Nightmare Energy Erosion

"What is going on?" Yang Ning stared blankly at the chariot moving without wind. I'm still outside—this chariot has no power at all, and I even left it on level ground!

As if sensing something, he used his thoughts to control the chariot, making it turn forward, back, left, and right. He even controlled the bolts mounted on it to load themselves, aim, and fire!

It was as though the tank had been fitted with a brainwave controller. It required no manual operation whatsoever!

"It's the Dragon Pearl!" Yang Ning hurriedly summoned the Nightmare Dragon Pearl and held it in his hand.

This Dragon Pearl seemed no different from when he had placed it inside a month ago. Yet upon closer inspection, there were subtle differences.

A hazy mist had appeared within the Dragon Pearl. When he sensed it carefully, he found that it was actually connected to his mind!

"This is the mental energy you have dispersed!" Deep Blue reminded him.

Every moment, human life activities radiated thermal energy outward. Likewise, the human brain constantly emitted mental fluctuations.

In the macroscopic physical world, these manifested as brainwaves. Devices such as brainwave controllers and lie detectors made use of this principle.

As for mental energy, science had not even discovered the soul, much less mental energy.

But in the Taiheng Realm, mental energy was a force that truly existed. It would be awakened at the Body Refinement Ninth Level, then evolve into divine consciousness at the Qi Refining Stage. This was not only reflected in all kinds of cultivation techniques; there was also a complete system of methods for strengthening and using divine consciousness.

Meditation was a process of gathering and strengthening one's mental energy. Yet even his rudimentary meditation method could not stop mental energy from leaking away. On the contrary, as his foundation of mental energy grew, even more of it dispersed.

It was like pouring water in while water flowed out, except the rate of inflow was faster than the rate of outflow.

This caused Yang Ning's mental energy to grow faster than that of ordinary people. It was even possible that he would sense the existence of mental energy before reaching the Body Refinement Ninth Level.

But Yang Ning had not expected that before he could sense his own mental energy, he would first see the mental energy he had dispersed.

The Dragon Pearl had absorbed those things—and had accumulated quite a bit of them.

"So, do all Dragon Pearls have this function, or is it only this one?" Dragon Pearls were too rare and too important. They were essentially the closely guarded secrets of major sects, so no one would compile their research on Dragon Pearls and make it public.

After conducting some experiments, Yang Ning concluded that gathering mental energy should be an ability shared by most Dragon Pearls.

That was because after Dragon Pearls had been adapted into the human world, they became Golden Cores. A Golden Core was a Dao Fruit formed when the Three Flowers Gathering at the Peak of essence, qi, and spirit came together. Therefore, it was only natural for a Dragon Pearl to gather mental energy.

But the fact that the mental energy within the Dragon Pearl could merge into machinery was highly abnormal. Zhao might have been a scientist, but he had also been an imperial Dragon, of exalted status. He did not dabble in puppet arts, and Zhao's memories contained nothing related to puppets.

The Great Dragon Physiognomy he had passed down also contained no arts related to puppets.

"It's Nightmare Chaos!" The books circulating in the Taiheng Realm were vague about Nightmare Chaos, but its ability to erode living beings was indisputable.

Nightmare Beasts and Nightmare Dragons were both products of living creatures being eroded by Nightmare Energy.

Then could Nightmare Energy erode objects as well?

Yang Ning was inclined to believe it could. If it could erode the living, then dead things should be even easier.

But Nightmare Energy was an inanimate thing without a master. Even if it eroded dead objects, no one would control them. At most, it would damage them; it would not make them move, unlike when it eroded living beings and allowed them to keep fighting.

Things changed only after the inheritance reached Yang Ning.

He did not know whether he could control Nightmare Energy, but once his mental energy entered the Dragon Pearl, its nature had certainly been altered by the Nightmare Dragon Pearl.

Yet its fundamental nature as his own mental energy had not changed. Therefore, after this mental energy eroded objects, he could still control them!

Yang Ning took out a Sniper Rifle to test it.

Creations of different sizes required different amounts of mental energy to erode. If eroding a tank required 100 units of mental energy, then eroding a Sniper Rifle required only 1!

As for the results after erosion—

Yang Ning tossed the Sniper Rifle onto the ground, then controlled it with his imagination. The rifle actually stood up by itself, spun once in the open space, and fired at a distant target!

"It actually works!" Yang Ning's eyes widened. What kind of principle was this?

Where did the force to pull the trigger come from? Where did the force that made the firearm stand upright come from?

Most absurd of all, I didn't even load any bullets into the gun!

"Doesn't this setting feel familiar to you?" Yang Ning asked.

"Knights do not die with empty hands?" Deep Blue answered.

"Right!" Yang Ning nodded, then suddenly felt something was off. "Right my ass! I mean the Machine Soul!"

What skill had Knights Do Not Die with Empty Hands belonged to again? It could turn other people's things into one's own Noble Phantasms, which was only a tiny bit similar to Yang Ning's ability.

What was far more similar was the Machine Soul!

Machine Souls, also known as machine spirits, were products of the idea that all things possessed spirits.

In modern times, this custom mainly appeared in the military field. For example, the famous J-20 Fighter Jet had a Machine Soul known as the Eagle God.

The existence of Machine Souls carried strong symbolic meaning. Not only could they strengthen people's sense of identity and belonging toward equipment, they could also inspire military honor and patriotic sentiment.

Of course, it was all kinds of fantasy games, novels, and anime that truly developed and expanded the concept of Machine Souls.

For example, the completely unscientific Machine Souls in Warhammer 40K, the ship spirits in One Piece that could sail ships themselves, and the Artifact Spirits found in all kinds of xianxia novels.

Yang Ning had never imagined that he would encounter something like this too—and that he had made it himself!

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

"And you, don't just stand around!" Yang Ning looked toward the tank again and made it start running as well.

The sound of the Sniper Rifle firing rang out without pause. It was like a submachine gun, and it did not even need to be reloaded.

The key was that it truly fired bullets, and they possessed immense killing power!

The tank on the other side was even more outrageous. No one was pedaling inside it, yet it raced forward at astonishing speed. With a thought from Yang Ning, its speed kept increasing. Fourteen seconds later, it directly broke the sound barrier!

Twenty-two seconds later, the Sniper Rifle stopped first.

The tank was still running, with no sign of slowing down. Yang Ning could sense that its components and gears were perfectly intact. It truly did not resemble a tank that had surpassed the speed of sound!

With a thought, he created a circular racetrack. Yang Ning watched the tank circle lap after lap until, at sixty-four seconds, its speed had soared to Mach 4.6. It abruptly lost power, then was instantly torn apart by its enormous acceleration and scattered across the track.

For a time, bearings and gears littered the ground. One wheel even rolled more than five hundred meters away. Yang Ning could not bear to watch any longer, so he created a wall to stop it.

"The Sniper Rifle fired at a constant rate of sixty-four bullets per second. In twenty-two seconds, it fired a total of 1,408 bullets!"

"The tank accelerated continuously from the moment it began running until it stopped. Its acceleration was 24.31 m/s^2, and its acceleration time was 64.93 seconds," Deep Blue reported.

Yang Ning sensed them, and sure enough, the mental energy on the tank and Sniper Rifle had already been exhausted.

"Such a tiny amount of mental energy could keep them running for so long?" Yang Ning was somewhat astonished. He examined the Nightmare Dragon Pearl and found that it still contained quite a lot of mental energy.

By the standard he had just established, it still held 360 units of mental energy—enough for the Sniper Rifle to fire another 510,000 bullets, or for the tank to accelerate for another 180 seconds!

Yang Ning knew mental energy could not possibly be this outrageous. Creating things from the void was an ability reserved for great powers in the Spiritual Law Realm. A tiny fry in the Body Refinement Realm like him should not even dream of it.

But he had clearly created bullets from the void just now.

"So it's Nightmare Energy—I added Nightmare Energy!"

It was, after all, an energy capable of eroding an entire world and destroying the entire Dragon civilization. Creating things from the void should be child's play for it, shouldn't it?

Yang Ning immediately took out the Dragon Pearl and summoned 1 unit of mental energy.

"Make me a photolithography machine!"

The mental energy did not move at all.

"Then make steamed buns!" Yang Ning desperately pictured bread in his mind. If 1 unit of mental energy could create 1,408 bullets, making one steamed bun should be effortless, right?

But the mental energy still did not respond. It showed absolutely no intention of turning into a steamed bun.

Yang Ning thought for a moment, then simply kneaded a steamed-bun machine into existence by hand and fused 10 units of mental energy into it.

The steamed-bun machine showed no intention of working.

"Why?" Yang Ning scratched his head.

"Could it be that it doesn't know how to do it?" Deep Blue suggested.

"How could that be? Doesn't it know how to fire a gun?" Yang Ning said, then suddenly thought of something.

He first produced a bag of flour, loaded it into the steamed-bun machine, and ran it once.

After the flour was used up, Yang Ning started the steamed-bun machine again.

This time, there was no problem. The steamed-bun machine ran smoothly, producing one steamed-bun dough ball after another despite having no flour at all!

He understood now. He had driven the tank before, and he had used the Sniper Rifle before, so only after injecting mental energy could they operate.

Yang Ning nodded. "I think I understand how this thing works now!"

Creating things from the void was highly unscientific.

Yet the machines it could make function had to be creations that were capable of operating in the first place.

From that perspective, it was perfectly reasonable.

Clearly, casually putting together a few sticks to make a matchstick figure would not work. Nor could he use its principle of creating things from the void to make a Gourmet Tablecloth.

But even with so many restrictions, it was still an unquestionable divine artifact to Yang Ning!

What was there to fear in scientific research? Wasn't it simply the fear of lacking people and time?

The Spirit Realm solved the problem of having no time for research and development.

And Nightmare Energy erosion solved the problem of having no one to operate mechanical manufacturing.

A thought suddenly surfaced in Yang Ning's heart.

I alone am a technological civilization!