In the Mirror of Flowers Black Robe Town, in the largest Fox Lamp icehouse at the town center, people were chatting and discussing enthusiastically. Official source is NoveI(F)ire.net
"Yesterday, three ordinary inheritances were taken away from the Eternal City. I wonder which lucky ones got them..."
"They’re just ordinary inheritances. Above them, there’s the Flowing Gold Inheritance and the Peerless Inheritance!"
"The Flowing Gold Inheritance and the Peerless Inheritance are prepared for true geniuses. It’s possible that those whose magic realm has already surpassed gold to reach the status of Holy Domain Two-winged Mages remain on the Time Continent, vying for the position of King of Time. I’m not arrogant enough to compete with them... If I can win an ordinary inheritance from among thousands or tens of thousands, control a resource point for a year, I’d be satisfied."
At this time, the mature female manager, who leaned against the counter like a ripe peach, suddenly rang a golden bell. Once everyone’s attention was drawn, she leisurely pulled out a fountain pen and wrote a piece of information on the whiteboard behind her:
"96: In the Ghost Key Inheritance, upon passing every twenty levels, a ’Ghost Key’ will definitely appear. The key can be used three times, allowing the holder to exit the inheritance at any time."
After she finished, the manager shouted, "Table 13 gets a free meal!"
Instantly, the glamorous girls in the icehouse all looked towards the six people at Table 13: most noticeable was the Black Crow, disguised all in black, followed by the tall and masked Beast Girl. The other four were relatively normal — a cool blonde girl with glasses, a quiet blue-haired girl, a red-haired girl eating La La Fat, and a curly-haired, dark-skinned young girl with shackles on her hands.
Everyone nodded silently towards them to show their thanks.
After all, the ones who could provide information about the Ghost Key Inheritance were only Holy Sanctuary Mages, even though mages were gathered in Black Robe Town, Holy Sanctuary Mages were still among the few. This was evident from the sharing board — out of 96 shared pieces of information, less than 10 were about the Ghost Key Inheritance.
However, everyone only paid slight attention, then continued discussing the Lake Light Inheritance and the Eternal City. The red-haired girl signaled for another serving of red-hot La La Fat, and the dark-skinned girl asked, "Since we got a free meal, can we invite Alice to join us for a meal?"
"It’s possible, but what will Alice eat?"
"There should be piles of cockroaches here, right? At the very least, there ought to be some rats?"
"If you keep talking like that, the manager might be willing to pay you to eat at the restaurant next door."
Those who got the free meal were naturally Ash and his six companions.
After leaving the Dead City, Ash had been evading the Four Pillars God Sect while pursuing the Gray Fox’s legacy. Along the way, the two allies they picked up in the Dead City, the Beastman Qikara and the Star Mage Gwen, joined the team as temporary allies.
Logically, the Slavery Contract restrained Qikara, which was fine since he had the combat power of the Holy Domain. Throwing him out as rear defense in danger was quite excellent. But Gwen, not only did she have average combat power, but she was also once a vessel for the Mercury Wooden Horse. It was considered saintly that Ash didn’t kill her on the spot. Now they carried this ticking time bomb with them, as if their adventure wasn’t challenging enough.
However, Gwen had used the "Sanctuary·Zero Hourglass", which should have purged all the mercury from her body, preventing her from turning into a Wooden Horse again. Moreover, she once held a high rank in the Four Pillars God Sect, knowing a lot of valuable information, which was just right for Ash’s group of adventurers lacking logistics and needing to plunder.
More importantly, Gwen was unwilling to leave and kept following them from afar.
Not wanting to kill, but unable to ignore, Ash asked Igula to watch over her. If she tried to leak information or act unnaturally, she was to be executed immediately. Igula had no choice but to manage this new assistant with a sour face.
But it must be said, with Gwen the traitor’s guidance, they indeed avoided the attacks from the Four Pillars God Sect several times in advance, also looting a few of the sect’s secret vaults. In the short run, they didn’t worry about feeding the Technique Spirits — Three-winged Technique Spirits demanded far more coins than Two-winged ones. After Ash and the others promoted their Technique Spirits to Three-winged status, each needed three gold coins per day.
Even in the Wasteland with a high cost of living, three gold coins could feed an ordinary person for a month!
Fortunately, the Four-winged Technique Spirit Yuanchan could be sustained with Flowing Gold River water and didn’t require extra meals, or Ash would have gone bankrupt.
They came to the Qinri Alliance to pursue inheritance clues, but as the situation in the Wasteland rapidly worsened, even posing as "travel merchants" got them constantly monitored and even expelled. They narrowly avoided a fight with the Bronze Law Sect.
Additionally, with the changes in the Void Realm six days ago, Ash and his group sought to temporarily settle down and gather information. They made their way back to Black Robe Town — under the backdrop of a holy war, only commercial towns would allow ’unbelievers’ like them.
Upon arriving in Black Robe Town, Ash’s group found the transient population had doubled. Last time, they each got a room; now, all six shared three rooms. Nonetheless, as they all turned into beautiful girls at night, it wasn’t a big deal.
The sudden influx of visitors to Black Robe Town was mainly because the War Holy Temple was overthrown by the Four Pillars God Sect, and Black Robe Town was nominally a direct territory of the War Holy Temple.
When the War Holy Temple’s forces collapsed, multiple sects immediately stationed themselves in Black Robe Town, both as protection and to seize this trade center.
The secondary reason was due to the inheritance emerging in the Void Realm, sparking the mages’ desire for communication.
Unlike the Blood Moon or the Gospel, the Kingdom of Senluo had no online communication channels, leaving sect members to communicate internally. In normal times, it wasn’t a problem because they had little to discuss with heretics, and the mages of different sects practiced different magics, inherently limiting their desire to communicate with one another.