Thump...
That faint yet heavy beat seemed to come from the depths of the planetary core. Like the ultimate death knell, it struck Ling Ye right in the heart.
The muscles on his face instantly stiffened. The color drained from his face, and his pupils contracted to pinpoints from sheer terror.
It wasn't an illusion!
That broken little stone... it... it had really started beating?! Like a heart?!
What the hell was going on now?! Had a stone gained sentience?! Was it even going to grow up?!
Ling Ye felt a chill shoot from his coccyx straight to the crown of his head, even colder than when he had faced that madam's killing intent! The origins of this thing were even stranger and more terrifying than he had imagined! Once it truly "awakened," or its fluctuations completely ran out of control, what it attracted would be far beyond something on Greedy Wolf's level. It might even be the ultimate terror of the entire multiverse!
He had to suppress it immediately! At any cost!
He no longer had time to care about "Ling Xiaoye" or "homework." He lunged at the tattered cloth bundle, fumbling it open as he tried to reinforce the seal on the Chaos Green Lotus Basin once more!
However, just as his fingers were about to touch the cloth bundle—
Thump... thump...
Two clearer, more powerful beats came from deep within the bundle in succession!
This time, it wasn't just Ling Ye. Even Su Wanqing, standing beside him, vaguely felt the ground beneath their feet... tremble ever so slightly! It was as if something heavy were pounding on the heart of the earth!
"Waaah—!!!" Ling Xiaoye, who had just been soothed by the dudou, seemed to be frightened by the terrifying beat that originated from the source itself and began crying loudly again!
The dudou on his chest reacted even more violently! Its red light instantly became dazzling and unstable, conveying immense fear and... a trace of anger that seemed to have been provoked! It was as though something even more terrifying had invaded its territory!
"Shut up! Both of you, shut up!" Ling Ye's mentality completely exploded. He growled at the wailing baby and the agitated dudou, his hand already inside the cloth bundle, gripping the scalding, trembling Chaos Green Lotus Basin!
He frantically poured the last scraps of Chaos Origin Qi into the basin, trying to forcibly suppress the beating stone!
But this time, the effect was negligible!
The stone's beat seemed to carry some irresistible law power originating from the beginning of the universe. Every beat made the light on the surface of the Chaos Green Lotus Basin flicker violently. The basin walls let out an overwhelmed groan, and the fine crack that had appeared earlier surfaced again—and seemed to be widening!
"Damn it! I can't suppress it!" The veins on Ling Ye's forehead bulged. Golden blood seeped from the corner of his mouth again, and he felt his strength vanishing like mud sinking into the sea!
At this rate, the basin would completely shatter in fewer than ten beats! When that happened...
Ling Ye simply didn't dare imagine the consequences!
He had to think of something! He had to divert this thing's attention immediately! Or... find it a "pacifier"?!
In his desperation, Ling Ye's gaze swept across the only remotely "special" object in the room—the dudou radiating red light filled with fear and anger!
The dudou was a Fragment of a Congenital Sacred Spirit and contained an aura of the source... Perhaps... it could temporarily attract or soothe that broken stone?!
Desperate times called for desperate measures!
A flash of ruthless madness crossed Ling Ye's eyes. He no longer cared whether he might damage the dudou or anger that madam. He abruptly thrust out his hand—not to grab the dudou, but to make a fierce grabbing and pulling motion toward the dudou clinging to Ling Xiaoye's chest from a distance!
"Get over here!"
A powerful suction force instantly enveloped the dudou!
The dudou was doing its best to resist the terrifying pressure of the beat and had never expected Ling Ye to suddenly attack it. It let out a startled cry—in the form of a mental transmission—as its red light was instantly torn away from Ling Xiaoye's chest, transforming into a streak of light that involuntarily... was forcibly stuffed by Ling Ye into the violently shaking cloth bundle! It was pressed directly beside the Chaos Green Lotus Basin!
"Vmm—!!!"
The moment the dudou entered the cloth bundle, it was like a drop of cold water falling into boiling oil!
The space inside the cloth bundle suddenly shook!
The trembling of the Chaos Green Lotus Basin and the stone's beat abruptly stopped for an instant!
That beating stone seemed... to have really been attracted by this sudden aura, which shared the same source but had a different nature?!
The terrifying fluctuations it emitted, like tentacles, cautiously and curiously... wrapped around the dudou close at hand, which trembled with frantic red light in terror...
The dudou transmitted a mental shriek of utter terror and "Let go of me!" as it struggled desperately, trying to escape.
But Ling Ye held the mouth of the cloth bundle down tightly, using his last ounce of strength to lock the space. His face wore the crazed look of a gambler. "Soothe it! Or... let it assimilate you! You choose!"
He was forcing the dudou to display its potential as a Fragment of a Congenital Sacred Spirit and calm the stone's agitation!
The dudou struggled even more violently, its red light flashing frantically, as if furiously cursing Ling Ye, that heartless "daddy."
However, amid this fierce confrontation—
A mutation occurred!
Perhaps extreme fear had awakened its potential. Perhaps the attraction between kindred auras had produced a wondrous reaction...
While struggling, the dudou inadvertently released the faint fluctuations it had produced earlier while "learning" to prepare formula and change diapers—the fluctuations that carried the meaning of "care" and "soothing." Mixed with its source aura, they spread toward the stone.
For that cold, silent stone that seemed to possess only the pure concept of "existence," this fluctuation... seemed to be an... unprecedented... novel experience?
The stone's beat... stopped again for a moment.
Then...
Its terrifying, destructive fluctuations unexpectedly... and extremely rarely... revealed a trace of... an exceedingly faint hint of what seemed like "curiosity" and... "comfort"?
The fluctuations it emitted were no longer so aggressive and expansive. Instead, they began to grow... gentler? It even seemed to be trying to imitate the dudou's "soothing" rhythm?
Thump... (slightly less forceful)
Thump... (gentler)
Thump... (with a hint of strange rhythm?)
Although the beats remained heavy, the suffocating sense of destruction actually... began to weaken little by little?!
The pressure on the Chaos Green Lotus Basin dropped sharply, and the crack on its surface stopped widening.
Ling Ye froze, then his heart filled with wild joy!
It worked?! This ridiculous method actually worked?! Did this broken stone like being "soothed"?! Did it like the "mother-and-baby channel"?!
He immediately struck while the iron was hot and sent a mental transmission to the dudou inside the cloth bundle. "Keep going! Just like when you were taking care of Ling Xiaoye! Soothe it! Treat it as... as another baby... that needs taking care of!"
Dudou: "??????" (Its mental transmission was filled with disbelief and despair: You want me to treat this thing that can destroy the world as a baby?! Are you sick?!)
But sensing the stone's gradually softening fluctuations, which even seemed to carry a hint of dependence as they wound around it, the dudou seemed to understand that this was its only way out.
Extremely unwillingly, it tentatively... released even richer soothing fluctuations carrying a meaning of "milky fragrance"(?) and "tenderness." It even unconsciously hummed the off-key lullaby it had learned while soothing Ling Xiaoye earlier in the form of mental fluctuations? (Though soundless, the rhythm of the fluctuations was similar.)
Thump... (the stone's beat became slower and gentler)
Thump... (as if responding to the rhythm of the lullaby)
Thump... (even conveying a hint of... drowsiness?)
It worked?!!
Ling Ye nearly cried tears of joy! This could actually work?!
He cautiously extended a sliver of divine sense into the cloth bundle.
Deep inside, the Chaos Green Lotus Basin trembled faintly. The gray-white stone lay there quietly within it, its surface flowing with a docile sheen. Each beat had become deep and slow, like the heartbeat of someone about to drift peacefully to sleep.
The dudou, meanwhile, was like a wronged little wife, radiating aggrieved red light. It "hummed" a mental lullaby while using the edge of its fabric to tentatively... "pat" the stone's surface ever so slightly. (Though it might not have been touching it at all.)
The scene was so surreal that Ling Ye began to suspect he had already gone berserk from cultivation and that everything before him was an illusion.
But no matter what, the crisis seemed to have been temporarily resolved.
Ling Ye let out a long, cautious breath of relief. His entire body collapsed onto the floor as if drained of strength, sweat having already soaked through his robes.
Su Wanqing held Ling Xiaoye, who had started crying again after being frightened, and shrank into the corner from a distance. Watching the powerful man alternate between acting frantic and grinning foolishly at a cloth bundle had left her completely numb.
The room temporarily regained its calm.
Only Ling Xiaoye's faint sobs remained, along with the increasingly steady and slow sound from inside the cloth bundle, like a lullaby...
Thump...
Thump...
Thump...
However, before Ling Ye had fully relaxed—
The cloth bundle in his arms, and the Chaos Green Lotus Basin that had just calmed down, suddenly trembled faintly again without warning!
It wasn't the stone's beat!
It was... the basin itself!
As if it had received some... faint... resonance signal from an extremely distant direction?!
Ling Ye was startled and instantly grew alert!
Could there be another "stone"?! Or... was the stone's "mother" calling it?!
He immediately focused his divine sense on the Green Lotus Basin.
The profound chaotic runes on the basin's surface flickered extremely faintly, like an antenna, capturing and amplifying that distant, intermittent resonance fluctuation.
The fluctuation was extremely faint and indistinct, seemingly crossing an infinitely distant span and countless dimensional barriers. Yet it carried a meaning... of the same origin as the stone inside the basin, but even older, more incomplete, and more... mournful?
Ling Ye carefully "listened" to and "analyzed" this thread of resonance.
Gradually...
From those intermittent fluctuations, he caught a few fragmented pieces of information...
It seemed to be... another fragment?!
A larger, but even more severely damaged... "Origin Core" fragment?!
It seemed to be... sealed somewhere in the depths of an extremely cold, dark, silent... Cosmic Graveyard?
It was sending out... a plea for help? Or perhaps... a wail of unwillingness to perish?
And this wail happened to resonate faintly across space and time with the stone in his basin, which had just begun to "beat"!
Ling Ye's heart sank instantly.
One stone had nearly worked him to death, and now an even larger fragment had appeared, one that sounded even more troublesome?!
And it was sending out a signal that basically said, "Come save me"?! Was this thing trying to get him killed faster?!
Just as his scalp went numb and he prepared to forcibly block this damn resonance signal—
That distant wailing fluctuation seemed to sense the calm state of the stone inside the basin after being "soothed." It suddenly became more urgent and... slightly clearer!
And from it came a more specific, obsession-like fragment of information:
[...cold...]
[...so dark...]
[...Sister...]
[...take me... home...]
[...coordinates... (an extremely complex and chaotic fragment of spatiotemporal coordinates)...]
[...be careful... "they"... are looking too...]
Sister?!
Go home?!
Coordinates?!
"They"?!
Ling Ye's mind instantly went blank from the impact of this enormous amount of information!
Did this stone... have brothers and sisters?!
And it sounded like there was some enormous secret behind it, one concerning "going home"?!
There were even other factions—"they"—searching for these fragments?!
This was no longer trouble... This was a gigantic vortex capable of swallowing the entire multiverse!
Ling Ye felt as if his head had swollen to twice its size and wished he could immediately throw the cloth bundle and everything inside it into the Void Ruins!
However, in the instant when his mind shook from this sudden, even greater trouble and his defenses relaxed for a moment—
Inside the cloth bundle, the stone that had just been soothed seemed to sense "Sister's" wail and call...
Its now-calm beat...
Suddenly...
Became violent again!!!
Thump!!! (heavy and urgent)
Thump!!! (filled with a response)
Thump!!! (carrying an impulse to burst out of the basin!)
"Not good!" Ling Ye's expression changed drastically, and he immediately tried to suppress it!
But it was already too late!
The powerful beats instantly shattered the soothing atmosphere the dudou had barely constructed!
The Chaos Green Lotus Basin began trembling violently again, and cracks started spreading!
The distant resonance also became suddenly clearer because of the intense response from this side, like a beacon fire ignited in the darkness!
"Fuck!" Ling Ye couldn't help swearing as he frantically tried to suppress the stone inside the basin while blocking the distant resonance at the same time!
Just as he was trapped between internal and external crises, with everything nearly spiraling out of control—
"Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!"
The room's doorbell rang again, for the umpteenth time!
This time, the voice outside the door was a familiar yet terrifying, cold female voice without the slightest emotional fluctuation—one that instantly froze both Ling Ye and Su Wanqing in place!
"Open the door."
"Community..."
"Delivering warmth."
Before you continue