A total of eight years had passed since Lin Mu and the group had started the expedition now.

This was the longest time Lin Mu had spent together with people whom he could consider companions. Even in the Xiaofan world, the time Lin Mu had spent with his companions there was less than this, most of whom he had only known for a three years or less.

Still, it didn't feel like a long time to him. Instead, he felt like it was merely months since they had been here, allowing him to finally ease into the time scale of an Immortal.

In this time, he had grown close to his companions, and could now call them as 'friends'. After all, there was nothing that could bring people more closer than fighting together and killing foes they all deemed as enemies.

They learned more about each other, about their lives as well as their pasts. They grew stronger, improved their cultivation and enhanced their skills.

They suffered injuries, endured pain and sorrow.

All of it brought them closer and improved their collective strength.

Several of their goals had also been fulfilled, for their years of hunting down Chimeric Beasts, Chimera plants, and Black Fin Island members had granted them a lot of credits. Though it had not come all at once as there were several obstacles in their way.

Just as they had hypothesize earlier, the number of Chimeric Beasts actually were decreasing as the time went by. This was confirmed to have been caused due to the Yin Nascent Soul Maggots as well as the hunting of the Black Fin Island members.

Lin Mu and the others also noticed more and more items disappearing from the lists in the Offering Hall.

Some of these items were very valuable, costing four hundred to five hundred million credits, showing just how much the Black Fin Island members were hunting. Plus, their numbers were far greater than Lin Mu had ever thought.

Considering the scale at which the numbers of the Chimeric Beasts were reduced, it wasn't just the work of the Yin Nascent Soul Maggots but at least a thousand or more Black Fin Island members!

As such, their speed of obtaining credits decreased considerably until they were forced to seek out stronger targets like the Chimera Plants or the Black Fin Island members themselves. They came across the Black Fin Island Members several times during their search and always ended up in fights, though in some cases the Black Fin Island Members ran away. By that time, the group was already sure their presence was well known by their enemies.

Especially when they encountered their third Chimera Plant in the north, they not only did find it, but also three Yin Nascent Soul Maggots there that were feeding off the Chimeric beasts being produced. But these three maggots were a lot smaller and were clearly not at the level as the ones before.

Of course, the group spent no time in eliminating all three, which was when the Black Fin Island Members who tried to ambush the group. Of course, they didn't get to do much since Lin Mu eliminated the Chimera Plant with a Mortal Reminder Arrow.

The resultant explosion was not something the Black Fin Island Members knew about thus they were swept away by it almost instantly while Lin Mu's group retreat atop Little Shrubby's back.

Chances were, even if the Black Fin Island Members knew about the Death Qi explosion, they probably would not have been able to outrun the explosion as it was simply too fast. Only Little Shrubby was able to do so without an issue.

But from that point onwards, the Black Fin Island Members became a lot more aggressive as well as stealthy.

Every time they encountered Lin Mu and his group, they retreated and attacked again as an ambush. If not that, they would ambush the group when they were doing their searches. Of course as payback, Lin Mu and group also wiped out any of their camps that they encountered and tried to obtain anymore clues about how they were entering the Bridge Plane or what their true goals were. Unfortunately, that didn't yield much more than before.

All they got were a few reports about the progress of the experiments, and even interrogating the Black Fin Island members was useless as they would simply explode upon being restrained. What did yield a few results was Lin Mu checking their destroyed spatial storage ring by fishing in the void.

This allowed them to find more communication tokens as well as a few intact jade slips that revealed plans of bringing more Black Fin Island Members for 'harvesting'.

It was then that Lin Mu discovered just how they were gathering so many credits at once. They were simply using their numbers to hunt as many chimeric beasts as possible, then some designated members would kill these 'harvesters', obtaining the credits for themselves.

This way of 'concentrating' credits was fast, but insane.

Crown Prince Feng Shun and the others were shocked at this and couldn't understand how the Black Fin Island Members were letting themselves be sacrificed. They could only come to the conclusion that they were brainwashed to an extreme degree, where they would listen to each and every command.

Lin Mu was only thankful that they didn't target the Heaven Silencing Seal and instead obtained the lower ranked items, because the collective credits the Black Fin Island members could get through their 'sacrificial' method had already hit over two billion by this point.

If they wanted to, they could have already gotten it.

But this also worked in Lin Mu's favor, as some of the Black Fin Island Members they killed provided a massive amount of credits.

"HAHA! THAT SHOULD BE ENOUGH!

" Lin Mu rejoiced as he looked at the green band on his wrist that lit up.

<1,001,587,513 Credits>

"You really reached it… HAHA!

" Daoist Chu cheered.

"Congratulations!

" Crown Prince Feng Shun and the others cheered as well.