After he left the sect grounds, he went into the secluded corner of an alley and began undressing. He undressed until he became completely naked. Then he activated the Shifting Armor Ability.
As soon as his life ability was activated, a white metallic liquid came pouring out of his energy well and began covering his body. Soon it encased his whole body completely.
The white liquid didn’t become armor-like as it usually did. Instead, it formed a thin layer on his body like a layer of second skin. Then this layer of second skin began to transform.
The second skin changed color, texture, and elasticity to resemble human skin. Then part of it changed into clothes. So even though he was naked, he looked like he was wearing clothes.
Not only that, the second skin made him look like a completely different person. He didn’t look like he was wearing armor at all. But the defensive power and the forcefield shield were still present, so this disguise is just as good as his armor.
After changing into someone else, he nodded in satisfaction and said, "Not bad. Not bad at all."
Then he marched out of the secluded corner in the alley and continued his journey into the city.
This is one of the abilities that the Shifting Armor has gained after it advanced to the divine grade. It can become anything he can think of.
The second ability is that it can maintain its defensive power regardless of the form it takes. The third ability is that it can defend against any form of attack, be they spiritual, mental, physical, or curse-based.
All three abilities are great, but he can’t decide which of the three abilities is the best. It would have been the first ability if not for one tiny shortcoming. This shortcoming is that the Shifting Armor can’t transform into anything. It can only look like anything.
For example, the Shifting Armor can’t actually become a second layer of real skin made of flesh and blood. But it can change its color and shape to appear like human skin.
The Shifting Armor is still fundamentally a metal. But it can be made to look like something else.
This is why he didn’t kill Muni and everyone else in order to prevent the news of his appearance from spreading. He didn’t need to because no one was going to find him based on his looks.
This gave him the confidence to march around the city with confidence. Of course, didn’t mean that he was completely free.
The fact that he doesn’t look like Loki anymore didn’t mean that he still wouldn’t get in trouble because of his identity. So he had some things that he planned to do eliminate every source of trouble.
As he marched to the central market, he said to himself, "I need to gamble, acquire some information, buy the necessary Metacs, find some forgers to eat, get the method to advance to rank 5, sign up for the Heavenly Battlefield, and maybe schedule a meeting with Lady Red for her World Heart Fragment."
"So many things to do and so little time to do them. I guess I can only take things one step at a time."
His ultimate goal for now is to advance to rank 5. But he doesn’t know how to do that. This put him in the same situation that Skarg is in.
What he can do now is reach the peak of rank 4 as soon as possible. Then he will explore the opportunities to advance to rank 5.
There are two opportunities he knows that can lead to advancing to rank 5. The first option is to work for the sect.
As long as he has grade 5 merit points, the sect will tell him how to advance to rank 5 and will even be willing to help him advance. After all, he has proven himself to be a dedicated asset to the sect.
The second option is to gain Lady Red’s help. Lady Red is a peak stage rank 5, so she should know how he can advance. She is also in possession of a World Heart Fragment.
These two things make her a viable target for assistance. The trouble with her is that he doesn’t have a method to contact her. There is also the fact that meeting her face-to-face can be problematic.
So he plans to shore up his strength first. He wants to do that by acquiring rank 5 Metacs and a Level 5 Dao Status.
Level 5 Dao Status will require taking a grade 5 mission from the sect, of which the only available one is going to the Heavenly Battlefield. So he will take a stop in the sky soon.
In the meantime, he will try for the second-best option, which is to chat up Amelia. So he still signed up for the grade 3 mission and was assigned to Earthly Battlefield E6-137.
There was also the option to sign up for a grade 4 mission, but he didn’t want to do anything that would make him lose out on going to Earthly Battlefield E6-137. After all, his goal for going to any Earthly Battlefield right now is to meet Amelia, not to earn grade 4 merit points.
After signing up, he began the next step of his plan. This step was to acquire a lot of money to buy the rank 5 Metacs that he needs. In order to accomplish this, he went to visit his favorite gambling houses.
He no longer had any scruples about ripping them off since he was now always disguised, so he had fewer reasons to hold back. And he was a rank 4 cultivator, so the managers of the gambling houses were too afraid to tell him to leave.
The gambling houses would rather announce that they had run out of money and close down their shop than tell him to go after he had won too much money.