Occupation: Eternal Night Continent's Mortal Domain

In the pitch-black darkness, only the faint breathing of three people could be heard.

No one knew how long passed.

The darkness around them receded swiftly, like an ebbing tide. In its place, the morning sun rose slowly in the distance.

The next moment—

Apart from the boat captain, the other two collapsed almost instantly. Their nerves had been stretched taut all night, and they had finally reached their limit.

Only then

did the man at their head get a clear look at the Strange Entity in the crater before him.

It looked like an octopus.

A limp mass lay amid sticky liquid scattered across the ground, with dozens of tentacles. Several Eerie Stones had fallen beside it, along with an Exotic Treasure he could not identify, shaped like a Token.

He quickly scooped up everything on the ground and tucked it into his clothes. Token-shaped Exotic Treasures were often worth a fortune.

At the same time,

a muffled peal of thunder sounded faintly overhead.

Then!

Green rain suddenly swept across the entire deserted island. Trees that had been withered for who knew how many years seemed to drink from the fountain of life beneath that emerald rain, rustling as great swathes of green leaves sprang from their branches.

In the blink of an eye,

the whole forest brimmed with green. He could even faintly hear birdsong and crickets.

And that was not all.

High above, the emerald rain formed a string of text in the sky. They could not read the writing, yet its meaning was perfectly clear. He had seen such text before, when the Eternal Night Continent advanced to a Second-Level Continent.

"Rugged Island has been successfully occupied."

"Occupying faction: Mortal Domain of the Eternal Night Continent."

"Occupant: Zhang Taiping, boat captain of Group Seventeen, Mortal Domain