Of course, Loki was also losing 100 years of his lifespan through the inquiry that he was trying to push through, and he, too, was consuming lifespan to enhance his speed of travel. In fact, he was using six Divine Metacs at the same time, so he was consuming 36 years of his lifespan per second for it.
This put the total amount of lifespan that Loki was consuming at 196 years per second. So Loki was losing 78 years per second more than Forced Exchange.
Monarch Forced Exchange didn’t know this and only thought that Loki was using one Divine Metac to speed up. He thought that Loki was losing 6 years per second, not 36 years per second, so he believed that Loki was only losing 166 years of lifespan per second.
The loss of 166 years of lifespan on Loki’s part is still 48 years above his own loss of 118 years per second. This gave him the confidence that he would outlast Loki in this struggle.
When he realized that Loki had no intention to fight back and could only silently endure, he laughed and said, "Oh, Gold Body. You don’t realize it, but you’ve already lost."
"Not only are you losing more lifespan than I per second, but I also have more lifespan than you. Or do you think that whatever alliance you’ve joined will have enough lifespan to help you outlast me? I doubt it."
His laughter rang out as he said, "The fact that my Cave Heaven is larger than yours is already proof that my alliance is bigger than yours. So if you think you can force me to back down, you are mistaken."
Loki only smiled and said, "We’ll see."
His behavior made Forced Exchange snort and shake his head as if he were talking with a clueless idiot who couldn’t understand the truth of what he was saying.
On the surface, he looked extremely confident and appeared to be able to last an eternity. But inwardly, he was already panicking.
The truth is that he has used up all of his lifespan a long time ago. Not only was the lifespan in his Life Fire gone, but even the world essence and spirit stones had been sacrificed and used up to keep up with his struggle with Loki.
Right now, he was only holding on because of the support of his alliance. The other divine beings in his alliance had been notified by the emergency and had gone over to Forced Exchange to give him world essence and spirit stones.
Since they all have the same Cave Heaven, it is very easy for them to meet each other. They don’t usually meet, though. But Forced Exchange’s situation has alarmed the alliance.
Ten seconds went by, and Forced Exchange lost 1,180 years of lifespan. Twenty seconds later, Forced Exchange had lost 3,540 years of lifespan. Thirty seconds after that, the loss of lifespan had escalated to 7,080 years of lifespan.
The total savings of the lifespan of the Thorn House of Commerce is effectively 70,125 years. This is the amount that they’ve been saving for over a thousand years.
This amount of savings looks small, but it is actually worth 850,000 years. The reason why they can only use 70,125 years of it is that the average conversion efficiency of their Life Fire is 8.25%.
Now that Forced Exchange has consumed 7,080 years out of their savings of 70,125 years in one minute, they’ve lost 10.1% of their savings. So it is safe to say that at this rate of loss, Forced Exchange would only be able to survive 9 minutes more.
As if that isn’t bad enough, they can’t actually allow Forced Exchange to use up all of their savings. After all, once Forced Exchange uses all that they’ve saved for so long, all of them will become vulnerable and easier to kill.
With this kind of outcome on the line, they have to decide to continue supporting Forced Exchange or cut their losses. None of the five other divine beings could make a decision about this. Only the leader of the alliance could make the decision.
So they went to meet Money Body in the core of their Cave Heaven. This meant that for the first time in a long time, all seven of them in the alliance will be meeting up. It is a rare occasion, as they didn’t meet like this when they were trying to decide if they should save Gold Body or not.
In the core of their Cave Heaven, there are three stars at the very center. These three stars formed a triangle formation and are burning together.
The three of them are separate, but a single golden flame is burning with them as the source. So as long as one of the stars is intact, the golden flame will be maintained.
There are other stars around these three. There are exactly 8 stars. These 8 stars group themselves into 6 sets. Four of these sets have one star each, while the remaining two sets have two stars each.
The arrangement of the eight stars signifies that the eight stars belong to six divine beings. Four of the divine beings only have one star, while the other two divine beings possess two stars each. This is why these eight stars only form 6 Life Fires.
The eight stars form a ring around the three stars at the center of the darkness in the core of the Cave Heaven. The three stars at the center can borrow the power of the other stars and can even snuff out the Life Fires of the stars. This is the personnel arrangement of the Thorn House of Commerce.
Their physical bodies aren’t in the Cave Heaven right now. What they’ve been using to chat is their avatars.
Money Body had heard a little about what was going on, but he wanted to know the specifics. So when they entered the core, he said, "Show me everything that happened."