Chapter 978: Chapter 539: New Destination Chapter 978: Chapter 539: New Destination “After friendly negotiations with various parties, the Evil God Golden Mother agreed to join our side and decided to become a permanent NPC within the battleship.”

“Our chief commander, Decaying Commander, established a good cooperative relationship with the Golden Mother, and through negotiation, made the Golden Mother one of our permanent deities.”

“Afterward, players could make wishes to the Golden Mother by burning their merit, and obtain the support of the Golden Mother’s abilities. However, due to the Golden Mother having forgotten most of the content, the content of the wishes might be a bit random; players should explore this on their own.”

“From the current situation, the Golden Mother’s abilities should be related to probability. I heard that after burning merit, it can increase the chances of drawing SSRs. I’m just blabbing, don’t take it seriously, you lose if you take it seriously.”

“Lastly, I’d like to add that Decaying Commander mentioned that the journey ahead might be a bit dangerous, and everyone should consider buying insurance to avoid losing their accounts. The insurance is inexpensive, just merit will do.”

In Gong Gong’s livestreaming room, after hearing the latest major events from “Nebula,” players were extremely curious about the Golden Mother.

Some players with merit had already started taking action, burning their merit to research the Golden Mother’s abilities, then they discovered that this deity’s power was quite esoteric.

Just like Gong Gong said, this evil god’s ability was related to probability.

To put it more clearly, she likely was the evil god who governed probability.

Sacrificing and burning merit to other mighty beings would compel them to come and help you with your tasks, and they might feel quite embarrassed if they fail.

But if you pray to the Golden Mother for help, she would grandly wave her hand to change the probability for you, and whether or not it succeeds is left to fate.

Evidence proved that the act of changing probabilities did have some effects.

Using a probability calculator made in the game, players found that after praying and burning merit, the game’s probability indeed improved.

However, this improvement was limited to within “Nebula”; there were no changes in the spending on gacha outside the game.

So, what’s the use of this feature?

After a series of large discussions among the players, they pinpointed its use and started to stack wishes by burning merit to introduce a new feature in the game.

A lottery.

For as little as two merit points, one could try their luck with one drawing, with those two merit points given to the Golden Mother along with a wish for something good to happen.

Due to the nature of probabilities, once merit was burned, the world would return prizes at a certain rate, and the value of these prizes was not fixed.

The prize could be only an insignificant bit of cultivation, but it could also be a legendary Divine Artifact that greatly increased the player’s abilities.

Not only could players partake in the lottery, but friendly NPCs in the game could as well.

And the more merit you put in, the higher the value of the prize you could receive. As a result, various powerful beings became addicted to this Skinner’s box first, investing all the merit they obtained by helping players into this system.

Gong Gong was already deep in debt, but upon learning of such an enjoyable thing, she became utterly obsessed.

In her livestreaming room, with red eyes and panting breath, Gong Gong exclaimed to the screen: “It’s almost mealtime brothers! Today, I especially went for some big scores, and now I finally have enough merit for the lottery. I have a feeling I’m definitely going to win big this time! I’ve scraped together a hundred thousand merit for a thousand-tier, hundred times draw; today, let’s do a massive session for everyone.”

“Stop it, Gong Gong!” Tai Yin pleaded with a tearful voice, grabbing hold of Gong Gong, “You’ve invested too much merit, there’s no guaranteed minimum in this thing!”

“Shut up, I have an exceptionally strong feeling today, I know for sure I can win big! Come on, Great Heavenly Lord help me, let me score a big win and clear this damn debt!”

“Don’t, there’s no good end for a gambling addict!”

Having burned all her merit, Gong Gong watched the spinning cube in front of her with a euphoric expression.

She felt it!

She truly felt it!

Her power furnace was throbbing, the water cooling system was running wildly, her own CPU was heating up more and more, giving her an unprecedented sense of blur and intoxication.

This was the feeling!

This was what I live for!

Gong Gong borrowed the power of the Golden Mother, the power of possibility boiling over here, the will of the vast universe enveloping her, making her feel that this time she would definitely hit the jackpot!

And then…

She really did…

The power of possibility exploded around her, a mass of golden legendary items rained down around her, and piles of legendary-quality items filled her room; even without appraisal, just the color alone showed that Gong Gong had made a fortune this time.

“Wuhu! Wuhu! Wuhu! I’m thrilled! I’m really thrilled this time! I’m usually so charitable and always doing good deeds; this is what I deserve! Brothers, we’re really going to feast this time! Thanks to the Great Heavenly Lord for providing this meal!”

The Military Governor, who had been looking forward to laugh at Gong Gong’s embarrassment, was also stunned.

After carefully calculating the merit obtained here, she said in disbelief, “Four hundred million. At a conservative estimate, four hundred million in merit. We can pay off our debt to the Great Heavenly Lord!”

“Wuhu! I knew I could do it! Who was the one that said I was bound to crash? Come out and take a walk so I can have a look!”

The news of Gong Gong making a fortune and accruing over a billion in merit shot to the top of the trending searches that day, boosting Gong Gong’s popularity by another notch.

And as Gong Gong managed to pay off his debts outright and henceforth became free, a large number of NPCs found new ways to repay their karmic debts to Fang Cheng and began to serve the players with increased enthusiasm.

Some NPCs simply wanted to play with the Skinner box; after all, there were some NPCs that could be entertained for years with just rock-paper-scissors. The Skinner box’s card-drawing game, filled with uncertainty, was something they really loved.

They abandoned their usual aloofness, casting coquettish glances at the Decaying Commander, hoping that this commander would assign them more tasks.

Seeing the flood of applications, the Decaying Commander was having a headache.

Some people were full of zeal, some came with veiled threats, and there were New Celestial Honors suggesting that if the Decaying Commander was willing to assign more work, they would secretly add some yin virtue to ensure he could enjoy spicy foods in the afterlife and not lack offerings.

If the Decaying Commander was worried about the Great Heavenly Lord’s investigation, they suggested that he could just kill himself right after completing the task, and they would have everything else arranged for him.

Swearing at the message received, the Decaying Commander burst out, “What kind of NPCs are these! Even sending a message has to come with a task attached! And telling me to kill myself, why don’t you go carry your family register and go find someone to kill themselves? Sorry, I forgot that your family register is so thin, only a page left!”

After venting, the Decaying Commander covered his head, feeling overwhelmed by the issue.

The Golden Mother sitting in his lap separated a strand of hair, and the hand that formed from the hair skillfully peeled an orange, offering a slice to the Decaying Commander.

Taking a bite of the orange, the Decaying Commander pressed his head against the Golden Mother, troubled, “What should we do about this?”

“Just deal with it as usual,” said the Puppet Prime Minister. “Besides, aren’t things going well lately? The players are continuously contributing merit, and our Emperor always has something to eat.”

To the Evil Gods, merit was also a kind of nourishment.

It wasn’t so much food that allowed Evil Gods to survive but rather something that made them more lucid and helped to restrain some of their peculiar instincts.

The Golden Mother was one of the weaker beings among the Six Great Evil Gods. After all, she hadn’t been in the Origin Land for long and had deleted that part of her memory, which allowed her to avoid the corruption of knowledge but also made her the weakest among the Six Great Evil Gods.

Nevertheless, she still needed to consume merit to maintain a relatively lucid state or else she’d go mad.

Knowing this trait of the Golden Mother, the Decaying Commander explained, “The players can still make enthusiastic wishes, which is because they still have a relatively large stockpile of merit from before. However, as they keep burning through merit, the stock will gradually diminish, and new problems will arise.”

The Puppet Prime Minister pondered the issue seriously and then said, “You have a point there. Where did the players’ previous merit come from?”

“From other games; you could think of it as a type of game currency. But by my calculations, the players’ rate of earning merit can’t catch up to their rate of consumption. If this continues, the merit will be depleted.”

“That’s a problem. Do we need to impose some restrictions, like limiting the amount of merit spent on card draws per day?”

“Or maybe we can adjust the win rate. Lowering the win rate could also reduce their enthusiasm for the merit draws.”

“And maybe adjust the discount scale while we’re at it. Right now I extract one merit for every ten thousand burnt by the players when I go out. Later, we can adjust it to two in ten thousand.”

“Anything else good?”

While the Decaying Commander and the Puppet Prime Minister were discussing the issue, the Minister of Military Affairs could no longer hold back.

He angrily drew his military saber, shouting excitedly, “There’s no need for such hassle; we must open up new sources! All our problems come from insufficient productivity. If we Conquer enough land and make local citizens happy by doing good deeds, won’t our merit continue to flow? Not to mention the local residents here are in the trillions; there’s as much merit as you could possibly want.”

“Easy for you to say, but where do we find local residents now?” the Decaying Commander said, holding his head. “We don’t have the star map of this place, and the only direction we have comes from burning merit to reveal it; where do we find residents?”

The Golden Mother watched the Decaying Commander discussing with his right-hand man for a long time, then, while eating an orange, pointed to a spot on the star map and said, “Here.”

“Hmm? How do you know?” the Decaying Commander asked, rubbing the Golden Mother’s face.

“That used to be a settlement. I’m not certain if there are still residents there, but it would be good to check. However, remember our agreement–absolutely do not go to the Origin Land, make sure to walk around it.”

“Okay, then it’s settled there.”

Rubbing the Golden Mother’s face, the Decaying Commander thought it was quite nice to have an Evil God as a pet.

Meanwhile, to the boss on the other side, it looked like the Decaying Commander was just rubbing the air, which seemed rather peculiar.

Quietly looking away, he felt it was better to not talk too much.