Chapter 144: Warp Arbiter (5)

"Wait!"

"Premise 1: All immortal gods of planet Visca have consumed the 'Blood God Fruit'."

"Premise 2: After a life form that has consumed the 'Blood God Fruit' dies, through a special method, the 'Blood God Fruit' can be 'extracted' from their body."

"Premise 3: Inside the 'Ancestral God Tomb', the corpses of the dead immortal gods of planet Visca are buried."

"That means, there is no need to directly attack the 'Ancestral God Cult' at all. As long as one can acquire the corpses within the Ancestral God Tomb, can the 'Blood God Fruit' be obtained?"

"Although judging from the information I obtained, the 'Ancestral God Tomb' is also guarded by a group of immortal gods. But following normal logic, the true core territory of the Ancestral God Cult must have defensive forces far exceeding those of the 'Ancestral God Tomb'."

"Finding a way to sneak into or directly attack the 'Ancestral God Tomb' and seizing the corpse of the 'Ancestral God' is actually of lower difficulty..."

Jiang Chen suddenly realized that his own thinking seemed to have hit a blind spot.

After pondering for a long time on how to hunt down the powerful figures of the Ancestral God Cult, he failed to realize that the 'Ancestral God Tomb', which he had first dismissed, was actually a much better path.

Of course, this refers to the premise of acquiring a large quantity of 'Blood God Fruits' all at once.

If it were just to get one or two, then hunting down isolated immortals and divine sons would certainly be easier.

However, even though the 'Blood God Fruit' is immensely valuable, if one only procures one or two, the returns are far from staggering.

The Virtual Universe Company treasury does sell treasures that enhance 'genetic levels'.

Among treasures capable of raising the genetic level by a hundredfold, the 'Blood God Fruit' is considered relatively inexpensive, with a treasury list price of over ten million contribution points.

After all, one can only consume a single fruit, and because it can be re-'extracted', once word gets out that a powerhouse has consumed a 'Blood God Fruit', it is very likely to attract hunting parties from other formidable beings.

These two characteristics cause the value of the 'Blood God Fruit' to drop quite a bit.

Especially the latter; without the characteristic of being 're-extractable', how could a treasure capable of a hundredfold genetic enhancement be worth merely ten million contribution points? Multiplying it by a hundred or a thousand times wouldn't be excessive!

Ten million contribution points is naturally not a small sum.

Yet for Jiang Chen, given the opportunity to acquire more, how could he possibly be satisfied with just ten million points?

Planet Visca has existed for an unknown length of time, and even if the vast majority of 'Blood God Fruits' were taken away by the Virtual Universe Company, a significant amount remains 'temporarily stored' on this planet.

To put it modestly, if he could secure ten of them, that would amount to hundreds of millions of Hunyuan units.

If he could obtain over a hundred 'Blood God Fruits' at once, Jiang Chen would even dare to massively replace the main force of his mechanical legion with 'Void Dragon Mechas' or other technological weapons of the same tier.

After all, a single 'Blood God Fruit' is equivalent to over eight, nearly nine 'Void Dragon Mechas'.

This would be a very significant boost to the combat capability of the mechanical legion.

Naturally, ideals are wonderful, but the premise for everything is the ability to actually get hold of the 'Blood God Fruit'.

Right now, Jiang Chen didn't even know the locations of the Ancestral God Cult's base camp and the 'Ancestral God Tomb'.

"I still need to gather intelligence..."

Countless thoughts spun through Jiang Chen's mind as his attention shifted back to his clone.

Inside 'Purple Dream City', Jiang Chen's clone had already placed the entire city under surveillance, barring only a very few restricted areas governed by Domain Lords.

As hundreds of millions of indigenous people communicated with one another, the information they revealed was immense.

While the vast majority of this intelligence held zero value, occasionally, valuable pieces of information would surface, granting Jiang Chen a deeper understanding of this city and even the entire planet.

Such trivial chores as surveillance and intelligence analysis were entirely delegated by Jiang Chen to Jarvis; only truly important matters were escalated to Jiang Chen himself.

Meanwhile, Jiang Chen's focus was directed toward the vicinity of the outer city walls.

As night fell, the ferocity of the ferocious beasts in the wilderness escalated, and their aggressiveness increased drastically. They spontaneously gathered together, assembling toward 'Purple Dream City'.

For the indigenous people residing in the various cities across planet Visca, the beast tide of every 'night' was fraught with immense danger.

It would be fine if the city walls could withstand the onslaught of the beast tide.

If they failed to hold, once the city walls collapsed and a breach appeared, the entire city would be reduced to a purgatory under the terrifying number of beasts.

At this moment, the city walls were already densely packed with troops.

Star-level and Universe-level martial artists formed individual military arrays, lined up along the broad city walls, standing by in strict battle readiness.

At the base of the city walls on the inner side, huge cauldrons were boiling large chunks of meat.

This was soup brewed from the meat of ferocious beasts hunted during the 'day'.

Through the surveillance inside the city, Jiang Chen had long since learned that when fighting during the 'night', a martial artist's primal essence and spiritual force could not be replenished via 'cosmic origin energy'; they could only recover their physical strength through eating.

And the energy-rich meat of ferocious beasts served as the finest tonic.

Weaken the ferocious beasts by day, letting humans hunt them.

Weaken the humans by night, letting ferocious beasts assault human cities.

Back and forth, coupled with the secret interventions of the Ancestral God Cult, the balance of power between humans and ferocious beasts on planet Visca had been largely maintained throughout endless years, while making it impossible to halt this brutal slaughter.

With every diurnal alternation, the number of lives perishing on this planet was beyond calculation.

Martial artists dwelling within the city were required to pay exorbitant fees or venture outside the city during daytime to hunt vast numbers of ferocious beasts and fulfill their 'quota' in order to reside within.

Meanwhile, the City Guard, jointly established by the City Lord's Mansion and several major factions within the city, was responsible for guarding the city and resisting the onslaught of beasts during the night.

This was the survival model of the vast majority of cities on planet Visca.

Night had only just fallen, and although some ferocious beasts had already gathered outside the city walls, their numbers remained sparse. The City Guard hardly needed to make a move; the city walls alone were enough to easily fend off their attacks.

Standing high atop the ramparts and looking down, they employed spiritual force weapons, bows, arrows, and javelins to launch long-range attacks, effortlessly slaying the approaching beasts.

Given the intelligence of the ferocious beasts—apart from a few avian and reptilian beasts possessing innate flight capabilities—the remaining ordinary 'ground' beasts rarely chose to fly, blindly pressing forward in reckless charges.

Through the footage transmitted by the nanoprobes, Jiang Chen discovered that in the nocturnal environment, the combat prowess of the ferocious beasts was enhanced by at least several fold.

Coupled with their terrifying numbers, if these beasts possessed intellect, or if they were replaced by fierce monsters of equivalent strength, the indigenous inhabitants within the city would likely find it hard to hold out.

"Perhaps the prohibition of technological development on planet Visca is also meant to maintain a balance between humans and ferocious beasts?"

A guess popped into Jiang Chen's mind.

When dealing to such powerful yet mindless beasts, technological weapons were far more effective than people.

Even Domain Lord or World Lord-level ferocious beasts could not withstand the attacks of high-grade laser cannons, plasma cannons, anti-matter missiles, and other powerful technological weaponry.

Moreover, when it came to large-scale area clearance and cleansing, prior to reaching a certain threshold of personal might, the efficacy of tech weapons far surpassed that of cultivators.

If technology were allowed to flourish, even with the 'Ancestral God Cult' intervening from the shadows, it would be difficult to maintain such a pristine balance between the indigenous humans and the ferocious beasts.

Observing the assembly of beasts outside the city walls for a moment, Jiang Chen quickly concluded that a large-scale beast tide eruption would not happen immediately.

For this city defense battle, the intensity would not rise to a relatively high level until at least a dozen hours or even longer later.

Such 'small-scale scenes' right now were truly uninteresting.

Jiang Chen quickly shifted his focus away, casting it toward the City Lord's Mansion and several other areas guarded by powerhouses at the 'Domain Lord' level.

Six Domain Lords in a single city—compared to the genetic aptitude of planet Visca's natives, this number seemed a bit low.

A genetic constitution capable of reaching the Star-level upon adulthood, coupled with the uniquely blessed cultivation environment of planet Visca, should yield a considerably larger population of Domain Lords among a population of over a billion.

However, it was hardly strange for some powerhouses to leave their hometowns and head toward places teeming with even stronger beings.

Judging by the existence of the 'Ancestral God Cult', the distribution of powerhouses on planet Visca was obviously non-uniform.

In truth, within any cultivation civilization possessing a sufficiently vast territory, the distribution of powerhouses is never uniform.

There are always certain more 'core' locations that gather the vast majority of strong individuals across the entire civilization.

What interested Jiang Chen wasn't the number of powerhouses within Purple Dream City, but rather the intelligence they possessed.

In a world where personal might reigned supreme, powerhouses frequently occupied lofty positions, naturally granting them access to greater amounts of information and crucial intelligence.

Perhaps individuals with influential backgrounds yet lacking strength might also command rich intelligence.

At least up to now, however, Jiang Chen had not spotted any such 'scions of noble houses'.

To gain a deeper understanding of this planet, he ultimately had to focus on these few Domain Lords.

Nevertheless, while 'nanoprobes' could evade the perception of Universe-level beings, they could not bypass Domain Lords.

The moment they drew within a certain range, they would inevitably be detected.

Furthermore, these Domain Lords did not idle about discussing secrets of planet Visca; passively collecting news in this manner yielded extremely low efficiency.

Strike directly?

Jiang Chen was confident he could defeat a Domain Lord without employing technological weapons.

Whether it was blade techniques, spiritual force weapons, or soul illusions, given Jiang Chen's attainments, he could easily engage in cross-tier combat.

Once battle broke out, however, the commotion would unquestionably be substantial.

Trying to capture a Domain Lord alive to extract intelligence from their lips would definitely alert the other Domain Lords within Purple Dream City.

Ultimately, it might even provoke a scenario where the majority of the city's population surrounded and attacked him.

What if he used technological weapons?

Though the technological armaments Jiang Chen had prepared were quite comprehensive, he truly lacked anything that generated exceptionally minimal commotion while depriving the enemy of resistance without inflicting fatal injuries.

Any single one of these three conditions was not hard to meet individually; combining all three, however, proved extremely troublesome.

Particularly keeping the commotion minimal so as not to attract the attention of other powerhouses—that was the trickiest point.

"An assassin? No, an assassin can approach in stealth just fine, but once they strike, it's always a fatal blow. Domain Lords no longer possess conventional vital points in their bodies; rendering them incapacitated requires either specialized suppression weaponry or soul-based methods."

"Gravitational interference, energy interference, psychic storms—if the output is finely tuned, any of these can strip a Domain Lord of resistance, but the commotion is simply too massive. Purple Dream City is too small; avoiding the notice of others is utterly impossible."

Jiang Chen rapidly reviewed the specifications of all the weapons and equipment in his possession, calculating which option best suited this scenario.

After pondering for a long time, Jiang Chen finally thought of a 'fine item'.

[Warp Arbiter].

A special unit defined by Jiang Chen as a 'battlefield auxiliary unit'.

Crafted through a combination of traditional technology and psionic technology, due to its exorbitant cost, there was only a single unit within the entire mechanical legion.

The [Warp Arbiter] possessed no offensive capabilities whatsoever, boasting merely two 'special skills' of immense strategic value: 'Warp Summon' and 'Static Field'.

Both were spatial-type abilities.

The former could use itself as coordinates to open a portal leading to a known coordinate, pulling everything within a certain range of the target coordinate directly to its side.

The latter caused space within a designated area to completely freeze; beings lacking sufficient mastery over the laws of space would find themselves unable to move once they entered this domain.

The skill Jiang Chen intended to utilize right now was naturally 'Warp Summon'.

His clone would sneak close to a certain Domain Lord to provide coordinates, and the [Warp Arbiter] on his main body's end would initiate 'Warp Summon', instantly pulling the Domain Lord over.

By then, they would be over ten thousand kilometers away; even if the commotion was somewhat loud, the powerhouses in Purple Dream City wouldn't be able to track down the enemy's location for a while.

Coupled with the beast tide's siege on Purple Dream City, a massive amount of attention here would inevitably be diverted.

By the time the powerhouses of Purple Dream City had spare energy to search for culprits, Jiang Chen would have long since completed his task and departed.

Given the sheer expanse of planet Visca, they wouldn't even know where to begin searching for him.

"Still, there's no need to rush. Let's wait a while and observe the situation of the beast tide. In the unlikely event that Purple Dream City fails to hold against the beast tide, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to strike arbitrarily either..."

A thought flashed through Jiang Chen's mind.

He had no interest in managing the chaotic and bloody plight of planet Visca, nor could he manage it.

Yet if he were the indirect cause of plunging a city with a population exceeding a billion into carnage, that was something Jiang Chen could not bring himself to do.

After all, despite their differing stances, the indigenous inhabitants of this planet were still a branch of humanity.

At the very least, he needed to ensure that losing the combat strength of a single Domain Lord would not cause this city to fall under the siege of the beast tide.

Under those conditions, Jiang Chen would make his move.

Having made his decision, Jiang Chen remained quietly inside his rented manor, waiting silently.

Time trickled by second by second, and the number of ferocious beasts gathered outside Purple Dream City continued to swell, launching wave after wave of assault against the city.

Initially, the defense put up by the City Guard was relaxed.

As the number of beasts steadily escalated, however, the pressure bearing down on the City Guard began to skyrocket.

More than a hundred hours into the night, abruptly, a knock sounded at Jiang Chen's door.