Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Lin Sheng went back to his place, and while he had no particular urge to save the world, seeing the place he lived in descending into such chaos irked him somewhat.

 He dared not summon the Palatinate that he had taken so much effort to kill, but seeing the encroaching Blacktide before him, Lin Sheng knew that the incursion was real.

 Now, there was only one Palatinate among the Holy Sanctum Templars, and that was the Night Lord.

 With only a single Palatinate, the capabilities of the Holy Sanctum were minuscule compared to the various organizations and families across the Darksider realm.

 “Perhaps, I could try to resolve this problem myself.”

 As he got back to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the manor, Lin Sheng started to go through the largest about of knowledge he had gathered.

 The elementary otherworld summoning was the biggest crutch he depended on to summon his underlings.

 The summoning ritual was originally very powerful and mysterious to him. But now with the knowledge he had gained, the summoning was not as difficult for him compared to last time.

 If he could think of it, he could summon it.

 Lin Sheng then started on modifying and improving the summoning ritual inside the bas.e.m.e.nt blessed by the Sacred Ground.

 He had managed to isolate and collate a series of symbols, patterns, and scripts that could draw energy from all of the rituals and matrixes he had mastered.

 At the same time, he also included part of the Ashen Seal into it.

 After being engraved, the Ashen Seal would have just a two-hour effective time, but its boon within these two hours was nothing to snuff at.

 Thus, Lin Sheng gave all of these contents that he had collated a name, soul runes.

 These soul runes not only could be used independently, but they could also be freely combined and merged into different modules.

 Even if they originated from different systems altogether, Lin Sheng did not mind that as long as they were usable.

 After compiling the soul runes, Lin Sheng could finally start modifying and improving the ritual. He first tried to change some symbols or patterns before starting to summon some weaker summons.

 Like the human-headed frog or something.

 Through the constant experimentation, he found out that some parts of the runes could be changed without affecting the ritual, while some were permanent fixtures that could not be touched. Through this, Lin Sheng started to get a grasp of the usage of each symbol and pattern of the ritual.

 The days pa.s.sed as the city slowly recovered.

Lin Sheng went over to check on the Soul Fortress from time to time, to keep an eye on Milla, Mylissa and the rest.

 Aside from that, his focus was on expanding the Holy Sanctum.

 Countless Darksiders continued to join, and some of them were high-level Darksiders. After awakening their holy powers, they then served as the conduit of the holy seed and spread the seeds to more people.

 With a downward branching system where the senior members control the source of the junior's power, the entire system was tightly controlled.

 As long as they did not betray the Holy Sanctum, they could obtain the Ashen Seals from Lin Sheng to meditate on.

 Plus the power source held by the seniors did not affect anything, and once people realized these, more and more decided to join the Holy Sanctum. Even more of them were cheats who wanted to steal the holy seed and training methods from the sanctum before leaving.

 Lin Sheng did not pay much mind to this group of people.

 Without his Ashen Seal to continuously strengthen the holy seed, it could not sustain itself at all. And these cheaters who had left would soon realize that they would never be able to obtain holy powers after turning their backs to the holy Sanctum.

 As a power originating from the soul, the holy power was not something that could be fooled about. One may be able to fool someone else, but never him or herself.

 Also, all of the holy seeds that were spread out all originated from Lin Sheng himself; and he did not even disseminate the true method to awaken the holy power without the holy seed.

 Another week pa.s.sed.

 Lin Sheng's improvement of the summoning ritual had reached its final stages. He had totally removed all unnecessary parts of the ritual without affecting the summoning and reconstruction effect.

 At the same time, he had incorporated parts of the Ashen Seal into it as an auxiliary matrix.

 Under the condition that he could read all of the matrices and master them, Lin Sheng had removed all other risks involved and properly improved the ritual.

 Using the new ritual, any beings that he summoned would be completely under his control, and they would also receive the protective s.h.i.+elding from the Sanctuary Ashen Seal.

 This improvement literally gave every summoned being an additional armor layer and a rather effective one at that.

 With this, he was finally able to properly commence the summoning ritual. He wanted to summon that red-haired swordswoman.

 …

 Henriqcal City, construction material wholesale market.

 Deep inside the deserted market, all of the shops had already been shuttered, and among the streets and alleyways were rubbish thrown about by the cold wind.

 A few bone-thin stray dogs were out looking for food as they rummaged through the rubbish bin with bloodshot eyes.

 Closer to a few flat blocks in the middle of the market, human figures were seen from time to time, yet there was no sound.

 *Bam!*

 Suddenly, one of the stray dogs was. .h.i.t in the abdomen by a rock that flew out of nowhere. It whimpered as it rolled before forcing itself up and ran away, leaving a faint trail of blood.

 Two men in gray coats covered their faces with their tall collars and hat as they stood in front of a shuttered ceramics shop.

 “The Asterism patrol is just too tight at other places. Only this place is safe,” one of the figures whispered.

 “Asterism, the Holy Sanctum, Baine University, with all three of these local forces breathing down on us, even going underground is difficult, much less trying to pinpoint the Marked down…”

 The two were extremely frustrated. The mark of the Sevenlocks Tower would originally be very clear, but for some unknown reason, the marked person in this city, would appear and disappear from time to time.

 The mark sensors also could not clearly determine the marked's ident.i.ty or location.

 “Perhaps the device is already broken?” One of the figures pulled out a silver box the size of a palm with a thoughtful expression.

 “Probably, the other marked targets are normal. Only the one we are tracking is giving us trouble.”

 “Then let me fix it. When I was at HQ, I was the handyman for repairs.” The person holding the box seemed confident.

 “Go ahead, then. It's broken, anyway.”

 “Yeah, this is quite simple actually.”

 Ten minutes later….

 “Why the h.e.l.l is there additional stuff here?”

 The man who had just rea.s.sembled the device looked at the box in his head. He had taken the device apart to inspect and repair, before rea.s.sembling them.

 For some reason, there was an extra chip-like device that he had no idea where to put it back…

 “Did you screw it up instead?” His partner gave him a suspicious glance.

 “It's already fixed no? This is the reason why it was broken.” The repairman's expression was impa.s.sive as he put the additional chip into his pocket.

 “This device had an additional component compared to the rest, little wonder the scanning function was broken.”

 He stood up and sounded confident. As he said that, he pressed on the device's b.u.t.ton and it worked like a charm.

 “Eh, it worked! d.a.m.n you're good!” His partner gasped in amazement and gave him a thumbs up.

 “Nothing to it, just repairing a scanning device. I still have that bit of confidence,” the repairman said as he let out a sigh of relief.

 He then decided to get a new unit from the HQ once he went back.