Chapter 461: Chief, It's Me, Don't You Recognize Me?

"How can you prove you have the strength to cooperate?" In the House of the Departed, Gustav, as agreed, left a message in a certain corner.

Not long after, he returned here and found the message had been changed to: "Does destroying the Wind Tide system of the Starburst Array count as strength?"

The main function of the Wind Tide system is to make the air within the entire Starburst Array flow; if the wind in a certain area cannot flow, living beings needing to breathe will be unable to survive there.

Didn't the God of Life say before that the Starburst Array was broken, but it couldn't say exactly where it was broken?

After Anthony met Cabrera, he gathered some key information from the side, then, connecting it with the God of Life's statement, deduced that the Wind Tide system was the problem.

This problem could be big or small; the Starburst Array hangs high in the sky and has no air itself, so they possess the ability to 'produce' air, but to make the air flow, the Wind Tide is needed.

Unlike the ground, where air convection is unobstructed and the composition in every corner is roughly the same.

The Starburst Array can be viewed as a combination of countless caves; the air in every area is unbalanced, convection is very slow, and the Wind Tide is needed to quickly deliver it to every corner.

When discussing this topic, Cabrera's explanation was: "Some grass seeds, not knowing how they got in, sprouted in the ventilation ducts and jammed some Tide Arrays."

Good heavens, so it turns out the God of Life broke their system.

"Really?" The God of Life scratched his head: "I just found some hidden corners to sprout; those round and breathable ducts were the most hidden."

Other things are hard to verify, but the destruction of the Wind Tide is easy to verify; with so many living beings on the Starburst Array, surely some spies loyal to the Undead Empire could have slipped in.

They managed to contact the spies on the Starburst Array and received news confirming that the Wind Tide Arrays in certain areas were indeed damaged.

"Very good, you do have strength. How shall we cooperate?" Gustav left a message.

"First we do this and this, then that and that, then this and this again."

Gustav soon received a detailed plan (Part One), listing the things they needed to do now, such as friend-or-foe identification, strengthening mutual trust, coordinating performances, etc., and then asked:

"Do you have any political enemies or competitors to eliminate? If so, I'll help you kill him, then you use revenge against us as an excuse to help me kill my political enemies. We sign a vow, equivalent to giving each other a handle; if exposed, we'll both be finished. This is the fastest way to gain mutual trust. Do you have any?"

Gustav was stunned after reading it, then felt a faint temptation, but quickly dismissed the thought; he didn't fully trust the other party yet, so he'd deal with it later.

Looking at the entire plan, feasibility was very high, and it required no upfront investment from Gustav's side; only when they saw the returns would they need to follow through.

This was practically a business with no capital, and all he needed to do was issue an order: when anyone with the corresponding mark came to the Undead Empire's departments, release the imprisoned members of the Church of Light.

Over these years, the Undead Empire had captured many members of the Church of Light: clerics, priests, saints, and believers; they were mostly locked up until death because Your Majesty disliked killing.

Kuabada, how did this weird quirk form? If undead don't kill, are they still undead? While Your Majesty was away, Gustav couldn't help but mutter a string of complaints in his heart.

Kill less, be cautious about killing, so lock them up until death; across the world, the Undead Empire established various death prisons, imprisoning countless members of the Church of Light.

Lock the living in, drag the dead out, and publicly reincarnate them for the living to see; killing the body and also piercing the heart. Every time this happened, it was the moment the believers' faith collapsed.

Good heavens, Gustav suspected the other party wanted to trick them into releasing death row inmates; was there someone particularly valuable inside?

"Heh, you want to save the Undead King but give nothing in return; have you slept so long your soul has gone numb and won't turn? What person's value could equal one ten-millionth of the Undead King? Even if there were ten million people in the prison, to save your King, would you be willing to release them all?"

"Uh, yes, yes." Scolded by the reply, Gustav felt relieved instead; indeed, compared to Your Majesty, even if all the Light prisoners were released, so what? The valuable ones inside were just a few fanatics and ascetics, nothing worth mentioning.

"Before any new changes, you can take five people." Gustav replied.

"New changes? Does destroying the Seed of the Sky-Piercing Tree count?"

Gustav shivered instantly and immediately replied: "If you can destroy the Seed of the Sky-Piercing Tree, you can take twenty people."

"Alright, wait for us."

Two days later, news from the spy came: the Seed of the Sky-Piercing Tree suddenly bloomed and sprouted, but withered immediately.

"Really destroyed? How did they do it?" Gustav was full of doubts, but he still kept his promise and issued the order to take twenty people out of the death prisons.

The Undead Empire's orders were transmitted very efficiently: via relay spirits, via soul connection, or even via teleportation arrays; a small wisp of soul flame could carry a massive amount of information.

All the managers of the Black Prisons soon received a mark and an order, along with a secret command: record every move of these people.

In the sky, an eighteen-meter-long gray dragon soared, skillfully catching updrafts to fly higher and faster.

Jia Delige had never flown so thrillingly; it was a native lich, never having gone through the 'dragon' stage, retaining no dragon memories.

From the moment it had memories, it was a tough, clumsy body with thick skin and flesh, moving slowly; only many years later, after learning magic, could it barely fly.

It flew, but had nothing to do with agility, at most a bit more agile than a flying car or airship.

But now, it felt like a nimble little bird, even able to roll easily.

On its back squatted Seeing Ange, the Little Angel, the Little Zombie, Anthony, Duroken, and Nai Ge Li Si; everyone stood perfectly steady, completely unaffected by the rolling.

But being unaffected didn't mean they liked it; the Little Zombie angrily stamped its foot on its back, forcing Jia Delige to obediently resume level flight.

On the dragon's back, Nai Ge Li Si had to humbly ask: "What are you up to again? You said the Black Prisons are places to imprison Church of Light members; taking us there is so dangerous. Is there anything there worth the risk?"

"No, no." Anthony explained: "I have made full preparations; there will be no danger. There are too many Black Prisons; the Empire can at most send some guards, their strength won't be great. I neither said which Black Prison nor when we are going; even if Gustav wants to ambush us, he won't have time to prepare."

"And most importantly, my lord has regained the Hand of World-Crossing; in danger, he can stuff us all inside."

Nai Ge Li Si rolled its eyes at him: "That means Seeing Ange also has to abandon his current body? Then how do we send ourselves back? Taking such a huge risk, what is in the Black Prisons?"

Anthony shrugged: "What else could there be? Saints, fanatics, ascetics. Some people in the Black Prisons have been inside since their ancestors; if they can still maintain their faith, they are absolutely the most fanatical, most devout believers."

"Hiss—" Nai Ge Li Si sucked in a cold breath; every noun Anthony mentioned made its teeth ache.

Saint Shamara, one person who caused chaos in the Church of Light, and the Power of Corruption spawned a Corruption Legion.

Fanatic Oke, single-handedly slew the Insect God Hemel, the ceiling of fanatics.

Ascetic An... this one doesn't count, but his fame is sung everywhere on the Prime Material Plane.

If twenty such people could be picked from the Black Prisons, restoring the glory of the Church of Light would not be a joke.

"Would Gustav agree to let you pick off such people?" Nai Ge Li Si asked in surprise.

"Why wouldn't he? They are just ordinary people now; even with the most devout beliefs, they are nothing, because there is no god." Anthony sighed regretfully.

Nai Ge Li Si turned to glance at Seeing Ange, whose shoulders were shrugging up and down, and suddenly understood: "I get it. You are taking them a 'god'."

Anthony nodded: "My lord and you don't need to go in; I'll go in myself. You wait outside; if there's an ambush, I'll call for help. Is this arrangement okay, my lord?"

The last sentence was a question directed at Xiang Ange.

Seeing Ange looked up in confusion, his right arm vanished into thin air, his shoulders shrugging up and down.

Nai Ge Li Si said irritably: "Don't mind him; having a seed to plant is enough for him."

Seeing Ange nodded in agreement and cheerfully continued farming, occasionally pulling out bags of fertilizer and tossing them into the Divine Domain.

The reason a desert is called a desert, besides the lack of water, is also desertification—nutrient loss. Many places require large amounts of fertilizer for topdressing; they can't use bug-ash liquid for everything, that would be too wasteful.

Conveniently, Seeing Ange had stored a pile of bird droppings in the Palace of Rest, and now he could finally pull them out to use, because reaching in no longer had a time limit.

Lord Nai Ge Li Si couldn't watch anymore: "Just because there's no time limit doesn't mean you have to come dig out bird droppings—it consumes Soul Flame, you spendthrift thing. It's not like there isn't bird droppings here. We'll find a bird-droppings mine later. Conveniently, your Divine Domain can be used to store things, no waste."

Compared to the World-Piercing Hand, the Divine Domain was actually a better loading tool—putting things in and taking them out didn't require much power. Of course, a little divine power was still needed, but compared to the World-Piercing Hand, which calculated Soul Flame by weight, they were on completely different levels.

Seeing Ange nodded. Other things aside, digging for bird droppings he was still very interested in.

Flying and flying, a straight azure sea horizon appeared at the edge of the land.

"Huh? The Death Prison is built on the sea?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si said in surprise.

Anthony said: "Part of it is built on the sea, because it's convenient—just toss the prisoners onto an island. Hundreds of kilometers with no islands in between; unless they all have True God protection, they can't swim across that stretch of sea."

"Besides that, there are also some abysses, valleys, sinkholes, and the like. Even without guards, it's very hard for ordinary people to escape from them."

Lord Nai Ge Li Si was speechless: "Is this still a Death Prison? If the island is a bit bigger, could they build villages, set up stockades, get married, and have kids on it?"

Anthony scratched his nose and said awkwardly: "Actually, yes. Didn't I say some people have been locked in since their grandfather's generation? If the grandfather was locked inside, he was definitely born inside too. It's not like his grandfather was locked in at eight and he was somehow born outside—this isn't some weird opera."

It could actually be like this? The "prison" in this Death Prison seemed to be quite different from what he had imagined.

Just as he was about to ask more, Seeing Ange suddenly pointed at the sea surface: "Bird droppings."

On the sea surface, there was an island of jagged strange rocks, its surface piled with gray-white stones that reflected a fairly intense glow under the sunlight.

Seeing Ange had seen too much; at a glance he recognized it as bird droppings. Seabirds excrete on the island, the sun dries the droppings, and over time a thick layer of phosphate builds up—an excellent natural fertilizer.

The Great Rift Valley beside Dragon-Fall Lake on the main plane was also a source of natural phosphate, now developed, but the fertilizer there was facing competition from the Black Night Crow pirates.

The main issue was transportation cost. Bird droppings mined from the Great Rift Valley had to go west through Dragon-Fall Lake, enter the sea via the North River, and then be shipped to various parts of the continent—transportation costs were high.

The Black Night Crows dug directly on the islands, shipping via sea vessels straight to all parts of the plane. Sea vessels had far greater tonnage than riverboats, so costs were low.

Now the Great Rift Valley's fertilizer competitiveness had declined, and most of it was kept for use around Dragon-Fall Lake. However, after Seeing Ange's development, Dragon-Fall Lake—with its land, shallows, and water surface—had a terrifying scale of cultivation, and consumed a considerable amount of fertilizer too.

"What kind of dogshit luck is this? Just finished talking about bird droppings and you bump into bird droppings." Lord Nai Ge Li Si was green with envy.

Anthony, however, didn't think it was luck: "This is normal. As long as you're on a migratory bird route, these kinds of bird islands will exist. Birds need to rest on the sea surface, and these islands are their best choice. Running into one is perfectly normal."

After speaking, Anthony added: "Go down. You all wait for me here. It's not far from the Death Prison, convenient for rescuing me."

It wasn't that he wanted to drag Seeing Ange over, but if Seeing Ange was too far away, his power couldn't be projected onto him. Even if he screamed himself hoarse, no one would be able to save him.

Seeing Ange was very satisfied with this arrangement; he didn't want to go to any Death Prison at all.

They didn't even need to land. As Jia Delige swept past Dragon Haidao, they simply jumped down.

Slowly drifting down to the island, just as they were about to touch the ground, Lord Nai Ge Li Si suddenly twitched his nose: "What smell? A very familiar smell. Be careful—this isn't an ordinary bird-dropping island."

The little angel, seeing this, also twitched his nose, looking blank—he clearly hadn't smelled anything.

Everyone landed and searched around. In a crevice of a cliff not far away, they found a cave. Lord Nai Ge Li Si said with certainty: "The smell is coming from inside."

The moment he entered the cave, he suddenly realized: "No wonder it smells so familiar—it's the smell of eggs! So many dragon eggs."

Inside the cave were piled dozens of dragon eggs, and a giant dragon on its last breath—a golden giant dragon a full fifty meters long.

A golden giant dragon—one of the three great superior giant dragons—but it had no wings. It had noticed Seeing Ange and the others. It squinted, raised its head, opened its mouth—dragon breath was about to be unleashed.

"Wait, wait! Patriarch, it's me! Don't you recognize me?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si flew up and shouted loudly.