Longevity Martial Arts: Grinding Experience in the Chaotic World

Chapter 1817: Chapter 921: Sea of Consciousness Compression—冲 Ninth Grade (2)

However, just as his spiritual power ripples swept over a certain specific area on the top floor of the Ten Thousand Treasures Hall—

On the top floor, in a room filled with intricate devices and glowing runes, more like an Artifact Refining Workshop.

Tantai Mingjing was standing with full concentration in front of a blazing furnace, holding a piece of strange metal that had just cooled and shimmered with a dark purple glow in one hand, while the other hand was positioned like a pen, fingertips condensing highly concentrated spiritual power and spiritual will, carefully engraving an extremely complex miniature Array on the metal.

This was the core sensory component of her latest composite Spiritual Puppet, and it could not afford to fail.

Just at the moment when the final stroke of the Array was about to be completed!

An invisible, weak, yet extraordinarily clear spiritual power fluctuation, carrying a sense of fresh exploration, brushed over her body like the softest feather, even swirling on the unfinished metal piece.

"Hmm?!"

Tantai Mingjing’s movement instantly froze! The spiritual light condensed at her fingertips nearly lost control.

A trace of astonishment fleetingly crossed her stunning face, followed by a sharp, icy flash in the depths of her eyes!

It was neither an attack nor an intentional intrusion into a forbidden area.

The spiritual power fluctuation itself wasn’t particularly strong, but its texture and the freshly-emerged exploratory desire to understand surroundings after a breakthrough were extremely distinct.

More importantly, the source of this spiritual power fluctuation... she was very familiar with it! It was right within this Ten Thousand Treasures Hall, in the room of that boy downstairs!

"Gu Sheng?!"

The name flashed through Tantai Mingjing’s mind instantly.

Wasn’t this boy refining the Source of Void Spirit? How long has it been? Only a little over two hours!

She immediately collected her mind, her powerful Holy Realm Divine Thought silently spread out like water waves, precisely locking onto Gu Sheng’s room below while also carefully reminiscing the fleeting spiritual power ripple from earlier.

"Such condensation... such exploratory range and fine perception..."

Tantai Mingjing’s eyes were filled with growing surprise, even carrying a tinge of disbelief.

"It’s impossible for the Eighth Grade to reach this! This is clearly the characteristic of someone who has just entered the Ninth Grade as a Spirit Talisman Master, where spiritual power begins to interfere with reality, forming a stable ’Divine Thought Field’! But his previous spiritual power was clearly far from the Eighth Grade Peak... Even the effect of the Source of Void Spirit wouldn’t enable someone to cross the threshold of the Eighth Grade Peak and directly step into the Ninth Grade in just over two hours!"

Unless... he didn’t use the normal method of slow absorption and refining!

Recalling Gu Sheng’s previous displays of various peculiarities, especially his sister Xueli’s vague mention of "exceptionally resilient spirit" and Xuefei’s irate yet contemplative mentions of "strange resistance" after her return, an astonishing speculation suddenly arose in Tantai Mingjing’s heart.

"Could this boy... be using some near self-destructive extreme method to forcibly compress and purify the spiritual power of the Source of Void Spirit, achieving a qualitative transformation and sublimation of spiritual power without expanding his Sea of Consciousness? How did he endure such terrifying pressure? Why is his Sea of Consciousness so resilient?"

Tantai Mingjing set down the unfinished metal piece in her hand, turned toward the direction of the room downstairs, her beautiful eyes narrowing slightly, flickering with exploratory and contemplative glint.

This unexpected discovery made her elevate her evaluation of Gu Sheng and sparked even more curiosity.

"It seems the ’little gift’ I casually gave you has returned an unexpected surprise, Gu Sheng little brother..."

Her lips curled into an enigmatic curve, and then her Divine Thought retreated like a tide, restoring calm as if the instant of vigilance and astonishment had never occurred.

However, in her heart, her level of attention towards Gu Sheng had quietly been adjusted to the highest.

The secrets on this boy might be much more intriguing than she initially anticipated. At this moment, freshly broken through and still immersed in a new world of perception, Gu Sheng was completely unaware that his unconsciously scattered spiritual power had drawn such considerable attention from the Master of the Ten Thousand Treasures Hall.

Just at the moment when Gu Sheng’s spiritual power ripple, still carrying traces of newness and curiosity from his initial entry into the Ninth Grade, brushed across Tantai Mingjing, the Sacred Realm Great Power wasn’t merely reacting to being ’noticed’.

The spiritual power... albeit having the embryonic form of the Ninth Grade and a subtle texture of initial interference with reality.

Yet in Tantai Mingjing’s vast perception like a sea of stars, it remained like a clear candle flame in the dark night, with its source, character, and even the unconcealable curiosity of its owner after just breaking through to gaze at a broader world laid bare.

"Gu Sheng?"

Tantai Mingjing’s fingers carving the Array didn’t even tremble in the slightest, and the final stroke landed as steadily as a rock, with a glow flashing on the dark purple metal piece as the miniature Array perfectly formed.

Yet in the depths of her eyes that seemed able to perceive the essence of all things, true ripples surged. Not in anger at being explored — there was no malice, more like an unconscious act of a baby opening its eyes to view the world — but purely in surprise.

"His spiritual power... is it really able to reach here?"

The top floor and the guest room specially arranged for Gu Sheng were not only separated by physical distance but also by the overlapping Arrays of the Ten Thousand Treasures Hall itself. An ordinary early-stage Ninth Grade spiritual power couldn’t even ’sweep’ over her so clearly, let alone penetrate a room’s walls without deliberate action, and it was easily twisted or blocked by the Arrays.

But Gu Sheng’s spiritual power was able to naturally, even with a certain penetration, spread out, covering a thousand miles! This was by no means the breadth and penetration achievable by an ordinary early-stage Ninth Grade!

The dark purple jade token just completed at her fingertip was casually placed on a delicate jade frame beside her. Tantai Mingjing’s figure rippled slightly like water waves and vanished from the Artifact Refining Workshop on the top floor in an instant.

In the next moment, slight ripples appeared in the space within Gu Sheng’s room, and Tantai Mingjing’s figure quietly emerged.

She didn’t deliberately conceal her aura, and the natural Heaven and Earth Laws fluctuations triggered by a Holy Realm expert were like hidden currents beneath a calm sea, making the air in the room seem slightly heavy.

Her gaze landed on Gu Sheng, still seated with eyes slightly closed, the sweat on his forehead yet to dry. A point of light on her brow, as cold and pure as the bright moon, silently blossomed, transforming into gentle moon-like radiance that cascaded over Gu Sheng’s head.

This moon-like radiance was not an attack but an advanced auxiliary Divine Skill from her practice of the "Taiyin Soul Suppressing Technique" — "Taiyin Nourishing Divine Light", most adept at soothing agitated spiritual power, stabilizing the Sea of Consciousness barriers, and nurturing the soul origin.

Seeing Gu Sheng having just completed such a violent breakthrough, instinctively thinking to lend a hand to prevent any instability or latent injuries in his foundation.

However, when the moon-like radiance touched Gu Sheng’s brow, attempting to infiltrate his Sea of Consciousness, Tantai Mingjing was once again stunned.

Stability! Beyond imagination’s stability!

The Sea of Consciousness barrier felt not like something brittle and tense forcefully compressed after violent expansion but rather like a barrier of Divine Iron tempered through countless refinements, thick, resilient, and integrated.

Her gentle nourishing light brushed over it, feeling akin to a drop of water sliding over smooth glass, difficult to penetrate and unnecessary to penetrate — because although the spiritual power inside was surging, it was well-organized, with crystalline core points radiating stable and strong fluctuations like stars.

Even more startling was that Gu Sheng’s ’acceptance’ and ’guidance’ of her foreign power appeared exceptionally skillful, not passive reception but spontaneously the release of a strand of invisible spiritual power.

Like a deft finger, gently ’plucking’ the Taiyin Nourishing Divine Light, extracting its most essence for nourishing the recently transformed, slightly ’heated’ core of spiritual power, while the rest was smoothly rejected outward.

This fine control over spiritual power, the instinctive use of solidified spiritual power, was absolutely not something a person who had just entered the Ninth Grade and first contacted ’Divine Thought’ could possess! It was more like a seasoned hand who had immersed in this realm for years, wielding spiritual power as easily as an extension of themselves!