The portable grandfathers that appear are all problematic.

"So now we've summarized two rules." Xue Dinglu smiled and held up his finger. "First, the host who signs the Heroic Spirit Contract will be mentally corrupted. Second, individuals with mental corruption will exhibit a state of arrogance intertwined with lust."

"As for more rules and the characteristics of this pollution, further experimental investigation is needed."

Xue Dinglu spoke of the information he had obtained, looking at the two heroic spirits present: "So, I also have a way to resolve the contracts on you, and at the same time prevent myself from being mentally corrupted. Shall we begin now? And do you really believe me? After all, once I control your contracts, I will have the power of life and death over you, and you will be unable to refuse any request I make you make!"

Xue Lu looked at the two of them, his glasses covered by the reflected light: "My strength is very strong, even your methods of escaping, which are like hiding from your hosts, cannot achieve this."

"Heh, Mad Viscount, at least I trust you to some extent on this matter. Besides, your personality is quite good, and you're to my liking." The one-eyed female pirate glanced at Xue Dinglu and said, "Let's get started now, hurry up!"

The archer ignored Xue's provocation and said, "Re-sign the contract for me too. I believe you. I saw everything that just happened. You're not a bad person."

"Tsk..." Xue Daolu didn't know if he hadn't played the villain well enough, or if the favorability he gained from his "human protection" was just too high, because neither of the two heroic spirits showed any intention of struggling.

As for them, they had also thought about it. Once they signed the contract, the host would be corrupted. They felt that rather than letting the corrupted guy control them, they would rather trust this mad viscount, at least he didn't seem like a bad person.

Yes, a woman's intuition.

The cursed blood entered their bodies directly, penetrating deep into the very core of these bodies that had descended into the mortal world. It located the contract, then removed it entirely and rewrote its name on a new one.

At that moment, the two boys who had been frantically searching for their female Heroic Spirit in the center of the Royal Training Ground suddenly turned pale and their eyes widened in horror, because at that moment, they felt that the contract between them and the Heroic Spirit had been broken.

That bastard dared to defy me, his host, and even dared to find a way to break the contract! Damn it! Damn it!

The mental pollution caused them to lose control in an instant, and they roared madly. At that moment, even the royal court mystic and other guards noticed the problem.

……

After Xue Law completed the contract, he forcibly reclaimed the pollution, and the pseudo-World Heart was almost full, containing five distorted human faces.

Just as they were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief, the three heroic spirits present suddenly sounded alarms, exchanged a glance, and said in unison, "An enemy is approaching!"

"The enemy is actually... the Blood Duke?" Xue Dinglu sensed even more and immediately deployed his defenses in confusion.

The next moment, the room where Xue Lude and Lana were located was almost completely blown open, and the energy wave released by the scarlet greatsword covered the entire place, collapsing the house where Xue Lude and the others were temporarily staying.

The violent explosion and tremors alarmed everyone in the palace. Court mystics rushed over, including the prince, who had been busy collecting materials and props all day. The old prince had planned to sit down for a meal and relax with his maid, but the sudden explosion made him hurry over as well.

The greatsword scattered dust as the Blood Duke, who had accompanied the Golden Emperor in the Great Crusade 1300 years ago and won the victory for mankind, frowned as he looked into the ruins.

Upon seeing the defensive barrier erected by Xue Dinglu, which blocked his attack, and also noticing the other pirate woman and archers in the room, the Blood Duke frowned, but also showed an indifferent attitude, filled with fighting spirit.

His gaze fell on Lana, whom Xue Dinglu was holding, and he said, "I'm really sorry, although I don't want to do such a despicable thing, I have no choice. My host wants me to take that girl back."

At this moment, both the royal court mystic and the prince stared blankly at the heroic spirits fighting.

No, they haven't even started the expedition yet, and they've already started fighting amongst themselves, and the reason for the fighting is just... a woman?

The host of the Blood Duke is that second son of the duke's family, right? They started fighting amongst themselves just for a woman, to satisfy their own desires?

Go ahead and plagiarize, you bastards! The singing girls in the capital are legal. Even if you plagiarize, you only need to pay a small fee. It's not much, and the royal family can reimburse you. Otherwise, things wouldn't have escalated to this point. It's just a small fee!

Both the court mystic and the prince felt a profound sense of unease, as if they had swallowed a historical injustice. They had started fighting amongst themselves simply because they wanted to sleep with the earl's daughter, completely disregarding the overall interests of humanity.

Disgusting! Ugh! Disgusting!

Then, the melodious music filled the air, and the bard's blessing was bestowed upon the Blood Duke. The bard, a spirit of a hero, slowly emerged and said, "Although I think this is a very tasteless thing to do, there's nothing I can do. My host also ordered me to take back that noble lady. I'm really sorry."

The second Heroic Spirit joined the Blood Duke's opposing side and became an enemy.

Seeing the situation escalating, the prince immediately stepped forward and said, "Gentlemen, please give me some face, especially the two heroic spirits who came to snatch people. Please give me, the 27th direct descendant of the emperor, some face. I am willing to let the palace maids serve your hosts. Please step back!"

Although he was actually losing face, after all, the palace maids were, in essence, his maids, and one of the concubines he would have as the next emperor. Now he was essentially using his own concubines to quell this disaster.

However, being a prince, he was still decisive and added without hesitation: "If that's not enough, I can send each of you hosts at least four maids. They are all young girls trained by the royal family, and their skills and appearances are amazing. They will not disappoint the heroes who are about to participate in the Great Expedition."

The prince felt he had been very sincere. After all, no matter how stunning the count's daughter was, she was only a fourteen-year-old girl who hadn't fully grown up yet. His own maids might not be as pretty as the count's daughter, but there were still four of them. He didn't believe that this couldn't solve the problem.

To everyone's surprise, the Blood Duke frowned, looked at the prince, and sighed, saying, "Your Highness, although I would very much like to give you face, unfortunately, my host has specified that he wants this count's daughter. I have tried to find him a maid, but he has not agreed. I am truly sorry..."

The Grand Duke's words made the prince's face turn as black as the bottom of a pot in an instant.

At this moment, he even had the idea of ​​killing the Grand Duke, whose ancestors had deep ties with the royal family, on the spot. At the same time, he also harbored a silent grudge against the second son of the Earl's family.

You lowly illegitimate child, you disgusting thing, do you really have to sleep with this count's daughter? Who the hell do you think you are!

……

Meanwhile, in Xue Dinglu's arms, Lana finally woke up. Although the back of her head still hurt, she saw the scene of confrontation and the Blood Duke staring straight at her.

Combining what she had been harassed about during the day, she immediately understood the situation and her face turned pale.

"Don't worry, I'll handle it." Xue Dinglu lowered the holy light defense barrier and silently adjusted his glasses.

For some reason, the countess's daughter abandoned her haughty, swan-like expression and simply responded with a quiet, "Hmm..."

The prince, along with the court magician, stood behind Xue Lude, indicating their stance.

For both public and private reasons, the prince had to stand on Xue Lude's side. After all, this was the Grand Duke directly slapping him in the face, showing him no respect whatsoever.

If I were to back down here and be unable to protect even a daughter from a count's family who is one of my subordinates, where would my authority be? Where would my imperial power as the future emperor be?

If he can't even protect the daughter of an earl, how can his followers possibly believe that he can protect them?

Therefore, he had no choice but to stand on Xue's side, even if it meant another internal conflict and civil war.

The Blood Duke frowned as he watched the farce unfold. To be honest, he hadn't wanted things to escalate to this point. At the same time, he wondered if his son had lost his mind, that he must have taken a liking to Lana and wanted her.

However, he had no way to disobey the contract, and it didn't involve his interests. As for the count's girl, he didn't really care for her; she was just a nobody. He figured he could just take her without a second thought and didn't believe the girl or the mad viscount could say anything.

Little did he know, he was now also put on the hot seat. No one gave him any face, and he no longer obeyed the contract. Instead, he arrogantly looked at Xue Luding, this worthless viscount, and his fighting spirit soared. As a berserker, his muscles began to affect his brain.

"Heh, so you've teamed up? Don't accuse me of bullying the weak. Come at me all at once. Don't worry, it won't waste your time." The Blood Duke grinned. He hadn't fought a battle where he could go all out in a long time, and he also wanted to see how much magnanimity these future vassals of mere earls and viscounts could muster.

Similarly, he hadn't fought in a long time, and hadn't had any fun in a long time!

……

One minute later...

The Blood Duke lay on the ground, his entire body smoothly severed in half at the waist. His lower body remained standing, but his upper body, dripping with blood, lay on the ground. He raised his head and looked with difficulty at the moon in the sky.

"The younger generation has far exceeded my expectations. I'm truly sorry I didn't make you use your full strength..." Lying on the ground, with only his upper body remaining, the Blood Duke coughed up blood with difficulty. He felt his contract beginning to loosen, and he was about to dissipate...

"That kid seems to have been corrupted by something special. Be careful." As if a dying man's words are wise, the Blood Duke, who had just been all talk of "fighting is so exhilarating," revealed the information.

“We’ve known about this for a long time, which is why we asked the Mad Viscount to solve it. We never expected that you, this old relic, would actually be controlled by the contract.” The pirate woman said. She actually had some connection with this Blood Duke, and was a distant relative.

They also suspected that the Blood Duke, being a berserker, might just have wanted an excuse to have some fun fighting, but he didn't expect to be cut in half by the Space Slash in an instant.

Xue Dinglu silently put away his dimensional sword and looked at the Grand Duke who had been cut in half at the waist.

The bard had already fled when he sensed the danger, and the archers gave chase.

"Goodbye. If we have the chance, let's fight again. Next time, I will definitely force you to use your full strength..." The Blood Duke seemed to have finished speaking his last words before his entire soul disappeared.

Only a corpse, cut in half at the waist, remained on the spot; it was merely material to summon the spirits of heroes.

Chapter 331 The Prelude to the Great Expedition

"I might remember you, the guy who died the day before the Great Expedition while trying to find resources for his own descendants to plunder," Xue Dinglu said quietly, looking at the corpse broken in two on the ground.

For some reason, Xue Law thought of the story of Wancheng during the Three Kingdoms period, and the most expensive plagiarism in the world.

If this event were recorded in the history of that world, its historical status would probably be similar to that of the Wancheng Chronicles, and it would even be more amusing for future generations to laugh at than the Wancheng Chronicles.

Soon, the archer silently returned to the royal palace, holding a strange head in her hand.

"I killed that bard, and his head is right here." She casually tossed the unfamiliar head to the ground and silently returned to Xue Dinglu's back.

Soon, all of them were captured by the royal mystics, since their location was too easy to find. Whether it was the seemingly rational second son of the eldest prince, who was preparing to escape even in his anger, or the two who were impotently furious because of the betrayal of the heroic spirits, they were all stopped by the guards.

They were all pinned down in the center of the training ground, like bulls in heat.

Two of them glared fiercely at Lana, while the female pirate's host stared intently at her. The archer's host then launched into a string of vulgarities, including "biaozi, traitor, swordsman, and stinky wooden structure."

The prince, on the contrary, politely handed over the handling of these people to Xue Dinglu, saying, "It is up to you how to deal with these people, Lord Mad Viscount."

There was no other way; a wise man submits to circumstances. The prince had just thought he was about to face a tough battle, after all, the Blood Duke was an extremely strong hero in the records. Although he might not be among the strongest, he was definitely at the T1 level.

Their strength was only average. Even with the support of the royal mystic, he felt that the best outcome would be to exhaust all their strength to starve the Blood Duke to death, or to make the Duke back down while he secretly sent some people to kill their host while keeping the Duke occupied.

In this way, both the manpower was preserved and the incident was resolved smoothly.

Little did anyone know that Xue's hand was too fast. Although the battle lasted for a minute, ten seconds of that time were spent in the standoff and probing between the Blood Duke and Xue's hand. After the probing was over, the battle was truly over in less than a second.

If this were a shonen anime, it would definitely be a terrible one. The Blood Prince was going berserk and fighting Xue Lude with great enthusiasm just a second ago, constantly muttering that he hadn't had such a good fight in a long time and was so excited that he was raising the flag.

Just when everyone thought it was a close, even protracted war, the Blood Duke's upper and lower body suddenly separated the next second, and he fell into a pool of blood, uttering some incomprehensible words.

This scene made the prince's eyelids twitch uncontrollably, and he even felt an indescribable sense of dread.

"Hmm." Xue Dinglu responded calmly, then looked at Lana and the other two Heroic Spirits, "I'll leave the decision of how to handle them to you. I'm going to start trying the next Heroic Spirit summoning ritual."

Xue Dinglu seemed to calmly utter something extraordinary, while the prince beside him continued to twitch at the corner of his eye.

What he was actually more worried about was that this "mad viscount" must have had a grudge against the royal family in his previous life. After all, the forbidden research he conducted was to use the corpses and bloodlines of the royal family to try to summon the Golden Emperor. Before the master could successfully summon him, he was wiped out by the royal family more than a hundred years ago.

However, after spending some time with him, he even felt that this mad viscount was completely different from the one in history, and even seemed very easy to get along with. On the contrary, he not only did not hate the royal family, but also admired him.

For some reason, the prince actually felt a sense of kinship with this "Mad Viscount." If it weren't for the time constraints, he really wanted to continue perfecting the Mad Viscount's experiment on summoning the "Golden Emperor," so that at least humanity could reliably summon the strongest Heroic Spirit in history before the Great Expedition.

The first emperor of mankind, a man known as the Golden Emperor, was said to be a giant, over three meters tall, and was clad in armor made of gold.

Even though the price of summoning that person is sacrificing a member of the royal family, the prince felt it wasn't a bad deal since sacrificing some royal family members every hundred years and then consistently drawing SSR cards was a viable option.

Unfortunately, time is running out. The Great Expedition will officially begin the day after tomorrow, and they will head to the Land of Judgment tomorrow.

"Ah, Your Excellency the Mad Viscount, if you need any props or materials, just tell me, and I'll get them for you tonight," the prince said finally, trying to appease him.

Xue Dinglu simply nodded calmly. He immediately returned to his room and began trying to summon the heroic spirits again.

After all, they had already lost two members, and according to past history, if a heroic spirit died before the Great Expedition, a corresponding host would be randomly selected to begin resummoning.

He didn't want this kind of spiritual pollution and distortion to affect more people, so he decided to reserve the spot for himself first.

Looking at the distorted human face shadow on the pseudo-Heart of the World, Xue Law felt that he might have found the source of this pollution.

The Ninth Apostle?

Or rather, what are the rules of this world?

He seemed to be able to determine the reason simply by meeting the demon faction's leader and followers.

After quickly drawing a magic circle on the ground with the cursed blood, Xue Dinglu calmed down, placed a wooden figure made of the divine tree inside, and began to summon a new heroic spirit.

"Summon Heroic Spirits, Unleash the Spell!" Xue Dinglu chanted directly.

The spell inscribed on the ground with cursed blood shone brightly. According to the mad viscount's theory, what he summoned this time should be the phantom of the Great Sage, right?

Xue's Law only believes that this spell summons a phantom spirit, not a real heroic spirit, because what is summoned is clearly an existence born from cognition, not the real hero in history.

Even though it was just a phantom, Xue Dinglu really wanted to say something to the Great Sage, at least to tell him about his current situation.

As the light faded, a face that seemed to be a fusion of human and beast features appeared before Xue Lude. Three rows of amber vertical pupils were arranged in a fan shape, and six pairs of dragon wings covered with barbs pierced out from the shoulder blades.

And on his shoulders, countless twisted and bizarre snake heads grew.

Xue Law: "..."

Despite it being their first meeting, Xue Daolu immediately recognized who was standing before him the moment he was summoned.

Typhon, the ancestor of all demons!

In particular, its aura, which faintly reached level 5, and the murmurs it uttered.

"fry!"

Xue Law: "..."

The distorted mental pollution was captured by the pseudo-Heart of the World. It seems that this Noble Phantasm has completed its mission. At least before it is digested, it cannot capture any more pollution and distortion.

This time, Xue Dinglu had no desire, either emotionally or rationally, to summon another Heroic Spirit.

If Zeus represents omnipotent reproductive power, then Typhon represents "the reproduction of beasts," that is, the reproductive power of any wild beast, magical beast, or monster. This is the authority and power that Typhon transmits.

That familiar reproductive power still blessed Xue Dinglu, which made him very uncomfortable.

Xue's Law even suspected that if the next time a Heroic Spirit was summoned, it might be the Breeding Poseidon, representing the reproduction of all aquatic animals.

In this situation, he had no choice but to stop and immediately contact the prince to search for the last remaining heroic spirit.

I don't understand why, even though I used cursed blood as the material to inscribe the magic circle, all that was summoned were a large group of powerful Greeks, who made up the majority of the force.

Although both Zeus and Typhon are powerful, their fifth-tier strength and ultimate reproductive power are astonishing. They are the kind of beings who can rely on their reproductive power to become the gods of any realm, no matter where they are placed.

If Zeus's catastrophe were to occur in this world, Xue's Law believes that the world would completely transform into a bizarre era where even the earth could conceive.