Dark clouds hung overhead. A lone figure could be seen climbing atop the cloud as if it were an obsidian chunk floating in the sky. A bolt of lightning flashed within the cloud and struck the lone man. It didn’t seem to affect his progress. The man, Max, shrugged off the tingling sensation and continued up the cloud. The very first time he was told to transplant the Thunder God’s Beard, he had failed the mission, and the golem had to do it for him instead. However, after spending years within the god’s herb garden—as he liked to call it—he didn’t need the help of any golem to tend to the plants. He had been given a cloud-climbing skill. Of course, he couldn’t help but wonder why the system couldn’t just teach him how to fly instead. To get onto the cloud, he had to go up a mountain, climb the tallest tree at the peak, then leap off and snatch the cloud’s edge.

Max’s hand grabbed the top edge of the cloud, and he pulled himself up with ease. He strode on top of the cloud and approached the Thunder God’s Beard. It was a spiritual herb, and it looked like a ginseng. If he were to pull it out of the cloud, he could see its root being long and wispy like a beard. And, he was going to pull it out of the cloud. In order for the herb to grow properly, it had to be moved to a different cloud after being struck by lightning seven times. Luckily, the herb seemed to control the lightning strikes or something because they always struck at certain intervals. Max used the herb-plucking technique, which he had earned by watering the Toenail of the Giant, and snatched the Thunder God’s Beard in one motion. He ran and leapt off the cloud, landing on a different cloud in the distance. Luckily, he had reached the foundation establishment stage; otherwise, that jump would’ve been impossible for him to make. Before, when he was still in the qi condensation stage, he had the golems throw him to different clouds. Now, he didn’t have to suffer that shame.

Max went to the center of the new cloud and jabbed the ginseng downwards, firmly planting it within the black mist. He didn’t know why the ginseng didn’t just fall through, but then again, he didn’t know a lot of things. One more unexplainable thing didn’t bother him much.

[Nice job, Max!]

[Mission: Transplant the Thunder God’s Beard Completed]

[Reward: One Hundred Spirit Stones]

Max touched the ring on his finger, confirming he was a hundred spirit stones richer. The ring was an interspacial ring, an extremely valuable item capable of storing items. If he were still a guard in the capital city, he’d never be able to buy one, not even if he saved up his salary for his whole life; however, he was given one for keeping the Fire Dragon’s Heart submerged in a volcano for eight hours. It was a shame there was literally no one else in the world for him to show off to. Occasionally, weird people would pop into the world, planting more herbs around, but they never spoke to him. One person even created a basement with the wave of his hand and stored barrels of ale inside, but he also never spoke to Max. Instead, all of them pointed at Max, and he was bombarded with words on how to take care of everything. Luckily, there was always that cheerful, overenthusiastic set of writing reminding him of what he needed to do.

It wasn’t a difficult life. There was no hardship, nothing too stressful to deal with. But at the same time, there was no excitement either. He was like a robot, moving from one task to the next while occasionally being given breaks. Thankfully, the food was good even though all of his meals consisted of potato chips. He was surprised by how addicting they were. He had eaten them everyday for years, but he wasn’t sick of them. Max made his way back to the mountaintop, jumping from cloud to cloud. Next, he had to submerge the Fire Dragon’s Heart again. It was the easiest task. There was a platform he could sit on. All he had to do was insert his qi into the platform, and it would keep the herb in the proper position. Sitting on it was his form of sleep.

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***

Pravos smiled at her customers. “Sorry for the delay,” she said and bowed her head. “This is my first time running a business like this. I’ll find a way to automate it better.” Vremya’s fast-time world was capable of speeding up time at a ridiculous pace: every second outside was a million years inside. However, not all herbs needed the same amount of time to mature. Some herbs only took several years, and Pravos had to turn the microwave, err, fast-time world on and off repeatedly to retrieve them. She let the gods who owned the crops retrieve them, and in that time, she’d also let more customers in. What theoretically should’ve only taken one second was taking much longer because of the constant interruptions. Despite that, Max, her user, was growing at an extremely fast pace! Lower lifeforms usually developed in periods of years, but Max went from the qi condensation stage to the foundation establishment stage in less than twenty seconds.

Pravos swallowed. Couldn’t Vremya grow an army of users this way? Sure, none of them would reach the peak, but with his practically infinite-money cheat, he could guarantee they reached immortality. Even she would be afraid of a trillion immortals charging at her at once despite being a god. At a certain point, a quantitative change became a qualitative change. One immortal couldn’t do squat against a god, but a trillion immortals was a whole different game. Also, it wouldn’t even be that hard for him to accumulate the rarer cultivation materials. Pravos had been given a secret mission. Not only did she have to operate the fast-time world, but she also had to pretend it worked twice as slow as it actually did. Every herb in there was grown until they produced their seeds. Then, they were grown again. Only after the second growth cycle were they presented to their owners as the original. That way, Vremya would obtain the seeds of the rare herbs practically for free. Once again, Pravos marveled at how overpowered primordial gods were.

Pravos opened the door and two more gods went in. It didn’t take long for them both to exit. Pravos watched them leave and couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if gods swiped other gods’ items while they were inside. Other than automating the process better, she also had to come up with antitheft measures. There were some things she couldn’t plan for, and only after creating a trial could she figure out the problems. Since she couldn’t resolve the theft problem right away, all she could do was ban gods from entering until all the herbs the previous god was growing were done. It’d slow down the process even more, but it was already going fast enough. The gods could complain about the wait, but in the end, they’d wait; after all, where else would they go to quicken their herb growth? The power of a monopoly was terrifying.

Speaking of which, the gods basically had to give up their monopolies to use Vremya’s fast-time world. Pravos was honestly surprised at how many gods were willing to part with what made them unique. The god of alchemy handed over his personal furnace. The god of brewing handed over his personal keg. The god of herbology gave Pravos a book that contained knowledge of every single plant in existence. She thought most of the gods would give up information about their users, but all of the customers were bigshots that she’d never come into contact with. In the righteous gods’ alliance, Blagora was the one who met with the more powerful gods. Pravos sighed in her mind. It was a shame she couldn’t make connections with these gods despite seeing them face to face. They all treated her like a golem.