Yellow Spring City woke up before dawn.
After nine years of development, the formally desolate city had become the largest city in Earth Prison. It was lined with high-rise buildings, filled with roads that connected with one another, and crowded with people and vehicles.
The air rang to a creaking sound. That was the sound of the shop owners and workers opening their doors. Below those high-rise buildings were shops. The development of the city was driven by people, and when the population was larger, there would naturally be more shops. With many shops lined up on both sides of the streets, the city appeared to be bustled with activity.
If one followed the shops to the center of the city, they would see a crowded restaurant. It was not big, but it was located in the heart of the city. Many shops were built around it.
Although it was early morning, the front of the restaurant was already packed with people. They talked and laughed and seemed to know each other very well. If someone saw these people now, he would definitely be surprised because they were men and women with high status in Earth Prison, including Prison Overlords and heads of aristocratic families. Each of them was highly respected in any major cities, and yet they were lining up in front of a little restaurant early in the cold morning, wrapped in thick clothes.
With a creak, the door opened. The people who were talking and laughing brightened up and all looked excitedly into the restaurant. From behind the door came a handsome but slightly indifferent and cold face, and a burly figure filled with incredible strength. At the sight of the man, everyone bowed respectfully, no matter how prominent their status was. This had happened countless times, but these experts still did it.
"Good morning, my lord!" They greeted unanimously.
Tian Cang nodded at them with a gentle smile. "The restaurant is open now. Line up orderly and don't jump the queue," he said. Having been a waiter for so many years, he was already very familiar with the job.
One customer after another stepped orderly into the restaurant. With the venerable Tian Cang working as a waiter, these experts naturally dared not to be rude. After sitting down, they began to order the dishes they wanted to eat.
Tian Cang still had the gentle smile on his face. He wrote down everyone's order in a small notebook, then went to the front of the kitchen and informed a lean figure inside what the customer had ordered.
The sound of flames burning rang out and lingered in everyone's ears, refreshing their minds.
"Owner Bu has started to cook…"
Soon, the aroma of food spread from the kitchen.
He set the steamer on a table in front of the kitchen and removed its top cover. A plume of hot steam immediately gushed out of it and rose to the ceiling. Then, he took out the buns one by one with a pair of jade chopsticks and placed each of them on a palm-sized blue-and-white porcelain plate. Every time he picked out one, he handed it to Tian Cang, who then placed the bun in front of one customer.
The God Doesn't Care Buns were the food that customers must order every morning when they came to Yellow Spring Little Restaurant. Placed in a blue-and-white porcelain plate, the steamed bun was as white as jade and emitted rolling steam. It had a rounded, semi-spherical shape with nine folds on it, and the gap between each fold was exactly the same. The middle of the folds appeared like a vortex, which looked quite lovely.
A bald customer stared at the bun with drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. He swallowed and picked it up, holding it in one hand. However, the bun was so hot that he soon had to toss it back and forth between his hands from getting burned. When it cooled down a little bit, he brought it to his mouth and gave it a bite.
As his teeth sank into the bun, its soft, tender skin broke in an instant, proving that it did not have a thick skin. Tasty grease oozed out through the opening, trickling down his lips and chin and dripping on the table. The customer hurriedly sucked away all the remaining grease. A rich smell of meat filled his mouth in an instant. Then, he bit further into the bun and tasted the stuffing.
The stuffing was light brown and finely chopped. Soaked with grease, it looked very appetizing when accompanied by the milky white bun skin. The customer was intoxicated after the first bite. With his eyes narrowed, he savored the feeling of the stuffing moving on his tongue.
Every customer who had gotten a seat in the restaurant began to eat the bun as well. They could hardly wait to taste it. For a moment, the only smell that lingered in the air inside the restaurant was the aroma of the bun. It was an extremely tantalizing aroma.
After distributing all the buns in the six-tier steamer, Bu Fang wiped the water on his hands with a square of clean cloth, then brought the steamer back into the kitchen. God Doesn't Care Bun was a brand-new cuisine he created. They were infused with the Great Path, and the ingredients were all the best, which made them very delicious. The reason he gave it the name was to signify that even Gods would not care anything when eating the bun because it was too delicious.
The kitchen echoed with the clear and melodious sound produced when the spatula hit the Black Turtle Constellation Wok, as well as the sizzling noise of water being added to a hot wok. The pleasant music of the kitchen filled the customers' hearts with anticipation, and waiting for a good meal to appear is always agonizing.
Ting-a-ling!
The kitchen's curtain was finally lifted. Flowery walked out of it with dishes in her hands and set them on the tables. The popular Yellow Spring Little Restaurant began another day's hard work.
…
A silver warship suspended in the starry sky. Stars swirled behind it, forming what looked like a curtain of light. With hands clasped behind his back, the figure standing on the deck of the ship's topmost level stared at Nether Prison in front of him with deep eyes. Suddenly, he raised a hand and snapped his fingers.
The moment the snap disappeared, the warship behind him began to transform. Clanging sounds echoed out as large openings revealed on both sides of the ship, and a series of rumbling noises rang out of them. Then, one silver puppet after another flew out of these openings.
"The Continent of Nether Prison has just become a great world. I'll pay it a visit. As for you all, investigate the Great Netherworld thoroughly and draw me a virtual map…" the figure said lightly.
The puppets' mechanical eyes flashed. Then, rumbling noises rang out as they turned into beams of light and sped away. Perhaps they were moving too fast—there were plumes of white smoke gushing out from their buttocks. As they headed toward different small worlds, the air rang to a buzzing sound.
…
A silver puppet hovered outside the Wandering Soul Realm, its mechanical eyes flashing. The next moment, a metal plate lifted on its chest. Light beams shot out of it and seemed to turn into a huge light screen, which then began to scan the whole realm.
None of the experts in the Wandering Soul Realm sensed its presence. It was the same for the Vajra Realm.
The metal puppets' movements were very consistent. Each of them hovered outside a small world and kept scanning the world with the light beams shooting out of its chest. As they scanned, some virtual images emerged in their eyes, which were actually the maps of the small worlds. Not only were these maps extremely accurate and lively, but they also clearly marked the population and the level of the experts in every world.
If someone saw this, he or she would be terrified, for this trick seemed to be more amazing than scanning with divine sense.
…
Meanwhile, in the Winged Man Valley…
Beautiful winged girls flapped their wings and gathered nectar among the flowers. Suddenly, everyone in the Winged Man Valley seemed to feel a strange will. They raised their heads and looked into the distance, where a white column of light rose into the sky.
In the light, twelve wings spread and white feathers swirled. The Lord of Winged Man Valley, who was also a Perfected Great Saint, looked into the sky with a grave face. His strength was far stronger than anyone in the valley, and he had sensed a strange fluctuation outside his world.
"How dare you wantonly scan my Winged Man Valley?!" shouted the Perfected Great Saint. His twelve wings flapped, bringing him up into the air and pushing him into the starry sky. His figure grew smaller and smaller as he soared higher and higher. Soon, he saw the metal puppet hovering in midair, and he was slightly startled by the fluctuation emanating from it as it continued to scan.
"How dare you!" As he bellowed, the Lord of Winged Man Valley threw out a punch. It was a holy punch, which represented justice, and it could destroy everything.
The metal puppet's eyes flashed, and its light beams swept across the mighty expert's body. "Ding, ding… A Perfected Great Saint with a weak bloodline of the Winged Man from the Great Holy World…" A mechanical voice rang out of its mouth.
Boom!
The holy punch struck the puppet the next moment, its power drowning out everything. When the blasts were cleared, however, the Lord of the Winged Man Valley's eyes went wide in disbelief. The metal puppet was unscathed! He was a Perfected Great Saint, and yet his punch could not even damage a puppet? Was there such a fearsome puppet besides Tian Cang?
The metal puppet slightly tilted its head, then it raised a hand. A clanging sound rang out of the arm, and in the next instant, numerous cold muzzles were pointed at the Lord of the Winged Man Valley.
Rumble!
As a deafening noise filled the air, flames poured out of the muzzles, and the mechanical arm was shaken by the powerful recoil. In a twinkling, energy shells as tiny as glass beads shot toward the Perfected Great Saint.
"How dare you!" Enraged, the Lord of the Winged Man Valley produced his holy sword and swung it at the approaching energy shells.
However, he had just swung the sword when those energy shells hit him.
RUMBLE!
A terrible explosion broke out in an instant. Before he could unleash the power of a Perfect Great Saint, he was already severely injured by the explosion.
The puppet approached, threw out a metal net, and captured the Lord of the Winged Man Valley. A plume of white flame gushed out from its back, and the puppet turned, flying in the direction where the silver warship was docked in the starry sky.
The Winged Man Valley was not the only one invaded by these metal puppets. The Vajra Realm, the West Little Buddhism Realm, and all the other small worlds were facing the same things. And every expert who detected them and came out to fight was bombarded, seriously injured, and captured.
At this moment, the defenses of all the small worlds in the Great Netherworld were silently breached.
…
Inside the silver warship, the burly figure sat comfortably in a silver chair, holding a metal plate that showed the information scanned by those puppets.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk… This is indeed a remote and mixed small world. I can see the bloodline of those birdmen from the Great Holy World, and also the inheritance of those bald monks from the Great West World…" The man touched his chin and grinned. "A pity that they're all too weak…"
Looking at the images shown on the metal plate, he chuckled and said, "What a desolate region. They have only a few Perfected Great Saints, and every one of them is too weak. Eh? Hold on… Two small worlds are excluded from the Great Netherworld? Are you kidding me? How could they fail to conquer two small worlds so close to them? This newly formed great world is too… weak."
The man narrowed his eyes as he read the information on the metal plate. On the plate, his puppet hovered in front of a huge landmass. According to the information, the people of this great world called this landmass… Earth Prison.