Setting The World Ablaze With A Candle

Point out any errors I made in the chapters, as I'm very lazy and sometimes can't be bothered to reread them. Also give your opinions on something I should change or add

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Feng went back to forging Intermediate Mana Armor Kits, up until notifications about the completed construction of the Shops in the various Imperial Capitals started sounding in his head. 

Putting down his tools, Feng headed out of the Candlelight Trading Firm and started teleporting around once more. Although the Shops have finished construction, that didn't mean Feng was done with their set up just yet. 

On his way, Feng called up the System Panel and used the privilege of his other five 3-star Shops to upgrade 25 of the recently built 1-star Shops in the various Empires to 2-star status, spending 15,000 Gold Coins in the process. 

Shops suddenly appearing in the most prominent locations of nearly four dozen Imperial Capitals had instantly caused a huge stir on the official forums, and over half of them immediately growing into five-story buildings, evidence of them becoming 2-star Shops, even more so. 

But Feng wasn't done yet, as he headed to the City Halls of the Imperial Capitals in which he had just founded 2-star Shops, choosing to upgrade them all again using the 3-star Shop Promotion Orders gathered from Zero Wing's grand Mythic Hunt. 

As soon as the upgrades finished, Feng utilized the privilege from four of the new 3-star Shops to promote Candlelight's remaining 1-star Shops. 

Then he made a trip to those Shops' Imperial Capitals and turned all of them into 3-star Shops. 

With that done, and Feng having spent 158,400 Gold Coins for the Shops' promotions, coming to an overall total of around 204,000 Gold for all of the construction, the Candlelight Trading Firm was now the proud owner of fifty 3-star Shops. 

To which Feng had Melancholic immediately send products to be put for sale, as well as send some of Candlelight's members to the new Shops for management and to free up some room in the other Shops; along with giving a place to the ones who had been stationed in the Starstreak Trading Firm but now had to move after Feng had finished that part of the Quest. 

Soon, all the new Shops were stocked with goods and ready for work, with Candlelight announcing the Shops' opening. 

Seeing that the Shop which had suddenly appeared in the heart of their city was open, all of the players decided to pay it a visit and see if there was anything interesting for sale, or if the prices were lower compared to the other Shops belonging to the various powers in the city. 

Huge crowds around the Candlelight Shops formed as a result, and when said players took notice of all the products in the Candlelight Trading Firm, several of which not being available anywhere else, like the Light Stones of different ranks, Intermediate Mana Armor Kits, Basic Strengthened Armor Kits, its other speciality and useful items, as well as the wide range of basic commodities, their eyes instantly became filled with glee, scrambling to buy as much of the products as they could before anyone else managed to. 

Players from Empires, especially those residing in the Imperial Capitals, were fairly more well off than Kingdom's players, so even with the prices in those Shops' being a bit higher than the ones in White River City, there was no shortage of people wishing to buy from Candlelight. 

Thanks to their patronage, each of the Shops started racking in over 4,000 Gold Coins an hour, making Feng a huge profit, and instantly earning him back the money he had spent on the Shops' construction over the past few hours. 

Though, he was still a bit far off from getting back the Gold spent on purchasing the Land those Shops stood on. 

He'd make that back too in due time at the rate the sales are going, and even though the players' purchasing was bound to slow down after the initial burst, Imperial Capitals were huge, holding millions of players within their walls, and as news of the Candlelight Trading Firm spreads, more and more would come to check out the famous Shops' amazing products, with even players from other cities potentially paying a visit to the Candlelight Shop of their Empire's Imperial Capital. 

Thus, a huge amount of money was about to pour into Feng's pockets. 

Of course, all that profit naturally came at a huge price as well. 

With millions of players buying Candlelight's products such as Light Stones, the Shops' main selling point, the Trading Firm's stock of the glowing rocks was being exhausted by volumes of dozens of millions. 

All those took an enormous amount of materials, time and effort from Candlelight's members to forge. Even with Light Stones not needing many expensive or rare materials to make, and the Lifestyle Players having a fairly high success rate in making them, the amount consumed by the Shops' sales far outpaced the possible production capabilities of the Candlelight Trading Firm. 

If not for Feng having heavily invested into Light Stones' production and making ample preparations beforehand, Candlelight's supply would have been run dry in only a couple of minutes. 

Still, it was impossible to keep this up for long even with the members responsible for Light Stones going at full force to support the sales, and they'd be unable to continue selling them without restrictions within less than a day. 

Even if the sales were to slow down after the initial hype train, that would only prolong the inevitable. 

A similar situation applied for the rest of Candlelight's products, including the basic items for everyday use. Had Feng not fully invested all of Starstreak's manpower into crafting as many items as possible while selling nothing, it would also be impossible to support Candlelight Trading Firm's new Shops. 

Thus, with solving this crisis being of most importance, Feng had Melancholic start recruiting Lifestyle Players, Forgers being a slight priority, in all of Candlelight's Shops across God's Domain. 

Payment was promised through Credits, with even regular members of Candlelight having a monthly salary of 25,000 Credits, while internal members would have a monthly salary of 50,000 Credits, as long as they completed their designated work, along with possible bonuses if they did more. 

Such an opportunity to earn a large sum of money greatly stirred the Lifestyle Players who heard of the recruitment being held by the Candlelight Trading Firm, rushing to apply and earn themselves one of the limited member slots. 

In contrast to other Trading Firms and Shops, who give their employees only a portion of the profits made from their products as payment for their work, which they then would trade into Credits for living expenses, the Candlelight Trading Firm directly offered a set monthly salary of Credits, which was several times higher than that of even white-collar workers, to its members. 

Which option was better and more profitable for them was obvious to these Lifestyle Players, who had no idea that, in truth, this arrangement was not at all in their favor, and that Feng was fully taking advantage of their ignorance. 

All of the regular players, and even many of the higher-ups of superpowers, were still under the impression that God's Domain, while very obviously more advanced and profitable than any other virtual reality game in history, and that it would surely only grow bigger and better with time, was, at the end of the day, still simply only a game with much more room for exploration and an opportunity to make a huge profit. 

They still failed to grasp what God's Domain truly is, or what it represented for the future. 

Players played to replace their everyday miserable lives with virtual ones and their miserable jobs with more profitable and enjoyable ones, so all of the Lifestyle Players flocked to the Candlelight Trading Firm upon hearing about its recruitment, not caring that they'd only be earning Credits and not any money in God's Domain. 

The various powers had no idea just how important the early stage of God's Domain is, especially these first days before more of the system updates got triggered and life in God's Domain got harder and harder, so they continued to refrain from removing all stops and fully investing in the game. 

Only once it was already too late will they realize the importance of taking advantage of every single possible opportunity right now, which they didn't even know was available to them. 

Feng had known all of this in his previous life, but instead of not being willing to, he didn't have the option to invest as much as possible and do everything he wished to due to lacking in both capital and strength. 

Now, however, things were different, and he was fully intent on using all of the tools and knowledge at his disposal to the limit. 

Naturally, conducting this type of recruitment for the Candlelight Trading Firm was costly, and would take a few billion Credits to pay all of the Lifestyle Players it recruited across all its Shops.

Such an expenditure wasn't worth it to the other powers, since they could simply recruit a smaller number of Lifestyle Players to get the job done the normal way and earn a profit from their work, but Feng didn't have the luxury to wait and needed as many workers as possible, as soon as possible. 

He was desperate for more manpower to create Candlelight's products and didn't care about a loss in mere Credits, even if the amount was in the billions... 

And even if it was an amount of Credits that Feng didn't have right now, having already spent a large portion of the one billion Credits he had, totally justly, gotten from Twilight Echo. 

The good thing about a monthly salary, though, was that he only needed to give them the promised payment a month from now. Many things will change during that time, and Feng would have plenty of opportunities to sca- earn more Credits from unsuspecting tycoons. 

But unbeknownst to the potential losses they could make, or Feng's current inability to pay their work, thousands of players swarmed Candlelight's recruitment personnel to participate in the entrance test and signed contracts to work for the Candlelight Trading Firm with a salary in Credits upon passing. 

With the additional players ready for work, Melancholic distributed Designs for Light Stones and other items, quickly sorting through all of the new members' capabilities and assigning all of them corresponding jobs. This way, they no longer had to worry about a shortage of goods stifling their sales. 

Meanwhile, the moment Candlelight's Shops had started appearing in the various Imperial Capitals, powers with forces stationed in those Empires were instantly notified of buildings rising on one of the capitals' most valuable Golden Land. 

Investigations were immediately conducted on which power or powers were behind this development, and it wasn't long before it was revealed the Candlelight Trading Firm was the owner of all those forty four 3-star Shops. 

Those belonging to powers who knew about the Candlelight Trading Firm, especially the superpowers who had already done a thorough investigation on Candlelight and Zero Wing, had strange expressions on their faces upon hearing the news, while those who didn't know anything about the mysterious Trading Firm dug deeper, soon finding out Candlelight's origins, and couldn't help their shock after seeing the information about Zero Wing. 

Annihilation of the forces sent by the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion! Complete eradication of the War Dragon Legion and over 80% of the legion's members having to restart their accounts while the rest were still unable to log in! Nine Dragons Emperor's humiliating death! 

Possessing nearly a hundred Void Realm experts, among which was a Cursemancer capable of contending against a Domain Realm Berserker in melee combat while Silenced, along with two dozen suspected Domain Realm individuals! 

Moreover, all of those experts were completely unknown and never before heard of. 

Everyone who investigated Candlelight and Zero Wing obtained the same result and information as Phoenix Rain. 

Essentially nothing that really interested them, with only some hints at what they truly wished to know. 

Helpless with their investigation not yielding any satisfactory results, but still needing to know about the background of Zero Wing and the many experts that had appeared in it, the various superpowers could only turn to the Secret Pavilion for more information. 

However, the Secret Pavilion's response only served to shock them even further. 

We have no idea where they came from either. 

Being told that by the transcendental power known to have the greatest and largest database, as well as the best information gathering capabilities, in the whole world, they could only give up and focus on investigating other things. 

What they didn't know or expect, however, was that the Secret Pavilion was lying. 

Feng hadn't done things so cleanly that he left no traces, and it was more than possible for a power focused on information gathering with many connections like the Secret Pavilion to pick up on the clues he left behind. 

Only, it was what it managed to find out that struck the entire Secret Pavilion into silence and caused it to lie about coming up with nothing. 

After the appearance of so many unknown experts, the Secret Pavilion immediately descended into chaos, trying to figure out just how the fuck this many people possessing such high combat standards and strength had managed to slip past their radar. 

Several of them would be understandable. 

A dozen or so would be acceptable. 

Hell, even if it was two or three dozen of them, it would not be beyond the realm of possibilities, and they could still rationalize how it happened. 

But this? 

As a power that prided itself on information gathering and knowing everything that happens in the virtual world, this was inexcusable. 

Thus, the Secret Pavilion's full effort and power was initiated into discovering where these never-before-seen people had popped out from, with priority on the two dozen or so suspected, which wasn't difficult for the Secret Pavilion to confirm as true, to be Domain Realm experts; as well as the monstrous commander of Zero Wing's Main Force, who had managed to kill War Dragon Legion's commander, Martial Dragon, a Domain Realm expert, with him not being able to even react. 

Locating Zero Wing's Workshop in the real world happened fairly quickly after the Secret Pavilion's first round of investigation failed to tell them anything useful. 

And that's where the rabbit hole really began. 

With how the Zero Wing Workshop came to be, the one seemingly responsible for it, and the Jin Hai Fellowship Party. 

From what the Secret Pavilion managed to put together, multiple of the current members of Zero Wing that were at the Domain Realm standard had been recruited into the guild by a student of the Jin Hai University called Shi Feng, the former president of the Green Leaf Workshop, Ye Wumian, being the most notable among them and the easiest to get info on. 

According to the Secret Pavilion's sources, Ye Wumian, along with the other three strongest experts of the Green Leaf Workshop, had only been players of some skill, not even at the Half-step Refinement Realm, before the Jin Hai Fellowship Party, after joining the Zero Wing Workshop, however, they all suddenly turned into powerful experts. 

Although it was unknown if they had immediately reached the Domain Realm standard due to a lack of data, a drastic change had definitely happened from that point. 

Many other experts of Zero Wing had also evidently been average players or noobs, a rare few exceptions with some strength, but none of them having any proficiency in the Realms of Refinement, only to suddenly become great experts, a few even instantly displaying combat standards at the Domain Realm. 

Moreover, each and every one of them seemed to have deep attainment and experience in the Domain Realm, something only those who had been Domain Realm experts for many years and underwent countless battles with powerful opponents could possibly achieve. 

The most prominent of Zero Wing's experts who had been average in strength before joining the mysterious guild, and the one the Secret Pavilion had the most information on, was the former Honorary Elder of the First-rate Guild Twilight Echo, as well as the current Vice Guild Leader of Zero Wing, Aqua Rose. 

She was among the first to be recognized by the Secret Pavilion due to having some fame in the virtual world, and the easiest to investigate due to that fame. 

Even though Aqua Rose had gone through the training of a Super Guild and shown to have a decent amount of talent, becoming famous to the masses as an expert, to the Secret Pavilion, she was only an average player with potential, as she still seemed far from stepping into the Refinement Realm. 

Yet, the Aqua Rose who participated in the fight against the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion's raid on Zero Wing's Guild Residence was an entirely different person from their reports. 

That Aqua Rose of Zero Wing was like an invincible goddess as she leisurely strolled through the chaos and bloodbath of the war, any enemies that got near her, or foolishly attempted to attack the Rose Goddess, not even knowing how they died. 

Her being at the Domain Realm was as clear as day even through only a video, and Aqua was suspected to have reached the higher steps of the Domain Realm, being on par with the Super Guilds' old monsters, by the Secret Pavilion. 

Though, even after doing all sorts of digging and questioning Twilight Echo's higher-ups, the Secret Pavilion still didn't manage to find the exact source of her sudden strength. 

After meeting Black Flame in Blackwing City, Aqua started earning large sums of money through a deal with him, but nothing too unusual or impossible to explain. 

It was only when she left Twilight Echo upon an internal disagreement and joined Zero Wing that Aqua began displaying an odd amount of improvement. 

There was only a sizeable increase in her strength and combat standards in the beginning, with her merely reaching the Half-step Refinement Realm standard from what the Secret Pavilion was able to tell, but suddenly, seemingly overnight, she seemed to reach the Domain Realm; just like every other expert of Zero Wing the Secret Pavilion had attempted to investigate. 

Meanwhile, after considering the entire thing from multiple angles, the Secret Pavilion finally noticed a pattern. 

Each and every one of those experts, including Aqua, only changed so drastically after going to Zero Wing's Workshop in the real world. Specifically, after having a meeting with the one who had started the Workshop and recruited people at the Jin Hai Fellowship Party, Shi Feng. 

But this didn't really explain anything about how they had all managed to improve to such a standard, and only gave the Secret Pavilion more questions, extremely confusing ones with no explanations at that, than answers. 

Even after investigating that Shi Feng, who seemed to be the cause of these people's improvement, as well, nothing was solved, with additional puzzling dilemmas being added to the list. 

Then the enigma that is Black Flame came up. 

No matter where or how they searched, nothing about him was found. At first they thought Black Flame was some old monster, but no one in the entire history of the virtual gaming world resembled Black Flame or his techniques in any way. 

Apart from the knowledge known by most players, they were unable to find out anything else, with the elite members of Zero Wing not really knowing much about their Guild Leader, while the lips of core members seemed to be completely sealed, no offer or proposal being capable of catching their interest and getting them to spill what secrets they knew about Black Flame or Zero Wing's Special Training. 

Having come up with nothing concrete or something that could possibly explain the impossible strength and combat standards of Zero Wing's experts despite trying everything within their power, just finding out about some inconceivable situations instead, the Secret Pavilion naturally couldn't publish or sell any of their gathered information. 

Not only would no one truly believe it, the Pavilion's reputation and the trust everyone had in it would probably be damaged if they attempted to tell anyone about what they had managed to piece together. 

Thus, it could only lie to everybody that asked and say they know nothing. 

Due to the uniqueness of the entire situation and its impossibilities, the Secret Pavilion didn't even place any of Zero Wing's experts on the Expert List. 

After all, the Secret Pavilion's Expert List only served as a basic source of information to the regular players and to boost the reputation of the experts placed on it. It didn't place all of the experts it knew about on the list, keeping many hidden experts, both independent and those belonging to the various superpowers, off the list; not wanting to make public and provoke those who didn't want any attention. 

Since Zero Wing's experts only publicly participated in the fight against the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion, who had attacked their Guild Residence, choosing to remain unknown up until now, the Secret Pavilion assumed they didn't want any fame or to be known, and only showed up to fight back a hostile power, along with serving as a warning to other powers by displaying their presence. 

The only thing the Secret Pavilion did do with the Expert List was push up the One-hit Asura to first place after seeing that Black Flame had no problem with being promoted as a famous expert, his domineering show of power during his last battle being horrifying enough to have earned him that position in spite of the Secret Pavilion not even being able to tell his exact combat standards. 

Though, similarly to the Phoenix Pavilion Master, all of the powers who conducted their investigations found no information on the Candlelight Trading Firm having any Land outside of the Star-Moon Kingdom or being capable of expanding outside of it, so they originally had no worries about it taking over the market anywhere else. 

Now, however, with this new development, the various powers that owned Shops in the Imperial Capitals where the Candlelight Trading Firm was were faced with a significant threat to the profits they were making from their Trading Firms. 

And there wasn't even much they could do about it. 

Nine Dragons Emperor had already shown them what would happen if they tried to take a forceful approach against Candlelight and Zero Wing. 

Regardless of whether they are known experts or not, it was a fact that Zero Wing had nearly a hundred Void Realm experts and around two dozen individuals who had awakened a Domain, while their exact attainment in the Domain Realm was still unknown, albeit evidently deep. 

Domain Realm experts were the true strength of every guild, and Zero Wing possessed more than some Super Guilds, being comparable to top-tier superpowers, with how much power it still has hidden being a huge question mark. 

Until the mysterious guild's background and full strength was revealed, no one wished to provoke it without a good reason. 

Moreover, taking any action against it would be extremely risky. 

Of course, eradicating Zero Wing and forcing it to disband would be trivially easy for these powers even if destroying its Guild Residence was impossible. 

No matter how powerful an expert was, they could not be in several places at once, so even with the Zero Wing experts being very strong, targeting the small guild's regular and elite members and killing them to Level 0 would be easy for these powers with millions of players at their disposal; and eventually, no one would be willing to stay in Zero Wing. 

If they did that, though, they'd inevitably earn the ire of those Domain Realm and lower Realm experts whose guild they had destroyed. Most of those players would be simple enough to handle, but it was a very different case for the two dozen Domain Realm experts. 

It was entirely possible for them to disregard everything and do their best to cause trouble for the guilds responsible. A few or several would still be manageable, two dozen, on the other hand, could cripple a guild. Even if those experts were killed, being at the Domain Realm, it would be fairly simple for them to regain most of what they've lost and go back to being a pain in the ass. 

Thus, with entering a full out war being like inviting disaster to their doorstep, while something simple like destroying Zero Wing's Guild Residence, apart from obviously impossible to accomplish, also being an incredibly dangerous endeavor considering the current state of the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion's forces who had partaken in the raid, they were only left with facing against the Candlelight Trading Firm in an economic war. 

But with so many locations all over God's Domain and the Star-Moon Kingdom's market as another source of income, even if all of the powers decreased their prices, they'd only be able to reduce Candlelight's profits by a negligible amount, as the enemy Trading Firm didn't rely on basic commodities and products that they have as its main selling point, but on Light Stones. 

They couldn't help but admit the Light Stone was an incredible item as both a grinding tool and a product for selling. Although they also wished to obtain the Design for Light Stones, they couldn't find a single one as a drop in any of the maps within their reach, and searching in the Star-Moon Kingdom didn't change that. 

Cutting off Candlelight's supply of materials wouldn't work either, as, aside from the guilds in Star-Moon Kingdom who had signed a contract with the Trading Firm, and couldn't be threatened into stopping their trade with Candlelight due to it, the various powers had no idea where the Candlelight Trading Firm got its materials from. 

So, even if they were to eradicate the guilds who had made an agreement with Candlelight and forced them to trade any of their materials with it that way, it wouldn't matter much, as at the rate Candlelight's Shops were selling their products, even if all those guilds pulled their materials together, they could only support two to three Shops' long term. 

Thus, the various powers summarized that the Candlelight Trading Firm must have many hidden and unknown sources of materials, along with plenty of manpower for the items' production. 

Though, all of their assumptions were completely wrong. 

Feng did indeed have a large amount of materials stored in Zero Wing's Wearhouse, but they were all for Level 50 stuff and above, while he was nearly out of the parts needed to make Light Stones. 

The only reason he managed to supply such a large expenditure during the production is because Feng had simply stocked up everything beforehand, and apart from Star-Moon Kingdom's guilds and Phoenix Rain, he had had no other direct sources for materials. 

All the necessary materials for the millions of Light Stones Candlelight's Forgers had made were purchased through Auction Houses and street stalls from all across God's Domain, along with through Starstreak's sources, but such a method was not only very costly, its nature was also unreliable, especially after he already had such an enormous amount taken off the market, and insufficient to support Candlelight's current sales. 

Meaning, Feng had no way of continuing to sell at this scale even if he had the necessary manpower. 

Aside from a price war and cutting off the material supply, the various powers also had the option of poaching Candlelight's members, but all the valuable members who could be bought with money have already been taken away by Feng Xuanyang, while the others' loss would not affect the Candlelight Trading Firm. 

Its disregard for if it had to make a loss in Credits in order to hire Lifestyle Players was shown with its recent recruitment, and Candlelight clearly didn't care how much it had to spend for more manpower. They also had no idea about which corporation or power was backing the Candlelight Trading Firm and Zero Wing, and how much it was willing to invest into this recruitment, so simply poaching the huge number of Candlelight's employees would be useless. 

Realizing that they had no way of competing against the mysterious Candlelight Trading Firm that was all over the place and seemingly had its fingers dipped into nearly every Empire of God's Domain[1], the various powers could only choose to either reduce their prices and continue making some profit from their regular and custom items while the Candlelight Trading Firm reaped most of the players' money, or move their operations to other important cities with a high population. 

Even the powers that occupied the Four Great Empires didn't fare much better. 

However, aside from the obvious implications the Candlelight Shops had on their business, there was another thing that concerned the various powers. And those were the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. 

They had previously heard about this item due to the scandal with Nine Dragons Emperor, but their attention was then taken away by the reveal of Zero Wing's experts. There was also the fact that Candlelight was selling a limited amount of the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits in the far off Star-Moon Kingdom, making a trip all the way over there and purchasing such a small amount of the Kits not being worth the effort[2]. 

Since no one previously had the kits, there was no problem, as the playing field was still equal, but now that the Candlelight Trading Firm was selling the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits at their doorstep, it was impossible to ignore them any longer. 

If their competitors were to purchase the kits from Candlelight, that would put them, whose members don't have any Intermediate Mana Armor Kits equipped, at a disadvantage, so everyone had no other choice but to procure some Intermediate Mana Armor Kits for themselves, lest they began to fall behind the rest in terms of grinding dungeons and monsters. 

However, only a limited number of Intermediate Mana Armor Kits gets sold daily at the high price of 15 Gold Coins due to the insufficient supply, so the various powers were forced to seek out the Candlelight Trading Firm for a larger batch that would fulfill their needs better. 

Only, when they attempted to contact the Trading Firm at their local Shop in order to strike a deal, the response these representatives of various superpowers received was that those present didn't have the authority to make decisions concerning such matters, and that they'd have to go to Candlelight's main branch in White River City if they wished to make any arrangements with the Candlelight Trading Firm. 

Slightly peeved at being told to go to another location and not getting the respect they're used to, while any other Trading Firm that wasn't backed by a superpower would have immediately sent out at least a manager to welcome them upon their arrival for business, the representatives had no choice but to leave and report to their superiors. 

Hearing the reports, all of the higher-ups immediately understood that Candlelight was planning to do the same thing it did when selling a large amount of Intermediate Mana Armor Kits to Star-Moon Kingdom's powers. 

However, considering that some powers would make a trip to the Candlelight Trading Firm and obtain enough Kits to outfit their main forces and top combatants, everyone could only send some representatives of a higher standing to White River City. 

Thus, the activity and population of White River City once again became bustling, while the regular players commenced in heated peanut galleries about the arrival of so many superpowers. 

It also greatly boosted the economy, as many other curious individuals decided to pay White River City a visit and see what was going on, with the city's Candlelight Trading Firm's hourly profit even surpassing its previous peak, rivaling that of the Trading Firm's Shops in Imperial Capitals. 

--- 

White River City, Candlelight Trading Firm:

Due to the sheer magnitude of Candlelight's move and how attention-grabbing it was, the Trading Firm's power and capabilities had attracted the notice of many powers who weren't even affected by the new Shops, resulting in them growing interested in the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits and coming as well. 

A reception hall was nearly filled to full capacity with foreign powers, multiple Super Guilds, dozens of Super-first-rate Guilds, and many First-rate Guilds, along with some powers of different standing. 

Melancholic stood by the door, welcoming everyone who arrived and politely asking them to wait as more powers gathered. Seeing that most of the important representatives had already gathered, and that they'd soon start getting rowdy after waiting for so long, she left the reception room and went to call Black Flame. 

With her gone, there was no longer anyone to contain these proud and irritated personages, causing the previous mostly calm atmosphere to begin boiling. 

Many powers among the ones present weren't on good terms, and conflict was bound to erupt whenever they meet, along with such a large number of people having gathered here, among which nearly all were great experts sent by their respective powers, with several being Domain Realm experts dispatched today as a show of power and for the purpose of not coming off as weak to Zero Wing, it was only a matter of time before this situation turned troublesome; even if some of them wished to keep a peaceful disposition. 

However, before anything could get out of hand, a suffocating aura poured into the room, instantly silencing all of its occupants and freezing them in place. 

Leisurely strolling in, Black Flame swept a glance across all of the representatives of various powers, his aura that he had previously kept suppressed now on full display akin to a raging storm, as Black Flame didn't feel the need to keep it hidden any longer after achieving his original goal. 

In fact, Black Flame let the intense pressure that he naturally gave off rain free and suppress Candlelight's visitors, making them painstakingly aware of the strength he possessed. 

Having strength was almost like magic, instantly turning all of the arrogant loudmouths into tame rabbits upon exposing them to real power. 

Noticing that he had everyone's undivided attention, Black Flame began to speak "Am I correct to assume everybody is here due to your interest in purchasing the Candlelight Trading Firm's Intermediate Mana Armor Kits?" 

Faint nods was all that Black Flame received, as even those who had been planning to make various demands nearly got petrified by his stifling aura, making them unable to bring forth any comments or refusals. 

This was especially so for those few who could faintly tell Black Flame's true attainment in the Realms of Refinement due to their many years of experience and having seen a large number of experts who were now classifying as old monsters. 

The Third step of the Domain Realm was a realm only those top experts of the most powerful Super Guilds possessed, but Black Flame's strength seemed to be even above that. Most of the people present had never even seen someone who wielded such high combat standards, with them instinctively understanding that even their Guild Leaders and Grand Elders were inferior. 

As for in terms of attributes and Life Rating, by Black Flame's aura, no one present was sure if there was anyone in God's Domain that could rival Black Flame. 

With all of their confirmation, Black Flame took out a contract, different from the ones he had offered to the powers of the Star-Moon Kingdom, and presented it to all of the representatives to see "Then, as long as you sign this agreement in the name of your guilds and sell a certain amount of materials to the Candlelight Trading Firm at 170% of the market price, you can purchase the corresponding amount of Candlelight's exclusive products, such as the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits at a price of 600 Magic Crystals, or 5 Gold Coins and 400 Magic Crystals." 

After hearing Black Flame's words, hesitation appeared on the representatives' faces, not being willing to sell their materials to a competitor, but also not willing to part with the opportunities brought by the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. 

Currently, all of the various powers were desperately searching for items that could boost their members' attributes in order to increase the chances of successfully raiding dungeons and obtaining more power. Thus, a powerful tool for improving their strength like the Intermediate Mana Armor Kit was of outmost importance at the moment. 

To trade the hard-earned materials of their guilds over a longer period of time for something that would lose its potency and value after they outgrow the kits, however, wasn't a worthy expenditure. 

"I know what you're concerned about, but you can rest assured, Intermediate Mana Armor Kits aren't the only valuable product Candlelight will have for sale," Black Flame easily saw through the representatives' thoughts, and although he thought it below him to try negotiating and convincing these weaklings, this deal was very important for the purpose of securing the materials necessary for Candlelight's continued production, as well as to facilitate the unknown power he had in everyone's minds, so in order to put their worries to rest, Black Flame took out an Advanced Mana Armor Kit, saying "In the future you'll be able to trade for these as well." 

Checking the information of the kit Black Flame had taken out, the hearts of these higher-ups were stirred, not believing the Candlelight Trading Firm and Zero Wing would already have something like this available to them at the current stage of the game. 

Although the Advanced Mana Armor Kit was useless to them at the moment due to only being possible to bind it to Level 50 and above equipment, the same case would be far from the truth in the future once players start reaching Level 50 and obtaining corresponding equipment. 

Anyone who had Advanced Mana Armor Kits at that time would instantly surpass their peers of the same level, and experts who got to that point faster than the rest could surpass everyone even further. 

Zero Wing's members, in particular, had levels much higher than regular players and seemingly leveled faster than even players from Super Guilds of the same rank, so they will definitely benefit the most from the Advanced Mana Armor Kits. 

Yet, Black Flame was offering them as a possible product of Candlelight for trade as well. If he was able to give up on such an advantage, and considering the hidden incredible power of Zero Wing, it was safe to assume other great items could possibly be obtained from this trade as well. 

Though, what they didn't know was that this would probably be the last time they are willing to do business like this with Candlelight, and that Feng and Black Flame would be more than overjoyed if anyone wished to purchase the Advanced Mana Armor Kits like they were currently considering the Intermediate version. 

"The Secret Pavilion is willing to agree to this arrangement with the Candlelight Trading Firm." A graceful old man that sat at the forefront of the reception hall suddenly announced the Secret Pavilion's agreement to Black Flame's proposal. 

Being an organization that focuses its attention on business, information gathering and overall growing stronger, the Secret Pavilion was much more inclined to agree with what Black Flame was offering, taking the opportunity to get closer to the Candlelight Trading Firm and find out more about it. 

With the Secret Pavilion being the first to sign the contract and take the lead, the others soon followed, understanding the significance of this deal and the benefits they could gain from it. 

Nearly every one of them succumbed and signed their guilds up for Black Flame's offer after some time, having no clue how unfavorable it was and just how much it was going to fuck them over, with even the least number of Intermediate Mana Armor Kits purchased by any of the powers being over 2,000. 

Several among them traded for 5,000 in order to accommodate the members of their guilds, with the Secret Pavilion being the wealthiest and ordering 10,000 kits. 

A total of around 150,000 Intermediate Mana Armor Kits were asked for by the various powers, the first option of 600 Magic Crystals being what pretty much all of them chose, earning Feng 90 million Magic Crystals and a large batch of materials. 

Meanwhile, the ordered Kits were promised to be delivered to each of the powers within five days of transporting the equivalent materials and Magic Crystals to the Candlelight Trading Firm, giving Feng and Black Flame enough time within which they could create the remaining number of Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. 

One hundred and fifty thousand Intermediate Mana Kits were by no means easy to prepare, and would take more than a week of Feng and Black Flame doing nothing but forging to make. 

Thankfully, the two of them had already been making Intermediate Mana Armor Kits for several days now, and even with the amount Candlelight has sold by now to Star-Moon Kingdom's powers and at its Shops, they could have the necessary amount created by the end of the time limit. 

Thanks to these deals with the various superpowers, Candlelight's problem of inadequate materials will be greatly offset, and through other avenues, it will be barely possible to continue the Trading Firm's operations. Aside from the materials, Feng had once again taken advantage of God's Domain's ignorant powers and gained a huge amount of Magic Crystals that will grow to be extremely important and valuable in a couple of days. 

Once everyone finished with their intended business in the Trading Firm, the various superpowers left one after another, going back to handle their part of the contract with Candlelight and dealing with whatever responsibilities they had at their respective guilds. 

When the room returned to its peaceful silence, aside from Black Flame and Melancholic, only one more person remained within Candlelight's reception hall. 

"Can I help you with something, Mr. Yuan?" Black Flame turned towards the old man, who was the Secret Pavilion's representative, that had previously been the first to agree with the Candlelight Trading Firm's demands, and asked calmly. 

"There is something I wish to discuss with Guild Leader Black Flame," Yuan Tiexin, an Elder of the Secret Pavilion, replied in a calm and steady tone, seemingly unaffected by the monstrous aura Black Flame was radiating, "Aside from representing the Secret Pavilion for today's matters, I'm also here as a representative for the Secret Chamber of Commerce, to extend an offer from the chamber to the Candlelight Trading Firm." 

"Oh?" Black Flame raised a brow slightly, not having expected the Secret Chamber of Commerce to come forward with a wish for Candlelight to join it this soon. 

The Secret Pavilion was a transcendental power in the virtual gaming world. The strength it wielded was simply unfathomable. The Secret Chamber of Commerce the Pavilion had developed was similarly unfathomable, as very few Chambers of Commerce could rival Secret's range of influence. Needless to say, Secret was far more powerful than Seventh Street.

Without a doubt, Secret was one of the best Chambers of Commerce in God's Domain right now. Many superpowers were desperate to join, but very few were actually invited into the alliance. 

Now that he thought about it, though, the Candlelight Trading Firm had displayed its vast "connections" across the entire God's Domain by owning Golden Lands in over forty Empires, including the Four Great Empires, as well as its incredible products and the ability to support the sales of so many Shops with its items. 

Candlelight's capital was an entirely different factor, as even if you ignore the reputation necessary for purchasing Land in those Empires, just the amount of Gold Coins necessary to construct the Shops and upgrade them to their state was enormous and much more than any power could achieve at the moment, not to mention having the necessary funds to actually buy all that Land. 

Naturally, a power that could manage such a thing would be a welcome partner to any Chamber of Commerce, so it made sense for the Secret Chamber to invite the Candlelight Trading Firm in hopes of it joining. 

"The Secret Pavilion wishes to invite the Candlelight Trading Firm into the Secret Chamber of Commerce. As for the entry conditions, we would like to utilize Guild Leader Black Flame's means of purchasing Land and upgrading the star status of your Shops, as well as to allow all of the chamber's members the right to purchase more Intermediate Mana Armor Kits from the Candlelight Trading Firm whenever necessary," Yuan Tiexin said in a serious tone "May I know if you are interested in this offer, Guild Leader Black Flame?" 

"Sure." Black Flame didn't spend much time thinking about the deal and immediately agreed in a calm manner. 

Yuan Tiexin said 'utilize' for purchasing Land, not that he had to buy the plots for them completely on his own, so all he had to do was take their coins, buy the Land, and transfer ownership. A minute of his time, and he could even keep the change from having a discount. 

As for the Shop promotion, Candlelight didn't have a need for more Shops at the moment, and he could upgrade any of them to 2-Star status using the rights of the 3-star Shops which he had yet to use up, so he could simply sell all the 2-star Shop Promotion Orders for a hefty price like he had been planning to, along with most of his unused 3-star Shop Promotion Orders. 

A couple of powers having some high ranking Shops wouldn't affect him at all at this point, while he always welcomed the business for selling the Intermediate Mana Armor Kits if people wanted to get ripped off. 

Although a bit surprised by Black Flame's ready reply, Yuan Tiexin recomposed himself, and the two of them signed a God's Domain contract, the Candlelight Trading Firm becoming a member of the Secret Chamber of Commerce, creating another source of items and materials for it. 

For his side of the deal, Black Flame simply said that if they wanted a plot of Land to be purchased for them, all they had to do is provide the necessary money, and he'll get the Land for them, while they could contact Melancholic if they wished to purchase the Shop Promotion Orders. 

Once the transaction was complete, the Candlelight Trading Firm joined the Secret Chamber of Commerce's member list, and the two organizations exchanged 1% of their shares.

Shortly after Candlelight joined the Chamber of Commerce, news of it quickly spread to the various superpowers.

Uncaring for all of that, Black Flame went back to his Forging Room and continued making Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. Now that so many of the kits had been ordered, he had to put in his full effort in order to get them all ready within the time limit, so neither he nor Feng planned to do anything else for the next two or so days, at which point Feng will have to make a trip to the Dark Den and save Blue Frost's team from the boss monster they will be raiding. 

Though, what even Feng didn't expect was how crazy the other lower ranking powers would go for Intermediate Mana Armor Kits after the deals made between Candlelight and the superpowers. 

Even though it had been miserably steamrolled, the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion had shown all of these guilds, especially First-rate Guilds, how vast the difference between them and a portion of a Super-first-rate Guild's strength, with both the capabilities of the guild as a whole and its members being insurmountable. 

Seeing all these immeasurably powerful forces obtain Intermediate Mana Armor Kits and increase their strength by another level greatly stirred all of the lower ranked guilds, who wished to bridge the gap and stand toe to toe with superpowers, but only saw it grow larger instead. 

Thus, with great zeal, an enormous number of guilds from First-rate to unranked and from both Kingdoms and Empires made a trip to the nearest Candlelight Trading Firm and voiced their wishes to empty out all of their Magic Crystal stock for the purpose of purchasing as many Intermediate Mana Armor Kits as possible. 

Individually, these powers didn't order a large number of kits, at least not how the superpowers did, with even the strongest First-rate Guilds not getting more than one thousand Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. But there was strength in numbers, and when all of them gathered, the amount asked for was stupefying. 

Each of the 250 or so Kingdoms had more kits requested than the Star-Moon Kingdom's 5,000 purchased by its residential guilds, while the Empires that housed many more guilds than a Kingdom had orders of a volume a couple of times larger. 

When totaled, a mind-numbing number of around two and a half million Intermediate Mana Armor Kits was brought together by most powers across the entirety of God's Domain. 

Feng would have been more than eager to take on the job, since he'd earn more than 1.5 billion Magic Crystals, not to mention the possible material gathering capabilities Candlelight will have if these powers signed a contract like the one Star-Moon Kingdom's powers had, which was the one they'd get considering their strength that was much less than the superpowers who had received a different treatment by Black Flame... 

...If it wasn't completely impossible to fulfill. 

At the moment, even if Feng and Black Flame slaved away, doing nothing but make Intermediate Mana Armor Kits for 48 hours straight, they wouldn't be able to even forge a measly twenty thousand kits combined; meaning around five months of hard work would be needed to finally have enough of the kits. 

However, even under the condition that the two of them were willing to forge Intermediate Mana Armor Kits nonstop for those five months, which there was zero way in hell they would ever do, these powers wouldn't be willing to wait for that long, by which point Intermediate Mana Armor Kits would grow useless. 

In spite of his frustration at losing such a heavensent opportunity, there was nothing Feng could do about it, as this problem wasn't something exactly fixable. 

But that's when a possible solution occurred to him. 

The reason this humongous amount of kits wasn't possible to forge within a reasonable period of time was because the Book of Magic that gave Feng the Design for his Mana Armor Kits was a unique recipe that wasn't available anywhere else, so only he was capable of creating them, greatly limiting the possible production. 

Having Black Flame through the Ethereal Replicant Core doubled the kits' output, but that was still inadequate. 

If Feng could find a way to allow more people to forge the Mana Armor Kits, this issue would be instantly resolved. 

Thinking of so, Feng ordered the managers currently overlooking the representatives of the various powers in all of the Shops, since there was no way Black Flame or Melancholic could be at so many places at once, to tell the walking Magic Crystal Warehouses that they'd have to wait for a bit before the Candlelight Trading Firm could get back to them with a reply to their commission of Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. 

Although displeased at the situation, the various powers' representatives could only sit and wait patiently. 

In the meantime, Feng teleported to Ten Saints City, where a Quest which he has yet to complete waited with its time limit soon approaching. 

Some two weeks ago, he had accepted an Epic Hidden Quest in this Imperial Capital, and after employing Fire and the others, the materials he needed to complete the Quest have finally been gathered. 

Heading to the same outdoor garden as last time, Feng spotted the Quest NPC, and approached him, telling the old man he has gathered the materials he had asked for and could now make the outfit, which was the goal of the Quest. 

Excitement appeared on the old man's face, and after some unimportant exchanges, the NPC led him to his Workshop in order to finish the Quest. 

There were some complications along the way, with some NPCs being annoying and causing trouble to try and stop the old man from making Feng the outfit and completing the job for some bullshit reasons. 

Feng just killed through his problems and hurried along the old NPC to get this done with. 

Around half an hour later, the old man finished with his work and handed Feng a full set of motor biker's outfit, that, to Feng's surprise, was a Unique Master rank clothing set with decent stats. 

Apart from giving some points in Defense, the outfit had two hidden passive skills, one that directly set the wearer's starting speed to 15% of their maximum Movement Speed, while the other increased the Movement Speed of the wearer's Mount by 5%; with the exception of mechanical-type Mounts whose Movement Speed is increased by 20%. 

For an equippable item that doesn't take up any of the usual equipment slots, it was of very good quality and would be of great help to most players, but it was useless to Feng, with the extra Defense being negligible to him, his starting speed already being set to his maximum Movement Speed by the Nightwalker's Cape, and Feng naturally had no need for Mounts when he had his wings. 

At least it was fairly comfortable and looked good on him if nothing else, while the extra clothes didn't inconvenience him when wearing armor; but it was one of the other rewards for completing the Quest that interested Feng. 

System: Congratulations! You have completed the Hidden Epic Quest, "Fine Fashion Taste." Rewarding 100,000,000 EXP, 20 Free Mastery Points, Book of Leatherworking and Unique Master rank outfit. 

Placing the Free Mastery Points into his one-handed sword mastery, Feng checked out the Book of Leatherworking, noticing it had the same design look as the Book of Forging, Records of Potions and Book of Engineering, except a slightly different cover. 

Teleporting back to his Private Warehouse in White River City, Feng retrieved a few more books from his and Zero Wing's storage, before heading to the Candlelight Trading Firm. 

Upon restoring the memories of his guild members, Feng had them all take a list of items that should be gathered and searched for, among which were fragments of the Book of Creation, whose location should be reported if anyone knows of any. 

Thanks to their intel, multiple books for various Lifestyle Classes have been located and some gathered. 

After all, the number of items in God's Domain was simply too vast, and it was impossible for Feng to keep track of everything and all of the information floating around, especially so about items of not much value like these books that could only assist Lifestyle Players to reach Master rank. 

Not mention that he had always been focused on increasing his and the guild's strength, not busying himself with things such as paying attention to non-viral information; and he had only known about the method of obtaining the Book of Cooking due to the attention Olivia's shop had attracted by everyone in his God's Domain, while he had come across the clue for the Book of Leatherworking by accident. 

His guild members, particularly the ones responsible for enriching Zero Wing's database, managers and Vice Guild Leaders, on the other hand, were much more well-informed on such things. 

With their info, Zero Wing had managed to find more fragments of the Book of Creation from some Quests and exploring dangerous maps, at this point having gathered 5 books, being the Book of Gathering for the Gatherer Subclass, the Records of Buildings for the Architect Subclass, the Records of Trading for the Merchant Subclass, the Book of Taming for the Tamer Subclass and the Records of Tracking for the Tracker Subclass. 

Aside from those, there were a few more books that they knew or had clues about the location of, but were unable to get at the moment due to either lacking special items, requirements or a higher level, but these six may be enough to complete Feng's goal. 

Feng's hope is that repairing the Book of Creation with all of these parts while having Divine Providence activated and focusing Probability Manipulation would give it a skill that can create a Design or Recipe that the holder had learned. 

Such a thing wasn't completely unheard of, and there are some very rare items in the Greater God's Domain that could achieve this feat, albeit they are normally one time Consumables and could only replicate lower ranking Designs and Recipes. 

However, the Book of Creation Feng currently had was a very special item and a replica of a Divine Artifact ranked Manual, so it wasn't entirely implausible for it to happen as long as Feng believed hard enough. 

As long as he had such a skill at his disposal, Feng could duplicate the Design for the Intermediate Mana Armor Kit from the Book of Magic that he had learned, then it wouldn't be a problem to accept all of the various powers' demands for the kits and earn a huge amount of resources. 

In fact, there would be many other incredible opportunities Feng could gain if the Book of Creation upgraded in the way he wanted. 

Arriving at Cocoa's Forging Room, Feng knocked before entering, the sight of Candlelight's number one Forger making another Fragmented Legendary ranked Levellume Capsule greeting him. 

Once she was done, Cocoa put down her things and came over to Feng. He merely asked for the Book of Creation, which she immediately handed to him. 

System: You have discovered fusible parts of the Book of Creation. Do you wish to spend 3,000 Magic Crystals to assimilate these books with the Book of Creation and repair it?

Activating Divine Providence while sacrificing a large portion of the Life Force he had gathered from the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion members, Feng focused his concentration on the result he wished to achieve and clicked "Yes" without any more hesitation, causing a blinding light to erupt from the Book of Creation. 

A moment later, the books his guild members had gathered flew out of his bag and turned into lights as well, which then fused with the original orb of light. The aura around the orb of light continued to grow as time passed, surprising Feng by its magnitude. 

After around a minute, the pure-white blinding light finally subsided, while the stifling aura reached its peak, a pressure greater than some Legendary items gave off coming from the Book of Creation, with even traces of a very pure Divine Might in it, as it strained the Forging Room's Magic Array, nearly shattering it. 

Having hid behind the unmoved Feng in order to not be directly crushed or petrified by the powerful pressure, Cocoa peeked out at the Book of Creation and gazed in slight awe at the white book and its ever changing symbol.

Just looking at the current Book of Creation caused a sense of clarity to appear in Cocoa's mind, with ideas and speculations about Forging continuously popping up, something she had only experienced in areas with a very dense amount of Eternal Energy; and even then, the current feeling had a certain potency she had never experienced before. 

It didn't last forever, though, as the Book of Creation's pressure soon reduced slightly, at which point Feng grabbed it and inspected the newly repaired book. However, to his surprise, the Book of Creation hadn't become a Legendary item like he had suspected, but still remained at Fragmented Legendary rank. 

[Book of Creation (Replica)] [Fragmented Legendary Rank [Current])

A replica of the Book of Creation, created by the Goddess of Creation. The Book of Creation replica is still incomplete, however, as it has regained some of its fragments, it can use 24% of its original power.

Increase the success rate of creating anything of:

Common rank by 99%

Bronze rank by 96%

Mysterious-Iron rank by 93%

Secret-Silver rank by 90%

Fine-Gold rank by 85%

Dark-Gold rank by 70%

Epic rank by 55%.

Fragmented Legendary rank by 17%

Legendary rank by 3%

Additional Passive Skill 1 - Quick Mastery

For every successful usage of a profession, receive two extra Proficiency Points for Major Subclasses, five for Minor Subclasses and eight for Gathering Subclasses.

Additional Passive Skill 2 - Chance Upgrade

When successfully creating something there is a 4% chance to increase the item's rank by one, up to a maximum of Fragmented Legendary Rank.

Additional Passive Skill 3 - In Search of Creation

Automatically detects fragments of the Book of Creation within a 250,000-yard radius.

Additional Active Skill 1 - Blessing of Creation

Improves designs and fixes flaws on them unconditionally.

Cooldown: 36 hours 

Additional Active Skill 2 - Creator's Rights 

For every 1,000 times that the holder has successfully created an item, they can create a Design or Recipe of that item. (Up to a maximum of Fine-Gold or Professional[3] rank) 

Cooldown: 8 hours 

Additional Active Skill 3 - Creation Eye [4] 

Play back the sequence of an item's creation. 

Cooldown: 2 days

It was incredibly difficult to repair a Fragmented Legendary item to Legendary rank by collecting all its scattered pieces, and if even one was missing, the item would stay at Fragmented Legendary rank. 

However, Feng had been fairly sure that Legendary rank wouldn't be the maximum for this Book of Creation, even if it was only a replica, so fusing enough pieces should be enough to upgrade its rank to Legendary, while all the parts would probably be needed for further. 

Going by this situation, though, where the aura of the Book of Creation was equal to that of a Legendary item while it remained at Fragmented Legendary rank would insinuate that Legendary was its cap. 

In that case, if he isn't able to find all of the pieces, Feng may not ever upgrade his Broken Steel Set Forging Design to Fragmented Legendary rank. His only other option would be to let Sharlyn handle it and upgrade the Book of Creation with the Law of Creation, which was currently impossible considering her strength. 

At the very least, Feng managed to obtain the skill he had wanted, and he could now create six Designs for the Intermediate Mana Armor Kit a day. To test it out, he activated Creator's Rights, and chose the Intermediate rank from the Peak Book of Magic, a Design for Intermediate Mana Armor Kits appearing in his hand after a couple of seconds. 

Seeing that there were no problems with it, a wide grin spread across Feng's face, knowing it was fully possible to rip off all those ignorant fools and take all their stocked up Magic Crystals. 

Quickly contacting all of the managers who were at the Candlelight Trading Firm Shops, Feng had them accept all of the offers from the various powers for purchasing Intermediate Mana Armor Kits. 

However, due to the volume of the kits ordered, there would be a wait of 20 days before the kits could be delivered, and if those powers wished to shorten it and get the kits ahead of the others, they'd have to join the newly formed Candlelight Chamber of Commerce, with the first in line to receive the things they've paid for being the ones who contribute the most. 

Despite knowing Candlelight was forcing them to compete against each other, while it reaps all the benefits, they could only gnash their teeth and agree, signing their materials and Magic Crystals away. With this, Candlelight's problem of material supply got completely resolved basically by itself. 

And soon, the Magic Crystals started pouring in. 

Feng didn't even have enough room to store all of these Magic Crystals in his Private Warehouse or at the Candlelight Trading Firm's. 

This was the true meaning of suffering from success. 

He wasn't too bothered by it for long, as these crystals won't be staying with him for long. 

To begin with, he currently had nothing urgent that required even one million Magic Crystals, let alone over a billion of them, so he just started using the Magic Crystals up to clone his Seven Luminaries Crystals with the Philosopher's Stone as they came in. 

With the previous small number of Magic Crystals that he had, Feng could only duplicate a thousand or so Seven Luminaries Crystals, and he had ended up expending 500,000 of them to create his Perfect Clone without cloning any of them; along with thousands more later on to update him. 

Even with the ninety million crystals that he got from the superpowers, which had been fully within his expectations, Feng would have only been able to clone a bit over 100,000 Seven Luminaries Crystals. But now, he was finally able to clone a large portion of them, so that he could truly double his riches. 

As such, of the around 1.6 billion Magic Crystals Feng had gathered up till now, 1.4 billion was instantly spent in order to duplicate around 2 million of his Seven Luminaries Crystals, leaving multiple of his Warehouses still filled up with over two hundred million Magic Crystals. 

This was still more than enough and an amount Feng would have trouble using up utilizing conventional ways, and it could support his other plans and operations for a while, as well as still leaving him with plenty for cloning other valuable materials. 

Meanwhile, with most of God's Domain's lower ranking powers having spent nearly all of their Magic Crystals on Intermediate Mana Armor Kits, the superpowers expending most of their stockpiles for the same purpose, and the Magic Crystals on the market everywhere having been cleaned out by Melancholic and her crew, it was safe to assume Feng had obtained around 95% to 99% of all the Magic Crystals acquired by players across the entire God's Domain. 

Once he triggers the third system update in a few days, he would grow to be quite hated by everyone. 

The reason all the powers managed to cope with the third system update in his previous two lives was due to causally stock pilling their Magic Crystals, not having any use for them, resulting in them having plenty when the Divine Colosseum appeared. And even then, no amount of Magic Crystals were enough. 

Now, however, there was no way any of the various powers could support their members' needs and growth, which was also the only silver lining, that nobody possessed the needed Magic Crystals. Except for Zero Wing, of course. 

It wouldn't even be a surprise if the price for Magic Crystals increased several times to what it had been in the previous timeline, probably reaching one Gold Coin per Crystal. 

Not that Feng cared though. Who asked them to hand over all of their Magic Crystals to him? 

Aside from the fortune Creator's Rights had brought Feng, the repairing of the Book of Creation brought along another powerful skill. Creation Eye. 

He had already tested out the skill's effects after dealing with the Intermediate Mana Armor Kit situation, and found them to be incredible. 

After selecting the Levellume Capsule Cocoa had just made, Feng witnessed the reversed creation process of the miraculous EXP storage whose Design he had obtained from a Legendary Treasure Chest. 

Starting from the finishing touches, the Levellume Capsule got deconstructed in front of Feng's eyes, letting Feng see how it came to be in its entirety, from the concept of utilizing the space element to store an imaginary substance like EXP, to the capsule's parts being put together, to some of those parts getting smelted, all the way until all of the Levellume Capsule's parts became just raw materials and energy. 

The vision ended after that, and Feng found the Book of Creation's brand new skill incredible, deciding to chose a better item to see its creation process through the Creation Eye next time once the skill's cooldown ends. 

Following which, Feng handed the Book of Creation back to Cocoa and went back to forging Intermediate Mana Armor Kits while waiting for the time to go into the Dark Den to come. 

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1. Was how many Kingdoms and Empires there actually were in God's Domain ever mentioned? I can't remember ever getting a clear statement about the exact or approximate number. Since I don't remember it ever being said, I'm just gonna come up with my own number. 

2. I can't remember if the actual reason for why other Super-first-rate Guilds and Super Guilds never bothered trying to buy Intermediate Mana Armor Kits or did anything to make a deal with Candlelight for them was ever said, or did they do it and I'm just misremembering, since it doesn't make much sense for them to be uninterested in such an item, and it's not like they didn't know about it after what had happened with Nine Dragons Emperor? 

3. Is this the name of the rank below Master grade? Like how it's Apprentice Forger, Forger, Master Forger, Grandmaster Forger, so Apprentice rank, Professional rank, Master rank, Grandmaster rank? I'm not sure if that's how it works, but since I don't know if the exact name was ever stated, I'm just gonna go with this. 

4. Idea for skill based off of the Purple Eye Butterfly beast soul from the novel "Super Gene".