Chapter 145: Making a Move, City Lord Zimeng (Bonus Chapter for 500 Average Subscriptions)

Jiang Chen opened the door with a trace of displeasure and asked, "What is it?"

"Respected guest, I am deeply sorry to disturb you. I am Jin Jiu, the innkeeper of the Yangquan Inn."

The innkeeper bowed in apology and immediately stated his purpose: "The beast tide is approaching. By order of the City Lord's Mansion, all outsiders within the city must be registered. Should an emergency arise, we may need to requisition powerful individuals to help defend the city. Of course, you are our most esteemed guest at the Yangquan Inn, and unless it is a matter of life and death, you will never be requisitioned."

Hearing this, Jiang Chen could not help but frown. He communicated with Jarvis in his consciousness and confirmed that this was indeed the case.

Every time night descended and the beast tide struck, it was a life-and-death crisis for the native cities on Planet Visca.

Although past beast tides had been successfully weathered, no one knew whether the next one could be successfully defended.

If the defense failed, not a single soul within the entire city would survive.

Naturally, besides the standing City Guard Army, if a crisis arose where the defense lines might be breached, the city's upper echelons would also requisition civilians and outsiders to participate in the defense battle.

Except for children, the disabled, and the severely ill who lacked combat capability, everyone else who reached the Star Level was a potential soldier for city defense.

However, Ziyun City was considered a major city, and the strength of the City Guard Army was also very formidable.

The situation requiring the requisition of civilians in the city to fight was extremely rare, perhaps not occurring even once in a millennium.

Jiang Chen did not want to make trouble and said directly, "My name is Li Yao, a Universe-level wanderer. As for the requisition, unless there is a crisis of the city being breached, don't bother me."

Throwing out a fake name to brush it off, the innkeeper did not ask further and immediately replied respectfully, "Please rest assured, guest. This is just a routine formality. Ever since our Yangquan Inn was established, there has never been a record of guests being asked to participate in city defense."

"If there is nothing else, I am going to rest." Jiang Chen issued an order to see him out.

The innkeeper was very tactful, bowed respectfully, and immediately offered his farewells: "Sorry to disturb you. This is a small gift—a spiritual wine produced exclusively in Ziyun City—as compensation for interrupting your rest. Then I shall not disturb you further, and I hope you have a pleasant evening."

"Spiritual wine?" Jiang Chen did not even open the bottle cap and directly tossed the wine bottle into an empty World Ring.

Although Jiang Chen was fond of wine, he knew there was a time and place for everything.

Planet Visca was a "danger-grade" mission world, and Jiang Chen naturally would not indulge in pleasures in such a place and put himself in crisis.

Who knew if there was anything wrong with this wine?

In an unfamiliar environment, maintaining vigilance was the instinct of a martial artist.

Having dismissed the innkeeper, Jiang Chen continued to wait patiently.

Through the comprehensive monitoring system, Jarvis perfectly reconstructed the battle outside the city and displayed it before Jiang Chen.

In the curtain of night, dense swarms of ferocious beasts continuously gathered from afar, surging toward Ziyun City.

The City Guard Army continuously attacked, slaying a vast number of beasts.

Yet as soon as one batch of beasts died, more immediately filled the gaps, as if they were endless.

The only good news was that the levels of the beasts were mostly not particularly high, mostly ranging from the Star Level to the Universe Level.

Those that reached the Sector Lord level were extremely rare.

However, whenever a beast at the Sector Lord level appeared, it forced the City Guard Army to consume a massive amount of origin power and spiritual force in joint attacks just to stop it.

The offensive and defensive battle had just begun, and some of the weaker City Guard soldiers were already experiencing situations where their origin power and spiritual force could no longer sustain them. They had to retreat from the city walls and gorge themselves on stewed beast meat to replenish their stamina.

Reserve troops quickly replaced them, taking over the defense line to prevent any loopholes.

Yet it was evident that the pressure of defending the city was still immense.

At the 151st hour, the defense of the eastern city wall became critical, and a Sector Lord flew out from the city to join this battle line.

At the 273rd hour, a second Sector Lord entered the battle.

The time intervals between the actions of the first two Sector Lords were quite long, both exceeding a hundred hours, equivalent to several days on Earth.

However, by the 300th hour of the descending night, the impact intensity of the beast tide suddenly surged violently. Within less than twenty short hours, three consecutive Sector Lords took action.

By this point, among all the powerhouses within Ziyun City who had yet to make a move, only the city's nominal strongest "City Lord" remained.

Five Sector Lords emerged from their respective territories, leading troops atop the city walls to battle the beast tide. To avoid having anomalies detected, Jiang Chen had no choice but to order all the "nano-detectors" within the city to self-destruct, turning them into genuine dust.

Fortunately, there was still a large-scale detector capable of monitoring the city. Although its control over details fell far short of the vast number of nano-detectors, keeping an eye on a few Sector Lords was still not a problem.

Time ticked by, and the City Lord still showed no intention of making a move.

With the other five Sector Lords taking action, the battle situation to resist the beast tide also stabilized.

"There are still more than twenty hours before the night passes. When daytime arrives and the beast tide disperses, the range of activities for the native humans will expand significantly, and perhaps some trouble will arise then. We can make a move right now..."

Jiang Chen calculated the time and decided to take action.

His clone concealed its tracks, suppressing its aura to the absolute limit, dodging pedestrians along the way, and cautiously making its way toward the City Lord's Mansion.

As for his true body, it rapidly released a mechanical legion, forming a circle dispersed within the valley.

In mid-air at the center of the valley, a dark golden aircraft with unique fins resembling fish wings on both sides hovered in the air.

At this moment, the ferocious beasts across this wilderness had all gathered in the direction of Ziyun City, leaving very few remaining beasts.

Even if a few existed, they had no chance of approaching under the firepower of the mechanical legion.

The entire mechanical legion presented a perfect encircling formation, surrounding the [Warp Arbiter].

The psionic energy furnace inside the [Warp Arbiter] boosted its power to the absolute limit within mere seconds, converting it into spatial force.

Violent energy circulated within the aircraft, which was less than twenty meters long, faintly emitting a powerful coercive might.

If this energy were to erupt, it would be sufficient to completely vaporize an area with a radius of a thousand kilometers.

However, as an exquisitely perfected design, an energy runaway obviously would not happen.

The spatial force was compressed to the extreme and perfectly controlled, awaiting the coordinates provided by the clone.

Inside Ziyun City, Jiang Chen's clone had already arrived at the periphery of the City Lord's Mansion.

Without continuing to conceal his tracks, Jiang Chen directly retrieved a [Psionic Shield Generator], turning himself into a stream of light as he charged into the City Lord's Mansion.

Under the monitoring of the detector, the location where the City Lord resided naturally could not be hidden from Jiang Chen.

The moment they met, Jiang Chen directly activated the [Psionic Shield Generator], blessing himself and the City Lord of Ziyun City with a "Psionic Shield".

The semi-transparent, film-like shield looked extremely fragile, but it was sufficient to withstand a full-power blow from a Sector Lord of the ninth tier.

However, defense was not the goal; this shield itself served as a "positioning coordinate" and an "identification signal" to distinguish the teleportation target.

Having obtained the coordinates, deep within the wilderness valley, the [Warp Arbiter] immediately initiated the "Warp Summon".

Space was torn open with a massive rift.

Before the City Lord of Ziyun City could react, he was swallowed up by the powerful spatial force.

Jiang Chen's clone leaped forward, likewise entering the spatial rift and actively responding to the summons of the [Warp Arbiter].

Such a massive commotion naturally stirred up tremendous ripples within Ziyun City.

Realizing that the City Lord had gone missing, the guards and servants inside the City Lord's Mansion fell into panic, hurriedly seeking help from the other Sector Lords.

Yet all of this no longer had anything to do with Jiang Chen.

Deep within the wilderness valley.

A spatial rift opened, "spitting out" two figures before rapidly closing again.

One was naturally Jiang Chen's clone, while the other was the City Lord of Ziyun City, who stood over three meters tall and possessed an appearance resembling an ape.

The reaction of the City Lord of Ziyun City was actually quite swift. Although he was suddenly ambushed and failed to break free from the spatial force of the "Warp Summon" in the first instant.

The moment the teleportation ended, however, his attention immediately locked onto the enemy who had ambushed him.

The instant he saw this valley, the heart of the City Lord of Ziyun City sank involuntarily.

"Outsiders!"

The City Lord of Ziyun City stared bitterly at Jiang Chen, gnashing his teeth.

From the mechas and fighter jets surrounding him, he could deduce the enemy's identity.

Such tech-infused objects did not exist on Planet Visca.

Under the control of the "Ancestral God Cult" and generations of brainwashing education, the natives of Planet Visca held extreme hostility and hatred toward "Outsiders."

Although the City Lord of Ziyun City had never dealt with "Outsiders" before and had only heard fragmented legends, the moment he confirmed Jiang Chen's identity as an "Outsider," he swiftly prepared for battle.

A double-edged battle-axe appeared in the hands of the City Lord of Ziyun City.

Wielding the battle-axe with both hands, his figure flashed as he appeared directly before Jiang Chen, raising the axe high with both hands to hack down at Jiang Chen.

This strike held no intention of holding back; he launched it with all his might, aiming to chop Jiang Chen in two.

However, halfway through the axe's descent, the expression of the City Lord of Ziyun City changed abruptly.

An arm-thick laser beam struck the battle-axe, and the immense impact directly sent the City Lord of Ziyun City flying sideways.

The next moment, the [Gravity Modulation Device] activated.

A massive gravitational force pressed down upon the City Lord of Ziyun City, making it impossible for him even to stand, let alone muster the strength to attack.

"Why bother? I'm not here to kill you, I just want to understand some intelligence."

Jiang Chen's voice rang out leisurely.

Veins bulged on the temples of the City Lord of Ziyun City, his eyes bloodshot as he shouted angrily, "Outsider, don't dream that I will ever submit! Wanting me to betray my home planet—in your dreams!"

"Rest assured, I don't need you to submit. I have my own ways to obtain the intelligence inside your head."

Jiang Chen's voice sounded normal enough at first in the ears of the City Lord of Ziyun City, but it increasingly grew ethereal. By the final few syllables, the City Lord of Ziyun City could no longer hear what Jiang Chen was saying.

In a hazy blur, the City Lord of Ziyun City felt as though his soul had detached from his body, entering an incomparably dreamy world.

It was just like the "Divine Realm" where the "Ancestral Gods" lived according to the legends of Planet Visca.

Watching the City Lord of Ziyun City sinking into illusion, Jiang Chen could not help but sigh softly, lamenting: "These natives are far too inferior compared to the powerhouses in the universe..."

Under Jiang Chen's illusions, the City Lord of Ziyun City barely struggled at all before sinking into the illusionary realm.

In the universe, even ordinary Sector Lords who were not geniuses possessed wills and consciousness at the fifth or sixth tier of the Sector Lord level that were not this weak.

At the very least, it would require a clash of spiritual consciousness before Jiang Chen could invade their minds with illusions.

A native civilization lacked a systematic heritage, lacked sufficient tempering, and stagnated in self-isolation upon a single planet.

Even if the environment here allowed them to give birth to quite a few powerhouses.

Yet at the same tier, they were completely out of alignment with the cultivators of the universe.

Let alone comparing them to geniuses within the five behemoths.

Even the mechanical legion Jiang Chen had prepared wasn't needed; merely a gravity suppression and an illusion were enough to easily resolve the opponent.

Having controlled the City Lord of Ziyun City with illusions, Jiang Chen swiftly operated the Secret Technique of "Soul Search," extracting the information he desired from the mind of the City Lord of Ziyun City.

A Sector Lord lived for tens of thousands of years, possessing vast and colossal memories.

It took Jiang Chen several hours to sort through the massive memories of the City Lord of Ziyun City and obtain the intelligence he desired from them.

"The Ancestral God Cult is on the other side of the continent. The specific distance is unknown, but a conservative estimate puts it at over a hundred million kilometers away. That is quite a distance..."

Jiang Chen shook his head slightly.

Perhaps due to his insufficient status, the information grasped by the City Lord of Ziyun City was not extensive.

Regarding the Ancestral God Cult, he only knew that its headquarters was on the other side of the continent, and he didn't even know the specific location.

As for information concerning divine children, blood god fruits, ancestral god tombs, and the like, he knew none of it.

The only valuable piece of intelligence was that the "Ancestral God Cult" would periodically dispatch "envoys" to various cities to search for geniuses.

If one could pass the envoy's test, they could become a "Candidate Divine Child" and be taken back by the envoy to the Ancestral God Cult to engage in further competition.

A true genius who stood out among a group of candidate divine children could become an official "Divine Child" and occupy an extremely high position within the Ancestral God Cult.

However, the last time an "envoy" came to Ziyun City was tens of thousands of years ago.

And the City Lord of Ziyun City at that time was not the current one.

What happened back then, he understood very little, knowing only that the envoy ultimately did not take anyone away from Ziyun City and seemed extremely dissatisfied.

"According to the memory of the City Lord of Ziyun City, about five million kilometers to the east, there is a large city with 'Domain Lord powerhouses'—meaning Sector Lord-level powerhouses—existing within it. Those Sector Lords should know much more..."

Based on the memories obtained from the mind of the City Lord of Ziyun City, Jiang Chen calculated his subsequent plan: "Let's first go to that 'Jialan City' and see if there is an opportunity to obtain more detailed intelligence."