Chapter 3682

Lord's Manor, inside the study on the third floor of the ancient castle.

After Su Xiao reviewed the final sales list, he signed the approval document and branded it with the lord's seal. Seeing this, the Spotted Fox-kin Piru, who was waiting respectfully on the side, put away the list and employment questions on the table.

As the saying goes, people rely on clothes, and the Spotted Fox-kin is the same. At this moment, Piru didn't see the decadence and depression before at all, and had restored the spirit of the former financial officer of Eternal Ring City. Although those eyes were not sharp, no one dared to offend him. At least in the Twilight Winter City fief, no one dared to offend this God of Wealth.

"How many gold coins are left in the fief's finances."

Hearing Su Xiao's words, Piru opposite the table showed a bitter look and said in a low voice: "There are still more than 4.9 million gold coins."

"So many, how much did that batch of crystal fat sell for?"

"It sold for 3.2 million gold coins, but as an additional condition, we got a lot of convenience from it. Now, calculating it, the total profit is 4.8 million gold coins. Counting the original 60,000 gold coins in the fief's account, it is a total of 4.86 million gold coins. The value of food supplies and daily necessities is not counted here, but..."

Piru had a look of wanting to speak but stopping. Su Xiao treated it as if he didn't see it, and had long been accustomed to it. Even if the fief's finances were abundant, if he asked the financial officer for money, the other party would still have a look of having no money in his pocket.

"How much can be used."

Hearing Su Xiao's words, Piru showed a difficult look. He winked at Egein, Harvey, and Viper who were sitting near the window. The three of them all lowered their heads and drank tea, pretending not to see it, because they all knew that this time, asking for money was the salary for the six legions. These three guys naturally wouldn't help Piru speak at this time.

"My lord, ever since the old lord of the Twilight Winter City fief passed away, the financial situation here has been very bad. Twilight Winter City and the other nine big cities are places where money is used everywhere. Just talking about Twilight Winter City, the steam heating pipes here have not been repaired for many years, and there are water supply and sewage systems, and..."

Piru said a lot of places where money was used. In short, it meant that money was needed everywhere in the fief now, so at most 1.2 million gold coins could be taken out to allocate to the six legions, make up for the previously owed salaries, and then issue a batch of recent salaries.

Hearing this, Egein immediately spoke, starting to talk about how difficult the Beast Tribe legion was. Harvey and Viper also spoke. The three people's opinions were rarely unified. At this moment, Egein seemed to have lost his rebellious nature, Harvey seemed to have changed his coldness, and Viper was no longer a wall-grass.

"You want 3 million gold coins?! Why don't you go rob? Do you know how many places in the fief need money."

Piru stared at Egein. Egein had a look of "I don't understand what you are talking about at all." In short, the army was going to battle, and a large sum of salary was necessary.

"My lord, you judge for us, they want 3 million, it's simply outrageous."

"..."

Su Xiao didn't speak, as if he didn't hear it. He was using the lock hook in his hand to adjust the internal structure of the Mysterious Eye. He didn't care how much the various repair costs of the fief were, and how much money the legion needed to go to battle. This was the professional field of Piru and Egein. Let these two sides argue first, and wait until they argued enough and both sides made concessions, he would sign the approval document.

Unknowingly, it was noon. The people arguing in the study had changed from a few to two groups. The legion faction led by Egein was one group. Here, led by Egein, the dozen people present were all generals of the six legions.

And on the other side, it was the power faction led by Piru. Here were all fief officials. As for the noble faction representative who also arrived, that old noble didn't dare to say a word. None of the people speaking here were people he could afford to offend.

In the room, the mellow aroma of strong liquor and the smell of cigarettes and cigars mixed. As a lord, Guowei, who was sitting on a small chair beside Su Xiao, frowned, and even secretly turned aside, hiding behind Su Xiao and yawning.

*Click, click~*

The sound of the lock hook adjusting the internal parts of the Mysterious Eye was precise and slight. Just then, Su Xiao felt Guowei beside him secretly touch him with her elbow. He tilted his head and looked, finding that Guowei was staring at a small note next to the approval document on the table. After opening it, it was Guowei's elementary school student-like handwriting, writing: "When are we eating, so hungry."

Su Xiao put down the Mysterious Eye and the lock hook and said: "Everyone."

Su Xiao just spoke, and everyone who was arguing fiercely just now quieted down, waiting for his order.

"It's noon, you should all be hungry from arguing. Go upstairs and eat."

Su Xiao got up and walked out of the study. Piru and Egein followed behind, and further behind were legion generals and fief officials.

The lunch was quite rich. The servants who had been dismissed due to the Lord's Manor's financial problems were all re-employed now, which also gave the Lord's Manor a bit of life, no longer as cold as before.

In the council room after the meal, the dozen people on both sides of the council table stared at each other with fake smiles. After a morning of arguing, Piru and Egein finally reached a capital allocation that both sides were satisfied with. Su Xiao reviewed the approval document, confirmed there was no problem, signed his name, and branded it with the lord's seal badge.

Egein, Harvey, Viper, and Evil Tooth not only received an allocation of 2.3 million gold coins, but also 300 units of grain, 400 units of meat food, 90 units of liquor, and finally 180 units of various daily consumption materials.

"Egein, give me a clear time, six legions, when will they go to the main battlefield."

While Su Xiao was speaking, he had already switched his title to War Lord.

"Set off tomorrow morning... no, set off tonight!"

Seeming to notice Su Xiao's gaze becoming more "kind," Egein hurriedly changed his words.

"You said this yourself, take the approval document and get out."

Su Xiao took out the signed approval document. Egein immediately lowered his body with a full face of smiles. When he picked up the approval document on the table, he finally couldn't hold it anymore, his hands were shaking, shaking with excitement, because after this approval document took effect, he would be the legion leader of the Twilight Winter City fief.

After Egein and others left, Su Xiao looked at Piru. If the legion battle on Egein's side represented the bacterial carpet, evolution points, and Zerg improvement, then the fief construction and repair that Piru was responsible for concerned the completion of the main mission.

【Main Mission: Winter (Second Ring).】

Mission Introduction: Ensure the fief evaluation reaches C grade or above.

Mission Reward: Determined according to the mission completion situation.

The current fief evaluation had reached C-. Su Xiao estimated that before the mission time limit arrived, with Piru's ability, he would at least let the fief evaluation reach B grade. If it reached A grade, the mission reward would reach an outrageous level. As for reaching the highest S grade, that was unlikely.

Just when Su Xiao was prepared to close the fief list, the fief evaluation actually improved from C- to C grade, and prompts appeared one after another.

【Prompt: Your main mission, second ring, has entered the completion stage.】

【Detected that the subsequent main mission has no judgment.】

【Prediction released, main mission, third ring (find out the hidden danger), has now been completed in advance. You have indirectly killed the lord's butler and successfully repelled Voodoo Warlock Herui.】

【Prediction released, main mission, fourth ring (legion battle), has now completed the preparation for the expedition in advance, and it is estimated that they will go to the main battlefield before tonight.】

【Prediction released, main mission, fifth ring (battle for White Hoof Port), has now successfully occupied the central building of White Hoof Port once.】

【Because the subsequent rings of the main mission may have no judgment, the content of the main mission and the reward range have been appropriately changed.】

【The reward range has been increased from the upper limit of 100% to the upper limit of 180%.】

【The main mission has now been changed.】

【Main Mission: Winter Lord (Final Ring).】

Difficulty Level: Lv. 87.

Mission Introduction: Ensure the fief evaluation reaches B grade or above.

Mission Deadline: Before leaving this world.

Mission Reward: Determined according to the mission completion situation.

Mission Penalty: Forced execution.

A large number of prompts appeared. After reviewing them, Su Xiao understood what was going on. In short, although he was now proceeding to the second ring of the main mission, he was almost going to complete the subsequent fifth ring.

Therefore, once the second ring was submitted, the subsequent rings of the main mission might be completed continuously, leading to the final ring of the mission being quite peculiar. Also because of this, the main mission was changed, and while the reward upper limit was increased by a large margin, the fief evaluation was changed into the final ring of the main mission.

It seemed that the number of times to obtain mission rewards was less, but as long as the final fief evaluation was high enough, the total amount of mission rewards obtained would definitely be more than completing it ring by ring.

Su Xiao didn't understand the construction and repair of the fief. Fortunately, Piru and his subordinates were very good at these. What Su Xiao needed to do was to find a way to get more gold coins and other materials needed by the fief.

In this aspect, Su Xiao was prepared to start with the bacterial carpet. The six legions under his command would set off tonight. With the marching speed of the Beast Tribe legion and the ability to take giant transmission arrays halfway, the six legions would be able to reach the main battlefield by the day after tomorrow morning.

Currently, Egein and the other four had obtained a certain degree of War Lord title effect through the "Leader Potential" ability.

【Leader Potential (Passive, S-level): Can inherit the halo, war-type ability, etc., effects of the subordinate leader unit, and add 95% of this effect to the soldier-type units under his command. Even at a very long distance from the subordinate leader unit, this ability can still continue to take effect (this ability level is E-S level).】

Not only 95% of the title effect, but also the bacterial carpet that could be deployed at any time could improve the combat power of these six Beast Tribe legions.

【Bacterial Carpet Lv. 30: Biological energy, soul energy absorption efficiency +50%, all friendly/friendly units on the bacterial carpet movement speed +25%, physical strength recovery speed +35%, true physical strength +5 points. When a friendly/friendly unit falls near death, its life force recovery speed will be improved to a certain extent.】

The Beast Tribe legion of Twilight Winter City already had super combat power. Plus the superposition of the War Lord and the bacterial carpet, its combat power definitely reached the top echelon of many Beast Tribe legions.

So the order Su Xiao gave to Egein was to attack "White Hoof Port" first, then "Ancestor Lighthouse," then the "Floating Light Island" in the Sea Tribe's territory, and then the "Sleeping Island." After hitting the "Sleeping Island," he could stop. Su Xiao suspected that there was a high probability that the Wolf Tomb was on the "Floating Light Island" or "Sleeping Island."

In order to make his side's morale higher, Su Xiao also asked the Abyss Dragon's eldest son to go to battle with the legion. This was both because the Abyss Dragon's eldest son always wanted to escape, and because the riding experience of this behemoth was exceptionally bad.

Su Xiao had ridden quite a few dragons, totaling: Black Dragon Midis, Storm Dragon, Demon Flame Dragon Barbato, Storm Flame Dragon Dis, and the Abyss Dragon's eldest son.

If combat power was not considered, just looking at the riding experience, the ranking was: Abyss Dragon's eldest son < Black Dragon Midis < Demon Flame Dragon Barbato < Storm Dragon < Storm Flame Dragon Dis.

If talking about riding experience, it was still the Ninth-Tier Overlord Storm Flame Dragon Dis cultivated in the previous world. After spending so much resources to cultivate it before, it was naturally to let Dis "willingly" sign a permanent summon contract.

At first, Dis, as a Ninth-Tier Overlord creature, refused, but under the repeated "persuasion" of Su Xiao, Amu, Platinum Bishop, and Red-Eyed Girl, Dis was beaten... *cough*, was persuaded to the point of being unable to bear it, and finally signed a permanent summon contract with Su Xiao.

Su Xiao was prepared to summon Storm Flame Dragon Dis, and through Dis's attitude, decide whether to awaken the other party's ultimate ability "Dragon Devour." This ability was quite powerful and could improve itself by devouring the flesh and blood of overlord creatures of the same rank.

Su Xiao was currently dealing with matters related to the legion, bacterial carpet, and evolution points. As long as this side was on the right track and didn't need him to operate behind the scenes, he would go to the territory of the Tribal Faction for the first time. There were three reasons:

1. Kill the Soul Reaper. Although this was not a mission, Su Xiao always felt that he must complete this matter. The "Soul Gaze" ability he mastered destined him to be unable to escape this entanglement, or in other words, this powerful ability, to a certain extent, was like a bait. It was precisely because of this that he hadn't used this ability for a long time, and even if it was triggered passively sometimes, he would suppress the activation of this ability.

2. On the territory of the Tribal Faction, many exotic beasts lived here. Su Xiao was prepared to hunt exotic beasts to obtain life sources. The "Eternal Life Source" of this world was a material that Su Xiao extremely needed.

【Eternal Life Source Usage Requirement: Can be absorbed without risk, replenishing a large amount of source life force (if there is no life force loss, it can permanently increase 7500-9000 health points. By absorbing Eternal Life Source, it can permanently increase up to 42000-50000 health points. According to different physiques, the bonus obtained will be different).】

Law-Extinguisher Shadow Usage Effect: Can use the Devouring Core that reaches Lv. EX level to absorb this Eternal Life Source, and use the unique energy transformed by this item to improve the Green Steel Shadow ability.

Regarding the fact that killing exotic beasts would increase the hatred of the exotic beast faction, this side itself was not a good thing. The situation in the Wind Sea Continent today was all caused by the exotic beast faction. Furthermore, Su Xiao had never been a kind and orderly faction. Both sides were evil factions, so he spoke with his ability.

3. On the territory of the Tribal Faction, there was a high probability that "Initial Mark" fragments were scattered. Coupled with the dangerous environment there, there must be very few people going there to search.

Su Xiao had a very clear understanding of his own luck, so he decisively chose a place that was more dangerous but had a higher probability of obtaining "Initial Mark" fragments.

These factors destined Su Xiao to go to the Tribal Faction side. If he summoned Storm Flame Dragon Dis this time and the other party didn't show much resistance and had signs of being obedient, Su Xiao was prepared to awaken the other party's "Dragon Devour" ability.

In this way, after killing exotic beasts, he could not only get "Eternal Life Source" but also the treasure chests produced by exotic beasts. Most of their flesh and blood could be eaten by Dis to improve Dis's strength, while a small part of the meat with good quality would be kept and let Xia cook into delicacies after returning. Thinking about it this way, exotic beasts were simply treasures all over.

Thinking to this point, Su Xiao couldn't help but look forward to the territory of the Tribal Faction, which had pleasant natural scenery and many exotic beasts. However, he had to finish dealing with the Twilight Winter City side first before he could set off.

Su Xiao poured a cup of tea for Piru, who was sitting opposite respectfully. Piru got up and took it.

"Gold coins are not a problem. How this fief can be developed depends on you."

Hearing Su Xiao's words, Piru, sitting opposite, couldn't help but feel excited in his heart. He naturally understood Su Xiao's meaning. This was giving him the greatest degree of power.

"But I don't hope this is a long process."

Su Xiao didn't explicitly say that he wouldn't stay in this world for too long, but Piru opposite the table immediately expressed that he would let Su Xiao see the changes in the Twilight Winter City fief as soon as possible.

After asking Amu to send Piru away, Su Xiao went down to the inner hall on the second floor. A figure was sitting on the sofa with her legs curled up. She was wearing rabbit-ear hooded pajamas and holding a handheld console in her hands. It was the Moon Apostle who came alone.

As for Morei and Hao Mei, Morei was looking for the joy of mining mineral veins, and Hao Mei went to the Hunter Guild. Originally, the Moon Apostle was mining a high-value mineral vein with Morei. If Su Xiao hadn't said directly that if she didn't come, he would send someone to "invite" her, the Moon Apostle would be too lazy to go out.

"What do you want with me?"

"Summon Xian Lulu."

"You can't take her to a place that is too dangerous, unless you sign a detachment contract, allowing her to escape at a critical moment."

"Can."

Su Xiao took the detachment contract drafted by the Moon Apostle and signed it after confirming there was no problem. This was not a conventional binding contract. Even if he did something on it, he couldn't make any restrictions. The main role of this thing was that Su Xiao couldn't forcibly bind Xian Lulu, allowing Xian Lulu to detach herself when she felt she might die.

Seeing Su Xiao sign the contract, without seeing the Moon Apostle make any movements, a summoning array appeared behind her, and then Xian Lulu appeared and landed on the Moon Apostle's head.

"Stupid master, I accompanied you to play games all night last night, and I am sleeping, *sigh*~, master, I can forgive you for being very bad, but you have to let me sleep."

Xian Lulu lay on the Moon Apostle's head in a daze. The Moon Apostle didn't speak and pointed diagonally opposite. Xian Lulu looked in the direction pointed. For a moment, her tail wagged happily, and then she asked hesitantly: "Master, are you trying to let me assist Big Daddy... ah no, assist Bai Ye in battle."

"Yeah."

"No, you are so stupid. If I am not there, what will you do if you encounter danger."

"Usually when I encounter danger, besides shouting, you don't seem to have helped me much. The treatment amount is obviously not as good as, *woo*..."

Xian Lulu covered the Moon Apostle's mouth and argued: "I am a combat assistant. You are a summoner who watches the battle. How can I assist you? So I can only cheer for you."

"So I decided to let you assist Bai Ye this time, and if you participate in multiple events, you can improve my world evaluation."

"This..."

Xian Lulu hesitated. In fact, she wanted to assist Su Xiao in her heart, but she was afraid that if she took the initiative to jump onto someone else's shoulder, her master would feel sad, so she appeared so hesitant.

"Well, okay, for the sake of the master's world evaluation in this world, I will assist Bai Ye this time."

"That's good, I have very important things to do, I'm going back first."

The Moon Apostle activated the transmission equipment and disappeared in place the next second. Seeing the Moon Apostle leave, Xian Lulu jumped onto Su Xiao's shoulder.

【Prompt: Light Elf Xian Lulu has attached to you.】

【When Xian Lulu is attached to you, your true intelligence attribute and mana upper limit will improve Xian Lulu's gain effect/treatment amount and reduce Xian Lulu's skill cooldown time.】

【Your intelligence attribute is 300 points, Xian Lulu's gain state is improved by 28%, treatment amount is improved by 22%, and skill cooldown time is reduced by 2.7%.】

【Your mana is 62143 points, Xian Lulu's gain state is improved by 4.1%, treatment amount is improved by 5.9%, and skill cooldown time is reduced by 94.8%.】

【When attached to you, Xian Lulu's gain state is improved by 32.1% overall, Xian Lulu's treatment amount is improved by 27.9%, and Xian Lulu's skill cooldown time is reduced by 96% (96% is the reduction limit).】

【You obtain the following gains.】

1. Current total health is temporarily improved by 14%.

2. Strength, agility, and physical strength attributes are temporarily improved by 5 points (this is a diminishing improvement. Xian Lulu's characteristic in this tendency is that the higher the basic attribute of the gain party, the lower the gain brought).

3. All your abnormal attribute resistances are temporarily improved by 70 points.

【Prompt: When Xian Lulu is attached to you, she can use the "Psionic Recovery (Active, Lv. 80)" ability to immediately restore 25% of your maximum health, and in the subsequent 6 seconds, improve your movement and dash speed (this improvement is a diminishing mode, initially improving 70% movement and dash speed, decreasing by 10% per second until this gain ends).】

【The amount of mana consumed by this skill will be determined according to the recovery amount used each time.】

【The cooldown time of this skill was originally 180 seconds and has been reduced to 7.2 seconds.】

A large number of prompts appeared in front of Su Xiao. Besides these gains, Xian Lulu had other abilities, but they were more biased toward control and binding. Because the strong enemies Su Xiao fought were all outrageously strong to Xian Lulu, these control abilities were basically the same as non-existent, and "Psionic Recovery" was the most practical.

However, "Psionic Recovery" was not as invincible as imagined. The cooldown time was indeed short, and the recovery amount was outrageous, but correspondingly, helping Su Xiao, whose health temporarily reached 820,000, restore 25% of his maximum health, Xian Lulu needed to consume a large amount of body energy, which would lead to the situation where Xian Lulu would be out of mana after treating a few times.

"*Cool... so cool! *"

Xian Lulu, floating above Su Xiao's shoulder, widened her cat eyes. The hair on her ear tips gradually turned golden, and a faint blue flame appeared on her body.

Xian Lulu subconsciously raised her cat head. Every time she hung on Su Xiao, because of Su Xiao's big boss-like mana upper limit and high true intelligence attribute, Xian Lulu had an exceptionally high experience, which was commonly known as floating.

At this moment, Xian Lulu's thought was that Ninth-Tier bosses were all scum, and she could beat several with one claw.

Ignoring the expanding Xian Lulu, Su Xiao took out an object. This was a mass of wriggling black liquid, with scattered scarlet particles distributed inside. Checking its attributes, there was only a short introduction.

【Dark Wriggling (Abyss Ritual Object): Can significantly strengthen the success rate of summoning or sacrifice (at least improved by 35%, at most improved by 70%). If you are not worried about angering the summoned person, you can also significantly disguise the value of the sacrifice and disguise the summoning scene.】

Su Xiao had previously heard Grand Commander Kane mention that the Sea Tribe not only cooperated with the Arcane Eternal Star but also colluded with a hidden evil god faction in this world. In this way, this didn't involve personal grievances, but a problem of faction hostility.

Su Xiao was a Law-Extinguisher, that's true, but he was also a close-combat type. Close-combat dealing with evil gods was generally quite strenuous. Most evil gods had many types of damage-type or weakening-type halos, which also meant that Su Xiao was not good at fighting evil gods.

Since this was the case, he had to prevent it before it happened. Su Xiao was indeed not good at fighting evil gods, but this didn't mean he was not good at dealing with evil gods. When he first arrived in this world, he was still wondering why the "Necronomicon" didn't leave temporarily this time.

Not only dealing with evil gods, Su Xiao was prepared to summon Storm Flame Dragon Dis later. He got up and left the ancient castle, walked to the public bus station, and took a public bus to the outside of the city.

An hour and a half later, the public bus stopped at a farm covered in heavy snow. The owner of this farm left in early winter and would bring his family back next spring.

This place was empty enough, and it was far enough from Twilight Winter City. Setting up a ritual to summon an evil god in this place, he thought there would be no problem.

Su Xiao jumped onto the roof of the two-story wooden house. After looking around, he felt that the warehouse on the right was good.

"Bai Ye, are we going to fight the enemy?"

Xian Lulu spoke in a semi-hidden state. When she hung on Su Xiao, she would always maintain this state of avoiding attacks.

"Not really, later..."

Su Xiao was halfway through his words when he suddenly felt a boundary thunder spear several meters long attacking from a distance. This boundary thunder spear was outrageously fast. However, in his perception, it didn't look like natural boundary thunder, not violent and savage enough. As the price of being able to control it, the power of this boundary thunder must be greatly reduced.

Although this was the case, this golden boundary thunder spear was covered with magic patterns and soul imprints, representing that this was a mixture of boundary thunder, magic-type, and soul-type characteristics. These three characteristics were very strong systems if taken out casually, let alone the mixture of the three.

What was even more deadly was that this golden boundary thunder spear was extremely fast. Undoubtedly, this was someone's ultimate ability, and it was a terrifying ultimate ability above Lv. 50.

*Crack! * The boundary thunder spear pierced through layers of space, leaving layers of terrifying air explosions along the way. In this instant, the sky became a bit dim because of this blow.

Xian Lulu, hanging on Su Xiao, had her hair stand on end directly. Regardless of whether it would overdraw her body energy, she instantly opened all her shields and defense-type abilities, trying to weaken the power of this blow for Su Xiao.

*Pop~*

More than a dozen layers of shields were as fragile as eggshells. Not to mention blocking this boundary thunder spear, just the spear light in front of the boundary thunder spear caused layers of defenses to shatter instantly, and it didn't play the effect of weakening its power at all.

*Thump~!! *

After a muffled sound, the surrounding world became quiet. After 0.5 seconds, the deafening roar spread out. The earth shook. With the spread of light, a giant crater with a diameter of more than ten kilometers appeared.

High temperature caused a large area of glassification in the giant crater, and smoke dissipated here. The next second, a figure stood on the edge of the giant crater. The person who came said in a low voice: "Don't blame me for being despicable in a sneak attack. Isn't the battle between contractors like this?"

Thunder Law God Aige looked at the smoke dissipating in the giant crater. Out of caution, he didn't jump into the giant crater, but activated the Ninth-Tier Battle Angel permission to check what kind of damage this blow caused to the enemy. In the past, he always checked the kill prompt directly, but this time he was dealing with a Hunter, so he wouldn't be so arrogant as to think that one blow could kill him in seconds.

When Thunder Law God Aige opened the battle record, his expression suddenly stiffened, as if he couldn't believe it. He narrowed his eyes and carefully checked this battle record.

One, ten, hundred, thousand.

Thunder Law God Aige only truly confirmed after looking at it twice. This blow of his caused 3940 points of mixed damage. It looked okay, but if converted into a damage ratio, this blow caused 0.48% of Su Xiao's maximum health in mixed damage. Seeing that the damage intensity ratio started with 0, and the layers of damage reduction prompts, Thunder Law God Aige suddenly felt a bit panicked in his heart. He hadn't had this feeling for a long time.

Not to mention why this enemy had more than 800,000 health points, Thunder Law God Aige was more concerned now that his ultimate move seemed to be scraping the enemy? Or rather, it could be considered a fierce scrape at most? Thinking of this, Aige suddenly realized the seriousness of the matter.