A level 50 Tier-5 BOSS, at this stage where the average player level in Blazing Ember City was only in the low twenties, was practically invincible.
Combined with all kinds of AOE skills and explosive damage, the Dark Ruler, bearing the bearing of a king, swept across Shadow City with unstoppable force.
Under the BOSS's rampage, the Chaotic World guild players' death rate reached an unprecedented level.
Endless white light, just like fireworks on New Year's Eve, scattered above the city.
The Chaotic World guild that the Dragon Soul guild couldn't defeat even after fighting at full strength for an entire hour, was completely crushed by the Dark Ruler in just two minutes.
"Fack! What the hell is wrong with this BOSS? Why is it chasing us like crazy and killing us?"
"Seems like as long as you pick up that scroll, you get hunted. If you don't touch the scroll, you're fine!"
"Brother Jie said whoever picks up the scroll and brings it to him gets a one-million bonus! And you can even become Chaotic World' vice guild leader!"
"But even if you pick it up, you can't keep it! That thing always drops on death. Why die for a pie you can't even eat, losing levels and gear for nothing?"
"Holy shit! That actually makes a lot of sense! Then brothers, let's run!"
Thinking that the BOSS would keep rampaging like this, the few remaining Chaotic World survivors all fled the city in utter embarrassment to seek refuge outside.
Only Lin Mo, having guessed that the BOSS didn't have much time left, stayed hidden in a corner of the city, waiting for the right moment.
Waiting until the Chaotic World guild players were either dead or had fled, completely routed by the BOSS.
Only then did Lin Mo emerge from hiding.
He walked precisely to the Shadow Codex drop location he had been watching the entire time, and picked up the Shadow Codex.
At this moment, the Dark Ruler, who had just finished wiping out the last batch of Chaotic World players who had tried to risk their lives to grab the Shadow Codex, turned his head toward Lin Mo.
"Damn you!"
"This king will tear you to pieces!"
With a furious roar, the Dark Ruler spurred his blazing warhorse and charged toward Lin Mo, wielding the King's Authority Sword.
Watching from afar, the Chaotic World players let out a wave of mocking sighs.
"So Rulebound has been hiding this whole time and didn't leave? He's trying to scavenge leftovers?"
"Haha! What a joke! Did soloing a Tier-3 BOSS by abusing terrain go to his head? Does he really think he's so badass that he can even block a level 50 Tier-5 BOSS?"
"Let's see how this self-righteous idiot gets one-shot by the BOSS!"
Just as those Chaotic World players were gloating from a distance, waiting to watch the show, on the field, facing the Dark Ruler charging straight at him, Lin Mo stood calmly in place, unhurried, silently counting down under his breath, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1!"
The instant Lin Mo finished counting down to zero—
Buzz!
The Dark Ruler's body suddenly turned translucent and gradually disappeared, only a few dozen yards away from Lin Mo.
At the same time, the Shadow cavalry regiment that had followed the Dark Ruler out of the dungeon also vanished from every corner of Shadow City.
At the center of the city, the Shadow Gate closed.
In an instant, everything returned to calm.
Lin Mo felt a wave of relief in his heart.
Just as he had expected: the dungeon time was essentially the BOSS's free activity time.
Once the time was up, even a Tier-5 BOSS like the Dark Ruler had to obediently go back.
And Lin Mo had timed it perfectly, coming out to pick up the codex in the last few seconds.
However, the Chaotic World players on the outskirts were completely confused.
"The BOSS… disappeared?"
"What the hell? Why is it that the moment Rulebound picked up the scroll, the BOSS was gone? When we picked it up, the BOSS chased us like a mad dog!"
"Fack! Go kill Rulebound and make him drop the scroll! This time let's stop fighting among ourselves. Once we get the one million bonus, we'll split it among the brothers!"
As soon as one person reacted, all the Chaotic World players who had been hiding instantly swarmed toward Lin Mo.
Clearly, Lin Mo's deterrence as the Heavenly Rankings' number one was far inferior to that of a Tier-5 BOSS.
Chaotic World didn't dare snatch the scroll from the BOSS, but they dared to snatch it from Lin Mo.
Lin Mo, however, remained completely calm. His gaze swept over the ground littered with loot dropped by dead Chaotic World players, and he sighed.
"So much stuff. If I picked it all up, I could sell it for quite a bit of money, right?"
"Forget it. I'll let you have this pile of scrap metal. Anyway, all the good stuff is already in my bag."
Thinking this way, Lin Mo no longer felt any regret and instead felt extremely satisfied.
As he spoke, he took a Town Portal Scroll out of his backpack and crushed it.
Whoosh!
White light enveloped Lin Mo, and a ten-second return-to-city countdown appeared above his head.
"Fack, he's teleporting back!"
"Don't let him get away! Brothers, charge!"
All around, Chaotic World players rushed toward Lin Mo with the same speed as a man whose wife had been cheated on running to catch someone at a hotel.
But in the end, they were still one step too late.
They could only watch helplessly as Lin Mo, carrying their "one million," turned into white light and vanished from the city.
Inside Shadow City, the sound of "FACK" filled the air.
———
At the same time, Blazing Ember City.
Upon receiving news from his underlings in Shadow City that Lin Mo had taken the scroll, Wang Junjie instantly flew into a rage.
"Fack your mother! Trash! I spent so much money just to raise a bunch of useless trash like you?"
At this moment, the strategist Chaotic World Zhuge suddenly realized something.
"Wait! That's not right!"
"This scroll was thrown out by Rulebound in the first place, and it has the property that it always drops on the holder's death. Could it be—"
"Rulebound deliberately used this scroll as bait, luring the BOSS to help him deal with us! Because he knew that no matter who picked up the scroll, they'd never make it out alive."
"And he even precisely calculated the time when the BOSS would return to the dungeon. After using the BOSS to kill our people, the scroll went around and around and ended up back in his hands…"
"Damn it! Just like last time in the Insect Nest Underground Palace, when he used the insect swarm against us. It's that facking 'killing with a borrowed knife' again."
Wang Junjie grabbed Chaotic World Zhuge by the collar and roared, "Then why the fack didn't you say it earlier? Why didn't you say it sooner?"
Chaotic World Zhuge could only swallow his bitterness, "Sorry, Brother Jie. I only realized it just now. This Rulebound is just too cunning."
"AAAAAAH!"
"Rulebound! You deserve to die! You really facking deserve to die!!"
Wang Junjie got so angry that his brain ran out of oxygen, and with a "thump," he collapsed to the ground.
The surrounding underlings all rushed over.
"The boss fainted again!"
"Boss, wake up, boss!"
"Quick, someone with piss-yellow urine, come wake the boss up! He still hasn't given us our bonus yet!"
———
On the other side—
Lin Mo returned to Blazing Ember City via the Town Portal Scroll.
His first reaction wasn't to check the overflowing profits from this dungeon run.
Nor was it to turn in the hidden dungeon quest, which was even more valuable than the dungeon's direct rewards and would grant even greater gains.
Instead, he opened the Blazing Ember City rankings and, through the reputation leaderboard's number one spot, found [Liuli].
It was already certain: Liuli was Ning Xi.
Liuli was the number one female emperor of the Dragon Nation national server in his previous life, one of the world's nine SSS-tier talent holders, Xi Yue.
In fact, Lin Mo should have seen this coming earlier.
"I remember that in my previous life, wherever Xi Yue was, the top spot on the reputation leaderboard was always hers, and her reputation value was just as absurdly high as Liuli's."
Lin Mo remembered that in his previous life, when the second-ranked player on the reputation leaderboard had only just broken into five digits, the first-ranked Xi Yue was already at eight digits.
Simply having a massive amount of reputation wasn't scary.
What was scary was that Lin Mo had once carefully observed that every time the Empress Xi Yue fought, her reputation value on the leaderboard would decrease in real time.
From this, he deduced, "Xi Yue's SSS-tier talent doesn't just allow her to gain enormous amounts of reputation, it also lets her temporarily and massively boost her combat power by consuming reputation."
Lin Mo had also considered that Liuli might have a similar talent type to Xi Yue's, both related to reputation gain, just of a different grade.
But then he thought about it again: every SSS-tier talent in the Divine Oracle world was unique. Xi Yue's talent couldn't be copied, not even at a lower tier.
So in Lin Mo's mind, Liuli's identity had always been a huge mystery.
But he never imagined that Liuli was actually Xi Yue herself.
"Wait!"
It was as if Lin Mo suddenly thought of something, his heart almost came to his throat violently.
"That means, although Ning Xi entered Divine Oracle early in this life, her talent didn't change?"
"The talent she awakened is still the same SSS-tier talent from her previous life?"
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