Chapter 20: The Challenger Plan | Monsters Are Coming
[Number of Players: 90]
Number of Contained Primordial Traits: 9
Player's Sacrificial Power Output Today: 552 points
Average Monster Level: 5
Owned Territory Node: Emperor's Mound Village (The place where the Emperor's Sign's final trace of Origin is buried; possesses the territory rule trait of life reconstruction)
—
After reviewing today's gains, the Primordial Altar beneath Qi Sheng's feet glowed.
After a brief spatial distortion, he appeared in his bedroom in the real world.
Glancing at the calendar hanging on the wall, he opened the window, switched to Emperor's Sign form, and flew into the vast night sky.
After a long while, Qi Sheng arrived at an abandoned graveyard.
It had been untended for many years. Many tombstones were covered with creeping vines, and nearby, a city rail station was under construction.
Qi Sheng's footsteps stopped before one particular tombstone.
The photo on the tombstone was already faded, and the engraved words were worn and indistinct.
Staring at the tombstone, Qi Sheng's expression was complicated. In the end, he knelt before the grave and bowed deeply.
Maintaining this posture for a long time, he eventually stood up and began restoring the tombstone, as memories surged in his mind.
When he was a child, he often fantasized about having powers beyond ordinary people. But when he truly obtained them, he realized he had inherited a heavy burden.
He crossed into Monster World at the age of eighteen.
At that time, Monster World was mired in great upheaval. The Monster King, the Emperor's Sign, had self-dismantled, and the various factions, now leaderless, plunged into chaotic fragmentation.
The war had already lasted thousands of years before his arrival. The factions that once served the Emperor's Sign all sought to become the new rulers of the world.
Among them, four forces were the most powerful.
Yan Ming, master of spatial power; Nine Yin, master of purification power; the Guide, master of analysis power; and Transdimensional, master of extraction power.
They had once been the Emperors most loyal retainers. After its dismantling, each believed they were the rightful successor to the Emperor's Sign, striving to inherit the trace of Origin it had buried in Emperor's Mound Village, to become the new Emperor's Sign.
But the arrival of the terrifying Black Tide altered the tense stalemate.
Monster World was gradually corroded by the Black Tide's power, its ecology devastated, with spatial rifts appearing across the world.
At this rate, Monster World would eventually be consumed by the Black Tide.
The four retainers ultimately chose to join forces to resist the Black Tide, battling the endless hordes of evil entities.
The long war left the four retainers increasingly weakened, while the power of the evil entities continued to grow along with the Black Tide's infiltration. Defeat became inevitable.
Eventually, the four retainers were pushed to the edge of Monster World by the evil entities, to Emperor's Mound Village where the Emperor's Sign's trace of Origin was buried. There, they unsealed a forbidden seal and hid within.
Emperor's Mound Village became the last uncorrupted sanctuary of Monster World.
The four retainers had originally hoped to fuse with the Emperor's Sign's trace of Origin, inherit its power, and use that power to fight the Black Tide again.
But at the critical moment, the terrifying Black Tide struck again, engulfing Emperor's Mound Village.
It was at this moment that Qi Sheng crossed into Monster World, pulled into the vortex of the Black Tide, on the brink of death.
At the crisis point, the four retainers joined forces to repel the Black Tide and rescued him, bringing him into Emperor's Mound Village.
That battle further weakened the already frail retainers, causing varying degrees of physical damage.
The Guide was stripped of its life form and turned into its current water orb shape.
What the four retainers had not expected was that none of them inherited the Emperor's Sign's trace of Origin. Instead, this honor fell to Qi Sheng, a mere mortal who had crossed over.
Qi Sheng clearly remembered the complex expressions in the eyes of the four retainers when he inherited the Emperor's Sign's power.
Anger, confusion, despair, unwillingness, excitement… all kinds of emotions intertwined, but ultimately they accepted it with calm resignation.
The four figures knelt before him and swore eternal loyalty, vowing to serve him as retainers for all eternity.
In turn, Qi Sheng took on their obsessions, promising to use the might of the Emperor's Sign to save Monster World and dispel the endless horror of the Black Tide.
In the years that followed, he first fused with the Emperor's Sign's trace of Origin, entering a 300-year slumber.
Afterward, under the guidance of the four retainers, he underwent a hundred years of cognitive learning, teaching him to understand the abilities of the Emperor's Sign and the workings of Monster World.
However, to truly become the God of the Emperor's Sign, he had to leave Emperor's Mound Village and explore Monster World, containing the scattered Primordial Powers of the Emperor's Sign.
But this process was unimaginably difficult. Aside from possessing the trace of Origin, he had no other powers. The Emperor's Sign Vessel could not be strengthened through any cultivation method; only by containing could he gain strength.
His strength at the time was only slightly better than the weakest creatures in Monster World, and with evil entities rampant outside, his growth was painstakingly slow.
The Emperor's Sign's trace of Origin greatly attracted evil entities. The four retainers believed that once discovered by high-tier evil entities, disaster would surely follow. Therefore, every time he ventured out, sacrificial power had to be constantly spent to mask his Emperor's Sign aura.
Each expedition was a significant sacrificial power expense.
During this time, he contained the Owl-Headed Fiend, Gargoyle, and Black-Scaled Serpent, gradually increasing his strength.
But in the eyes of the four retainers, this pace was still too slow. The sacrificial power consumed on each expedition far exceeded the gains from hunting and containment, and they had already injected their remaining divine power into Emperor's Mound Village to prevent its destruction by the Black Tide, unable to assist him further in battle.
At this rate, the village would fall before he could grow strong enough, as its sacrificial power reserves would be depleted.
Just when the four retainers had fallen into despair, Qi Sheng proposed a concept.
This idea became the prototype of the Challenger Plan: the Player Recruitment Plan.
The four retainers each controlled different rule-based powers.
He had the Guide, a master of information, create the data system of the Challenger Plan, allowing challengers to read data on everything they encountered in Monster World.
He had Yan Ming, master of spatial power, create the summoning system, enabling the summoning of challengers from different worlds into Monster World, and returning their consciousness upon quitting.
He had Nine Yin, master of purification, create the purification system, which could cleanse challengers of mental trauma and various negative states.
He had Transdimensional, master of extraction, create the growth system, allowing players to refine the life force of dead monsters and merge it into their bodies, becoming part of their strength.
These four systems, combined with Emperor's Mound Village's territory trait 'Life Reconstruction,' made the player recruitment plan viable.
To achieve this goal, the four retainers spent fifty years perfecting and refining the system, and eventually, the Challenger System was completed.
At that time, the sacrificial power pool of Emperor's Mound Village had only about ten million left, enough to sustain the village for ten more years. Moreover, as the Black Tide's strength grew, the maintenance cost kept rising, increasing from 500 points a day to 1000 points a day.
The four retainers left the decision to him, and Qi Sheng made his choice.
He gambled the remaining sacrificial power on a future, having Yan Ming burn sacrificial power to use spatial power to search other worlds for potential challengers.
Throughout the cross-space search, Qi Sheng's consciousness remained alongside Yan Ming.
During that time, he saw countless worlds corroded and devoured by the terrifying Black Tide. All things withered, leaving only countless evil entities roaming the heavens and earth.
Just as their sacrificial power was about to be exhausted, Qi Sheng saw a familiar place.
It was a blue planet.
As the image of the planet zoomed in, though it had changed greatly from his memories, he was certain.
This was his former home.
At that moment, Qi Sheng smiled with great joy.
He knew he had succeeded. The Challenger Plan had finally found its purpose.