Chapter 206: Midas Touch Set

"Can't eat it so you won't eat? Keep eating!"

Seeing Ange forcefully kept pouring more in: "Let's see if you still dare to eat the little zombie's head?"

Seeing Ange was angry. If he hadn't reacted quickly, most of the little zombie's body would have been eaten. If it had gnawed into the soul fire of the heart, the little zombie would have died.

He figured the Spirit-Eating Monster hadn't expected that one day it would eat soul energy until it was stuffed. After being force-fed a round, a string of pained messages radiated out: "Full… bursting… spare me…"

Seeing Ange extended a finger, condensed a Soul Covenant and moved it onto the hat. The Spirit-Eating Monster obediently let the covenant engrave itself onto the hat. A connection between souls was established between it and Seeing Ange, joining the Soul Network.

Some information also flooded into Seeing Ange's soul along with it.

After browsing the information transmitted by the Spirit-Eating Monster hat, Seeing Ange suddenly raised his head and said to Lord Nai Ge Li Si: "The scarecrow hat, he made it."

"It? This hat made the scarecrow hat?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si sounded strange. A hat made another hat?

Seeing Ange shook his head: "Durorken, made it."

"Oh, is he also an illusionist? An alchemist?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si asked dismissively.

As a Lich King, it was no surprise what Durorken could do. A lich whose fame was obscure and who couldn't beat Jian Gu Luo Ke in a fight — besides sleeping, what else could he normally do?

Of course, whatever was fun he'd play with. Seeing how he'd arranged his palace into the style of a concert hall, it was perfectly normal for him to know a few other skills. Nothing to be surprised about.

Sure enough, Seeing Ange nodded: "He knows them all." Meaning he knew both illusion and alchemy, and also understood music. His magic level was certainly not low — a versatile Lich King.

Seeing Ange picked up that conductor's baton, poured soul energy into it, then took out his broken scarecrow hat and gently tapped it at the cracked spot.

The cracked scarecrow hat actually repaired itself automatically.

"Wow, is this an illusion?" Luser cried out in surprise, thinking he'd fallen under an illusion.

"Tsk tsk tsk, I know what they are now — the Midas Touch Set. This is quite a fine treasure." Lord Nai Ge Li Si clicked his tongue in praise.

Luser asked in confusion: "Aren't you not familiar with Durorken? How do you still know about his set?"

"Sigh, can't be helped. This is the work being famous while the maker isn't. The Midas Touch Set is a household name, yet nobody knows he made it." Lord Nai Ge Li Si sighed with deep empathy. Everyone knows the God of Knowledge, but who cares about his divine name?

Luser urged: "Just tell us already, how is it famous?"

"The Midas Touch Set has three pieces: a Spirit-Eating Monster hat, a Midas Touch baton, and a cloak. The Spirit-Eating Monster hat contains the secret methods of various alchemies. As long as you put it on, you can master the alchemy secrets, and then cast them through the Midas Touch baton. It's very easy to manufacture or repair an alchemy piece of equipment — like the scarecrow hat, see if it's fixed?"

Seeing Ange took off the Spirit-Eating Monster hat and put the scarecrow hat back on. The light and shadow around his body flickered, and the human appearance he'd previously transformed into appeared before their eyes.

"Looks like it's really fixed. This Midas Touch Set is so handy." Lord Nai Ge Li Si sighed in admiration.

Seeing Ange nodded and casually put the Spirit-Eating Monster hat onto Lord Nai Ge Li Si's head.

"Ah! What are you doing? It'll gnaw me! Ah! Help! It's biting me, take it off quick! Save me!" Lord Nai Ge Li Si felt the hat on his head wriggling and deforming, thinking he was about to be gnawed into bones like the little zombie. But then he heard a faint message from atop his head: "Won't eat… idiot…"

Steadying himself to look, the wriggling, deforming hat had shrunk a size, becoming a small top hat that fit snugly over his brow, clipped onto the protruding part of his skull — as if tailor-made. So the wriggling and deforming wasn't to gnaw him, but to adapt to his shape.

Seeing Ange then stuffed the Midas Touch baton into Lord Nai Ge Li Si's hand: "It says, the more you know, the better you can use it."

Although the Spirit-Eating Monster hat had attached many alchemy secrets, ordinary people couldn't use it well. For example, some skeletons didn't even have a concept of what alchemy was, and could only tap blindly.

Moreover, when Seeing Ange wore the scarecrow hat, he couldn't also wear the Spirit-Eating Monster hat, so Lord Nai Ge Li Si was the most suitable one to wear it.

"You also think I know a lot, huh?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si's little claws struck his waist, and his tail perked right up.

Getting a new toy, Lord Nai Ge Li Si instantly became like Seeing Ange when he'd gotten the Life Essence — pointing at everything he saw. A perfectly good table, once tapped by his Midas Touch baton, went "Crack!" and turned into a pile of wood shavings and copper chunks.

Seeing Ange searched the palace for a long time but found nothing else useful. Of course, that was just what he thought useless — those exquisitely carved, lavishly made objects, if you took any one of them out, would be brimming with artistic value.

But unfortunately, if it can't be planted, it's called useless.

Leaving the Rest Palace, Luser took the Upgrade Bean and happily sent it down.

"Oh right, Seeing Ange, do you still remember that luxury carriage? The one belonging to that mage in the desert, what was it called?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si asked.

Seeing Ange nodded and transferred the luxury carriage out.

This carriage utterly embodied the aristocrats' love of ease and hatred of labor, their extravagant and indulgent nature. Inside the carriage there was not only folding space, but also an ice magic array for cooling, to maintain the most comfortable temperature.

And these magical facilities consumed an enormous amount of energy. Just to run, they required more than ten magic crystals per day.

Ten magic crystals — that's equivalent to a hundred gold coins a day, enough to buy over a dozen tons of grain. Just for a bit more spaciousness and a bit more comfortable temperature.

So after getting this carriage, Seeing Ange and the others had never used it, and it wasn't practical either.

"I used to want to modify it, but I couldn't quite get the details right. Now that we have the Midas Touch Set, I know how to retrofit it. Oh right, give me a few Boundaryless Crystals and Astral Gems too. Didn't you catch a few Rainbow Stones last time? Give me those too. Watch how I make it beautifully modified."

"Oh, can it sow seeds?" Seeing Ange asked.

The expression on Lord Nai Ge Li Si's face instantly froze: "Can you stop thinking about farming all the time? Isn't a high-speed, flying, teleporting carriage good enough?"

"Oh, can it harvest?" Seeing Ange asked.

"No! If you want a harvester, go find Waguri."

"Oh, neither works. Junk carriage." Seeing Ange nodded to show he understood, turned his head to tend to his own Spirit Beans, leaving Lord Nai Ge Li Si standing there in a daze. He had originally wanted to properly modify this carriage, but now he couldn't muster any enthusiasm at all.

"Kwabada, forget the modification, take it and farm with it yourself later." Lord Nai Ge Li Si said angrily.

Just then, Seeing Ange suddenly received Lisa's call in his soul: "Not good, not good, my lord, someone here has been infected with the Undead Plague."

Someone in the Rest Abyss had been infected with the Undead Plague. This news was like a bolt from the blue, stunning everyone into helplessness.

By the time Seeing Ange was sent down from the Heavenly Kingdom, everyone had already gathered in Demon Valley, all surrounding a zombie whose body was half-rotted.

The zombie was tied with a rope, swaying back and forth. Swaying to one side, it felt the creatures in front were fierce, so it quickly shuffled in another direction. Shuffling to the other side, it found the creatures here even fiercer, so it turned yet another way. If zombies had intelligence, it would probably be crying by now.

Lord Nai Ge Li Si went up to examine it and said: "Sure enough, it's the Undead Plague. Where did you find it?"

A human was brought forward. Seeing a pile of undead staring at him, he couldn't help but tremble all over, and replied timidly:

"R-report, esteemed undead lords, this is my older brother. Wood's been cheap lately, so I wanted to nail him a coffin so he wouldn't wander around. I went out to the wasteland looking for him for several days, finally found him, but I don't know why he's rotted like this. If it weren't for the tag on him, I wouldn't have recognized him. I brought him to New Dark Side City, and then I got caught by my lord."

Lord Nai Ge Li Si looked at Anna and Felin and asked: "Do you know him?"

Anna nodded: "I know him. He's one of us from Bingcheng. At least a whole street of neighbors knows him."

Then he wasn't an infiltrating enemy from another plane, and his older brother was also a native Abyss resident. Why would he have contracted the Undead Plague?

Lord Nai Ge Li Si turned to Rogg. The more than three thousand undead in Dark Side City had to be transferred to the Rest Abyss, and he had to follow the whole process. Many undead only trusted Rogg, so he'd been handling the immigration matters during this period.

Now this plague was also the first discovered at the New Dark Side City settlement.

"My lord, you know, this plague scared us to death. We'd recognize it even if we turned to ash. The moment we saw this human leading a rotting corpse over, we were scared stiff on the spot, almost hacked him to death right there. Oh wait, burning him to ash would be safer." Rogg said somewhat agitatedly.

The undead plague bacteria scared them half to death — every undead creature watching the bacteria eat its own body clean wished it could just die sooner, and if they hadn't found Seeing Ange who could drive out this bacteria, once it broke out, plenty of them probably wouldn't have been able to bear it and would have killed themselves.

Some people were willing to leave the prime material plane and come to this godforsaken barren abyss, and deep in their souls there was still a subconscious wish to get as far from the outbreak's origin as possible — who would have thought that before they'd even had a few peaceful days, they discovered the bacteria had returned, and they were scared out of their wits.

"Burning them to ash isn't safe either — we have to find the source of infection first. If we don't figure out where they came from, even if you burned every zombie and skeleton on the wasteland it'd be useless." Nai Ge Li Si frowned tightly.

"Could it be that among Rog's subordinates, someone is still carrying the bacteria?" Lan guessed.

"Impossible. If anyone were still carrying the bacteria, they'd have broken out long ago — it couldn't have infected wild zombies before being discovered." Rog said flatly.

Nai Ge Li Si, Anna, Filin, and Lan — their faces couldn't help turning Solemn: "If it wasn't brought in by Rog's people, then the problem is serious. Someone has secretly infiltrated our world and released this bacteria out in the wild."

With this guess, no one could sit still any longer, and they called out in a chorus: "Get up, get up, get moving — search every inch, see if someone snuck in."

A great search sweeping across the entire plane unfolded; every living being was mobilized — humans, undead, demons, or minotaurs — as long as they could move, they joined this search.

Taking the spot where that rotting zombie was found as the center, everyone searched outward, leaving no corner unchecked.

In the past, the Resting Abyss couldn't carry out a large-scale operation like this — there wasn't even enough food to eat, where would they find the energy and supplies to run out into the wild for a great search?

But now it was different. The emergence of the World Tree windbreak forest gave the abyss large tracts of arable land, more than enough to feed the current population.

In fact, with the harvest of grain and the abundance of supplies, the number of newborns in all three human settlements showed explosive growth — given time, the Resting Abyss might well recapture the prosperity of when the world's transit station first opened.

With food and supplies plentiful, large-scale operations of this sort — which weren't part of production activities — could now be carried out.

By day, Bai Hou the bone dragon, Lightning, and other things that could fly darted about everywhere; at night, wherever the search reached, they'd dig a pit on the spot to take shelter, and continue the next day.

After five straight days of searching, Seeing Ange's group ducked into a pit the little zombie had just dug, sheltering from the biting Resting Wind at night.

Seeing Ange hadn't felt the wind in a long time. These past days he'd been quietly squatting, stretching his hand out beyond the pit. The little zombie and the little angel sat one on each side of him, copying his posture.

Nai Ge Li Si was chatting with the others, and they heard him sigh: "Found another thirty rotting zombies and skeletons — looks like this bacteria really has spread."

Luther, unusually solemn-faced, said: "We might have to thank the Resting Wind. Without it, the bacteria would probably have spread faster — of those thirty infected zombies and skeletons, twenty collapsed out on the wasteland, and the rest couldn't wander too far, which slowed the spread. Also, Grandma Lan seems to be infected."

"What? Lan is infected? How is she, is it serious?" Nai Ge Li Si was shocked.

"Not serious — just scared out of her wits. Because she was infected on her face, and suddenly saw her own face starting to rot, she nearly burned down everything nearby." Luther said, still shaken.

"Uh, understandable. If Nai Aili found her own face starting to rot, she'd definitely dragon-breath herself all over."

"Sigh… just like my mom." Lightning sighed.

"Sigh…" The others, not knowing what they were thinking of, all sighed together.

"Oh right, I made a few spatial rings — do you want them?" Nai Ge Li Si asked.

After getting his hands on the Midas set he couldn't sit still, and Seeing Ange had plenty of good materials on hand — most crucially, a pile of Boundless Crystals — making spatial rings was the easiest thing.

But he wasn't a spatial mage, so the rings he made couldn't be locked — the kind anyone could open.

"Yes yes yes yes — my original ring was snatched away by Anna ages ago, and my Dragon-grip… two-handed sword has nowhere to go." Luther, who had been about to say the full name, caught the murderous looks everyone was shooting him and meekly changed tack.

"I want one too, I want one too."

"What do you want one for? Your hooves are so thick, there's no size that fits you."

"Can't I hang it around my neck? Are you going to give me one or not — believe it or not I'll camp at your door and tell the story of you and the sandfolk girl a hundred and eighty times."

"When did I ever know a sandfolk girl? The one with a sandfolk girl story is Luther!" Nai Ge Li Si was so angry he nearly jumped up.

Lightning curled his lip: "I know, but other people don't. After telling it a hundred and eighty times, someone will believe it eventually."

Nai Ge Li Si was so angry his beard stood on end, and he obediently offered up a spatial ring.

Just then, Seeing Ange, who had been stretching his hand out into the Resting Wind, suddenly said: "In the wind — there's a sound."

Saying that, he leapt up, pulled out a hollow bubble stone, and charged into the wind.