Chapter 240: When Gazing into the Abyss
"This stage tests the contestants' perception and mental strength. Simply place your hand on the handprint position of the mirror stand, then look into the mirror. If you feel you can no longer continue, immediately release your hand from the mirror stand." The mechanical voice responsible for explaining the rules sounded promptly.
Hearing these words, the host also tried to meet the gaze of that impossibly beautiful, gigantic crystal mirror, but there was no reaction whatsoever.
"Only the test subjects can activate the mirror," the reminder popped up again.
As Xiao Mingyue placed his right hand in the appropriate spot and looked straight into the center of the mirror, the crystal mirror began to emit strange, multicolored light. The light enveloped his entire body, making him appear translucent and indistinct.
"It seems this stage is quite mysterious..."
Many people were intently listening to the host's explanation, and a few with sharp business acumen had even started contemplating opening test preparation classes.
After all, combat power assessment was also a test, and as long as it was a test, Huaxia people with peculiar talents in this area would have specialized tutors, just like any other examination, big or small.
Cultivators now concentrated most of society's wealth—or rather, most of the original wealth owners had themselves become cultivators. Every shrewd businessman would set their sights on this group, finding ways to profit from their overflowing riches.
However, looking through the camera at this moment, aside from a riot of colors and Xiao Mingyue's blurry figure, there was no useful information at the scene, and the host temporarily found herself in an awkward predicament.
"Through the colored light membrane, one can faintly make out contestant Mingyue gritting his teeth and persisting. What exactly is happening inside?"
...
Although it was all rather insipid commentary, she felt it was better than dead air.
From Xiao Mingyue's perspective, ever since he was enveloped by the light, he seemed to have entered another dimension.
This dimension was completely dark, yet he could feel it was filled with countless things immensely useful to him.
"It's cultivation insights!" Instinctively, he extended his mental strength as far as possible to seize these invaluable treasures that were absolutely unobtainable in the outside world.
The moment he began to harvest the insights, a terrifying repulsive force suddenly appeared, constantly trying to push him out of this place!
"How could he be defeated by mere repulsion?" He frantically used his mental strength to resist this nearly omnipresent repulsive force coming from all directions, while racing against time to absorb the precious insights.
Only within a mental world constructed by special equipment could Ability Users below the Xuanhua Stage allow their mental strength to leave their bodies.
When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Bai Mo utilized this very idea, encrypting a vast amount of his cultivation insights into obscure and difficult-to-understand mental fluctuations. While the other party fully resisted his will and opened their mind to solve the puzzle, he also began to read the memories within their mind.
Only during this kind of information exchange could he, with the aid of the equipment, read the memories of those who had temporarily lowered their mental defenses.
He swiftly bypassed the useless memories, and immediately, only a tiny amount of useful, cultivation-related memories remained.
He believed that Spirit Qi had only appeared for a little over five years to date, and was still a relatively new thing; even people far weaker than himself could very well have some excellent insights.
What he needed to do now was to unearth these excellent ideas from other minds. Although there was curse protection, the Contribution Point System's confidentiality was ultimately insufficient, and many people were still unwilling to put their truly valued ideas onto it.
Moreover, most people would choose to bury what they considered their best ideas deep in their hearts, hoping to quietly strike it rich later.
The incident with Luo Yi a few years ago had also made Bai Mo more cautious. He really wanted to know if there were still people in this world like Luo Yi, harboring enormous secrets.
Compared to these anticipated gains, what he paid was merely knowledge of not great value to himself; for Bai Mo, it was practically no loss at all.
Only VR access points installed in major Contribution Point centers, and specially modified, were capable of performing this memory reading task.
Of course, the prerequisite was that the mental strength of the party being read had a significant difference in total amount compared to Bai Mo. And this was the fundamental reason why he currently did not open the test to Xuanhua Stage Ability Users.
As a mental ability user, he indeed possessed stronger mental strength than the others, but the gap wasn't so large that he could wantonly sift through their memories; it wasn't worth the risk of being discovered just to peek at a few memory fragments.
Bai Mo believed that as long as he read the insights of hundreds or thousands of people every day, even if their combined strength was no match for him, there would always be some areas he hadn't thought of.
Of course, if he discovered any treasure that even he found tempting, he wouldn't mind making a cameo as a brigand and playing some tricks of killing for treasure.
While the possibility of him having to act was truly small, after all, with the Contribution Point System backing him, he was already rich enough to rival a nation.
The reason for setting the limit to once every six months was also this: they needed some time to accumulate the results of their thoughts, as too frequent harvesting of minds would only bring him a massive amount of meaningless labor.
After persisting for twenty minutes, the completely limp Xiao Mingyue still reluctantly released his hand, and the light curtain enveloping him slowly began to dissipate.
"Mr. Xiao, could you briefly describe what kind of trial the third stage was?" the host asked Xiao Mingyue after he caught his breath.
"I apologize, but this is something that can only truly be felt through personal experience." He refused to disclose what had happened inside, instantly piquing the curiosity of the audience behind their screens.
His next action, however, left even more people bewildered.
"Thank you!" Xiao Mingyue bowed respectfully towards the mirror.
"What exactly happened in there? What would make an Ability User genuinely thank such a mirror? Perhaps this question will only be answered once others emerge."
"Next, we will follow contestant Mingyue's footsteps to the second floor of the Heaven-Connecting Pagoda for the final test: combat intuition and experience."
"Objective: kill as many hidden monsters in this forest as possible," the mechanical voice provided a simple task reminder.
"This task is quite simple and straightforward. According to the staff's reminder, this practical combat test will also adjust the scores from the previous six stages."
"For the sake of testing fairness, I cannot provide any guidance or interference to contestant Mingyue for the remainder of this period, so I will temporarily disappear from his sight, but the live broadcast will continue."
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