42: Chapter 42 Evolution!

Before his eyes was a hazy blur, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was calm, and a familiar aura rushed toward him.

Su Ming had already left the Hanging Secret Realm.

The moment he appeared, countless subtle or blunt gazes instantly locked onto Su Ming.

The gazes were mixed with novelty and probing, dread and scrutiny, and a bit of defiance.

Everyone's lines of sight burned brightly, implicitly carrying the intent to apply pressure, and the atmosphere grew faintly stagnant.

The next second, a cold and piercing female voice suddenly sounded: "Humph! Pull back your gazes a bit. If you pry wantonly again, don't blame me for being impolite."

Mu Qingge stepped out slowly, the coercion of a True God quietly diffusing around her body, and a cold hum shook the surrounding airflow slightly.

The originally restless atmosphere instantly dropped to freezing point, and most deities and prodigies, hindered by her strength and background, hastily withdrew their lines of sight, not daring to look around wantonly anymore.

But the experts present were like clouds, and True God realm experts were not few; not everyone was willing to give Mu Qingge this face.

A slightly sarcastic voice sounded abruptly: "Mu Qingge, you are simply too overbearing. How come the people of your Blue Planet can't even be looked at?"

Mu Qingge's eyes were cold and piercing, looking toward the source, her brows and eyes covered with frost: "Wei Shiqi, you forgot the lesson from last time fast enough, didn't you?"

A short sentence, like a sharp blade hanging overhead, made Wei Shiqi's face turn abruptly pale.

Luo Li on the side seized the opportunity to speak, her tone full of mockery: "That's right, I heard you vainly lost a True God Retainer last time, wasn't the price painful enough? Now you actually still have the guts to provoke Sister Mu?"

Pressured in turn by the two of them, Wei Shiqi lost all face, but did not dare to argue again, and could only tightly purse her lips, give an angry cold hum, and dejectedly turn her head away.

The disturbance subsided, Mu Qingge withdrew her coercion, turned to look at Su Ming and his group, her tone shedding its edge, and calmly instructed: "Alright, this place is not suitable for a long stay, follow me back to the warship to recuperate."

The group set off immediately, returning inside the exclusive starry sky warship in a flash.

"You all return to your residences to recuperate, just wait quietly for the return notification. When the ship returns and arrives at the Blue Planet, I will issue further orders." Mu Qingge dropped this sentence, her figure blurred, and she left directly.

The crowd dispersed in all directions, and the clamor faded away.

In a quiet corner of the warship that no one paid attention to, Su Ming and Gu Qingfeng, one after the other, quietly blocked Liu Hongfeng.

The corners of Gu Qingfeng's lips curled into a cold smile, his gaze heavily locking onto Liu Hongfeng: "Liu Hongfeng, you shouldn't have completely forgotten about the bet in the Hanging Secret Realm, right?"

Liu Hongfeng's back stiffened. Even though his heart was filled with unwillingness, he didn't dare to shirk responsibility in the slightest, grinding his teeth and saying in a deep voice: "I, Liu Hongfeng, keep my word and my voice resounds like gold; a promise I make, I will never go back on it."

He raised his hand to take out a gilded star card engraved with star patterns, his fingertips trembling slightly, handing it into Su Ming's hands, his eyes a mix of complicated emotions: unwillingness, dread, and surrender: "Previously, I was short-sighted and blind, repeatedly offending you with my words. There are a total of one million divine crystals inside the star card, five hundred thousand to fulfill the bet, and the remaining five hundred thousand are a meager gift of apology from me. I hope you will let bygones be bygones."

Su Ming was slightly stunned, completely unexpected that the usually arrogant and sharp-tongued Liu Hongfeng was actually so sensible of the times. To resolve the grudge, he directly offered a million divine crystals, which could be called a massive bleeding.

Thinking about it again, Su Ming couldn't help but chuckle inwardly.

He had never taken Liu Hongfeng's provocation to heart in the first place. The Star Glory Divine Enlightenment Academy was inherently a place where nobles gathered, and coming from a commoner background, he had suffered from the mockery and exclusion of aristocratic children year after year; he was long accustomed to such cold and malicious words.

Just two sentences of gossip and sarcasm, and turning his hand to receive one million divine crystals—where on earth was there such a cost-effective deal?

If possible, he even wished this group of aristocratic children would mock him a few more sentences.

Of course, Su Ming was also extremely clear in his heart that this sudden windfall was not because the other party was magnanimous, but because the battle record he displayed in the Hanging Secret Realm had completely shocked Liu Hongfeng.

The other party feared his future rise and revenge, and spared no expense to spend money to avert disaster in exchange for reconciliation.

"Since you sincerely apologize, I will accept this star card, and past grudges are wiped clean." Su Ming accepted the star card, his tone calm.

Even though he lost a million divine crystals for nothing and his heart ached terribly, hearing these words, Liu Hongfeng still breathed a massive sigh of relief, squeezing a forced smile onto his face: "Thank you for your understanding, I will take my leave first."

Watching Liu Hongfeng's panicked departing back, Gu Qingfeng leaned over to Su Ming's side and muttered in a low voice: "This guy really knows how to trim the sails and bully the soft while fearing the hard."

"No need to dwell on these." Su Ming waved his hand, "I'll go back to my room to recuperate first, you should also go back and rest early."

"Alright, this secret realm almost exhausted me to death, I'll go back and sleep well too." Gu Qingfeng rubbed his brow, full of fatigue, and turned to leave.

Su Ming returned to his exclusive guest room alone, exhausted physically and mentally from days of battle, but he had no sleepiness at all. Closing his eyes and concentrating, his thoughts instantly sank into the Jiuyou Divine Domain.

His vision suddenly switched, and the cold and boundless nether qi enveloped his whole body. The moment he stepped into Jiuyou, what came into view was mountains of massively categorized massive resources.

All of them were plundered when he swept through the Hanging Secret Realm.

His Undead Retainers had long sorted and classified them in advance, arranging them in an orderly manner.

Su Ming paced slowly, his gaze sweeping over the materials everywhere. Roughly estimating the value, selling this batch of resources externally would guarantee a baseline of one million divine crystals.

If he expended nether yin qi and completely transformed them into pure nether-attribute resources, the value could still rise by 30%.

Pondering for a moment, he decisively dismissed this thought.

"It's a pity that I don't have retainers skilled in alchemy and pharmaceutics at hand; hoarding a large batch of high-quality raw materials here is simply too wasteful."

Su Ming looked at the mountains of resources and sighed inwardly with regret.

Selling raw materials directly yielded meager profits, but if refined into pills or potions, whether kept for personal cultivation or listed on the divine network to be sold off, the returns could multiply several times.

However, Su Ming had already used up his resource card quota for this month, and wanting to use the retainer card again would require waiting until next month.

Furthermore, alchemy and pharmaceutics-type retainers were extremely rare.

Such retainers were all kept by major forces for themselves and basically would not flow into the public divine network market; even with money, there was nowhere to buy them.

For a time, Su Ming couldn't help but feel distressed.

After struggling for a good while without thinking of a way, he simply stopped struggling.

He still had other more important matters to resolve.

Su Ming raised his steps and walked straight toward the divine palace at the very center of Jiuyou.

The dome of the divine palace was dim, surrounded by swirling yin qi. Above the divine statue altar, three hazy and illusory lights and shadows floated quietly, corresponding respectively to the Yin Soldiers, Purple Zombie, and Crimson-robed Grievous Maidens three types of retainers.

Now the area of Jiuyou had expanded to 43 square kilometers, and the carrying capacity of the divine domain had greatly increased, already meeting the hard conditions for carrying D-grade retainers.

This time, Su Ming was here precisely to evolve his three types of retainers into D-grade retainers.

Each type of retainer required one hundred thousand divine crystals to evolve to D-grade, which added up to three hundred thousand divine crystals.

Holding a huge fortune of a million, Su Ming didn't hesitate in the slightest. With a movement of his mind, the star card shimmered with a faint light, and the three hundred thousand divine crystals turned into a pure golden source torrent, flowing along the veins of the divine domain and pouring entirely into the altar.

The instant the golden light merged into the dim altar, the three source phantoms that were originally stagnant and indifferent suddenly trembled and undulated, ripples of nether spreading out around their bodies.

Su Ming held his breath, his eyes burning brightly, staring intently at the three figures on the altar with full anticipation.