Chapter 264: The Gap
After Bai Mo had meticulously organized his system at the extreme point, he resumed his journey across Antarctica.
No matter how far he traveled, what greeted his eyes was always an expanse of white, enough to fill an ordinary person with despair.
Only two percent of Antarctica's landmass isn't permanently ice-bound, but even that only occurs during the continent's brief "summer."
Now, in the midst of the polar night, even that meager two percent was swallowed by the omnipresent snow and wind. Yet, it was precisely such a desolate, uninhabited land that allowed him to freely practice controlling his power.
It wasn't that he harbored any aversion to killing others; rather, Bai Mo had no interest whatsoever in meaningless slaughter. In most cases, living people generated far greater value for him than dead ones.
To him, a life's most precious asset was a freely thinking soul; only the living could be squeezed for greater profit.
This point became even more pronounced now that he had the VR system, allowing him to read most people's memories. Human imagination wasn't necessarily tied to actual power; the weak could still offer potentially useful insights.
The Star Dharma Body, integrated into his being, seemed to have undergone a strange reaction with the "Sky-Piercing Void" Lingtu. This made him appear simultaneously far away in the heavens and intimately close, presenting a paradoxical superposition.
Traveling north, stopping and starting for over ten days, he finally saw the ocean.
Within several kilometers of him, all living creatures instinctively dared not approach, even though he had now reined in all his radiance, appearing only subtly unlocatable.
Bai Mo had no immediate plans to return to Huaxia. A part of his primordial spirit controlled the entire experimental ground, and there was nothing urgent to attend to for the time being.
According to his original plan, he was supposed to make a trip to South Africa to see Ji Si Ti Si, the nation representing justice, with his own eyes. Compared to the dull power transitions back home, Bai Mo was more interested in this country established by an idealist.
After two days and thousands of kilometers of flight, he finally landed less than two hundred meters from the red mist nation of Ji Si Ti Si.
The endless red mist stretched for dozens of kilometers, like a city wall, isolating the city within from the evils of the outside world.
Large numbers of people, unwilling to be constrained by its strict laws but also fearing plunder, lived scattered across the hundred-kilometer buffer zone between various warlords and Ji Si Ti Si.
Here and there, missionaries from the One-Wheel Cult could still be seen moving between tents. The deeper the suffering, the more people placed their hopes in religion. Across the African continent, the figures of pastors were active in many places.
Bai Mo's arrival immediately caused a violent disturbance in the red mist. Tracing back to the source, Hou Zi had been kicked out of the intelligence department because of issues when handling Bai Mo's affairs back then, ultimately embarking on this road of no return, pursuing justice and rebelling against reality.
The dark core he had never forgotten now appeared vividly before him. How could he not be agitated?
Especially in the years that followed, through the slaughter of numerous officials, Hou Zi gradually deduced the full extent of Bai Mo's dark dealings with the entire upper echelon from fragments of their minds. Only then did he understand why he had suffered such a fate simply for saying a few wrong words back then.
"Bai Mo!!!!" Hou Zi's furious mental fluctuations solidified into a tangible shockwave, sweeping straight towards his opponent.
"Full marks for the red mist's creativity, but zero for your power." He didn't even adopt a defensive stance, walking straight into the red mist.
To him, a shockwave of that magnitude was no different from a gentle breeze caressing his face.
Hou Zi naturally knew that his casual strike couldn't possibly affect such a formidable foe. Even when he was an ordinary person, his opponent had already been a powerhouse at the very pinnacle of the entire nation. Years had passed, and though he himself had encountered continuous fortuitous opportunities, his enemy certainly hadn't idled away their time.
People both inside and outside the mist witnessed this level of chaos for the first time. The red mist, which had always been as still as an ancient well, suddenly churned like boiling water.
"I've learned it." No sooner had his words fallen than countless white mists began to erupt from Bai Mo's back. The endless mist surged outwards like a colossal wave.
"How is that possible!!! The Xuanhua phase transformation that took me a full half-year to conceive, you learned in half a minute?!" Hou Zi suddenly felt like the brain in his head might be a fake one.
Bai Mo offered no explanation, merely continuing to ceaselessly release his vast Xuanhua, allowing it to engulf everything around him.
The people who originally resided on the outskirts of Ji Si Ti Si, seeing this cataclysmic eruption, were mostly too terrified to move. Not everyone possessed the courage to turn and flee when faced with a hundred-meter-tall tsunami.
"I'm the pioneer; he's merely a later learner. A difference in speed is perfectly normal..." Hou Zi offered himself this explanation.
As a powerhouse who had risen through countless slaughters, while he was indeed shocked by his opponent's learning speed, he quickly recovered his composure and prepared his defenses.
However, Bai Mo's accumulation was colossal. In these two years alone, his daily expenditure on various spirit materials approached ten million, all of which served to promote the expansion of his Lingtu, thereby increasing the amount of Xuanhua he could control.
From this perspective alone, Hou Zi, who was currently supported by a small African nation with a total population of less than a hundred thousand and had previously been constantly on the move, was simply not on the same level of developmental speed.
Moreover, the advantages of the Lingtu were gradually becoming apparent. Unlike lower-level cultivators who fretted over resources, at least during this period, high-tier ability users hardly needed to worry about spirit materials. What truly limited their development speed was the sheer quantity they could absorb each day.
A Lingtu composed of numerous Spirit Hubs could, evidently, absorb a far greater quantity each day than others who possessed only two or three Spirit Hubs.
The white mist engulfed everything within a hundred-li radius, its quantity already approaching ten times that of the encircled red mist.
"Your efficiency is too low. Let me teach you."
At Bai Mo's mere word, the endless white mist around them permeated the red mist with overwhelming superiority, continuously reshaping the red mist that stretched for dozens of kilometers in between.
Hou Zi, in the center of the red mist, realized for the first time that his phase-transformed, gaseous Xuanhua could actually become uncontrollable and autonomously alter its structure.
As the improved structure emerged, he felt the burden on his Spirit Hubs lighten considerably. Now, he could support the generation of even more Xuanhua, which meant the red mist nation could once again expand outwards.
"Why?" Hou Zi asked, bewildered. He clearly harbored terrifying murderous intent towards Bai Mo, yet the other party ignored it and continued to enhance his own power.
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