Chapter 735: Death
"Is creation born from destruction?"
Xu Xuanling casually crushed a Spirit Stone into powder, finding that even at the limit of her perception, she couldn't discern any difference from an ordinary Spirit Stone.
Creation was indeed formidable, the only issue being that its cost was truly prohibitive.
A ten thousandfold consumption rate was acceptable for crafting small trinkets, but to conjure a Heaven-grade spiritual herb from nothing, it would likely drain even a Celestial Immortal dry in an instant.
The Federation, upholding certain whimsical old traditions, classified all discovered spiritual materials and plants into four grades—Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow—based on their rarity and efficacy.
Heaven-grade spiritual materials and plants, in the few years immediately following the Spirit River Autumn, were thoroughly plundered due to their immense value for cultivation. Apart from a minuscule number of saplings secretly protected, later generations could essentially only glimpse them in videos.
Only when conquering a new planet might one potentially discover a few among the spoils of war.
Perhaps some still grew on obscure private estates, but at least within the reach of ordinary people, Heaven-grade spiritual plants were effectively extinct.
The earliest cultivators saw their advancement speed akin to riding rockets, and the abundance of Heaven-grade spiritual items provided no small aid.
Earth-grade spiritual materials once still existed in certain remote, secluded old mountains and forests, but ever since superhumans grew increasingly powerful, no truly uninhabited places remained on Earth.
By the era of the Federation, when humanity ventured into the cosmos, they occasionally stumbled upon some during their plundering of the solar system.
Profound-grade spiritual materials and plants, at present, roughly represented the upper limit of what could be acquired with money. Because Heaven and Earth-grade spiritual items were excessively scarce, exchanges for them were largely limited to bartering.
As for Yellow-grade items, they were a general term for spiritual items that humanity had already achieved large-scale cultivation and production of.
Nearly a century had passed since the Spirit River Autumn. In this span of a hundred years, through the efforts of several generations of bioengineering experts, humanity had cumulatively achieved the large-scale cultivation of over a thousand types of spiritual plants, as well as the domestication of more than three hundred types of demon beasts.
Through generations of optimization and cultivation, a significant portion of these species even exhibited forms superior to their wild counterparts.
In short, Heaven-grade spiritual items were like myths, almost equivalent to legends and folktales.
Earth-grade spiritual items were akin to ancient history, with occasional fragmentary evidence still unearthed.
Profound-grade spiritual items were the goal of development, yet for now, they could only be gazed upon from afar.
Yellow-grade items, however, were the present reality, problems already conquered.
...
She attempted to restore the Spirit Stone she had crushed, but felt somewhat unfamiliar with operations at the atomic level.
It was easy to destroy things; a Celestial Immortal's casual Annihilation Palm was enough to shatter most molecular bonds, turning matter into particles at the nanometer scale.
But to reassemble those countless nanometer-sized shattered pieces into a complete picture...
"How do you plan to deal with the Main God Temple?" Though Xu Xuanling was deeply interested in this object containing complete eight-stage power, she was even more aware that it was beyond her ability to touch.
"I'll see it off."
A stream of silver flame flew from Bai Mo's hand, instantly enveloping the Main God Temple, which had originally been emitting an eerie green light.
The silver flame burned fiercely, yet offered not a hint of warmth.
Through her divine sense, Xu Xuanling could barely perceive that something was being refined at an extremely sluggish pace. If the current speed remained unchanged, it would take at least fifty years to thoroughly refine it.
"A living corpse, yet so difficult to kill?" She was shocked by the "Main God's" vitality, that even Bai Mo would require over fifty years to erase it.
"Life should not be a weapon. Only pure weapons, as they grow more destructive, simultaneously become more fragile in their core. Take your Blazing Sun Star Destroyer Cannon, for instance; a single shot is enough to melt a small planet, yet in an unshielded state, a low-tier cultivator could destroy its control system.
The direction of life's development should be towards living, becoming increasingly difficult to kill. That is the correct path.
Tiers One and Two involve strengthening the physique, remaining mortal. Tier Three sees the emergence of a Life Field, marking the first life metamorphosis. Tier Four strengthens the Life Field. Tier Five spiritual cultivators manifest Xuanhua defense, while martial cultivators forge a Golden Body, marking the second life metamorphosis. Tier Six cultivates a True Spirit. Tier Seven ascends to Celestial Immortal, the third life metamorphosis. Each metamorphosis makes one harder to kill than the last, each layer more difficult to overcome."
"How would you kill yourself, then?" Bai Mo finally retorted.
"..."
Xu Xuanling pondered for a moment, thinking of five methods, but each would require at least ten to a dozen years and the assistance of a cultivator of the same tier to utterly destroy both body and soul.
Solely relying on cultivators below the Celestial Immortal stage, even if one stood still and allowed them to attack, the body's self-recovery rate would still exceed the destructive speed of most six-stage cultivators.
Even taking a Blazing Sun Star Destroyer Cannon blast to the face would at most destroy the physical body once; with the might of a Celestial Immortal, one could recover with a slight expenditure of power.
However, what she was witnessing now—designing a Main God Temple and spending millennia to accomplish self-destruction—still completely surpassed her imagination.
For millennia, the blood of countless Reincarnators had transformed into blood sacrifice seals, gradually eroding the Main God's true form, bit by bit.
"It will take about fifty years to thoroughly refine it." Bai Mo gestured at Wu Renxing, who had already fainted from pain, and then extracted a ball of green light from his head.
Once separated from the body, the green light was almost instantly sucked into the cube formed by the Main God Temple, which then began to subtly tremble.
Simultaneously, a black void, about the radius of a basketball, tore open on Bai Mo's chest, sucking in the Main God Temple cube.
Deprived of the Main God Temple's power support, the dream world immediately became precarious.
With a casual wave of his hand and a soft sigh, the "Eight-Nine Arcane Art" and "River Styx Blood Sea" that had battled in the dream world until the sky darkened and mountains and rivers changed color, transformed back into two streaks of light and flew into his body.
Everything shattered like a soap bubble.
Upon awakening again, everyone had returned to the real Water Blue Star.
Not only that, they also possessed the memories of what had just transpired in the dream world.
Every individual had played a certain role in the dream world.
...
"Damn it, you little scoundrel! When the zombies were chasing us, you deliberately tripped me, causing me to get bitten and die!"
"Brother Li, please calm down. I truly didn't mean it, and besides, it was just a dream..."
"So what if it was a dream? The pain from the zombie bite felt exactly real!" The man touched his neck, the ache seemingly not having subsided. The thought of the corpse-reeking breath and sharp teeth of the approaching zombie sent shivers down his spine..
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