Monster Paradise

Lin Huang returned to the Iron Fist Shelter after he was done with the Tyrant Bug King.

However, he did not hand over the mission items right away upon his return. Instead, after accepting the mission to kill the Horned Beetle on Death Sickle’s missions forum, he rented a cultivation room and went into closed-door cultivation.

Once in the cultivation room, the first thing Lin Huang did was to give the Tyrant Bug King’s bug beasts’ spiritual energy to Fading Petals and Creation Clock.

Although the bug beasts that the Tyrant Bug King had conquered were less powerful than the Wine Ant Queen and the Spider Empress, he had many high-level Virtual Gods under him. He had dozens of Virtual God rank-8 and Virtual God rank-9 Bug Kings; some of them were even mythical-level. The total sum of spiritual energy was not that different from the other two missions.

After this transfer of spiritual energy, the last two God’s Figurines’ Combat Souls, namely Fading Petals and Creation Clock, finally elevated to Virtual God rank-9.

As of now, all ten God’s Figurines’ Combat Souls were one step away from elevating to true god-level. Their overall ability was over several times more powerful than before they came to the great world.

After allocating his spiritual energy, Lin Huang checked the cards that he had obtained over the last few days.

Since he used a Double Reward Card every time these days before fighting, he had obtained a total of 450 million card pieces and over 1,200 complete Monster Cards. Most of them were basically triple mutated legendary-level Monster Cards. There were only 52 pseudo-mythical-level cards and 8 mythical-level cards.

There were two Spider Empress cards among the mythical-level cards. The remaining six cards were two bug guardians and a Bug King under the Tyrant Bug King. Since he used a Double Reward Card, the number of complete cards was doubled.

Lin Huang was actually surprised to have obtained the Spider Empress cards; he had not been hoping for much.

After placing the 1,200-over bug beast cards that he had just obtained into the galactic hive, Lin Huang fed all of the extraneous bug carcasses into the hive.

Earlier, Lin Huang had retrieved the Godheads in the bug carcasses when he had summoned the Bug Tribe army to clean up the battlefield. He had since placed them in a corner of the storeroom. Now he brought them out.

Apart from the four Virtual God rank-9 Godheads from the Wine Ant Queen, the Spider Empress, the Tyrant Bug King and the Horned Beetle, there were two Godheads that came from the mythical-level Bug Kings under the Tyrant Bug King.

Lin Huang had finally gathered the main materials he needed, which were the six Virtual God rank-9 Godheads.

Meanwhile, he had over 200 million Godheads for supplementary materials. Naturally, he had sufficient materials now.

Without hesitation, he tossed a Virtual God rank-9 Godhead into his Divine Fire as the main material. Subsequently, he tossed in the sea of Godheads as the supplementary materials.

The Godheads turned into meteors, colliding straight into his Life Palace. Very soon, they were surrounded by ten golden Life Wheels resembling suns. Each Life Wheel spurted dark-red Divine Fire, enveloping the Godheads entirely.

When Lin Huang was still imperial-level rank-1, he needed a full month to refine a Virtual God rank-9 Godhead. Now that he was already at imperial-level rank-3, the refinement period was shortened by almost a third, which meant he would only need 20 days for refinement.

The refinement time would accelerate after level elevation. This was because the Divine Fire’s refinement power was restricted by Lin Huang’s combat strength.

In the cultivation room, Lin Huang closed his eyes to focus. He concentrated all his attention on activating the Divine Fire.

After being refined by Divine Fire, the sea of Godheads was transformed into a white stream that penetrated his Life Palace.

The stream was merely the thickness of a hair and flowed slowly at first. As the Godheads were refined, the stream grew. Some one to two hours later, it was flowing like a great river in the Life Palace.

Time flew by; 12 days passed. All of the supplementary materials were refined and the Life Palace began to stop absorbing supplementary energy. Lin Huang began focusing on refining the single remaining Virtual God rank-9 Godhead in his body.

Eight days went by just like that. The main material, the Virtual God rank-9 Godhead, had been refined completely, turning into a white river that flowed into the Life Palace.

A moment later, Lin Huang’s inner universe experienced a period of upheaval. The Divine Fire retreated back into the Life Lamp while the ten Life Wheels returned to their original positions.

Lin Huang could clearly feel the Divine Power in his body undergoing another transformation.

However, this was just a minor transformation. It was not powerful enough to trigger a fundamental change in the Divine Power’s nature, but the Divine Power’s intensity was certainly a bit stronger than before.

At the same time that this Divine Power transformation was taking place, Lin Huang’s physical body and soul were strengthened too.

Although once again no fundamental change took place, he could clearly feel that he was more powerful now.

“I’ve been elevated to imperial-level rank-4!”

After observing the transformation in his body for a little, Lin Huang then looked at the Monster Cards in his body.

Bai and the others had had their combat strength elevated to Virtual God rank-3.

Lin Huang was at peace again after calming himself down. He took out two Virtual God rank-9 Godheads and a large number of supplementary Godheads. Without any hesitation, he tossed them into his inner universe again.

While Lin Huang was focusing on refining Godheads to elevate his combat strength, the forum exchange on the Death Sickle’s website was a stirring hive of activity.

One of the threads had over 10,000 comments.

The title was, ‘Where Did The Bug King and the Bug Queens Go?!’

The thread described the sudden disappearance of the overlords of three battlegrounds, the Wine Ant Queen, the Spider Empress, and the Tyrant Bug King. There were verification photos and videos too.

Before the thread was posted, people had originally been speculating on the internet about the disappearances of the Bug King and the two Bug Queens. It was just that most of them thought this was a rumor started by trolls. Even though there were videos and photos, people still thought they were faked.

However, as rumors continued to spread like wildfire for the next few days, people witnessed a couple of major organizations sending their elite virtual god-level teams to investigate the three battlegrounds, while more videos and photos were posted. Only then did people start to believe that this was the real thing.

More and more discussions about the disappearances of these three Bug overlords mushroomed up on the forums of every organization.

However, basically, everyone on the forums had come to the same conclusion.

All of them assumed that the two Queen Mothers and the Bug King had retreated by choice from the battlegrounds, which explained why there were no traces of battle left behind at the scenes. Not only had the Bug King and the Bug Queens disappeared, but even the Bug Tribe armies had also vanished.

If it were only the Bug King and the Bug Queens that had died, people might have speculated that powerhouses from the God Territory had invaded the core of each bug lair and assassinated the overlords. There was certainly a possibility that this could have happened.

However, a hundred million over Bug Tribe troops disappearing without a trace could not possibly be the work of human agency. Most importantly, there were no traces of battle at all.

Even the upper echelons of a few major organizations in the God Territory were discussing the matter, including Death Sickle. All of them were asking if anybody had taken up the missions recently.

Death Sickle’s upper echelons even discussed Lin Huang in their meeting. However, it was merely someone mentioning in passing, “I think that rookie Xie Lin took those missions recently but as I recall, he’s only a Virtual God rank-3.”

Everyone merely shook their head and smiled before skipping over the subject. Nobody thought Lin Huang could possibly be responsible for the mysterious disappearances.