Chapter 247
Mingming's task was simply to eliminate a few rising oak owl newcomers, and everything went smoothly during their ambush.
The targets were taken out, the mission was accomplished, and they could have left. Yet, Liang Yuchuan insisted on sticking around to take out a few more oak owls before she would budge, nearly getting them cornered by a high-level oak owl leader.
Liang Yuchuan was not pleased either: “They called you a disgrace and a traitor to the Song family, a mixed-breed bird unworthy of the Song surname. They even demanded you change your name to ‘Dung Ball’ and cursed you to lose your wings! Aren't you angry about any of this?!”
Good grief, she just gave me another lecture.
**Chapter 320: The Tower - Seven Years**
It was always like this. She suspected Liang Yuchuan was taking the opportunity to vent her frustrations by berating her in person.
Yu Xunge realized that Liang Yuchuan was more like a male lead from a male-centric novel than any male lead she had encountered; anyone who insulted her was marked for death.
Originally, this wasn’t Yu Xunge’s concern, but Liang Yuchuan, for reasons unknown, had taken it upon herself to defend Yu Xunge fiercely. Whenever they were forced to team up for a mission, if any foreign creature insulted Yu Xunge, Liang Yuchuan would kill them on the spot.
You’d think she’d just kill them and be done with it, but no, she had to remember every insult and repeat it back to Yu Xunge…
More than once, Yu Xunge had told Liang Yuchuan that it wasn’t a big deal; they had more important matters to attend to! If she wanted to take revenge, she could do it later—she should at least consider the situation!
Having spent time in the entertainment industry, Yu Xunge had heard far worse. People would enter with both parents and come out worse than beasts. So what if they insulted her parents? She loved hearing people talk about them… not that her parents were the type to care.
But every time she said this, Liang Yuchuan would give her a thumbs-up, pinching the first joint of her pinky finger.
Just like now, when Yu Xunge turned around, sure enough, Liang Yuchuan was pinching her pinky again, wearing that AI-generated smile that said, “You’re a benefactor of the Liang family, so I can’t lose my temper at you…”
Yu Xunge: …
The most infuriating and despicable one here is you! You little brat, you scoundrel!!
Tu Lan perched on top of Yu Xunge’s head, clearly enjoying the show.
Liang Yuchuan was a genius at bouncing around Yu Xunge’s bottom line.
For the past few years, Yu Xunge had never given Liang Yuchuan a pleasant expression. Sometimes, when Liang Yuchuan sought her out for a spar, Yu Xunge would mercilessly beat her down, leaving her unable to get up even with healing. After each bout, she would quietly keep score, muttering about tenfold retribution.
Though Liang Yuchuan would get angry and sulk, she couldn’t deny that Yu Xunge was stronger. She might not admit it out loud, but deep down, she respected Yu Xunge.
The faster Yu Xunge knocked her down, the more Liang Yuchuan admired her. She had improved so quickly, yet she still couldn’t catch up to this person!
Yu Xunge suspected that beating Liang Yuchuan was so satisfying that she felt she should be paid for it. While it was enjoyable to beat Liang Yuchuan for free, her reactions always made Yu Xunge feel like she was the one losing out.
In this regard, Liang Yuchuan and Tu Lan were somewhat alike.
If you’re stronger than me, then your bad temper is understandable; that’s just the nature of the strong.
But if you’re weaker than me, then your generosity is just cowardice, and your concessions are mere fear.
Because Yu Xunge was strong, Liang Yuchuan had come to see her caution not as excessive timidity but as “You’re just overthinking things!”
But respect aside, she never slacked off on her duties…
If she was annoyed, she’d kill; if she was angry, she’d kill; if she was bored, she’d kill.
Back at their old hideout, Yu Xunge walked in and announced to Zhao Shuying, “Next time, I want solo missions. I don’t want to team up with her anymore.”
Zhao Shuying didn’t respond, just smiling as she handed over fifty-two types of materials. Yu Xunge immediately fell silent; these were the last materials she needed for both “Spring’s Not Late” and “Gold Medal Killer.” With these, she could finally refine them all.
Liang Yuchuan, who had followed behind, received a new fist blade from Zhao Shuying and looked at Yu Xunge with the confused eyes of a child. Not only did she stare, but she also shook her head with a smile—this kind of foolishness was something Tu Lan had taught her.
Yu Xunge took a deep breath with her eyes closed, then grabbed Tu Lan’s head, who was mimicking her actions, and said, “If you keep smiling and shaking your head at me like that, I’ll twist your head off.”
Tu Lan: “Ah, is that really how it feels?”
Yu Xunge lifted Tu Lan by her tail, turned around, and with a deep stance, swung her arm seven times before using all her strength to throw Tu Lan away—decided! Off you go! Pikalan!
She had endured this miserable life for seven years; that was enough!
But she had also gained several new skills.
The tasks Zhao Shuying had taken on for her focused on shooting skills and skills that could enhance her own status. If the employers couldn’t provide those, she’d settle for potions and metals.
However, when she took on tasks herself, she operated under a different identity, seeking close-combat skills.
The five years of battlefield experience as Xiangzong had left a lasting impact. On the battlefield, when a weapon was damaged, she had to use whatever weapon she could find, so she didn’t want to be limited to just one type. She preferred to collect skills that could instantly boost her attributes or apply to most weapons.
But good things were hard to come by. Seven years had passed, and they had spent nearly half their time evading pursuers, with only a small portion truly dedicated to completing tasks. Most of the skills they acquired were C-grade, with only four B-grade skills and one A-grade skill; S-grade skills were something they hadn’t even glimpsed.
There were many sources for skill books within the tower. Some were created by the spirits of those who died inside the tower, who stripped their own experiences to make skill books. Others were skills lost by foreign creatures who died inside the tower after ascending.
Characters formed from the memories of other beings couldn’t create skill books. For instance, Tao Mian was alive and well outside the tower, but the Tao Mian inside the tower, while looking very real—almost like a clone of his true self—couldn’t strip anything from his true self to give to others.
However, Yu Xunge found that these memory-formed characters were no less real or rigid than the spirits sealed within the tower.
Memory was a vast net, weaving these characters together. The more well-known an oak owl was, the more threads were woven into its existence, making it appear more vivid and alive.
In contrast, characters that existed only in the memories of a few dozen or hundred people were blurry and free; their lives had no mandatory tasks to complete.
Each had its pros and cons, and Yu Xunge couldn’t definitively say which type of character was better.
The tower had already become a self-operating world. It was not just simply real; over the years, she had traveled extensively to collect the essence of the moon for her own purposes. She suspected that the tower might be hiding a fragment of the shattered Senhai; otherwise, how could it contain so many souls that had died for years? But suspicion was just that—she hadn’t found concrete evidence yet.
Now it was the end of the year 7205 in Ruin Core. Over the years, the three of them had stepped out of the perspective of the oak owls, observing the invasion from the viewpoint of bystanders, which had allowed them to see much more clearly.
In the early stages of the instance’s light curtain, Zelan’s progress was indeed slow. This period felt like a beginner’s welfare phase for the oak owls. Once the instance light curtain began to unlock, high-level foreign creatures would enter Senhai to secure an instance, allowing more troops to come through, and the progress would accelerate rapidly.
The “beginner’s welfare phase” for Senhai lasted five years, as most of them were surface dwellers, and the spore-formed instance light curtains were quite obvious, enabling them to clear instances as quickly as possible.
But Blue Star was not so optimistic. Although many people had gained divine talents early due to the game’s beta testing, the biggest difference between Blue Star and Senhai was that Blue Star’s ocean area was too vast, with many instance light curtains hidden beneath the sea…
If progress didn’t go smoothly, it was likely that Blue Star wouldn’t last as long as Senhai.
**Chapter 321: The Tower - Big Moves**
Since becoming Tao Jar, she had been in the tower for 27 years, diligently searching for moonlight to harvest each month, transforming into Tony to carve the night sky within the tower into a patchwork of craters.
Gradually, she discovered a pattern: every time she fed moonlight to the irritable moon, she received 1 to 3 points of essence, which seemed random but was not related to luck; it felt genuinely random.
Her essence points had now reached 772, surpassing even the Emperor Umbrella.
Moreover, she realized that the moonlight she had cut off during her time as Tao Jar, Xiangzong, and Daohe had yet to recover.
That was terrifying! She needed to take advantage of the fact that she was still in the tower to harvest more of those specialties to bring home!
During this time, she also brought Tu Lan along to leech off the irritable moon, discovering that Tu Lan could only ever receive a fixed 1 point of essence, which didn’t affect Yu Xunge’s 1 to 3 points. Sometimes, when Tu Lan was present, Yu Xunge would receive 3 points of essence, so she always took Tu Lan with her afterward.
Now, Tu Lan had also accumulated 83 points of essence.
With so much essence, she felt free to experiment. She needed to understand the effects and limits of essence to use it better.
The result was that C-grade skills could unleash the power of A-grade skills instantly, and the same went for enhancement skills.
For example, her B-grade skill, Blood Shield, originally consumed 30% of her health to create a shield that lasted 12 hours and could withstand damage equal to 10% of her health.
But when using essence to cast Blood Shield, it transformed into a shield that lasted for 3 natural days at the cost of only 10% of her health, and it could absorb damage equivalent to 50% of her health.
Now, if she were to release her SS-grade divine talent skill using essence… whoa…!
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