It took Bai Zemin a long time to calm his racing heart.

If there was one disadvantage to entering the Collector's Pocket World it was the fact that the Collector's Pocket Watch, for some reason, could not follow the user there and could only be left behind in the outside world.

Such a thing might change in the future, but for now there was nothing Bai Zemin could do about it.

After calming down, Bai Zemin looked at the other three objects inside the spatial storage earring and confirmed that they were all Third Order Soul Stones.

"Not bad." He muttered to himself as he sent the three Soul Stones into his storage ring.

No matter what, a single Third Order Soul Stone was enough to provide energy to an entire base for over half a year as long as no energy shields or high-powered weapons that needed the support of Soul Stones to operate were used. Now that he had obtained 3 of such treasures on the rebound he would naturally accept it with a smile.

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[Bracelet of Obedience (Legend Grade Treasure): Magic and Mana +2000 when equipped.]

[Effect 1: By activating the effect of the Bracelet of Obedience, your words will become as important as the decree of the Gods to their subjects. The limit of the effect of the ability depends exclusively on the power difference in the Magic and Mana statistics between the user and the other party. Consumes different amounts of Mana depending on the number and strength of the targets.]

[Effect 2: Increases the power of spiritual skills by 40%]

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Bai Zemin stared at the silver-colored bracelet with golden ornaments on his hands before smiling wryly.

"Really... Those Holy Church guys are packed with good treasures."

He could finally understand how Israfel did to raise his faction so fast, besides his own personal strength and ability.

"This Bracelet of Obedience is simply the best treasure a Faction Leader could ask for to deal with troublesome subordinates." Bai Zemin removed the Binding Bracelet from his left wrist and equipped the Bracelet of Obedience in its place.

Although the Binding Bracelet was good, its effectiveness was low against Third Order soul evolvers not to mention Fourth Order soul evolvers.

Bai Zemin had been waiting for a good bracelet to replace the old one, and the time had finally come.

After a moment, Bai Zemin took out the two skill scrolls he obtained once Israfel died, "Let's see what about these two babies..."

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[Luminous Wings (Third Order active skill) level 1: Does not consume Mana during the day but consumes 3000 points during the nights to activate, as well as 50 Mana points for every 5 seconds.]

[Effect: Uses luminous particles to shape two large perfect white wings that allow the user to move through the sky as if moving on the ground. Increases Agility by +700 points and weakens the power of darkness-type skills in a range of five meters by 10%]

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[Magic Suppression (Third Order active skill) level 5: Consumes 900 Mana points to activate and does not distinguish between allies and enemies. Can only remain active for 3 seconds and has a cooldown of 48 hours.]

[Effect: It creates a huge sphere of white light that can suppress all attack magic within 20 to 50 kilometers depending on the magic power of the user. All magic touching the light sphere will disintegrate into motes of light and blind both enemies and allies until the effect fades completely.]

[This skill is at its maximum level and can not evolve on its own.]

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A Wings-type skill and an anti-magic skill...Bai Zemin did not know that Israfel had used the skill Magic Suppression to ridicule several hundred thousand attack-type magic skills cast by the demon army during the invasion in Italy, thus saving his troops from what would otherwise have been a hell of flames and blood.

However, the skill Magic Suppression seemed to be at its limit from the very beginning.

What did this mean? Basically, it meant that if a low-level soul evolver tried to learn this skill they would definitely die horribly; but one didn't need to be a genius to think that something bad could happen just by looking at the activation requirements and the description of the skill's effect.

If it was in the past, Bai Zemin would never learn a skill that had already reached its limit at such a low stage since at higher levels, beyond 400, Magic Suppression would probably lose all its power over enemies.

But things had changed a bit now that he knew more about the Collector's Pocket Watch.

[You have learned the skill Magic Suppression.]

[Spaces available for external skills: 14.]

Of course, he also learned the skill Luminous Wings.

[Spaces available for external skills: 13.]

"I wonder how fast I can be in combat now..." Bai Zemin closed his eyes and couldn't help but smile like a little kid, happy to become stronger even though his level hadn't moved even a little bit upwards.

At the very least, he believed that he would definitely not lose to Saint of the Absolute Felix fully released.

Not by a considerable margin as it was before.

"If I use Shadow Control to reshape shadows into wings, my movement speed will increase slightly... This added to Annihilation of the Falling Sky in the form of golden wings, plus Luminous Wings, plus the effect of my Windsong Walkers of the Cataclysm, Lightning Crimson Flash, and Heavenly Wind..." Bai Zemin opened his eyes and stood up as he muttered to himself.

He stretched his body before looking up at the sky.

"Yep! Today is a good day!"

* * *

Time flew by, and in an instant, another seven days passed since Bai Zemin arrived in this new dimension; an alternate dimension to his own in which many things were similar but definitively not identical to how he knew them.

Over the past week, the group of survivors grew to over 250 but it still wasn't enough to make the large main gymnasium at Beijing University look crowded.

"We are running out of food."

'Shangguan Bing Xue's words were like a bucket of ice water dumped on the heads of everyone present on a winter day.

"How can that even be possible?" 'Liang Peng' expressed his disbelief with wide eyes, "Wasn't the food we had here supposed to be enough to last at least a month? That's not to mention the two other convenience stores we looted over the last week!"

'Chen He' sighed, and after a moment, he remarked, "I understand how you feel... But, if you think about it carefully it's not impossible considering we haven't been particularly careful with our consumption."

"That's..." 'Liang Peng' had a rather ugly expression on his face.

'Shangguan Bing Xue' looked at everyone coldly, and her voice was just as cold as her gaze as she said, "In times of boredom, with nothing else to do besides sitting still, food became a good method to escape from the reality we live in now. Even though we kept fear from reaching dangerous levels and rioting, the truth is that everyone here except us probably gained several kilos over the last half month."

"That's what you get for not listening to me." 'Bai Zemin' snorted and said indifferently, "I warned you that it was better to give these good-for-nothings very little food. They only eat but don't help at all! Now you see, we are in trouble because of them and negligence on your part!"

This time even 'Shangguan Bing Xue' couldn't say much for while it was true that they had avoided trouble by feeding the surviving students and teachers well, the problem was now a lot bigger than it could have been if they had handled things differently.

"Why don't we leave the university premises?" 'Lian Xuan' suddenly proposed, successfully attracting everyone's attention.

'Bai Zemin' rolled his eyes and couldn't help but point out, "Another thing I don't understand is why the hell are these people here? They can't fight or can they? I don't care if he used to be some Secretary or something.""That might be true, but having more ideas and opinions will let us see a much bigger picture of the situation." 'Chen He' clearly disagreed with 'Bai Zemin.'

"Whatever you say pretty boy." 'Bai Zemin' folded his arms before snorting, "Don't come crying later."

Actually, there was still plenty of food... It was just that those rations belonged to the main group, the team that risked their lives going out to fight and clear areas for more supplies.

None of them was willing to give what rightfully belonged to them to people who were good for nothing and therefore they were all smart enough not to mention this matter.

"I... I think his idea isn't that bad..." 'Wu Yijun' said in a hesitant voice. Her black eyes glanced quickly in a certain direction and as if afraid of being misunderstood she immediately explained, "I-I mean. We can't stay here forever or can we? We don't even know what the situation is like outside after all."

Bai Zemin continued to open and close the broken old pocket watch, not paying too much attention to either 'Wu Yijun' or anyone else in particular.

Seeing this, 'Wu Yijun' sighed in relief but at the same time disappointed.

She had tried to reach out to him over the past few days; bringing him food when it was ready, trying to thank him again for helping them back then, or just trying to talk about the current situation.

Unfortunately, 'Xun Tian' was neither too warm nor too cold to her. He simply limited himself to being polite but not allowing her to get too close.

'Wu Yijun' was not stupid, she could naturally see that the other party did not want to have any particularly deep relationship with her beyond simple acquaintances. In normal times she would have given up pretty quickly as she had her own pride, but in this particular case she simply couldn't stop herself.

In fact, the more he tried to push her away the more that sense of urgency grew in her heart.

After nearly two hours of debating what to do, the group finally came to a conclusion.

"Since most of us are okay with this, tomorrow at noon we will begin to make our way to the west exit since it is the closest to our current location." 'Shangguan Bing Xue' looked at everyone one by one before closing her eyes and sighing, "Rest for now... I'm afraid that starting tomorrow we won't have much time to sleep."

They all retired, some together and some separately to sit or lie down on the mattresses they had with the intention of doing exactly what 'Shangguan Bing Xue' advised.

From his place in the shadows, Bai Zemin raised his head slightly and couldn't help but marvel at how stupid the people in this dimension were; even brilliant people like the alternate version of Shangguan Bing Xue and Wu Yijun couldn't see the solution to the problem even though they had it right in front of them.

"This..."

Bai Zemin turned his head slightly as he heard the mosquito voice next to him.

Yes, there was a person who was now sitting with him.

Sylvia looked at him hesitantly, and after a moment of doubt whispered softly, "I didn't want to say this for fear of what the others might say but... Wouldn't it be nice to eat some of the things we killed? Th-That beetle everyone's talking about, for example..."

Bai Zemin slapped his chest several times before letting out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

"W-What's wrong?" Sylvia glanced at her surroundings before looking at him with panicked eyes.

"No, it's nothing." Bai Zemin raised a hand and shook his head, "I'm just relieved that at least not everyone is so stupid."

"Ah?" Sylvia looked at him with her big blue eyes, having no idea what he was talking about.

Even if eating a giant beetle didn't sound appetizing at all it was still better than starving to death!

'But this kind of development is the best for me.' Bai Zemin reasoned as he looked at the inside of the Collector's Pocket Watch with a faint smile imperceptible from the darkness, 'Now I'll be able to do other things I had planned.'

​ Previously, the inside of the Collector's Pocket Watch was practically empty if not completely empty.

Now, however, a long, thin, dark gold-colored handle was embedded in the small hole in the center and pointed to where the number 12 should be.

The next morning everyone was forced to wake up early, and after a few hours to organize everything necessary the double doors were pushed sideways by four male students after receiving the nod from 'Shangguan Bing Xue'.

Bai Zemin made a pause as he took a step outside, and as he stared in a certain direction he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

'Looks like this dimension is completely different in several senses after all.'

* * * * * * *

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