Spirit Communication

Gallo operated through his intent, investing 1 attribute point into [Inspiration].

[Inspiration] +1.

The moment the attribute point was invested, it felt as if some invisible barrier had been abruptly shattered.

Gallo only felt his consciousness spread out violently, like a drop of ink falling into clear water.

Everything around him became extremely bizarre in his perception—the desk in front of him, the bed to the side, the curtain behind him, and even the air itself seemed to be coated in a layer of viscous, constantly flowing "oil."

The concepts of up, down, left, right, inside, and outside were suddenly lost; every direction felt like it was directly in front of him. Humans define the direction visible to their eyes as "forward," but this sense of direction became completely blurred for Gallo.

Some subtle, non-human whispers rang out deep within his mind, chaotic and disordered, carrying a certain unsettling rhythm.

His perception was spreading outward uncontrollably, piercing through the wooden walls of the attic, catching the nagging complaints of Mrs. Jell in the grocery store downstairs, the rumbling of carriage wheels rolling over cobblestones on the street, and even catching, from further away, the faint fluctuations emanating not from the current physical world, but from the deeper Subspace.

Information surged in like a breached dam.

Fortunately, he had raised [Learning] and [Memory] to a sufficiently high level beforehand. His brain acted like a high-efficiency information processing hub, forcibly classifying, archiving, and even blocking invalid information from this complex and chaotic sensory data!

This prevented his brain from being instantly overwhelmed by the torrent of information.

He felt a wave of intense dizziness and nausea, but he barely managed to keep his consciousness clear.

Contain! Must contain!

Gallo roared in his heart. His knowledge of the Subspace told him that he was currently trending toward a state of psionic eruption. If the loss of control over his Inspiration was not curbed, he would likely end up a madman, or his soul would be forever lost in the Subspace.

From his vast memory of Subspace knowledge, he retrieved the methods to control psionic instability and master a psionic's own Inspiration.

He desperately focused his mind, forcing himself not to pay attention to those external information streams, and instead concentrated his entire will on imagining something concrete that only he knew—the high-tech products from his past life that did not exist in this world: mobile phones, televisions, airplanes, ships, rockets.

He strove to recall and construct every single detail.

In the end, Gallo, who had once been a military enthusiast, constructed a giant liquid-fueled missile in his mind with a strike range covering the entire globe.

As his will focused, that divergent, uncontrollable Inspiration was slowly reined in as if by an invisible hand, retracting from the vast and dangerous outside world until it finally stabilized within a limited range around his body.

"Hoo... ha..." Gallo panted heavily, his forehead covered in cold sweat, his clothes soaked through at the back.

The feeling of disordered expansion of Inspiration, the confusion of orientation, the pervasive whispers, and the constant influx of information slowly faded, and the familiar scene of the attic became stable and clear once again.

With a flick of his mind, he focused his contained Inspiration on his vision.

In an instant, his eyes were covered by a faint, imperceptible glow.

He looked at Lily, who was busy in the balcony kitchen. His gaze could even penetrate the curtain dividing the attic space, seeing the warm, orange-yellow spirituality fluctuations radiating from the little girl, like leaping flames, full of vitality and simple joy.

As for his mother Aisha, who was sewing a doll on the bed, her spirituality fluctuations appeared weak and grayish, interspersed with a few dark spots representing illness, which indicated that she was still plagued by sickness and had not yet fully recovered.

In Gallo's vision, spirituality fluctuations were complex and unique, containing information about a person's thoughts, emotions, health status, and even deeper consciousness; it was a signal emitted by the soul into the real world every moment.

Subsequently, his gaze fell upon the brown leather notebook on the desk.

The notebook itself was emitting an extremely ominous, dark-red spirituality fluctuation, like thick, twisted blood mist.

In the real world, besides living beings possessing souls and generating spirituality fluctuations, ordinary objects could also exhibit such fluctuations if they had been influenced by the Subspace or contaminated by a psionic's power.

However, such objects could no longer be classified as ordinary items.

What shocked him even more was that on the cover of the notebook, there was a "residue" of extremely subtle, yet essentially powerful and cold Subspace physical energy, as if it were some kind of mark.

Gallo took a deep breath, gathered and contained his Inspiration, and cautiously touched the notebook on the desk. Previously, he hadn't opened the psionic path and wasn't considered a true psionic, so touching this notebook didn't seem to affect him.

At most, his perception was superior to ordinary people, but now the enhancement of his Inspiration forced Gallo to treat this notebook with caution.

The good thing is that if my Inspiration is strong enough, I can perform psychometry to trace the origin of this notebook's spiritual infection. Perhaps then I can understand what Sacia Taylor and the group or organization behind her are trying to achieve by having me translate this notebook.

Gallo closed his eyes, pressed his hand onto the leather cover of the notebook, and focused on extending his Inspiration to cover it, intertwining with the notebook's spirituality fluctuations.

Scenes exploded in his vision, not through his eyes, but projected directly into his consciousness:

He saw an acquaintance he knew sitting on a sofa in the living room of an apartment—it was Professor Vanason.

He could see a strange young man intimidating Professor Vanason and demanding that he translate the contents of the notebook. When Professor Vanason blurted out that Gallo could translate the contents, Gallo felt speechless; the man had just sold him out under duress. But was the young man in front of him a member of "Clovin"?

The organization Clovin seemed to be some government department of the Empire, but Gallo didn't know much about the specific details.

So, was Sacia also a member of Clovin?

But the subsequent images made him realize that the other party was a fake Clovin member, and at the same time, Sacia had obtained the notebook and planned to go to Lubo Lane the next day to find him for translation. So, the scene before him was something that happened yesterday, and the man with Sacia was named "Malcolm"!

Gallo tried to focus his Inspiration further to attempt to trace the source of the notebook. He could be certain that Sacia's reason for obtaining this notebook from a market somewhere in the Southern Continent was definitely a lie.

Then, the image blurred and gradually became clear. He saw a man with a haggard face, sunken eye sockets, and messy hair, supporting himself with both hands on a desk, the surface of which was piled into a small mountain with paper materials and books.

He looked terrified and was weeping, growling in resistance.

But all of this was useless; his resistance had no effect. Blood vessels began to emerge on his skin, as if the veins of his entire body were branded onto his skin and had come alive, burrowing out from his body surface like worms. Accompanied by his weeping wails, the blood vessels twisted and converged into the same dark-red hieroglyphs as those on the notebook!

Immediately after, the man's body stiffened violently, and then he immediately grabbed a paper-cutting knife on the desk. He plunged the knife directly into his neck, his eyes revealing a desperate expectation for release.

His skin was torn apart as if by an invisible force, starting from his head, peeled off completely bit by bit. The blood spurting from his neck carried a terrifyingly high temperature.

Like burning oil, it ignited everything around it. That piece of human skin printed with bright red hieroglyphs began to twist, contract, and shrink under the high temperature, finally turning into... this notebook.

Next, the fire engulfed everything. Even though it was a scene projected into his consciousness, Gallo could still feel a trace of that terrifying, scorching heat.

The man's body carbonized in just a few seconds. The flames that had filled the room receded, and everything had been carbonized by the high temperature.

Yet that notebook remained completely unscathed, its dark red fluctuations of Spirituality growing increasingly eerie.

Later, not knowing how much time had passed, he saw Sacia Taylor and Malcolm walk into the study that had been reduced to charred remains.

Sacia picked up the notebook with an expressionless face, while Malcolm vigilantly scanned his surroundings; after confirming there was no danger, he whispered excitedly, "It looks like Jeffrey must have succeeded, but some accident happened in the end. Still, we didn't come away completely empty-handed this time!"

The vision came to an abrupt halt.

Gallo snapped out of his spiritual vision, his face pale and his heart pounding wildly; the book in his hands was actually the Human Skin Notebook.