Virtual Universe, Ice Peak Lord's private space.
Inside the space, Luo Fan was fighting a powerful expert of the Thousand-Eyed Race.
In front of the Thousand-Eyed Race expert stood a gigantic Water-Space Beast God.
With a single fin slash, the opponent was severely wounded.
After a few more strikes, the opponent was completely killed.
At the same time, a notification sounded in Luo Fan's mind, announcing the completion of the mission.
Listening to the familiar system voice in his head, his face was filled with joy.
The reward for this mission was a Pseudo Heavy Treasure.
Just as Luo Fan was feeling delighted, Ice Peak Lord suddenly appeared beside him.
Luo Fan hurriedly bowed respectfully.
"Teacher!"
Ice Peak Lord looked at Luo Fan with great satisfaction.
After all, although Luo Fan had stayed inside the Cosmic Extreme Tower for many years,
in reality, less than a year had passed.
"Not bad. In such a short time, you have already created a top-tier secret technique."
"This speed is impressive, even for someone using time-acceleration treasures."
Ice Peak Lord assumed that Luo Fan had used a Time Palace for time acceleration.
After all, he knew that Luo Fan had purchased one.
As for where his disciple's money came from, Ice Peak Lord did not look into it.
Those were not important matters.
Which genius did not have their own opportunities?
Ice Peak Lord had no intention of probing into his disciple's secrets.
In fact, he would be happier if Luo Fan had great secrets.
"Next, your main task is to refine this secret technique further."
"I can see that this technique contains many insights from the Beast God Path."
"You can consult your Fifth Senior Brother more often."
Hearing this, Luo Fan nodded.
The Fifth Senior Brother mentioned by Ice Peak Lord was called Hanlong Venerable.
He had previously come to see Luo Fan at Ice Peak Lord's instruction.
Hanlong Venerable had a very deep understanding of the Water-Space Beast God Path.
Under his guidance, Luo Fan's comprehension speed of the Water-Space Beast God Path increased significantly.
After that, Ice Peak Lord gave Luo Fan further guidance, pointing out shortcomings in the secret technique.
He did not point them out directly at once, but instead guided Luo Fan step by step, allowing him to discover them himself.
As a result, Luo Fan's Whale Fin Slash was refined even further.
…
During this period, it was always Luo Fan's avatar that logged into the Virtual Universe.
After completing the mission, his true body directly claimed the reward.
At this moment, Luo Fan's true body was holding a massive blade.
This giant blade resembled a whale's fin.
On the handle was a sculpture of a beast resembling a whale, which was the Water-Space Beast God.
The blade itself was covered with many secret patterns of fused water and space laws.
If this blade were used to execute the Water-Space Beast God Path, its power would increase significantly.
Although this blade was only a Pseudo Heavy Treasure,
its value was extremely high.
If auctioned, it would sell for at least several thousand, or even over ten trillion, Chaos Units worth of universe currency.
Moreover, he discovered something else.
When he created Whale Fin Slash, it had mainly been designed in combination with the Tide Blade.
After all, the Tide Blade had been the best weapon he possessed at the time.
However, after obtaining the Whale Fin Blade, he tried using it to perform the secret technique.
To his astonishment, he found that the Whale Fin Blade seemed as if it had been tailor-made for Whale Fin Slash.
Using the Whale Fin Blade to execute Whale Fin Slash was far more powerful than using the Tide Blade.
It was also much smoother to wield.
This discovery instantly delighted Luo Fan.
This way, he did not need to specially adjust Whale Fin Slash to accommodate the Whale Fin Blade.
…
Hundred Flowers Secret Realm.
During this period, the Space Worm avatar had also discovered many good items within the Hundred Flowers Secret Realm.
This place truly lived up to its reputation as one of the Insect Race's important secret realms.
He had not been here long before harvesting many treasures.
These treasures were mainly various flower- and plant-type spirit entities.
Some could heal injuries and restore divine power, while others could be used to prepare high-grade nutrient solutions.
There were even some that could increase law clarity.
Although the increase in law clarity was not large, they were still extremely precious.
The treasures he collected during this time were worth over ten million Chaos Units.
However, Luo Fan was not particularly happy.
For ordinary genius World Masters, or even Marquis-level Immortals, these treasures were extremely valuable.
But Luo Fan completely lacked none of these things.
Still, he had only been searching for a few months, and there was no harm in continuing slowly.
Over these months, he also encountered many plant-type lifeforms.
Occasionally, he would test his secret techniques on them.
Most of the time, he simply bypassed them.
Unless the plant lifeform had some particularly precious fruits on it.
At this moment, an alert sounded from Luo Fan's detector.
Over 900 million kilometers away, two powerful beings were engaged in battle.
They had just entered the range of his detector.
He checked and saw that it was an Insect Race Mother Empress fighting a plant lifeform.
A trace of curiosity flashed across his face.
This was the first time he had encountered an Insect Race Mother Empress since entering the Hundred Flowers Secret Realm.
This was mainly because the location he had entered was relatively deep.
Furthermore, the Hundred Flowers Secret Realm was vast, and there were not many Insect Race Mother Empresses qualified to enter it.
As a result, he had not encountered any other Mother Empresses until now.
Yet at this moment, he saw an Insect Race Mother Empress fighting a plant lifeform on his detector.
Normally, when encountering plant lifeforms in the Hundred Flowers Secret Realm, the best approach was to bypass them, just as Luo Fan did.
After all, most plant lifeforms did not possess particularly valuable items.
More importantly, killing them would certainly require paying a price.
Plant lifeforms were famous for their massive divine bodies.
In such cases, the cost and the reward were often disproportionate.
Therefore, after arriving in the Hundred Flowers Secret Realm, very few Mother Empresses would actively provoke plant lifeforms.
Even if they encountered one by accident, they would avoid it as much as possible.
But this Mother Empress was clearly abnormal.
She was not personally fighting the plant lifeform.
Instead, she had deployed a large number of Insect Race warriors.
Judging by the numbers, there were at least several hundred thousand.
One had to know that cultivating several hundred thousand Insect Race warriors was extremely troublesome.
It not only consumed enormous resources, but also required a great deal of effort.
Using them to deal with a single plant lifeform would result in massive losses.
This represented a loss of several hundred thousand Chaos Units at minimum.
For a World Master–level Mother Empress, this was not a small loss.
And that was under normal circumstances.
Luo Fan noticed that those did not seem to be ordinary Insect Race warriors.
Their combat power was extremely strong.
They appeared to be Insect Race Kings.
One had to know that creating a single Insect Race King cost one hundred times more than creating an ordinary Insect Race warrior.
Viewed this way, her losses were even greater.
Even for a World Master–level genius Mother Empress, this was a massive expenditure.
After all, such a large number of Insect Race Kings was not just a matter of resources, but also required an extremely long time to produce.
At this moment, Luo Fan grew curious about what exactly she had encountered.
Without hesitation, he began transforming himself, disguising his body as a flower.
Within the Hundred Flowers Secret Realm, his disguised form was completely inconspicuous.
After transforming, his aura did not appear strong at all.
As a result, a normal World Master–level Mother Empress would not even give him a second glance.
Next, Luo Fan directly used a wormhole to arrive near that Insect Race Mother Empress.
After arriving nearby, he could observe both sides of the battle more clearly.
That plant lifeform was only an ordinary Immortal.
However, its divine body was simply enormous.
Even as an ordinary Immortal, under a strategy of trading injuries for injuries,
the Insect Race Kings on the battlefield were dying one after another.
Moreover, this plant lifeform had already gone somewhat mad.
After those Insect Race Kings died, not even their corpses remained intact.
Such remains, even if used as materials to nurture Insect Race warriors or Insect Race Kings, would require a large amount of fragmented remains just to produce a single Insect Race warrior.
Yet at this moment, there was not the slightest trace of heartache on the Insect Race Mother Empress's perfectly beautiful face.
On the contrary, her expression was filled with excitement.
It was as if those dead Insect Race Kings were not nurtured by her at all.
Luo Fan quietly took out his detector and began scanning the surrounding area.
When he saw what appeared on the detector, he could not help but freeze for a moment.
In the distance, about 500 million kilometers away, there were actually more than a dozen Immortal-level plant lifeforms.
Among them, the strongest had even reached the high-level Marquis stage.
This in itself was extremely abnormal.
Plant lifeforms generally disliked movement.
As such, they would not actively seek out others of their kind.
Normally, there would not be any other plant lifeforms near an Immortal-level plant lifeform.
This was similar to how ordinary plants require sunlight.
If two flowers bloomed in a very small corner, receiving only a tiny amount of sunlight each day,
then those two flowers would inevitably compete for that limited sunlight.
Plant lifeforms were the same.
They strongly rejected the presence of their own kind nearby.
After all, plant lifeforms were enormous in size.
Even more massive were their underground root systems.
A plant's underground root system was often even larger than the portion above ground.
For plant lifeforms, these roots were also the medium through which they absorbed energy.
Therefore, within the range of a single plant lifeform's root system, there would usually not be a second plant lifeform.
But the distance between these plant lifeforms was extremely short.
This was highly unreasonable.
This could only mean one thing.
There was a treasure there.
Judging from the distance, the plant lifeform currently fighting the Insect Race Mother Empress had likely originally been there as well.
It had simply been lured away by the Mother Empress.
Most likely, she planned to lure these plant lifeforms out one by one and eliminate them, then seize the treasure there.
Alternatively, she might first lure out some of them,
and once she was confident, snatch the treasure from the remaining plant lifeforms.
Because the distance was too great, Luo Fan's more precise detector, which was specifically designed to search for treasures, could not detect what exactly was there.
Since this Insect Race Mother Empress was dealing with these plant lifeforms one by one, Luo Fan could simply wait for her to kill a few more before going over to take a look.
He prepared to play the role of the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it. (TL/N: It just means, MC will let her do all the work while he reaps everything later.)
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