When Bai Ya returned again early the next morning, she was stunned by what she saw.
There was a wall.
At about a hundred meters high, the wall stood on the Ares Palin like the Great Wall. It looked as if a giant beast was lying in the middle of the desert.
Impressive…
Spectacular…
Majestic.
The wall just seemed to stretch into infinity.
“Is this the wind-sand isolation belt that Ling Jiu has talked about?”
Bai Ya murmured as awe filled her beautiful eyes. She slowly rose into the air and ascended rapidly.
She flew across a hundred miles in the sky.
It was the signature of a Level 7 Arcanist. Apparently, Bai Ya had become a Level 7 Arcanist.
After ascending to a thousand meters high in the air, Bai Ya stopped. She hovered at a high altitude and looked down from above to get a bird’s eye view of the wind-sand isolation belt.
“This wall covers at least a hundred kilometers in radius,” Bai Ya said to herself. “How did he come up with a wind-sand isolation belt that’s one hundred meters high and ten meters wide overnight? It covers a radius of a hundred kilometers!”
As destructive as the power of a Level 7 Arcanist was, it was impossible to build such a wall of wind and sand. It would have been too much for his Gene Arcana to bear.
Even a Level 8 Arcanist could not have done it as it would have consumed too much Gene Arcana.
Yet, Ling Jiu had done it.
How strong was he?
After observing for a long while, Bai Ya flew back down and landed within the confines of the wall. She then went up to where Ling Jiu’s maglev airship was.
She glanced at it and found that Ling Jiu was still practicing self-cultivation inside the airship. Not wanting to interrupt him, she picked up her shovel and started planting again.
The morning was over in the blink of an eye.
The airship door opened with Ling Jiu emerging from within, stretching his limbs.
“You’re here, Bai Ya!”
“Uh-huh?”
Bai Ya stopped what she was doing and boarded the airship. She proceeded straight to the kitchen and got busy. Not long after, a tantalizing aroma drifted in the air.
There were four simple dishes and one stew. The dishes were scrambled eggs with tomatoes, fried bacon with dried radish, stir-fried beans, and stir-fried potato shreds.
As for the stew, it had pork ribs and radish.
It was a simple meal, but Ling Jiu was drooling all over. “I didn’t know that you could cook. These dishes look good.”
“I brought some ingredients here after I went back yesterday.”
Bai Ya was filling bowls with rice. “I will not leave for the next week!”
While speaking, she brought the bowls that were filled with rice to the table. “Let’s eat!”
“Okay.” Without waiting for her, Ling Jiu started to dig in “Not half bad at all. This is much better than my dad’s cooking. You have skills.”
“Mmm.”
“You have a good look, and cook well. Anyone who marries you will be the happiest man in the world.”
“Mmm.”
“By the way, Bai Ya, are you from the south?”
“Mmm.”
“Jinling Base City?”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, don’t be such a buzz killer.”
“Mmm.”
Fine. She was indeed a buzz killer. Ling Jiu felt as if he was facing a lifeless machine. He was not in the mood right now, but just lowered his head and ate his meal.
After the meal, he burped a couple of times and lied down listlessly.
“It feels so good to have the stomach filled.”
Bai Ya ignored him. She picked up the dishes and put them away. Ten minutes later, after cleaning everything up, Bai Ya put on her Venom Suit and got out of the airship.
She was planting trees again.
“I can’t believe this woman!”
…
For the next two weeks, the two were busy on the Ares Plain, working during the day and resting at night.
Bai Ya might be like an iceberg, but she was a very diligent woman.
She prepared three meals a day and varied the dishes every time. No two meals were the same, even after two weeks.
Ling Jiu secretly saluted her. If there were five dishes a meal, there would be fifteen dishes a day, and 210 dishes in two weeks.
Yet, not one dish was repeated.
Fantastic was an understatement for this woman’s cooking skills.
Not to mention, she cleaned the inside of the airship: the floor, tables and chairs, bedrooms, and toilets.
She was beautiful, diligent, a fantastic cook, and someone who loved cleanliness.
Never mind her icy temperament, she was a perfect woman. Ling Jiu had more than once thought of courting her. But this woman was as cold as an iceberg; she never responded to his flattery at all. Over time, Ling Jiu lost his enthusiasm, so he just went with the flow.
After two weeks, Ling Jiu had planted 10,086 trees, and the scale of the forest had reached an astonishing level.
The most gratifying thing was, the 1,000 trees planted on the first day had survived and sprouted.
Next, Ling Jiu only needed to ask the inspectors of the matriculation camp to assess and count the saplings, and he could get the corresponding points.
However, he could not be bothered to do this. Instead, he wanted to wait until the forest grew to a certain level before he got an appraisal.
That night, the two had dinner together. “Will you go back? If yes, I can send you back,” Ling Jiu said.
“You go back, and I’ll keep watch here instead this time,” Bai Ya said. “Remember to buy a week’s worth of ingredients when you get back. By the way, bring me a bottle of moisturizer. It’s too dry here.”
“Sure.”
Ling Jiu could not have been more bored after staying in a barren place like this. Besides, he still had something else important to do.
Sensing the dimensional marker, Ling Jiu opened a dimensional passage and disappeared from the airship in the blink of an eye. He was back at the dormitory in the matriculation camp.
Instead of revealing himself immediately, Ling Jiu continued to stay back inside the sea of dimension, quietly entering another dimensional passage to leave Mars.
No one could leave the camp unless permission was granted, but that was not a problem for Ling Jiu.
With the Dimensional Arcana in his possession, he could come and go as he wanted, like a ghost. No one could stop him.
Ling Jiu went straight to the Australian mainland. One hour later, he came to the underground dimension where the Flame Astral Behemoth egg was.
“Stellar Fire, Spawn Split, Soulpeeping, The Devourer, and Inner World—which one should I replicate this time?
“Forget about Stellar Fire and Soulpeeping. The choice would be Spawn Split, The Devourer, or Inner World.
“The Devourer and Inner World come in a package; there is no Inner World without The Devourer. So Inner World it is.
“Choosing between Inner World and Spawn Split.
“If I choose Spawn Split, I don’t have the remains of a powerful life form. I can’t perform a Spawn Split even if I replicate this ability now. So…”
Ling Jiu quickly decided.
“Replicate Inner World.”
Replication is successful. Do you want to install it?
“Install.”
Boom!
A burst of sharp, lingering pain rose within him. Fortunately, compared to the pain when he installed Ultimate Physique, the pain this time seemed like a child’s play.
The pain subsided after a few minutes. Ling Jiu checked inside him and found a dimension in his heart.
This dimension was like a floating continent.
The continent looked like an inverted bowl, over 20 kilometers in diameter, and the 20 kilometers at its highest point, surrounded by surging red flames, with the surface of the continent also in the sea of the same red flames.
This was a world of fire.
It was bigger than the dimensional ring that 9527 gave him in terms of volume.
Ling Jiu had a feeling that he could control everything in this world of fire like it was his right arm that he could control at will.
“This is the Flame Astral Behemoth’s Inner World? Not exactly. This is actually mine,” Ling Jiu said to himself. “9527 once said that the Flame Astral Behemoth’s Inner World is akin to its stomach; it possesses the ability to break down everything and transform everything that enters here into the purest form of energy for self-absorption.”
“How about giving it a try?”
With that thought in mind, Ling Jiu took out a Direbeast carcass from the Dimensional Ring and sent it into the Inner World.
Boom!
The Direbeast carcass ignited at once like a piece of dry wood that had been thrown into the fire.
The temperature of the fire was incredibly high. The Class 8 Direbeast’s carcass, which was over a hundred meters long, was reduced to ashes in just minutes.
It was to the point that not even a bone or a single scale was left, as it had been turned into nothingness.
Terrifying energy appeared in the Inner World. Ling Jiu could feel that this energy was nothing but the purest form of vitality.
Sapling Ling was staying inside Ling Jiu, continuously providing vitality to him. So Ling Jiu could not be more familiar with this vitality.
This energy undergoing through the world of fire was the vitality.
It was the purest form of vitality.
As Ling Jiu willed with his mind, his vitality gushed out of the world of fire to appear in his heart. It then centered on the heart, spreading throughout his limbs and body.
He felt warm and comfortable all over, his body strengthened, albeit just by a bit. But it was at last strengthened.
“A Class 8 Direbeast carcass could improve my physique a little. If there are more Direbeast carcasses, won’t my physique continue to improve?”
Ling Jiu’s eyes lit up. “The Flame Astral Behemoth’s Inner World is simply incredible. No wonder the Flame Astral Behemoth likes to swallow the stars. Compared with the massive energy of the stars, the energy content of a Class 8 carcass is too insignificant.
“I am going to replicate The Devourer next.”
He glanced at the Flame Astral behemoth egg with a reluctant look in his eyes. “The Devourer and Inner World are the really buggy class abilities.”
He left the underground dimension but was not in a hurry to return to Mars. Instead, he went straight to the dimensional passage that led to Pandora.
Since he had come to Australia, he might as well pay 9527 a visit. He still had many questions to ask it.
“What are you doing here, Ling Jiu?” The voice of 9527 came.
“I just dropped by to see you. Let me show you something.” Ling Jiu smiled as he took out an Arcana sapling. “Do you know what this is, 9527?”
“Huh?”
9527 cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “Isn’t this a sapling of the Stellar tree? Where did you get this thing?”
“I knew that you’d know.”
Ling Jiu explained the origin of the Arcana tree, and 9527 nodded as it listened.
“This thing came from our Emissian Civilization. Its primary function is to terraform planets and create secondary Dark Bio-energy.”
“Secondary Dark Bio-energy?”
Ling Jiu raised an eyebrow. “In other words, the mysterious energy produced by the Arcana tree is a demoted form of Dark Bio-energy?”
“‘Produced’ is not exactly the right word,” 9527 corrected him.
“Dark Bio-energy is bred by the universe itself. So far, no creature has been capable of producing Dark Bio-energy.
“Stellar trees cannot produce Dark Bio-energy either. They can only absorb Dark Bio-energy in the dark universe.
“This ability may sound incredible, but the Dark Bio-energy that they absorb will inevitably undergo a diminishing effect.”
“Downgraded.”
“Of course, its energy-diminishing effect is much weaker than the Gene Arcana spills from the dimensional cracks. So it is pretty well preserved. That means this secondary Dark Bio-energy absorbed by the Stellar trees has a much better effect than the more severely degraded Gene Arcana.”
“Now I know.”
