Chapter 950: Dao One Generates Spiritual Energy
Chapter 950: Dao One Generates Spiritual Energy
Li Fan hurtled through the spatial channel. Even before he reached the Empire Small World, the Final Dissociation Disc had already absorbed, converted, and completely deciphered the hundred thousand formations inscribed on the Sky Patrolling Arrow.
Li Fan paused for a moment. A silver light shot from his eyes, and in an instant, he wiped away every last formation adhering to the arrow's surface.
These hundred thousand formations weren't just for acceleration, targeting, and amplification; layered one upon another, they formed a kind of armor, raising the arrow's physical hardness to an unbelievable degree.
Now that the formations had vanished, the Sky Patrolling Arrow revealed the raw material of its inner core.
Only then did Li Fan realize that the Sky Patrolling Arrow was, in fact, a living creature!
Beneath a hard, chitinous layer, he detected a subtle spiritual fluctuation. It was so faint that had his spiritual soul not been stronger than that of a typical Dao Integration cultivator, had his senses not been so exceptionally sharp, he would have overlooked it completely.
"What is this...?"
Li Fan couldn't help but be intrigued.
The reaction was just like that of a startled tortoise retracting swiftly into its shell.
After that, no matter how Li Fan probed, the arrow steadfastly refused to reveal any further sign of life.
Left with no other option, Li Fan temporarily stored it in his personal grotto-heaven, leaving a wisp of his spiritual sense to keep a constant watch. He would wait for it to lower its guard.
"No wonder the Myriad Immortals Alliance managed to deploy thousands of these Sky Patrolling Arrows so quickly," he thought. "They're just some unknown living creature overlaid with composite formations..."
"And there must be a central control hub coordinating them all."
Li Fan silently mused, recalling the image of a vast net woven from Sky Patrolling Arrows during the great war between the Myriad Immortals Alliance and the Five Elders Council.
"I've already cracked all the composite formations," he considered. "If I can just analyze the nature of this creature..."
"I could mass-produce them myself!"
"Whether for my own use or to sell the secret to the Five Elders Council, the benefits would be substantial."
Though pleased with this development, Li Fan didn't let himself get carried away.
Gazing at the Empire Small World in the distance, he refrained from revealing his presence.
Instead, he first swept the area thoroughly with his spiritual sense, making sure the Empire had laid no traps, before finally unleashing his power.
Empowered by the Burning Soul technique, five sinister blood moons instantly materialized in the skies above the Empire Small World.
Darkness descended, eclipsing the world's sun.
One by one, terrifying gods and demons emerged from the blood moons, swiftly taking up positions across the entire Empire.
The profoundly dark and chilling aura radiating from them threatened to freeze the very thoughts of the Empire's mortal inhabitants.
They couldn't even muster a sense of fear; they simply stood rooted to the spot, paralyzed.
As a ghostly domain enveloped the Empire, Li Fan's utterly cold voice echoed without end.
"The three-year term is up. What of the task I assigned you?"
His voice, like rolling thunder, spread across the entire Empire.
At that moment, every soul in the Empire was plunged into absolute terror, as if witnessing a vision of countless demons tearing their nation to shreds with horrifying ease.
After a moment, three figures of light—Qing, Hong, and the Di Nv—flew forward and appeared before Li Fan.
"Greetings, Senior."
The aura Li Fan now projected was immensely stronger than during his last visit.
The three of them could barely manage to move freely under its pressure.
"We have not failed you," Qing finally replied, mustering her courage. "Over these three years, we have poured all the nation's resources into the task and have finally upgraded the spiritual energy synthesis technology."
Li Fan’s gaze locked onto her, and Qing’s heart skipped a beat.
"Hahahaha..."
"Excellent! Take me to see it." A moment later, his booming laughter allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief.
They led him to the imperial treasury. Where the Myriad Phenomena Furnace once stood, there was now an enormous machine.
It resembled a colossal hourglass, and one could even hear what sounded like something dripping from its upper chamber to the lower one.
"Senior, please observe," Qing said, pressing a button on the side of the hourglass-like device.
The dripping sound grew more and more rapid.
Once the sound reached a certain frantic pace, a small opening suddenly appeared on the lower half of the device.
A jet of pure spiritual energy shot out from the opening.
The spiritual energy was so concentrated that it first manifested as a fine "spirit rain" before slowly turning into a white mist and dissipating into the air.
Li Fan reached out, catching a wisp of the energy in his palm.
Aside from a subtle, lingering scent of blood, it was nearly indistinguishable from natural spiritual energy.
Even so, its quality was vastly superior to the energy previously synthesized from the flesh and blood of beasts.
After this burst of energy, the dripping from the metal hourglass nearly ceased.
A long time passed before another faint drop could be heard.
But Li Fan perceived that as time went on, the frequency of the dripping was gradually increasing.
He surmised that once it reached its previous speed, another burst of spiritual energy would be released.
His spiritual sense penetrated the metal hourglass. Inside, Li Fan found its upper chamber filled with countless minuscule tissues of flesh and blood.
No, it was less like flesh and more like a collection of some kind of fungi.
Their life force was faint, and they possessed no self-awareness whatsoever. Their sole purpose was to absorb nutrients and reproduce.
"Interesting."
Qing, ever observant, chose this moment to explain. "Previously, the spiritual energy could only be produced from the cores of specific beasts. It took at least half a year for a beast to be born and gestate a core."
"And that was with us compressing their reproductive cycle to the absolute limit," she added.
"Even then, the efficiency of spiritual energy production was far too low. So, we shifted our approach and began to selectively breed the beasts for directed evolution."
"We bred them to a point where all other functions atrophied, leaving only the parts necessary for producing cores."
"Then, we integrated the traits of our fastest-reproducing fungal beast..."
"After hundreds of generations of iterative breeding, we finally achieved this near-perfect creation."
Qing's tone was measured, but when speaking of their research, an irrepressible excitement shone in her eyes.
"As you can see, Senior, this creature begins to reproduce the moment it comes into existence."
"It bypasses the need for conventional reproduction entirely, multiplying infinitely through self-replication. And its nutritional requirements are no different from ordinary fungi—it only needs water and sunlight."
"Once it produces a core within its body, the creature dies, and its flesh separates from the core."
"The cores are collected in the lower funnel, while the creature's remains are broken down, becoming nutrients to be absorbed by others of its kind."
"The cycle repeats. This device only requires a small amount of nutrients to be added periodically to produce a continuous, unending supply of spiritual energy."
(End of this chapter)
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