Li Fan sped through the spatial passage. Before he even reached the Empire's pocket world, the Terminal Dissociation Disc had already absorbed, transformed, and cracked all one hundred thousand formations upon the Sky-Patrolling Arrow.
Li Fan paused briefly. A beam of silver light shot from his eyes, instantly wiping away every trace of the formations clinging to the arrow's surface.
These one hundred thousand formations did not merely serve functions such as acceleration, tracking, and amplification; stacked layer upon layer, they also formed a coat of armor that granted the Sky-Patrolling Arrow an almost unfathomable hardness.
Now, with the formations stripped away, the raw material of the arrow's inner core was laid bare.
Only then did Li Fan discover that the Sky-Patrolling Arrow seemed to be a living creature!
Beneath a hard, keratinous shell, faint fluctuations of divine sense pulsed. The fluctuations were extraordinarily feeble. Had Li Fan's soul strength not surpassed that of an ordinary Dao Integration cultivator, granting him exceptionally sharp perception, he would have overlooked it entirely.
"What is this thing...?"
Li Fan could not help but grow intrigued.
He separated a strand of equally delicate divine sense, attempting to communicate with the arrow. Yet, as if startled, the Sky-Patrolling Arrow reined in its fluctuations of divine sense in an instant, showing no further sign of life.
The reaction closely resembled a frightened turtle rapidly retracting into its shell.
Afterward, no matter how Li Fan probed, the Sky-Patrolling Arrow stubbornly refused to display any further sign of life.
With no other choice, Li Fan temporarily stored it away into his grotto-heaven, leaving a strand of divine sense to monitor it constantly until it lowered its guard.
"No wonder the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals could deploy thousands of Sky-Patrolling Arrows in such a short span of time. It was nothing more than an unknown living creature layered with composite formations...
"Hmm, there should also be a central control hub coordinating all the arrows."
Recalling the image of the massive web woven by the arrows during the clash between the Alliance and the Five Elders Association, Li Fan pondered in silence.
"Now that I have fully cracked the composite formations, if I can also analyze the nature of this living creature...
"I can mass-produce Sky-Patrolling Arrows myself!
"Whether for my own use or to sell the secret to the Five Elders Association, it will be immensely beneficial."
Though in high spirits, Li Fan did not let it go to his head.
Looking at the Empire's pocket world not far ahead, he did not reveal himself immediately.
Instead, he swept through it thoroughly with his divine sense first. Only after confirming that the Empire had laid no traps did he unleash his power.
Empowered by the Soul Burning Art, five eerie blood moons instantly descended upon the sky of the Empire's pocket world.
Darkness fell, blotting out the original sun.
One terrifying fiendgod after another flew out from the blood moons, swiftly occupying every quarter of the Empire.
The utterly yin and pitch-black aura emanating from them threatened to freeze the very thoughts of the Empire's mortals.
Unable even to conceive fear, they froze stiffly where they stood.
As the demonic domain enveloped the Empire, Li Fan's utterly cold voice echoed continuously.
"The three-year period has arrived. How fares the task entrusted to you?"
The voice rumbled like thunder, reverberating throughout the entire Empire.
At that moment, every soul in the Empire fell into extreme dread, as though witnessing firsthand the scene of countless fiendgods effortlessly tearing their nation to pieces.
After a moment, three streaks of light—Qing, Hong, and the Imperial Daughter—flew up and arrived before Li Fan.
"Greetings, Senior."
Compared to his previous visit, the aura Li Fan exuded was far more than a notch stronger.
The three of them could barely maintain their freedom of movement.
"We did not fail your command. Over these three years, we exhausted the nation's full strength and finally completed the upgrade to our spiritual energy synthesis technique," Qing replied, eventually summoning her courage.
Li Fan's gaze locked onto her, making her heart skip a beat.
"Hahahaha..."
"Very good! Take me to see it." A moment later, however, Li Fan's booming laughter allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief.
They made their way to the imperial palace vault. In the place where the Myriad Phenomena Furnace had once stood, a massive machine was now installed.
Its exterior resembled an hourglass, and one could even hear something dripping from the top chamber down into the bottom.
"Senior, please look." Qing pressed a button on the hourglass device.
The ticking and dripping sounds grew increasingly rapid.
Once they reached a certain tempo, a small aperture abruptly opened at the base of the hourglass.
A blast of pure spiritual energy erupted from the opening.
Because the concentration was extraordinarily high, it initially condensed into a "spiritual rain" before gradually turning into white mist and dispersing into the air.
Li Fan reached out and captured a strand of the spiritual energy.
Aside from a faint trace of metallic, bloody scent lingering within, it was virtually indistinguishable from natural spiritual energy.
Even so, compared to the spiritual energy previously catalyzed from the flesh and blood of strange beasts, the quality was far superior.
After venting the burst of spiritual energy, the dripping sound inside the metallic hourglass almost completely ceased.
Only after a long while did another drop fall.
Yet Li Fan noticed that as time progressed, the frequency of the dripping sounds steadily climbed.
Presumably, once it attained the previous speed, another blast of spiritual energy would erupt.
Sending his divine sense through the metal hourglass to inspect its interior, Li Fan discovered that its upper chamber was filled with countless minute flesh tissues.
No, rather than flesh, it resembled a colony of fungi.
Their vitality was exceedingly weak, and they lacked even self-awareness. Their sole purpose was to absorb nutrients and reproduce.
"Fascinating."
Observing his reaction, Qing seized the right moment to explain, "Previously, spiritual energy could only be extracted from the beast cores inside specific strange beasts. From birth to the gestation of a crystal core, a strange beast required at least half a year.
"And that was after we had already compressed their reproductive cycle to the absolute limit.
"Even so, the efficiency of producing spiritual energy was still far too low. Thus, we shifted our approach and cultivated those strange beasts through targeted evolution.
"We bred out every other biological function, preserving only the part responsible for producing crystal cores.
"We then incorporated the traits of the most rapidly reproducing fungal strange beast...
"After hundreds of generations of iterative cultivation, we finally obtained this nearly perfect creation."
Qing spoke in a steady tone, but when discussing their research achievements, an uncontainable excitement still gleamed in her eyes.
"As Senior can see, from the moment this strange beast comes into being, it begins self-reproduction.
"It bypasses sexual reproduction entirely, multiplying infinitely through pure self-replication. Furthermore, the nutrients it requires are just like ordinary fungi—merely water and sunlight.
"Once a crystal core forms inside its body, the beast undergoes programmed death, separating its body from the core.
"The crystal cores are collected down in the lower funnel, while the corpses are broken down and converted back into nutrients to be absorbed by their kin.
"In this continuous cycle, the device needs only a small amount of nutrients added at fixed intervals to yield a ceaseless supply of spiritual energy."
Chapter 950