At a depth of one thousand kilometers underground, the temperature was approximately five thousand degrees Celsius, and the pressure was a million times that of the surface.
Bai Ge only intended to go one thousand kilometers underground.
Taking everything into consideration, this depth was the most suitable: it had to contain a large amount of High-Temperature Molten Slag, while also having smaller diamonds and gemstones.
Closer to the surface, there was nothing but massive blocks of ultramafic rock or orthopyroxene.
Farther down, everything was fluid matter, and the deeper he went, the more energy it would inevitably consume.
"Would two hundred thousand kilowatt-hours be enough for teleportation?"
Bai Ge tried it. The property of teleporting anywhere within Earth was nowhere near enough; there was no reaction at all.
"I have to make the conditions more specific."
"Hmm... What about random teleportation? I randomly appear somewhere one thousand kilometers beneath the surface..."
"As for the reason for the teleportation, on the third step I take across the surface, I happen to collide with something resembling a micro-wormhole. It's a cosmic coincidence."
Bai Ge did not know whether setting it up this way would work. He only knew that he had to make it as realistic as possible.
Among the knowledge he had absorbed, Earth had actually experienced many bizarre disappearances. Some people had even vanished suddenly right in front of others.
Some claimed it was a wormhole, some said it was a spacetime tunnel, and others said aliens had abducted them.
There were many similar records and many theories, but they were basically groundless speculation—nonsense from the media trying to attract attention.
Bai Ge also did not know whether the universe truly had micro-wormholes that appeared and vanished in an instant.
If they did not exist, his energy would absolutely be insufficient to force such an objective law into reality, and the property would be impossible to achieve.
But what if they did exist? The universe was so vast that, due to some coincidence, a micro-wormhole could happen to appear on Earth for zero-point-something seconds, then vanish because it was unstable.
As long as it was possible, that was enough. Bai Ge only needed to make use of that possibility.
He would make himself happen to collide with it during that brief period and teleport randomly once.
"There was a consumption cost. One hundred thousand kilowatt-hours—only that much?"
Bai Ge returned to reality, standing inside his factory.
He felt somewhat excited. The fact that there had been some consumption meant the property had been realized.
"This is the low consumption that a very realistic, chance-based property should have. So the universe really can spontaneously produce wormholes? No, no. What I set was something resembling a micro-wormhole, so it could be something else. In any case, it's an encounter that can't be sought out!"
Bai Ge stood on the ground and looked around, but he found nothing unusual.
He knew he had to take three steps for it to activate.
After choosing a direction, Bai Ge took one step while tightening the bow tie around his neck, and his body instantly transformed into Shadow Lord.
He took another step, removed his shirt, and casually tossed it onto the ground.
Only when he took the third step did an immense force strike him. It was a pulling force that instantly lifted him off the ground.
A sharp pain surged through every limb and bone. The Shadow Form weakened pain, so Bai Ge immediately realized that if he had not transformed, the tremendous pressure would have killed him the instant the teleportation began.
The world spun. A fleeting "spherical mirror surface" appeared in Bai Ge's vision for an extremely brief instant. Then the surroundings became a strange region that was both dim and glittering with countless reflections.
Excruciating pain, discomfort, oppression, and suffocation assaulted him with an enormous agony he had never experienced before.
It was a ceaseless pressure acting on every cell—impossible to scratch, impossible to block. Bai Ge found it unbearable.
Compared to this, the instant of pain during teleportation was nothing.
In just a few seconds, Bai Ge was on the verge of breaking down.
"Calm!"
Only after activating Calm Command did Bai Ge barely suppress his urge to escape into the Mindscape World.
Yet the calmer he became, the worse he felt. He was not even sure how long he could endure it.
He had once tricked Shadow Person into burying itself underground, but he had never expected to experience this sensation himself.
"Am I being crushed inside rock? No..."
Bai Ge discovered that some gas had come along with him when he teleported down. It immediately exploded and ignited around him.
Flames twisted into all kinds of shapes appeared beside Bai Ge. They formed a white light, illuminating countless reflective surfaces around him and making the surroundings constantly glitter.
This was different from the lower mantle he had imagined. There should have been high-temperature molten material here. Why was it so dim?
Bai Ge tried waving his hand and found that he could move his arm. Although the pressure brought an immense sense of stagnation, the area around him really was...
"Empty?"
Bai Ge was filled with confusion. He then tried pulling the surrounding material into the Mindscape and seeing what it actually was.
"Carbon dioxide? Am I inside a cavity?"
As the surroundings grew brighter, Bai Ge finally saw clearly.
"Ah! So it's this kind of place!"
From near to far, countless "mirror surfaces" reflected the light. Some points of reflected light were above his head, some beneath his feet, and others surrounded him in every direction.
Bai Ge seemed to be standing in outer space. The densely packed points of light finally allowed him to see the true appearance of this place.
"A crystal cavity..."
The countless reflective surfaces around Bai Ge and beneath his feet were actually pieces of spinel.
These spinels looked like rock-candy-shaped crystal blocks. Crystal blocks dozens or even hundreds of meters tall could be seen everywhere.
They resembled countless crystal skyscrapers rising at uneven heights.
Looking upward, he saw the same thing everywhere. It was like being inside a gigantic stalactite cavern, with countless sharp crystal edges slanting or pointing straight downward.
The scenery was magnificent and gorgeous. Under the various refractions, everything glittered brilliantly, beautiful beyond compare.
Spinel came in every color. Because it contained different amounts of zinc, aluminum, iron, manganese, and other elements, its colors varied as well.
Some were pure blue, some pure red, some purple tinged with blue, and some blue tinged with green.
There were even pink and colorless crystals.
Of course, there were also orange-yellow and brown spinels. Those contained too many impurities and were not sufficiently crystalline.
"I should be inside a gigantic composite crystal block. Just this hollow section in the middle feels far, far larger than a major metropolis!"
"The crystals inside weren't melted by the high temperature, so the exterior must be extremely thick and have isolated a massive amount of heat."
"By that calculation, the diameter of this entire enormous crystal could very well be one-fifth the size of HB Province!"
"In other words, I'm currently one thousand kilometers underground, inside a super-crystal whose volume might rival HN Island?"
Randomly landing inside a crystal as large as HN Island was a kind of luck too...
In the lower mantle, high-temperature molten material occupied most of the area. Everything had become liquid matter with a temperature exceeding five thousand degrees.
That was Bai Ge's primary objective.
He would collect it into the Mindscape, absorb its Thermal Energy, and, once the liquid matter cooled, it would form various crystals or rocks.
Even if only a tiny amount formed crystals, he could sell it for money.
Even the other materials after cooling were rare on the surface and extremely valuable.
It was practically a guaranteed profit, which was why Bai Ge had chosen a depth of one thousand kilometers.
However, there were exceptions to everything. Even at this depth, crystals and rocks did not necessarily all melt into slag.
This place was one such example.
Although the outside temperature was high enough to melt crystal, the problem was that this crystal was simply too large! Spinel had excellent heat resistance, allowing the crystals inside to remain solid.
Put simply, this was a crystal island drifting through countless pools of molten slag.
Compared with the lower mantle, this ultra-large crystal was actually insignificant.
Yet Bai Ge had happened to encounter it.
Bai Ge was extremely helpless. He did not know whether his luck was too good or too bad.
The molten slag he wanted was not here, while the Mindscape could only collect things within the limits of his strength. This meant that after coming here, he might not be able to take anything away except air!
One had to understand that, at a glance, any random piece of spinel around him weighed tens of thousands of tons.
There was no point in taking too much anyway.
"Beautifully random!"
Bai Ge could not do nothing. Although the random location had disrupted his plans, the saying that underground treasures were everywhere was not empty talk.
The interior of this enormous crystal still had an environment of at least two thousand degrees Celsius.
The carbon dioxide and other inert gases in the cavity contained this high temperature as well, and they could likewise provide Bai Ge with Thermal Energy.
Bai Ge continuously absorbed the air into the Mindscape while walking across the multifaceted crystals.
"This one weighs at least several million tons..."
"That one's even bigger! It's practically a crystal mountain..."
"If it were brought to the surface, it could flatten an entire city..."
As he walked, Bai Ge saw all kinds of bizarrely enormous spinels, each one frighteningly huge.
It was impossible for spinels this large to exist on the surface. Spinels could be rough or transparent.
Transparent, gem-quality spinels were also top-tier, world-class gemstones in human society, measured by the carat.
But here? They were all measured by the ton!
"Hmm? This one's relatively small!"
Among the many colossal objects, there were always smaller spinels, such as pieces that had broken off larger ones.
Bai Ge soon discovered several piles of such fragments.
When he looked up, he could see a hundred-meter-long spinel lying across several towering stone pillars. Clearly, that horizontal spinel had once been one of the crystals hanging upside down overhead. For some reason, it had fallen, struck the crystals below, and shattered into a mass of smaller pieces.
Some of these smaller pieces weighed one or two tons, while others weighed only a few hundred kilograms.
The smallest weighed around half a kilogram.
"I can collect the ones weighing around five hundred kilograms."
Bai Ge was currently in Shadow Person form and could lift objects weighing five hundred kilograms, so he could store spinels weighing around half a ton in the Mindscape.
After some busy work, he cleared away a large pile of crystal fragments around him.
By a rough calculation, he had taken away more than five hundred tons of spinel fragments in total.
"These fragments are also two thousand degrees Celsius... Bell, do these spinels and gases contain radioactive elements?"
"No!"
With some energy, he could even perform internal vision. Seeing the molecular structures of the microscopic world only required spending a little more energy.
Any elements present were immediately obvious.
"In other words, once I absorb all this heat, it's gone."
"What I want is five-thousand-degree molten slag! That definitely contains radioactive elements, which continuously release energy outward!"
Bai Ge raised his head and looked at the vast expanse of enormous crystals.
These crystals isolated the high-temperature molten slag outside and trapped Bai Ge here.
"I came all this way and only managed to produce one containment object. How can I leave with such little harvest..."
"I have to find a way out..."
Before you continue