Chapter Sixteen: The Hall, Give Me a Boost! (Please Keep Reading)

The hall continued to cascade with prompts, endlessly refreshing. It was frantically listing, evaluating, and prioritizing the steps needed to reconstruct itself. Countless plans were proposed, only to be rejected the next moment, then refreshed again. The computational power of the hall was beyond Li Xia’s comprehension.

Despite this, it still hadn’t found that faint, perhaps one-time, opportunity.

Estimating that the hall wouldn’t reach a conclusion anytime soon, Li Xia found a comfortable brick, blew off the dust, and sat down.

I need to sort this out... digest exactly what happened...

First of all, the hall wasn’t singular but six in total, each with a different name.

The hall he was in was called the Transcendence Hall. The others were the Mountain of Light, the Blissful Paradise, the Divine Kingdom, the Abyssal Sea, and the Hyperstring Realm.

Thirty-two standard time units ago, the other five halls besieged Transcendence, shattering it and stealing the critically important “???” artifact.

Though Transcendence Hall was destroyed, it wasn’t entirely dead. From some perspectives, it wasn’t wrong for Transcendence to call itself the Supreme Hall—requiring the combined might of all five halls to break through, it was indeed formidable.

By rights, Transcendence Hall should have fallen into dormancy, having lost the ability to recruit new apostles.

But fate works in mysterious ways—because I arrived!

The special item, the “Reserve Apostle’s Credential,” was created based on the fundamental rules of the hall. It was itself a hall’s mark, so the hall awakened and exerted all its power to pull me here.

Li Xia pinched his chin, lost in thought... so what on earth is this “Reserve Apostle’s Credential”?

How come I don’t remember ever having it?

Forget it, no point in digging into that now... Since the hall had no one left, by order of precedence, I became the highest authority of the hall.

The First Progenitor was a rank, and the Prince was a merit rank. In short, this yellow robe was donned quite suddenly.

But how to put it... I’m a lone commander.

No, no, think positively: the hall is just me now, so all the resources should be mine...

Li Xia glanced around the desolate ruins. What resources? There was nothing!

Bored, he began to examine what use these two titles actually had.

To his surprise, the benefits were substantial.

First, all facilities within the hall were free to use—no fees required!

Second, the hall offered a 90% resale price for items recovered from them.

Just these two perks were huge advantages; perhaps the progenitors didn’t care about such expenses.

But Li Xia cared—early-stage finances were crucial.

There were other lifestyle benefits, like the hall providing free housing.

Seemingly ordinary, but the dwelling was enormous—big enough to select an entire “world”!

Absurd!

The rest was even more complex. As he perused further, Li Xia began to see a pattern: if apostles were hall employees...

The elite apostles were middle management, the progenitors were senior executives.

Then the First Progenitor was like a partner in the company, apparently on equal footing with the hall itself.

So just how powerful were the true progenitors?

Just as Li Xia was lost in thought, the hall finally had new developments.

[Reconstruction plan completed!]

[Decomposing plan into 12,874,861,234,987 sub-items, merging similar items, optimizing sub-items]

[Reorganizing plan... total of 38,457,723 sub-items, involving 214,563 world bubbles, 2,783 void-origin world hazard zones, 452 despair zones, 84 death zones, 3 no-go zones]

[Honored First Progenitor, Your Excellency, please subdue these worlds and plunder the resources the hall requires!]

Li Xia’s mouth twitched twice. Me, subdue them? Seriously?

[Critical error: Progenitor’s power level assessed as low-tier first-rank apostle. Probability of death exceeds 100%.]

Li Xia: ...

Thanks, at least you remember I’m a low-tier apostle.

[Task modified: enhancing progenitor’s power set as a task of equal priority.]

[Searching for available resources... initiating emergency repairs.]

Li Xia noticed a large cluster of building ruins in the distance suddenly levitate, then disperse into countless parts under invisible force.

Some parts glowed milky white, as if imbued with life, converging in one direction and assembling together.

Eventually, they formed a semicircular structure resembling an igloo and settled on the ground.

[Honored Progenitor, Your Excellency, you may strengthen your attributes and enhance your skills here.]

Thank heavens, there’s at least a place to strengthen myself!

Li Xia stepped into the odd igloo, which was surprisingly bright despite no visible light source.

A personal status panel appeared before him again.

[Name: Li Xia]

[ID: 1]

[Level: First Progenitor]

[Merit Rank: Prince]

[Physical Strength Assessment: 1 (First Rank · Carbon-based lifeform)]

[Strength: 4 (Increasing this improves physical power)]

[Agility: 5 (Increasing this improves attack and reaction speed)]

[Intelligence: 6 (Increasing this improves spell model construction and complex fuzzy computation)]

[Spirit: 5 (Increasing this raises spirit limit and reduces ability release cost)]

[Constitution: 5 (Increasing this improves healing, cardiopulmonary function, and stamina)]

[Luck: 0 (Increasing/decreasing this affects probability of rare events and tilts outcomes positive/negative)]

[Note: Earth · 22% oxygen environment · standard gravity · average adult male baseline attribute is 5]

[Skill: Breath of the Sun (Initiate 0%)]

[Equipment: None]

[Personal Storage Space: 100 cubic meters—??? (depends on hall recovery progress)]

[Talent: Fortunate Misfortune (Fate level)]

[Available Attribute Points: 6]

Each basic attribute had a ‘+’ sign next to it, allowing immediate allocation.

Li Xia pondered, about to add points—then hesitated, and after a moment asked:

“Hall, can training in the real world improve basic attributes?”

[Yes.]

Just as expected! Li Xia’s eyes gleamed with excitement. Raising from 5 to 10 was hard, but from 5 to 6 or 7 was not.

If he held off on allocating points now, trained in the real world, then returned to the hall and deferred point allocation until before world-hopping...

Would that not be like gaining free attribute points?

And not only that, Li Xia’s breathing quickened as he recalled learning Breath of the Sun.

Since skills could be acquired through study, could basic abilities also be skill-ized by learning in the real world?

Like shooting techniques, hand-to-hand combat, and so forth.

Soon, the hall confirmed this.

I’m a genius!

So the only thing I need to improve right now... is Breath of the Sun!

With that thought, Li Xia decisively pointed at the plus sign next to Breath of the Sun.

Hall, allocate points for me!