81: Chapter 80 MOD: [Yu Wang Ding]!

Late at night, in the Duel Secret Realm, dark clouds covered the sky.

The corpses of Mutated Deep Ones littered the ground,

their bulging fish eyes staring straight at the entrance of the secret realm, as if dying with lingering regrets.

Suddenly, light flashed at the entrance of the Duel Secret Realm, and a handsome, clear-featured young man walked in.

As he walked, dark cyan light mixed with flowing water flickered around his body.

After the light faded, a dominant set of deep black armor appeared under the moonlight.

The newcomer was none other than Sun Po. Ever since he was ambushed while crafting a MOD last time, he had made up his mind.

Whenever he crafted a MOD in an unsafe area in the future, he would absolutely perform "Armor Merge",

otherwise, if another backstabber caught him off guard again, he would truly have nowhere to cry.

As for why he came to the Duel Secret Realm to craft a MOD?

Naturally, it was to test on the spot whether his MOD concept was successful.

In the end, Sun Po decided to craft a MOD for Tianhe Budu.

The reason was simple: first, judging from Black Rhino Armor's performance in that battle,

it could be said to be truly invincible, fully worthy of its orange-tier quality.

Its only flaw was that its energy consumption was too rapid, and its attacks were relatively weak against god-level monsters.

However, after Sun Po enhanced it with the calamity qi reactor MOD and Tianhe Budu's "Calamity Annihilation" trait,

he successfully solved both of these problems.

Thus, the core of Sun Po's current combat limit was calamity qi—

all his upper limits were inseparable from calamity qi.

Naturally, Tianhe Budu, which had an extremely high compatibility with calamity qi, was the optimal choice.

Moreover, loading MODs onto Tianhe Budu consumed calamity qi,

and the vast amount of calamity qi in this Duel Secret Realm was a "now-or-never" opportunity.

As for Sun Po's concept for crafting the MOD,

he currently wanted to relocate this "village" altogether so that the opportunity would never pass.

In other words, Sun Po needed a storage-type MOD now,

to store as much of this calamity qi as possible into Tianhe Budu.

But even for a custom-made MOD, this choice wasn't easy to conceptualize.

Sun Po had felt this before when making custom MODs.

If he were to purely imagine it out of thin air in his mind, sculpting a MOD completely devoid of cultural or tangible reference concepts,

the colorful jelly-like object on the center screen would be extremely difficult to shape.

Therefore, he had to find a related concept as a reference. Fortunately, this time he possessed divine substance,

so he should be able to craft some god-related MODs, broadening his scope of reference once again.

The first thing Sun Po thought of that fit fairly well was the Iron Bull Suppressing the River,

which was a flood-control artifact specifically designed to suppress river waters—a strongly related option.

However, the Iron Bull Suppressing the River focused more on suppression, and its concept of storage was rather weak.

Next was the Sea-Suppressing Vase, unique to the Southern Fujian region.

Local people would write misfortunes on slips of paper and throw them into the sea, which legend said could protect villages and towns from floods and tsunamis.

But Sun Po felt its status was too low, and it likely couldn't store much calamity qi.

Sun Po even considered foreign items, such as Pandora's Box.

But this box itself contained all the misfortunes of the mortal world. Although it also stored calamity,

considering settings in its legend like how opening the box meant it couldn't be closed, Sun Po still rejected it.

Just as Sun Po was racking his brains to no avail,

suddenly,

an ancient image flashed through his mind.

"That's it! This is the one!!"

With inspiration striking, Sun Po acted immediately.

In ancient times, the Yellow River flooded.

A middle-aged man wearing a coir raincoat and a bamboo hat bustled along the riverbanks every day,

solely to control the waters, passing by his own home three times without entering.

Later, he became the Human Emperor, continuing to build water conservancy projects, slay demonic beasts,

and even cast Nine Great Dings to suppress the Nine Provinces of the world.

That's right, it was the story of Da Yu casting the Nine Dings.

As a symbol of power in ancient China, the Nine Dings

matched Sun Po's absolute control over Tianhe Budu.

At the same time, as sacred treasures suppressing the Nine Provinces, the Nine Dings naturally possessed the attributes of suppressing calamity and praying for blessings,

and with dings being vessels, storing calamity qi was perfectly logical.

Furthermore, as artifacts guarding the Nine Provinces of the world,

Sun Po could completely reference this concept to design a

"Nine Dings of the Realm" unique to Tianhe Budu.

But right after, Sun Po looked at his huge sum of 550,000 spirituality points and felt it might not be enough.

After all, the prototype was a national treasure, so the spirituality points consumed would likely be terrifying.

After pondering for a moment, Sun Po compromised.

"The status of this item is too high; I can only make one first."

Saying that, he opened the custom MOD area

and looked at that colorful blob of jelly as he began investing spirituality.

The [mod loading system] indeed issued a prompt:

"[Authority of Great Old One and divine substance detected. Invest into MOD crafting?]"

"Yes."

Sun Po did not hesitate; he was going all in

to make a powerful MOD that could permanently suppress the domain.

He began recalling all the information from his past life about Da Yu's Nine Dings in his mind:

"'In the past when the Xia possessed virtue, distant regions drew pictures of objects and the nine governors contributed metal,

casting dings depicting these objects, representing all things so that the people might know the divine spirits and malevolent ghosts.'"

This was recorded in the *Zuo Zhuan*, meaning:

"'In the past, when Yu of Xia carried out virtuous governance,

he ordered distant vassal states to draw images of local spirits, ghosts, and monsters.

The feudal lords of the Nine Provinces contributed bronze,

and these images were cast onto the dings.

The dings presented all kinds of gods and monsters in detail,

using this to teach the people to distinguish auspicious gods from harmful evils.'"

"The ding is cast in bronze, carved with inscriptions and patterns?

But I have no common people to teach; I only need to pursue combat power."

Thus, after pondering for a moment, Sun Po carved Changyou's meander patterns onto the massive ding.

The colorful jelly-like object in the center continuously shifted shapes along with Sun Po's thoughts.

"Legend has it that the Nine Dings also had the ability to query the heavens?

Perhaps I can design an ability that synergies with Changyou's [Sound of Fate]?"

"Da Yu's Nine Dings possessed the power to suppress the Nine Provinces, so their weight must be immense."

"How should I change the patterns for distinguishing auspicious gods and harmful evils?"

"I must try to keep the style consistent with the Nine Dings in my memory; going like this seems too bizarre."

...

This was probably the most complex MOD Sun Po had ever designed, and he pondered with complete focus.

Matching the external appearance style as closely as possible, balancing functionality with investment,

and making it as compatible as possible with his card abilities, while leaving more possibilities for adding the remaining dings in the future.

After a long time, the system's electronic voice finally sounded:

"[MOD [emperor yus ding] (1/9) crafted. Quality: [1-Star Gold].

Consumed 550,000 spirituality points in total, 0 spirituality points remaining. Gained 2,000 system EXP.]

[Natural compatibility between custom MOD and host's cards increased by 20%.]

[Compatibility between MOD [emperor yus ding] (1/9) and Tianhe Budu: 97%.]

[Success rate for loading MOD [emperor yus ding] (1/9): 80%.]

[Consume 100,000 strands of calamity qi to load MOD [Nine Dings of Emperor Yu] (1/9) onto Tianhe Budu?]"

Enduring the headache caused by excessive spirituality consumption, Sun Po said,

"Yes!"

The next second, Tianhe Budu automatically manifested, and a dark cyan gas began surging in madly.

A massive bronze ding that obscured the sky broke through the clouds and slowly descended.

But Sun Po's vision was already blurring, and his consciousness was fading.

Just before he was about to pass out, Sun Po vaguely seemed to hear Changyou's voice.

...