During an exploration, the Yan Kingdom obtained the final letter left behind by the Dragon Roar Daoist from the Ancient Times.

Then, thanks to spies, the contents of this letter quickly became known to the upper echelons of the various nations.

At first, there were indeed some who didn’t believe it.

But when they conducted tests based on the letter’s contents, the results matched perfectly.

Just like that, the nations were completely dumbfounded.

Everyone had agreed to become immortal nobles together, but it turned out that while they could still be nobles, their immortality was gone.

So what was the difference from before? In the past, the upper echelons of the nations already held immense power and lived lives of wanton luxury.

What they valued was the effect of immortality, which would allow them to be nobles for all eternity.

In reality, they were already immortal, but only on the condition that Cold Energy continued to exist. Once it began to fade away like the tides of the Ancient Times, their immortality would vanish as well.

As for hibernating, just as they did in ancient times.

They had entertained this idea at first, but they quickly realized something.

The Qi Cultivation Methods they had obtained contained instructions on how to grow stronger and fight, but nothing about hibernation.

Occasionally, some advanced Qi Cultivation Methods would mention it, but the descriptions were mostly vague and unclear.

Since the Cold Energy of this era had only just emerged, the upper echelons of the nations felt no urgency to prepare for hibernation in advance.

Why would a newborn start thinking about where to be buried and begin preparing a coffin? What’s the point? If it died prematurely the next day, the coffin would be far too large.

After that, the leaders of the nations secretly held a meeting and began arranging for an expedition team to investigate the Ice Continent.

At the same time, they formulated a strategic plan for the Ice Continent.

No matter what, the entire Ice Continent had to be under their control to guarantee their immortality, wealth, and immense power.

Therefore, their first priority was to eliminate the remaining Cold Energy Monsters on the Ice Continent.

This was no small task; it would require a massive investment of manpower and resources.

Under normal circumstances, an operation of this magnitude would be extremely difficult to get approved, let alone execute.

Even coordinating between the nations would have been impossible without one or two months of bureaucratic wrangling.

But now, it was handled as a special case. The entire process was completed in just two days.

However, because of this action, the national power of all the nations declined, and considerable internal vulnerabilities appeared.

The leaders of the nations were selfish, but they had never underestimated how terrifying the Cold Energy Monsters were.

They were naturally aware of the existence of Beast Kings and Venerables—especially the latter, which most survivors knew nothing about.

However, with the help of the state apparatus, how could they possibly not know about such intelligence?

In addition to this, they had an even more secret plan: to find the humans who had lived through several eras.

But they found nothing. Instead, they found quite a few Cold Energy Monsters from the previous Cold Energy era.

After being captured and interrogated, it was confirmed that humans could indeed live through several eras.

On one hand, there was the testimony of the Cold Energy Monsters. On the other, there were their own verified results and the complete lack of any trace of humans from the previous era.

The nations naturally leaned toward the latter.

In fact, through extensive investigations using their vast national power, the nations had already discovered some clues, but they lacked sufficient intelligence.

Meanwhile, Qi Suian watched the mobilized nations and also reaped considerable benefits.

The most basic of these were the nations’ research into Cold Energy, supernatural abilities, and Qi Cultivation Methods.

One had to admit, the power of an entire state apparatus was truly formidable.

They had already begun to artificially create clones. These clones could be directly infused with Cold Energy and made to manifest a uniform supernatural ability, to be used as war machines.

The effect of this ability was simple, called Clone Link.

It allowed them to gain corresponding attribute boosts by linking with others, though there was a cap.

According to Qi Suian’s observations, the cap on dual-attribute boosts was 2 points.

Most importantly, they could acquire the supernatural ability of the linked subject, albeit a low-spec version with only about half the power.

But their sheer numbers made up for it.

Although these super-powered clones could only possess one linked ability at a time, when a large number of well-trained clones acted in perfect concert,

the terrifying result was easy to imagine.

To put it more simply, if they chose a supernatural ability that could regulate temperature, their thermal weapons would no longer be affected by the low temperatures, and the nations’ advantage would be restored to its original level.

It was precisely because they had this ace up their sleeve that the nations dared to storm the Ice Continent in an attempt to control the Cold Energy Source.

Qi Suian obtained the corresponding technology but had no intention of using it.

The reason was simple: the entire technology—from cloning and linking to development—revolved around Cold Energy as its core power source.

Its degree of dependency was extremely high.

The plans of the nations’ leaders actually had few flaws, but they had overlooked the Doomsday Game.

To this day, they subconsciously ignored the fact that the Doomsday Game would, at some point in the future, transport them to another Doomsday World.

After all, the Doomsday Game had a low profile and, on the contrary, offered them considerable convenience.

For the leaders of the nations, everything from the attribute panel and item inventory to certain rewards were all benefits without any corresponding obligations.

Besides, even if they did know, it would be useless. They would never give up Cold Energy; they would only try to find a way to take it with them.

In that case, they could only pray that the source of Cold Energy was an item, like a sun in a bottle, and not a natural phenomenon like the Profound God.

Otherwise, they definitely wouldn’t be able to take it with them.

If it really was an item, that would mean only one person could enjoy the Cold Energy, and all the other survivors would still be out of luck.

However, there was another option: to turn the Cold Energy Source directly over to the Doomsday Game as a quest item.

By doing so, the native survivors of the Cold Winter World could have their own dataization stabilized through the Doomsday Game, thereby eliminating the drawback.

The problem was, wealth moves the hearts of men. Whoever obtained the Cold Energy Source wouldn’t necessarily think that way.

To say nothing of others, if Qi Suian were asked to hand over the Source of Profound Darkness: Viral Frenzy he possessed, he would definitely just ignore the request.

Even if the Doomsday Game offered a handsome reward.

However, for the item’s owner, the value of the reward would certainly not exceed the value of the item being turned in.

If the leaders of the nations were truly survivors who had the world’s best interests at heart, they wouldn’t have conducted so many horrific experiments on civilian survivors.

If it really fell into the hands of the nations’ leaders, they wouldn’t solve the underlying problem; they would only unleash an even more terrifying storm of blood.

More importantly, Qi Suian wanted it too. If it fell into their hands, he would just go and snatch it from them.

If he tried to take it, the leaders of the nations certainly wouldn’t give it up, so Qi Suian would have no choice but to start killing.

Therefore, unless no one obtained it, a bloody conflict was inevitable.

"Sigh, another failure..." Qi Suian sighed.

His progress on the Low-level Poison Element Attachment Magic had failed once again. There was some progress, but he couldn’t even get past the basics.

’Building a castle in the air without a foundation is truly difficult.’

’I thought I could succeed in one go, but it can only be used as a poison gas bomb, and it explodes just three seconds after it’s made.’

Qi Suian’s original goal was the Energy Confinement Technique, but due to a different Enchantment Array and a lack of fundamental theory, you could say it was a success... in a way.

After all, the energy really was confined. The problem was that it wasn’t just unstable; it only lasted for three seconds, which was truly difficult to handle.

After failing, Qi Suian went to find materials to forge the Dragon Roar Daoist’s final letter. Then, through some minor tricks, he arranged for the Yan Kingdom to obtain it and for it to be smoothly leaked to the other nations.

The entire process was controlled by an AI and assisted by his protagonist’s halo, so there were no hitches.

And just like that, the nations fell for it. Qi Suian suspected there might have been some kind of intelligence-lowering effect at play; otherwise, how could it have been so easy?

Even he could spot quite a few flaws. Moreover, for all the nations to agree on such a large-scale operation was bizarre, especially since not even Qi Suian himself was sure if the letter’s contents were authentic.

The nations made their decision so quickly that it would be unrealistic to claim their intelligence hadn’t been lowered.

’Good thing those two days weren’t wasted. The Tai Sui Divine Armor Value reached 32 points, and it completed its twenty-fifth evolution.’

Qi Suian looked at the last module slot, which now had a module installed.

According to his preset plan, he had installed the S-grade Jade Vein Lotus as a module.

[SSS·True Martial Jade Vein Lotus]

It seemed that because Qi Suian had extracted the "Seven-Star" aspect, even after it was restored to SSS-grade, it didn’t revert to being the Seven-Star Jade Vein Lotus. Instead, its original "Jade Vein to Lotus" trait became dominant, changing the prefix from "Seven-Star" to "True Martial".

The effect gave the Tai Sui God the inherent abilities of the "Myriad Phenomena Thousand Truths Hundred Refinement Skill" at the Great Perfection level. Combined with the Dragon and Tiger Primordial True Force, it had thoroughly reached the Divine Force level.

The Tai Sui God was now a suit of armor with an Ancient Martial Realm of Divine Force, a fact that left Qi Suian rather speechless.

As for Qi Suian himself, he had also reached the Divine Force level thanks to the Viral Bloodline Symbiote module, but the downside was that the attributes were an external enhancement.

Of course, the most important thing was that the Tai Sui God now possessed things it shouldn’t have, like Martial Dao Intuition and Martial Dao Will.

This guaranteed that both Qi Suian and the Tai Sui God could resist attacks against the Spirit and will.

Qi Suian didn’t have them himself, as he was only sharing the effects.

As for cultivating the "Myriad Phenomena Thousand Truths Hundred Refinement Skill" himself... he couldn’t.

The True Martial Jade Vein Lotus was now a trait of the Tai Sui God that had been forcibly upgraded to SSS-grade. As a result, this Ancient Martial Technique, far more powerful than the "Seven Elements Beidou True Skill", could only be used by the Tai Sui God armor.

Even the Qin Sheng of the past wouldn’t have been able to practice it.

Moreover, the Tai Sui God wasn’t cultivating it; the skill was installed via a module, directly at the Great Perfection stage, with nothing left to practice.

In this regard, Qi Suian could only say that the Jade Vein Lotus truly lived up to its reputation as the source of Ancient Martial Techniques. The effect was certainly powerful enough.

The Tai Sui Divine Armor Value was still low, but with the Dragon and Tiger Primordial Force and the True Martial Jade Vein Lotus, even though these two modules weren’t for shields or defense, they were enough to ensure the Tai Sui God was no longer so fragile.