Chapter 75 – Earning Trust, an Alliance with Protector Shadow!

Chapter 75: Earning Trust, an Alliance with Protector Shadow!

In the real world, Su Xing’s heart was suspended in his chest.

In the simulator, he had spoken those words, essentially laying his identity bare. If Protector Shadow wasn’t a spy or traitor, then he was as good as dead.

That would mean Su Xing had wasted a precious simulation opportunity.

But if Protector Shadow truly was a traitor, then Su Xing would save himself enormous effort in future simulations.

Everything hinged on a single moment.

Su Xing swallowed hard and continued the simulation.

【After hearing your words, Protector Shadow’s expression shifted slightly. She said she didn’t know what you were talking about—she had been a member of the Advent Cult for decades, always following in the Lord’s footsteps.】

【Hearing Protector Shadow’s response, you actually felt relieved, because if she were truly loyal to the Advent Cult, she should have killed you on the spot.】

【You simply closed your eyes and told Protector Shadow to go ahead and kill you. She fell silent.】

【After a long pause, Protector Shadow let out a bitter laugh and said: “How tragic. Compared to those true colossi, our world is destined for destruction! In Their eyes, our world is nothing more than insignificant dust…”】

【Protector Shadow finally bared her heart to you. You struck while the iron was hot, saying that as long as there was even a sliver of hope, one should exert ten thousand times the effort. Wasn’t that exactly what Protector Shadow was doing when she asked you to refine pills—fighting back even while knowing resistance was futile?】

【Protector Shadow seemed moved by your words. She asked about your plan to resist the foreign invasion. You produced a pill and declared that you could refine pills, and as long as you created enough powerful fighters with them, the day would come when the foreign race could be driven away.】

【After listening, Protector Shadow said bitterly that it was a drop in the bucket. Even if humanity’s overall strength were raised by an entire tier, they would still be insignificant before the monstrous beasts.】

【Protector Shadow asked how many pills you alone could possibly provide.】

【Your heart swelled with hope. After a moment’s thought, you said you could provide one thousand Essence Nurturing Pills per month, and asked if that number was sufficient.】

【Protector Shadow was visibly stunned by your words. One thousand Essence Nurturing Pills per month meant creating two hundred warriors rivaling Grandmaster-stage powerhouses. In a year, that was nearly three thousand. If that many powerful fighters could be produced every year, it might truly delay the foreign invasion significantly!】

Su Xing chuckled softly at this.

At his pill-refining speed, if he focused entirely on it, he could produce over two thousand Essence Nurturing Pills in a single month.

But Su Xing also needed to cultivate. He needed to reach the Nascent Soul stage in this simulation, so without affecting his cultivation speed, he could only spare eight hours per day for pill refining.

“It looks like I’ll be forming an alliance with Protector Shadow in this simulation. The question is how long we can delay the apocalypse.”

Su Xing raised an eyebrow and continued the simulation.

【Ultimately, Protector Shadow agreed to ally with you. She said she would do her best to provide you cover and conceal your identity, while you would need to supply her with at least five hundred Essence Nurturing Pills per month!】

【You seized the opportunity to request Yellow Immortal Essence as well—the primary ingredient for your Organ Tempering Pills. Protector Shadow agreed to your request.】

【In the fourth year, you maintained eight hours of daily pill refining while spending even more time ensuring your cultivation progressed. You could feel yourself drawing ever closer to the Nascent Soul stage.】

【Over the course of the year, you refined over ten thousand pills, giving nearly half to Protector Shadow. The remaining pills you used to sustain your own cultivation, and you also stockpiled several thousand Organ Tempering Pills, ready to bring out when needed.】

【In the fifth year, you continued taking Essence Nurturing Pills and Spirit Nurturing Pills daily to strengthen your cultivation. You sensed that the Golden Core within your body seemed to be undergoing a subtle transformation.】

【This forced you to spend even more time stabilizing your cultivation. Breaking through from the Golden Core stage to the Nascent Soul stage proved more difficult than you had imagined.】

【By the end of the year, your accumulated Organ Tempering Pills reached ten thousand. This number was still far from enough.】

【In the sixth year, you continued refining pills in an orderly manner. Beyond your cultivation practice, you spent your spare time tending to the spirit plants in your Blessed Spirit Field.】

【You discovered that many of the spirit herbs you had planted had already reached maturity, and their quality was significantly higher than those found in the Cult treasury.】

【You were tempted to try refining new types of pills, but you knew the goal of this simulation was to break through to the Nascent Soul stage, so you abandoned that idea.】

【In the seventh year, you continued cultivating diligently. You could feel that only a paper-thin barrier separated you from the Nascent Soul stage. You knew you had hit a bottleneck.】

【You understood that breakthroughs cannot be forced. Sometimes, obsessively pursuing a breakthrough only backfires. It was better to let nature take its course—perhaps then you could break through to become a Nascent Soul cultivator.】

In the real world, Su Xing nodded slightly.

Given his True Spirit Root aptitude, breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage shouldn’t present a major bottleneck.

For cultivators, being stuck at a major realm for decades or even centuries was perfectly normal—that was due to insufficient aptitude.

Su Xing’s case was different. His mental state was what fell short. He was only one catalyst away from the Nascent Soul stage—perhaps a painless breakthrough was just a single opportunity away.

With this in mind, Su Xing turned his attention back to the simulation panel.

【You no longer engaged in grueling cultivation each day, instead only practicing lightly for an hour each morning to maintain your spiritual intuition. This gave you much more time for pill refining.】

【That year, you refined pills for twenty hours every day. Because you had set aside sufficient spirit herbs beforehand, you were not short on ingredients.】

【Over the course of the year, you refined over thirty thousand Essence Nurturing Pills. You knew these pills would prove invaluable in the near future.】

【You clearly remembered that in a previous simulation, Protector Shadow had stopped needing pills in the eighth year. Perhaps that was when some catastrophic event occurred in her original world, rendering pills unnecessary.】

【So you sought out Protector Shadow, intending to deliver the Essence Nurturing Pills a year ahead of schedule.】

【Protector Shadow was shocked upon receiving over thirty thousand Essence Nurturing Pills from you, but she accepted them nonetheless. You told her the pills needed to be distributed as quickly as possible.】

【Protector Shadow nodded, and over the following days, you did not see her again.】

【After resting for a few days, you threw yourself back into the rhythm of pill refining. Apart from maintaining the necessary cultivation practice, you accumulated tens of thousands more pills over the course of the year.】

【In the ninth year, it was an ordinary day for you. You continued your daily routine of refining pills and cultivating.】

【But on this day, Protector Shadow came to find you. She looked considerably more haggard. It had been several months since you last saw her, so you hurriedly asked how things were going.】

【After a long silence, Protector Shadow uttered a few words: “Give up. Give up this futile resistance.”】

【Your heart lurched. You knew that Protector Shadow’s world had likely been destroyed after all. You urgently asked her how they had been defeated, how the world had been destroyed.】

【Protector Shadow seemed unwilling to say much, simply repeating a few words: “A colossal beast descended… the end of the world…”】

【You fell silent, because Protector Shadow had actually bought her world an extra year. According to the original timeline, her world would have been destroyed in the eighth year, yet it had endured one year longer.】

【But what truly shook you was this: a colossal beast descending—the cause of destruction was virtually identical to what would befall your own world. You dared not dwell too deeply on the implications.】

【Looking at the grief-stricken Protector Shadow, you seemed to be infected by her emotions, and for a moment, you didn’t know how to comfort her.】

【Crack—under the surge of intense emotions, your long-stagnant realm finally broke through. You successfully became a Nascent Soul stage cultivator!】