Qualification

"Hmph, Lu Bai, since I've fallen into your hands today, do whatever you want—kill me or carve me up. A head is just a bowl-sized scar; if I even furrow my brow, consider me a loser!"

One of the thugs, a man with thick eyebrows and large eyes, shouted with great courage despite being tied up on the ground after seeing Lu Bai.

"That's right! We brothers live and die together, facing death as if it were a homecoming. We will never bow our heads to you."

"Good brother, we'll be together again in the next life!"

The three thugs were tied to the ground, eyes brimming with hot tears, as if they had completely ignored Lu Bai, their enemy.

"Very well, then I shall grant your wish." Lu Bai quite appreciated those who faced death without fear.

"Someone, leave one of them behind and drag the other two out to be carved up!"

The thick-browed man's expression changed instantly. His bound body began to wriggle toward Lu Bai like a meat worm, stopping just short of licking Lu Bai's shoes.

"Brother, Brother Lu, Ancestor Lu, I was wrong! I was just talking nonsense earlier." The thick-browed man's demeanor was now worlds apart from before; he didn't even seem like the same person.

The two thugs beside him also immediately groveled, lowering their posture as much as they possibly could.

"Big Brother, you brought us here to ask questions, right? Ask away, we'll tell you everything."

"That's right, that's right! I know the most, just ask me. Those two aren't important."

"I have exclusive information they don't know. Just keep me, Ancestor Lu!"

The three brothers who were supposed to be together in the next life had completely turned on each other in this moment.

They didn't even need to be subjected to torture; they confessed everything.

They were local thugs from Yongfeng City who had met their leader, Boss Zhang, over a year ago.

From that time on, Boss Zhang had led them in performing various shady jobs.

Then, at certain times, Boss Zhang would suddenly take them to various places in Yongfeng City to scout and track information on specific people.

However, most of the time, Boss Zhang would not take action himself.

The act of driving a van and suddenly appearing to snatch people was not something they did very often.

Lu Bai was the third target they had set their sights on; after the first two were captured, their death compensation payments were stolen.

According to these thugs, however, the cut Boss Zhang received was not actually that large.

"Ancestor Lu, that animal must have someone behind him. They provide information about Awakened ones like you to that animal, and he takes the smallest cut while doing the most shameless work."

"That's right, Ancestor Lu! It was the same this time. We hadn't even really scouted your information, but that animal locked onto your location and brought us here to charge in directly."

"I suspect someone close to you leaked the information."

Boss Zhang, their former leader, quickly devolved into an "animal" in their mouths, with even harsher insults being hurled his way.

Lu Bai didn't care about that; he cared about the source of the information they mentioned.

After waking up from a 77-year slumber, he had been under the care of the Church of Thousand Dimensions. After they provided him with his death compensation, he was secretly arranged into a slack position at a small company to help him adapt to the new era.

Since then, he had been coasting through life while investigating news about the new era.

Once he confirmed the information regarding Travelers, he began waiting for the Tianwu Group to sell tickets to the 'Jianghu' dimension.

Throughout this process, Lu Bai hadn't had much contact with anyone, and his behavior had been standard and unremarkable, without drawing any unnecessary attention.

Even so, had he been targeted?

"Did something go wrong within the Church of Thousand Dimensions?" Lu Bai shook his head, feeling that was unlikely.

Special extraction points might be precious to him, but to the people of the Church of Thousand Dimensions, they were nothing.

"I only need to go back and eliminate the people around me one by one to find out."

Lu Bai listed a few suspicious targets in his mind and continued to ask about other matters.

Boss Zhang had awakened before him and had even joined an organization, so he surely knew more about Traveler affairs than Lu Bai did.

Since these thugs had followed Boss Zhang for so long and had accidentally entered this dimension together this time, they must have learned something from him.

"You're saying you only have one skill slot?" Lu Bai looked at the thick-browed man and raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, Boss Lu." The thick-browed man spoke up immediately. "According to that piece of human trash, the process of entering a dimension involves the body being eroded and transformed by the dimension's power. The panel and skill slots are actually formed by this power."

"Depending on each person's constitution and their adaptability to the dimension, the number of skill slots formed varies."

"Some people can't even form a single complete skill slot after entering a dimension seven or eight times."

"And those people don't have the qualifications to become Travelers."

No wonder Lu Bai felt these people didn't seem like Travelers. If they had modules, they should have been able to form a skill quickly; they shouldn't have been reduced to holding a weakened small pistol and going pew-pew-pew.

The thugs told Lu Bai that if they used pistols to shoot and kill martial artists, they could only condense the most basic internal energy modules, and all these modules were confiscated by Boss Zhang.

In other words, they currently only possessed incomplete skill slots and had no modules on them at all.

"Every dimension has a corresponding theme."

"Only by following that theme can one obtain modules to the greatest extent."

"Any power added that is unrelated to the theme will only reduce the harvest and is very likely to cause problems, triggering some terrifying events."

"He was always very nervous whenever we used the pistols."

"That beast of a man was full of terror when he told us those things; he must have encountered something back then, which is why he was so afraid."

"That's right, I remember it clearly. After he came back that time, he stayed in his room for a long time, and even woke up screaming in the middle of the night from being scared."

"His pants were still wet, too. He definitely pissed himself out of fear."

With a few words exchanged, the group laid bare Boss Zhang's darkest secrets.

Lu Bai grasped the key information: in this dimension, things unrelated to the theme would reduce rewards and trigger terrifying consequences.

Is this the restriction?

Lu Bai had analyzed it long ago; there must be some kind of restriction keeping the current Martial Forest in its original, authentic state.

Otherwise, this place would have long since been subjugated by all sorts of modern weaponry and turned into a modern colony.

"Terrifying consequences." Lu Bai pondered, what kind of event could possibly make a Traveler piss his pants in fear?

The bandit leader's performance earlier hadn't been too bad; although his combat ability was lacking and he lost his nerve in the end, he had still been willing to fight hard at the critical moment before that.

For a man like that to wet himself, it meant that some phenomenon of terror far beyond his psychological threshold must have appeared.

"This piece of information still warrants vigilance."