Chapter 560: Cold
The idea of a life-bound object originally stemmed from Wen Jian, who intended to cultivate "man and sword as one" to become a Celestial Immortal, and the Yamato warriors who advocated "blade is my body."
Subsequently, the relevant information, through certain clandestine transactions, eventually made its way into Bai Mo's hands.
After acquiring these ideas, he attempted to extend the concepts of blades and swords further to other weapons, truly paving the cultivation path for Ghost Immortals, instead of just an empty framework with a mere outline.
Thus, Xiao Xun, whose body "unfortunately" transformed into a staff, became the most suitable test subject for the "man and weapon as one" scheme.
...
"Entered senescence?" On Earth, within the White Month, Bai Mo discovered this as he meticulously examined the Solar Star Spirit obtained from the Moon.
During the spirit energy scan, he observed that this Solar Star Spirit, slumbering within its seal, had already completed the vast majority of its life's journey, its remaining power was like a candle flickering in the wind.
Its "body temperature," originally reaching thousands of degrees Celsius, had now plummeted to less than nine hundred degrees Celsius, just a hair's breadth from completely cooling down.
The seal merely prevented its light and heat from radiating outwards and causing destruction, but it could not impede the flow of its life.
"Can you understand?" After undoing the seal, Bai Mo cautiously channeled power into the spirit's core, attempting to sustain its life.
There was no response.
He continued his rescue efforts, because only a living Solar Star Spirit could potentially reveal the principles of its core's controllable nuclear fusion.
Through the constantly emerging cracks in its core, his divine sense frantically recorded all of its microscopic structures.
Simultaneously, above the dome of White Month, an identical replica of the spirit's core, but magnified tens of thousands of times in volume, was slowly forming.
The invisible Xuanhua enveloping the entire White Month, like countless hands, began carving the intricate patterns replicated from the outer core.
"Spirit again." Bai Mo felt a slight pang of disappointment.
He had originally thought that the Solar Star Spirit's miniature controllable nuclear fusion core was achieved using scientific principles that could be analyzed on Earth, but it turned out to be another runic effect that only appeared after the spirit qi outbreak.
These mysteriously profound runes, from the appearance of the first one until now, a total of over four thousand different image forms had been collected.
Thousands of cryptographers and ancient language scholars dedicated themselves to it, attempting to discern the underlying patterns, but unfortunately, deciphering the truth remained a distant prospect.
Some scientists and conspiracy theorists felt fear about this, believing there must be a trap involved, but this did not hinder humanity's widespread application of runes as a whole.
Even if they didn't know why these effects occurred, whether it was alien black technology or some other reason, they figured they'd use it first and ask questions later.
These extraordinarily convenient things, just take any medium, engrave the runes upon it, and inject spirit energy, and it would immediately function.
As long as the material of the medium could withstand it, the runes themselves were not an issue.
Rune armor, rune weapons, and even rune batteries, rune cars—humanity's applied technology had been forcefully pulled up a significant notch by the discovery of runes.
...
"Cold..." A perplexing voice appeared in Bai Mo's mental link.
"Is that you?" He looked at the spirit.
At this moment, the dying Solar Star Spirit was desperately seizing every shred of light and heat outside its core, attempting to replenish its "heart," which was already riddled with cracks.
Its flickering outer flame layer looked as if it could be extinguished by a breeze at any moment.
A specialized thermometer within the electromagnetic confinement displayed that, at this point, its "body temperature" had dropped to only three hundred and twenty-five degrees Celsius.
"Cold..." The voice merely repeated the word.
Bai Mo slightly increased the output of light and heat energy, but the cracks on the spirit's core simultaneously expanded.
"Black..." It finally "spoke" a second word.
"Hm?"
"Black..."
"Hm?"
"Black..."
"..."
A fruitless exchange; with each word spoken, the spirit's core moved a step closer to complete fragmentation, and several precarious components within it foreshadowed that it might not see the next sunrise.
"Forget it." Bai Mo, who also understood the situation, abandoned the idea of completing communication with an alien race in such a short time, and decided to use the final method—
An overwhelmingly dazzling white light surged from his hand, instantly devouring everything of the spirit!
"Ra!" This was the Solar Star Spirit's last word left in the world.
In the final moment before its life ended, it believed itself to be fortunately returning to the embrace of the Sun God Ra.
...
"It's not that it couldn't adapt to the environment, but rather that its natural lifespan was only a year?" After devouring this spirit that called itself "Feng," Bai Mo obtained a portion of the Solar Star Spirit's memories.
He was actually not very willing to do this, because assimilating and devouring other life forms with white light yielded fairly limited memory and information, but seeing that it would die if he didn't devour it, he had no choice but to act.
From Feng's memories, Bai Mo learned that Solar Star Spirits were divided into four internal levels in total; the weakest ones, living on the sun's surface, shared a common racial surname—Bei.
The deeper one went into the sun's core, the stronger the spirits residing there became; the Shou clan, located in the deepest part it knew, could make its core explode with just a single thought.
Bei, Luo, Tuo, and Shou were the four great racial ranks it knew; whether there were even higher-ranking existences above them was not mentioned in Feng's memories.
Light and heat were everything to them, the essential resources for their survival, and also their living environment.
"Life that rapidly arises and perishes." Bai Mo commented after reviewing all the memories.
He had a plan for an expedition to the Sun, or rather, any human residing in the solar system couldn't help but be interested in the Sun.
The Sun, which concentrated over ninety-nine percent of the stellar system's mass, would naturally spark ideas in anyone aspiring to the "sea of stars."
...
"Patriarch Nanxuan, what are your intentions?" After Bai Mo departed with all the Holy Progenitors, the higher-ups on the Ark began a protracted closed-door meeting with the native Bloodline Houses of the Manghuang Realm.
As it concerned the future of an entire world, almost all of the Ark's higher-ups dispatched avatars to attend.
"Jointly developing the Hanluo City ruins is not an issue for either side, but your desire for our clans to become subordinate forces of your Ark—is that not going too far?"
After the hidden factions and major patriarchs all ascended in one wave, the disunited Bloodline Houses within the Manghuang Realm lost a considerable amount of confidence when negotiating with these "visitors from beyond the heavens," and their words became a little more polite.
"Mr. Nanxuan, that one has already reached an agreement with us." The Ark side used Bai Mo's name to intimidate them.
"Don't think we don't know that you're not aligned with him! Rather, he is your enemy; if it weren't for chasing you, he wouldn't have broken into this world at all!" the new Patriarch of the Duan Imperial Clan retorted.
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