Exploring the Image World

Shi Fen had obtained new operating permissions for the Eight Trigrams Reincarnation Mirror.

Through the Eight Trigrams Reincarnation Mirror, Shi Fen could directly see everything in the Image World. What was more, he could use the mirror to move himself to any location he wanted.

Shi Fen's thoughts stirred.

He stood beneath the ceiling of the Main Hall, with the dazzling Starry Sky Map right above his head.

Looking down, he saw a hundred "Forging Plazas" scattered throughout the spacious Main Hall. The newly appeared Forging Plazas were nearly identical to the one Shi Fen had originally occupied in the corner of the Main Hall. There was hardly any difference between them.

The Main Hall was now 100 kilometers long and wide, and 33 kilometers high. It could be called a Small World. Only someone with eyesight as extraordinary as Shi Fen's could take it all in; an ordinary person couldn't see from one end to the other at a glance.

The Main Hall's height of 33 kilometers made the one-kilometer-high arched doorways of the Side Halls look like "mouse holes."

What did a height of 33 kilometers mean?

Mount Everest was only a little over 8.8 kilometers high. Thirty-three kilometers was roughly the height of four Mount Everests.

And what did a length and width of 100 kilometers mean?

A standard soccer field was generally about 110 meters long and 70 meters wide. An adult already looked somewhat insignificant standing on one. A one-kilometer-long Forging Plaza was roughly the size of 130 standard soccer fields.

That was already enormous.

The Main Hall, now 100 kilometers long and wide, had ten thousand times the area of a Forging Plaza. Its astonishing area of ten thousand square kilometers was comparable to that of a Base City.

Taiwan Island, which had long belonged to Huaxia, covered about 360,000 square kilometers. The Main Hall was about a third the size of Taiwan Island.

At nearly 1.8 meters tall, Shi Fen was like an ant standing inside it. Actually, calling him an ant was giving him too much credit. At most, he was "dust."

The one-kilometer-square Forging Plazas looked like isolated little square cities within the Main Hall. The small cities were distributed with remarkable uniformity.

The hundred small cities felt like special "floor tiles," evenly laid out across the Main Hall. It was as if the hall had been paved with alternating white and silver square tiles.

This arrangement gave the Small World of the Main Hall a uniquely elegant design.

Shi Fen raised his hand, looked up at the Starry Sky Map, and ran his fingertip across its surface.

The map felt strange to the touch, like a springy block of ice—cool, smooth, and wonderfully bouncy.

Shi Fen's figure shifted. He reached out to touch the various colored spheres beneath the Starry Sky Map, then chose a red monochromatic sphere. His hand passed right through it without feeling a thing.

"What a shame. I thought it might be some kind of treasure, but it's just a decorative light."

Slightly disappointed, Shi Fen shifted again and carefully landed on the Black Disc.

"Hm? It's not an illusion."

Shi Fen stood on the Black Disc, pleasantly surprised.

Once he was steady, Shi Fen quickly glanced around. The various objects here had a distinctly "immortal" air about them, and he immediately recognized them all as Treasure Refining tools.

There were exactly ten of each item. In all, there were ten complete sets.

Shi Fen didn't try to move them. He had learned his lesson after getting burned once before. The sensible thing was to find the information Teacher Yi had left and get Yi's guidance first.

Standing on the Black Disc, Shi Fen looked up at the Main Hall's ceiling. From here, nothing blocked his view. He could see the entire Starry Sky Map, along with every single multicolored sphere.

The Starry Sky Map embedded in the Main Hall's dome depicted a Dazzling Star Universe. The map had a deep blue base, with colorful planets scattered amid a sea of countless blue giants.

The Starry Sky Map emitted faint glimmers from the ceiling, like a special light that illuminated the entire Main Hall.

The map's colors, style, and every other detail felt incredibly real to Shi Fen, as if it were a brilliant river of stars. The starry river stretched across the entire ceiling of the Main Hall, and anyone who saw it would be stunned.

Shi Fen was already lost in the spectacle.

As he gazed at it, Shi Fen unexpectedly noticed that the various colored spheres beneath the Starry Sky Map were arranged in a pattern.

The many spheres floating below the map could be divided into ten identical sections.

It was as if ten identical lighting fixtures hung beneath the ceiling.

At the center of each "fixture" was a milky-white sphere shimmering with rosy light. The other spheres formed four rings around it.

The innermost ring held five multicolored spheres: one with ten colors, two with six colors, and two with four colors. Their colors flowed and shifted, making them breathtakingly beautiful. The next two rings each held nine spheres that shimmered with two colors. The outermost ring held ten monochromatic spheres.

Each "fixture" held thirty-four spheres.

"Why does everything have something to do with the number ten?" Shi Fen couldn't understand.

After thinking for a long time without figuring it out, Shi Fen went to take a look at the Silver Disc. It was almost identical to the Forging Plaza, with every kind of tool imaginable.

"Let's take a look at the Storage Cabinets beside the 'Trash Cans'..." Filled with anticipation, Shi Fen went to inspect them.

Beside the "Trash Can" at each of the ninety-nine newly appeared Forging Plazas stood eleven cabinets.

Shi Fen took a deep breath and eagerly opened one. The moment he saw what was inside, his eyes lit up. He immediately opened the other ten cabinets as well.

The cabinets stood about two meters tall and were still divided into five levels, just like the storage cabinets he had seen earlier.

Each level was packed tightly with transparent little boxes. There were still one hundred visible boxes on the outermost side. Shi Fen swept them with his Spiritual Force and immediately knew that the cabinets were full.

Each of the five levels had a visible "wall of boxes" on this side, stacked ten by ten, for exactly one hundred boxes. There were ten more such "walls of boxes" inside each cabinet.

Each Storage Cabinet still held a full thousand transparent little boxes.

All eleven cabinets were packed with transparent little boxes containing Storage Cards.

Shi Fen hurriedly took a box from each cabinet and checked the labels.

One cabinet held Storage Cards with dimensions of "one hundred million kilometers in length, width, and height." The other ten held Storage Cards with dimensions of "ten thousand kilometers in length, width, and height."

Overjoyed, Shi Fen opened all the Storage Cabinets at the other ninety-eight Forging Plazas. To make sure he hadn't missed anything, he checked every cabinet again. The results had him grinning from ear to ear.

Including the original Forging Plaza, there was still only one Storage Cabinet containing Storage Cards with dimensions of "one trillion kilometers in length, width, and height." It held ten million top-grade Storage Cards.

There were now one hundred Storage Cabinets containing Storage Cards with dimensions of "one hundred million kilometers in length, width, and height," for a total of one billion high-grade Storage Cards.

There were now one thousand Storage Cabinets containing Storage Cards with dimensions of "ten thousand kilometers in length, width, and height," for a total of ten billion basic Storage Cards.

"Teacher Yi is so generous. I won't run out of Storage Cards for a long time now." Seeing so many Storage Cards made Shi Fen indescribably happy.

As "basic components," Storage Cards did far more than store things.

They weren't just basic components for Tech Tools. They had an incredibly wide range of uses: they could serve as a weapon's energy core, its "ammunition compartment," a link for quickly transporting supplies, a matching spatial storage device for technological products, an expansion for a spaceship's cabins, or a premium storage device for materials...

They had far too many uses to count.

It could be said that having enough Storage Cards meant that future development could proceed quickly enough.

Storage Cards were as important as a building's foundation. They were indispensable.

Shi Fen didn't believe he would gain the ability to refine Storage Cards anytime soon. Let alone refining Storage Cards—even refining a World Ring required world-level strength. He wouldn't be able to refine one himself for ages.

Shi Fen was extremely excited. He bounced all the way to the Side Halls to inspect the Library Hall as it was now.

Shi Fen could overlook the Image World, so he could see everything in the other Side Halls clearly.

There were now nine Side Halls: the Treasure Hall, Library Hall, Meditation Hall, Collection Hall, Experiment Hall, Inheritance Hall, Mortal Hall, Plant Hall, and Heaven-Reaching Hall.

Six of them—the Treasure Hall, Collection Hall, Experiment Hall, Inheritance Hall, Plant Hall, and Heaven-Reaching Hall—were empty.

The bookshelves that had originally been in the Meditation Hall were gone. Now only the two sets of sofas remained.

The Mortal Hall was filled with rows of quaint, detached villas. There were so many that they looked like an ancient city. Shi Fen wasn't interested in houses. He didn't believe Yi would hide treasures in there and make him go to all that trouble to search for them.

That left the most eye-catching place of all: the Library Hall.

The Library Hall's interior space was now many times larger than before. Its area had increased tremendously. There was a reason for that: its shelves now stretched farther than the eye could see, holding countless books.

"Oh my god." Shi Fen was still stunned when he saw the countless books with his own eyes. "How many books are there? If I had to read them all, I don't think I'd finish in my lifetime."

The Library Hall now stretched for several kilometers in both length and width, and the enormous space was filled with giant bookshelves thirty-three meters tall.

These enormous, thirty-three-meter-tall shelves stood much taller than ordinary ten-story buildings. The two-meter-high bookshelves from before looked like "little matchboxes" beside them.

Walking between the bookshelves was almost no different from walking between buildings.

The shelves were just as wide as before, less than a meter across both sides combined. This made the giant bookshelves look like "paper-thin towers."

It was no exaggeration to say that this place held more books than the national libraries of several countries combined. If someone had to study and memorize them all, they would definitely kill themselves. It was an impossible task.

Shi Fen dashed down the central thoroughfare of the Library Hall.

"Hm?" When Shi Fen reached the center of the Library Hall, he spotted a Golden Light Sphere slowly wandering among the shelves out of the corner of his eye.

The Golden Light Sphere hadn't appeared under Shi Fen's inspection permissions before.

He was seeing it with his own eyes for the first time.

So I really don't have to go through all the trouble of reading everything myself. Shi Fen felt relieved. Without hesitation, he immediately changed direction, chased after the Golden Light Sphere, and reached out to grab it.

The Golden Light Sphere continued wandering along slowly and foolishly, not speeding up at all when Shi Fen chased it.

The instant he touched it,

a vast stream of information rushed straight into the depths of Shi Fen's consciousness. The golden ocean in his Sea of Consciousness roared as the powerful influx struck it, immediately whipping up fierce waves. It seemed as though a tsunami was about to erupt within his Sea of Consciousness.

At the same time,

his Inner World began to evolve!

Feeling the information flow into him, Shi Fen couldn't help smiling smugly. He had guessed right.

This time, it didn't begin with words. Instead, a wild, unrestrained laugh, brimming with joy, rang out.

"Hahahahahaha..."

Yi seemed extremely delighted and satisfied. He laughed for a long while before speaking in person again.

"This soul really does keep bringing unexpected surprises. Excellent. I gave you three years, but you completed what I asked of you in a little over one. Looks like I underestimated you.

"Not only did you complete the task quickly, you also comprehended the Soul Domain on top of that.

"Since that's the case, I won't waste any more time. Your original rewards and special rewards have all been granted. Since you've surprised me so much, I'll open a special trial for you ahead of schedule in the next stage.

"Complete it all, and what you gain will exceed your wildest imagination. I've even given you my signature techniques, so don't disappoint me.

"You'll understand once you enter the Treasure Refining World again.

"Hahaha..."

After those brief words came all kinds of information about secret techniques. Most of the consciousness receiving it gradually sank into a half-unconscious state, utterly absorbed in the vast stream of information and losing awareness of the outside world.

Shi Fen's body, sitting outside, suddenly opened his eyes.