For someone who had already died once, Chen Zhuo did not particularly fear his life coming to an end.
If death was his destiny, he would accept its embrace.
Chen Zhuo clenched a sharp piece of brass alloy he had pried off a sacrificial candlestick.
Accepting death was one thing.
He had never said he would not fight back.
Whatever that river god was, if it wanted to eat him, it could swallow this strike of his, too.
The moon shone bright, and the stars were few.
A pair of red lanterns rose from the mist-shrouded river.
A closer look revealed that they were a pair of fucking scarlet eyes.
The Transforming Serpent, with ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety years of cultivation, looked at the offering Black Snake Village had delivered as promised.
It noticed that this time, they had sent a cute little boy.
There was only one thing it did not understand.
This offering was rather strange.
At its arrival, he neither froze in terror nor wet himself; he neither struggled nor fled.
Instead, he smiled at it.
What a neat set of white teeth.
Just as the Transforming Serpent was about to open its mouth and swallow the offering along with the wooden boat...
It discovered that its body no longer obeyed its commands. Suddenly, it could not move.
"Urgh-"
The look in the Transforming Serpent's eyes darted about like a startled mouse, betraying its panic.
Inside the Main God Space.
Chen Zhuo had returned to the place that had jolted him awake from nightmares in his previous life.
Once an ordinary university student, he had gone through the Shrouding the Heavens World and then the Wizard World, following the missions assigned to him by the Main God Space.
If a mission failed, the Main God Space would erase every participant who had failed that mission.
Yes! It would kill them all, without any room for negotiation.
Success, however, earned points, followed by a forced assignment to the next world for another trial.
An accident had occurred during his mission in the Battle Through the Heavens World, when he seized Dou Sheng Qing Lin's eyes.
Before he could make his escape, she had self-detonated and taken him down with her.
When he regained consciousness, he was already in Black Snake Village on the Douluo Plane.
That was why, during his martial soul awakening, his expression had briefly slipped out of his control when he discovered that his martial soul was the Triple Jade-Green Snake Flower Pupils.
The Triple Jade-Green Snake Flower Pupils were the very eyes he had seized from Dou Sheng Qing Lin.
Those divine eyes possessed an innate ability to absolutely suppress and control serpentine creatures.
That was also why he had smiled on the wooden boat.
Whether the river god was a fallen soul master or a ten-thousand-year soul beast...
Neither was an existence Chen Zhuo could handle.
But the river god just happened to be a snake.
Even being a Transforming Serpent with the bloodline of an ancient mutant species would do it no good.
Against the Triple Jade-Green Snake Flower Pupils, its only fate was to be controlled.
The positions of attacker and defender reversed in an instant.
What Chen Zhuo had not expected was that activating his ocular technique would bring him to the Main God Space, which he had long since lost contact with.
"You're finally here."
A black sphere resembling a black hole flew over.
At the sight of the Main God Space's will, Chen Zhuo nearly suffered a trauma response.
In his previous life, the Main God Space had enslaved him, forcing him to carry out its missions without end.
Failing his mission in the Battle Through the Heavens World could even be considered a release.
"You don't need to worry."
"At most, I'm only a fragment now. I no longer possess the main system's ability to travel through the myriad worlds."
Only after hearing that did Chen Zhuo's taut nerves ease a little.
Chen Zhuo had already guessed that something must have gone wrong with the Main God Space.
Otherwise, since he had long ago recovered the memories obscured by reincarnation, the Main God Space would never have waited until now to summon him.
Given a choice, he truly did not want to travel through the myriad worlds, undergoing one endless trial after another.
In fact, staying in this world and settling down would be quite nice.
After some discussion and firsthand verification, the stone weighing on Chen Zhuo's heart finally dropped.
The current will of the Main God Space could be understood as an artificial intelligence that had lost its ability to search online.
Its original database, however, remained intact.
And it was now firmly bound to him.
Chen Zhuo's eyes lit up.
Having the Main God Space meant that in this life, he could not only follow the path of a soul master but also continue along his previous life's path to transcendence.
"How many points do I have left?"
He had cleared two worlds in his previous life. Surely he had at least 200 points left.
However, the will of the Main God Space gave him some bad news.
Losing contact with the main system had invalidated all the personal points he had accumulated.
The good news was that it could establish a new system for earning and redeeming points within the existing framework.
Soon, the will of the Main God Space finished creating that function.
This world's martial souls, soul bones, living beings (bloodlines), gold coins, and other rare treasures could all be sacrificed to it in exchange for corresponding points.
"How many points can I get if I sacrifice that beast outside to you?"
The black sphere embodying the Main God Space's will scanned it and actually radiated disdain.
[Classic of Mountains and Seas exotic beast: Transforming Serpent] [Bloodline purity: thin] [Age: 99990 years] [Redeemable for: 10 points]
The result left Chen Zhuo speechless.
How could a soul beast infinitely close to a hundred thousand years old, one of this world's top soul beasts, be worth only 10 points?
Chen Zhuo refused on the spot.
Ten points could only buy one bottle of the most basic tier-one genetic potion.
"Oh, don't cry."
"I completely understand how you feel."
"I'll tell you now in the most honest, least roundabout, most direct, most hardcore, most practical, and least evasive way possible..."
"I can give you preferential treatment."
On the electronic screen before Chen Zhuo, the redeemable points changed to 10 × 2.
From then on, anything he sacrificed would earn him twice its original value.
That was a privilege he alone enjoyed as the administrator.
Chen Zhuo wiped away his nonexistent tears, his smile blooming like a flower.
Had the Main God Space's consciousness not been so stubborn, Chen Zhuo would absolutely have pestered it to keep bargaining.
He would have demanded ever greater benefits.
What was this nonsense about an administrator still having to pay for items in his own system?
That was completely unreasonable.
This was what happened when it could not connect to the internet.
No intelligence, just idiocy.
Outside, the Transforming Serpent's hundred-meter-long body vanished into thin air.
At administrator Chen Zhuo's command, the Main God Space's consciousness captured it.
The Main God Space's consciousness told him that producing a tier-one genetic bloodline potion did not yet require techniques involving the soul.
Given this world's cultivation system, he could make much fuller use of this Transforming Serpent.
For instance, he could make it his first soul ring.
"That's something I can't do, but you can."
"Your eyes are special. They are the natural enemy and absolute superior of all snakes."
The Triple Jade-Green Snake Flower Pupils had become Chen Zhuo's martial soul. Having fused with this world's laws, they had already become a conceptual-level existence.
They could ignore differences in soul power level and affect anything related to snakes.
His eyes had never been a trash martial soul!
To all serpentine soul beasts and snake-type soul masters, they were a godlike existence.
Sure enough, beneath the gaze of Chen Zhuo's jade-green eyes, the Transforming Serpent, which had been restless inside its spatial cage, instantly became utterly still.
With a single glance, the Transforming Serpent's soul was forcibly extracted from its body.
Its savage bestial nature was erased, and it was transformed into a soul spirit.
"Sacrifice yourself to me."
Under the suppression of the Triple Jade-Green Snake Flower Pupils, that was the highest command to the Transforming Serpent's soul spirit, one it could not disobey.
And so this serpent emperor, which needed only to devour a stalk of ten-year solitary bamboo or a ten-year Wind Baboon to become a hundred-thousand-year soul beast, truly did obediently sacrifice itself.
It did not even think of resisting.
When a soul beast sacrificed itself, a soul master could absorb the soul ring it produced regardless of the difference in their levels.
A ring of the deepest black appeared beneath Chen Zhuo's feet, becoming the first soul ring of his Triple Jade-Green Snake Flower Pupils martial soul!
His soul power also shot straight up to level 12.
"You're rather lucky."
While collecting the Transforming Serpent's fleshly body, the Main God Space discovered unusual residual soul power in its tail.
An external soul bone crystallized out, taking the shape of a Tang-style straight saber.
A saber-shaped external soul bone-could this be the first of its kind in all history?
Chen Zhuo collected the soul bone and discovered that this extremely rare external soul bone could actually be used without fusing with his body.
In another world, it would absolutely qualify as a magical artifact.
Moreover, the nature of an external soul bone meant that it still had room to grow and the ability to evolve.
"What a treasure!"
Chen Zhuo ran through a saber routine with it and could hardly bear to put it down.
His constitution was just a little too weak to withstand much practice.
But that was no problem.
Under the Main God Space's magical potions (genetic bloodline potions) category, a Transforming Serpent potion priced at 10 points per bottle materialized from an illusory image.
"Redeem!"
Without any hesitation, Chen Zhuo chose to redeem it.
Before you continue