Chen Yan's heart skipped!
Had he been discovered?
Could this little girl really sense his presence in her sleep?
Almost instinctively, he pushed Shadow Concealment to its absolute limit!
The last faint trace of his presence fell completely silent.
He blended perfectly into the surrounding air, walls, and shadows.
It was as if he had "vanished" from the world.
Inside the guest room.
Yu Qingmeng only mumbled something indistinctly. Her little body rolled over, then burrowed deeper under the covers...
Before long, her breathing became slow and steady again.
It seemed that what she had said just now really had been nothing more than sleep-talk.
Chen Yan waited silently outside the door for a full minute, making sure she was fast asleep and that nothing else stirred.
Only then did he slowly let his taut nerves relax.
But a storm was raging in his heart.
This little girl... was definitely strange!
How could an ordinary eighteen-month-old child possibly have such keen instincts?
The first time he played Hide and Seek at her house, she had quickly found him even while he was using Shadow Concealment.
It seemed she was hiding secrets of her own.
Could it be... a special constitution?
Chen Yan silently filed the matter away, tagging Yu Qingmeng as someone to keep a close eye on.
He finished his rounds and confirmed there was nothing else amiss in the house.
Then he slipped back into his nursery without a sound.
Back on the familiar carpet, Chen Yan no longer felt like immediately returning to his cultivation.
That icy, piercing mental attack from earlier still haunted him, like a poisoned thorn buried in his heart.
If not for the fact that he had lived two lives and possessed an extraordinary soul,
and for the powerful spiritual force he had built up through Divine Sense Differentiation and the Meditation Method,
his mind might already have collapsed, leaving him a babbling idiot.
Human martial arts had evolved from ancient fighting techniques.
Ninety-nine percent of them focused on hardening the body and tempering one's vital energy, or on fists, kicks, and weapons designed for maximum lethality.
Secrets like the [Meditation Method], which systematically tempered and strengthened spiritual force, were incredibly rare...
And even when such methods existed, they came with all sorts of restrictions that made mass adoption impossible.
Otherwise, the East Continent Alliance would have rolled out a meditation method for the public, just as it had the National Health Exercises...
For the past hundred years, humanity had managed to hold its ground against ferocious beasts through martial arts built on overwhelming vital energy.
But now, against the Spirit Race, those bizarre beings who specialized in mental attacks, traditional martial arts seemed inadequate and ill-equipped to cope.
Unless they could find and destroy the Spirit Race's frail "physical bodies," as Wang Xiaoming had said,
ordinary martial artists who encountered them might not even get a chance to react before their souls were struck directly, leaving them dead or insane!
According to Wang Xiaoming's report on the news, "spiritual-force martial arts" designed specifically to deal with such threats were still only in the earliest stages of theoretical research and development.
If the Spirit Race really did form an army and come to Blue Star through that mysterious passage...
Then humanity's future would be so dark it was suffocating.
Chen Yan slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, forcing himself to stop dwelling on these disturbing possibilities.
He sat cross-legged again and steadied his breathing...
Then sank his entire consciousness into that vast sea of awareness.
Deep within the sea of awareness, the Spirit Race lifeform his divine sense had swallowed had neither vanished completely nor been fully digested.
It was like a shadow, constantly writhing under the restraint of some invisible force.
Or like an ugly insect perfectly preserved in amber.
A force of spiritual energy far more powerful and pure than its own held it firmly bound.
It struggled and thrashed in vain,
unable to shake its restraints in the slightest.
"Up close, this thing is... quite uniquely ugly."
Chen Yan's divine sense stroked its chin as he observed this unprecedented captive with great interest.
He could clearly sense that he had absolute control over the Spirit Race entity.
An instinctive connection had formed, like the one he had with his own hands and feet.
With just a thought, he could force the entity to act according to his will.
He could also tell that one slightly stronger thought would be enough to crush and purify the entity completely.
It would transform into a highly refined form of ownerless energy, which he could then use to nourish and strengthen his own spiritual force.
As he focused his consciousness and carefully sensed the constantly writhing Spirit Race entity, a strange, subtle connection formed naturally.
Chen Yan's thoughts stirred, and he quietly eased his restraint on the entity.
He wasn't being reckless. He wanted to experience firsthand exactly how this bizarre creature attacked.
The moment its restraints loosened, if only slightly,
the writhing shadow shuddered violently, like a drowning person breaking the surface.
Its featureless face rippled violently, and a piercing scream erupted, though it made no sound and struck directly at the depths of Chen Yan's soul!
It wasn't a physical sound, but pure mental noise, crashing wildly against the walls of Chen Yan's consciousness.
His mind rang, as if someone were scraping a nail across glass. The sensation was unbearably unpleasant.
[You have suffered a mental attack! Mental resilience slightly increased!]
The system prompt flashed by.
Then the world around him began to twist and melt.
The warm, familiar nursery disappeared, replaced by a cold, gloomy wasteland of ruins.
Amid the broken walls, countless malevolent eyes seemed to be watching him!
A chilling fear washed over him like a tide, trying to swallow his reason.
An illusion!
The Spirit Race creature could draw out the fear in his heart and weave it into a scene so lifelike!
[You have suffered a mental attack! Mental clarity slightly increased!]
The Meditation Method began circulating on its own. Chen Yan's divine sense glimmered, like a pillar anchoring the sea, and steadied his wavering mind in an instant.
The illusion shattered like a mirror, scattering with a crash and revealing the real room once more.
Seeing that its first two attacks seemed to have failed, the Spirit Race lifeform grew even more frenzied.
It suddenly contracted, concentrating all its spiritual energy into a single point.
The energy became a black spike, almost solid, radiating an intensely frigid aura. It shot toward the core of Chen Yan's consciousness!
This was its true killing move—a mental spike condensed from all its power, meant to kill with a single strike!
It was incredibly fast and vicious!
Chen Yan could clearly feel that the spike's destructive power far exceeded that of the "poisoned needle" from before.
But he neither dodged nor evaded.
He even voluntarily withdrew his last bit of defense, meeting the attack with nothing but his own refined spiritual force.
He wanted to know where his limits lay.
The spike silently pierced into his vast sea of awareness.
It was like plunging red-hot iron into ice water!
A searing pain surged through him, making Chen Yan's little body tremble slightly.
The spike spun and drilled frantically, trying to tear his soul apart.
But that was as far as it got.
His sea of awareness was simply too vast, his spiritual force too condensed.
After burrowing in to a certain depth, the spike was like an arrow at the end of its flight, its speed dropping sharply.
In the end, his immense spiritual force ground it down and assimilated it, turning it into nourishment.
[You have suffered a mental spike attack! Spiritual strength significantly increased! Resistance to mental attacks permanently increased slightly!]
It worked.
Screams, illusions, and spikes.
Those three attacks were simple, but extremely effective.
If the creature had encountered anyone other than a freak like Chen Yan, most ordinary martial artists probably wouldn't have made it through the initial burst of noise.
The test was over.
Chen Yan no longer hesitated.
At a thought, his vast spiritual force slowly ground down like a millstone.
"Hm?" Chen Yan was a little surprised.
He suddenly realized that he could understand the silent cries it kept uttering in fear.
"Innate..."
"Dao... Body..."
The halting thoughts, filled with terror and greed, came through clearly.
Chen Yan's heart gave a sudden lurch!
As he'd expected!
His guess had been right!
He acted without delay. At a thought, the force restraining the Spirit Race entity tightened abruptly!
"No—!"
The Spirit Race entity was already so weak that it couldn't even manage one last convulsion before vanishing completely.
It became an energy purer and gentler than before, merging perfectly into his sea of awareness.
Putting together the system quest's description of a "King Rank entity" that wanted to extract his Innate Dao Body...
A bold yet entirely reasonable theory took shape in his mind.
This Spirit Race creature... had come for his Innate Dao Body!
Before you continue