The strongest Independent, yet in the blink of an eye he had raised such a large force and seized such a huge territory. In essence, it still came down to power reaching a certain level; so‑called "forces" were merely a derivative of Wen Yu’s own strength.

They walked past the mountain of corpses Mountain Kui called the "canteen". The stench in the air gradually weakened, and the mutant beast or puppet they ran into by the roadside became fewer and fewer. Seeing this, the leading Mountain Kui immediately quickened his pace.

Mountain Kui’s strength was not weak, and Fran, as Sequence Number 6, was at least as strong as Mountain Kui if not stronger. The open ground in front of the great mountain was swiftly crossed by the two of them, until they reached the foot of Mountain Kui’s main body.

Mountain Kui’s main body had already grown into a great mountain nearly a thousand meters tall, and Wen Yu’s "bedchamber" — the Soul Experiment Lab — was located inside Mountain Kui’s body.

All of this was information Fran already knew.

He saw the root of the towering mountain ahead suddenly split open, revealing a pitch‑black, bottomless cave. One pure white light source after another flared to life inside the cave, extending straight into the mountain’s interior. Mountain Kui stood at the entrance and made a "please, go ahead" gesture to Fran.

"I can only guide you this far. Things outside are busy; you’ll have to walk the rest of the way yourself."

This wasn’t perfunctory. As Wen Yu’s most trusted Soul Abiogenetic Creation, Mountain Kui oversaw the entire Soul Puppet Legion. It was only because this was Fran; if it had been someone with a weaker identity and power, Mountain Kui’s carbon copy wouldn’t have needed to show up in person at all.

Seeing this, Fran nodded lightly, then stepped into the mountain’s belly.

...

The light sources on both sides of the tunnel illuminated the deep cave down to the tiniest detail, without any oppressive or suffocating feeling. Even so, the length of this passage still exceeded Fran’s expectations.

He spread out his Perception Ability, sensing the internal structure of the entire mountain — Fran was very curious about Mountain Kui’s main body. But as expected, his Perception Ability was completely blocked; he couldn’t sense anything. At the same time he kept walking inward, until a heart‑rending howl came from ahead; only then did Fran stop, standing before an open, spacious area.

In his line of sight, the crooked, skewed large characters "Soul Experiment Lab" made Fran avert his eyes for a second. Then his gaze slid downward, and he immediately saw Wen Yu standing in the middle of the plaza‑sized open space. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

At that moment, Wen Yu’s hands were emitting a faint, nearly imperceptible radiance. A Demon Fiend bound tightly in front of him was screaming and crying in sheer terror. There weren’t many wounds on its body, but its broken, shattered gaze was more than enough to prove that this unlucky guy had suffered a punishment even crueler than torture.

"You’re here. Find a place to sit, wait for me a bit."

Wen Yu spoke without even turning his head, then continued the experiment he hadn’t finished.

Fran wasn’t in any hurry. He casually leaned against the wall, standing on tiptoe as he carefully watched the busy man in front of him.

Still unfathomable as ever, but compared to the last time they met, Wen Yu now had an extra hint of scholar‑like calm. The smell of blood on him wasn’t that strong, yet the aura all over his body had become even more ethereal and hard to pin down.

He’s stronger again...

Fran thought so, then gave a self‑mocking smile — there was no reason for Wen Yu not to grow stronger.

Then his gaze was drawn by Wen Yu’s movements.

Wen Yu’s right hand flared with light and slapped directly onto the Demon Fiend’s head. As the glow expanded, that poor Demon Fiend rolled its eyes back, losing even the strength to scream. Only when Wen Yu carefully yanked out a blazing, radiant orb of light from its skull did that Soot Skin Demon Fiend pitch forward and collapse to the ground, completely losing its life.

Wen Yu, meanwhile, carefully held the glowing sphere extracted from the Demon Fiend’s head and lightly pressed it onto a sheet of white paper shaped like a scroll at the side.

As soon as the light orb touched the white paper, it rapidly merged into it. The next second, like fireworks, the white paper exploded into a riot of colors. In this dazzling brilliance, Fran could clearly sense a strange power condensing on the scroll. Only when the light died down did Wen Yu exhale heavily, joy spreading across his face.

"It worked? From the look of it, your experiment should have succeeded."

Only now did Fran speak.

Wen Yu picked up the scroll and examined it in detail, nodding quite satisfied before turning to look at Fran.

"You could call it a success."

With that, he tossed the scroll in his hand to Fran.

Psionic Barrier (A-Class, Active Skills): Releases a wide‑area energy barrier. Within this barrier, elemental type abilities will be greatly amplified.

A pretty standard ability, but recalling Wen Yu’s actions just now, a flash of understanding shot through Fran’s eyes.

"This is a skill you made?"

"You can think of it that way. Part of it is extraction — extracted from a B-Class Skill on that Demon Fiend. The other part is modification — upgrading and transforming the skill. I won’t go into the specifics; it’s a pain in the ass, and the success rate isn’t high. Let’s just say this one was for practice."

At this point Wen Yu caught the skill scroll Fran tossed back and put it into his space ring — the mutant ants under Luo Luo could also have their skills tuned with Wen Yu’s help. In other words, low‑level skills were still useful to Wen Yu, which also meant the birth of yet another resource‑devouring bottomless pit.

"Now then, let’s see what gifts you, Santa Claus, have brought me this time..."

Wen Yu rubbed his hands together, looking full of anticipation, which made Fran smile and shake his head.

"Relax, you won’t be disappointed."

...

Finding a spot at random to sit down, Fran took three scrolls out of his space ring and laid them out in front of him, gesturing for Wen Yu to inspect the goods first.

True Dragon Golden Body (Species-specific Esoteric Level, Passive Skill): A member of the Dragon Race with this skill will, as time passes, gradually raise the upper limit of their species innate talent and physical attributes, and break through body‑size barriers, slowly enlarging their body. When under attack, True Dragon Golden Body transforms into Golden Dragon Battle Body, massively boosting the host’s various defense capabilities and comprehensively enhancing the power of all the host’s other skills.

The Dragon Race, darlings of the heavens — their long lives grant them incomparable power! This is a bug‑tier lifeform that gets stronger even without working hard. Of course, that time span will be very long... very long... very long...

A Limit Breakthrough Level ability, and it covered both limit breaking and combat capabilities, making it pretty comprehensive and tailored specifically for the Dragon Race — very suitable as one of Star’s skills.

But those three "very long..." gave Wen Yu a faint sense of foreboding.

Fran explained at the right moment: "It was discovered in a treasure land that had been modified within a world inhabited by the Dragon Race."

Wen Yu nodded, fairly satisfied as he put away the skill, then picked up the next scroll.

Skill Upgrade Scroll (SSS-Class item): Upgrades one skill from S-Class to SSS-Class.

Skill upgrade scrolls — Wen Yu had seen them before. The significance of items like this was even higher than skills of the same level. At least in Wen Yu’s eyes, this definitely counted as a valuable trade item.

He decisively stored the skill upgrade scroll away, then looked at the last scroll in front of Fran.

The two scrolls Fran had just traded over were both of decent quality and really hadn’t let Wen Yu down. Now, Wen Yu couldn’t help feeling great expectations for the final scroll.

Meeting Wen Yu’s burning gaze, Fran sighed and said, "This last scroll isn’t part of the deal. Rather, it’s..."

Halfway through, Fran abruptly shut his mouth and simply pushed the scroll toward Wen Yu, indicating that Wen Yu should look at it first.

Wen Yu picked up the scroll, and a prompt sounded in his mind.

"Deep Sleep Spell (Species-specific Esoteric Level item)..."

"This is..."

Wen Yu narrowed his eyes, looking at Fran expressionlessly. He only heard Fran speak: "My lord, that promise you once made to Tang Haofei — does it still count?"

In his mind he recalled what Tang Haofei had said to him at the very first meeting of the Ultimate Force Team, the last favor he’d spent. Then he looked down at the Deep Sleep Spell in his hand. After a long moment, Wen Yu gave a firm nod.

"I, Wen Yu, keep my word."