Chapter 22: Scheming
A faint glow emanated from the teleportation array. The yet-to-be-activated Law-Destroying Teleportation Array, while not appearing particularly stable, could at least be described as harmless-looking. However, the eyes of the Nature Maiden, Elukulu, held a trace of hesitation.
"Are you sure this teleportation array is safe?" Elukulu frowned deeply. She clearly possessed a certain level of spatial mastery. "After multiple tests, it's fine."
"Still... forget it. Let's meet at the dungeon in the Northern Continent." Elukulu turned and drifted away. Seeing this, he felt a pang of regret. The spatial notes he had already taken out seemed useless now; he had originally wanted to record the teleportation shockwaves.
*Boom!*
The surrounding space shattered into crystalline fragments. When these fragments re-fused, the scenery around them had completely changed. They were now inside a luxurious mansion within the dungeon.
The originally opulent decorations were now in disarray, the walls covered in cracks, as if struck by a powerful explosion. Afterwards, bandits or scavengers had come, taking everything of value, even the relatively intact marble floor tiles had been pried up and carried away.
Stepping out of the nearly collapsed building, Su Xiao found that the spiral cross, which had once stood in the center of the dungeon, had been toppled. This was the symbol of the Dark God Cult in this world. Now, a skull flag was raised in its place, belonging to the local scavengers.
The reason the scavengers' flag had such a pirate style was due to the dungeon's unique geographical location. To the south was the Sky Wall of the Dark Zone, to the northwest was the Ancient Tower, and further north was the Dead City. Plus, it wasn't far from the Dark Zone, resulting in several low-intensity Dark Spreading Zones around the dungeon.
The dungeon scavengers had long since explored the relatively safe surrounding areas. They could only head east towards the sea, which was safer, to explore isolated islands.
The current situation was that the Dark Bishop, Berhwa, stationed in Twilight City, had been assassinated by Xiao, causing the dungeon in the far-off Northern Continent to quickly fall into a leaderless state. Strangely enough, the Dark God Cult, a cancerous force in other worlds, had its branch on Blazing Sun Star wiped out by the local scavenger force.
Even more bizarre was that this scavenger force had gained confidence from defeating the Dark God Cult, thinking that's all a first-rate force amounted to. This led them to decide to press their advantage and head to the Southern Continent to seize territory from the Soul Academy.
It could only be said that this scavenger force still had some sense, choosing not to declare war on Twilight City. They also knew the Northern Continent wasn't safe for long; the nights here were becoming increasingly dangerous. They needed to leave this territory of dark, eerie creatures quickly and head to the Southern Continent, where humans and the Sun God Clan held the advantage.
Besides this, Su Xiao saw many lower-ranking officials from Twilight City arriving. The dungeon had a population of several million. For the entirety of Twilight City, this number wasn't large, but for a single district within Twilight City, this population was extremely important.
Twilight City had over 100 districts. The size of the entire city was larger than the land area of a country in a Ninth Rank world. This made managing the whole of Twilight City very difficult. Coupled with various historical issues left over from the war with the Ancient Wyverns, the current power structure of Twilight City was a mix of aristocracy and bureaucracy.
Simply put, the Blazing Sun Lord, Aishlot, was at the very top of power. Below him were the Old Noble, Augustus; the Finance Minister, Hebersha; and the Sun Warrior Leader.
Finance Minister Hebersha was a stern and meticulous old lady. Twilight City's survival to this day owed at least twenty percent of the credit to her.
The Sun Warrior Leader was stationed in the Inner City. To put it more directly, the Sun Warriors were like the personal guard legion of successive Blazing Sun Lords. This Sun Warrior Leader was the captain of that guard. One could imagine how much the Blazing Sun Lord trusted him.
Finally, there was the Old Noble, Augustus. The entire old aristocratic system was stabilized by him. The old aristocracy had two levels: High Nobles and Nobles. High Nobles could not be inherited; they could only be passed to blood relatives. It was worth noting that in Twilight City, cousins were also considered blood relatives, just not direct blood relatives.
The entire Twilight City had the Outer City occupying over 90% of its area, divided into 125 districts. Each district was managed by a High Noble and a Finance Officer. The High Nobles were naturally controlled by the Old Noble, Augustus, while the Finance Officers were directly under the management of Finance Minister Hebersha.
Below the High Noble and Finance Officer in a district were a host of various officials. The officials currently arriving at the dungeon were mostly from districts with small populations. The High Nobles backing them had given them rough population targets before they came. If they couldn't recruit that many residents back, even if it wasn't considered dereliction of duty, their future prospects would be grim.
Given the current state of the dungeon, it wouldn't be long before it became a fortress city with a population of only a few hundred thousand, serving as an adventurer gathering point or a supply city. By then, many adventurers who valued treasure more than life would teleport from the Pioneer Fortress in the Southern Continent to the dungeon, using it as a starting point to explore the resources and wealth of the Northern Continent. Of course, this came with the risk of being devoured by the Northern Continent's strangeness and darkness, leaving not even bones behind.
One could imagine that a massive amount of resources would first arrive at the dungeon, then be transported via spatial teleportation channels through the Pioneer Fortress to Twilight City. For Twilight City, which had nearly exhausted the resources of the Southern Continent, this would undoubtedly inject a large amount of fresh blood.
Thinking about it this way, the former dungeon lord, Dark Bishop Berhwa, died at just the right time. Considering the cause of his death more carefully, when Su Xiao first entered this world, he had planned to conspire with Dark Bishop Berhwa to support an agent in Twilight City, thereby intervening in the city's power structure.
The actual operation went smoothly. Both Dark Bishop Berhwa and the former noble, Albers, were sent to Twilight City by Su Xiao, who also provided a good enough start. The life-extending secret medicine was irresistible to the dying elderly nobles.
But who would have thought that after arriving in Twilight City, Dark Bishop Berhwa would soon defect, throwing his lot in with the old aristocracy.
This was the Old Noble Augustus's method. Faced with Su Xiao's open scheme, Augustus had found it tricky. He could curb the greed of the nobles under him, but he couldn't suppress the dying old men's desire to live. If he used brute force to suppress them, without Su Xiao even needing to intervene from behind the scenes, those dying elderly nobles would make Augustus a public target.
Augustus's way to break the deadlock was to first win over the weakest point in this open scheme: the dungeon lord, Dark Bishop Berhwa. Augustus naturally understood this tyrant of the Northern Continent's dungeon and knew that Berhwa had already purchased a mansion in the Inner City of Twilight City and sent his family there.
Faced with Augustus's overtures, Dark Bishop Berhwa agreed without much hesitation. It made sense. Compared to a Law Destroyer who had just entered this world, Dark Bishop Berhwa would naturally prefer to cooperate with the famous and powerful noble leader of this world, Augustus. Su Xiao didn't have a "stupidity aura"; he couldn't make Berhwa abandon his interests and become inexplicably loyal after cooperating with him.
After successfully winning over Dark Bishop Berhwa, Augustus didn't immediately approach Su Xiao's intended agent, the former noble Albers. This old fox keenly sensed that this newcomer wasn't here to scheme for something. It seemed more like he couldn't bypass Twilight City while achieving his goals, hence the open scheme. Logically, someone who could pull off something like this should have a more complete, more extreme, and harder-to-deal-with plan.
Having confirmed this, Augustus wore a smile when meeting Su Xiao. The entire negotiation was amicable. It wasn't because both sides had good tempers, but because they had already clashed covertly, found each other troublesome, and decided to become collaborators instead.
It had to be said, an old fox is an old fox. With this move, Augustus not only eliminated the relatively unstable Dark Bishop but also successfully cooperated with Su Xiao, became the exclusive supplier of the Replenishing Secret Medicine, more stably managed the nobles of the old aristocratic faction, and turned the Northern Continent's dungeon, once a threat to Twilight City, into an adventurer gathering place, using the Northern Continent's abundant resources to solve the Southern Continent's growing resource scarcity.
Old Fox Augustus saw through these layers. At least in the current situation, he seemed to have outsmarted Su Xiao in terms of being a sly old fox. But there was a problem: Su Xiao sending the Dark Bishop to Twilight City was itself a test and a trial. It tested whether Augustus could see the value in it and whether he could be a collaborator.
After confirming that Augustus understood the value of killing the Dark Bishop, Su Xiao decisively had the Dark Bishop killed. To ensure absolute success, he even used one of Xiao's three promises. Remember, Xiao was the strongest assassin. More importantly, Baha had the ability to assassinate the Dark Bishop, but the success rate wasn't 100%.
Entrusting Xiao with the assassination of the Dark Bishop might have seemed like using a cannon to kill a mosquito before, but now it looked more like playing it safe.
Su Xiao looked at the skull flag in the center of the dungeon. This so-called scavenger force was almost certainly secretly supported by the Old Noble Augustus of Twilight City. This was exactly what Su Xiao wanted to see. He would inevitably have to fight powerful enemies in the Northern Continent later. The intensity would be such that his combat power and will could hold up, but his resource consumption definitely wouldn't. Finding a way to drag Twilight City into this was the best way to solve this problem.
Currently, dealing with the Tower Knight didn't show much resource shortage. But later, when facing the powerful enemy in the Dark Moon Nightmare at the northernmost point of the Northern Continent, entering that nightmare zone without sufficient preparation meant certain death.
Adequate preparation would inevitably require the consumption of various rare resources. Not to mention anything else, just the Aromatic Crystal Resin needed to suppress the nightmare's mental contamination required tons of raw materials to refine per gram.
The only entity in this world with such raw material stockpiles was Twilight City. As for why Twilight City should support Su Xiao's expedition to the Dark Moon Nightmare, being the representative of Twilight City to complete the King's Trial was far from enough. Fortunately, Su Xiao already had a way to force Twilight City's hand. Having Twilight City swallow the dungeon now was the bait to achieve this plan.
Watching the nobles of Twilight City swallow the bait of the dungeon and savor it, Su Xiao felt gratified.
Old Fox Augustus didn't see this? This was precisely Augustus's smartest point. He saw it but pretended not to know anything. This old fox now secretly hated Su Xiao's ruthless open scheme. If Augustus tried to stop the old aristocratic faction from swallowing this bait, he would be standing against the interests of all nobles.
Not lingering long in the dungeon, Su Xiao and his group left the city and soon entered a forest shrouded in thin mist. The trees in the forest were withered but not dead, their bark black, giving a dark and eerie feeling.
In such an environment, the Nature Maiden, Elukulu, remained constantly vigilant. What surprised her was that Su Xiao's team, led by Su Xiao, seemed to have no experience exploring dangerous places, moving forward quickly. This slightly puzzled her. Generally, Paradise camp members were very experienced in combat and exploring dangerous areas. The current behavior of Su Xiao's team looked like novices with no experience in dangerous exploration.
"Aren't we moving too fast?" Elukulu spoke. It could be seen that she had high emotional intelligence, not directly saying that Su Xiao's team lacked experience and caution in exploring dangerous places.
"This... why walk so slowly?" Baha looked at Elukulu suspiciously.
"The Northern Continent is the territory of monsters. After intruding into their territory..." Elukulu stopped mid-sentence. The reason was that the One-Eyed Aberrant Demon lurking in this area, upon sensing Su Xiao's blood aura, chose to temporarily flee this area.
This made Elukulu realize why Su Xiao's team, originating from the Paradise camp, seemed to have no experience exploring dangerous places. It wasn't inexperience; on the contrary, they had too much experience. This exploration method was simple and crude: march straight towards the target area. Monsters encountered along the way that couldn't be scared off were killed for treasure chests; those that ran away were ignored.
The Northern Continent was fraught with danger, but the problem was, with Su Xiao's current combat power, after arriving in the Northern Continent, he wasn't the one facing danger. Instead, he became one of the sources of danger in the Northern Continent.
Those Aberrant Demons, Moon Beasts, Mad Beasts, etc., upon sensing Su Xiao's blood aura, their first reaction wouldn't be that a human had entered their territory, but that a more powerful monster was passing through. Enduring this wave wasn't shameful.
The team's pace grew faster and faster until the black mist ahead became denser, even reaching a semi-fluid state.
A sound like a group of soft-bodied organisms squirming came from ahead. Su Xiao took out a honeycomb-shaped crystal and tossed it forward into the darkness. The crystal didn't fall but floated a few meters above the ground, emitting a sound wave undetectable by hearing.
A ball of light approached from above. When it was still a hundred meters from the honeycomb crystal, it suddenly accelerated, like a predatory fish, swallowing the crystal. As the light ball drew closer, Elukulu saw the ancient, ugly creature resembling an anglerfish.
Su Xiao's goal wasn't to lure out this aberrant creature, but to use the unique light from its luminous organ to see the true nature of the black mist ahead.
What lay ahead wasn't thick black mist, but a mass of dark creatures squirming like leeches, numbering so many they covered several kilometers ahead. They were distributed on the ground, in the air, and above, turning this area into a forbidden zone. While emitting a wet, sticky squirming sound, they also gave off a smell similar to rain-soaked soil. Most intelligent beings liked this smell, feeling an unconscious sense of relief. This was precisely the deadly trap these leech-like dark creatures were creating.
Even more terrifying was that because these dark creatures had physical, mental, and spiritual paralytic properties, intruders they attached to wouldn't notice their presence until they were devoured to the point of being unable to maintain minimal life functions. Only then would their vision gradually darken, and before falling into the darkness of death, they would see this horrifying, mind-shattering scene.
Elukulu had been to many dangerous places, but honestly, this kind of hair-raising area was something she would avoid if possible. This experience was definitely one of the most shocking she had ever had.
"Should we... take a detour?" "No need."
Su Xiao took out a cooling device and pulled out a piece of dark red flesh. As soon as this dark red flesh touched room temperature, it began dripping blood. The dark creature group ahead became agitated.
Su Xiao exerted force in his hand, squeezing the blood from the dark red flesh like a sponge. Strangely, the blood didn't continue to drip but clung to the surface of the flesh, causing its volume to rapidly increase.
He threw it with appropriate force. The dark red flesh flew several thousand meters before landing with a *splat*. With a *whoosh*, all the leech-like dark creatures swarmed it, forming a black sphere a kilometer in diameter in an instant.
The black mist ahead instantly dissipated, revealing a layer of bleached bones on the ground. Su Xiao stepped forward and continued. Seeing this, Elukulu fell into thought. She remembered a dangerous place she had once visited, where the deepest part was too perilous to pass. In contrast, the deepest treasure vault held several coveted secret treasures.
Elukulu didn't mention this matter, after all, she was hostile to Su Xiao's faction. This temporary cooperation was forced.
Although Su Xiao's high-level Abyssology didn't directly enhance combat power, it played a crucial role in exploring the Northern Continent. To get from the Dungeon to the Ancient Tower, even with his current combat power, fighting his way to the front of the Ancient Tower would leave him, if not severely injured, at least wounded and exhausted. As for finding a place to rest, that was basically impossible. The experience brought by high-level Abyssology perfectly solved this problem.
After traveling for over a dozen hours, the perpetually dim sky suddenly brightened a bit. The further they went, the more pronounced this clear-sky feeling became. A cylindrical tower appeared ahead. This tower had a diameter of over ten thousand meters and stretched into the sky, its height invisible to the naked eye. The Ancient Tower had been reached.
The area around the Ancient Tower was a vast expanse of ruins. Due to the immense passage of time, only the larger pure rock structures remained, hinting at the former glory of this great city.
Following the main street of the ruins, Su Xiao arrived at the entrance at the base of the Ancient Tower. On both sides of this main street stood guards in tattered armor. They were all over two meters tall, their flesh withered to a woody texture. These were the Moon Eclipse Knights of the former Dark Moon faction. Their old rivals were the still immensely powerful Sun Warriors.
The double metal doors of the Ancient Tower were tightly shut. The lower right corner of one door had rusted through, creating a breach. Entering through this nearly three-meter-high gap, Su Xiao found that most of the vast interior of the tower was occupied by a dark purple substance. This substance looked like biological tissue but was harder than most metals.
With his blade skills, Su Xiao could certainly cut through this dark purple substance, but the time cost was too high, and it would incur unknown risks.
Elevators, stairs, and other passages leading to the upper floors were all sealed by this dark purple substance. Only a tower teleportation array was still usable. Stepping onto the array, he found it marked in Void Language. Because it was Ancient Void Language, he could only understand part of it, but that was enough.
The structure of this teleportation array was special. Amidst the spatial traps scattered throughout the Ancient Tower, this tower teleportation array could ignore them. Moreover, the spatial traps here were ancient and basically impossible to disarm. Furthermore, these chaotic, barely functioning spatial traps were more dangerous than when they were first set up.
[Prompt: You have entered the Ancient Tower and triggered the local "Moon Curse."]
[Moon Curse: When you attempt to take any item from within the Ancient Tower and leave this place, you must undergo the weighing of the "Soul Balance." All your gains within the Ancient Tower will be placed on the left side of the Soul Balance, while you yourself must stand on the right side of the Soul Balance. When the weight of your soul is greater than the obtained items on the left tray, these items will belong to you, and you will receive "Moon Marrow Spirit Liquid" of equivalent "weight" to these items.]
[Warning: If the weight of your soul is less than the obtained items on the left tray, you will be devoured by what lies within the Ancient Tower.]
[Prompt: You may pay 50% of the items obtained this time to abandon the trial of the Soul Balance, and endure the erosion of the Moon Curse for the following 500 natural days.]
Closing the prompt, Su Xiao continued studying the tower teleportation array. After a moment, he found that only one spatial coordinate was usable on this array: teleporting to the highest floor of the Ancient Tower. He adjusted the coordinates and activated the array.
With a *boom*, large cracks appeared on the teleportation array, but the teleportation proceeded normally. When the spatial mist around him dissipated, Su Xiao found himself in a luxurious yet ancient room. It was clear that the owner of this room had held a high position in the Dark Moon faction.
Su Xiao looked around. Most of the furniture had rotted to dust. A dark purple resin container on a metal wall cabinet caught his eye. He stepped forward and picked it up.
[You have obtained Dark Moon Source Matter.]
Seeing this prompt, Su Xiao frowned slightly. The Great Library seemed to be secretly enhancing his luck again. Otherwise, something like obtaining a Source Matter for nothing would never happen to him.
Was that really the case? Not entirely. Due to the plan of the Old Monster of the Great Library, the high-ranking members of the Great Library had indeed paid a great price to invite a powerful Fate System expert. But that was meant to temporarily enhance Su Xiao's luck after he entered the Dark Zone, limited to the period between his entry and exit from the Dark Zone.
The problem was that this Fate System expert hadn't personally experienced the power of the Law Destroyer's luck. This person exhausted all their strength to successfully enhance the Law Destroyer's luck, but when the scheduled time arrived, they found they couldn't stop.
Currently, this emaciated Fate System expert was being forced to continue enhancing Su Xiao's fortune, constantly trying to figure out how to stop this enhancement. Otherwise, they might become the first Fate System expert in history to die from enhancing someone else's fortune.