The half-dead Nikos was exchanged for the basic city-building technology and dozens of rare forged materials unique to the Ashen World. Coming with the deal was also Lin Sheng’s most coveted teleportation technology. It was near-field teleportation. but for Lin Sheng, it was the missing puzzle in making up the shortfall in the ceremony and circle knowledge system.
Lin Sheng had learned his lesson when he was still in Xilin. The Darksiders from Redwin inserted themselves into the battlefield to provide reinforcement and then left using the teleportation circle. This left Lin Sheng with only passive battle tactics to choose from.
Back in Baine University, Lin Sheng bemoaned that the military and the Suncrown from the Moon Basin were the only ones possessing the teleportation circle technology. But the civilian coronated academies could only make do with on-the-shelf teleportation disc.
Lin Sheng coveted the technology. So Tenko Kasumi had made it a term of the negotiation. Once he mastered the technology, he would get tremendous enhancement to his skills in rituals and teleportation. Even now, he was already no slouch after absorbing memory fragments of tens of thousands of people.
After the exchange and the convoy brought Nikos away, a team of special forces raided the Chaotic Lairs of the Fireghosts. During the operations, two Chaotic Lairs were destroyed, and hundreds of survivors rescued from the underground shelters. Along with the survivors, a little girl with a terrible scar on her face had entered Henricqal.
…
In the dark spirit cave, Lin Sheng swam out from the dead spot. He had lost count of how many dark spirits he had consumed. It could be hundreds or even thousands.
He had turned the dark-spirit beads into Rock Dragon blood in his body with a ritual. Already reaching its peak, the Rock Dragon bloodline began another round of changes with the massive ingestion of the dark-spirit beads.
Lin Sheng did not have any reference data for comparison; a Palatinate like Tenko Kasumi was not here to keep measuring his strength. He could only feel his strength was rapidly increasing. He did not know how far he had gone.
He only knew that he had sort of turned into a real dark spirit—hiding, hunting, transforming, and then the process started all over again. During the forage, he had talked with the dark spirits and learned that the name of the world of the dark spirits was Caerphipo. From the mouth of a hapless, chatty dark spirit, Lin Sheng had also gotten an idea of the social form of them. These strange lives lived in the gap between different caves. The cave that Lin Sheng was in was in the corner of a larger cave. The real dark-spirit cave of Caerphabor was the size of a province in Xilin, with thousands of dark spirits living there.
With this intel in hands, Lin Sheng was no longer satisfied with the slow stand-hunting method. He needed a more efficient way.
Other than converting the dark-spirit beads into blood using a conversion ritual, he could also use the holy power to purify the beads into soul-power beads before absorbing them. In fact, it was the soul power that determined the strength of a dark spirit. So he ingested all the dark spirits he had hunted and converted them into soul power. This way, he no longer needed to go back and forth between here and the real world.
“It’s about time…” Lin Sheng came out from his thought, “to wipe clean the dark spirits here.”
He got to his feet and slowly got out of the dead spot. The cave still floated with a sparse number of dark spirits, and most of them were of the higher form, the more powerful individuals. Lin Sheng had almost eaten the lowly individuals.
“There are only thirty something left. I’ll take them in one fell swoop.”
Lin Sheng shuffled toward the nearest dark spirit. This one was massive, looking like a pineapple with spikes that looked like tentacles all over its body. At the tip of each tentacle was a nose. It looked twisted with no aesthetic sense and logic.
“Oh, look who this is! Isn’t he the outsider who only knows how to devour the little dark spirits?” The dark spirit sneered when it saw Lin Sheng from afar. “After eating all those lowly dark spirits, you think you’re good enough to challenge us the real Darkspirit General?”
“If that’s how you think, then I, Hanborgskoso, is going to teach you a lesson which you’re not going to forget for the rest of your life!” The dark spirit laughed, its voice filled with provocation, ridicule, and boasting.
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But these dark spirits were not yet at the level of the general. In their eyes, all Darkspirit General started their life as a devourer at the bottom of the food chain. After they ate an enough number of their same kind, they would get a chance to upgrade to Darkspirit General. But such conversion was not something that they could ask for.
Every living thing was made up of different structures. The presence of structure many there were limitations. The same held true for the dark spirits. So whether one dark spirit could become a general, it had been predestined right from the beginning. It was their talents that determined it. The limitations of their souls determined whether they could achieve the general-class soul power by devouring.
In fact, they had noticed Lin Sheng quietly eating up the lowly dark spirits. Just that they did not care back then. Little did they expect he would challenge the dark spirits on the top of the food chain.
By consuming a thousand lowly dark spirits, he thought he could rival the great dark spirits that were about to advance into the level of general? What a foolish thought.
“Let me think; after devouring that many dark spirits, you think you have reached your soul power’s limit, your strength has grown to the point of recklessness?”
“Well, not bad! He looks like a human. Solidification well done.”
“We better not look down on this rookie; he has swallowed a thousand lowly dark spirits!”
“A thousand? Wow, that was a lot!”
“He looks savage. Is he thinking of killing us? What a shame, he can’t do anything about us although I like his idea!”
“This rookie will be fun!”
“Yeah, right. We need to have some fun. Don’t kill him too quickly this time!”
A group of dark spirits surrounded Lin Sheng. Half of the higher-form dark spirits in the cave had come out, laughing with a malicious, high-pitched voice with their red, massive bodies.
Lin Sheng stood in the middle, head low. Their shrills were drilling into his ears as if a thorn trying to penetrate his soul power. It seemed like the dark spirits were just babbling about. But in reality, they had begun testing and attacking him.
They encircled him, edging closer, shrilling and ridiculing. They were full of malice and murderous intent. But little did they notice that an energy had risen in Lin Sheng’s body.
All of a sudden, Lin Sheng struck a dark spirit on his right with his hand, penetrating the target’s head. His long hair fluttered in a gust of air, exposing his pair of eyes that glowed in pure-white light. In the strong air current that whirled and danced around him, a dazzling gold and white halo suddenly lit up.
Before the rest of the higher-form dark spirits could react, a golden white beam shot out from the halo, pierced through the body of the remaining dark spirits and lit up the entire cave. Their bodies went up in flame and turned into beads before dropping to the ground.
The white-gold beam gradually subsided. Lin Sheng had put up his Armor of Dawn that had his face shrouded in the helmet. This time, it was a little different from before. On his head grew a pair of screw-threaded sharp horns. The dragon’s horns were slightly curved, over half a meter long, with a hideous yet an ancient luxurious look to it.
Lin Sheng looked down. With the stretch of his hand, the dark-spirit beads flew up into his hand like birds returning to their nests. After absorbing the dark-spirit beads, he went to the only exit in the cave. Soon, his tall and white body disappeared into the dark-red passage.