Chapter 105: Freedom
Fifteen minutes later.
"How is this possible! Your spiritual energy can't possibly last this long!" the few ghosts, enduring immense consumption every second, exclaimed in shock when they saw their opponent in this war of attrition still looked completely at ease.
"I never explain myself to living opponents. If you're so curious, then go to hell first."
After enduring such high-intensity consumption, the several candidates' originally extremely condensed ghost bodies turned ethereal. The smaller ghosts on the side, scavenging for scraps, gnawed faster and faster, one of them even gnawed down to only half a body.
"Let's truce! The flower is yours, we promise to leave immediately!" Having been reborn once more, these ghosts' craving for life was even more intense.
"Is that truly the will of 'you'?" Bai Mo was saying something strange again.
"Stop with the nonsense! Either let us go, or we'll fight to the death!" The ghost that had suffered the most consumption suddenly realized that, with the suppression of ample spiritual energy now lacking, the vast amount of undigested memory fragments it had previously swallowed began to riot. Countless memory fragments transformed into sub-personalities, launching an assault on the dominant personality currently in control.
"I am Yu Wan Nian! No! I am Pang Juan! No! I am Ning Ze!..." One ghost began experiencing self-cognitive confusion, countless wills within its ghost body were vying for power. The will that had initially fought Bai Mo to the death had no idea where it had gone. The chaotic situation was comparable to the French Revolution.
"The first one. It's your turn next." Bai Mo's spiritual fluctuations continued to sow panic.
"If you want to die, die yourself! Don't drag this ghost body down with you!" "Exactly, exactly!"...
Like dominoes, the remaining three ghosts also collapsed one after another, all the wills within their bodies seizing this rare opportunity to launch a rebellion.
"Ultimately, they are just collections of fools. With an external enemy at hand, they're still thinking of internal strife. But then again, it's a rare opportunity; if they don't fight, their ultimate fate would likely be a slow refinement by the dominant personality anyway. They might as well take a shot at 'Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers born of a special seed?' After all, if they don't rebel, they'll just be trapped in the ghost body waiting to die." Bai Mo glanced at the stiffened ghosts and paid them no further mind, preparing to finish them off once their internal struggle had sufficiently depleted them.
Ignoring the smaller ghosts feasting amidst the chaos, Bai Mo walked straight towards the fully matured flower. His spirit-energized brain gave him a certain premonition, telling him that as long as he ate this flower, he could evolve to a new height, but might have to pay a price.
"Premonitions are truly unreasonable things," he thought. "They always give only the answer, with absolutely no deduction process."
After this premonition, he gave up the idea of directly eating it. The feeling of "a price" was too unreliable. He suddenly remembered the fantasy novels he used to read, where characters often advanced by consuming pills or rare natural treasures. Unless they were protagonists of the 'underdog' genre, their path to further progress was basically cut off as supporting characters. And he, for his part, felt no need to advance right now. As a decent scientist, he wouldn't go to the front lines unless it was a matter of national survival or species extinction; he had no pressing need for power.
More importantly, he never considered himself a protagonist of the 'pill-popping' genre with unparalleled luck – where the natural treasures encountered were more formidable than the last, allowing one to bravely and diligently advance simply by popping pills along the way.
"This flower seems to be manifested from the crystallization of countless spiritual energies." Bai Mo lightly scraped the tiniest corner of a petal with his finger. The moment it touched his Life Field, a surging wave of spiritual energy ceaselessly impacted it.
"Since it's a crystallization of spiritual energy, then eating it should result in an astonishing amount of spiritual energy. This explosive growth in spiritual energy would promote evolution in some way. And the Life Field is the materialization of one's spiritual will, so the next step might very well be some form of development for the Life Field?" For a moment, Bai Mo couldn't control his mind, and his thoughts wandered far off again.
Although he didn't plan to eat the flower directly, he also had no intention of leaving it behind for someone else to benefit from. Since merely touching the flower with his hand would result in a spiritual energy impact, Bai Mo decided to carefully pluck it with his telekinesis and take it back for research.
The moment his telekinesis touched the flower, as if heavenly lightning had ignited earthly fire, he instantly felt his telekinesis burning fiercely. Yet, nothing at all happened in the physical world.
The invisible flame, following his telekinesis, instantly spread throughout Bai Mo's entire body. To his surprise, his Life Field, which always had excellent self-defense capabilities, made no attempt to block the flame at all. Instead, it allowed it to enter his body.
"There was a burning sensation," he noted, "but the pain wasn't intense." He even had the presence of mind to describe his sensations.
"Could it be that this flame is beneficial and not harmful?" He found that although it felt like flames were fiercely burning on him, the more he burned, the clearer his mind became. Some problems he usually couldn't figure out, and previously forgotten knowledge, suddenly surfaced. Seizing this rare opportunity, he kept his eyes closed, fully concentrating on many research and study problems he encountered in his daily life.
As Bai Mo continued to be "burned," the originally palm-sized flower also began to slowly shrink.
After about an hour, he felt the flames on his body were about to extinguish. At this point, he turned his attention to the nameless flower, but unexpectedly discovered a secret hidden within it.
"These blue particles appearing here are clearly not right..." He saw that after the nameless flower burned, a significant number of tiny blue particles remained. He then tried to observe its microscopic structure with his divine sense. Unfortunately, even when magnified to the micron level, he still couldn't make sense of it.
At the same time, somewhere in the deep sea.
"Who! Who destroyed my plan!" The Zerg Brain Bug roared in a crude underwater palace.
"Great Priest, what happened?" The giant whale heard its subordinate's report and came to investigate.
"A part of the plan I arranged was unknowingly destroyed by some human bastard. The undead from thirty-two large cities, under my arrangement, should have mutually devoured each other to form thirty-two land-bound Ghost Kings that, having swallowed the specially treated Soul-Gathering Flowers, would be unable to leave. Then, these Ghost Kings would activate a formation through their pulling force to further strike at humanity," the Zerg Brain Bug patiently explained to the mutated whale elder.
"Great Priest, haven't you always taught us to be patient? After all, time is on our side. The oceans of this planet account for over seventy percent. As time passes, we will always win."
"Right, I was too hasty." The Zerg Brain Bug suppressed the urge to beat up the great elder, who had a lazy expression and no fighting spirit, because it knew it couldn't win in its current state.
After the great elder left, the Zerg Brain Bug continued to vent its anger internally.
"If it was merely the plan to weaken humanity that was destroyed, would I need to be this furious? That was a Spirit Gathering Array I painstakingly scrounged from my memories, one that could be deployed in this world where spirit qi had just appeared! With it, my strength could recover at least one-fifth. Everything wouldn't be as passive as it is now. Damn it! Now a part of it has actually been destroyed." The Zerg Brain Bug continued to curse fiercely in its mind.
"So many years have passed. I wonder how our battle with the Xia-He Civilization turned out. Back then, I barely survived, passing through a spatial rift during the great war and luckily arriving at this life-bearing planet. All I had left was a set of Spirit Gathering Arrays and a few Spirit Stones I snatched from the Xia-He cultivators. But the greatest benefit is that I'm finally free! I'm no longer a battle machine controlled by the Overlord!"
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