Because within the split-open entrails, he saw a familiar glint of gold.
With four quick slashes, he severed his enemy's limbs. Murray knelt beside his fallen foe like a devout believer, released the knight sword in his grip, and reached into the writhing innards, stirring around in search.
The enemy's wails sounded like a young child's, but Murray felt no pity. His mind was entirely occupied by the sensation at his fingertips.
Pulling out a blood-drenched gold coin from the depths of the scarlet viscera, Murray lifted his blood-soaked hand, utterly enraptured as he gazed at the holy object, shimmering with a beautiful radiance under the light!
Carefully placing the blood-stained coin into his inner pocket, Murray greedily looked down at the wailing boy, a twisted, ferocious grin of ecstatic joy spreading across his face.
There's more inside!!
Without hesitation, he plunged both hands into the boy's guts, frantically searching, violently and carelessly tearing out clumps of organs, as foul-smelling mucus and blood splattered everywhere. The originally elegant study gradually turned crimson, as sinister and terrifying as Hell.
Quickly, a second coin was uncovered, followed by a third, a fourth…
The boy's screams of despair and agony sounded to Murray like celestial music. The smile on his face became harder to suppress, growing more twisted, ferocious, and manic…
The gold coins inside the boy's stomach seemed inexhaustible. Unknowingly, Murray had extended his entire upper body into the gaping maw-like incision, which began to swallow him bit by bit…
In the real world, one of the opponent's eyeballs was squeezed out of its socket, hanging by a nerve at the corner of his eye. Yet, his face bore an even greedier, more frenzied smile. Zhu Haomiao rubbed his chin, curious to know what Murray saw in the illusion realm.
What could be making him so happy? Tell me so I can share in the joy?
With a soft snap of his fingers, Murray instantly awoke from the illusion. The mountain of gold piled around him evaporated like bubbles, leaving his one intact eye staring at a mysteriously sinister boy in black standing before him, deftly flipping a familiar, ornate gold coin between his fingers, watching him with a not quite smile.
Instinctively, he tried to reclaim what was his, but only now did Murray realize that his body was twisted like a pretzel, suspended in mid-air by an invisible force.
Realizing his predicament, an indescribable pain immediately flooded his mind. The intense shock caused his brain to momentarily crash, and he instinctively lost consciousness, sparing him from dying of agony.
But as he hovered at the brink of death, Zhu Haomiao leaned down and whispered softly in his ear.
"Where did you get this gold coin?"
Murray's pupils dilated and unfocused as his consciousness was utterly dominated. He murmured weakly.
"From a Qing Country merchant…"
"Where are those merchants now?"
"In the dungeon of the Songjiang Prefecture County Office…"
"Why are they in the dungeon?"
"Because they wouldn't hand over the coins, so I had them arrested…"
Hearing this, Zhu Haomiao had already vaguely guessed the course of events.
Merely a scenario of collusion between officials and merchants, scheming for wealth and murder.
These powerful colonizers could mobilize local forces with a single word, framing Liu Heng's merchant group with any excuse.
Smacking his lips, Zhu Haomiao sighed deeply and languidly uttered two words.
The next second, the authority of the Book of Black intervened in reality, with chilling sounds of bones cracking echoing like a string of firecrackers, as the tall and burly middle-aged Caucasian was twisted like a damp towel by invisible giant hands, squeezing out every ounce of "value."
Liquid brain matter, blood, entrails, bone marrow, along with even more intangible concepts were extracted and merged into a mesmerically beautiful gold hue.
Eagerly opening his palm, several blood-stained gold coins floated into Zhu Haomiao's hand, and he couldn't help but reveal a satisfied smile.
Indeed... the human heart is filthier than demons!
Especially these colonizers, inherently burdened with Original Sin…
Their every piece of wealth was soaked with the tears and blood of the colonized people, their positions climbed atop the white bones of the colonies!
What's more, their minds are not as strong as they appear to be!
Unlike the present-world Transcendents who valued the Dao Heart, the creatures of this Illusion Realm seem to be at a rather primitive stage in exploring spiritual power, which makes it more convenient for the Black Book to harvest them.
Zhu Haomiao knew that if it were purely a contest of brute strength, he was actually not as strong as the middle-aged Caucasian before him.
Rather than saying he defeated him, it was more accurate to say the man lost to his own inner greed.
The Black Book merely stirred the Original Sin deep within his soul, using his power to kill himself!
Eyeballing the twisted, nearly unrecognizable flesh, Zhu Haomiao raised a hand in a virtual grip. Watching the mysterious, hefty tome materialize in his palm, he let out a lamenting sigh.
What truly insidious and strange power…
Greed: LV.2→LV.3 (0/300)
Adjusting the ratio between the Original Sin values and gold coins, Zhu Haomiao gained a total of 13 greed coins, plus one returned coin, making a total of 14!
Without any hesitation, Zhu Haomiao held his fist over the Book of Black, releasing his fingers, allowing the ornate coins to spiral down onto the open pages, creating visible ripples of principle.
Four cultivation techniques successively glowed with brilliant golden light. Surprisingly, they absorbed only eight coins before stopping, much "cheaper" than Zhu Haomiao had anticipated.
Big Toad Qi: LV.1 (entry-level) → LV.2 (Skilled)
Hard Qi Skill: LV.1 (entry-level) → LV.2 (Skilled)
Stacked Waves Strength: LV.1 (entry-level) → LV.2 (Skilled)
Plum Blossom Step: LV.1 (entry-level) → LV.2 (Skilled)
A torrent of immense energy was channeled from the void, gradually settling and hiding, merging into the depths of spirit and body.
Glancing at his six-dimensional attributes, Zhu Haomiao found that each item already had a latent potential of 2.5, with Body reaching as high as 3.5!
Even if he used the Sloth authority to accelerate with deep sleep, these attributes would still take him nearly a virtual moon's time to cultivate!
He can't digest it all!
There's simply too much to absorb!