prynovel Chapter 91 : Chapter 91
Chapter 91 : Chapter 91
Chapter 91: Wantonly Torturing the Ferocious Beasts! Over 400 Billion Points!
“What exactly did Xiao Xuan customize? How has the first floor still not ended by now?”
Even Mu Xiying was bewildered at this point.
She herself had never looked too deeply into the Heaven-Reaching Tower.
That was because, according to the memories of her past self from the second time she returned to the future, Mu Xiying’s talent during her years at Imperial Capital University had already reached high gold rank.
So she had also customized what she believed to be the most difficult trial to clear.
In the end, after clearing it, the points she obtained were only about twice as much as the High-Level Mode.
Even so, the record set by her custom trial had still stood for two thousand years before someone finally broke it.
The one who broke her record also became a Supreme in the future.
Of course, that person’s final achievements were naturally nowhere near Mu Xiying’s, because during her university years, Mu Xiying’s talent had not yet been fully developed.
That prodigy, on the other hand, had already reached his limit.
“He cleared it. He’s reached the second floor!”
Suddenly, a cry of surprise rang out.
Everyone immediately turned to look at the display screen of the Heaven-Reaching Tower.
Sure enough, Xiao Xuan’s name had moved from the first floor to the second.
At the same time, the suffix behind his name now showed an additional 1,000 points!
“Only 1,000 points?”
“Isn’t that just ordinary High-Level Tower Challenge Mode? How could High-Level Mode be this slow?”
“Did he really fall asleep inside?”
“There’s no way he got this Heaven Ranking number ten spot through some kind of trick, right?”
“Who knows? Maybe that really is the case!”
…
The moment they saw the points, the students who had originally speculated that Xiao Xuan might have chosen Custom Mode were speechless.
Custom Mode, and only 1,000 points on the first floor? Then even if it really was Custom Mode, it definitely was not some especially difficult customization.
Everyone knew that in the past, someone at Imperial Capital University had earned 5,000 points on the very first floor of a custom trial.
In the end, that person had only reached the thirteenth floor before stopping, but even so, the total reward for those thirteen floors had been 200,000 points.
Although that was still less than clearing the entire High-Level challenge, the difficulty had been even greater.
And the higher the starting base, the higher the points. That was common knowledge.
“Xiao Xuan, just what are you doing?”
Even Mu Xiying had become curious now. What exactly had Xiao Xuan customized?
Everyone else waited curiously as well.
Of course, they had no choice but to wait. If Xiao Xuan did not come out, no one else could enter.
But that wait stretched on for several more hours!
More than seven hours later, Xiao Xuan’s name finally moved from the second floor to the third.
And the points had only increased by 2,000!
At that moment, everyone outside was speechless again.
“Well now, 2,000 points for the second floor. Xiao Xuan’s challenge difficulty is even lower than High-Level Mode!”
“Exactly. I remember the second floor of High-Level Mode gives 3,000 points.”
“With this difficulty, it’s confirmed. That Heaven Ranking number ten position of his was definitely picked up through some loophole.”
…
…
For a time, all the students began mocking him.
The Heaven Ranking was indeed prestigious and powerful, but a ranking that looked this cheap, or perhaps even bought through some transaction, naturally inspired no respect.
…
…
At this moment, inside the battle space of the Heaven-Reaching Tower!
“So it’s another fifty billion or so?”
“Although the number is a bit smaller, the increased strength of the beasts means the Eco Points gained haven’t decreased by much.”
Looking at how his Eco Points had already exceeded 100 billion, Xiao Xuan began thinking.
But in the next moment, massive spatial fluctuations appeared in the sky again.
Then countless Ferocious Beasts were teleported in.
This time, the beasts had all reached the Third Heaven of the Martial Emperor Realm, which was the level of three-star seventh-tier beasts.
Any one of these casually thrown into Blackwater City would be enough to create a city-destroying crisis.
Yet now, in Xiao Xuan’s hands, these tens of thousands of beasts were no more than ants, casually crushed to death.
In fact, with Soul Blood Domain in hand, killing these Ferocious Beasts was easier for him than killing ants would be for an ordinary person.
This time, it took six and a half hours for all the Ferocious Beasts to finish teleporting in.
His Eco Points increased by another 60 billion.
As for the tower points, he gained an additional 4,000.
…
At this point, because nearly an entire day had passed, the number of people outside had swelled to several hundred.
On top of that, other students who had heard about it from friends also began arriving one after another.
Among them, some recognized Xiao Xuan.
“Xiao Xuan? So it’s him? The runner-up of this year’s Hundred-Province Genius Tournament!”
“What? The runner-up of the Hundred-Province Genius Tournament? He’s a freshman? But how did a freshman get to Heaven Ranking number ten?”
“Could this year’s examiner have been Zhao Wuji? Did he beat Zhao Wuji?”
“Holy hell, he beat Zhao Wuji? No way. But if he’s that strong, why is his custom difficulty so low and still so slow?”
“Could it be that he used some despicable means or something?”
…
…
That was because the news about Xiao Xuan had already been posted on the official website of Imperial Capital University!
Of course, it had only just been published, so it still had not caused a huge stir.
Most people still did not know the details.
“Hah. A bunch of frogs at the bottom of a well. Brother Xiao defeated Zhao Wuji entirely with his own strength.”
“And not just Zhao Wuji. Even Ouyang Zhantian was defeated by him. No, to be exact, he was killed by him!”
Suddenly, an incomparably proud voice rang out from the crowd and reached everyone’s ears.
Hearing that voice, everyone turned to look. The moment they did, quite a few young men instantly felt their hearts skip a beat.
There stood a strikingly heroic young girl of breathtaking beauty, speaking with a proud expression.
That person was none other than Gu Xuan.
Although the Feminization trait had been plundered away by Xiao Xuan, it would still take at least several years for him to return to a male appearance.
“This junior sister is so pretty. Is she also one of the freshmen from this year’s Hundred-Province Genius Tournament?”
“Wait, what did she just say? Ouyang Zhantian was killed too? Damn, is that the Ouyang Zhantian I know?”
“No way. This girl’s probably new here and doesn’t even know who Ouyang Zhantian is.”
“Yeah. If Xiao Xuan had really defeated Ouyang Zhantian, then shouldn’t he be ranked number one on the Heaven Ranking?”
“Uh, Ouyang Zhantian hasn’t challenged the Heaven Ranking for two years. His ranking already fell off it long ago.”
“That still doesn’t mean Ouyang Zhantian was weak. Forget Zhao Wuji. Even the current number one on the Heaven Ranking is definitely no match for him!”
For a time, everyone present was shocked by the explosive news Gu Xuan had brought.
“Wait, the points are out. It’s 4,000!”
At that very moment, another cry of surprise rang out, and everyone looked over. Sure enough, this time the points had indeed risen to 4,000.
Once again, everyone fell into doubt.
Four thousand points really was not that high.
The third stage of High-Level Mode was worth at least 6,000 points!
So Xiao Xuan’s 4,000-point stage really did not seem very impressive.
But the way his points were increasing was undeniably strange.
Everyone immediately began checking whether the rumor that Xiao Xuan had killed Ouyang Zhantian was true.
And when they found the recorded video someone had uploaded to the forum, everyone was stunned.
It was actually true!
Although it was not clear from the footage exactly how Xiao Xuan had killed Ouyang Zhantian, Zhao Wuji had undeniably been defeated in a straight fight!
At that moment, everyone was truly shaken.
Now, as they stared at the floor count on the Heaven-Reaching Tower, a trace of anticipation began to rise in their hearts.
Perhaps Xiao Xuan was far stronger than they had imagined?
As time continued to pass, another six hours went by.
Xiao Xuan finally reached the fifth floor!
And on the previous floor, the points he had earned had reached 8,000.
Although that still seemed a bit behind the 10,000 points of the fourth floor in High-Level Mode, many people had begun noticing that the gap was shrinking.
And they had also discovered the pattern in Xiao Xuan’s points.
“Holy hell, don’t tell me Xiao Xuan’s points are doubling every floor!”
At last, someone cried out in disbelief.
“Doubling? What are you talking about? If that were true, then by the tenth floor wouldn’t it be nearly a million points?”
“How could that be possible?”
“Exactly. Then how many points would the eighteenth floor be? Over a hundred million?
“A hundred million points! Even converted into money, that would be in the trillions!”
…
…
For a time, the person who had made that guess was immediately buried under waves of criticism.
After hearing it, he could only laugh awkwardly, realizing he had spoken rashly.
But many people had already begun to suspect, faintly, that maybe his guess was actually correct.
If the reward really doubled every floor,
just how terrifying was the difficulty of Xiao Xuan’s custom trial?
“Several hundred million points?”
“Back then, I only earned a few million points at most. It seems the limit of the Heaven-Reaching Tower is far higher than I imagined.”
“It is just a pity that my talent developed too slowly, so I never fully unearthed the maximum point potential of the tower.”
Mu Xiying was naturally certain by now that Xiao Xuan’s point growth really was doubling every floor.
But more than anything else, she was happy.
That meant they no longer needed to worry about obtaining the medicinal ingredients for refining Godfall Poison.
Of course, even if they did not use Godfall Poison, refining the Life-Bound Poison Xiao Xuan needed would also become much easier.
…
Time continued to flow quickly.
After that, Xiao Xuan’s speed in clearing the tower only became faster and faster.
The fifth floor took five and a half hours.
The sixth floor took four and a half hours.
The seventh floor took only three hours.
To everyone’s shock, the points really were doubling with each floor.
And while other people always became slower and slower as they climbed the tower, Xiao Xuan was actually becoming faster and faster.
There could only be one explanation: on the earlier floors, the opponents were not very strong, but there had been a huge number of them.
No one could guess just how huge that number really was.
But from the fact that Xiao Xuan’s floor rewards really were doubling, that number had to be staggering.
At last, Xiao Xuan reached the tenth floor!
…
The opponents teleported in by the Heaven-Reaching Tower had now risen from the Martial Emperor Realm to the Martial Venerable level!
In other words, they were eighth-tier Ferocious Beasts.
And on this first floor of the eighth-tier segment, there were still an enormous number of them!
There were several thousand in total.
Moreover, every one of those thousands of beasts dropped high purple traits.
Each one was worth 100,000 to 200,000 Eco Points!
Unfortunately, because their numbers had decreased, the Eco Points Xiao Xuan gained in this floor were actually much lower.
It was only around 7 to 8 billion.
“As expected, once my strength reaches a certain level, then if I want to quickly obtain huge amounts of Eco Points, I will need massive numbers of low-level traits.”
“After all, no matter how valuable high-level traits are, there simply aren’t many of them!”
“Even gold traits are no exception!”
Seeing this, Xiao Xuan’s gaze sharpened slightly.
On Earth, a gold trait holder was as rare as a tenth-tier Subterranean Cavern!
But if all the Ferocious Beasts inside a tenth-tier Subterranean Cavern were wiped out, the amount of Eco Points gained would definitely be dozens or even hundreds of times greater than what one gold trait could provide.
Possibly even more.
Of course, for some rare traits, he would still need to get them from humans.
But one thing was certain: Xiao Xuan’s future lay with Ferocious Beasts and other races, not with humanity itself.
…
“But with so few beasts left now, I can probably slow down a little and develop their potential more thoroughly.”
Having thought that through, Xiao Xuan stopped hesitating and expanded the coverage of his Soul Blood Domain.
The blood-red streams of light formed by the flying knives instantly sped up.
Pff! Pff! Pff! Pff!!
At this moment, those flying knives became like a meat grinder, shredding the bodies of the Ferocious Beasts.
Yet every single flying knife deliberately avoided the beasts’ vital points.
At the same time, great amounts of flame and lightning erupted as well. But none of it was strong enough to kill them instantly. It was only enough to force them to endure even more pain.
That was right. What Xiao Xuan wanted was pure torture.
This way, the Ferocious Beasts would drop even more traits.
The number of traits could even double.
Previously, there had simply been too many beasts. He could barely finish killing them all as it was. If he had added torture on top of that, he likely would not have reached his current floor count even after ten days or half a month.
But now, with fewer beasts and higher levels, it was naturally worth trying.
And sure enough, under his frenzied torment, all kinds of traits began exploding out!
[Pain], [Blindness], [Sterility], [Crippled], [Severely Wounded], [Suicidal Tendencies], [Burn Injury], [Electric Injury]...
And many more negative traits poured out in a flood, most of them purple traits.
Although they were only ordinary purple traits, quantity made up for quality.
And not only that, his telekinetic force also turned into giant hands that grabbed directly at the traits embedded in the beasts’ bodies.
Only, traits while still attached to a body were many times heavier than when dropped.
Even for Xiao Xuan, forcibly extracting those purple traits while they were still on the beasts was a difficult task.
“I almost forgot. Supreme Will, upgrade all my traits to gold!”
Only then did Xiao Xuan remember this.
All of his traits were still silver.
Boom!!!
In the next instant, violent power poured into his body.
In a flash, all the ranks of his traits began rising madly.
On each of the previous nine floors, he had gained around 40 to 50 billion Eco Points.
So by now, his total Eco Points had already risen to over 400 billion.
But he currently possessed more than twenty different traits.
So after upgrading them all to gold, more than half of his Eco Points was instantly spent.
Of course, Xiao Xuan’s strength also underwent a tremendous leap.
His telekinetic force in particular.
Not only had its power increased greatly, but its quality had also risen by an enormous margin.
In an instant, huge numbers of purple traits were forcibly pulled from the Ferocious Beasts’ bodies by him.
Dense masses of purple traits gathered together like a flood and surged toward Xiao Xuan.
In only a few dozen minutes, his total Eco Points had already risen by another 30 billion.
If this had been done with his earlier method, then from this number of beasts, he would have earned at most 8 or 9 billion.
With this approach, the Eco Point gains increased three to four times over.
“This whole process really needs to be standardized properly.”
“In the future, this is how I’ll have to deal with enemies.”
“That is the only way to maximize profits!”
Xiao Xuan thought to himself.
After that, he directly used the beasts on the eleventh floor as test subjects.
Very quickly, he discovered that not only physical torture, but also soul torture could produce traits.
By using Soul Blade to carve apart the souls of those beasts, he could make several soul-related traits explode out, and every one of those soul-state traits was of very high grade.
Those traits were [Soul Trauma], [Soul Tremor], [Extreme Pain], and [Soul Scattered]!!
Especially the last one, [Soul Scattered], which was actually worth even more Eco Points than the Death trait.
“It looks like once I get out, I’ll need to seriously study a martial technique that can attack souls over a wide area.”
“That way, when facing Ferocious Beasts, I can torture them on a large scale.”
“Right, and different elemental damage seems to produce different traits. So shouldn’t I also try using more elemental attributes to torment these beasts?”
Looking at the several thousand Ferocious Beasts lying on the ground and convulsing, another thought surfaced in Xiao Xuan’s mind.
As for feeling pity for these Ferocious Beasts?
There was no need at all. Non-human races always harbored different hearts. Leaving aside the fact that humanity and the Ferocious Beasts were hostile races, even friendly races, or even fellow humans, could never remain at peace forever.
Xiao Xuan needed to grow quickly now, because there were still many things on Earth that could threaten him.
And in the universe, there were terrifying beings like the Evil God.
Only with enough strength could he protect his family.
Of course, if he ever had sufficient strength and energy, then he would even like to protect all of humanity as well.
…
After that, he began selecting traits from his Recycle Bin.
Inside the Recycle Bin, he deliberately kept several copies of different traits.
Only traits that overlapped too much with each other were recycled by him.
Because those different traits might one day prove useful.
And clearly, now was exactly that time.
Xiao Xuan began selecting from among them.
“Before, my Eco Points weren’t enough, so I could only focus mainly on the Darkness, Lightning, and Fire paths.”
“But now it’s different. My Eco Points aren’t so abundant that I can spend them without limit, but upgrading a few hundred peak silver traits would still be effortless.”
“In that case, it’s time to begin the path of all attributes!”
With that thought, Xiao Xuan directly selected all the elemental traits.
According to humanity’s records, all elements were divided into several levels: basic, advanced, high-level, and ultimate!
Basic elements were the five most fundamental ones: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
Advanced elements were things like wind, lightning, frost, light, darkness, poison, and the like, stronger and rarer than the basic elements.
Above advanced elements came high-level elements.
High-level elements were generally evolved from one or more basic or advanced elements.
For example, the power of stars was born from the fusion of earth and light.
Holy power and purifying power were evolved from light.
Demonic power and slaughter power evolved from darkness.
Of course, there were also support-type elements, such as Healing Light, which arose from the fusion and advancement of wood and water.
In short, high-level traits were the most numerous type in the world.
But above high-level elements, there were still ultimate elements.
Ultimate elements existed only in the legends humanity had heard from other races.
According to those legends, the ultimate elements were Death, Life, Creation, Fate, Space, and Destruction!
And the Teleportation Xiao Xuan controlled was not complete spatial power.
The Teleportation trait was only one of the many derivative traits of spatial power!
It was somewhat stronger than ordinary high-level traits, but it was still only a high-level trait.
Although Xiao Xuan had many stored traits in his Recycle Bin, most of them were only basic or advanced traits.
As for high-level traits, he only had one or two.
After all, whether it was Ferocious Beasts or humans, awakening a high-level element or above was extremely difficult.
At the same rank, high-level traits were far stronger than other traits of the same level.
Take Xiao Xuan’s Teleportation for example. With Teleportation, his strength had undergone an almost qualitative leap.
The increase in combat power it gave him was greater than what seven or eight other elements combined could offer.
And that was only a high-level element. If an ultimate element ever appeared, the increase in strength would be even more terrifying.
Unfortunately, Earth had no such traits, so Xiao Xuan could only dream about obtaining them.
At that thought, Xiao Xuan directly equipped all of the dozen or so elements he still lacked!
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!!!
In an instant, one element after another poured into Xiao Xuan’s body.
All of those elements flowed deep into his Sea of Consciousness, where they condensed into elemental orbs.
Only, most of those elemental traits were purple or blue.
Compared with the massive poison-element orb, and his thunderflame elemental orbs, they were naturally much smaller.
“Supreme Will, upgrade all of these elements to peak silver!”
After thinking it over, Xiao Xuan directly gave the order to the Supreme Will.
“Command accepted. Beginning upgrades!”
Boom!!!
With Xiao Xuan’s command issued, dazzling rays of light erupted deep within his Sea of Consciousness.
At that moment, the elemental orbs not only began swelling madly, but their quality also rose rapidly, and the energy intensity they contained skyrocketed.
[Congratulations, you have awakened the trait 【Wood Control! Silver】. Corresponding elemental skill effect +6000%!]
[Congratulations, you have awakened the trait 【Metal Control! Silver】. Corresponding elemental skill effect +6000%!]
[Congratulations, you have awakened the trait 【Power of Earth! Silver】. Corresponding elemental skill effect +6000%!]
[Congratulations, you have awakened the trait 【Healing Power! Silver】. Corresponding elemental skill effect +6000%!]
…
One notification from the Supreme Will after another poured into Xiao Xuan’s mind.
And the total cost had only been a little over 10 billion.
“Once I get back later, I’ll find absorption traits corresponding to all these elements.”
“When that time comes, I’ll be able to absorb all of them at once to increase my strength.”
“Maybe that will save me quite a lot of Eco Points.”