Ulterior Motives

Half an hour later, a once-in-a-millennium wonder unfolded across the Distant Sky Realm. Sanctuary Sorcerers, who should have been scattered throughout countless bubbles exploring on their own, were now gathered in a single place. A magnificent host of two thousand sorcerers unfurled their Sanctuaries, drifting through the air. As time ticked by, many more flapped their three wings and rushed toward the site. A single stone had stirred up a thousand ripples. The news that Blood Moon sorcerers were breaching the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams erupted like a plague, sweeping across the six countries within seconds. Whether you were a high-ranking mayor in the Gospel Country, a senior cult leader in the Senluo Country, an aristocratic professor in the Starlight Country, or an obscure hermit, every single one of them—save those gravely injured or completely out of reach—flocked to this unprecedented feast of strife without exception. Every sorcerer who arrived could scarcely contain the surging tempest in their chest as they gazed upon the clusters of thousands of Sanctuaries outside the golden bubble. Even though they had not yet laid hands on a single scrap of treasure, the sheer spectacle alone was enough to etch itself into their memories for a lifetime. This was almost certainly the one and only time in their entire lives they would ever witness so many Sanctuaries assembled in one place. At this moment, they finally understood just how immense a weight lay behind the saying, "The Void Realm is the ancestral home of all sorcerers." Blood Moon, Starlight, Senluo, Paradise, Abyss, Gospel! The colossal disturbance caused by the Blood Moon Sanctuaries in the Void Realm had summoned the world's Sanctuary Sorcerers within half an hour! Sorcerers of all six nations were united here! Even for a Sanctuary Sorcerer, leaving one's homeland in a lifetime was nearly impossible. To them, sorcerers from other lands were like distant fairy tales, stories in books, or virtual avatars behind screens—existences they knew of, but could never physically touch. In the Sea of Knowledge, enshrouded in white fog, a One-Wing Sorcerer could travel tens of thousands of li without running into a single person, and that was completely ordinary. On the Time Continent, veiled by golden rain and fraught with peril, even if Two-Wing Sorcerers crossed paths, they would swiftly put distance between each other to stay safe unless they were already acquainted. And the Distant Sky Realm went without saying. Sorcerers were segmented into separate bubbles, and the number of bubbles stretched into tens of thousands. The odds of an encounter here were even lower than on the Time Continent. However, starting from the Sanctuary stage, whenever sorcerers did cross paths, the atmosphere leaned much more toward communication. They rarely fought right off the bat—because they simply couldn't kill one another. A Sanctuary was security, and security was the prerequisite for equal communication. If multiple Two-Wing Sorcerers bumped into one another on the Time Continent, their very first reaction would be to prepare defensive miracles, or hide if they lacked one. It was fortunate enough if they didn't start brawling on the spot; how could they possibly converse? Some might wonder: did sorcerers really need to be so paranoid? Was it impossible for both sides to simply be decent people? It was true that most sorcerers were law-abiding citizens in reality, but once they entered the Void Realm, all bets were off. The Void Realm possessed two defining traits: one could log in and out at will, and tracing someone back to reality from the Void Realm was exceedingly difficult. To put it simply, if you slashed someone in the Void Realm, even if you failed to kill them, they couldn't do a thing to you. After all, this might be the only encounter the two of you would ever have in your entire lives. If an anonymous, lawless zone with zero real-world consequences appeared on the online Curtain, it would undeniably turn into a cesspool of trolls. And from ancient times to the present, the Void Realm had always been like this. Even if you were an ordinary person in reality who had never slaughtered so much as a Lalafell and mourned whenever you saw a stranger die, if you ran into another sorcerer in the Void Realm, it wouldn't be unusual at all if a wicked urge suddenly seized you to try killing them just to see what happened. Nobody was there to hold you accountable anyway. Furthermore, even if you harbored no such desire, how could you guarantee the other party didn't? Not to mention the myriad confounding factors. For instance, what if you were a Gospel Elf sorcerer, while the other happened to be a Blood Moon Goblin sorcerer who had suffered social persecution? You might never have discriminated against a goblin in your life, yet you'd end up hunted by one purely because of the Blood Moon's social system. Moreover, killing a sorcerer yielded tangible profits. Under normal circumstances, when a sorcerer was slain, they merely lost soul fragments rather than suffering true death. And the lost soul fragments had a high probability of retaining sorcery spirits, which served as spoils of war. The first and second layers of the Void Realm were essentially a dark forest where everyone could hunt one another with zero penalties. Yet on the third layer, the arrival of the Sanctuary changed everything. An absolute barrier that could not be swiftly shattered allowed trust to sprout and malice to recede. The scattered rogues found the courage to gather and negotiate team-ups, even harboring faint hostility toward the sorcerer forces representing the gods, precisely because their Sanctuaries gave them backbone. Whatever happened, they believed their Sanctuaries could weather a blow or two, buying them a chance to escape or strike back! A route of retreat was the greatest capital for an adventure! Thus, a grand spectacle emerged, with two thousand Sanctuary Sorcerers watching hungrily like tigers eyeing their prey. The three official factions numbered around a hundred each, whereas the "others" amounted to two thousand! However, these two thousand rogue Sanctuaries had no unified leadership, nor did they even form squads larger than ten people. Many were loose bands of three or five, and even more were lone wolves operating by themselves. If valuable treasure appeared, they would turn on one another before doing any fighting. Grouped together, they merely looked formidable on the surface. They were like a flock of vultures blotting out the sky, waiting for the scraps left behind by lions. But if the lions were injured, they wouldn't mind humiliating the gods either. Hence, Baiyu didn't spare this rabble a single glance. Staring at the distant Curse Elves and Parasite Sorcerers, he scratched his bird's-nest hair and tightened his right hand around the crimson lightning. "The Apex Lord never mentioned there'd be a PvP segment..." Just then, a female sorcerer stepped out from among the Curse Elves. Like ordinary elves, Curse Elves had long, pointed ears, but aside from their paler complexion, the greatest difference lay in their snake hair. This gorgeously dressed, noble female Curse Elf possessed nine bronze serpent strands that seemed to have minds of their own. They flicked their tongues faintly, fixing their gaze on Baiyu alongside her. "Zhuozhou," she said. Her voice was not loud, but her soft, sluggish tones reached everyone within a one-kilometer radius with absolute clarity. A masked young man, bundled head to toe in garments, stepped out from the Parasite Sorcerers' ranks. "Ezhao." Zhuozhou spoke slowly: "We, are the same." "Isn't it a bit early to fight when we haven't even caught a glimpse of the prize? We should at least strip the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams bare first," Ezhao remarked, glancing toward the rabble waiting greedily in the distance. "Besides, there's such a long line behind us. If we start tearing into each other, who knows if they'll seize the chance to attack those of us representing the gods? Trust me, nobody can resist the temptation of desecrating the sacred and trampling the noble." Baiyu had no desire to stir up needless complications either. "Then we enter the heaven first, and may the best man win." "Clear, the field?" Zhuozhou asked. "Whoa, such a savage elf. I like it," Ezhao teased, signaling the Parasite Sorcerers' agreement. Baiyu, however, rejected it flatly. "The Blood Moon does not engage in indiscriminate slaughter." This was not an occasion where the minority yielded to the majority. To clear the field, all three parties had to act in unison. Otherwise, if two sides engaged the peripheral sorcerers while the Blood Moon Sanctuary Sorcerers suddenly pincer-attacked them from behind, they might as well kiss their chances at the Spectre Inheritance goodbye. Since the Blood Moon had cast a veto, Ezhao and Zhuozhou dropped the matter. Baiyu reined in his crimson lightning and watched them quietly. If they wanted a seat at this feast, they needed to show their qualifications first; a mere hundred Sanctuary Sorcerers fell far short of the threshold. Moreover, if Ezhao and Zhuozhou had no miracles in reserve, Baiyu had no obligation to share with them. After all, the crimson lightning in his hand could be unleashed one more time, and that would deal an unbearable blow to any single faction. Zhuozhou raised her hand, and a blazing orange greatbow materialized in her grip. In an era when gunmanship had exploded in popularity, bows and arrows were quite foreign to most sorcerers. Simultaneously, the snake hair of all the Curse Elves hissed and flicked their tongues, their serpentine eyes glowing with a faint orange light as they gazed upon Zhuozhou at the front. Much like the Blood Moon alliance, the Curse Elves synchronized their Sanctuary power through the resonance of their shared bloodline! Seconds later, the orange greatbow rapidly expanded to a hundred meters in length, and the colossal arrow in Zhuozhou's grip grew to rival Baiyu's crimson lightning. Its glaring brilliance was enough to scorch the retinas of anyone who looked directly at it, forcing the Sanctuary Sorcerers to avert their eyes! Miracle: Glorious Light Arrow! The shockwave of the giant arrow piercing the air sent ripples rolling across the sorcerers' Sanctuaries! Boom! With pinpoint accuracy, the colossal arrow struck the finger-sized hole in the golden bubble, expanding it to the width of a human torso! "My turn to perform expansion surgery on this lovely Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams." Ezhao casually pointed a finger. Emerald jade abruptly sealed the hole in the golden bubble, and the jade-green sheen expanded continuously until it fractured open into an entrance wide enough for two people to pass side by side! Miracle: Boundless Green! Baiyu and Zhuozhou both narrowed their eyes slightly. There had been no chant, no flight trajectory, and it wasn't even clear whether he had synchronized the strength of the other Sanctuaries. Ezhao had unleashed this miracle practically instantaneously. Its sole drawback was likely its narrower area of effect, unlike the crimson lightning and orange great arrow that could transform into wide-area attacks. Still, the possibility of area variations couldn't be ruled out. At this point, Baiyu sent a Moon Shadow Sanctuary Sorcerer to probe the entrance. Testing the waters near the hole, the Moon Shadow flashed a V-sign toward Baiyu and declared happily, "One-Wing sorcery spirits face no restrictions! Two-Wing sorcery spirits suffer a 50% increase in sorcery power consumption, and Three-Wing sorcery spirits suffer a 100% increase! Furthermore, at most three sorcery spirits can be driven simultaneously!" "The Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams has shattered after all. Even though the Spectre Prophet patched it up with countless seals, once breached, it can no longer maintain its suppression over sorcery spirits..." Recalling the materials provided by the Apex Lord, Baiyu led the Blood Moon Sanctuary Sorcerers to charge into the Spectre Inheritance first. The Curse Elves and Parasite Sorcerers followed right on their heels. Once they entered, a clamor of voices immediately erupted among the restless peripheral sorcerers: "The Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams is huge! There's no way they can scour it completely clean. The scraps they leave behind will be more than enough to feed us!" "If the Spectre Prophet laid other traps, they'll definitely flatten them for us!" "They're sorcerers favored by the gods; even without the Spectre Inheritance, they know how to reach Ruby Mountain and the realms beyond. But if we miss the Spectre Inheritance, we'll never have any hope of rising above Ruby Mountain!" "The gods have already attained the supreme realm, so why are they still fighting us for the Spectre Inheritance? Everyone has a right to share a demigod's legacy! How can we let them monopolize it?" "Break the monopoly on the inheritance!" The moment the first person rushed through the entrance, the Sanctuary Sorcerers boiled over completely, surging into the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams one after another! "Mr. Bogin, that was amazing!" Chikala said in admiration, looking at the returning Igola. "You actually managed to whip all those Sanctuary Sorcerers into a frenzy! Haha, with them as cannon fodder, we can just hang back and rob whoever picks up the good stuff!" "Not a chance," Igola replied calmly. "While mind miracles using sound as a medium pierce Sanctuaries more easily than others, they're still not strong enough to affect over a thousand Sanctuaries... If my senses aren't mistaken, at least dozens of Mind Sanctuaries were casting miracles just now. That's why it was so easy to stoke everyone's greed and fury." "There are quite a few people harboring the exact same idea as us..." Recalling how he had just cast spells in tacit coordination with other Mind Sanctuaries, Igola felt a surge of excitement. He was a swindler born for grand stages and massive spectacles. At this moment, with Sanctuaries from all six nations gathered in the Distant Sky Realm, the temptation was to him what an ancient battlefield was to Harvey! However, Igola swiftly steadied his mind, because the real challenge was only just beginning. Harvey glanced around and mused, "It's been more than a dozen hours since Yaxiu logged into the Void Realm..." "Let's go," Igola said directly, offering no answer to Harvey's musing. The necromancer glanced at the swindler and nodded. Igola, Harvey, and Chikala entered the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams through the opening, the light shifting from bright to dim. Inside the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams lay a vast world of utter pitch-black. Strangely enough, the sorcerers' vision remained crystal clear; white outlines traced the edges of every object, making the world resemble a minimalist line drawing on a black backdrop. In the darkness, countless colossal black spheres were moving erratically at high speed! Boom! The moment Igola entered, he watched a Sanctuary Sorcerer get blasted a hundred meters away after colliding with a black sphere! Now, the Sanctuary Sorcerers were hugging the edges as closely as possible to dodge the spheres' high-speed charges! Yet the Blood Moon Sanctuaries, the Curse Elves, and the Parasite Sorcerers were all attacking the same black sphere. Using an unknown miracle, they managed to slow the hurtling sphere to a crawl, then bombarded it relentlessly with miracles until it finally shattered! The instant the black sphere collapsed, dozens of sorcery spirits and experience light orbs fled outward in a panic. Looking closely, the onlookers realized the interior of the black sphere was none other than the subterranean trial hall they were so familiar with! Although the divine sorcerers promptly rounded up these rewards, several sorcery spirit light orbs still slipped past and were snatched up by peripheral sorcerers. "The Spectre Inheritance is hidden inside the black spheres!" "Smashing the spheres bursts out all the rewards inside!" The Sanctuary Sorcerers grew wildly excited. Normally, completing a single trial netted only a single reward, which was very likely a temporary sorcery spirit. Yet now, blasting a black sphere yielded rewards directly! There were hundreds of black spheres here, each hiding over a hundred rewards! And inside, there might even be the Spectre Side Chronicles, True Chronicles, or even the Master Chronicle! In stark contrast to the thrilled peripheral sorcerers, Baiyu, Zhuozhou, and Ezhao looked exceedingly grim. Observing the other black spheres, they had finally uncovered the trap left behind by the Spectre Prophet. "As expected of the Spectre Prophet..." Baiyu gave a weak, bitter smile. "We're in massive trouble now." The Spectre Prophet had undoubtedly foreseen that people would storm the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams to seize the inheritance, so Baiyu and his peers had remained very cautious. Yet they had never anticipated that the Spectre Prophet would be so ingenious— Whenever a black sphere was destroyed, its internal energy would merge into the other black spheres, increasing their volume and velocity! Once they smashed enough spheres, the remaining ones would be accelerated to an absurd speed. Even with Sanctuaries, they would be battered senseless and rendered powerless to resist! The black spheres were likely fragments of the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams, which explained how they could operate and reconstitute themselves fully automatically. In other words, they were not only contending against the Spectre Prophet, but also against the power of the Void Realm itself! And this was merely the first layer of traps; the Spectre Prophet had second and third layers waiting for them! Yet they had no way to resolve it, nor any way to bypass it! The Spectre Inheritance was hidden inside the black spheres. Unless they could directly locate where the Master Chronicle lay, they had to smash through the spheres one by one! Even if they possessed prophecy miracles to search at their leisure, two thousand greedy Sanctuaries were lurking right beside them! Those rogues were only looking to grab a quick score and run; failing to get the Master Chronicle mattered little to them. Why would they sit obediently on their hands just so Baiyu and his cohort could secure the Master Chronicle smoothly? Did being a god mean you got to run the whole show? This black sphere trap, perfectly leveraging greed and shortsightedness, demonstrated the Spectre Prophet's chilling insight into the human heart. Still, it wasn't without good news. Baiyu and the others noticed that the additional sorcery power consumption for Two-Wing and Three-Wing sorcery spirits had decreased. The black spheres were fragments of the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams; destroying them dealt further heavy damage to the realm, progressively weakening the suppression imposed upon them. Baiyu, Zhuozhou, and Ezhao exchanged glances and nodded in unison. "Move." The three factions slowed down another black sphere and launched a fierce assault! Chikala and Harvey looked toward Igola. Igola watched as groups of roughly four hundred peripheral Sanctuaries intercepted and battered three or four black spheres. Although many spheres remained, the Sanctuaries dealt immense damage, to say nothing of the potent miracles held in reserve by the divine sorcerers. The fall of the Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams was already a foregone conclusion. The swindler knew Yaxiu and the others were inside the black spheres, so what he needed to do was stop the Sanctuaries from attacking them. Yet swimming against the tide was pure folly. Right now, every Sanctuary Sorcerer was frantic to plunder the Spectre Inheritance; who would willingly stop? Therefore, he had to engineer a different tide... With this thought, Igola signaled Harvey and Chikala to follow him, stopping not far from the divine sorcerers. The moment the divine sorcerers cracked open a black sphere, the trio rushed in to scavenge the scraps, then swiftly retreated to avoid being hunted down by them. Had this been the rabble, someone would surely have pursued Igola's trio. But the divine sorcerers were led by Baiyu, Zhuozhou, and Ezhao, none of whom wished to stir up complications over a few opportunistic flies. Soon, however, they learned the consequence of failing to swat a fly immediately: it attracted an entire swarm. Noticing the actions of Igola's trio, more and more Sanctuaries waited outside to scavenge. Watching the divine sorcerers attack the black spheres, they resembled diners waiting for the chef to serve a dish, or students waiting for the homeroom teacher to hand out assignments. The moment a black sphere shattered, they surged forward in a frenzy to freeload, then promptly retreated to wait for the next course. This was simply too insolent. Unable to endure it any longer, Baiyu and his peers ordered their teams to spread out and encircle the black spheres, intending to monopolize every reward and shut the peripheral sorcerers out. Spreading out, however, meant lowering their formation's density, leaving them far more vulnerable to the black spheres' interference! Just as a Curse Elf prepared to dodge a black sphere, a shrill blast rang in his ears. A violent mental pang froze him on the spot, and an instant later, a black sphere slammed him a hundred meters away! "Who was that!?" he shrieked, the snake hair atop his head hissing as he glared toward the peripheral sorcerers. "Who just attacked me with a mind miracle!?" Naturally, none of the peripheral sorcerers answered. Baiyu, Zhuozhou, and Ezhao exchanged glances, quietly regrouping their team members. Yet doing so meant rewards would inevitably slip through their fingers whenever they destroyed a black sphere. Outwardly, nothing seemed to have changed—the divine sorcerers kept battering black spheres while the peripheral sorcerers waited to scavenge—yet an oppressive tension, like a brewing storm, gradually seeped throughout the entire Kingdom of Heaven in Dreams. Chikala and Harvey looked toward Igola, who slowly shook his head. The mind miracle that had struck the Curse Elf had nothing to do with him.