Chapter 152
The Mother of Fertility delivered Lilus into the lab like a priceless treasure.
Cynthia barely qualified to participate in the research.
Because she was personally entrusted by the Mother of Fertility, even the elusive senior researchers emerged, each one vying to show loyalty, eager to dissect Lilus hundreds of times that very day.
But in reality, they didn’t dare go that far.
With such a rare specimen, at most they would take a few fingernail clippings, some hair, or blood samples to study. Without absolute certainty, they would never dare do anything to Lilus.
With such a rare specimen, at most they would take a few fingernail clippings, some hair, or blood samples to study. Without absolute certainty, they would never dare do anything to Lilus.
It was just that Lilus had been placed under a restriction by the Mother of Fertility—his abilities and items were sealed, and even his combat strength was greatly weakened. Locked inside a small room in the laboratory, he couldn’t even break through the door.
Lilus, however, wasn’t worried in the least. He even smiled at Cynthia.
On his sister’s turf, what was there to fear? In fact, Lilus was even excited.
Being locked up and studied by his sister—how amazing was that!
On Lu Chuan and Cang Jiu’s side, they perfectly played the role of background props. After watching the clash between the Mother of Fertility and Lilus, they exchanged a glance and returned to their room.
Cang Jiu once again began writing on the golden paper.
“The Mother of Fertility’s current strength is roughly equivalent to that of a mid-tier god, perhaps even weaker. Her revival doesn’t seem to be progressing smoothly.”
Even if she had obtained the Seed of Fertility, she likely hadn’t fully absorbed its power yet. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be in her current state.
Though Lilus was formidable, he was still only human. Normally, for a high-tier god to crush a newly-listed master-rank player should be effortless—within an instant, even a single glance should have been enough to lay Lilus flat.
But the fact that it actually took the Mother of Fertility three seconds, even without Lilus showing his full strength, was already proof of her weakened state.
“Even if she’s weaker compared to her prime, I still can’t beat her.” Lu Chuan spread his hands. “Purely in terms of combat power, Lilus could take on two of me with just one hand. And you, in this form, without using your true power, can’t exert much either. So we’ll need other means to deal with the Mother of Fertility.”
No matter how weak, a god was still a god—Lu Chuan had no intention of fighting her head-on.
Besides, gathering intelligence was more important first.
Within a dungeon, the Main God System always maintained balance. It was unlikely to allow players to directly clash with a god without restrictions; there would usually be all sorts of limitations placed on divine power. Only that way could players have any chance of victory.
The Mother of Fertility naturally had weaknesses—especially now, while she was in a weakened state.
“Our target is the Seed of Fertility.”
This was the final line Cang Jiu wrote after crossing things out and rewriting.
“Of course I know that.” Lu Chuan nodded. “Don’t worry, give me some time to think about our next move.”
At the moment, Lu Chuan and his side still held a major advantage—they were hidden, while the god was exposed. The Mother of Fertility might suspect her enemies were nearby, but she had no idea exactly who. By contrast, the players’ advantage was obvious: whether in the nursery, the logistics base, or even the laboratory, they had people on the inside. Even Lilus, the so-called test subject, was one of them. With inside–outside cooperation, clearing the dungeon wasn’t too hard.
The problem was, the system’s mission demanded that they either completely kill the Mother of Fertility or delay her revival. But this didn’t align perfectly with Lu Chuan’s own goal of stealing the Seed of Fertility.
Gods were extremely hard to kill. As long as a single believer remained, they could easily begin reviving again.
Hadn’t the Mother of Fertility been killed before?
Yet her Seed of Fertility had never been taken.
Furthermore, Cang Jiu wanted to bring back her corpse to patch up Number 18’s body. So the best path forward was to kill the Mother of Fertility, seize her Seed of Fertility, and do so without the Main God System discovering that they had used powers outside of the players’ own. That was the trickiest part.
This meant they couldn’t rely on any power the system wouldn’t recognize as belonging to players. Their options were heavily limited.
Even #888 found this troublesome: they had to complete the task, avoid detection, and couldn’t use their true strength. It was a real headache.
Still… not impossible.
“I remember some of those divine attendants are actually worshippers of other gods,” Lu Chuan said with a faint smile. “So many different divine powers—even if only scraps—all stolen by the Mother of Fertility. Do you think those gods are made of clay? That they wouldn’t want revenge?”
Cang Jiu fixed his gaze on Lu Chuan, then wrote in large characters on the gold foil:
“Set the tiger on the wolf—can you handle it?”
“Hah? Handle what?” Lu Chuan widened his eyes, looking innocent. “Exalted Executor, don’t tell me you’re planning to sit back and do nothing? That won’t do. With you here, I’m at best just your assistant.”
[Yes, yes, exactly like that, Host! Why should the Executor sit idle? The Mother of Fertility is still a god after all—far more valuable than a mere Seed of Fertility. They ought to do the heavy lifting!] #888 chimed in excitedly.
The origins of the divine attendants were quite complicated.
The Mother of Fertility and her believers, through capture, coercion, or trickery, brought back worshippers or priests of other gods. These captives were forced to mate with her followers, while she used her authority to pass down and fuse the other god’s power and bloodline.
But divine power was rarely inherited—it was a gift bestowed, not a trait passed down. Only a handful could be transmitted by birth.
So in the early days, many of her followers died. Those who barely managed to produce offspring with divine power usually weren’t weak within her church either.
The first generation of second-tier attendants were few, but their combat strength was truly monstrous.
At her peak, the Mother of Fertility had few rivals. No god wanted to face her directly, lest their power be stolen and exploited. But once players and the Executor got involved, she was ambushed and killed. Her church and the second-generation attendants were quickly devoured and divided by other divine churches. By the time the Church of Fertility staggered on, the usable attendants left were all misshapen and subpar.
The dungeon Lu Chuan’s group was in seemed large—but compared to a true god’s territory, it was nothing.
Take the God of Exchange, for instance. His domain spanned tens of thousands of dungeons, each one far larger than the Mother’s little patch.
Now, the Mother of Fertility had only this tiny remnant left. When she abducted followers, it was only from mid- or low-tier gods. She no longer dared touch the high-tier ones.
The great churches of high-tier gods ignored her, and she couldn’t compete with the small ones. That gave her a sliver of breathing room.
And she bided her time. In such conditions, she stole the Seed of Fertility, hoping to use it to revive herself, then reclaim her lost domains once she was strong again.
But Lu Chuan had no plans to confront her head-on.
Why fight alone, when you can bring in outsiders?
His plan was simple.
Right now, they were deep inside Mother of Fertility’s territory. Leaving was nearly impossible—she had locked everything down to prevent leaks.
But Cang Jiu wasn’t bound.
His true body wasn’t here, only a projection.
Which meant he could spread word outside.
“You don’t need to show your face,” Lu Chuan said. “Just anonymously leak the info through the Extreme Usury Company. That place handles massive trade every day, crowds coming and going—information travels fastest there. Leak just a little, and soon someone will sniff their way to this dungeon. Especially those gods who had their powers stolen—don’t you think they’d worry about being the first targets if the Mother revives?”
Ideally, Lu Chuan would have liked to contact Chen Ji himself.
But since he couldn’t leave, this could only fall to Cang Jiu.
“If possible, I’d even suggest letting slip a little about the Seed of Fertility,” Lu Chuan added. “Those god-seeds are immensely powerful. And among the players on the master-rank list, there’s bound to be someone whose hunt target is the Mother of Fertility. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have died so fast back then—there must’ve been strong players fanning the flames.”
The seeds Lu Chuan had obtained from the God of Exchange weren’t particularly great. But the Mother’s Seed of Fertility was different—it could help a god resurrect. The quality difference was a chasm. Leak that, and many of the players who once fought her would panic.
They were the ones most afraid of her revenge.
Once chaos broke out, this dungeon would be much easier.
Anyone with work experience knew: starting a new project was more profitable than patching an old one. And introducing foreign investment was the best way to revive stagnant waters.
If he couldn’t beat her himself, why not call in reinforcements?
Especially reinforcements that were free—that was even better.
The only catch was, locating their exact dungeon among countless others wasn’t easy. Breaking through dungeon barriers was also difficult. So, while this plan was workable, they still couldn’t rely on it entirely.
Lu Chuan decided to proceed cautiously, securing his own interests first.
At the same time, Cang Jiu’s true body had no intention of personally delivering the news to the God of Exchange.
First, someone had to stay behind to watch over Number 18—he couldn’t just leave alone. Second, he hadn’t fully recovered yet, while the God of Exchange was in peak condition; it wasn’t wise to confront Them head-on.
So Cang Jiu simply offered part of Number 78’s corpse as payment, hiring other Executors to spread the message. The Executors almost fought over the chance to take the job.
A notice issued by Executors could spread across the dungeon in the shortest possible time.
Before long, the master-ranked players in every dungeon heard the news:
“The Mother of Fertility has stolen the Origin Seed, attempting to revive?”
“Damn, why is this god trying to resurrect again? Didn’t we just kill Her?”
“High-tier gods are so annoying—they’re never gone for good.”
“Seriously? The Mother of Fertility doesn’t even get mad after Her seed was stolen?”
For a while, the veterans on the leaderboards were swearing non-stop.
Apart from a few younger latecomers, most of those veterans had been on the boards for over ten or twenty years. At that level, anyone still active had strong self-preservation abilities—it wasn’t easy to kill them outright.
That also meant many who’d joined the ambush against the Mother of Fertility twenty years ago were still around. Hearing the news of Her attempted revival instantly set off a sense of urgency—they wanted to stop it right away.
Meanwhile, several divine churches also received the report. They realized that some of their priests and longtime blessed followers had been abducted by the Mother of Fertility, and hurried to pray and inform their gods.
Inside the dungeon, everything looked peaceful on the surface.
Outside, chaos was brewing.
Shen Li spent his days helping Lu Chuan handle disputes between divine servitors and “maternal bodies,” while also assessing their “performance.” Life felt so much like an office job that Shen Li couldn’t help feeling something was off.
It was like a storm was gathering, but he had no proof.
As the one tallying daily evaluations, Shen Li clearly noticed the disputes between servitors and hosts growing more frequent. Many servitors began flying into sudden rages, or their powers shifted unpredictably, sparking more conflicts.
There was no doubt Lu Chuan was behind it somehow.
But since Lu Chuan never mentioned it, Shen Li didn’t ask. Instead, during assessments, he quietly categorized each servitor and host’s condition, preparing detailed records so Lu Chuan could target them precisely when the time came. Logistics were handled to perfection.
Meanwhile, Cynthia occasionally sent bits of information from inside.
And, truth be told, the Mother of Fertility was no amateur.
Lilus and Cynthia both understood their origins, but not the full potential of their powers—no precedent existed for people like them. In the five major guilds, players held the main strength, while real researchers were rare; there was little soil for them to study their own biology.
Yet in this laboratory, thanks to the researchers’ work, Lilus and Cynthia had begun to gain a clearer picture of their bodies.
For example, Lilus’s left hand was clearly inherited from his father. Research suggested Lilus’s father had been a humanoid demon-type high-level NPC, perhaps someone their mother met in a Western-fantasy dungeon. That’s why Lilus possessed such a hand. Moreover, it might still “evolve” further—if they could find an NPC of the same lineage, fuse its bloodline, and modify it, the hand could both grow stronger and even revert to a normal human shape.
Similarly, Cynthia’s eyes likely came from her father’s side—perhaps a saintly NPC, somewhat like today’s divine servitors. She’d even found records of so-called “second-generation servitors,” whose powers resembled her eyes.
Compared to them, however, the Mother of Fertility artificial servitors were less stable and lacked the ability to self-upgrade. Clearly, when the Main System altered player bodies, it had secretly done more than advertised. With the Main System’s power, the Mother of Fertility, and their own cunning, the siblings had accidentally become perfect products.
The lab was now planning to clone Lilus, then have the clone mate with different hosts to breed a new generation of servitors.
Cynthia was determined to sabotage that plan.
No way would she let a clone of her brother spread his seed everywhere!
When Lu Chuan heard this, he was glad to cooperate with her.
Either the chosen hosts would “develop problems” and be unable to pair with the clone, or some servitor would conveniently “lose control,” destroying the clone’s incubation chamber—anything to throw the insane project into chaos.
No one understood the cause of these disturbances better than he did. He also knew the Mother of Fertility, under pressure from outside forces, was starting to unravel.
As for the strange behavior among the servitors, the reason was simple:
Whenever a servitor’s power didn’t originate from the Mother of Fertility but from some other god, its true owner could influence it—even from outside the dungeon.
And with Lu Chuan and Shen Li stirring things up—turning performance assessments into provocations—they made the servitors’ unrest seem reasonable. Two birds with one stone.
The Mother of Fertility was appearing more often, and Cynthia, inside the lab, could feel something pulsing in its deepest part.
Thump.
Thump.
The sensation was overwhelming.
“Don’t you feel it?” Cynthia quietly asked a fellow researcher. “Lately, every time I enter the lab, I feel like I’m inside some creature’s belly. Its heartbeat and breathing are right in my ears.”
The researcher shuddered involuntarily.
Seeing this, Cynthia knew they felt the same.
All of them sensed the lab changing, but no one dared speak up—or run.
Because here, the Mother of Fertility was always watching.
Anyone who thought of fleeing would end up like certain colleagues—suddenly exploding into bits.
“Don’t overthink it. The Mother of Fertility patience is running out,” the researcher whispered. “Clone Project No.1 is on hold—the defects in the clones are still huge. Now She’s out of time and wants to dissect the original specimen for analysis.”
“He’s the only one we’ve got. How can we just cut him up?” Cynthia feigned puzzlement. “We can’t capture another.”
“Shh. They say our outside operations have been hit hard.” The researcher lowered his voice. “We here only work and reproduce—none of us produce goods. All our food and supplies come from those worshippers outside. But recently, they’ve been attacked by rival churches; even priests were captured. Morale’s collapsing, and the Mother of Fertility losing patience.”
Maybe information leaked, or maybe their outside industries simply drew too much attention. Either way, they were marked.
At this point, slow study of Specimen No.1 was no longer acceptable. They needed a quick, brutal way to reproduce its success. The Mother of Fertility had even given an ultimatum: if No.1 wouldn’t cooperate, they’d erase its memory and turn it into Her vessel.
After all, the Mother of Fertility’s own power already flowed through No.1’s body. Making him Her host would be ideal.
Cynthia’s heart tightened as she understood the unspoken meaning.
Time was running out. She had to find the key to the lab—and escape with Lilus.
That night, Cynthia entered Lilus’s room with the other researchers.
While he watched, she casually made several subtle gestures, then left without a word, never meeting his gaze.
Lilus understood every signal.
The siblings had long perfected their own secret code.
Her message tonight was clear: “We act tonight.”
Lilus lowered his eyes slightly. If his sister suddenly said that, the situation in the dungeon must have changed drastically. He had to put on his best performance.
