At the bottom of the glowing dark rock crater, the liquid rock was cooling from blazing bright white to a sluggish, bubbling amber crust.
Lin Xiao sat comfortably upon the hardening stone, letting the leftover earth-heat warm his underside. The tiny arcs of violet static dancing across his semi-clear lavender mantle were gradually fading, absorbed smoothly into the deep ocean of his spiritual sea. Inside his central core, a steady, humming warmth pulsed like an engine idling smoothly after a high-octane tune-up.
Above him, the shattered rim of the crater rose eighty feet into the air. Its jagged was dark rock lip still smoking with spark-charged steam. The smell of scorched minerals hung thick in the air. But beneath it, Lin Xiao could detect the pleasant, appetizing scent of uncorrupted Yang ozone—crisp, peppery, and rich with vital energy.
“Host dantian tracking data analysis complete,” the sweet-sounding, unflappable voice of the Omniscient Dao Spirit chimed within his mindscape. “Vital sign check: Peak body and spiritual balance. Fluid membrane stretch has increased by twenty-eight percent. Cellular thickness modulation confirmed. Zero fire toxicity or energetic turning to stone detected.”
Lin Xiao gave his jelly a small, satisfied bob. He enjoyed the smooth, elastic pull of his water’s skin.
“I have to admit, Dao Spirit, when those three giant purple pillars came screaming out of the clouds, I thought it might sting a little,” Lin Xiao murmured internally. “In all the old training scrolls Elder Han Gu kept in his cave, heavenly tribulations were described as bone-melting agonies that cause grandmasters to vomit blood and burn their hair off. But that strike felt surprisingly pleasant. Like a cup of sparkling tonic water infused with mint and black pepper, but with much more body.”
“The total absence of physical suffering is attributable to your innate Primordial Chaos Void power,” the Dao Spirit explained, projecting a crystal-clear, glowing screen directly before Lin Xiao’s mental senses.
Lin Xiao examined the glowing lines of archival data with genuine interest.
“Look at that purity index,” Lin Xiao noted, his fluid thoughts humming with admiration. “Ninety-nine point four percent pure Yang-Thunder essence? That’s cleaner than the highest-grade refined spirit honey Patriarch Lu Feng sells at his trading pavilion! How does the heavens produce something that pure without a single herb garden or copper cooking pot?”
“The Ninth-Tier Purple Total ruin Sky-trial isn’t a conventional sky phenomenon, Host,” the Dao Spirit replied, her tone as calm as a scholar reciting an ancient dictionary entry. “In the cosmological stonework of the Great Dao, this specific hum of lightning represents the primal starting flame of creation. When the universe was unformed chaos, before the birth of the sun, moon, and mortal realms, it was this exact Yang-Thunder that struck the cosmic waters, separating light from void and establishing the elemental cycles.”
“So it’s not just an execution decree,” Lin Xiao surmised, nudging a cooling pebble of dark rock with an azure slime arm. “It’s the original spark of life itself.”
“Exactly. For ordinary fighters, whose physical vessels and spiritual spirit veins are built upon mortal bone and fragile spirit veins, this packed origin fire is total. Their mortal forms can’t contain the creative thickness of the cosmos, resulting in instant core burning and spiritual erasure. Their spiritual roots calcify and their souls shatter like dry glass dropped onto an iron anvil.”
“And for an ancient slime?”
“For a Primordial Chaos Slime, whose deepest origin predates the formation of elemental laws, this lightning is essentially raw, pure mother’s milk.”
Lin Xiao chuckled, a soft gurgling sound escaping his jelly. “Mother’s milk seasoned with cracked black pepper. I like that description. So what’s the official diagnosis on my Golden Core? Is the shell holding together, or is it ready to crack open?”
“Status: Inevitable Nascent Soul transformation set engaged,” the Dao Spirit answered promptly. “The first three waves have successfully dissolved forty-two percent of your Golden Core’s outer mortal shell. To achieve complete metamorphosis and condense the Ancient Translucent Nascent Soul, your core needs the full spiritual yield of the leftover six sky-trial waves.”
Lin Xiao nodded mentally. “Six more waves. Easy enough. I’ll just sit right here in this cozy rock bowl and wait for the kitchen to send out the next course. We can let the sky do all the heavy lifting while I relax and enjoy the view.”
“Negative recommendation, Host.”
Lin Xiao paused, blinking in mild curiosity. “Negative? Why? The crater is warm, the view is nice, and nobody is bothering me down here. Even that noisy old man on the chariot finally ran out of breath.”
“Moving and heat-powered counts indicate a severe smooth speed deficit,” the Dao Spirit explained, her screen shifting to display a fine, detailed three-space-folding blueprint of the crater, the rising steam plumes, and the swirling cloud vortex above. “During Waves One, Two, and Three, your forty-inch surface area captured only fifty-eight percent of the total nearby discharge. The leftover forty-two percent was deflected into the surrounding bedrock, creating this five-hundred-foot molten pit.”
Lin Xiao’s jelly rippled with sudden dismay. “Wait... Forty-two percent was wasted on rocks?!”
“Affirmative. Plus, as the leftover six waves escalate in volume and conceptual complexity, sky friction and ground-strike diffusion will scatter up to fifty-five percent of the available Yang-Thunder essence into the surrounding earth-shaking plates. In short: more than half of the clean sky nutrition will be irrevocably squandered on mud, gravel, and underground worms.”
Lin Xiao’s fluid core tightened in pure, gut anger.
In his last life, growing up in a modest household, his mother had drilled a single, rock-steady golden rule into his heart. Never, ever leave food on your plate. You didn’t take more than you could eat, you didn’t scrape good rice into the garbage bin, and you certainly didn’t let a freshly cooked meal sit out in the rain to rot while hungry people had nothing.
To Lin Xiao, food was sacred. It represented effort, time, care, and the precious energy of the world. And to learn that the heavens had prepared an amazing, nine-course, ninety-nine-point-four-percent pure sky feast, only for more than half of it to be splashed across cold dirt like spilt porridge...
It was an unacceptable, unbearable waste of good ingredients.
“Forty-two percent wasted on rocks...” Lin Xiao grumbled, his semi-clear azure mass wobbling with deep disapproval. “Gravel doesn’t even have a stomach tract! Dirt can’t appreciate cracked peppercorn flavor! That’s just atrocious table manners. Leaving half a bowl of noodles behind because you were too lazy to lift your chopsticks is something I’ll never tolerate.”
“Indeed, Host,” the Dao Spirit agreed smoothly. “Such energetic squandering violates the deepest tenets of cosmic thrift.”
“So what’s the alternative?” Lin Xiao asked, his curved eyes narrowing with determination. “How do we make sure not a single drop of that thunder goes to waste?”
“The optimal exact solution is direct sky-maw devour,” the Dao Spirit presented her test model. On the mental screen, a glowing blue avatar launched itself eight thousand five hundred meters into the upper air, right into the swirling eye of the storm. “By intercepting the sky-trial at its point of generation—within the stratosphere before aimed divergence occurs—Host can deploy the [Primordial Chaos Devour Domain]. Inversion of air pressure gradients will draw all six leftover waves directly into your void dantian with an estimated ninety-nine point eight percent retention rate.”
Lin Xiao studied the diagram. It showed him expanding into a vast, swirling blue vortex in the clouds, catching the lightning bolts right out of the sky oven before they ever touched the air of the mortal realm.
“Basically,” Lin Xiao summarized, “instead of waiting for the waiter to bring the soup down the stairs and spill half of it on the floor, I just walk straight into the kitchen and drink directly from the pot.”
“Host’s culinary analogies remain vulgar yet structurally irreproachable,” the Dao Spirit noted.
Lin Xiao smiled, his entire body swelling with cheerful excitement.
“I’ve never eaten directly from the sky before,” he thought, feeling his elastic mantle begin to contract against the hardening dark rock. “Back on Earth, if you jumped eight thousand meters into a stormcloud, you’d freeze solid or get shredded by hail. But here? The sky is just a giant soup tureen waiting to be ladled.”
Meanwhile, a mile back along the eastern ridge, standing atop the heavy dark rock watchtower, Su Ling’er watched the crater with keen spiritual senses. Her nine snowy-white tails swayed in a steady, protective rhythm, the ruby tips glowing faintly in the dim violet light.
“He’s not going to wait down there, is he?” she whispered softly, her sharp fox senses picking up the sudden shift in Lin Xiao’s internal fluid tension.
Beside her, Xiao Hei let out a low, approving rumble from his chest, his golden eyes fixed on the distant pit. The giant wolf’s tail gave three heavy, rhythmic thumps against the roof stones. He knew that stance. It was the exact stance his master took whenever he was about to pounce on a particularly delicious pot of braised pork ribs.
“Old Bear,” Sword Saint Gu Qingfeng called down from his granite perch, swirling the last drops of wine in his gourd. “Look at the little fellow. He’s crouching down like a toad on a lily pad. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s preparing to jump.”
Tie Shan squinted his small black eyes through the smoke, then let out a booming laugh that shook his heavy iron belt. “Jump? Little Brother Gu, that’s not a jump! That’s the squeezing strike he used when he launched that two-thousand-pound boulder over the river last spring! The boy is aiming for the sky!”
High above in the churning purple gloom, the ten-thousand-li storm vortex let out another ear-splitting rumble.
The sky high sky, seemingly frustrated that its first three execution strikes had produced nothing more than a contented burp and a compliment regarding crimson cloud-pepper noodles, was gathering a never seen before quantity of energy. The violet veins of star-fire began to intertwine, twisting into massive, snake-like ropes of crackling power that coiled around the eye of the vortex like hungry beasts preparing an ambush. The air grew so dense with static that arcs of electricity leaped between the jagged peaks. It hissed like angry serpents.
Down on Cloud-Piercing Pass, ten miles away, Grand Elder Xuan Ji was still shouting into his scrying mirror, his bloodshot eye dripping red into his beard:
“The fourth strike is coming! Look at the clouds! The heavens are condensing the Twin Purple Thunder Dragons! That thing is dead! It can’t survive twice! Witness the judgment of the righteous Dao!”
At the bottom of the crater, Lin Xiao ignored the distant screeching entirely.
He settled his mass firmly against the dark rock floor, tucking his pseudopods tight against his sides. His non-Newtonian fluid matrix shifted into a high-thickness dilatant spring state, storing thousands of tons of high-pressure tension within his rubbery core. His sapphire jelly grew dark, dense, and glossy, compacting down until he was barely thirty inches across, humming like a tightly wound titan-bow.
“Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao whispered, his curved eyes sparkling with excitement. “Prepare the napkins. We’re going up for seconds.”
“Flight path locked, Host. Target height: eight thousand five hundred meters. High-pressure launch pressure at maximum capacity. Launch set engaged in three... Two... One...”
Lin Xiao released the spring.