“There are many kinds of courage. It’s not just about daring to jump into a mountain of knives and a sea of fire.” Lingling said with a smile. “Besides, for you superhumans, a mountain of knives and a sea of fire is just a thorny path. I won’t test your courage in terms of adventure, because that’s the kind of courage you have the least to offer. What you really lack is something you’ve neglected because you’re too focused on power. Fortunately, Lingyun passed the test.”
She suddenly shrugged: "I suddenly envy the true owner of this memory and you. At least you can still get to know and fall in love with a man who is close at hand and who can overcome his courage. As for me, I only have this short period of consciousness and time. Just when I understood what love is, I had to fall into a permanent slumber. Anyway, congratulations on passing the test of the second hall. Congratulations."
Ling Yun nodded silently. Although it was a shadow drawn from his memory, the sight, hearing, and feeling made Ling Yun feel as if he had seen Lingling again after a long time. Whether it was real or fake, it at least satisfied his long-cherished wish. The real Lingling should still be in the United States at this moment. Perhaps this trip abroad will give him a chance to see the real Lingling.
At the same time, Ling Yun was once again shocked by the ethereal and enormous spiritual consciousness. It turned out that without him even realizing it, everything about him had been controlled by it, and even his memories had been silently stolen and transformed into a woman that he could not distinguish from the real one. In fact, even the shadow was real because it came from his memories. No wonder even the Eye of Illusion could not tell the difference. This kind of supernatural power was far beyond Ling Yun's imagination.
If it so desired, the immense spiritual consciousness could erase Lingyun and Xiaorou from their bodies at any time, but for some reason it did not do so. Instead, it made the two go through numerous trials until they could reach the highest temple.
Ling Yun thought to himself, “There must be a being close to a god waiting silently there to reveal the secrets of everything.”
Chapter 326 Microscopic Perception
A scorching heat suddenly rose from the entrance of the hall. The three turned to look in that direction. Through the darkness of the entrance, they could clearly see a dazzling, fiery red color outside. Although the hall had no main door, the entrance was blocked by a barrier-like seal. From the outside, one could not see inside. However, even through the seal, the three could feel the heat intensifying—a sign that the rising lava sea had reached the entrance of the second hall. The seal wouldn't hold back the lava for long; the magma would soon engulf the area.
"You should leave now. The Lava Sea has risen, so hurry up," Li Lingling said calmly, a look of reluctance on her beautiful face. "There are still two more tests to go, so Yun, you must be extremely careful and not disappoint those who love you. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything. If you leave, I will also disappear."
Ling Yun gazed intently at the woman who didn't actually exist. Although she wasn't the real Li Lingling, she gave him a very warm feeling. If possible, Ling Yun would certainly like to bring her out of the barrier as well, but unfortunately, the two were destined never to meet again. Thinking of this, Ling Yun couldn't help but sigh and said somewhat heavily, "Take care." Then he took Xiao Rou's hand and hurried towards the exit of the second hall.
Lingling watched forlornly as the two figures disappeared through the exit. Lava had seeped into the seal of the entrance, beginning to flow and spread unchecked within the hall, filling the air with a fiery atmosphere. The raging flames even suppressed the hall's own light, displaying a blood-red brilliance. Lingling stood motionless with her back to the raging flames, appearing with an ethereal, otherworldly beauty.
She suddenly put her hand to her mouth and shouted, "Yun, if you ever see the real Li Lingling, you must tell her about my past!"
Ling Yun had already halfway out of the exit when he faintly heard Lingling's call. He only had time to turn around, nod, and flash a smile before his view changed. The endless, cold, white marble steps reappeared in his sight, and when he turned back, the second hall was engulfed in a sea of fiery red. A wisp of smoke rose, seemingly telling a story.
Seeing Ling Yun's somewhat absent-minded expression, Xiao Rou said with a half-smile, "What's wrong? Can't bear to part with her? Why don't we go back and rescue her? Hehe."
Hearing his girlfriend's teasing, Ling Yun blushed slightly and guiltily covered it up, saying, "I'm not reluctant, I'm just thinking about the upcoming tests. The first two tests were wisdom and courage, I don't know what the next one will be?"
Xiao Rou said dismissively, "Why don't we go to the next hall and see? Thinking about it here won't help. Besides, I know what you're thinking. I'm warning you, you can only think about me." With that, she smiled sweetly, grabbed Ling Yun, and walked forward. The girl's emotions had just experienced the four seasons, from joy to loss to happiness. Clearly, she had reached the peak of happiness, even the ordeal seemed to have a warm glow, as if what they were going through was no longer a life-or-death adventure, but a game of make-believe.
Ling Yun stuck out his tongue, thinking, "You're really something. Do you even have advanced mind-reading abilities?" Mind-reading does exist, but very few people can actually use it. Mental-based supernatural abilities generally fall into two extremes: either extremely powerful, like Mochizuki Nami's Blood Sacrifice Demonic Art, or extremely weak, completely ineffective. Mind-reading requires a huge amount of mental energy to perform on ordinary people, let alone on other users of the same ability. Even a small mental trap is enough to cause severe backlash to the user of mind-reading.
The two quickly ran up the steps. There was a long staircase between each hall. For an ordinary person, tens of thousands of steps would be a bit overwhelming, but for Ling Yun and Xiao Rou, the distance of several hundred meters was covered in an instant. In less than five minutes, they could see the third hall, which was different in color but the same in style, in the distance.
They exchanged a glance, then walked hand in hand into the sealed entrance. This was to avoid being suddenly separated from the illusion. Lingyun and Xiaorou had been doing this since the very first hall they entered.
After a moment of disorientation, the two found themselves in a vast space, unlike the dreamlike town in the first hall and the realistic interior of the second. This space was an ordinary, enormous plaza.
The plaza stretched out almost endlessly; Ling Yun and Xiao Rou couldn't see the end of it at a glance. The distant horizon disappeared into a misty fog, within which indistinct shadows moved, but due to the great distance, even the Eye of Illusion couldn't make them out clearly. Ling Yun looked down at his feet. The plaza was entirely paved with nearly spotless light blue tiles, each marked with purely decorative patterns at even intervals. He stepped on them, feeling a solid, grounded sensation beneath his feet; clearly, the tiles were very thick and hard.
Xiao Rou looked up at the sky. The interior of the palace seemed to be a self-contained, ethereal world. From the plaza, the structure above the palace was not visible; only a hazy gray sky backdrop was visible, devoid of any celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, clouds, or stars—completely empty. Interspersed throughout the sky were seemingly meaningless fiery red stripes, like fiery clouds at sunset. About a third of these stripes emitted a fiery red light inexplicably, shimmering and occasionally coalescing into several straight beams of red light that shone down from the extremely high heavens, exuding an eerie and unusual aura.
The red beams of light weren't everywhere, only appearing occasionally. Compared to the plaza, Ling Yun and Xiao Rou were even smaller than an ant compared to a city, so there was a vast and expansive space between the red beams, sometimes tens of kilometers apart. However, Ling Yun and Xiao Rou carefully avoided the red beams by keeping them hundreds of meters away. They didn't know what the red beams represented, but their senses issued high-frequency warnings when they were only a few hundred meters away, meaning that the fiery red striped beams posed a significant threat to them. However, as long as they didn't touch them, the red beams wouldn't move arbitrarily.
At the center of the square stood a massive platform, hundreds of meters high, a rectangular structure with tiered, blue-gray stone steps on all four sides, the same color as the ground. Apart from the colossal statue hundreds of meters tall, the platform was completely empty. It was as if the entire square had been created solely to house this platform and this one statue.
Lingyun and Xiaorou's gazes were immediately drawn to the huge statue. It wasn't because the statue was strange, but simply because there was nothing else in the square that could attract their attention, so looking at the statue was their first instinctive reaction.
This is a colossal statue of an unidentifiable creature, made entirely of bronze and covered in rust, suggesting its great antiquity. It possesses two tall, robust lower limbs, but its feet have wide webbed feet like those of a platypus, resembling a mammal that has not fully evolved from land to sea. The two lower limbs are not side by side, but rather one in front of the other, with reverse protrusions at the knees, like the joints of a feline. Through his deep understanding of genetics, Ling Yun knew that this structure would allow the lower limbs of this giant creature to generate tremendous explosive power. If this creature truly existed, its speed would undoubtedly be astonishing.
The upper body of the statue-like creature was covered in scales resembling brass-buttoned armor. The scales varied in size but completely enveloped the creature's upper body, extending from its hind limbs up to its neck, and even its flat head was covered in scales, making it look like the head of a giant moray eel, but far more ferocious and grotesque. Two long tentacles extended from the side of a flat, large mouth, like two sharp steel needles.
The creature has no nose; above it are two murky, pupil-less white eyes, apart from a wide-open mouth. Because it lacks upper and lower eyelids, even as a statue, it exudes a gloomy and fierce aura. It is immediately clear that this creature is extremely aggressive.
Neither Ling Yun nor Xiao Rou had any recollection of this bizarre creature statue. None of the creatures they remembered resembled it, as if it didn't belong to Earth at all. Not knowing what kind of creature it was, a thought suddenly struck Ling Yun. The information carrier he had obtained inside the tunnel, from that unfamiliar and powerful civilization, had demonstrated many strange and bizarre creatures and monsters. Perhaps this strange creature's statue was a member of that ancient civilization.
"I felt its eyes moving; it seemed to be watching us just now!" Xiaorou suddenly pointed at the giant creature statue and said. Ling Yun was searching for traces of the creature within the unfamiliar civilization information copied into his permanent memory, but after three rounds of searching, he had found no information related to or similar to the giant creature statue. This proved that the giant creature statue did not belong to the vanished unfamiliar civilization, but could only be one of the monsters spawned by the barrier itself. Hearing Xiaorou's words, Ling Yun's heart skipped a beat, and he involuntarily narrowed his eyes, carefully examining the statue again with his senses.
Xiao Rou couldn't possibly be wrong. People with superpowers don't experience the same illusions or hallucinations as ordinary people. If they do, then there must be something wrong with the biological statue itself.
“My senses can’t penetrate the inside of the statue. There must be other forces inside. In short, it’s not an ordinary statue.” A flash of silver light appeared on Xiao Rou’s hand, and with a flick of her arm, she seemed to have grabbed something as she spoke.
Ling Yun nodded slightly, a golden light flashing in his eyes. He had silently extended a trace of his microscopic perception, imbued with the power of the Eye of Illusion. Perception was already extremely subtle, but microscopic perception was hundreds or even thousands of times more subtle than ordinary perception, truly a unique art of the microscopic world. Even the most powerful superhumans could not perceive even the slightest bit of this pure microscopic perception with their naked eyes and senses alone.
This is similar to bacteria in the blood vessels of the human body multiplying, from one to two or more. However, the human body will not feel anything. This does not mean that humans have no normal senses, but rather that bacteria are too small, exceeding the limits of human perception. This is the role of the microscopic level. Because in the macroscopic world, even the finest protection has huge flaws and loopholes compared to the microscopic world. After transforming perception into microscopic perception, no force in the macroscopic world can block Lingyun's detection, and even face-to-face guarding would not detect it.
This is a new ability that Lingyun has developed since he mastered the microscopic world. The microscopic world itself does not have special abilities, but if it is combined with the right techniques in the right place, it will often produce unexpected results. Perception is the simplest example.
If the world of superhumans knew that Ling Yun possessed such miraculous abilities—the ability to send perceptions at a microscopic level—it would undoubtedly cause a massive upheaval. Whether it was the anomaly with the Heavenly Eye, the ability to replicate powers, the Eye of Illusion, the Hand of God, or the Heavenly King Key, every step of Ling Yun's growth defied the normal progression of superhumans. He was like a freak, always unpredictable yet bringing immense shock. In a sense, even as an acquired mutant, Ling Yun had already become a unique symbol. However, currently, apart from Tang Tiejin, no organization or individual has realized the immense significance contained within this young man.
Although microscopic perception is countless times smaller than normal perception, it's like comparing a miniature computer to the oldest computer. The essential ability of perception remains undiminished; in fact, due to its microscopic nature, it acquires some unexpected characteristics. Normal perception, when entering a matter-transformation interface, such as from air into water, is often affected by the increased density of the matter, a detrimental factor. Powerful superhumans often exploit this opportunity to reverse perception and severely injure the perceiver. However, microscopic perception doesn't face this obstacle. Because it's so small, the resistance when traversing various matter interfaces becomes extremely small, even negligible.
The microscopic perception silently swept across a straight-line distance of several thousand meters. When it reached the surface of the statue, Ling Yun did feel an unnamed force slowly flowing within the statue's body, like a loyal guardian blocking any probing force from entering. However, to the microscopic perception, it was like a pebble thrown into the sea, causing no ripples. In fact, the unnamed force swaggered into the inner world of the bronze statue under its patrol.
Chapter 327 A Low-Level Mistake
Ling Yun was suddenly startled. The detection data from his microscopic perception told him that the bronze statue was actually solid. In other words, this colossal statue, hundreds of meters tall, was entirely made of bronze, unlike what he and Xiao Rou had originally thought—a normal statue with a solid exterior but an empty interior. Although he didn't know much about history, Ling Yun knew the immense manpower and resources required to create a bronze statue hundreds of meters tall. Even in this era of rapid technological advancement, a nation might not be able to procure tens of thousands of tons of bronze just to create a meaningless biological sculpture.
Ling Yun suddenly chuckled, patting his forehead. He'd actually been worried about the lack of materials for the statue! In this ancient and powerful barrier, even the Lava Sea and temples could appear, so why couldn't a bronze creature statue? If it were just a simple dream spell, with Xiao He here, let alone one creature statue, ten or even a hundred would be no problem. Even within the Yellow Book barrier, as the barrier's master, Ling Yun possessed such virtual abilities.
The ability to create from nothing is not the exclusive domain of the Creator, but the ability to turn virtual matter into reality is something that no human power can achieve.
Microscopic perception probed rapidly within the bronze creature statue, quickly locating the core of the nameless power attached to it. To Ling Yun's slight surprise, the nameless power wasn't controlled by any single entity; the statue itself was merely an inanimate object. However, within the solid bronze statue's internal patterns, there were wisps of information energy that seemed to possess life. This information energy itself didn't constitute intelligence, but it formed a consciousness capable of reacting to the outside world. This consciousness acted according to the information contained within the information energy, like a pre-programmed software, automatically making choices or reactions like an intelligent being. Clearly, while Ling Yun and Xiao Rou were observing it, it was also observing the unfamiliar intruders in a more covert way.
Both sides were carefully observing each other, trying to figure out each other's background.
If we compare the bronze biological statue to a physical body, then information energy is the statue's blood. The information in the blood is as vast and complex as the genes in human cells. Although it is extremely complex, it is not chaotic. Instead, it is arranged and combined according to certain rules and order. No matter which angle you look at it from, it has a harmonious and unified way. This is the main reason why information energy can operate systematically, and it is also the main reason why Xiaorou's perception felt like it was being intercepted by an intelligent being.
What Ling Yun couldn't understand was why such a huge bronze statue of an unnamed creature would appear in a vast, boundless square, and why the statue contained abundant information energy.
Fortunately, after encountering the information carriers left behind by the unfamiliar civilization within the barrier passage, Ling Yun was no longer unfamiliar with this kind of information energy. Although there were still some subtle differences, the principles were basically the same. Of course, the information carriers left behind by the unfamiliar civilization inside the giant pillars were completely incomparable to the information energy within the statue; they were like rivers and oceans. Ling Yun could easily destroy a pillar to destroy the information carrier, but now, although he could detect the information energy within the bronze statue, destroying it was an impossible task. The data from his microscopic perception told him that it was a massive energy that Ling Yun could not resist.
Ling Yun's heart skipped a beat. After probing the interior of the statue, he suddenly felt an immense curiosity about the precise changes in the information energy flow. Inside the colossal statue, the information energy flow resembled a well-organized ant colony, faithfully executing its predetermined program to react to the outside world. Though extremely fast, it was perfectly orderly, like a file running on a mainframe computer. What kind of information could make the energy flow so obedient? Recalling the gene sequencing he had seen in the microscopic world, Ling Yun suddenly thought of another possible way of combining information. His heart leaped. Perhaps this unexpected information energy flow could offer him a new approach?
A golden light flashed in Ling Yun's eyes. Under his command, his microscopic perception suddenly transformed into a beam of extremely fine needles, piercing the surface of the information energy flow without any obstruction, and then falling into the rolling torrent of information.
The moment Ling Yun saw the torrent of information, he was stunned. He did not know the laws of information, but when he saw the vast and boundless torrent, the feeling brought by his microscopic perception was unparalleled. It was a power that was closer to the essence, and in a sense, it was the synonym for power.