Chapter 1710 - 1263:

The road in front of the hotel was marked by lasers as a temporary restriction zone, and the roaring Gospel floating car slowly descended to the ground. The cabin door slid open to reveal a golden interior, almost as comfortable as a hotel suite.

"Ash, over here."

Besides Ash and Felix, everyone else was inside.

Sonia was wearing a black strap dress and black silk stockings with straps. She patted the empty space beside her, crossing her legs while swirling a glass of red wine. Ash could feel the nearby onlookers’ gazes shifting from envy and jealousy to admiration—especially after Freyja poked her head out and jokingly greeted him, the onlookers’ gazes nearly turned into pity, watching Ash, who looked like a pretty boy, stepping into the bewitching, bone-eating demon cave.

In fact, Ash also felt this way. Although the interior space of the floating car was already quite roomy, it was clearly overloaded with nine people inside. To his left was the Sword Maiden maid, and to his right was the Witch Silver Lamp. Squeezed in the middle, his hands touched others’, feeling more cramped than accomplished, more like a bullied underclassman than someone enjoying the company of his seniors.

"Do we have to cram into one car?"

"There aren’t many imported Gospel floating cars; I could only arrange for one." Siflin sipped the red wine like blood and glanced at him with a smile, "Anyway, it’s not far, so stop complaining."

"If it’s not far, can’t we just take a regular car?"

"But since we’re all riding the floating car today, we don’t want to switch transportation."

Ash was a bit curious, "Are you guys doing activities together today?"

"Yes, we visited the ’Technique Spirit Tomb’ in Feimeng City. It was quite interesting. The Blood Moon Mage used miracles to collect all technique spirits that fell to the earth, preserving a trace of their True Spirit in tombstones. We witnessed many incredible technique spirits." Sonia put down her glass and looked at Vishi, "So ’Sword Spirit Technique Spirit’ really can’t be summoned? With my Sword Technique Faction and your Soul Faction..."

"No, it can’t." Vishi, who had changed back into a maid outfit, spoke in a tone accentuated by the simple black and white corset highlighting a captivating outline, "The summoning condition for Sword Spirit is to nurture the sword for over ten years until it becomes sentient. I can at most help you shorten the nurturing time, but it would still take at least three years. Forget about it short term."

"Is there no way to bypass this summoning condition? Can’t other technique spirits be converted?"

"In theory, it’s not impossible. For example, ’Evil Spirit’, ’Corpse Spirit’, or ’Sword Soul’, ’Sword Intent’ should all be convertible to ’Sword Spirit’. But it also requires time to research, unless Ash helps, given his mastery of swordsmanship and soul. He should be able to intuitively explore the conversion method of Sword Spirit."

"Then let’s add this to Ash’s 72nd to-do list..."

Ash was startled, "I have 71 tasks before this?"

"Of course, the enemy can destroy the earth like Dazzling Star. We must prepare adequately, patch all our shortcomings, and exploit our potential to the utmost before stepping into Seven Heavens to face her in battle." Sonia pulled out a notebook and began writing, "We’ve been moving too fast and too hastily. These two months of vacation are just right to pause, carefully review our resources, and adjust our cultivation direction..."

"Let’s go to the Abyss!" Diya suddenly suggested.

"If we go to the Abyss now, we’d just be rampaging," Sonia said indifferently, "Even the deepest Abyss wouldn’t be much more challenging than a playground for us."

"But what if we’re not allowed to use any technique spirit miracles, only skills?" Diya said, "Though we’ve been through two Divine Wars, our teamwork experience is still too little. Not to mention Vishi, even Weiser is somewhat unfamiliar. Regular training is too dull; I think we need a common enemy and work together to defeat them. That’s the only effective way to improve our teamwork."

Felix pondered, "Why does this sound a bit familiar..."

"Because we just did something similar the night before last, except we didn’t win. Instead, we were all defeated by Ash." Weiser said leisurely, poking the witch on her forehead, "Do you really just want to improve team coordination?"

Diya blinked her eyes, "And register an adventurer identity, then become a legendary adventurer at an unimaginable speed. Isn’t that quite interesting?"

"’Starting My Adventure Life from Zero as a Demigod’..." Siflin laughed, "You just want to try the thrill of a novel plot!"

Busted, Diya blushed while arguing, "Can’t we enjoy ourselves after all those hard cultivation moments?!"

"I’ve tried." Vishi said abruptly, "Before advancing to demigod, for soul refining, I intentionally joined many organizations, pirates, mercenary groups, smuggling gangs. Wherever there was conflict, I went. Since I intentionally hid my strength, when people tried to plot against me, I displayed my strength bit by bit, watching their expressions shift from assured victory to panic and despair... It was indeed quite interesting."

"Exactly this!" Diya said with longing, "I just want to try this! Best if there’s a gamble, where nobody expects us to win, throw in some disgusting villains lusting after us, then we crush them completely, scaring those who treated us poorly into kneeling and begging for mercy!"

"Witch, you’re an empress; how can you indulge in such low-level interests?" Sonia teased, her eyebrows filled with smiles, showing obvious interest, "But it’s worth considering."

Ash grabbed Sonia’s wine glass, lowering his presence, quietly listening to their conversation.

During the past half month, Ash avoided activities when possible, idling in the hotel. First, he defined vacation as "doing nothing all day," likely a side effect of a corporate life; working six days, anyone would likely avoid going out on Sundays. Second, he wanted to create bonding space for them.

Over the past half-year journey, Ash realized that although their team was large, everyone’s focus revolved around him. From emotions to cultivation, Sonia and the others’ topics invariably linked to him, with their gazes always following him.

This wasn’t necessarily bad; in fact, for Ash, it was an ideal situation—not only satisfying his vulgar yet vain sense of superiority but also facilitating team management. If factions split within his team, for someone who only served a year as a dorm leader, it would be an immense management challenge.

The price of this was that, aside from Sonia and Diya, who got along quite well, the others didn’t have much interaction with each other. For instance, Diya and Vishi often chatted in the team chat channel, but if they were left alone together, the atmosphere would become unbearably awkward.

It wasn’t until Ash appeared to break the awkwardness that they both breathed a sigh of relief.

But not having close personal relationships wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the focus was on teamwork. However, Ash vaguely sensed that they seemed to rely on him too much.

Yes, although everyone assumed Ash was the dead weight they couldn’t take along, they wouldn’t let Ash take on the usual training plans, but when it came to major route decisions, they all defaulted to Ash as the final decision-maker. This wasn’t because they were hopelessly in love, but because Ash, with his Supreme Void Wings, was the highest combat power, and for goals like challenging Dazzling Star, only he could make the decision.

The lack of close personal ties plus him being the final decision-maker resulted in the team not having a vice-captain, someone who could lead the team when Ash wasn’t around.

Although it seemed everyone defaulted to Sonia as the vice-captain, and Sonia did indeed fulfill the duties of a vice-captain, her prestige came from Ash’s delegation of power... would others still accept Sonia’s leadership when Ash wasn’t present?

Ash wasn’t sure, he wasn’t even sure if Sonia could handle the responsibilities of a vice-captain.

On closer inspection, Diya was an Empress with actual ruling power, Weiser once led the Four Pillars God Sect rampantly, and Vishi was a Ghost Prophet full of political cunning... They all seemed more suited to lead this team than the village girl Sonia.

So he actively withdrew his presence, leaving space for them. Power is an intriguing force, if you don’t use it, it will inevitably be taken by others. Only a vacant throne is without power, as Ash entered stealth mode, the Sword Maiden and the others naturally re-established their own rankings.

Even small things like ’where to go tomorrow’ would lead to disagreements, naturally defining statuses.

What slightly surprised Ash was that after a brief adjustment, Sonia still strongly held the leading role. It’s worth noting that he had tried to minimize his influence as much as possible, Vishi and the others had no reason to compromise on minor matters during a vacation, yet Sonia’s arrangements were still managed impeccably, making everyone willing to listen to her.

He even felt that Sonia was more suitable to be the captain, in fact, this was Sonia’s harem team, and he was just the vice-captain providing sleeping services.

Another pleasant surprise was that the relationships among the Sword Maiden and the others improved.

That’s to be expected, aside from the usage rights to the Ash trash can, they initially had no conflicts. Weiser’s resentment towards Vishi vanished after Vishi gave her all in the two previous Divine Wars. Once Ash gave them space to interact, they naturally gravitated towards each other. After all, they were all exceptionally gifted female mages, standing at the pinnacle of mage civilization. There weren’t many people eligible to stand on the same stage with them besides each other.

The trust issues were completely resolved thanks to Ash as the shared hub and the previous adventures of shared life and death. It only seemed natural for them to become friends, and before they hadn’t because Ash, the root of all evil, was obstructing them.

As for worldview issues, their views were actually quite similar, simply put, they were sophisticated, self-interested, proud, and self-sufficient, while Ash was somewhat different from them. For instance, Ash couldn’t accept Vishi’s life-taking and soul refining, but the others didn’t mind, thinking that if others died, it didn’t concern them.

However, their similar worldviews also made it relatively difficult for them to become friends, after all, a selfish person is unwilling to be friends with another selfish person... But this problem was resolved with frequent developer conferences, nothing brings people closer than candid openness.

Ash slowly sipped red wine, quickly becoming mildly drunk. It was quite nice, this was the scene he had been hoping for, not expecting the plan to go so smoothly, just that...

"Feeling lonely?"

Sonia poked his cheek and laughed, "Why aren’t you saying anything?"

"No, I just think it’s really nice." Ash clasped his hands together, sincerely saying, "I hope you guys will always be as close as sisters, united and friendly."

"And then love you wholeheartedly and without reservation too?"

"Ah, is that possible? Thank you!"

"Thank you, my foot!" Sonia laughed and scolded, "Do you believe that once we conquer Dazzling Star, our next target will be you? Think about it, letting you become the Supreme of Magic is too risky, it would be better for us to hold the Supreme Void Wings, and you can spend the rest of your days obediently under the victors’ skirts."

"Seconded."

"Agreed."

"Sounds quite thrilling..."

Felix listened in awe, is it finally happening, are the female mages finally rebelling against Ash’s tyrannical rule?

"Well, I’ll look forward to your rebellion then." Ash laughed, "If without me, you can also work together hand in hand..."

He relaxed his body against the soft cushion, half-closing his eyes and whispered:

"I really want to see that scene."

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