Ian Song didn’t get back to his dorm from Redleaf Mountain Resort until 10:20 p.m.
He flipped on the living room light, and his gaze inadvertently landed on the bullet holes in the wall. Instantly, the image of that gold-ranked assassin flashed through his mind.
That guy’s existence was like a ticking time bomb. How could he possibly dig him out?
"Maybe I should let Nangong Yuntian handle it!"
But he immediately dismissed the idea. If the Nangong Family couldn’t even track down Blood Rose, a silver-ranked assassin, there’s no way they’d manage to find a gold-ranked one.
Still, I need to find a chance to turn the Nangong Family’s great elder into my puppet too. That way, I can use their power to secretly protect Uncle’s family.
After a quick wash-up,
Ian went to his bedroom and took out the Ancient Bronze Ring.
Refining a magic artifact involves two steps: first, blood recognition to claim ownership; once that succeeds, you need to temper it with true essence.
So, Ian found a box cutter in his nightstand, sliced his finger, squeezed out a drop of blood, and dripped it onto the Ancient Bronze Ring. To his delight, the ring quickly absorbed his blood.
Right after, he felt a subtle connection form between himself and the Ancient Bronze Ring.
He activated Radiance of Life to heal the small wound on his finger, then started channeling true essence into the ring.
Suddenly, a tremendous suction force erupted from the Ancient Bronze Ring.
Boom!
His true essence burst out uncontrollably, flooding into the Ancient Bronze Ring.
"Crap!"
In just one second, a tenth of his true essence was gone—and the rate of loss kept accelerating.
For a moment, Ian panicked. Then he remembered he still had a spirit crystal on him. He quickly pulled it out, gripped it in his palm, and started absorbing.
The aura inside the spirit crystal was incredibly pure—even a few degrees purer than his own true essence.
But converting it into true essence would take time, and the Ancient Bronze Ring was devouring his reserves faster and faster. Seeing he was about to be drained dry, he had no choice but to redirect the spiritual energy he was absorbing into the meridians of his other hand.
Ian’s quick thinking actually worked—the Ancient Bronze Ring abandoned his true essence and started absorbing aura instead.
After about a minute, the suction from the ring suddenly stopped. Ian let out a silent sigh of relief, sensing that his bond with the ring had grown even tighter.
Suddenly, his vision went black.
When the light returned, he found himself in a dim, gray space.
The space was about the size of his bedroom—completely empty.
"What’s that?"
Ian’s gaze fell on a cyan ancient jade rod lying on the ground, shaped like a ruler.
But in the next instant, he was ejected from the space. At the same time, he sensed something cold in his hand. Looking down, he saw it was the same cyan jade he’d just seen in that dim space.
He paused for a moment, then understood what had happened.
If he guessed right, the Ancient Bronze Ring was a storage ring, and this jade was a message jade slip—used by immortal cultivators to store information, basically a magical USB drive.
Reading the jade slip was simple—just place it against your brow.
With a thought, Ian pressed the jade slip to his forehead. Instantly, he sensed a mass of information flooding into his mind, imprinting itself onto his cerebral cortex.
Whoosh!
After reading the information, the jade slip crumbled like weathered stone, turning into a pile of jade sand that slid from his palm…
"I wonder what kind of information was stored in this jade slip?" Ian muttered, sinking his consciousness into his cerebral cortex. Instantly, an ethereal, illusory voice echoed in his ear: "Junior, I am Dan Ding Zhenren. It’s fate that you obtained my jade slip. With this map, you can safely enter my cave estate, where I’ve left you several gifts."
As soon as the voice finished, a map appeared directly in Ian’s mind.
After looking over the map, Ian quickly opened his laptop and searched for a map of the Yanhuang Republic online.
The online map of Yanhuang was incredibly detailed, down to every village and country road.
It took him two minutes to memorize the Yanhuang map, then he compared it to the one in his mind.
But after comparing, Ian couldn’t help but frown.
Because the two maps didn’t overlap at all.
"Could it be that Master Dante Dan’s cave estate isn’t inside Yanhuang?"
"Then I’ll try searching the world map!"
He pulled up a world map in his browser and quickly scrolled around. In about fifteen minutes, Ian memorized the world map down to every village.
Then he compared again.
"No way, seriously?"
This time, he found a match—the mapped area was actually in a tiny country called Nika, located on the Australian continent.
So he searched for information about this country called Nika.
What he found left him speechless.
Nika’s territory was only about two-thirds the size of Xiang City, with a population of roughly 3.85 million. It had three cities total, and the capital, Saint Etienne, was about the size of an ordinary county-level city in Yanhuang.
The other two cities were even smaller than a county.
What really made Ian speechless was that such a tiny place wasn’t even unified. Three factions constantly fought—one day they’d raid each other, the next day they’d wipe each other out. Out of 365 days in a year, at least 300 were spent fighting.
Nika had three main powers.
First was the government army, which only really controlled the area near the capital, Saint Etienne.
The second faction was a rebel force led by a woman named Nadia—yes, a female commander—with more than three thousand fighters under her command.
The third force nominally accepted the government’s rule, but in reality, Marshal Gillard commanded five thousand troops and didn’t give a damn about the so-called government.
Ian shut down the computer, feeling a bit depressed.
If Master Dante Dan’s cave estate were in Yanhuang, he’d have considered spending two days searching for it. But since it was on the Australian continent, in a tiny country that was always at war, he could only shelve the idea until after the college entrance exams.
On a whim, he pulled up the system interface.
"Whoa, my Fame Points actually went up by over a hundred million."
He was shocked to find his Fame Points had reached around 205 million.
The next day, when Ian walked into the classroom, dozens of eyes were fixed on him with burning curiosity.
This gave Ian a headache—he’d already been stopped by several students asking for his autograph before he even entered the classroom.
Today’s morning self-study was supposed to be Ms. Han Sha’s class.
But when the bell rang, it was the language teacher who walked in.
According to the language teacher, Ms. Han Sha had some family matters and might not be back until tomorrow.
After class, Ian wanted to call Ms. Han Sha, but after picking up the phone, he hesitated and put it down again—he wasn’t sure how to face her.
Just then, his phone suddenly rang.
Ian frowned—it was an unfamiliar number.
After a moment’s hesitation, he answered. A domineering voice came through: "Is this Ian? I’m Yang Susu, agent for Murong Xinyue. I’d like to meet with you at noon today. The location is..."
Ian was already annoyed, and the arrogant tone made him even more so. He cut her off with a blunt "No time" and hung up.
On the other end, Yang Susu was stunned—he’d actually hung up on her.