Chapter 20: The Challenger Project

【Player Count: 90】

Number of Primordial Characteristics Contained: 9

Sacrificial Power Produced by Players Today: 552 points

Average Monster Level of Players: 5

Domain Node Possessed: Emperor Tomb Village (The burial ground of Di Zhao's final wisp of origin, possessing the territorial rule characteristic of "Life Reshaping")

After reviewing today's gains, the Primordial Altar beneath Qi Sheng's feet glowed.

Following a brief spatial distortion, he appeared in his bedroom in the real world.

Glancing at the calendar hanging on the wall, he opened the window, shifted into his Di Zhao form, and flew into the vast night.

Some time later, Qi Sheng arrived before an abandoned graveyard.

This place had been untended for years; many tombstones were overgrown with vines, and nearby, a city rail station was under construction.

Qi Sheng's steps halted before a specific tombstone.

The photograph on this tombstone had blurred, and the characters carved upon it were already mottled.

Gazing at the tombstone, Qi Sheng's expression grew complex; finally, he knelt before it and kowtowed heavily.

Maintaining that posture for a long time, he rose and began to repair the tombstone, memories flooding his heart as he worked.

As a child, he had always fantasized about possessing abilities beyond the ordinary, yet when that moment truly arrived, he discovered he had already shouldered a heavy mission.

The year he transmigrated to the Monster World, he was eighteen.

At that time, the Monster World was plunged into violent turmoil; the Monster King, Di Zhao, had self-disintegrated, leaving various factions leaderless and Xianru a chaotic period of warlordism.

War had raged for thousands of years before his arrival, with factions once loyal to Di Zhao all vying to become masters of the new world.

Among them, four factions were the most powerful.

They were Yan Ming, who wielded the power of Space; Jiu Yin, who wielded the power of Purification; Guidance, who wielded the power of Analysis; and Super Dimension, who wielded the power of Universal Extraction.

They had once been Di Zhao's most loyal servants; after Di Zhao's disintegration, each believed themselves to be the rightful successor, seeking to inherit the "Power of Self-Preservation Origin" that Di Zhao had self-disintegrated and buried in Emperor Tomb Village, thereby becoming the new Di Zhao.

However, the arrival of the terrifying Black Black Tide altered the stalemate of the chaotic warfare.

The Monster World was gradually corroded by the power of the Black Black Tide; the ecological environment was devastated, and spatial rifts appeared in many regions of the world.

If this trend continued, the Monster World would eventually be devoured by the Black Black Tide.

The four servants ultimately chose to join forces against the Black Black Tide, fighting an endless war against evil lifeforms.

The prolonged war gradually weakened the four servants, yet the power of the evil entities continuously strengthened alongside the Black Black Tide's penetration into the world; defeat had become irreversible.

Ultimately, the four servants were forced back by the evil entities to the edge of the Monster World, specifically to Emperor Tomb Village where Di Zhao had left his Power of Self-Preservation Origin; there, they cooperated to open a taboo seal and hid within.

Emperor Tomb Village was also the last pure land in the Monster World that had not yet fallen.

The four servants originally intended to attempt merging with Di Zhao's Power of Self-Preservation Origin, inheriting Di Zhao's power to fight the Black Black Tide once more with Di Zhao's might.

But at the critical moment, the terrifying Black Black Tide struck again, enveloping Emperor Tomb Village.

It was at this precise juncture that he transmigrated to the Monster World, sucked into the vortex of the terrifying Black Black Tide, facing imminent death at any moment.

In that crisis, the four servants joined forces to repel the Black Black Tide and, in the process, rescued him, bringing him back to Emperor Tomb Village.

This intervention further weakened the already frail four servants, and their bodies suffered varying degrees of damage during the struggle against the Black Black Tide.

It was also at that time that Guidance was stripped of its life form, transforming into the shape of a water sphere.

Yet what the four servants never expected was that none of them could inherit that wisp of Power of Self-Preservation Origin left by Di Zhao; instead, it was he, a mortal from another world, who inherited the honor they had pursued all their lives.

Qi Sheng still clearly remembered the complex expressions in the eyes of the four servants the moment he inherited Di Zhao's power.

Anger, confusion, despair, reluctance, excitement... various complex emotions intertwined, but ultimately all transformed into calm acceptance.

Four figures knelt before him, swearing allegiance, vowing to serve him eternally as servants.

And he, in turn, shouldered the obsessions of the four servants, promising to use Di Zhao's mighty power to save the Monster World and disperse the endless terrifying Black Black Tide.

In the years that followed, he first merged with Di Zhao's Power of Self-Preservation Origin and slept for three hundred years.

Subsequently, under the guidance of the four servants, he underwent a century of cognitive learning, taught to understand Di Zhao's various abilities and to comprehend the affairs of the Monster World.

But to become a true Di Zhao God, he still needed to step out of Emperor Tomb Village, explore the Monster World, and contain the Primordial Powers that Di Zhao had lost.

Yet this process was incredibly difficult; aside from possessing Di Zhao's Power of Self-Preservation Origin, he had no other power enhancements, and the Di Zhao body could not be strengthened through any cultivation method—only containment could grant him power.

His strength at that time was only slightly greater than the weakest creatures in the Monster World, and with evil entities rampaging outside, his growth was arduous.

Di Zhao's Power of Self-Preservation Origin held immense attraction for evil entities; the four servants believed that discovery by high-level evil entities would inevitably bring disaster, so every time he ventured out, he had to continuously consume Sacrificial Power to mask the Di Zhao aura emanating from his body.

Every outing incurred a significant expenditure of Sacrificial Power.

During this period, he contained the Eagle-Headed Demon, the Gargoyle, and the Black-Armored Snake, gradually increasing his strength.

But to the four servants, this pace was still too slow; the Sacrificial Power spent on each outing far exceeded the gains from hunting and containment, and since they had already poured their remaining divine power into Emperor Tomb Village to maintain it against the Black Black Tide's destruction, they could offer no assistance regarding his combat strength.

At this rate, before he could become strong enough, Emperor Tomb Village would fall due to the exhaustion of its Sacrificial Power.

Just as the four servants felt despair regarding the future, Qi Sheng proposed an idea.

This plan was the prototype of the Challenger Project, also known as the Player Recruitment Plan.

Each of the four servants mastered different rule-based powers.

He had Guidance, who wielded the power of Information, create the data system within the Challenger Project, allowing challengers to read data information about things they saw in the Monster World.

He had Yan Ming, who wielded the power of Space, create the Reception System, which could use this system to draw challengers from different worlds into the Monster World and return the challengers' consciousness when they chose to exit.

He had Jiu Yin, who wielded the power of Purification, create the Purification System, capable of cleansing mental trauma suffered by challengers in the Monster World, as well as various other negative statuses.

He had Super Dimension, who wielded the power of Universal Extraction, create the Growth System, which could help players refine the life force of dead monsters, integrating it into the players' bodies to become part of their strength.

The combination of these four systems, plus the territorial characteristic of Emperor Tomb Village, "Life Reshaping," made the player recruitment plan feasible.

To achieve this goal, the four servants spent fifty years continuously refining and modifying the systems until the Challenger System was finally completed.

At that time, the Sacrificial Power pool of Emperor Tomb Village held only over ten million points of Sacrificial Power, enough to sustain the village's operation for at most another decade; moreover, the maintenance consumption was rising alongside the intensifying Black Black Tide, increasing from an initial 500 Sacrificial Power per day to 1, 00 Sacrificial Power per day.

The four servants handed the choice over to him, and he made his decision.

He would gamble their remaining Sacrificial Power on a future, having Yan Ming burn Sacrificial Power to utilize spatial power to search other plane worlds for lifeforms that could be recruited as challengers.

During the years of cross-spatial searching, Qi Sheng's consciousness remained constantly by Yan Ming's side.

Throughout this period, he witnessed countless plane worlds corroded and devoured by the terrifying Black Black Tide, where all things withered and only innumerable evil entities roamed between heaven and earth.

Just at the moment when the Sacrificial Power was about to be exhausted, Qi Sheng saw a familiar place.

It was a azure-blue planet.

When the images from the planet were magnified, although there were too many changes compared to his memories, he could still be certain.

This was his former home.

At that moment, Qi Sheng smiled very happily.

He knew he had succeeded; the Challenger Project had finally found its purpose.

The National Day holiday is over~

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(End of Chapter)