MIGHT AS WELL BE OP

Chapter 1344: Attention

Anthony looked around. Geniuses were already outside, most of them seemingly disoriented at first, with many of them on the ground. They rose groggily, staggering before standing upright as though this were their first time teleporting.

As Anthony looked around, he couldn’t help but notice that the number of geniuses who had come out was far smaller than the number who had entered. Roughly only twenty percent had made it out.

Nobody asked, and nobody said anything. Everybody already knew that the missing eighty percent had been wiped out. They had all expected this; they had seen it coming, after all, as they had all lost geniuses the last time the Underground Tomb opened a couple of thousand years ago.

Anthony turned around, his gaze falling upon where the Abyssal Maw was supposed to be. The huge, two-kilometer-wide area through which they had entered was gone, and the ground was whole again, as though nothing had ever been there. He had thought that a huge sinkhole would remain, but it hadn’t.

The next moment, various people shot forward as they moved towards their geniuses. Some didn’t move; they had lost all their geniuses. Others had lost a few and were relieved to see that some of theirs were still alive.

During the time they had all been within the Underground Tomb, the Elders who had escorted these geniuses here had never left. How could they leave when they didn’t know when the Underground Tomb was going to close and eject their geniuses?

Anthony’s attention shifted towards the golden thread around his wrist, his eyes following it to the geniuses. Unfortunately, out of the ten geniuses from the Null Sect who had entered, only four had made it out, while six had been wiped out.

Tory Hale could be seen covered in injuries as he panted, as though he could drop dead at any moment. It was as though the permanent closure of the Inheritance Realm had saved him just in time. If the realm hadn’t closed, he might have fallen to his enemies.

Anthony wasn’t really surprised that he had survived. Tory probably possessed enough strength to match the geniuses from the Top Organizations with ease and possibly overwhelm them, too. His talent and abilities made it possible.

Lora Vake had survived, too. She was ranked second, and she was missing a limb at the moment, while almost half of her waist had been blown off. She was simply holding on through sheer willpower and the immense vitality provided by her cultivation rank.

And obviously, Chu Feng had survived. Unlike Tory Hale and Lora Vake, the guy simply stood with a little dirt on his face that showed he had fought. Aside from that, he had no injuries and simply wore a calm expression, as though nothing could shake him.

’A protagonist through and through,’ Anthony mused to himself, as he wasn’t sure that anybody had obtained more treasures than Chu Feng, considering his protagonist-type luck and movements.

Of course, Chu Feng’s rewards would pale in comparison to his own, but he remained curious.

And finally, Jerry, whom he had saved earlier. The man was in good condition, at least. After Anthony had saved him, he had simply become more... no, overly cautious. Yes, he fought for things, but fear remained present in every moment he acted, as there was no guarantee that another Eternal Apex wasn’t lying in wait. As for his injuries, he had only lost an eye and an ear.

Out of the ten Above disciples, only four had made it out.

Lora Vake, Tory Hale, Chu Feng, and Jerry.

Before Anthony could walk towards them, Chaos Betroth appeared before Anthony in a blur. Anthony couldn’t even speak before she vanished with him, reappearing before the four surviving geniuses.

”We have to move,” she stated flatly, wasting no time on the dead disciples. While she would grieve for them, this wasn’t the place nor the time for that.

She knew how Inheritance Realms always woeked whenever they closed, whether permanently or temporarily. Although the Sleeping Hollow always wiped people’s memories of what had happened and the knowledge of the rewards another person might possess, it didn’t stop other organizations from attacking randomly or based on guesses about who had obtained something and who hadn’t.

Before Chaos Betroth could even vanish with the five of them towards the airship they had come in, a voice came from the side.

”That’s him! He’s the human who won the final reward from the Sleeping Hollow!”

At those words, everyone froze mid-motion. Their eyes snapped towards the voice that had spoken and followed the direction in which the owner of the voice was looking.

The next moment, millions of eyes fell on Null Anthony. They stared at him like hungry lions that wanted to devour him alive. Chaos Betroth immediately frowned as she saw the attention directed towards them. While she might love chaos and battles, that wasn’t her mission. They had already lost six Above disciples, and she couldn’t afford to lose another.

”Don’t falsely accuse another person just because you have a personal issue with them,” she stated as her eyes fell on the genius. Her voice was cold. ”Everyone knows that the basic function of the Sleeping Hollow is the manipulation of memories, meaning there is no way you should possess the information you’re speaking about. Hence, it’s a lie.” Her tone lowered.

At her words, clarity seemed to flash through the greedy eyes of everyone present as it dawned on them that they had forgotten such an obvious detail because of their greed.

”He isn’t lying. I was there with him. We witnessed Null Anthony win the reward with our own eyes after passing the final trial set by a Grim Reaper,” another genius spoke. It was a woman this time, and she was from the Whispering Butterflies Sect.

”I was there, too!” another voice came. He was from the Sword Sect, with a katana hanging on his waist.

Eight different voices from eight different organizations and territories rose, supporting the claims of the first voice.

As nine people were now accusing Anthony, Chaos Betroth’s expression twisted. There was no way to escape what was happening now; she could only do as much as she could. Besides, she couldn’t understand what was happening or how these nine people had retained their memories.

She wasn’t the only one frowning. Behind her, the four Above geniuses were also frowning, as they had just survived the Underground Tomb, only to come face-to-face with the entire Sathor Grand Region. There wasn’t even a 0.1% chance of winning here.

Anthony’s eyes shifted towards the nine who had spoken, his perfect memory allowing him to remember them. They were the nine geniuses with whom he had taken the riddle trial. But they shouldn’t have known that he was the one who won the reward, unless the announcement of his victory had been broadcast to all the losers, and they had all been familiar with one another, allowing them to deduce that he was Null Anthony.

If the nine of them had been teleported to the same domain, they wouldn’t have needed to deduce anything, but Anthony doubted that had happened.

At that moment, Anthony came to another conclusion. Since these nine hadn’t lost their memories of the events that had happened, it meant one thing: with the permanent closure of the Sleeping Hollow, the Lover Of Death had stopped manipulating people’s memories.