Chapter 155: The Curtain Falls

A puff echoed through the void as a pair of dragon wings swept past, crushing the head of an immortal god.

The spatial lockdown dissolved, faintly carrying the dying curse of the immortal god before his demise.

"I shall curse you in hell for all eternity!"

"Boring last words." Jiang Chen put away the corpse falling from the sky and looked down at the riddled and ruined Ancestral God City below.

As the highest-status sacred city on the planet Visca, Ancestral God City covered a vast expanse.

Although the threshold for settling there was extremely high, powerhouses and wealthy figures across the entire planet Visca yearned for it, eager to establish their homes within Ancestral God City.

Accumulated over long ages, the population of Ancestral God City was a staggeringly massive figure.

A large crowd of immortal-tier powerhouses had waged war above Ancestral God City, and the shockwaves of their battle had nearly destroyed the entire city.

As for the casualties...

Judging from the feedback signals sent back by the detectors, there were hardly any living beings left within Ancestral God City.

Jiang Chen sighed softly, forcing himself not to dwell on it.

"No matter what, this battle is finally over."

Controlling the Void Dragon mecha to return to the spacecraft and putting away his mechanical legion, Jiang Chen instructed Jarvis, "Jarvis, you can begin the expansion now. I want you to complete the extraction and collection of the shallow surface resources of planet Visca within the shortest possible time."

"Understood, Master. Based on a depth limit of thirty thousand kilometers below the surface, it is projected to take eleven years to complete the extraction," Jarvis replied promptly. "Additionally, I will need the mechanical legion to maintain internal stability on the planet. The current number of mechanical units is insufficient and needs to be scaled up."

"Allocate the extracted resources as you see fit, prioritizing schemes that do not require alchemical array conversions. Draft a plan for me first," Jiang Chen instructed, then continued, "For now, go and plunder the treasures within Ancestral God City. After all, being the stronghold of this planet's highest authorities, there should be quite a few good things."

"Understood, Master." Jarvis promptly complied, dispatching a mechanical unit equipped with detection instruments into the ruins of Ancestral God City to search for any potential treasures.

---

A little over a day later, Jarvis suddenly spoke within Jiang Chen's consciousness: "Master, you should come and see this."

"Hmm?" Following Jarvis, Jiang Chen arrived at a tunnel.

The entrance of the tunnel was located within the shrine at the headquarters of the Ancestral God Cult. It had been collapsed by the shockwaves of the previous battle but had now been cleared and reopened.

Walking through the long tunnel and calculating the distance in his heart, Jiang Chen could not help but feel a wave of surprise.

"This tunnel must be over a million kilometers deep by now, right? Still not at the end?" Jiang Chen wondered internally.

Given the geological structure of planet Visca, excavating a tunnel over a million kilometers deep was no minor feat.

Even for immortal gods, undertaking such a task would be grueling and consume a tremendous amount of time.

"Master, the end of this tunnel is located 4,587,536 kilometers underground," Jarvis reminded him. "At our current speed, it will take approximately another 2.2 hours to arrive."

"Over four million kilometers?" Jiang Chen was startled and immediately asked, "Is there any danger? If not, accelerate."

Jarvis replied, "It has already been scanned and checked; there is no danger."

Jiang Chen immediately sped up his advance.

Twenty-odd minutes later, the tunnel finally reached its end.

The other end opened into an incomparably vast and huge space, resembling an underground world large enough to accommodate a continent.

Of course, this referred to a continent on an ordinary planet, not a 'super-continent' like the ones on planet Visca.

Within the underground space, a type of moss-like plant emitted a faint glow, banishing the pitch-black darkness.

Though the brightness was low, for cultivators, even the slightest trace of light was enough to clearly see everything around them.

The entire underground space was filled with countless plant vines, forming a thick, dense carpet.

Among the vines lay a few corpses, being slowly devoured.

Scanning with his spiritual telekinesis, Jiang Chen was astonished to find that the seemingly endless layers of countless vines actually all originated from a single plant.

Right in the center, surrounded by the endless vines, was a small clearing about a hundred meters in diameter.

In the clearing, on a tiny vine, grew a bright red fruit the size of a soybean.

At a glance, Jiang Chen recognized that this fruit was none other than a Blood God Fruit.

However, a fully matured Blood God Fruit was the size of a fist. This particular Blood God Fruit was far from mature and could only be considered a seedling.

"So, this is the Blood God Vine?"

Jiang Chen immediately understood: "The essences of all life forms that perish across the entire planet are absorbed by the planet's earth and eventually converge here, where they are absorbed by the Blood God Vine to bear Blood God Fruits..."

Looking at the tiny, still-growing Blood God Fruit, Jiang Chen could not help feeling a sense of emotion.

Over endless ages, countless deaths and rivers of blood from generation after generation of Viscans were required for a single Blood God Fruit to mature and become a treasure worth thirteen million merit points.

Yet, Jiang Chen had no interest in changing this state of affairs.

The universe was inherently cruel.

Compared to those weak races, the human race's status and living environment in the universe were already exceptionally good.

Glancing at the corpses of several World Lords that had already been completely devoured by the Blood God Vine, Jiang Chen instructed, "Leave a mechanical squad to guard this place. Don't do anything extra."

"Master, according to calculations, if all the fierce beasts across the two continents are wiped out, there is a certain probability that another Blood God Fruit will be borne," Jarvis reminded him. "However, it will take about a hundred years to acquire it."

"A hundred years is a bit too long." Jiang Chen felt a faint temptation, but he was unwilling to wait for that long.

A single Blood God Fruit possessed a startling value to ordinary geniuses.

Yet Jiang Chen had already harvested numerous Blood God Fruits this time; waiting another century for just one more fruit was simply not cost-effective.

"Master can sell it to others," Jarvis suggested. "Universe-level geniuses in the core secret realms surely have grand enough backgrounds and can afford the price. As long as Master sells it slightly cheaper than the Virtual Universe Company's treasury, there will definitely be buyers willing to take it."

A thought stirred in Jiang Chen's mind, and he nodded slightly. "That is indeed an option, but let's not rush. I'll go back and study it first."

---

A few days later, Jiang Chen returned to the base in the Land of Eternal Sleep.

"Counting the assassinated immortal squad, this trip yielded a total of twenty-four immortal god corpses, all with genetic tiers exceeding a hundred times."

"Pity I didn't obtain the corpse of that 'God Lord'. With my current strength, killing a Marquis-level immortal while keeping a complete corpse intact is simply impossible..."

Jiang Chen could not help sighing.

The harvest from this trip to planet Visca was already immense.

Yet, if he possessed greater strength, the harvest could have been even greater.

Many unnecessary 'losses' occurred simply because he lacked sufficient strength and was forced to make concessions.

Doers of the Blood God Fruit alone accounted for dozens of immortal corpses that he had failed to successfully 'recover'.

Either they had self-destructed, or under duress, he had been forced to use the combined strikes of his mechanical legions to completely annihilate them, leaving not a single speck of residue.

Even so, the benefits already secured were of staggering value.

The number of immortal corpses that had consumed the Blood God Fruit totaled seventy-six.

Among them, fifty-two had already been crafted into immortal puppets.

However, whether they were raw corpses or immortal puppets, Blood God Fruits could still be extracted from them.

During the puppet-making process, Jiang Chen had deliberately factored this in, even willing to lower some of the puppets' attributes to preserve the opportunity to extract the Blood God Fruits.

There was no helping it; this item was far more valuable than a mere immortal corpse with a genetic tier over a hundred times.

When turning an immortal god's corpse into an immortal puppet, the most precious part wasn't the corpse itself, but the other materials added into the process.

From the perspective of combat power, extracting and selling the Blood God Fruits to purchase other treasures to strengthen the mechanical legion was far more cost-effective than keeping the physical puppets intact.

According to the listed price in the Virtual Universe Company's treasury, a single Blood God Fruit was worth thirteen million merit points. Seventy-six Blood God Fruits translated to nearly one billion merit points.

Weaker Marquis-level immortals might not even possess that much total net worth.

Compared to the Blood God Fruits, the harvest of other treasures was somewhat less monumental.

The Ancestral God Tomb and Ancestral God City had yielded a substantial quantity of miscellaneous treasures, but their individual values were relatively low.

Combined together, their total value was roughly seventy to eighty million mixed elements.

Of course, the Blood God Vine was not included in this calculation.

As long as this item was not destroyed, it could continuously bear Blood God Fruits.

However, the Blood God Vine's environmental requirements were extremely harsh; if Jiang Chen were to transplant it to a new environment, it would inevitably die.

The Blood God Vine held value only within that underground space on planet Visca.

A treasure that could not be taken away held no meaning for Jiang Chen.

Moreover, the Virtual Universe Company would never stand idly by and watch Jiang Chen dig up the 'root' itself.

Core geniuses at the universe level were allowed to venture into mission worlds and acquire the hidden 'opportunities' behind those worlds—opportunities capable of making Marquis-level immortals and even Universe Masters green with envy.

Yet, uprooting the entire foundation was strictly forbidden.

Without anyone needing to tell him, Jiang Chen understood this clearly.

Aside from the Blood God Fruits and the accumulations of the Ancestral God Cult, the greatest treasure on planet Visca for Jiang Chen was undoubtedly the planet's vast array of mineral resources.

Though the unit price of these mineral resources was low, their sheer quantity was astronomical, and cumulatively, they were even more valuable than the seventy-some Blood God Fruits.

The surface minerals of the smallest 'Abandoned Land' alone were valued at two to three hundred million mixed elements.

Though a fair amount had been wasted due to the 'alchemical conversion array', the actual yield was still immense.

Now, however, the resistance forces on planet Visca had been largely eliminated, and the remaining remnants were easily handled by the mechanical legion without needing to resort to the 'alchemical conversion array' for conversion.

Furthermore, the other two continents surpassed the 'Abandoned Land' in both area and resource richness.

The total value of the extractable resources would be even more astonishing.

According to the satellite detection results, once both continents were fully mined, the expected yield would reach approximately 1.5 billion mixed elements in total resources.

Naturally, such a feat was something only Jiang Chen could pull off.

Other geniuses, even if monstrous enough in strength to annihilate the 'Ancestral God Cult', lacked the sheer number of subordinates required to mine resources on such a scale.

The strength of the legion path lay not merely in frontal battlefields.

In the aftermath of a war, when harvesting 'spoils of war', it could likewise maximize returns and 'package' away everything of value.

This was something powerhouses who relied solely on personal might found exceedingly difficult to achieve.

With this, the plundering of planet Visca came to a temporary close.

What remained was wiping out the planet's fierce beasts and mining the resources.

The former served a dual purpose: partly to 'catalyze' the underage Blood God Fruit in the underground space, and partly to secure a better living environment for the native inhabitants of planet Visca.

Defending against beast tides by relying on city walls might seem safe.

Yet the moment a single breach appeared in a city wall, ten or a hundred billion lives would perish overnight.

As for whether the higher-ups of the Virtual Universe Company would later deploy large quantities of fierce beasts back onto this planet to force the natives and beasts to slaughter each other, Jiang Chen couldn't be bothered to care.

According to Jarvis's projected schedule, the entire process would take a little over ten years.

Waiting a dozen years to harvest over a billion mixed elements worth of resources was well worth the investment.

This period of time would also conveniently allow his main body to enjoy some free time and deeply accumulate knowledge within the system library.

Having advanced to Tier 4 so long ago, Jiang Chen had yet to fully master the 'laws' on the fifth floor of the system library, let alone the other technological systems.

Ten years certainly wasn't enough for Jiang Chen to master all the knowledge on the fifth floor of the system library—it wouldn't even scratch the surface.

Still, it would grant Jiang Chen considerable improvement.

Clones operating alongside the main body could not enter the library, but they could study blueprints and accumulate specialization points.

While a single clone's efficiency in studying blueprints was somewhat lower, it was still far better than doing nothing.

Even if they could only develop a single Tier 5 blueprint within ten years, it would still yield nearly ten thousand specialization points.

"Ah, right. That un-matured 'Blood God Fruit' should be sold as well. I'll reach out to a circle of people and find a buyer..."

A thought flashed through Jiang Chen's mind as his consciousness entered the virtual universe, dispatching a series of messages.

Among the core geniuses of the Virtual Universe Company, Jiang Chen made relatively few friends.

At the very least, however, he knew everyone in his generation and was on familiar terms with them.

He roughly knew which ones possessed substantial backgrounds and the potential to fork over vast fortunes.

There was no need to bother inquiring among those without backgrounds.

Not only would they fail to scrape together sufficient funds, but lacking a proper background, ordinary universe-level geniuses would fail to grasp the importance of 'genetic tiers' and remain oblivious to the true value of a 'Blood God Fruit'.