Chapter 940: The Second Evolution of the Spiritual Realm
For Ren Man, fifty thousand was an unattainable number, but in the eyes of the staff and Gao Xiaoyan, being able to consistently stabilize at a certain value was far more valuable than a high number. This meant that Xu Huo had achieved complete control over his spiritual power, able to release and retract it at will. Ordinary people tended to become unstable when approaching their limits, but being this steady indicated that he still had some distance from his true limit.
The staff members kept chattering, "seeking advice" from Xu Huo, but Gao Xiaoyan interrupted them, saying, "Mr. Xu still has things to do. Let's start the lesson first."
The teaching location was chosen in the woods along the road leading to Base City.
"Externalizing spiritual power is hard to control. To truly influence others, you need a specific venue or the help of a specific prop," Xu Huo said, pulling out the battered "Door of Severed Ties." Without changing his expression, he added, "This is an auxiliary prop. First, try to connect with your spiritual power. If you can sense my spiritual power, we'll proceed to the next step."
Ren Man hesitated, casting a doubtful glance at the nearly broken prop, but ultimately suppressed his confusion and attempted to mobilize his spiritual power.
Successful evolution was one hurdle, externalizing spiritual power was another, and only then could one open the spiritual realm to directly influence reality. Xu Huo had only crossed the first hurdle when he obtained the Seventeenth Hospital instance; it was Bai Kou who "guided" him with her own spiritual realm, allowing him to quickly touch the subsequent threshold.
This wasn't to say the first step was easy. Compared to the later steps, the first step lacked direction—one might not even know where to focus their efforts. Xu Huo's seamless progress was thanks to the hospital itself being a special site of spiritual interference.
After watching Ren Man struggle with a useless prop for five minutes, Xu Huo finally released his spiritual power. Once he successfully pulled the other in, he said, "I'll create an illusion. You find the key yourself."
Xu Huo opened the door for Ren Man but didn't reveal his own spiritual realm. Instead, he created a new illusory space, simulating Bai Kou's spiritual realm. Countless chains instantly filled the entire black space, their interlocking gears of varying sizes grinding together like countless sealed doors.
All the "doors" before him now looked identical. Only after opening a "door" once would spiritual power stack, and the more times a "door" was opened, the stronger the spiritual interference became, making it harder to open the next one. Whether Ren Man could break through the critical point depended on his luck.
He watched as Ren Man repeated the process of "opening doors." After just four or five attempts, the man was already showing signs of fatigue. Faced with the increasingly massive chains ahead, he seemed utterly unable to find a foothold.
This was normal. Breaking through a locked door was naturally difficult, which was why one needed to be flexible and "create doors" and "open doors" on their own.
Seeing Ren Man about to climb onto the giant chain, Xu Huo's brow twitched, and he timely reminded him, "You can create your own door."
Sweating profusely, Ren Man laboriously slid down from the chain. He looked around but didn't see Xu Huo, then called out twice, "How do I create a door?"
"How can you create a door out of thin air?"
No one answered him. Ren Man simply sat down on the ground to rest. He stared at the countless chains before him, feeling somewhat at a loss. Clearly, repeatedly opening chains wasn't the right answer, but he really didn't know how to create a door...
After sitting still for a moment, he suddenly looked at the black ground.
The ground wasn't real ground—it was just a flat, empty space in the illusion. What he saw might be fake, but everything in the spiritual realm was fake to begin with.
Ren Man closed his eyes. A few seconds later, a black hole appeared where he was sitting, and he fell into it along with it.
Of course, he didn't actually fall underground. Instead, he passed through the black hole to another part of the spiritual realm, which was equivalent to opening a door once.
Xu Huo was standing right beside him. When he saw the black hole on the ground, he was slightly surprised. Then, a surveillance pole emerged from the hole's location. He could tell it was a surveillance pole from the exposed metal rod because it had a surveillance camera on top, and it was even active. As it appeared, it rotated toward his position, paused for a second, then moved away normally.
That one-second pause allowed Ren Man to detect that he was standing nearby. He immediately turned his head to look in his direction, but the next moment, he became unsure of himself. "Mr. Xu, are you here?"
Xu Huo was very interested in the things appearing in his spiritual realm.
Generally, right after a super evolution, the contents of a spiritual realm were incomplete. This was part of the evolutionary process, requiring the player to strengthen their power before it would become more complete. Xu Huo had essentially completed the construction of his spiritual realm—a library tower—in the mental hospital. The normal process should have been like Ren Man's, piecing things together bit by bit.
Ren Man's door could only allow one person to pass through, and his spiritual realm was only a corner, with a limited perception range. But the surveillance camera amplified this power, allowing him to instantly pinpoint Xu Huo's location.
It was like standing inside a door and taking a glance outside.
If the spiritual realm were seen as a room, Ren Man had just successfully glimpsed the scenery outside the window.
This was very interesting.
Xu Huo's spiritual realm could extend up to a hundred meters, but that didn't mean the library tower had to appear immediately. First, the guest would be greeted by spiritual interference, and only if that failed would the library tower emerge. This meant that from the start, he had invited the guest into the room.
Back when he sparred with Bai Kou, he first saw Bai Kou's door, and even after several attempts, he never directly entered the core of her spiritual realm. Only last time, using the "Door of Idealism," did he enter and see the gears—he had previously thought it was because Bai Kou's spiritual realm was too vast, since the size within a spiritual realm couldn't be compared to reality, and a slight difference could be monumental.
But now, he suddenly had a realization. It wasn't just about the size of the spiritual realm; Bai Kou had layered another spiritual realm outside her own.
Simply put, there was a room outside the room. The guest first entered the outer room, never reaching the core—the gears, which were the materialized object of the spiritual realm.
Bai Kou had told him from the beginning to protect his materialized object, as it was the tangible symbol of the spirit. At most, he could hide his materialized object inside the library tower, but that was nothing compared to hiding it in another completely separate room. Moreover, the spiritual realm wasn't simply a large room containing a smaller one; he felt it was closer to two overlapping spaces, which was why he could find her materialized object using the "Door of Idealism."
To see beyond the range of the spiritual realm... Xu Huo stood still for a moment, and behind him, a simple vertical pupil appeared.
(Chapter End)