One World

The Artifact Spirit's eyes welled up with tears.

It believed! It believed very much!

This woman was too terrifying.

Her tone of voice was absolutely serious!

"How could this be, how could this be, sob sob." The Artifact Spirit said dejectedly, "I promise you, I will recognize you as my master..."

"Tsk."

Bai Lan frowned, "You seem very unwilling?"

"No, no."

"Forget it, I'll just seal you up then. I don't like forcing people," Bai Lan snorted.

The Artifact Spirit was greatly alarmed, and the entire stone bounced forcefully on the table, "No! I am willing, very willing!"

"To be able to recognize a cultivator as intelligent, noble, and exceptionally talented as you as my master! It is truly a blessing from three lifetimes. I am too honored!" The Artifact Spirit trembled, using the most flattering words.

Only then did Bai Lan nod with satisfaction, "Since you say so... Fine, I'll reluctantly accept you then."

The Artifact Spirit: "..."

She gripped the black stone again. The feeling of internal repulsion from last time did not come.

A sense of dizziness surged from her heart, and Bai Lan's consciousness was instantly drawn into the black stone.

Her vision went black, and she closed her eyes.

She opened her eyes, and before her...

Huh? Why was it still black?

Bai Lan blinked.

It must be that she opened her eyes incorrectly.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

Before her eyes was still an endless expanse of gray.

???

Just as Bai Lan was questioning life, two shadows floated towards her from the sides.

One was a fiery red youth, her System.

The other...

"Hi! Master!"

An indescribable object, flickering like a ghost fire in a pale white color, floated over.

Bai Lan took a step back silently, "You are the Artifact Spirit of this black stone space?"

"Precisely, this Spirit!" The ghost fire flickered.

Bai Lan: "..."

Her gaze shifted to the System floating beside her, and she suddenly felt... that the System's current appearance, which she hadn't paid much attention to before, was quite good.

At least it was easier on the eyes than the ghost fire in front of her.

"How is it? This space is quite nice, isn't it?" The ghost fire flickered.

Bai Lan was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed, "How long have you been here?"

The ghost fire pondered for a while before finally speaking, "I can't remember clearly either. I was born with this item and have become one with it. Therefore, wherever this black stone drifts, I follow. If I calculate carefully, it has been several hundred years."

"So, for these past few hundred years, you haven't left this space? And you haven't seen a single blade of grass or tree in the outside world?"

The ghost fire flickered, its voice full of confusion, "Is the outside world different from here?"

Bai Lan: "..."

It was very different. This ghostly place was pitch black, so dark she couldn't see her hand in front of her face. Everything she saw was nothingness.

Living in this ghostly place for hundreds of years was like being in jail for hundreds of years.

If she stayed any longer, she worried she'd get depression.

"Master should be able to feel it. You have already resonated with this piece of heaven and earth."

Bai Lan nodded. From the moment the black stone gave up its resistance and accepted her consciousness, she felt as if she had merged with the black stone, able to control everything within it at will.

What shocked her the most was that this black stone space seemed to have no boundaries.

She couldn't feel the edge of the space at all. It was like an infinite space, with nothingness above and below, boundless.

Clearly, after the Destined Female Lead in the plot used the black stone, she had only enlarged her Space Jade Bracelet by double?

She thought it was just like a computer patch, a system patch, or something to upgrade spatial artifacts.

How could the interior of this black stone space itself be so vast!!

"Does this space have no boundaries?" Bai Lan suppressed the shock in her heart and looked at the ghost fire beside her.

The ghost fire flickered, "The black stone mentioned by the master is called the Void Stone. It can form a world of its own, or rather... this place is a space that has formed its own realm. Although it has boundaries, its vastness is truly immense."

"..."

A realm... so vast?

Her silence was deafening.

What was going on!

She had originally thought she had just obtained a storage space more advanced than a storage bag.

Now she realized that the black stone in her hand contained a world.

A world.

A world.

She had read some miscellaneous books in the sect's Library Pavilion, and some of them mentioned that the original cultivation world was created by ancient immortals and gods who moved mountains and filled seas.

So, could she also create a world within this Void Stone?

Moving mountains and filling seas...

Forget it. With her current abilities, she could carry cement on a construction site and be three times as efficient as anyone else, but moving mountains and filling seas was still out of the question.

Dreams were beautiful, but reality was cruel.

As a mere cultivator at Qi Refining level one, she shouldn't be thinking about these pointless things.

Closing her eyes and with a slight movement of her will, Bai Lan sent herself, the System, and the ghost fire out of the Void Stone.

"Ooh! So bright!" the ghost fire flickered.

"Where is this? Is this the cultivation world? There are so many strange things."

Bai Lan sighed, scooped up the System beside her, and said earnestly, "It's up to you. Take this ghost fire to see this world and get familiar with the cultivation world."

The System scratched its head, "Alright."

After switching the System's "visible to one person only" mode to "visible to all," Bai Lan stopped paying attention to the two of them.

The System's flaw was being a chatterbox, and its advantage was also being a chatterbox.

Since he liked to talk, she would entrust him with the task of familiarizing the Artifact Spirit with the world, and she could then go do other things.

This Void Stone had brought her a big surprise.

Perhaps Bai Ling had not discovered the original function and secrets of the Void Stone and had instead used it as material to strengthen the Space Jade Bracelet. This was a missed opportunity in the grand scheme of things, losing such a vast space.

In a good mood, she opened Long Aotian's storage bag and took out the twenty Spirit Stones and a low-grade spirit artifact.

Besides these, there was also a broken teleportation array disk, which was clearly unusable.

Throwing everything into the Void Stone, Bai Lan closed her eyes, tightly gripping a Spirit Stone in her hand, and began to absorb the Spiritual Energy from it.

Her cultivation speed was slow, so she had to rely on external forces to supplement it. Absorbing the Spiritual Energy from Spirit Stones to cultivate could achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Time flew by quickly, and a month passed. The consumption of a full thirty Spirit Stones had only allowed Bai Lan's cultivation to advance from Qi Refining level one to Qi Refining level two.

At this speed, with this consumption.

She wasn't cultivating immortality; she was cultivating a bottomless pit.

Standing up with a blank expression, Bai Lan looked at the two little ones floating beside her.

"I am your teacher, you should speak to me with respect!"

"As a distinguished person like this Artifact Spirit, why should I try to please a non-human, non-demon thing like you? You are merely the master's servant, hmph."

"Host! It says I'm your servant!" The System, seeing Bai Lan awake, yelled to complain.