Chapter 10: The Spiritual Energy Power Bank
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The solar helium flash was imminent. All of humanity had boarded spaceships and departed from Earth, hoping to escape the solar system and survive the coming cataclysm. The predicted time for the solar helium flash was three years away, but the journey to leave the solar system would take more than a decade…
Anyone with any degree of status understood that the odds of survival were vanishingly small—almost zero. Yet, a fierce will to live led them to inflate and romanticize that faint shred of hope, yearning for a miracle against all logic.
What if, by some stroke of fortune, the solar helium flash was delayed by ten or twenty years?
What if, against all odds, humanity made a sudden technological leap and mastered safe light-speed travel?
This mindset was no different from buying a lottery ticket. The odds of winning the grand prize in the Xia Nation’s lottery were one in twenty million. In the United States, though the prizes were larger, the odds approached one in two hundred million…
Even so, countless people continued to buy tickets, each convinced that fate would favor them despite the slim chance. If they lost, it was just bad luck—they’d try again, relentless.
Those who lost themselves to such fantasies pinned their destinies on intangible probabilities.
Everyone aboard the international spaceships shared this mentality, for they had no other choice. At worst, losing the lottery would ruin a family, but with the solar helium flash, an entire civilization faced erasure…
At this moment, those who had the courage to leave the spaceships and return to Earth in pursuit of even the slimmest hope for humanity’s survival—such people deserved to be called heroes.
Liu Gaoguo watched as his daughter and the other four members swiftly exited the conference room. In his mind’s eye, he saw the scene from more than twenty years ago, when his daughter was born prematurely. He had held that tiny, frail little girl in his arms, weeping, and vowed that he would be the best father in the world, give her the best of everything, and protect her for life…
And now, he was personally recommending her to return to Earth.
He sighed…
Elder Number Six approached and gently patted his shoulder. “Comrade Liu, the importance of the legacy child requires us to do this. You know other nations are itching to send teams to Earth as well—especially the United States…”
Within the giant ecological spaceship of the Xia Nation, at an exit, the mechanical door slid open.
A small spacecraft was slowly rolled out. Inside sat Liu Yinyun and the other four members, fully equipped and awaiting orders. Four more hatches opened nearby, releasing four mini escort ships—unmanned, but with formidable firepower for support and defense.
On the screens before the five team members appeared the faces of their superiors. The leader gave a salute. “Earth’s surveillance network is now internationally shared. Upon arrival, use the special ground communicator to contact us. If you encounter personnel or vessels from other nations, proceed with caution. Take care. Depart now!”
With a roar, the small craft, flanked by four mini escort ships spitting blue flames, shot like an arrow toward Earth—away from the mother ship.
Not long after…
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The United States, the island nation, the peninsular nation, and several other capable countries all began launching their own small vessels toward Earth.
The massive ships were already travelling at sub-light speed out of the solar system, and after days of travel, the smaller ships—lacking such structural strength—could not achieve sub-light speed. It would still take them some time to reach Earth…
On Earth, atop Qingshui Mountain at Qingshui Palace.
Chen Chushi, at the third stage of Qi Refinement, had stayed up all night studying the pictographic seals on the great spirit stone.
After a sleepless night, his notebook was filled with densely packed pictographs and Xia script. Through extensive deduction, he discovered that each pictograph contained a faint power—yes, the characters themselves held power. Even written with a ballpoint pen, they retained this effect!
Each character’s power was feeble, but rearranged in different orders or positions, they could—on rare occasions—affect the surroundings or a chosen object.
The arrangement of characters on the spirit stone was designed specifically to prevent the stone from condensing and growing. Most astonishing was the energy source of the pictographic seal: it drew upon the spirit stone’s own aura to fuel the seal and restrain the stone. The logic was ingenious…
One could even liken the pictographs to cancer cells in the human body—devouring resources without contributing, consuming voraciously, damaging function, and ultimately dragging the body into death…
But Chen Chushi had gained more than just these insights.
He used an awl to chip a small fragment from the great spirit stone. Unable to write with a ballpoint pen, he dipped a brush in red lacquer and inscribed his newly devised sequence of six pictographs onto the fragment. Upon completion, the small stone remained pristine and translucent.
He named this arrangement the “Spirit Stone Preservation Incantation”—as simple as its name implied.
But he did not stop there. Gathering his spiritual energy in his hand, he carefully extended it to the tip of the brush and wrote a passage of eighty-eight pictographs on the reverse side of the small spirit stone. The great spirit stone’s inscriptions repelled spiritual energy, but those written by his own hand only resisted faintly; thus, the brushstrokes imbued with spiritual power settled smoothly onto the stone, and when he lifted the brush, the small fragment shone even brighter.
Through his spiritual sense, Chen Chushi felt the surrounding aura—including that emitted by the great spirit stone—slowly converging on the small fragment.
Excellent—his mobile spirit stone power bank was complete!
He had stayed up all night; though the pictographic script was complex, once he understood the meaning and effect of each character, arranging simple rules was no great challenge…
The system’s voice sounded: “Due to your insights into the rules of script, you have earned the ‘Novice Researcher’ achievement. Cultivation efficiency increased from twentyfold to twenty-fivefold! You have also gained half an hour of enlightenment!”
Double blessings!
The system’s function was as straightforward and direct as the names he gave his incantations.
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Gazing at the small spirit stone on his desk, he smiled and invoked enlightenment. Yes, he would use this opportunity to further decode the pictographs!
Learning brought him joy. From elementary school to university graduation, he had never dated—not for lack of opportunity, but because romance would steal time from his studies, slow his problem-solving, and spoil his graceful strokes as he swam in the sea of knowledge…
Without women on his mind, he was an unrivaled genius at problem-solving!
As enlightenment surged, his mind was crystal clear, as though freed from the body’s limits—every difficulty before him seemed charming and intriguing.
One by one, he unraveled the mysteries, each solution a delight.
Meanwhile, in the international livestream, the global audience—many of whom had also stayed up all night—were utterly bewildered…
What was going on? After hours staring at that stone, and filling a notebook with bizarre writing, he had seemed about to rest—yet now he was back at it! Please, can you at least practice some proper cultivation? You’ve already mastered water manipulation—how about fire next? We’ve already come up with dozens of names for your spells…
Your scholarly, professor-like behavior is nothing like what we imagine of a cultivator! Damn it!
Half an hour passed.
Chen Chushi returned to his normal state. Enlightenment was exhilarating, but left him feeling oddly empty afterward.
He surveyed the notebook, now filled with organized pictographs, as well as the immediately improved versions of the “Spirit Stone Preservation Incantation” and “Mobile Spirit Stone Power Bank Incantation,” and smiled with satisfaction.
In the international livestream, the audience erupted in complaint.
[Seriously, what are you smiling about? At first your Xia script was at least recognizable as writing—now, what is this?]
[Could it be that this guy just made up a whole writing system to pen his secret techniques? The Xia script was tough enough to understand before, but now these aren’t even real characters—forget it, I’m done!]
[Don’t jinx it! I personally think these new symbols are some kind of talismanic script—do you know what a talisman is?]
[Talisman, my ass! Even after following all those guides on sensing spiritual energy, I spent days training and all I got was a rumbling stomach—nothing else at all…]
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