Divine Emperor of Death

Davis and the others watched how it played out with Shirley and Dewzai.

He wondered what his women were up to collecting subordinates and making allies with enemies or opponents. Surely, they knew their alliance could collapse at any moment.

Then it hit him.

"It's possible that the ninth step has sealed their prowess or at least halved it, leaving Isabella and Shirley making these choices."

"What?" Mingzhi looked at him smilingly, "It's a possibility, but why do you say that?"

"It's because their cultivation haven't dropped to the Immortal Stage when everyone thought the ninth step would regress their cultivation base further than Level One Immortal King Stage."

Davis gave his reason and explained, "Since that didn't happen, we could only infer that their prowess degraded or they have other ailments that we don't know about, like lowering their energy capacity. However, lowering their energy capacity isn't as dreadful as lowering their prowess, so I think the latter is the most likely scenario that occurred- shit."

He cursed, focusing his gaze on Evelynn, and wondered if she was safe as she was alone.

Isabella and Shirley might have gained some shield, but not Evelynn.

He still saw her lurking in the crystal mountains, trying to do something that he couldn't see through.

The gazes of Mingzhi and the others became solemn while Myria was slowly understanding what was going on as she missed out most of the Candidacy. Natalya was walking her through over what had happened as she was seated by her side and even started casually holding hands with her as though trying to close the distance.

Evelynn hid in the crystal mountains, making her way around whenever she spotted those crystal creatures.

One misstep, and she would be meat paste. If she was found, then only the escape talisman could save her. As for the defensive talisman, she didn't know of its full capacity.

Can it defend against Mid-Level Immortal Emperor Beasts? She didn't know.

Despite the odds, she carefully traversed the mountains and found something. It wasn't hidden, but the crystal mountains blocked her sight from being able to find it, so until she made her way around, she didn't see it.

It was a monument.

[Candidates have the right to life by forsaking the treasures obtained so far and leaving the Crystal World through the Crystal Gate. This does not include the rewards they earned by clearing the trials.]

It had the same writings as what Isabella and Yi Feng had seen, but she didn't know about it.

The thought of finding the Crystal Gate didn't cross her mind as she was planning to win the Candidacy. However, she garnered the latter sentence and glanced at the crystal mountains.

Did that mean the immortal crystals were ripe for the taking, and she only needed to deal with these crystal creatures somehow to gain them?

Evelynn panned her gaze around, trying to think of a way to obtain these immortal crystals.

She felt that there must be a reason for their spatial rings being confiscated. After all, they all had plenty of immortal crystals in their spatial rings, so there must be some significance in immortal crystals being present in massive amounts. Novel Fire - novelfire.net

'The High-Level Immortal Crystals shouldn't be important. I should take the Vein Fragments and Vein Sources instead…'

There were around nine crystal mountains here. She came to the northeast corner where it was a blindspot to the beasts who returned after losing sight of that man who appeared and screamed out that he was rich.

Evelynn once again panned her gaze and saw that no one was there.

She carefully extended out her spider bones from her back. The four purplish-black sharp scythes pierced through the white robe, unfolding as the seven segments stretched, making her appear bigger and deadly.

Her purplish-golden eyes flashed with a red light, causing the tip of her scythes to glow in a faint crimson light. Standing tall, she flinched forward slightly, causing the scythes to pierce through the crystal wall.

The moment the four scythes made contact, the tip of the scythe blade caused tiny explosions to occur. It was so minute that it couldn't be pierced by even Evelynn herself but she knew that she applied the collapse property of her Hex Laws to her scythe blades.

It caused the matter she touched to disintegrate from within, so in essence, she was destroying the High-Level Immortal Crystals in her way, eradicating their energy capacity.

She tried to do it in a way that didn't release too much attention, so she was still on the lookout, watching if the crystal creatures were going to descend on her.

*Puchi~* *Puchi~*

Her four scythes carved the crystal wall before she took that big piece of crystal chunk and placed them down carefully so as not to make any sound. If one looked closely, one could see that there were a few pieces of High-Level Immortal Crystals inside that chunk.

If one gave them a good beating, they would come apart from each other like pieces of a puzzle. The rest of it was simply nothing but waste that would disperse after some time when the energy faded away.

This was the act of mining.

"…"

Evelynn couldn't believe she had come to the Candidacy and was mining for immortal crystals.

This was work given to slaves as people couldn't be bothered to mine all day long. Sometimes, it was also relegated to workers, who were paid wages accordingly, but still, she didn't know if she was plundering crystals or earning a wage by mining them by herself.

As a Young Mistress, she didn't have a need to do such a thing and after becoming the Crown Prince's wife, she literally didn't have one job assigned to her other than baby-making.

It couldn't help but make her lips curl, and her scythes triggered another wave of extraction.

Her purplish-black scythe, tinged with crimson on the top of the blade, sliced through the crystals like tofu.

Although her cultivation and prowess were sealed, the internal structure of her body still maintained an energy state equal to her prime, so each strike she made squandered much of her immortal martial energy.

Fortunately, although their cultivations were sealed, it didn't seem like their energy reserves were sealed.

This allowed her to excavate with her scythe blades as she pleased.

However, the amount of immortal martial energy consumed was still great, so she figured that she would be out of energy at ten or fifteen minutes at this rate.

Nonetheless, she was fast and swift.

She sealed the entrance with a big piece of crystal chunk and looked at the wonderful structure of the crystal mountain, admiring the refractive colors shining through from the sunlight like it was a prism before she excavated her way through the crystal mountain like a bug.

"Aah~ A Vein Fragment…"

On the way, she came across a bigger piece of High-Level Immortal Crystal and recognized the massive amount of energy stored it in it. Unlike spirit stones, immortal crystals were of the same size across the board. The Immortal Crystals, whether they be Low-Level, Mid-Level, High-Level, or Peak-Level, their size was only that of a fist. However, for Immortal Crystal Vein Fragments, each one of them was the size of the head.

Only their purity differed, which made them Low-Level, Mid-Level, High-Level, and Peak-Level.

However, the Vein Sources completely differed.

The Low-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source was six feet tall. The Mid-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source was fifteen meters tall. The High-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source was forty-five meters tall, and the Peak-Level ones…

Well, they had never seen one before, but it was rumored to be ninety meters tall.

Considering the crystal mountain's height, which was around a hundred and eighty meters, Evelynn didn't think she would find any Peak-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source here.

However, she did find the forty-five-meter tall High-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source and made her way towards it. They were visible from the outside due to their abnormal glow within the crystal mountain. They shined too brightly, which made outside the crystal through refraction.

Evelynn didn't forget to collect the High-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Fragments she found on the way.

As soon as she made it to the High-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source, she began carving it out carefully without making a sound. It was affixed to the crystal structure around it, and taking it out from them would be more strenuous than carving out crystals the size of a human.

Nonetheless, she quickly made her way around in five minutes like a spider bug crawling around a colossal piece of crystallized sugar and separating it from the crystalline structure.

That cut off the supply to a part of the crystal structure within the mountain, which meant the Vein Fragments belonging to it would no longer be able to generate immortal crystals.

*Woosh!~*

Abruptly, that forty-five meter tall High-Level Immortal Crystal Vein Source disappeared from the crystal mountain. It entered into her inner world, appearing to be stored in an empty space.