"Hermes, take care of the golem, I'll defeat the ghost generals!" Alex was confident since he had the ruby.

Hermes chuckled and replied, "I just thought that I was getting rusty, I'll show you why they call me the fastest in Olympus, Alexei-boy!"

​​

Alex smiled and charged at the group of ghost generals.

Prometheus was ruthless and efficient, and with one attack, he vaporized 4 ghost generals into nothingness.

However...

'There are too many!' Alex frowned.

The last time they fought a ghost king, he only had 10 ghost generals under his command, but there were at least a hundred attacking them.

Strangely, when a ghost general died, a tree or some form of vegetation sprouted at the spot it died in.

Fortunately, it was nothing deadly, and he swiftly advanced through the hundreds of ghost generals.

Looking behind him, Hermes was toying with the slow and sluggish sand golem and chipping away at its structure.

The delegate and the rest looked on with admiration.

Soon, there was only silence.

Alex had stampeded through a group of hundreds of ghost generals and easily swept through their entirety.

Nonetheless, he decided he wasn't going to move yet.

He had a mission to accomplish, and after hearing of the origin of the ghost mothers, that mission was also a moral one.

He wouldn't be able to live with the guilt of not vanquishing creatures who turned newborn babies into ghost-production machines.

That was way beneath his bottom line as an individual.

"Any of that has a Yin detection talisman?" Alex turned his head in their direction.

Only Xuanzang interjected and replied, "I can detect Yin passively, what do you need it for?"

"Could you explore the surroundings with me to see where there is the highest concentration of yin qi? There might be a ghost king around, and I'll do my best to protect you."

At the mention of 'ghost kings', the heavenly delegate's body jerked.

"Ghost kings? They exist?!" The delegate asked.

"Yes, I've met one and defeated it in fact, I suspect there might be one nearby."

Sun Wukong noticed the ease at which he cut down the ghost generals, and also volunteered, "I'm coming too!"

Hermes shrugged and asked him, "You seem to manage it well, I don't think you need me, right?"

"Truthfully, I'm not sure considering the insane number of ghost generals, but I'll call upon you if the situation turns sour."

Since that was decided, the expedition group for this mission was...

Alex, the god of humanity.

Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk.

And Sun Wukong, The Monkey King.

They swiftly moved out of the town and into the expanses of the desert.

"So, Sir Xuanzang, have you caught on to any unusual concentration of yin qi?"

The monk nodded and pointed at the vast emptiness of the desert.

They followed this direction, and the more they walked, the stranger the surroundings.

Alex was cautious this time, and he activated Link passively.

There was an extremely strange phenomenon going on around them.

Shrubs seemed alive, the sand seemed alive, and even the wind seemed alive.

These were all things that shouldn't be alive, but he felt like he could form a Link connection with any of them.

"You two, be careful of EVERYTHING."

Suddenly, a gust of wind destabilized the footing of the two behind him.

The wind turned sharp, and rotated at high speeds, forming a deadly tornado.

"This feels...nice..." Sun Wukong creepily remarked as his body was thrown around by the tornado.

"Don't play around, Wukong, destroy the eye of the tornado," Xuanzang sighed deeply.

Sun Wukong nodded, and his staff immediately turned into the size of an iron pillar and began spinning like a spinning top.

This counteracted the force of the tornado, and the sharp winds dissipated away.

Alex waited for the two and they resumed their expedition.

As they continued walking, they found a sandstone temple in front of them.

The eerie sound of a flute spread through the air, and they halted.

'What an inconspicuous hiding spot...' Alex sarcastically remarked.

It seemed they had reached their destination, as there were numerous ghost generals around.

'Who's going to take care of whom?' Alex wanted to defeat the ghost king.

"I'll leave the ghost generals to the two of you, alright?"

"What about protection? Wukong can't possibly protect me..." Xuanzang dramatically held his hand out.

"Stop fooling around, you two are obviously quite strong, I'll go take care of the ghost king."

Alex ran through an opening between the ghost generals and entered the sandstone temple.

Suddenly, he felt a strange force at his feet.

It was like riding up an elevator.

When Alex looked out of the windows of the temple, his eyes widened and almost bulged out of his skull.

The entire temple was hundreds of meters in the air, and they were still going higher.

"Regrettable that I'll have to lose another temple, but...

"I can just build a new one!"

Alex turned around.

A grey mass of slime formed a distinct human figure.

"The ghost emperor has informed us to be careful.....they were right, you practically swept through all of the lowly ghost generals..."

"You're a ghost king?" Alex frowned.

"Yes, directly under Guidi's command, those villager's screams were the best food the ghost mother could ask for, weren't they, temple?"

Eerily, a mass of stones formed a female figure, and the figure said, "Yes, ghost king."

"There are many strong ghost kings, but Guidi personally considers me speci-

A spear attacked him at a 180-degree angle, but the ghost king stepped back just a little bit and smiled.

"Hasty, aren't you? Well, the life-giving ghost king shall do just the exact opposite to you tonight,"

"Baby, finish my words," The ghost king 'talked' to the stone female silhouette.

The silhouette said robotically, "The life-giving ghost king shall be the life-taking ghost king."

"Stolen straight from my tongue...wait, I don't have one!"

The female silhouette creepily laughed, "Ha Ha Ha Ha"

"Now, baby, show him the might of my creations."

The stone female silhouette stiffly nodded and charged at the puzzled Alex.

"This is going to be a hard fight, isn't it?" Alex murmured under his breath.