As soon as Lin Huang returned to the Devil Hunter Star Zone, he activated the communication transfer function on his communicator and transferred it to Sword1’s communicator. He also authorized access for Sword1 to enter and exit the Great Heaven Territory freely.

  Furthermore, he let Sword1 know that if he received news from Death Sickle or any other important information, he could come into the Great Heaven Territory and knock on the door of the Great Heaven Palace.

  After making these arrangements, Lin Huang entered the Great Heaven Palace again and went into closed-door cultivation.

  As for the matter of Death Sickle’s headquarters being attacked, he did not participate any further in subsequent discussions.

  In reality, his presence did not really matter since Buried Heaven and the Blood Sickle members were there.

  In terms of resources and connections, Death Sickle most certainly had more of them than he did.

  Lin Huang did not want to waste his time by joining in.

  Of course, if they needed his help with anything, he would not say no either.

  Since the two Death Sickle incidents, all he wanted now was to become as powerful as possible.

  This was because he felt that it was only a matter of time before he was noticed by Raiders.

  He even suspected that he might already have been targeted by Raiders.

  Inside the Great Heaven Palace, Lin Huang sat down cross-legged and began to list out, one by one, the methods for making himself more powerful.

  "First of all, for my combat strength, I’ll need 256 half-step Lords’ God Territories to elevate from eighth-rank to ninth-rank. Although there are an extra 17 God Territories left from elevating to eighth-rank previously, I still need 239 more to elevate. In the interim, it will be extremely difficult to obtain so many half-step Lords’ God Territories. All I can do is obtain more resources later on to trade for half-step Lords’ God Territories.

  "Secondly, my Sword Dao is already at a critical boundary. Whether or not I can go a step further and break through from Sword Dao heavenly rule to Sword seal will depend on chance. Looking at things now, the possibility of achieving a breakthrough in the short term isn’t very high.

  "Thirdly, the maximum number of god sequence chains that I can borrow is already at twelve thousand eight hundred chains. If I want to increase that number, I have no choice but to use combat strength to achieve a breakthrough. Of course, in the long run, I need time to comprehend those borrowed god sequence chains and transform them into my own. However, I can’t strengthen my ability by comprehending god sequence chains from scratch. I can definitely wait on this until I’ve elevated to ninth-rank or tenth-rank.

  "Number four—there’s still room for improvement in my Divine Telekinesis. I still have the last eight images of the unknown Divine Telekinesis visualization set that I haven’t visualized yet. This is a way for me to elevate my abilities at present.

  "Number five—the God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls’ strength is lagging far behind my current abilities. This is actually also something that can be elevated. However, should I refine a new batch of half-step Lord dead bodies or use Advance Cards right away to elevate the original God’s Figurines? For now, I haven’t figured that out yet……

  "The sixth thing would be elevating the imperial monsters’ abilities. They’ll mainly have to rely on themselves for this. After all, I can’t help with elevating their combat strength. I’ll help when they need to advance a level. However, apart from Advance Cards, it’s quite impossible to expect them to acc.u.mulate materials. I’m guessing that for rare elevation materials, I’ll still need to find a way to gather them……

  "Number seven—there’s room for improvement in the Sword Servants’ abilities as well. The swordmaster guardians like Sword1 and Sword2 in particular; they have the ability and the acc.u.mulated experiences necessary to break through and become Lords. However, this can’t be rushed. I still need to give them enough time to prepare themselves. For the rest of the Sword Servants, their potential has almost been exhausted. Not many of them will be able to elevate to lord-level……"

  Lin Huang analyzed every aspect of his current situation.

  After a moment of thought, he calmed his mind and began to visualize the 101st unknown Divine Telekinesis visualization image.

  He chose to strengthen his Divine Telekinesis since this was the fastest way for him to elevate at present and would not cost him anything extra. All he had to do was to invest time and effort.

  Very soon, Lin Huang entered a visualization state.

  Time passed, day by day, in the Great Heaven Palace.

  In the outside world, three days had passed.

  However, in the Great Heaven Palace, it had been over thirty thousand days.

  Lin Huang—who had been sitting, legs crossed, like a piece of deadwood—finally opened his eyes today.

  When he opened his eyes, the first thing he did was check the date. When he realized he had only used thirty thousand days or so, he felt quite happy.

  This was because he knew that the visualization would become increasingly difficult after the 100th image. Based on his estimation, if he had tried this when his Divine Telekinesis was not at lord-level yet, he would need over three hundred thousand days to visualize just the 101st image. In other words, approximately a month would pass by in the outside world.

  Now, however, the efficiency of his visualization had increased significantly.

  He could clearly sense that his Divine Telekinesis had also become more powerful.

  "It looks like the origin of this set of visualization images might not be so simple after all." Lin Huang had only now realized that the improvement in his Divine Telekinesis brought on by the visualization images had far surpassed his expectations.

  Seeing that Sword1 had not come to awaken him, Lin Huang decided to quiet his mind again and seize the time to visualize the 102nd visualization image.

  Six days went by in the outside world.

  In the Great Heaven Palace, however, over sixty thousand days had passed, since time was accelerated ten thousand times.

  When Lin Huang opened his eyes again, he had already visualized the 102nd visualization image.

  He had initially supposed that his Divine Telekinesis strength would elevate to lower-rank lord-level after visualizing all one hundred and eight visualization images. However, he now discovered that this had been achieved even though he had only visualized the 102nd image.

  "If I continue the visualizing, don’t tell me my Divine Telekinesis strength might achieve a breakthrough to middle-rank lord-level?!" Lin Huang was rather astonished.

  Seeing that there was still no news yet from Sword1, Lin Huang calmed his mind again and continued to visualize the 103rd visualization image.

  However, this time, he had only been visualizing for a few days before a series of knocks sounded on the door of the Great Heaven Palace.

  Lin Huang immediately came out of his visualization state.

  "It looks like news has probably come from Death Sickle."

  He gestured, and the door of the Great Heaven Palace opened. Sword1 was standing there, clad in a long green robe.

  "Lord Swordmaster, news has come from Buried Heaven. I’ve already informed him that you’ll reply to him in a little while."

  "Alright."

  A moment later, the two teleported back to the Devil Hunter Star Zone.

  Lin Huang returned alone to his courtyard and called Buried Heaven’s number.

  In just a little while, the video call connected. Buried Heaven’s white-haired, youthful figure projected into the courtyard.

  "How is the investigation going?" Lin Huang asked right away, without bothering about niceties.

  "We’ve located someone whom we suspect might be the owner of the hand you severed." Buried Heaven paused and took stock of Lin Huang. "But I need you to bring the severed hand over to verify it."

  "Not a problem. Where do we meet?" Lin Huang agreed readily.

  "Let’s meet at headquarters," Buried Heaven said, a ferocious gleam flashing through his eyes, "After that, we’ll both go and pay a visit to the Combat God Temple!"