Chapter 1 Departure

After Su Lun bid farewell to Jing Xiansheng and the others, he didn't disturb the other members of the Dawn Squad and quietly left the Eternal Night.

He left the Burial Grounds and headed south towards the sea.

By nightfall, he was already near the Cobros Strait, eight hundred nautical miles south of Blizzard City.

The moonlight was faint tonight, and a thick fog covered the sea.

Su Lun walked on the sea as if walking on flat ground, leisurely and unhurried.

A legend has always circulated in the Alchemy Plane, known to almost every sailor: on foggy nights, lucky people can encounter a ghost ship drifting on the sea, full of gold, silver, treasures, fine wine, and beautiful women. You can go on board and take whatever you want, partying as much as you like. However, anyone who goes on board must come down before midnight, otherwise, they will never be able to leave, and when the ghost ship disappears, you will have to become a ghost on the ship along with it.

Su Lun had also heard many versions of the "Cursed Ship" story in the island circles before, most of which were related to beauty and wealth.

But no matter the version, it was full of mystery.

Now that Su Lun has reached this level, there are not many truly mysterious events in the Alchemy Plane.

He was also very curious about what exactly this cursed ship, which has been circulating for at least tens of thousands of years, was.

Now that he knows it's related to a Demon God contract, it's certainly not as simple as a ghost ship.

Before long, the sea around him was completely dark, and the night sea breeze entered his neck, feeling slightly cool.

But for Su Lun, the darkness made him feel more at ease.

His state of mind was as steady as his footsteps.

As he walked, suddenly, the black crow perched on his shoulder cawed.

Su Lun raised his eyes and looked southeast, pondering, "Oh? Even you can't figure out that existence, Crow?"

He stayed where he was, waiting quietly.

The waves under his feet rippled slightly, and the shadow of a huge ship gradually appeared in the thick fog in the distance.

A gleam of wisdom flashed in Su Lun's eyes, and he had already unlocked the Second Realm of the Omniscient Eye, carefully observing everything around him.

Before long, a three-masted sailing ship with brilliant lights burst into view.

He didn't see any ghosts, nor did he sense any soul fluctuations.

Su Lun's eyes reflected the ship, but the corners of his mouth slightly raised, and his heart suddenly realized: "Oh, this isn't even a ship at all."

He could see through it at a glance. The so-called "Cursed Ship" did look like a ship to the naked eye, but it was actually just an energy body covered in spiritual illusions.

The reason why it was recognized as a ship was simply because it had transformed into a carrier that humans in the Alchemy Plane could recognize.

As for those beauties and treasures, they were just illusions.

Anyone below Ninth Rank would probably not be able to see through the essence of this ship.

Even if they encountered it, they would completely regard it as a ghostly ship adventure.

The rumored fine wines, romantic encounters, and treasures... were all mental illusions created by those who boarded the ship.

Seeing through the essence, Su Lun immediately felt bored.

But his expression did not fluctuate in the slightest.

This kind of boredom was an inevitable process of glimpsing the truth.

Hei Xiansheng had once said to him, "Knowledge is heavy. As you gradually understand this world, you will gradually lose your enjoyment and indifferently view everything in the world."

Now that Su Lun had advanced to Ninth Rank and touched the ceiling of the Alchemy Plane, this feeling was real.

The Demon God probably made this scene to make the "Cursed Ship" widely circulated, attracting more people to look for this legendary ghost ship. The ghost ship slowly sailed over from the sea, and Su Lun didn't hesitate. He leaped onto the ship.

With his current mental strength, it was impossible for him to be deceived by that layer of illusion unless he wanted to be.

There was no one on the ship, only a contract on paper. He quietly sat there and began to meditate cross-legged.

Now that the cursed ship had no secrets, Su Lun was curious about where it would go.

......

After the cursed ship took on Su Lun, its only passenger, its speed suddenly increased.

The night around him passed faster and faster, and Su Lun's expression didn't fluctuate at all.

Suddenly, he felt the whole ship sink with a thud and plunged into the sea.

The surge of divine power made Su Lun suddenly open his eyes and let out a soft sigh in his heart.

He glanced around and saw that the entire ship had sunk into the sea.

But strangely, the seawater didn't flood in, but like a filter, the ship was no longer in the same space.

"High-level Void Displacement?"

Su Lun pondered. This was an advanced spatial displacement technique that even he had not mastered.

He observed without showing any signs, and threw out a few crystals with spatial coordinates along the way.

Before long, the cursed ship plunged into a crack in the ground. In an instant, the scenery in his vision became various twisted abstract lines, and spatial fragments like broken glass.

This was a "Plane Rift." Su Lun had seen it once in the Dragon Kingdom waters.

The Alchemy Plane was a broken plane, and deep within the plane were a large number of cracks like the roots of a large tree, leading to unknown places.

This was a dangerous area that Su Lun didn't dare to explore now.

Once he went wrong, he would be swept into the spatial gang wind and would almost certainly die.

At this moment, the cursed ship was taking him through these cracks, deeper and deeper.

Su Lun felt like he had entered a kaleidoscope, and his eyes were filled with chaos.

He was proficient in the laws of space, so he knew that a crack could be hundreds of thousands of miles away.

In just a moment, the cursed ship had taken him to a very distant place, so far that even the Dawn Organization's communication device couldn't sense it.

If it were a normal human, they would have long been "seasick," dizzy, and disoriented.

Fortunately, after merging with the [Blasphemer], Su Lun's brain processing ability became extremely strong. He recorded the routes while leaving some spatial markers at the key points of the intricate spatial rift network.

In this way, Su Lun was carried by the ship and traveled for three whole days.

During this time, he felt himself leaving the bottom of the Alchemy Plane, which was full of spatial fragments, and crossing a river-like river of time and space, and then plunging into another dense spatial rift...

Su Lun knew he had definitely left the Alchemy Plane.

He had even traveled through many planes.

He had never thought that he would take a trip across planes in this way.

Before, Su Lun thought he could only go to other planes through plane channels. But now, coming through spatial rifts was like "smuggling."

He also guessed that the Demon God's situation was clearly not good.

On the fourth day, the situation changed again.

Su Lun remained conscious, recording the routes.

He suddenly found that the surrounding space had suddenly become stable, which meant that the cursed ship should have arrived at a stable plane.

Su Lun also became very cautious, with his rune umbrella in his left hand, his black scythe in his right hand, and the crow on his shoulder fully alert.

Before long, before he saw anyone, he suddenly sensed four human-like soul fluctuations within his range.

"Humans?"

Su Lun breathed a sigh of relief.

At least they were humans, not some strange existence.

The scenery around him changed, and Su Lun found himself in a closed space like a cellar.

As soon as he arrived, four pairs of eyes looked at him. To be precise, not all of them were human.

......

Su Lun saw four beings.

A three-meter-tall barbarian, a white-faced young man in a robe, a woman wearing animal skins with dragon scales on her body, and the last one was the strangest.

His upper body was human, but his lower body was a horse.

"A Centaur?"

Su Lun recognized it at a glance. This was the legendary mythical race.

From the four people's attire and aura, he knew that these four came from different civilizations, different races, and different planes.

Perhaps, in their eyes, this alchemist was also very strange?

Su Lun silently took the four into his eyes, and the four people in the space were also looking at him.

The four of them seemed to have arrived a while earlier, and four pairs of eyes were looking at him, examining him in various ways. Because Su Lun could clearly feel someone probing with their aura, divining with secret arts, and a kind of bloodline sensing...

The atmosphere was strange and full of caution between each other.

"What a bunch of weirdos?"

Su Lun muttered in his heart.

The soul fluctuations of the people in front of him were all outrageously strong, all at least at the peak of Old Sword God Barto's same-rank combat power.

In other words, judging from the soul aspect alone, these guys probably all had peak Ninth Rank combat power!

And that barbarian might even be a demigod.

Looking at the situation, it seemed that he wasn't the only one who came to keep the appointment.

These people were too.

Just as Su Lun was observing the others, a hint of doubt flashed in the eyes of the white-faced young man in the robe, and his mind turned slightly: "Huh... strange, he's clearly a new Ninth Rank, but he was the last to arrive? That's not right. According to the previous order of arrival, the higher the rank, the later the cursed ship should bring them here... Could this guy have something special?"

......

The newcomer Su Lun didn't speak, and the cellar seemed a little tense.

Although he guessed that these people weren't enemies, he still maintained his instinctive vigilance.

Although this faint vigilance wasn't directed at anyone, the four people in front of him were all top experts, so how could they not see it?

The barbarian, who was more than three meters tall and as sturdy as an iron tower, noticed something, frowned, and said in a muffled voice: "Your Excellency has a heavy murderous aura."

A heavy murderous aura?

To be called murderous by this barbarian who had killed countless people, wouldn't he be a terrifying murderous demon with a human face and a beast's heart?

As soon as these words came out, the expressions of the other two people and one horse instantly became a little strange when they looked at Su Lun.

When they reached this level, they knew that the more unfathomable a guy was... the more bizarre his background was!

What he said was a series of jibber-jabber, obviously a native language of a plane. Su Lun understood [Language Comprehension], so he understood without any obstacles.

He glanced at the barbarian. The faint bloody aura on the other party's body seemed to be some kind of secret technique that could sense a person's murderous aura.

Just now, this guy was probing him as soon as he came in.

Su Lun didn't intend to explain what the other party said about his heavy murderous aura. He had indeed killed many people to get to where he was now, plus the puppet army had killed... probably hundreds of thousands.

No wonder the guys in front of him looked at him like he was a monster.

Su Lun didn't intend to explain to a few strangers.

However, the white-faced young man smiled and started a conversation in a seemingly familiar way, "Are you also here to fulfill the Demon God's contract?"

He was speaking in a language that Su Lun had never heard before.

But this person obviously also used a secret technique similar to language comprehension.

Su Lun listened and nodded, and asked with a normal expression, "Are you all here for the same reason?"

The white-faced youth chuckled and said, "Yes. Then we may not be enemies. Your Excellency doesn't need to be so vigilant."

He didn't seem to want to provoke a "suspected psychopathic killer."

He took the initiative to say, "Let me introduce myself. My name is Jay, and I'm from the Dou Qi Continent. A Ninth Rank Dou Sheng."

Then he pointed to the other few and introduced, "This is Mr. Kamuru Tu, a demigod archer of the Centaur race... This is Ault Ralph, a barbarian berserker from the Attila Continent... This is Miss Dragonkin Marcia. We arrived a few days before you and are all waiting here to fulfill the Demon God's contract. I don't know if anyone else will come later..."

As soon as Su Lun heard this, he knew that the others had indeed met each other first.

Dou Qi Continent, Attila Continent, Dragonkin, Centaur. Some were civilizations he had heard of in myths, and some he had never heard of.

Su Lun also admired how big this world really was.

Moreover, although their cultivation systems were different and their ranks were different, the four people's cultivation was definitely at the Alchemy Ninth Rank concept, the ceiling-level combat power that low-level creatures could touch.

From this simple introduction, Su Lun also obtained a lot of useful information.

Looking at the gazes cast by the four, he also faintly introduced himself, "Nicholas, a Death Warlock, from a very small and remote plane."

He decided not to say his real name.

Although he wasn't too afraid of any curse spells now, he couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be any means of using his name to do strange things.

Safety first in an unknown environment.

Moreover, he didn't say that he was a puppet master, nor did he say that he was an alchemist.

Because after he stripped the memories of those mages from the Celestial God Plane, he found that the reputation of alchemists wasn't very good in the heavens and planes.

Alchemists were called "God Thieves" by the heavens and planes.

Because in the eyes of God's believers, extraordinary abilities were bestowed by God. Alchemists relied on various alchemical techniques to steal the origin mysteries of the universe, which was tantamount to blaspheming God and stealing the abilities that only God possessed.

Another factor was that the predecessors of the Dawn Era were too good at fighting. They had fought in various planes and beaten too many civilizations. Those plane channels were the "evidence" they left behind.

Perhaps the civilizations of the few people in front of him were once enemies of the Alchemy Plane, or even mortal enemies.

No!

It was almost certain that they were 99% enemies!

Because of the special nature of alchemy, the alchemical civilization had almost no truly friendly planes. Any plane with a god-belief wouldn't allow alchemy to spread, and they were all in an antagonistic relationship.

The four people heard this and obviously kept something back, but they didn't show any other color.

Everyone was a stranger to each other, so how could they not have any secrets?

At least, the little bit of information they had revealed just now was true.

Death Warlock?

Did it sound like a necromancer-like profession?

They glanced at the scythe wrapped in black cloth in Su Lun's hand. This thing was a common weapon of the death gods in many civilizations.

No wonder...

The exaggerated murderous aura could be explained.

At this time, the woman in animal skin with some dragon scales on her body seemed to have discovered something and asked, "Is Your Excellency also a Dragonkin?"

"Yes."

Su Lun knew that someone had just tested him with a bloodline secret technique, so he ambiguously replied, "There is indeed a little Dragon bloodline in my blood."

He wouldn't say that this was an alchemist's gene potion and the [Dragon Mark Golden Body] armor.

The Dragon race was licentious. Even in myths, many races had a bit of Dragon bloodline, so it wasn't strange for humans to have Dragon blood.

Hearing this, Marcia's eyes flashed a dark light, obviously not believing it: "Your Excellency is being humble. I sense that your Dragon bloodline is very strong, not inferior to mine."

As soon as these words came out, the expressions of the other three people became slightly strange again.

Wasn't he a Death Warlock? How was he also a Dragonkin with a high-purity bloodline?

Usually, Dragonkin already had extremely strong physical combat power, so they didn't need any other professional system.

Although the few people all had their own secrets, it was at this moment that they all realized that this "newcomer" was a bit deep.

......

The five people in the cellar chatted with each other about some trivial matters.

But those who could advance to the Ninth Rank were by no means kind people.

They were probing each other in their conversations.

Su Lun noticed that these guys were all very shrewd.

The barbarian Ralph, who looked simple-minded and well-developed, said "heavy murderous aura" as soon as they met, actually wanting to shift the attention of the other three to him, the newcomer; and the Dragon Girl Marcia's purpose was the same.

She seemed to be asking, but she was actually revealing the information that Su Lun was a Dragonkin, wanting others to know that he was very strong.

In this way, if something happened later, the one who stuck his neck out would be shot first, and the one who was paid special attention to would naturally be the one who talked the most.

Heh!

They were all a bunch of old foxes.

Su Lun also pretended not to notice and said some information that wouldn't reveal his identity.

While talking, he was also observing that they seemed to be in a very deep underground.

He was also very curious. What exactly did that Demon God want these five contractors, who could all be considered top combat powers in their respective planes, to do?

From the current situation, it seemed that that Demon God had spent many thousands of years constantly summoning contractors by various means.

But he was still continuing to do so today.

In other words, the thing he wanted to do hadn't been done yet.

From this point of view... the contract would be very tricky.

Su Lun was the last of the five to arrive.

He originally thought he might have to wait for others, but he was the last one.

Before long, the cellar suddenly turned cold.

An indescribable will descended.

The five people all looked solemn and looked in the direction of the cellar.

They also recognized at first glance that this was the mysterious contractor.