My Apocalypse Territory-Chapter 457 - 425: Virtual and Real Transit

Beiting, Green Shadow Transfer Station.

Station chief Shay was in a conversation with the Anti-Demon Bureau Chief Yao Jun.

"... Purchasing high-purity Source Crystals, any attribute will do? No specific requirements?"

"Not exactly, we’ll take whichever is cheaper."

Yao Jun: "..."

Is that even a thing?

High-purity Source Crystals used for cultivation, could they be just picked randomly? Each attribute of Source Crystal had its corresponding group of Awakeners, how could there possibly be any cheap ones...

Actually, there were!

Elemental Series high-purity Source Crystals were in high demand due to the wide range of suitable cultivators, and they were generally not for sale unless traded for items of equivalent value.

But there were some attributes of high-purity Source Crystals, such as Blood Attribute, such as Erosion Attribute... Normal Awakeners would find them extremely inefficient for cultivation, and there’s also the risk of attribute conflict.

Yao Jun weighed his options and indicated that a transaction was possible.

Shay continued, "We also need some Dream Water, about a hundred grams."

"Dream Water?"

Shay produced a picture that displayed a colorful droplet of water with a description of the item’s characteristics below it.

Yao Jun studied it carefully for a while, then suddenly remembered something.

"What do you need the... Dream Water for?"

"I wouldn’t know that, I’m just a small-time worker after all."

Shay spread his hands.

Yao Jun was speechless; he had clearly seen Shay pinning down the deputy commander of the Candle Dragon a few days ago and grinding him into the ground.

The two haggled back and forth.

Eventually, Green Shadow purchased eight thousand units of high-purity Source Crystals and 80 grams of Dream Water from Beiting.

In exchange, they would have to provide Beiting with a hundred pieces of B-grade custom weaponry, as well as help Beiting deal with a Fourth Epoch powerhouse occupying a large Sanctuary.

...

"It’s no trouble, thankfully Beiting has Dream Water."

Ten thousand units of high-purity Source Crystals, he should be able to gather them; the stockpile in several large mines, plus those in his own Space Ring, should be nearly enough.

But as a result, there would inevitably be a shortage of cultivation resources in the future, so trading with Beiting was the best option.

As for the Dream Water, that was something he had never even heard of.

At the Transfer Station, Shay requested the transaction to be expedited.

Five minutes after Tang Yu conveyed the message to Shay through a contract, eight thousand units of high-purity Source Crystals finally arrived at the Territory through the Transmission Array.

Taking another two thousand units himself, he hurriedly purchased the Nightmare Puppet blueprints.

The parchment blueprint, glowing with a faint purple light, flew out and landed in his hands.

Tang Yu continued to refresh the system over a hundred times, and finally, he managed to complete the four-piece set of the Nightmare Puppet blueprints: Cloak (200k Source Crystals), Scythe (250k Source Crystals), Mount (500k Source Crystals), and Treasure Artifact (500k Source Crystals).

Damn expensive!

About the system’s "high probability of appearing" claim, Lord Tang had his doubts.

...

Workshop.

After the fitting degree of the Territory had increased, and with Tang Yu’s deep understanding, a new crafting mode was developed.

There was no longer a need to manually insert materials. As long as they were placed in storage, the materials would be automatically consumed during manufacturing, just like when building system structures.

Much more convenient.

But the manufacturing button still required manual operation.

He first chose to craft the Nightmare Puppet, and on the display screen, a progress bar slowly advanced.

Calling it slow was only relative to the usual pace of crafting advanced rune equipment; in less than a minute, accompanied by a light "beep," a puff of black smoke emerged from the workshop’s black box outlet and quickly formed a humanoid figure.

A black shadow with blurred features, like an extra playing an unnamed criminal lurking in the dark.

"Nightmare Puppet?"

Tang Yu tried to control it, and the moment his spiritual power touched the Puppet, the Nightmare Puppet’s appearance changed, its face becoming seventy percent similar to his own.

His perspective also split in two, one side viewing the transformed Nightmare Puppet, the other seeing himself through the eyes of the Nightmare.

Quite bizarre.

...

Two hours later.

In the back mountain, a figure wearing a cloak and holding a scythe floated in the air. His figure intermittently became ethereal and vanished, only to re-emerge from a different spot moments later.

"The Nightmare Puppet actually possesses the ability to transit between virtual and real, and it can also be controlled from a distance."

The figure murmured in a voice somewhat similar to Tang Yu’s, and indeed, he was controlling it from behind the scenes.

In terms of combat power, the Nightmare Puppet’s performance was quite average, only slightly stronger than Yan Dingtian, and its behavior pattern was rather rigid, far from comparable to Number One and Number Two.

It couldn’t grow stronger through cultivation, nor could it learn new Combat Skills or Magic.

The only way for the Nightmare Puppet to become stronger was one: by devouring Dark Attribute Source Crystals.

"Yet another big spender on Consuming Crystals."

Although that was the case, Tang Yu was quite satisfied.

The Nightmare Puppet itself had only one ability, which was to switch between the virtual and the real. When entering the nihility space, the Nightmare Puppet could not affect the outside world; thus, its combat power was not strong, but...

The scale of the nihility space was different from reality.

Tang Yu remembered just now when he merely controlled the Nightmare Puppet to make a light leap, it appeared several kilometers away in the mountains behind.

"And the control of the Nightmare Puppet is not like other puppets... Other puppets, once out of the territory range, can only switch to puppet perspective within my perception range, that must be the Lord’s privilege. But the Nightmare Puppet... seems to come with remote control capability?"

To verify this, the Nightmare Puppet, under Tang Yu’s control, entered a gorgeously radiant nihility space—he had already ordered that should it lose control, the Nightmare Puppet would automatically return to the castle after ten minutes.

One minute...

Two minutes...

In that radiant space, the connection between Tang Yu and the Nightmare Puppet remained tight. Moments later, finally making a leap, the Nightmare Puppet’s ethereal figure solidified and appeared in the real world.

The surroundings were desolate borders, with buildings overgrown with vines and old trees housing crows.

Sensing for a moment, he found he was no longer within the range covered by the territory.

While a part of Tang Yu’s spirit still lingered within the Nightmare Puppet, as if he had gained an avatar...

With a thought, he raised his right hand and grabbing the sickle handle, swung fiercely, pure Source Power transformed into sword light, carving a trench hundreds of meters long.

"Although it can’t learn any skills, transcendent is still transcendent, and the Nightmare Puppet, created with the Soul Crystal core of the Evil Dragon Clan, also inherited the Evil Dragon Clan’s fundamental transcendent ability."

The Nightmare extended its left hand, pale and delicate like a human’s, a gray stream of air blasted out from the palm, and everything in its path, be it vegetation or buildings, silently ignited.

Visible to the naked eye, the vegetation withered and the walls of buildings became increasingly dilapidated, cracks winding throughout.

The special ability "Evil Dragon Breath"!

It possessed an extremely strong erosive capability!

"With this move in combat, it’s enough... Instead of fighting, remote control combined with the ability to leap through the virtual and real makes it a perfect scout. No wonder the Nightmare Puppet’s intelligence is low, if there’s a controller, what’s the need for intelligence?"

The Nightmare made a trip back to the territory, took a Return City Scroll, then the figure faded and stepped into the kaleidoscopic, ethereal space.

Continually transiting.

Based on previous experience, the distance covered in the nihility space was much greater than in reality, and it would not be discovered by the transcendent from the Alien Race, truly a divine skill for speedy travel.

The only problem was that it was difficult to determine direction and the landing spot was unknown.

Returning to reality in an instant, it was also very possible to plummet into a Forbidden Land. However... the Nightmare Puppet might not have great combat power, but its ability to escape was top-notch.

The problem was not significant; it could afford to be reckless.

Tang Yu was envious; he coveted this ability!

...

Multitasking, he split his attention between cultivating on autopilot and controlling the Nightmare’s traversals.

Finally, Tang Yu felt it was about time.

The Nightmare jumped out of the nihility space, surrounded by the squalor of an old urban district.

In this area, the density of the Demonized Beasts was high, and as soon as the Nightmare Puppet appeared, the Demonized Beasts wandering the streets surprisingly noticed an outlier among them.

Growling, they lunged at him.

A sickle swung from virtual to real, held in the hand of the Nightmare, a crescent moon-shaped glow slashed from the sickle, and in an instant, Demonized Beasts within hundreds of meters turned into powder, with buildings collapsing one after another.

"Seems I overdid it with the force."

Tang Yu smiled wryly, but after all, controlling this body was nowhere near as nimble as the real one.

At that moment, the Nightmare Puppet looked toward the distance, its shape flashed, and it broke the sound barrier, streaking off into the distance.

...

On the rooftop of a high-rise building at the edge of the county town, an eight-person team clad in beast-hide garments was busy with their tasks—some checking equipment, some scouting, observing the environment of the county town.

"Captain, something’s off about this county town, the Demonized Beast density is just too high... Hold on, there’s a person over there! F*ck, he’s cheating!"

The exclamation made several teammates look over just to see dust and smoke, and a figure in a cloak holding a sickle, hovering outside the 18th-floor terrace.

A ghost? It’s a ghost!

The eight-person team’s faces were filled with horror as if their throats were gripped, rendering them unable to make a sound.

Just when they thought they were about to perish, the cloaked figure with an indistinct face spoke:

"Three questions, where is this? What’s the name of the largest Sanctuary nearby? Are there any Secret Realms or Crystal Ore in this area?"

The team rapidly spilled all the information they knew, fearing that any delay would turn them into the dead beneath the sickle.

Moments later,

The oppressive presence faded, and the captain cautiously lifted his head, only to discover that the cloaked figure had vanished without a trace, leaving only a war saber emanating a cold light on the edge of the terrace.

...

For two consecutive days, Tang Yu ensconced himself within his territory, yet he controlled the Nightmare Puppet to run wild and revel outside.

As a scout that could just brazenly plow through, the Nightmare’s efficiency in reconnaissance was high. Beiting’s information was mostly limited to around large local Sanctuaries, but the Nightmare Puppet could boldly explore where people were sparse.

At each location it visited, if it encountered an Awakener, it would casually inquire; those with malicious intent were killed outright, while those providing valuable leads were generously rewarded by Tang Yu... and so he learned quite a bit of valuable information, even discovering two Secret Realms.

At that moment,

Information came from Shay through the Contract, "Beiting is already prepared, hoping we can dispatch the Floating Airship soon to deal with that large Sanctuary forcibly occupied by Awakeners of the Fourth Epoch."