All or Nothing

The message from White Tiger lit up the phone screen, every word like an icy needle piercing into Chen Guan's retinas.

The ritual is brought forward; the entire city is the sacrifice.

The next second, an alarm so shrill it threatened to tear eardrums apart sounded simultaneously from every corner of the city.

Woooo!

Inside the gloomy abandoned platform, the emergency lights on the ceiling flickered twice before dying out completely, plunging the world into pure darkness.

Because of the qualitative change in his spiritual power, Chen Guan's eyes could still see his surroundings clearly in a different way.

He looked up, his gaze piercing through the thick concrete.

In his perception, the night sky of Jiang City was no longer pitch black.

Blood-red threads rose from all directions of the city, intertwining and spreading a thousand meters in the air, rapidly outlining the contour of a massive magic formation covering the entire city.

The patterns of the formation were complex, exuding a malice that made one's soul shudder.

This soul-deep shuddering did not affect Chen Guan's judgment.

With the boost of his 50-point Spirit attribute, his brain's processing efficiency reached a superhuman level.

Combined with White Tiger's message...

This was no ordinary attack.

This was a grand sacrifice using millions of living beings as offerings.

Cough... cough...

Long Ao beside him was awakened by the commotion. He coughed violently, spitting out not blood, but black clots.

Ignoring everything else, he struggled to stand up by leaning against a pillar. Feeling the overwhelming sense of oppression from the outside, his expression changed.

What happened... He looked at Chen Guan, still out of the loop.

Chen Guan didn't answer; he himself couldn't accurately describe the situation right now.

His spiritual power had already extended outward, following the threads rising from the ground to trace their source.

He saw it.

He saw a man living in an old apartment, worrying over a debt collection message on his computer screen. A wisp of despair drifted from the top of his head and merged into the bloody net in the sky.

He saw a girl who had just gone through a breakup crying by the river. Her heartbreaking sorrow turned into a thin thread and was ruthlessly drawn away.

Students, workers, white-collar employees, homeless people...

Countless faint traces of life force and negative emotions were being forcibly stripped from every living person in this city.

Ordinary people would only feel a wave of inexplicable weakness, but as it accumulated, what gathered in the sky was an ocean made of despair.

And all the threads of this giant bloody net ultimately pointed to one center.

The Central District, the top floor of the Queen's Casino.

When Chen Guan's spiritual power touched that place, it was instantly repelled by a domineering will.

He saw a blurry figure standing at the center of the storm, arms wide open, madly devouring the emotions gathered from the entire city.

The leader of the Embrace of Flesh and Blood, Blood Butcher.

The full picture of the plan connected and clearly emerged in Chen Guan's mind.

The death of Greedy Wolf, and the failures of Qisha and Pojun, had completely enraged Blood Butcher.

This madman didn't plan to wait any longer. He wanted to use the lives and souls of millions of people in the city as fuel to forcibly complete his ritual and summon the demon deeply bound to their organization.

We have to... go stop him!

Long Ao gritted his teeth, and golden dragon aura began to surface on his body. But as soon as he channeled his power, he felt a tearing, agonizing pain. The dragon aura instantly dissipated, and he stumbled.

White Tiger's power had saved his life, but it had also sealed most of the berserk dragon blood marrow power within him. His current strength was forcibly suppressed to Tier 4. Recovering would be a long, gradual process.

Chen Guan pressed a hand on his shoulder.

Don't move.

His voice was very calm, devoid of any emotion.

If you rush out now, you won't even make a splash. You'll only become a sacrifice in his ritual.

Then what can we do? Just watch him destroy the whole city? Long Ao became anxious. He grabbed Chen Guan's arm. You must have a way, right? You definitely have a backup plan!

[That's right, Brother Guan, stop hiding it, hurry up and call for backup.]

[Hilarious. Long Ao has already used his invincible wisdom to reach an invincible conclusion, which is to directly ask Chen Guan.]

[If I ran into someone this calm, I'd definitely ask for help too. I can tell who the big shot is at a glance.]

Chen Guan looked at the analysis on the bullet screen, his heart completely unruffled.

A backup plan?

His biggest backup plan was Bael, but summoning Bael wasn't that simple. Even if Bael took action, the commotion would be too big, which went against his principle of keeping a low profile while developing. The last person to summon Bael in front of everyone was Guan Jinyue.

Her ending was obvious to all.

He wouldn't follow in her footsteps.

Chen Guan's gaze fell on the black coffin on his back.

A crazy thought broke out from the deepest part of his heart without warning, growing wildly at an uncontrollable speed.

What was Blood Butcher doing?

He was collecting negative emotions.

Collecting a massive amount of emotions, he wanted to use them as a key to open a door leading to the abyss.

Then...

What if these emotions didn't flow to the abyss?

What if this key didn't open the door to the abyss, but something else?

For example... a coffin.

Chen Guan's heart was beating violently.

His main body was currently sleeping inside the coffin.

He had worked so hard to farm popularity points and add stats, all just so his main body could awaken one day.

But how long would he have to farm to gather enough popularity points to awaken his main body?

A year? Ten years?

After waking up, how would his main body handle itself in this danger-ridden world?

Now, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was right in front of him.

A gluttonous feast hosted by a Tier 8 powerhouse, using millions of living beings in the city as sacrifices.

Blood Butcher had worked hard as the chef, preparing all the dishes.

Why couldn't he be the diner who sat at the table?

The dove occupying the magpie's nest.

Using Blood Butcher's ritual to crown his own main body.

Once successful, his main body would reach the sky in a single bound, and he would have no more worries.

If he failed...

According to this system's experience, the worst-case scenario is that the main body gets polluted, requiring the consumption of a sufficient amount of popularity points to purchase the special potion needed for purification.

See, the worst outcome was nothing more than spending a bit more money.

You're right.

Chen Guan suddenly spoke, interrupting Long Ao's anxiety.

He looked at Long Ao, and in his eyes was a light that Long Ao had never seen in them before.

We should go stop him.

This was an opportunity.

An opportunity that belonged to me.

[Here it comes, here it comes! Brother Guan is going to make a move! I knew it!]

[Why did our Brother Ao get banned again? When are they going to give our Brother Ao his Tier 6 strength back?]

[Why do I feel like Brother Guan is smiling a bit perversely? He doesn't want to swallow that Blood Butcher, does he?]

[Uncle Hannibal: Thinking about me?]

Chen Guan ignored Long Ao and the bullet screen.

Queen's Casino.

It was exactly the center of the storm that his spiritual power had sensed.

I'll clean up the mess...

Chen Guan chewed over the words White Tiger had said before disappearing, and the prototype of a plan rapidly formed in his mind.

Since White Tiger knew about the ritual, it was impossible for him to sit back and do nothing. The Origin Group, the Great Wall, they would definitely have a response. Things that even he could sense, it was impossible for them to be completely unaware of.

And what he had to do was not to stop the ritual.

Instead, he was going to swoop in and steal the prize.

He stood up, dusted himself off, and prepared to head out.

"Where are you going?" Long Ao asked weakly.

"To the heart of the banquet, to grab the seat of honor."