Chapter 121
“What did he call me? He knows I’m a God of Wealth candidate?”
Lu Chuan woke up to find himself back in the Evil World game’s space, immediately questioning #888.
[H-host, what do we do? He knows you’re a candidate for the God of Wealth! We should run—let’s escape right now! This world is too dangerous, sob sob. Even True Gods have fallen this low! I thought there were no deities here, I thought it was the perfect place for you—but it’s actually a graveyard of gods!]
#888 was more panicked than Lu Chuan himself.
Lu Chuan, initially ready to press further, sighed when he saw his system’s uselessness and forced himself to calm down.
“Little System, calm down.” Lu Chuan said quickly. “Let’s review everything carefully—where did things go wrong? Obviously, Cang Jiu isn’t the complete God of Desire, or else he wouldn’t need to hide as an Executor under the system’s nose. Did he recognize me from the start? No, that can’t be. At first, he was inside the statue—if he’d noticed me then, his attitude wouldn’t have been like that. Most likely, it was when he left that mark on me.”
Lu Chuan suddenly realized the issue. “Back when he tried to attack me, I used the Eye of Wealth skill, remember?”
[Of course, Host! That was your first time using a God of Wealth skill. Oh no, it must’ve been then! You were only a candidate, without a full divinity. Only when you used the Eye of Wealth did you tap into its divine power.]
And as a fellow True God, Cang Jiu would naturally be sensitive to that power.
So, when Lu Chuan’s Eye of Wealth exposed Cang Jiu’s weakness and struck him, Cang Jiu sensed something off about Lu Chuan and left a mark.
—
“Hmm?” Lu Chuan was a little curious, so he listened as his teammates continued their story.
Actually, the first one among them to wake up was Wen Zhi.
Wen Zhi, after all, was a deputy vice-chair of the Abyss Guild, and an old veteran ranked near the top of the Master-Rank Leaderboard. It was said that, after Xi Jiangyuan’s abnormal instance was cleared, Wen Zhi had practically inherited almost all of Xi Jiangyuan’s legacy.
Rumor had it that when Wen Zhi woke up, his pillow was soaked through, but when Lilus saw him, there wasn’t the slightest sign he had been crying—just a stern, imposing vice guildmaster, making it impossible to ask questions.
“Vice guildmaster Wen said Xi Jiangyuan had long wanted peace, and this time we helped him a lot. He felt bad about taking most of Xi Jiangyuan’s legacy, so he gave each of us a rare little trinket. Here, this one’s yours.” Lilus tossed a card to Lu Chuan.
Lu Chuan flipped it over. Written on it were the words “Sanity 100.”
“A special item card, Sanity 100. Chairman Wen is really generous—he gave one to each of us. I plan to give mine to my sister. This thing is hard currency among Master-Rank players.” Lilus grinned. “It’s more useful than any S-grade item.”
“This thing can raise my sanity all the way to 100?” Lu Chuan wasn’t very keen on it.
“What are you thinking? There are different kinds of Sanity 100 cards—look at the color of yours, it’s purple. Supposedly these cards come in gold, purple, and blue. A gold one lasts ten minutes, purple lasts three, blue only one. Master-Rank players spend years fighting gods, their sanity drops badly, but they’re never short on items—the guilds supply them plenty. So they use these cards as trade currency or to hire help.” Clearly Lilus had done his homework.
“That’s right,” Shen Li added beside him. “Lu Chuan, you still haven’t opened your Master-Rank Player Gift Pack, have you? It explains all this. Every time a Master-Rank successfully kills a god, they might obtain one of these cards. If a player gets polluted and can’t control their mutation, having this card lets them stay sane for a few minutes. Sometimes that little window can save your life.”
For Master-Ranks, this was absolutely the best lifesaving tool.
Lu Chuan curled his lip.
He was already a prodigal at 80 sanity points—if his sanity hit 100, wouldn’t he end up owing people money?
He didn’t really want the thing.
[Host, just keep it. Anyway, it only works for three minutes, right?]
#888 was itching with curiosity. [I’ve never seen what you look like with a full 100 sanity!]
“Pfft, what would I look like? The only difference is between a little spendthrift and a big spendthrift.” Lu Chuan dismissed it, but he still decided to hold on to the card.
“You guys must have picked up quite a bit in that game too,” Lu Chuan finally had the mind to ask his teammates. “Why don’t we go over this instance together?”
Everyone gathered around and compared notes.
They all had the S-grade item [Dream Hypnosis], which must have been created by Xi Jiangyuan using the power of the [God of Beautiful Dreams].
It was a very useful tool: the user could target an NPC or player, and after they fell asleep, hypnotize them. The target would answer any question but remember nothing upon waking.
The item could be used once per instance; the only side effect was that the user would suffer three sleepless nights afterwards.
For players, this was undeniably handy.
Other items they’d collected varied, and could be traded for different things—overall, a good haul.
They had spent two S-grade items to enter Xi Jiangyuan’s instance, but now each of them held an S-grade item in return. That was definitely a profit.
When it came to the Executor and the Seed of Desire, no one mentioned names directly. They referred to them as “that person” and “that seed.” After exchanging thoughts, they agreed to establish a Covenant of Secrecy, swearing not to reveal anything to outsiders, not even to their guilds for the time being.
Lilus said he would tell his sister, but she would also sign the covenant, so they could rest easy.
Everyone trusted Cynthia’s character, so they added that condition to the pact.
They weren’t hiding things from the guild on purpose; it was just that anything involving such high-level gods couldn’t be discussed too freely. Words themselves might carry contamination, and if the guild learned too much, they might decide to intervene.
Messiah had nearly been abandoned once because of a fake God of Desire—what would they do if a real one appeared?
At their player level, the guild also had to consider their feelings.
“By the way, where’s Vivian?” Lu Chuan suddenly remembered. “She was with us in the Whistle instance, but she didn’t show up in the later ones.”
“She left early,” Messiah replied with a smile. “She took three teammates in, and only Li Lu came back with her. She didn’t skip the later runs entirely—she planned to take things slowly, collect information on the gods, and report to the guild. But before she could finish gathering intel, the instance collapsed.”
“She said she never wants to run instances with us again,” Lilus shrugged. “Apparently we gave her a psychological shadow.”
Vivian’s exact words were even harsher:
“What the hell are these people? Faced with so many gods and not one of them thought to lie low and gather intel—they just charged right in! Are they not afraid of dying? And that Xi Jiangyuan, what kind of man-child is he, obsessed with playing house—did he never get weaned?”
Running an instance with Lu Chuan’s group had left Vivian utterly flabbergasted.
Intel collection?
Division of tasks?
Sizing up the gods before barging in?
None of that.
All she saw was these lunatics bamboozling the gods, stirring up chaos, framing, scheming, cheating, even thriving in other churches—turning what should’ve been a calm Infinite World into a full-blown god war.
Did they have no shame?
She’d heard that, centuries ago, there were entire volumes compiling all the laws.
Surely these people had broken an entire book of laws.
Anyone who didn’t know better would think they’d been released straight from a maximum-security prison.
To a player like Vivian, they were nothing but troublemakers—people who spent every day making mischief, doing all the things others wouldn’t dare.
Thankfully this was just a game; in the real world, even without laws, no guild would tolerate their existence.
Vivian felt that teaming up with them was taking years off her life.
Before leaving, she had gripped Shen Li’s hand tightly.
“You really have it rough. Running instances with them—must be hard on you.”
Her heartfelt words nearly made Shen Li cry.
Wasn’t that the truth? Running with them was indeed no easy task.
But Shen Li, with his “mom-friend” nature, still put on a brave face before outsiders, firmly defending Lu Chuan’s gang.
“That’s just their way of clearing instances—it’s different from others’. But deep down, they’re good kids. What they did in the instance was just a special case, adapting to the situation.”
He tried to act cool and dismissive, as if Vivian were just overreacting.
His words left Vivian momentarily stunned. No wonder Shen Li was a Master-Rank—the level of awareness was a whole different league from her, an ordinary S-grade player.
After Vivian departed, Shen Li finally turned to Starry Shasha with tearful eyes.
“She gets me… finally someone understands my pain.”
Starry Shasha didn’t really get it, but expressed respect.
