The morning glimmer pierced through the clouds above Donghai City, spilling onto the floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor of the Evernight Guild base.

Zhou Huai sat in the leather sofa, blending seamlessly with the surrounding air.

He still maintained the posture of his thoughts last night, frowning, his fingers rubbing against the armrest of the sofa.

"One hundred days..."

Zhou Huai's lips parted and closed, spitting out these three words.

The challenge mission given by the System had a time limit of one hundred days.

But what troubled him the most was that he did not have the slightest clue about where Mr. Duan had hidden his mother.

"In other words, during these one hundred days, not only do I have to improve my strength, but I also have to figure out a way to find my mother's exact location." Zhou Huai calculated in his heart.

Theoretically speaking, the tentacles of the Dawnbreaker Guild had long secretly spread across the globe. Hiding a living person without anyone knowing for five years was simply too easy.

But judging by the degree of importance Mr. Duan attached to his mother, the other party would definitely not just place her anywhere.

The most likely possibility was placing her by his side.

"If there really is some base camp belonging to the Dawnbreaker Guild in this world..." A world map surfaced in Zhou Huai's mind, "Then it should be in the Freedom Federation tens of thousands of miles away!"

That behemoth hailed as the world's number one superpower, guarded by an SSS-Rank Expert.

In other words, his mother's location was very likely in a top-secret place within the Freedom Federation.

Just as he was pondering further along this clue.

"Ding!"

In his mind, the System's electronic tone rang out, interrupting his thoughts.

【System Prompt: Your believer Nakamura Shinichiro requests an audience. Do you want to transfer your consciousness to the Avatar Insect Emperor Caesar?】

"Nakamura?" Zhou Huai looked ahead.

Over the past few days, after experiencing the devastating blow from Daxia, Sakura Country was in a chaotic period of revival and power shuffling. As the decision-maker of the Puppet regime, the Divine Dynasty, which he supported, Nakamura Shinichiro requesting an audience at this time must mean something tricky had happened.

"Transfer." Zhou Huai simply put away his thoughts about the Freedom Federation and chanted silently in his heart.

Hum——

A familiar weightless sensation washed over him, and the scene before his eyes distorted and reorganized.

When Zhou Huai opened his eyes, his vision had switched from the Donghai City base to the newly rushed construction of the Divine Dynasty headquarters conference room above the ruins of Tokyo.

Nakamura Shinichiro knelt prostrate on the marble floor, his forehead pressed against the ground, not daring to even draw a heavy breath.

"Get up." Zhou Huai manipulated Caesar and spoke in a deep voice: "Speak, what is the matter in seeking me out?"

Hearing the Lord's voice, Nakamura Shinichiro finally raised his upper body.

He held a red sandalwood box inlaid with a defense Formation with both hands, knelt and crawled two steps forward, and raised it high.

"Reporting to Lord Master, when we were ordered to thoroughly investigate and plunder the heritage resources of the Kujo Family, we discovered this item in a heavily sealed, top-secret basement!"

Nakamura's tone was passionate: "I do not know whether to present this peerless treasure as a spoils of war to the Daxia military, or hand it directly to you, Lord Master... Your subordinate cannot make up his mind, and asks Lord Master to make the decision personally!"

"Oh? Something that can make you this nervous?"

Zhou Huai grew interested. He raised his hand, and a few flying insects dragged that box, flying down into the palm of his hand.

"Click."

With a gentle flick of his finger, the Formation lock on the box unlocked in response.

The moment the lid was lifted, pure and ancient energy fluctuations permeated the entire throne.

On the bright yellow silk lining, there lay an archaic magatama the size of an infant's fist, glowing with a deep green color throughout.

Taking a glance, Zhou Huai was stunned.

He recognized this item.

Without needing any System appraisal, the Law aura uniquely belonging to ancient Divine Artifacts simply could not be disguised.

"Yasakani no Magatama?"

This was precisely the ancient Divine Artifact once managed by generation after generation of the Omiya Family in Sakura Country, revered as a national treasure!

A series of intelligence about this Divine Artifact flashed through Zhou Huai's mind.

It was said that back then, Soma Kosuke of the Omiya Family relied on this Yasakani no Magatama, by his own strength, to almost brutally kill three SS-Rank Experts of the same level.

But it was precisely this infinitely powerful Divine Artifact whose backlash was extremely terrifying.

Not only did it prematurely drain Soma Kosuke's originally long lifespan, but it was also said that the Omiya Family sacrificed the blood and lives of nearly a hundred direct clan members for it!

"The power of Divine Artifacts is not something mortals can covet; the backlash is simply too great..."

Looking at the Yasakani no Magatama lying in the box, Zhou Huai suddenly figured out the crux.

He recalled his experience of personally using the Divine Artifacts Heaven-Suppressing Seal and the Pendulum of Life, recalled Mr. Duan's disdainful sneer when facing the Heaven-Suppressing Seal, and recalled Kujo Koji's crazy act of sacrificing the entire Tokyo City to charge the Pendulum of Life.

If the Pendulum of Life was a giant device for collecting life energy, then why should other Divine Artifacts be purely weapons?

Perhaps... their functions were fundamentally all the same!

The so-called Divine Artifact backlash was not any punishment from Heavenly Dao rules at all, but rather a rogue process of directly extracting the user's life energy!

You thought you borrowed the power of the Divine Artifact, but in fact, the Divine Artifact was extracting your lifespan and Origin to fill its internal energy pool! Soma Kosuke's death and the Omiya Family's sacrifice were all charging this thing!

Viewed this way, these so-called ancient Divine Artifacts were nothing more than a gorgeous facade from beginning to end!

They were all tools used by that Mr. Duan hidden behind the scenes to accumulate life energy in every corner of the world.

Mr. Duan scattered these Divine Artifacts out, letting those greedy high-level Classer fight over them and use them.

And those users were merely pathetic laborers, working with their own lives for Mr. Duan's grand plan!

Not only that.

After that hopeless contact with Mr. Duan, he came to an even more fatal conclusion:

In Mr. Duan's eyes, these Divine Artifacts all came with high-dimensional positioning functions!

No matter where this thing was hidden, as long as Mr. Duan wanted to find it, he could sense it. The fact that he could find the location of the Pendulum of Life previously was the best example!

Thinking of this, Zhou Huai even felt that the exquisite box in his hand was burning hot.

"Nakamura." Zhou Huai closed the box lid, producing a sound.

"Your subordinate is here!" Nakamura Shinichiro trembled all over, knocking his head even lower.

Zhou Huai stared down at him condescendingly, his tone flat: "This item does not need to be handed over to the Daxia military."

Nakamura felt a surge of joy in his heart, thinking to himself that the Lord was also coveting the power of the Divine Artifact and prepared to swallow it privately.

But Zhou Huai's next sentence caught him completely off guard.

"Even less should it remain in our Divine Dynasty." Zhou Huai casually threw the box containing the Yasakani no Magatama back to Nakamura's feet, "You immediately send people to secretly leak the news, find a black market or an auction... and sell this Divine Artifact for me."