Chapter 160: The Blood Luo World, and the Attention of Lord Tianshi (5-Episode Release)

The company’s top brass had made their decision, and Jiang Chen naturally had no room to argue.

No matter how monstrous a genius might be, he was still only a genius. Before coming into his own, he might enjoy certain privileges, but before the truly powerful, he could only obey orders.

Still, Jiang Chen couldn’t help feeling that the black-robed administrator’s attitude toward him was somehow off.

He couldn’t say exactly what was wrong, though.

In any case, Jiang Chen agreed to the man’s request.

The Virtual Universe Company would contact the various geniuses currently inside the Blood Luo World and ask them to abandon their missions. Jiang Chen would compensate each one with one hundred thousand mixed-element units in exchange for the chance to explore the Blood Luo World alone.

While Jiang Chen was inside, the Virtual Universe Company would temporarily seal off the mission world, doing everything it could to ensure his secret did not get out.

Of course, if any genius refused to take the money and leave, the company would not force them.

But they would be responsible for their own survival inside the mission world.

A few days later, the Virtual Universe Company sent Jiang Chen an email informing him that twenty-seven geniuses had agreed to take the money and leave.

Two had refused the offer to abandon their missions and intended to remain in the Blood Luo World.

One of them was Luo Feng, whom Jiang Chen had warned.

Jiang Chen had no idea who the other one was, but he didn’t particularly care.

He was confident that no universe-level genius could threaten him.

And if the Blood Luo World possessed forces capable of standing against him, they would be its natives—not the geniuses who had come there to take risks.

Jiang Chen spent 2.7 million mixed-element units to send the twenty-seven geniuses out of the Blood Luo World.

He then spent another batch of points on resources that were difficult to obtain there. Only after that did he accept the Blood Luo World mission and board a ship bound for the Primordial Secret Region.

The Blood Luo World was not his only option.

But Luo Feng had provided him with a map of the mineral deposits. It covered only a small part of the world, but it was enough for Jiang Chen to make a rough estimate of its potential returns.

On top of that, the Blood Luo World had its own unique treasures, such as Blood Luo Crystals and Beast God statues.

Rather than choose some other continent-sized world and blindly take his chances, Jiang Chen preferred the Blood Luo World’s more reliable returns.

After all, his path did not require rare, one-of-a-kind treasures. What he needed was vast quantities of all kinds of mineral resources.

At least at this stage, everything he needed could be bought with money.

The best choice was simply to go wherever he could earn the most.

—

After a little over a year in the dark universe, Jiang Chen finally reached the Blood Luo World.

Through the ship’s exterior simulation, he saw an immense continent floating in the void ahead.

Thick clouds blanketed the entire landmass. Above it, suspended in the void, stood an enormous palace.

It was the palace of the Eclipse Palace Master, one of the three top cosmic overlords of the human race.

Countless specks of dust and debris surrounded the continent. Only the area around the vast palace had been cleared, leaving a broad, open corridor through which ships could accelerate beyond the speed of light and enter the dark universe.

“Your Highness, regulations allow us to bring you only this far. To enter the Blood Luo Continent, you’ll need to take your own ship,” a staff member said respectfully. “Once you’ve completed your mission, we’ll return to pick you up.”

“Thank you.” Jiang Chen nodded, flew out through the hatch, boarded his own ship, and headed down toward the Blood Luo Continent.

“According to the reports, Luo Feng is in the Ancient God Ruins region. The resource map he gave me covers that area too.”

“But there’s no need to meet up with him just yet. I’ll deploy the satellites first.”

Inside the ship’s control room, Jiang Chen sat amid the clouds and gave Jarvis an order. “Jarvis, deploy the satellites in the eighteenth cloud layer and monitor the entire continent.”

Eighteen layers of cloud covered the sky above the Blood Luo Continent.

Each layer was incredibly dense, and every layer one passed through increased the pressure.

Even a weaker universe-level warrior might not be able to break through all eighteen layers and reach the space beyond the continent.

Naturally, the natives here dared not fly beyond the eighteenth layer either.

Anyone who tried to leave would be killed by the powerful warriors stationed outside in Eclipse Palace.

Even the strongest being on the Blood Luo Continent could not withstand a casual strike from the Eclipse Palace Master.

Satellites placed in the lower cloud layers might be destroyed at any moment by the continent’s powerful natives.

The eighteenth layer, however, was much safer.

With no unusual magnetic field to suppress them, the satellites could scan across a vast range. Even from hundreds of millions of kilometers above the surface, they could easily detect most things.

The scans could not be especially detailed, of course, but they were enough to locate shallow mineral deposits on the surface and pinpoint the positions of individual undying gods.

“Master, the Blood Luo Continent is enormous. It will take an estimated eight to ten years to cover the entire landmass with the satellites,” Jarvis reminded him.

“I know.” Jiang Chen nodded.

This world was simply too vast.

Its diameter was one light-year. Even at the speed of light, it would take a year to fly from one end of the continent to the other.

And there were countless fragments of celestial bodies around the Blood Luo World, making it difficult to accelerate to light speed. The journey would take even longer.

Eight to ten years was already a good estimate for covering the whole continent with satellite surveillance. The instruments Jiang Chen carried were exceptionally advanced, with a wide enough scanning range that the satellites did not need to blanket the entire sky above the continent.

Otherwise, it would take even longer.

The ship’s hatches opened one after another, and a multitude of small craft carrying satellites flew out toward their assigned positions.

Unlike satellites orbiting a planet, these did not need to circle the continent. They could simply remain fixed at points above it.

But without a synchronous orbit, the satellites could not rely on the Blood Luo Continent’s gravity to stay in place. Instead, they had to constantly expend energy to counteract the continent’s pull, drastically shortening their lifespan.

Still, Jiang Chen had no plans to operate in this world for the long term.

It would be enough if the satellites lasted until he had stripped the shallow resources from the Blood Luo World’s surface.

According to his simulations in the Virtual Universe, he could finish in a little over a century if everything went smoothly.

Even if things went less well, a few centuries should suffice.

A satellite loaded with high-quality energy cells could easily run for hundreds of years.

Jiang Chen did not hurry down to the Blood Luo Continent. He waited calmly aboard his ship.

As the satellites entered their assigned positions and began operating, a map gradually appeared on the large screen at the center of the control room.

At first, it covered only a small region in the middle of the Blood Luo Continent, and the terrain and distribution of native powers were still indistinct.

As more satellites came online, the map expanded and grew clearer.

The complex terrain appeared in scale on the three-dimensional map.

Dots representing different levels of strength lit up across the various regions.

“As expected of a continent-sized world. There are an astonishing number of undying beings…”

Looking at the glowing dots on the three-dimensional map, Jiang Chen couldn’t help but marvel.

In just one small region—with fewer than a hundred thousand cities—six or seven markers had already appeared for beings at the undying level. There were also hundreds of signals from World Masters.

The proportion was astonishing.

Of course, this was a prosperous region in the heart of the Blood Luo World, so it made sense that undying gods would be more densely concentrated here.

The desolate regions on the outskirts probably had far fewer.

Every world had its prosperous core and its barren periphery.

Suddenly, Jarvis spoke. “Master, I’ve located the Ancient God Ruins!”

A vast, desolate region appeared on the map, shrouded in a faint haze of blood.

It was not especially remote, but it lay a great distance from the center of the Blood Luo Continent.

If the continent were divided into three equal sections from its center outward, the Ancient God Ruins would lie roughly in the outer third. It was an immense region.

Still, compared to the entire Blood Luo Continent, the Ancient God Ruins occupied only a small fraction.

At the region’s center were a great many powerful life-signals: undying gods belonging to the Undying Temple, numbering more than a thousand.

Unfortunately, the distinction between Marquis-level and King-level beings lay chiefly in their laws and treasures. The nature of their divine power remained undying.

The instruments could not distinguish differences in strength based on the divine-power readings alone.

At most, some beings with higher genetic levels gave off signals noticeably stronger than those of other undying beings with a single-fold genetic level.

But that did not prove anything.

A stronger person did not necessarily have a higher genetic level than a weaker one.

The one thing that brought Jiang Chen a little relief was that the number of undying gods on the Blood Luo Continent was not as great as he had imagined.

Nor were there any undying beings with particularly high genetic levels.

The highest was tenfold, and there were only two of them.

“There aren’t as many Black Warriors in the Blood Luo World as I expected…”

A thought crossed Jiang Chen’s mind.

Black Warriors were beings with a tenfold genetic level.

Yet in this region, where undying gods were gathered in great numbers, only two of more than a thousand had reached that level.

That spoke volumes about how difficult it was to become a Black Warrior.

Of course, one important reason was that a person had to fuse ten Blood Luo Crystals before breaking through to become an undying god.

Jiang Chen remembered that in the original story, when the City Lord of Chaos guided Luo Feng in his cultivation, he had said that Blood Luo Crystals had to be fused to their limit before one became undying.

Jiang Chen did not know whether it was impossible to fuse Blood Luo Crystals after becoming undying, and one had to use the more advanced Beast God’s Blood to improve one’s genes instead—or whether fusion simply became more difficult.

Judging by the genetic levels of the undying gods on the Blood Luo Continent, he suspected the latter was more likely.

Of course, it was impossible that the Blood Luo Continent had produced only two Black Warriors over the course of its endless history.

It could only mean that those who had grown powerful had perished over the ages.

Whether they had died in the Blood Luo World’s internal conflicts, or tried to break through the Eclipse Palace Master’s blockade to reach the wider universe and were killed by him, Jiang Chen had no way of knowing.

But the question hardly mattered.

“Among more than a thousand undying gods, there have to be Marquis-level beings—probably more than one. As for King-level beings, I have no way of knowing… I hope there aren’t any. Otherwise, sweeping through the whole Blood Luo World could be a lot more difficult.”

The thought flashed through Jiang Chen’s mind.

“Start the ship. We’re going to the Ancient God Ruins,” he ordered.

“Yes, Master,” Jarvis replied at once. “Estimated travel time: one year and nine months.”

The Virtual Universe Company sent its geniuses to random locations in the Blood Luo World.

Jiang Chen had landed closer to the continent’s center, still a considerable distance from the Ancient God Ruins.

Since the ship could not accelerate to light speed, the journey would take a long time.

But the satellites also needed time to cover the entire continent. A lengthy trip was no problem.

The ship started up and sailed smoothly.

Jiang Chen studied the map for a while, then turned his attention elsewhere. He instructed Jarvis to keep watch on the satellite feeds and went straight into the system library, making good use of every spare moment to absorb new knowledge.

Beyond the world, inside Eclipse Palace, which floated in the void—

A man who looked much like a human from Earth, except for a conspicuous mark between his brows, turned to look toward Jiang Chen’s ship.

“So this little fellow is that Jiang Chen?”

The Eclipse Palace Master’s gaze pierced through the many spatial rings Jiang Chen carried and took in the enormous quantity of mechanical units inside. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Let’s hope this kid doesn’t turn my Blood Luo World upside down!”

Remembering the message he had received from the Virtual Universe Company’s top brass, the Eclipse Palace Master shook his head slightly. He did not interfere with Jiang Chen’s actions.

But he no longer felt like continuing his seclusion. He watched Jiang Chen, curious to see just how “special” he was to merit a high-level meeting of the human race over a youngster whose true body was only at the Domain Lord level and who, on the surface, was merely at the universe level.

Though Jiang Chen’s path belonged to an entirely different system from his own, the Eclipse Palace Master was still quite curious about him.

He might not have bothered paying attention under ordinary circumstances. But Jiang Chen had come to his territory, and the Palace Master’s curiosity would not let him ignore the opportunity to watch.

A subtle smile curved the Eclipse Palace Master’s lips as he gazed at Jiang Chen and murmured, “Let’s see how far you can go. The Blood Luo World is not as simple as it seems.”

(End of chapter)