When the destined test finally arrived, Tian Lang’s arrogance was nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t that he was utterly incompetent against the test, but the absurdity of the questions was simply unimaginable.

For example, one of the questions was: How were the [Purple Gold Twisting Conch] and [Purple Gold Twisting Screw] related to each other?

For all that was logical, this test was called Ranker’s Battle Sense Test.

Battle Sense!

How did [Purple Gold Twisting Conch] and [Purple Gold Twisting Screw] get in here?

Why did Tian Lang show such confidence in the first place?

Wasn’t it because he could take any challenge since it was about battle sense? Even if that was on papers, thanks to his three teachers, he had above average capability.

Another example was a simple medicinal question. If a warrior had been bitten by a Star-dotted Sandsnake beast, what was the best kind of medicine to apply immediately? Was it the Sitting Thornyback Lizard’s saliva or the Silver Haired Tree’s tree sap?

This was slightly easy since he knew the other two remedies were also poison. The answer was the last one, but he still couldn’t figure out how they were related to Ranker’s Battle Sense?

Who and what were Rankers?

They were an existence that surpassed the limit of Level 9 [Sage] and entered a whole new realm.

It was similar to a Beast’s Holy Realm. A qualitative change.

Could it be, those rankers needed to know these insignificant-looking things? These looked like something one would come up with when they had nothing to do.

In the end, he barely passed with 52 points.

It was all good. He attributed it to the unusualness of the test.

Yes, it was all good until he learned Princess Qian Qian got 65 points when she was thirteen, and the eight-year-old Princess Bei Bei, who occasionally joined Grandma Wu Teng’s class, got 80 points, he was basically fuming.

“Jun Wu You, you old bastard, are you trying to anger me to death with your daughters?! You’re cheating me, aren’t you? So what if your daughters are great at thirteenth and eighth years of age? I’m only two-years-old!”

While Tian Lang vented his anger, he had no idea whether to feel proud of his little age or die out of shame...

He decided that if he were to meet that bastardly emperor, he would punch the heck out of that smug face.

While grumbling and cursing, he took the chance to organize his war spoils.

First thing first, he fished out the Lich Ring from the vast remains with great difficulty.

Lich Rings were a type of storage equipment, but they were the lowest among storage treasures. The space inside was unstable, which made them incapable of holding living beings.

The original lich rings were disposable storage rings that failed at their creation phase.

And these Lich Rings were already rare in the Soaring Dragon Continent. Humans were sorely lacking in terms of forging ability. Let alone storage tools, the teleportation scrolls consumed all of their efforts, and even then, they were vastly inferior to the demons.

Before, he couldn’t use the ring because Lich Su Guo’s spirit imprint had yet to fate. With no way to remove the imprint, he could only wait till now.

Now that the spirit imprint disappeared, he replaced the previous mark with his and scanned the space inside.

Unsurprisingly, lots of human and beast remains occupied the ring. As one would expect from the name, the Lich Ring was used by liches to store their research and undead summoning material. There were also some clothes, wines, and crystals.

Tian Lang ran beyond Meng Delan’s gardens and dumped all the unnecessary remains deep inside the forest. For anything that looked profitable, he stuffed them in his Shadow Leopard’s shadows.

Leaving the small mountain of stinking remains behind, he ordered the Shadow Leopard to take out the items. Once he separated them from the leopard, it would genuinely become his most hidden card, both for defense and offense.

After such a long time of communication, their synergy improved significantly. The leopard could now understand human language... or at least, him.

Following his order, the leopard was piling up the items, but when it saw Tian Lang checking and stuffing them inside the ring, it was frozen silly.

Without caring about Tian Lang’s urging, the Shadow Leopard dived back to the shadows. Two white bubbles formed above its head.

The Shadow Leopard used to accompany Tian Lang every night and store everything for him in the first one. In the second, he now has a hateful human with two jiggly fruits and a ring to keep everything he wanted.

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It was weaker than Tian Lang. No longer needed as a company, not required to store his items either. The Shadow Leopard suddenly found its presence getting thinner day by day. It was so useless that he refused to form a contract with itself.

The Shadow Leopard came to a conclusion. Other than being of little support in battles, it would become useless and unneeded. Tian Lang might even discard itself one day.

To the leopard, who used to be of equal strength, it was a hit beyond measure...

Tian Lang was perplexed at the sudden change in the leopard’s behavior. If he knew his partner’s inner sulking, he would barely care.

The Shadow Leopard was his. It would be his until its last breath!

Did its thought matter?

If someone thought his belongings were easy to cast away then they would be gravely mistaken.

Without minding the leopard’s behavior, he stored the beast crystals and demon general armor and weapons. That reminded him, he had some demon general corpses which could be fed to the thorny flowers.

Hiss!

Just getting reminded of those glutton caused him to hiss in pain. The crystals consumed by the golden flower and the corpses by the green flower...

Nothing, just the presence of those two alone were enough to halve his war spoils in any battle, and if he had nothing extra to obtain, it could go down to zero.

“Hmm... if I remember correctly this was...” Tian Lang’s feeling of loss was distracted by a plain covered book.

It was thin, at most contained twenty-something pages.

He flipped the cover.

Blink blink...

Tian Lang blinked. Then he blinked some more. There were no words but a portrait.

Isn’t this–

“–Teacher Wu Hen? But...”

The Shui Wu Hen in the portrait was clad in a single white towel. Her expression was gentle as flowing water. Skin glistened with waterdrops. Without a doubt, she just left the bath.

The details of the painting were simply eye-catching. Even the position emphasized her usually ignored chest very much.

Tian Lang stared at the magical portrait.

Magical because it let him appreciate Teacher Wu Hen’s beauty differently than in real life.

Or maybe his appreciation of beauty was focused on somewhere else, the mighty rod once again made its appearance.

However, Tian Lang ignored it.

No one was here to see anyway.

He turned the page, and there was a beauty with a bottle of sake in her hand.

Her face flushed. She wore an ambiguous expression as her free hand gently tugged the white dress to reveal her deep cleavage.

Gulp!

Tian Lang gulped.

Behind the drunk beauty was a panda girl, rushing at the beauty with a flustered and pouty expression. The background seemed like a crowded place.

Tian Lang finally remembered it was what that goatee vice scammed him for five gold coins.

The Beauty Catalogue!

At that time, he searched for the secret of fleshy mounds and bought this beauty catalog in hopes of finding the secret.

However, thanks to Shui Wu Hen and Meng Delan’s regular classes, he forgot its existence. Now that it came in front of him, it really looked useless.

Would Wu Xia and Teacher Meng be in this too?

Though his thought didn’t indicate that at all.

To his disappointment and a strange sense of relief, he failed to find either of them.

How could he be sure when he didn’t even know what Xue Wu Xia looked like?

Tian Lang felt he could mistake anyone, but he wouldn’t mistake Wu Xia for anyone else. No matter what she wore or how she looked.

It was something mystical.

Even if he knew tens of times more than now, he reckoned he would still feel the same.

Maybe it would be possible to describe if I knew thousands of times more? he honestly wondered.

Her beauty was–after all–unmatched!

Tian Lang suddenly frowned. This hateful rod was getting itchy again.

Clearing his head, he meditated for two minutes. Only then did the mighty rod return to its dejected form.

So far, Tian Lang discovered three forms of the Mighty Rod. The dejected form or how it stays normally, the lively form where it gets thick but remains limp, and the triumphant and most annoying form. In the last form, it troubles his daily life and sometimes even gets itchy which could be unbearable sometimes.

He wondered how troublesome it would get if it was like this during battles.

Naturally, Tian Lang would never let either of the forms see the light of the world.

He put the “Beauty Catalogue” as a great treasure inside the ring.

After storing some more miscellaneous items, he noticed a white crystal.

It was the Demon Crystal Ice Spirit Orb.

“Ah, here it is.”

The ice spirit was only Bronze-ranked level 6. Tian Lang wouldn’t care about it, but its ability to hinder a Gold-ranked level 7 Reaper Mantis got him interested.

He focused a little and removed the runes he placed on the orb.

One by one, the ‘Fake Death’ and ‘Sever’ rune disappeared from the orb.

Fake Death to avoid Grimoire’s detection and Sever to disrupt Lich Suo Ge and the orb’s connection. He had no idea how they worked though.

Initially, Tian Lang had no idea how to use runes. Or, to be more exact, he wasn’t even aware of the rune’s existence in his body. It was one of the books Shui Wu Hen was researching on. He got curious and read a significant part of the book.

According to the book, runes could be stored in one’s body. Following the instructions, Tian Lang sensed the existence of the runes.

But he still had no idea how to use them.

Shui Wu Hen mainly researches about Runes, so she spoke about their general uses sometimes.

“...runes are also used to strengthen weapons and items. Many abilities of the weapons come from the runes. But not all types of runes are suitable for crafting. According to many, one of the Heaven Rune’s branches, the Dwarven Runes, are suitable for crafting. They are imbued on the items during crafting, giving extra abilities the metals can’t have...”

Or That’s what he remembered.

Unlike others, Tian Lang knew what most of the runes meant. Still, he had no idea how they worked or how to use them. So he was surprised when the runes worked on the ice spirit orb.

However, even when Tian Lang removed the runes, the orb remained unmoved.

Eh... did it, die?