Chapter 76: Internal Competition Drives Up Prices

Each member can now only receive cross-world talismans from the chat group monthly; what permissions the administrator has and what packages are available is highly anticipated.

Lu Mingfei: “Are you going to take out the inventory from your bag of treasures and give everyone red packets?”

Lu Mingfei: “Then I’m the first to support Su Lin as administrator!”

Xiao Yan: “Well... it’s not impossible, hehe, please help me, little Dora!”

Su Lin: “【Image】”

Ye Fan: “Pfft.”

Xiao Yan: “Ugh, I don’t want to experience that smell.”

They were three fruits with strange patterns on their surfaces.

Lu Mingfei: “I refuse!”

A group of ghost-toothed dragon vipers, glowing with deep blue light, hovered near Lu Mingfei’s submarine; he was deep in the ocean, and eating a Devil Fruit would be a severe penalty.

They were slender, small fish covered in beautiful silver-blue scales, each with a long, lantern-fish-like antenna on their heads emitting a deep blue glow.

They looked like a beautiful painting, but their teeth could bite through steel.

If they bit even a single crack into the submarine, the three elite members of Cassel would have to say goodbye to this world.

‘Huh? This world?’

He could take his senior brother and Caesar to another world, or seek outside help.

Right, why am I afraid?!

Only then did Lu Mingfei realize he was no longer the old Lu Mingfei.

Xiao Yan: “Your sincerity isn’t enough!”

Ye Fan: “This is the administrator—administrator of the Multiverse Chat Group.”

Ye Fan: “Add more money, you get it?”

Su Lin: “Come on, the administrator is voted on every year, it rotates, eventually it’ll be my turn.”

Xiao Yan: “But who gets to eat the first slice of cake? To be honest, I’m about to collect Core-Refining Milk from the Earth’s Core—everyone will get a share.”

Xiao Yan: “So, this administrator position, uh, everyone…”

Ye Fan: “Fifty thousand jin of divine source per person!”

He had dabbled in arms and medicine—the two fastest ways to make money. Though he sold counterfeits, it showed his love for peace. Thanks to these two lucrative industries, he now had plenty of divine source in his pockets.

Han Li: “Actually, no need for this. Everyone can enjoy the administrator’s benefits once a year.”

As Su Lin said, rotating one turn per person is just a matter of order; even if new members join later, they’d only have to wait a few more years.

Besides, there are too few people now. If you tried bribing votes with goods, prices couldn’t rise much—everyone’s cultivation level isn’t high, except maybe Su Lin has some strange oddities.

Thinking of this, Han Li spoke again in the group.

Han Li: “But as Xiao Yan said, if someone really wants to be the first administrator and experience the perks, they should at least show some goodwill.”

Han Li: “@Su Lin.”

Compared to Xiao Yan and Ye Fan’s bidding, he preferred Su Lin to participate willingly.

Su Lin: “You big-eyed, upright fellow, you’re trying to fleece me too?”

Han Li: “Master Su, how could you say that? I’m merely eager to see your promise: ‘When I become administrator, peach blossoms will bloom across the myriad worlds.’”

Kleine, replenishing and dining at a dock, ate with the cold, stern demeanor of Germain while reading the group messages.

The black bread tasted truly awful, but the meat soup here was quite good—herbs resembling potatoes mashed into paste, stewed with meat and vegetables, smeared on the bread to mask its bitterness; the combination was quite nice.

Thinking of Su Lin’s little gadgets, he felt tempted. Han Li was right—wasn’t there someone in the group making grand vows like, “If I become administrator, I’ll…”?

Kleine: “If that’s the case… hmm, if I transfer Luffy’s vote to you, do I get two red packets?”

Of course, ninety percent of it was a joke.

Ye Fan: “6”

Xiao Yan: “6”

Lu Mingfei: “You’re really a genius.”

Kleine: “I was joking.”

Su Lin hailed a taxi; the driver spoke fluent Beijing dialect, and hearing Su Lin’s accent as outsider, he chattered on—about the whole country, alleyways, and how today’s youth had bad morals and the world had declined.

Su Lin nodded and replied: “Indeed, the world has declined.”

Inside the chat group

Su Lin: “The world has declined.”

Su Lin: “I have something to attend to—I’m logging off.”

Excluding him, there were currently eight people in the group; if he truly sent red packets, he’d have to send eight.

The items inside the red packets couldn’t be half-hearted—they had to be substantial.

After all, two idiots had already pulled out divine source and Core-Refining Milk; he seriously wanted to report them for malicious internal competition.

Su Lin suddenly remembered his past life, his first two years on the job: every Lunar New Year, half his year-end bonus went to the red envelopes for his uncles’ and aunts’ kids.

The current situation… not exactly the same, but remarkably similar.

A private message arrived.

Lu Mingfei: “Old Su, I’m voting for you.”

No reason—he always felt he’d taken too many advantages from Su Lin, so on this matter, even without a red packet, he’d still vote for him.

Su Lin: “Which color fruit do you want? Shit-yellow? Green? Or white?”

Lu Mingfei: “Keep it for yourself!”

He’d asked Su Lin before what those fruits were; Su Lin said he didn’t know. Lu Mingfei recalled the bizarre forms animals took after eating Devil Fruits and felt repulsed—strong, yes, but utterly ugly by his standards.

Su Lin: “Thanks.”

Lu Mingfei: “Don’t mention it—I’m logging off.”

The underwater scenery was undeniably beautiful; now that he no longer worried about the risk of shipwrecks, Lu Mingfei openly admired the beauty through the observation window.

Below lay a river of magma, golden-red lava spreading out, forming a sharp boundary with the black seawater; small crimson shrimp swam near the lava, alongside some dark-purple creatures living symbiotically with them.

Around him, rolling thunder echoed—the sound of steam explosions as magma met seawater.

In this normally dark and silent environment, such a scene appeared.

One could only marvel at nature’s miracle and greatness, at life’s tenacity and diversity.

Soon, Lu Mingfei began to sweat; he was enduring it better, but Caesar and Chu Zihang had already stripped off their clothes, revealing sculpted, deeply defined muscles and contours.

They were surprised he could endure it so well.

“We’re all men, no need to be shy.”

“No….” Lu Mingfei wanted to say he was a cultivator—he could handle this heat.

Soon after, they spotted a tower—an edifice humans could never have built here.

The tower stood on a gentle slope of a crack in the earth, where tides of lava surged and receded nearby; its black body glowed under the magma’s light…

Only after witnessing this towering black tower with his own eyes did Lu Mingfei truly feel the awe.

He knew…

Ahead lay the city of dragons.