The Ultimate Evolution

Having handled everything properly and handed over command to President Wilson, Party Ace boarded a sub-airship used for emergency evacuation as per the Realm’s instruction.

Although the sub-airship was unmanned, it drifted upwards at breakneck pace, breaking through the atmosphere towards the vast starry space.

Because their reward for completing this world successfully had been exchanged for Legend Level +1, the summary of their adventure in this world shown by the Realm was very brief, so there was no need to waste too many words on that. They soon returned to the Nightmare Realm.

As soon as Sheyan got back to his personal room, he found a box on his desk with the words “Imperial Quartermaster Special Priority Delivery” on it. It seemed to be a delivery from the Empire.

Sheyan wondered who would send him something like this. He speculated that it should have something to do with his ‘Major General’s Blood Armour’, but he had too many things he needed to figure out at the moment, so he put it aside for now.

He felt like his thoughts were all jumbled up because there were too many things to take care of. He sat down at his desk and started listing out everything one by one.

The first thing Sheyan had to do was obviously the title synthesis after obtaining the title of ‘The Great Collector’.

Next, he already had enough achievement points to promote to the next military rank, mainly thanks to the large harvest of achievement points obtained from his outburst of ten straight kills plus G-spot’s decomposition of Evil Sword Apophis. His current achievement point total stood at: Colonel 403/400 (8 points were deducted from using ‘Extinction’ four times). It was clearly time to promote to Major General.

Next was the problem of the party’s personnel reinforcement. This was an extremely urgent matter. As for the candidate, Sheyan already had someone in mind, but he never did things that he was not confident in, so he never told anyone else about this. Otherwise, if the guy refused to join, wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

In addition, Sheyan also had to get into the best possible state he could to use the legendary item ‘The Scalp of Crete’ to gain an S-rank ability. Sanzi must also make the preparations for learning ‘The Power of the Dead’.

Zi and Reef had just comprehended their Awakening Skills in the last world, and the Awakening Skills were quickly upgraded not long after that, so they must spend some time in the Realm to practice and get used to their skills in order to display their greatest power.

There was also the problem with the dark green gloves. Sheyan was sure that if he dared to use ‘Extinction’ again, these precious gloves would definitely be destroyed. Before he could solve this problem, his ‘Extinction’ ability was as good as sealed.

Now that Old Charlie had the seed of Freddy planted in his mind, he would need a certain degree of strengthening. This would also cost a lot of utility points….

Finally, now that his innate ability had been upgraded, his resistance to diseases had no doubt improved too. This means that perhaps he could try to contract…SARS?? But that thought immediately sent shivers down Sheyan’s spine. If he wanted the SARS virus in his arsenal, he should wait until he had at least 30 achievement points in reserve first…

Oh, what a headache! Sheyan sighed. Finally, he wrote down something which would benefit the party financially.

They had a dark gold club to be sold. It would probably fetch a nice price. Besides that, they also had thirteen ‘Smelly Toruk Particles’ that could be traded in for an achievement point each. Unknown mysterious items which could be exchanged for achievement points were always hard currencies in the Realm. They could probably be sold for quite a sum of money too.

***

“Jinkuang! I have a good opportunity to make money!” Sheyan yelled lazily from his chair.

Jinkuang possessed an arrogance surpassing British swordsmen and French musketeers, and shouting like this to summon him would normally not get any reply out of him — unless keywords such as “making money”, “getting rich” and “profit” are mentioned.

Therefore, Sheyan was confident that Jinkuang would appear in front of him in less than three seconds. He would blink his eyes, and Jinkuang would be there in the previously empty corner.

But this time, Sheyan was disappointed. He closed his eyes and opened them again, but the empty corner was still empty. Sheyan was dumbfounded. For some reason, a feeling of emptiness rose in his heart.

“It’s an opportunity with several folds of profit margin, Jinkuang. If you don’t come out now, I’ll take this business opportunity elsewhere.”

There was still no response. Sheyan narrowed his eyes. He slowly stood up and walked to the room where Jinkuang usually stayed in. Sheyan did not come here often, but he could still recall the interior of the room clearly — because Jinkuang’s room arrangement was way too unique.

In the middle of the room was a heavily patched sky-blue hammock. He would find Jinkuang snoring there most of the time. The wall on the left was charred black by smoke, and next to it was a simple picnic stove built from broken red bricks. There was an old iron pot on the stove. Next to the stove was a pile of miscellaneous items (garbage) which included scrap papers, old books, scrap metals, tin cans, and so on.

A tattered leather bag for pig feed hung on the wall. The way the pig feed leather bag was hung and displayed was similar to the bear heads or deer heads in the living room of aristocratic families.

But when Sheyan reached the door of the room, he suddenly froze.

The room in front of him was unprecedentedly clean and tidy!

Of course, it was only relatively clean and tidy. For example, the smoke stain on the wall was still there, and there were still dust everywhere. However, the garbage, hammock, old iron pot, and Jinkuang’s linen sack were all gone!

Sheyan stood at the door for a long time. He finally came up with a rather appropriate term to describe the situation in front of him. Jinkuang had “moved away”.

He had moved away, leaving nothing behind.

Sheyan checked his personal attributes in disbelief, and under the sub-category “Servants”, there was only the name of “Old Charlie”!!! Jinkuang had secretly and one-sidedly ended their master-servant relationship!

A complicated emotion rose within Sheyan. The grief from losing Mogensha once again crept into his heart. He fought back the impulse to cry unrestrainedly. He had heard a song before called “Men Crying isn’t a Sin”. At the moment, he could deeply understand the message in the song.

But Sheyan soon suppressed this feeling after he came back to his senses because he understood that crying was a futile act. Instead of wasting his energy on crying, he should use it to find out why Jinkuang had suddenly disappeared.

Sheyan looked around and carefully inspected the empty room. His eyes stopped at the smoky corner where Jinkuang’s kitchen used to be. Jinkuang would often cook here by igniting scrap newspapers and firewood.

Sheyan pondered for a while, then walked over and touched the ground with his finger. He found that the temperature in this spot was much higher than the temperature in the surrounding areas. That means Jinkuang’s departure was not premeditated. Instead, he must have suddenly sensed something of vital importance while he was cooking. It made him panic and leave in a hurry.

A good way to figure out another person’s thought was to restore the situation at that moment and put yourself in the other person’s position.

Therefore, according to his memory, Sheyan sat at the place where Jinkuang would often sit when he cooked, and started thinking. Based on the spot’s current temperature, the moment Jinkuang sensed something amiss was approximately the moment when Party Ace returned to the Realm. Did they carry anything special with them when they came back?

While Sheyan was racking his brains, thinking about the problem over and over, his fingers were strumming the floor habitually. A rough unevenness could be felt on his fingertips, as if there were some crisscrossing scratches on the smooth floor.

Sheyan was surprised. It must be known that this place was an absolute safe zone, so the floor, furniture and walls were indestructible — at least to him it was. So how were these scratches on the floor made?

An idea suddenly came to Sheyan. He found a large sheet of paper, pressed it to the scratched floor, and used a pencil to smudge it back and forth. Gradually, the scratch marks were traced onto the paper. To his surprise, he found that the scratch marks were actually messy, unorderly sentences!

Sheyan thought back and recalled that whenever Jinkuang was alone, he liked scratching the ground with his long, black goblin fingernails. It had unexpectedly become an important clue today. After tracing all the scratch marks, Sheyan read the words, trying to understand Jinkuang’s complex psychological state.

“I can sense something strange in Master….”

“It felt both familiar and unfamiliar, like three cents mingled with seven pence.”

“I feel very agitated, as if I’ve missed something big. Did I forget to pick up a soda can that someone just threw?”

“Oh, those bastards have successfully returned? Ha-ha-ha, I have a hunch that I can make some good profits this time. Time is money!”

“What is this feeling??!!!!!”

“That’s… The remnant aura of Apophis???”

“Impossible! Impossible! Apophis was devoured?”

“Shouldn’t Apophis submit to all direct descendents of the bloodline? Why would it be devoured? This feeling coming from Master…it’s not ‘Extinction’, absolutely not! Although it feels like ‘Extinction’, it’s fundamentally different, like gold and platinum!!”

“Was I wrong from the very beginning? Oh god, oh god!! Did the great Jinkuang make a more serious mistake than losing ten gold coins?”