The Red Sun Rises

Watching the Silver Moon Wolf's corpse vanish without dropping a spirit bone, Xiao Mu grew furious. He felt an urge to blow up the Spirit Pagoda headquarters; swallowing his rewards was no different from killing a man's parents.

You could give him something inferior, but you could not give him nothing at all.

He had worked his fingers to the bone fighting monsters, waiting for the loot to drop, only for it to yield nothing. Who was he supposed to reason with now?

"True Monarch, burn it! Burn this Primary Spirit Ascension Platform to the ground!" At this moment, Xiao Mu was undoubtedly enraged.

He had gone through untold hardships and overcome countless trials to clear the stage, only to receive a pitiful amount of experience.

This was definitely a fix! Someone had clearly set him up!

Xiao Mu's force field turned chaotic from his anger, molecules jumping erratically as the surrounding temperature began to rise rapidly.

The next instant, the Golden Crow spread its wings.

Junwu transformed into a red sun, soaring from Xiao Mu's shoulder. Golden flames burned upon its wings, rising into the forest like a true sun.

The temperature climbed sharply, the air distorted, and the thin mist was vaporized into nothingness.

The spirit beasts that had originally intended to flee were pulled in by a terrifying gravitational force within a hundred-meter radius of him.

At this moment, Junwu was like a sun truly descending upon the mortal world, bringing disaster and doomsday to the world.

"Xiao Mu, don't do anything reckless—" Tang Wulin shouted, his voice distorted by the heatwaves.

"Back off. I'm going to smash the Primary Spirit Ascension Platform first, then I'll go smash the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform," Xiao Mu said, his voice as calm as if he were stating a fact. "The Spirit Pagoda clearly thinks making money is too easy."

In the sky, the red sun hung high, and golden fire rain poured down. As the flames landed on the treetops, the leaves instantly charred, curled, and turned to ash.

Where they hit the ground, the soil cracked and rocks melted, emitting a sizzling sound.

The entire Primary Spirit Ascension Platform was burning. Points of spiritual power twisted and rose within the sea of fire, drifting toward the nearest spirit masters.

"Teacher Wu, make your student calm down. Whether a spirit bone drops or not is a decision made by headquarters."

A Spirit Pagoda staff member couldn't help but speak up in a panic.

"Do you think he can hear me?" Wu Zhangkong was speechless. He couldn't command Xiao Mu; the boy rarely listened to him to begin with.

He truly feared neither heaven nor earth.

Inside the Ascension Platform, Gu Yue shouted, "Xiao Mu, if you keep burning, you'll offend the Spirit Pagoda."

"They were the ones who didn't give me what I was owed first." Xiao Mu was still furious. So what if he offended the Spirit Pagoda?

What did it matter if he broke ties with them?

He had noted this grudge.

Spirit souls were the foundation, were they? As long as something existed, it could be replicated.

And it could be upgraded.

He raised his hand, and the red sun dove downward, the golden flames carving a straight line through the forest.

Wherever it passed, trees turned to charcoal and the ground melted into glass-like crystals. A Silver Moon Wolf that hadn't quite died yet lunged from the ashes, only to be overtaken by the flames and howl as it turned into points of light.

All the spiritual power within the entire Spirit Pagoda rose up, surging toward them.

"Let's collect the interest first. If you can't hold on, just log out."

Xiao Mu's voice was slightly cold, golden flames reflected in the depths of his eyes.

The red sun formed by Junwu hung above the Ascension Platform like a doomsday sun, its golden flames burning everything to ash.

As the others saw the gathering spiritual power, Xu Xiaoyan was the first to feel her body reaching its limit, followed by Xie Xie, and then Wang Jinxi and Wei Xiaofeng.

Xiao Mu looked at Tang Wulin and reminded him, "Tang Wulin, don't forget your mental power; you can't withstand a thousand-year spirit soul."

Thinking of this, Tang Wulin glanced at the color of his first spirit ring, which was already a deep yellow, and hurriedly pressed the button to leave the Spirit Pagoda.

"Just the three of us left!" Xiao Mu watched the spirit rings at his feet. The speed of his improvement had slowed down; the spirit beasts in this Primary Spirit Ascension Platform should have been mostly wiped out.

"Let's go. To the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform. If we're going to cause trouble, we might as well do it thoroughly." He put on a wireless headset; this was a portable communication device created by Zero's intelligence.

He refused to believe he couldn't crash the Spirit Pagoda's industrial chain.

He hadn't studied the Sacred Teachings for nothing. He wasn't a gentleman; he was a petty man, and his revenge would be endless.

"No, are you really planning to offend the Spirit Pagoda to death?" Gu Yue felt exhausted. She had just joined the Spirit Pagoda; he shouldn't do this.

"Pfft, the worst they can do is blacklist me! If they dare to blacklist me, I'll cut off the Spirit Pagoda's network and their power supply." Xiao Mu was fearless. He didn't believe that once the Spirit Pagoda had enjoyed the convenience of modern tech, they could go back to the old days.

Moreover, Xiao Mu's blacklist was quite broad; it was easy to drag the Tang Sect and Shrek Academy into it.

If he couldn't deal with the Spirit Pagoda alone, he would just have to find a few teammates.

At this moment, Qiangu Dongfeng had no idea he had offended a petty person who, when he wanted to hit someone, would actually take action to do so.

When a person is doing something bad, their IQ is comparable to Einstein's, and they never feel tired.

Three figures crossed the dividing line and stepped into the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform.

The trees were taller, the mist was thicker, and the air was heavy with a dull fluctuation of spiritual power, as if the entire forest were breathing.

Xiao Mu walked at the very front. In his headset, Zero's voice was busy cracking the information of the Ascension Platform. He refused to believe he couldn't smash the Spirit Pagoda's rice bowl.

They had taken less than ten steps inside when a pillar of fire suddenly erupted from the ground. Crimson magma wrapped around a white-hot core, shooting three meters into the air and forcing them to a halt.

The ground split open.

A giant scorpion crawled out from the fissure, its entire body covered in a snow-white carapace. Killing intent radiated continuously from its joints, and its massive, powerful front claws snapped open and shut with immense force.

Its tail was formed from nine connected bone segments, creating a structure that could extend and retract freely, with a fiery red stinger over thirty centimeters in diameter at the tip.

A ten-thousand-year soul beast, the Earth King.

Xiao Mu glanced at it without a word.

He was currently in a foul mood.

A force field surged from within his body—not the delicate manipulation he had used before, but a brute-force method to clear the path.

The air was shoved aside. The flames suddenly contracted as the oxygen vanished.

The Earth King opened its mouth, but the fire it tried to spew extinguished before it could even form, leaving only a puff of black smoke.

A vacuum.

Xiao Mu had pulled all the air away from around it.

The Earth King tried to struggle, but at this moment, death was inevitable. The gases inside its carapace expanded wildly, and its bodily fluids began to boil in the zero-pressure environment. Bubbles swelled on the surface of its shell, making it look like a lobster being roasted over a fire.

With a final, dull thud, the Earth King's carapace burst from the inside. Fragments and bodily fluids sprayed in every direction, only to be halted in mid-air.

Gu Yue stood behind him, utterly silent.

A three-ringed soul master instantly killing a ten-thousand-year soul beast—was this Xiao Mu's true strength?

Xiao Mu was also heavily drained at this moment; a vacuum was not something that could be used casually.

It was almost like wrestling with the world itself.

He withdrew his hand, the force field dissipated, and the suspended fragments clattered to the ground.

"True Monarch, ignite the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform for me! Let the forest burn!"

"You got it, I've been waiting for those words."

Jun Wu transformed into a red sun once more, streaking through the sky like a ray of light. As his dark wings flapped, a massive fire broke out in the forest.

"Can you two still hold on?" Xiao Mu looked at the three soul rings beneath his feet, which had already turned pitch-black, and turned his gaze toward the two beside him.

Throughout the process, the two of them hadn't absorbed a single bit of spiritual energy, having ceded almost all of it to Xiao Mu.

"Let's go..."

Xiao Mu glanced at his soul rings one last time, and after absorbing another massive surge of spiritual energy, he pressed the button to leave the Spirit Ascension Platform.

At the same time, inside the Spirit Pagoda, Qiangu Dongfeng, who was in a remote meeting with the Federation, had his network connection cut off and was dropped from the call on the spot.

He had just reached for his phone to inquire about the issue when he realized his soul guidance communicator was also unusable.

This same event was happening to everyone in the Spirit Pagoda simultaneously.

This was a certain "virtue" of the Xia Kingdom from the past five thousand years—collective punishment.

Of course, for the Tang Sect and Shrek Academy, it was initially just a simple case of poor signal.

Xiao Mu wasn't worried about these people refusing to use his technology. They could choose not to, but they still had to use alternating current—and unfortunately, that was Xiao Mu's as well.

Of course, they could always go back to using the old-fashioned direct current.

After much turmoil, Qiangu Dongfeng finally contacted the person in charge at the Federation, only to learn that he had offended the inventor of the communication technology.

The other party had remotely locked the Spirit Pagoda out of the technology.

As long as they were within the range of the Spirit Pagoda, they could not use these technologies.

"No, how did I offend him?! He's just a researcher, is he really not afraid of me, a Limit Douluo?!"

Unfortunately, Xiao Mu had several Limit Douluos protecting him, and he was still just a child.