Chapter 992 - 561: Golden Banner Returns, Strategy Dual Dormancy

[Due to the special nature of this kill, a temporary adjustment will be made to the Challenge Boss. Subsequent cross-region attacks will no longer grant any Challenge Points]

By this time, Zong Shen had long since ridden his Flying Tiger away from the crusade battlefield.

They had flown some distance toward the south.

At this moment, he also saw those five flickering Golden banners in the sky.

Obviously, his feat of taking down two Flame Demons across regions had likewise triggered a breakthrough event.

This way, he could still get quite a lot of Points and item rewards.

Maybe he would even obtain a Fate System item of Unknown Tier.

This was something Zong Shen hadn’t expected beforehand!

He had originally done this merely to make full use of the Blood-Burning Arrow before the Lord System adjusted the rules.

To squeeze every last bit of Wool out of this Challenge event!

He hadn’t expected to gain an additional breakthrough reward.

Afterward, the Lord System also promptly made new adjustments to cross-region strategies.

During the upcoming Challenge Period, he would no longer be able to perform cross-region attacks.

Otherwise, in this gap, with the Flying Tiger’s high mobility.

He could have the Guide Module filter targets and pick a regional Flame Demon with relatively high remaining Blood Volume.

Ride the Flying Tiger over and use the Blood-Burning Arrow to take down a Flame Demon Boss!

Just in time, the Blood-Burning Arrow could still be used once more beforehand.

But now he could only obediently turn back.

After these Golden banners appeared, several more items popped up in Zong Shen’s Storage Grid.

These were all rewards granted for completing the breakthrough event.

Before he had time to check them, the surrounding spacetime suddenly underwent an anomaly.

A targeted Time Stop state descended.

The Flying Tiger, which had been in mid-Flying, just froze there in midair.

Its flapping wings also halted.

"Damn it, what’s going on?"

Zong Shen felt a twinge of unease in his heart.

At the same time, a peculiar Red cloud gathered in the sky above his head.

This Red cloud emitted a faint red glow even under the night sky.

When everything around was frozen, only these clouds were still moving.

They spun rapidly like a vortex.

From the vortex cloud, a Red beam slowly descended toward Zong Shen.

This scene felt somewhat familiar to Zong Shen.

As the Red light condensed and took shape, a Golden Strategy prompt appeared in front of Zong Shen.

This sort of unsolicited Strategy prompt showing up was already the second time.

The previous time had been when he killed the Netherworld Snake Apophis.

The Golden Strategy prompt was very simple, basically identical to last time.

(To evade high-intensity detection, the Guide Module will enter a 24-hour sleep)

Just as expected!

This time was similar to last time, both meant to evade some kind of detection.

The Golden subtitles flashed by; the Duration wasn’t even a full second.

Once the Strategy prompt disappeared.

The beam of light projected from the Red vortex cloud in the sky also shone down on Zong Shen.

Zong Shen immediately felt a powerful wave of Dizziness.

As if he had lost all weight and was drifting in an Unknown Void.

In that instant he felt a hazy sense of separation.

He could sense himself rapidly soaring upward toward some Unknown high altitude.

The scenery around him became incomparably blurry.

This Soul-out-of-body feeling of losing track of Time was almost identical to last time.

After he came to a halt, hundreds and thousands of white rays of light flashed around him.

These rays repeatedly scanned over his body.

And in the surroundings, Zong Shen could vaguely see streams of data composed of inexplicable symbols flashing by at high speed.

All of this looked incredibly dreamlike.

Coupled with his own peculiar sense of detachment.

He couldn’t see it clearly at all, as if he had fallen into an Illusion Realm.

Those white lights swept back and forth again and again; who knew how many times they had scanned.

Eventually, even that Blood-Burning Arrow appeared beside him.

Undergoing the white light’s scan.

As each beam of white light swept across the Blood-Burning Arrow.

A blurry image surfaced off to the side.

In this image, the scene of him digging under that crooked-neck tree.

Up to the moment he pulled the Blood-Burning Arrow from that Elf Race skull.

The next instant, all the white light suddenly vanished.

The surroundings around Zong Shen turned into a Red, hazy Void State.

Aside from his own body, he couldn’t see anything clearly.

After a brief pause came an intense sense of falling.

In that moment, he even felt an illusion of weightlessness in his perception.

As if he were suddenly plummeting from tens of thousands of meters high.

The feeling was not only peculiar but also maddening.

If he hadn’t been descended here for so long, with a mindset tempered as solid as bedrock.

He might have fallen into the terror of weightlessness right now.

The Duration of the impact of landing was very short, not as long as the previous ethereal sense of rising.

Of course, the Time between the two might actually have been about the same.

It was just that Zong Shen had already lost his sense of Time.

In any case, by the time he came back to his senses, he had already regained control over his body.

The Red vortex cloud and light pillar above his head had disappeared.

Everything around him returned to normal.

As if something had happened, yet also as if nothing had changed.

The Flying Tiger was still flapping its wings.

Mapple behind him still had her Two-Handed arms wrapped around his waist.

Everything was just as it had been before.

Their position hadn’t changed either; they were still at the spot before the freeze.

Those strange scenes from earlier felt like some kind of dream.

But to Zong Shen, who had gone through it twice now.

He knew that everything that had just happened had been real!

Obviously, he had once again been examined by some Unknown existence.

Perhaps it was the mysterious Lord System itself.

This procedure was somewhat like an anti-cheat scan.

Fortunately, his Guide Module was very clever.

It had voluntarily entered sleep mode in advance and had not been exposed.

Moreover, the Guide’s usual operating mechanism was very simple.

It didn’t produce any information; it was merely a porter of Lord System Information.

It only told Zong Shen the information he wanted to know!