The Era of Gods

Chapter 458: 458: Facing the King of Ten Thousand Lizards

Chapter 458: Chapter 458: Facing the King of Ten Thousand Lizards

The soldier hurriedly answered,

“We’ve collided with a huge rock, and the observer guesses that there’s a plane fracture not far from here. Nearby, the void will have many fragmented pieces of the collapsed plane.”

“A plane fracture?”

Lin Xiao strode to the bridge. An abyss of darkness filled the central observation screen, and as he looked through the window at the front of the bridge, he could see nothing but the roiling void energy outside.

Just as he was about to look away, suddenly a massive and irregular mountain burst out of the surging, tumultuous void storm ahead and collided with them.

The pilot quickly adjusted the angle of the warship, and the Flying Snake No. narrowly skimmed past the towering irregular mountain that was thousands of meters in height.

“It really is a plane fracture!”

Lin Xiao had noticed traces of buildings on the edges of the mountain they had just passed, indicating that there were intelligent civilizations within the shattered plane, and that their level of civilization was probably not low.

His interest piqued, he ordered loudly,

“Slow down the speed and approach carefully. Be prepared to flee at any moment, and retreat immediately if something is amiss!”

Plane fractures are rare occurrences—either caused by some terrifying natural disaster or by the misstep of a True God or an even more powerful being who inadvertently shatters the plane during battle.

Of course, there’s also a possibility that it was the work of a super void behemoth passing through the plane. If the plane isn’t large, it might be accidentally cracked open as well.

Fractured planes are generally worthless. Once shattered and fragmented, falling into the void, it won’t take long before the earth is corroded and dissolved by void energy, eventually disappearing into nothingness.

However, generally after a plane collapses and dissolves, some extremely durable and precious minerals and magic materials may remain. These are usually difficult to mine within a plane, but they may become accessible after a plane’s disintegration. Lin Xiao aims to try his luck and see if he can find such spoils.

The Flying Snake No. slowly moved forward, and soon another piece of land riddled with corrosion flew past them.

As it brushed past, the observer saw a large piece of blue crystal on the opposite side of the rock and shouted immediately,

“Look there, such a huge chunk of raw sapphire!”

Lin Xiao’s gaze shifted, and he saw the blue crystal, about the size of a small room, whose surface was aglow with a faint blue light. There were also many blue crystals of varying size nearby. His face brightened as he exclaimed,

“Move closer and dig it out.”

“We’re going to make a fortune this time.”

Everyone in the bridge was thrilled at the sight of the blue crystal.

This was no ordinary sapphire; it was the kind of gemstone that could be used as magic materials. The most common and largest use is to grind it into powder. After treatment, it can be mixed with other substances to create magic ink, which is essential for inscribing arrays, making magic items, or producing magic scrolls.

While it’s not highly priced individually, they couldn’t ignore the size of the loot here. To put it into perspective, normally one unit of such material is only the size of an egg, and the going rate on the market is one Godforce Crystal for a thousand units.

With such an abundance here, easily amounting to hundreds of thousands of units, the total value could reach several hundred Godforce Crystals. That’s no small sum of money.

“Finders keepers; let’s dig it out and everyone gets a big red envelope,”

Lin Xiao grandly proclaimed, raising his hand in a sweeping gesture.

The crew cheered in response, their movements becoming noticeably more efficient.

Maintaining trajectory parallel with the plane fragment, several meters tall, members of the Navy Marine Corps mounted several machines similar but larger than Pioneer Golems. They detached from the warship and flew toward the plane fragment. Two mechanical arms secured to the cliff surface, while the other two transformed into chisels, fiercely gouging along the seams around the sapphire.

These machines had immense strength. They cracked the hard ore layer, and soon enough, the ore and blue sapphire were loosened and separated. The two machines extended several arms to clutch and push the block towards the Flying Snake No.

It’s worth mentioning that these magic sapphires were associated minerals of iron ore, surrounded entirely by iron ore rocks.

If it were any other time, they wouldn’t waste these iron ores, but they didn’t have the space to store them now and had no choice but to let them go.

When Lin Xiao arrived at the rear cabin, he saw that a blue sapphire as big as a small room was already lying quietly on the hard metal floor, its soft blue glow illuminating the surroundings.

Shen Yuexin walked around the gemstone, picked up a small, irregular fragment from the ground, and said,

“This kind of magic gemstone has many uses and is in high demand in the market. Are you going to sell it or use it yourself?”

“Of course, for personal use!”

He had a Magic based race within his God Domain, and their consumption of such a material was quite significant. He previously had to buy materials for them, which was a considerable expense.

He then reached out to the Flying Snake and said,

“Lend me your sword, will you?”

The Flying Snake quickly unfastened his sword belt and handed over the sword. Lin Xiao took it, aimed it at the house-sized blue sapphire, and struck it down.

Dazzling light burst from the sword, quickly transforming into a five-meter-long blade as it struck down, cleaving the sapphire in two. With several more swift slices, he cut the sapphire into a dozen smaller pieces before stopping.

Returning the sword to his subordinate, he pointed at the pile of blue sapphires and said to his girlfriend,

“Here, half for you, half for me.”

The girlfriend didn’t play coy, either; she reached out and collected half of the sapphires.

Though she wasn’t short of money, when exploring other domains, what should be taken must be taken.

Lin Xiao stored the remaining half in his spatial magic item for the time being, planning to transfer them to his True Body using the Creation Rubik’s Cube when he had the chance.

After that, they mined the other smaller sapphires from the piece of the Piecemeal Plane one by one, and then used the ship’s cannon to blast the piecemeal plane open, from which they found a large quantity of gemstones of various sizes and other valuable associated minerals, and collected them all.

By the time they left, this piece of the Piecemeal Plane had been disassembled into countless fragments and swallowed by the Void Storm.

Moving forward, they continued to find several piecemeal planes of different sizes and extracted some rare minerals from them, though they didn’t come across any Magic Sapphires mines as rich as the one before.

It wasn’t until they had flown perhaps tens of thousands of kilometers forward, and for a long time, they hadn’t seen any Piecemeal Planes, that Lin Xiao estimated the Flying Snake No. had passed through the void filled with Piecemeal Planes, and he hadn’t seen any shattered plane cores, nor any remnants of life from the shattered planes, let alone the culprit behind the destruction of the planes.

Lin Xiao speculated that they had arrived too long after the disintegration of the plane, and the shattered plane core was probably taken away long ago.

If there was one…

He felt a mix of disappointment and relief.

Disappointment because they hadn’t seen the central region inside the shattered plane and naturally hadn’t seen the plane core.

Relief because coming late meant not encountering the destroyer of the shattered plane; had they truly met it, their odds of survival would likely have been slim.

The so-called plane core, also known as the Star Core, is the original core of a plane, containing an extremely terrifying energy. Turning this thing into a card would result in an eight-star Ancient Card that even a True God would covet in their dreams.

Integrating this thing into a Divine Realm could induce a qualitative transformation that countless children of the Divine Realm dream of, one that breaks through limits and allows the birth of True God Level powerhouses.

Put it this way, normally, using various conventional means to enhance the strength and energy limit of a Divine Realm reaches Rank 10, which corresponds to the Demigod Stage.

This is the conventional upper limit. Even if a child of the Divine Realm achieves Divine Enthronement, or advances to Powerful Divine Power, as long as they don’t use special precious treasures to enhance the limit of the Divine Realm, then the upper limit of the clan’s Strength within the Divine Realm is restricted to below Rank 10, unable to exceed this limit, even if the child of the Divine Realm obtained Divinity for core races. This is the world’s limit.

Yet the plane core has the function to break through this limit, hence its value is unimaginable.

But as good as plane cores are, they’re extremely rare. That’s not to say every plane has a plane core; the conditions for its formation and acquisition are extremely stringent.

First and foremost, it must be a plane that has intelligent life and has given birth to a Plane Will, regardless of the size of the plane, then there’s a possibility for a plane core to form.

Yes, just a possibility. It’s not to say that a Plane Will will definitely be born.

Without meeting these conditions, no matter how large a plane is, its core will not form.

Note, this formation is a conceptual formation. In truth, every plane has a core, it’s just a matter of whether it’s usable or not.

You can think of it like eggs. Some eggs can hatch chicks, while others will never manage to hatch chicks — it’s that kind of idea.

Beyond that, how to obtain a plane core is also a major issue.

After all, a plane core is the foundation of a plane’s existence, like the brain and heart of a person. If someone takes away your brain and heart, and does so while you are still alive, could you still live?

Definitely not.

Therefore, the appearance of every plane core represents the destruction of a plane that housed a vast number of intelligent lives.

People will resist, and so naturally will the Plane Will.

People in despair may fight to the bitter end, even to the point of suicide, and so will a Plane Will. Once it finds itself unable to resist entirely, there is a very high chance it will try to self-destruct as a final strike against its foe.

Whether successful in destroying the target or not, it would be annihilated.

Once a Plane Will falls prematurely, the plane core it guards essentially becomes useless.

Whoever destroys a plane with abundant life will face rejection and hostility from the entire Crystal Wall Universe.

That’s why plane cores are extraordinarily difficult to obtain, and not even the children of wealthy families each have one.

Every appearance of such a thing would lead countless wealthy sons of the Divine Realm to wave treasures attempting to trade for it.

Indeed, such things are only bartered with goods of equivalent tier or value, and are generally not sold outright.

Although Lin Xiao didn’t find such an item and had no regrets, had he truly found one, he would’ve faced a tough decision about whether to return immediately.

Of course, should he actually acquire a complete plane core, returning immediately wouldn’t be a loss.

They didn’t intend to return to search, either. If they had overpassed it, then that was that—they continued straight forward, disappearing into the Void Storm without a trace.

Inside the Divine Realm, as time passed, the light from the cocoons that the Wise Goblins had transformed into began to dim, signaling that the metamorphosis was complete.

Accompanied by a faint crack, the largest cocoon in the City of Truth split open, releasing a burst of crystal-clear starlight, and Lin