As the game progressed, the grind required by the entire illusion realm was visibly increasing.
At first, the only materials available were wood, stone, Paldium fragments, and iron ore.
Every ten levels, new materials and new equipment would appear.
For a better gaming experience, players had to gather vast quantities of new resources to craft better equipment and Pal Spheres.
The game was becoming more and more of a grind.
Once they started, they would play for an entire day.
With any other game, players would have been complaining bitterly by now.
But Palworld was different. The more they grinded, the happier they became.
Lu Ze had never understood it before. But now that he was looking at everything from a god’s-eye view, he did.
It was because, although the players were working themselves to the bone, the Pals at their bases were working even harder.
The capitalists only had to lift a finger and issue an order. The Pals on the front lines of production, however, had plenty to worry about.
Exploiting the Pals was one of the game’s pleasures. Watching them frown and whimper as they worked made the players feel much better about all the grinding and exhaustion.
Sure enough, people never got tired when they were doing something bad.
Lu Ze was much the same. Every time he created an illusion realm, constructing the world with his divine sense at high intensity for ten days or half a month at a time, all he had to do was imagine the players’ wails of despair and the satisfying influx of demonic cultivation points. Much of his fatigue would immediately fade away.
Most importantly, cultivators were still cultivators. Once their cultivation reached a certain level, they could go without sleep or rest.
High-level cultivators could often grind through several consecutive all-nighters.
Of course, that only applied to high-level cultivators.
The majority of cultivators in the cultivation world were still ordinary Qi Refinement and Foundation Establishment cultivators.
The Outer Sect of the Spiritcloud Sect.
The sky was just beginning to brighten.
“B-Bad news! Senior Brother Huang, stop playing! It’s almost dawn, and we’re on duty today!”
A chubby menial disciple suddenly jolted awake from the illusion realm and shook the tall senior brother beside him.
“On duty? What duty...?”
The tall senior brother rubbed his dark-rimmed eyes, his voice somewhat dazed.
“We’re supposed to enter the mountains and dig for spirit ore today! We’re leaving in half an hour!”
The chubby menial disciple spoke anxiously.
“Hahahaha, mining? I just caught a Flame Dragon. With Mining Level Five, I can dig as much as I want... Huh?”
The tall disciple laughed halfway through his sentence before suddenly realizing that the other man was apparently not talking about something happening in the illusion realm.
He rubbed his eyes. It took quite a while for his blurry vision to clear.
The sky outside the window was growing pale. He had pulled another all-nighter.
Yesterday had been his day off, and he had immersed himself in Palworld for an entire day and night.
The moment he opened his eyes, he had to enter the mountains and mine ore.
A feeling of physical and mental exhaustion enveloped his entire body.
“Why do I feel like...”
“We’re the real Pals here???”
...
...
The Beast God Hall of the Beast Taming Sect.
“Lu Zhenchuan truly deserves his reputation as an illusion master favored by the Heavenly Dao... This illusion realm is simply marvelous!!”
Watching Taixu Mengchi’s expression gradually improve, He Muye was so excited that tears streamed down his aged face.
After the Corrupted Soul had been beaten into submission by the Heavenly Dao’s remnant spirit and obediently accepted the identity of the Withered Star Dragon, it had merged with the illusion realm perfectly.
The Corrupted Soul’s instinct was to cause the bloodlines of spirit beasts to decline and hunt cultivators.
The Withered Star Dragon’s racial talent, meanwhile, was to drain a planet’s energy, cause Pals to perish, and control frenzied Pals to attack players.
What a coincidence.
Therefore, after the ancient storyline on the main server had been completed, the Corrupted Soul was having the time of its life.
Every day, it controlled frenzied Pals and randomly selected one lucky player to torment.
As the Corrupted Soul’s resentment gradually shifted into the world of Palworld, Taixu Mengchi’s condition in the real world improved more and more. Its body grew visibly larger.
When Lu Ze had first seen it, it had been only the size of a puppy. Now, it was already taller than He Muye.
“At this rate, we’ll be able to interrupt the seal and isolate the resentment tomorrow!”
He Muye excitedly clenched both fists.
What he wanted to do was separate the Corrupted Soul from Taixu Mengchi’s soul.
Although doing so would still damage the foundation of its soul, it would ultimately be far better than allowing it to be tormented by the Corrupted Soul for the rest of its life.
“Don’t be hasty, Sect Leader He.”
Lu Ze shook his head calmly.
The moment he thought of the Corrupted Soul sharing the Pals’ senses, and of how the players were currently straying ever farther down the path of capitalism...
He had a feeling that perhaps this resentment would not need to be isolated at all.
“Let’s wait two more days. Maybe... the Corrupted Soul can actually be cured?”
...
...
Luofeng Continent, Illusion Alliance headquarters.
Deep in a secret pocket dimension at the heart of the headquarters.
The fingers of the alliance leader, “Heart Demon,” twitched slightly.
The next moment, the hollow eyes behind the Four Symbols Mask suddenly opened.
“Heart Demon” abruptly sat up and touched the mask on his face. There were no signs that it had been tampered with.
He looked around the area, his brows drawing together slightly.
“Alliance Leader, you’re awake!?”
Sensing Heart Demon’s awakening, White Crane’s figure instantly appeared within the pocket dimension.
“How long... was I asleep?”
Heart Demon held his mask, his mind racing.
“Two months and three days... Alliance Leader, what happened?”
White Crane hesitated, unable to conceal his curiosity.
That day, everyone had joined forces to activate the Heaven and Earth Four Symbols Formation. After deducing information from Lu Ze’s Illusion Tower, Heart Demon had suddenly fallen unconscious.
His vital signs were normal, and his spiritual meridians were functioning normally. Yet he seemed to have lost his soul, and no one could wake him.
They had speculated that Lu Ze had tampered with the Illusion Tower.
But no matter how hard they tried, they could not understand how Lu Ze, with his cultivation, had managed to catch a Body Integration cultivator like Heart Demon off guard.
“Heh. Perhaps he borrowed the Heavenly Dao’s techniques...”
Heart Demon’s gaze turned cold.
Recalling the peerless ball of light he had seen that day, Heart Demon knew that the secrets within it ran extremely deep.
Although Lu Ze’s cultivation was far inferior to his own, Lu Ze had found a clever loophole.
While the Heaven and Earth Four Symbols Formation was breaking through the technique, it had triggered some sort of switch during the reverse deduction process, using the spiritual energy within the formation to reconstruct the Heavenly Dao Incense-Burning technique.
Therefore, the one who had activated that technique had not been Lu Ze, but Heart Demon himself.
Caught without any preparation, even Heart Demon could only fall victim to it, his divine sense sinking into an endless labyrinth.
“Let’s put that matter aside for now...”
“Tell me about the recent developments.”
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
