As he was thinking, he took off in the direction he sensed Monarch Star Divination. On his way to her, he thought about how to distribute his tracking marks.
Right now, he has a tracking mark on the Divine Metacs of each of the four money cultivators that he killed earlier. Those three are Life’s Worth, Money Construct, and Wealth Status.
Those three divine beings have used up three of his tracking marks. He used to have one on Forced Exchange, but he removed it earlier so that he could have enough tracking marks to seal all three of Shadow Body’s Divine Metacs. He also removed the one he used to mark the Monarch Eye Tracker.
Now that he is rank 8, he can produce and maintain a maximum of 8 tracking marks. If he had maintained the mark on the Forced Exchange Metac, he wouldn’t have had enough to seal the three money cultivators’ Divine Metacs, maintain the mark on Many Eyes, Eye Tracker, Star Divination, and continue to seal all three of Shadow Body’s Divine Metacs.
All of those things needed 10 tracking marks to keep up with. Since he only had 8 marks, he decided to give up on two things. So he gave up on Forced Exchange and Eye Tracker.
He let the Forced Exchange Metac go because he had another way to mark Money Body’s Cave Heaven. As for Eye Tracker, he gave up on him because his Cave Heaven was small and hadn’t reached the maximum size for a rank 6 cultivator.
But even after making all of these sacrifices, he had a feeling that he might not have enough marks to deal with Monarch Star Divination. This is because she possesses two Divine Metacs, not one. So he needs two tracking marks to ensure that he can seal both Divine Metacs.
When he thought about this problem, he could only shake his head and say, "She is alone with no one sharing her Cave Heaven, so as long as I lock one Divine Metac, that should be enough when I kill her. It has to be enough, because I am not giving up on the Shadow Alliance yet."
On the other end, Monarch Star Divination knew immediately that Monarch Shadow Body had died. This was because he had become too weak at the end to resist the probing of her eyes.
His death scared her so much that she made up her mind to die on the doorstep of the Thorn House of Commerce, even if they refused to help her. So she didn’t stop at all when she came up on the small world.
From afar, she projected her mind to say to Money Armor, "Please, protect me. There is someone killing people for no reason. I’ll pay."
Money Armor didn’t say anything to her when she started speaking to him. He was planning to ignore her shouting and mind his business, which was to protect the small world. But when he heard that she would pay him, he decided that maybe he should help her.
So he rushed out of the small world as he shouted with indignation, saying, "Who dares to kill people on my turf? They will have to ask for my permission first."
When she heard this, Monarch Star sighed in relief and said, "Thank you for your mercy."
But Money Armor said humbly, "Please, don’t thank me with words. I am not worthy of it. A callous man such as myself is only worthy of being thanked with money."
She didn’t think that there was anything wrong with this. After all, it is just common sense to pay the person willing to risk their life to save you.
But she knew that his strength wasn’t going to be enough, so she said to Money Armor, "I am willing to pay. But I don’t think you’re strong enough to defend me from this person."
Her words made Money Armor chuckle and say, "Who is this enemy of yours? Are they some rank 8 cultivator?"
She shook her head and said, "He doesn’t look like a rank 8 cultivator. As far as I can tell, he only has one Divine Position. So they shouldn’t be at rank 8."
When Money Armor heard this, he said with confidence, "As long as they are not at rank 8, you have nothing to worry about. Even if they are stronger than me, they will have to show the Thorn House of Commerce some respect, so you have nothing to worry about."
She also knew the might of Thorn Body and how he liked to protect his subordinates like precious goods. So she believed that the Thorn House of Commerce should have more deterrence than the Shadow Alliance.
However, just to be sure, she said to Money Armor to warn him, "This person killed Shadow Body earlier, though. Are you sure we will be able to handle them?"
In response, Money Armor asked in shock, "Shadow Body is dead? Who can kill him aside from a rank 8 cultivator?"
He began to realize that the situation might be bigger than he could handle.
On one side, the news that Shadow Body was dead made him want to give up on protecting Star Divination and wash his hands of whatever was going on.
On the other hand, he felt that since this situation was so dangerous, he would be able to earn more money from it if he solved her problem.
This made him think to himself, ’If I am not enough to stop this person, I can ask Money Body to make a move. Of course, he has to be paid a lot before this can be possible.’
He hadn’t made up his mind about what to do. But he wanted to know exactly what was at stake here, so that he could know what he was working for.
So he said, "First of all, who is this enemy of yours? Secondly, how much are you going to pay to get them to back off?"