First Contact with Spiritual Power

He sat down cross-legged, pressing both palms against the icy runes.

Now!

The power disguised as "Sky Dream Iceworm's" spiritual fluctuations was carefully injected by Huo Yuhao into the vast formation beneath his feet, slowly, like the finest probe.

One second.

Two seconds.

No response.

Like a drop of water merging into the ocean, it vanished without a sound.

Did it work?

The instant that thought crossed Huo Yuhao's mind—

"Bzzzz!!!"

Pain!

Indescribable agony exploded from the depths of his spiritual origin!

If that previous "purifying power" had been a pulverizer, then now he felt as though he had been stuffed into a particle collider!

Completely different yet equally cold and merciless counterforces surged madly from every runic node in the formation! They were not rejecting him—they were "shearing" him!

Like billions of impossibly tiny scalpels, they followed the structure of his spiritual power, cutting, tearing, and dismantling it with savage frenzy!

[Warning! High-frequency energy shear field detected!]

[Spiritual connection is being forcibly dismantled! Damage to the host's spiritual origin is rapidly increasing!]

[Damage rate: 17%... 21%... 25%...]

Damn it! This "firewall" was fucking double-layered!

The pain nearly made Huo Yuhao pass out on the spot, but he clenched his teeth and held on to the last shred of clarity.

"Thought Palace! Calculate!"

"Analyze its shearing pattern! Find its rules!"

Boom!

Within his sea of spirit, the computational core of the Thought Palace erupted with unprecedented radiance!

Every cut and every vibration from those billions of "scalpels" was transformed into pure data, refreshing madly within the palace!

[Analyzing counterforce pattern...]

[1.74 million high-frequency oscillation combinations discovered...]

[Performing reverse frequency matching... Match failed!]

[Adjusting algorithm... Initiating "chaos theory" model for fuzzy calculation...]

Huo Yuhao felt as though his brain was about to burn dry!

That agony was no longer merely pain. It was more like a spiritual "dissolution"; his consciousness and memories were beginning to fracture and blur!

No! He couldn't hold on anymore!

If this continued, forget absorbing Sky Dream—he would be "formatted" by this damned formation first!

Yet at the very edge of collapse, the ruthless defiance buried deep in Huo Yuhao's bones—the refusal of a transmigrator to let fate toy with him—erupted completely!

"Hold on!"

He was not shouting at anyone else. He was giving himself the most fundamental command!

"Do you want to spend your whole life as that useless piece of trash everyone can bully?"

"Do you want to just let Mother's hatred go unanswered?"

"Do you want to be toyed with like a chess piece by that lofty god until you die?"

"No!"

"I refuse to accept it!"

He abruptly poured in even more spiritual power, regardless of the consequences!

Pain? Then let it hurt even more!

You want to dismantle me? Then I'll give you more—let's see whether you can break it down faster, or I can replenish it faster!

It was an almost self-destructive act of madness!

But amid that madness, the once chaotic torrent of data within the Thought Palace suddenly became clear for an instant!

[Resonance singularity detected!]

[At the 970,000th oscillation frequency, the energy shearing effect weakens for 0.001 seconds!]

He had found it!

That was it!

Huo Yuhao instantly seized this lifeline!

He stopped resisting blindly. Enduring the soul-rending agony, he began adjusting the vibration frequency of his spiritual power with unimaginable control!

It was like threading a needle with a strand of hair in a storm-tossed sea!

[Frequency calibration in progress... 97.13%... 97.84%... 99.99%...]

[Calibration successful!]

Buzz—

In that instant, it was as though the entire world fell silent.

The agony that had been enough to grind his divine soul to pieces receded like the tide.

His spiritual power was no longer being sliced apart. Instead, guided by a gentle force, it smoothly pierced through layer upon layer of defensive systems and flowed toward the deepest, most central point of the formation!

He had succeeded!

He had truly penetrated this damned "firewall"!

Like a traveler who had crossed billions of light-years, Huo Yuhao's spiritual power had finally reached the end of its journey.

He "saw" it.

No, he did not see it with his eyes.

It was a pure form of perception.

His spiritual power touched a vast, ancient sea of consciousness, silent as death.

There were no waves and no sounds in that sea—only boundless darkness and a loneliness that seeped into the marrow...

As if a child forgotten by the world for hundreds of millions of years had curled up within an eternal dream, no longer even capable of feeling sorrow.

Sky Dream Iceworm!

Was this its spiritual world?

Huo Yuhao's mind was struck hard by that immense loneliness.

Carefully, as though touching the most fragile work of art, he slowly pressed his spiritual power against it.

However—

The instant they made contact!

An instinctive, tyrannical force of rejection, as heavy as a planet, erupted with a boom!

"Get lost!"

A blurry thought exploded directly within his sea of spirit!

This force contained no technique whatsoever. It was pure, overwhelming suppression!

If the formation's previous attacks had been scalpels, then this was a meteor crashing straight into him!

Huo Yuhao's spiritual power, which had only just managed to seep inside, was instantly scattered into pieces and nearly collapsed on the spot!

[Warning! Target's instinctive defense encountered! Spiritual connection on the verge of severance!]

Huo Yuhao's heart tightened.

He had been careless!

Even if an existence that had slept for a million years was weak, its instinctive defenses were no joke!

He could not meet it head-on!

He immediately drew back his spiritual power. No longer attempting to force his way "closer," he hovered at the edge of that sea of consciousness and began transmitting an entirely different message.

He did not send some empty slogan like "I'm here to save you."

Through the Thought Palace, he gave his goodwill concrete form!

What he transmitted was not emotion, but a "structure."

A structure of thought belonging to modern science, filled with logic and order.

[Concept Armament: Constructing "Goodwill" model...]

[Model components: mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, non-zero-sum games, equivalent exchange...]

These cold, purely rational concepts were packaged by Huo Yuhao into a spiritual signal and slowly sent into that chaotic sea of consciousness.

Sure enough!

Sky Dream Iceworm's violent force of rejection paused slightly.

Though its consciousness was muddled, it could sense that this foreign spiritual power was very "strange."

It was unlike the wild, chaotic nature of any soul beast it recognized.

Nor was it like the muddled spiritual power of human soul masters, filled with greed and desire.

This spiritual power was pure, calm, and imbued with a certain... clear-cut sense of order.

Like a clear mathematical formula appearing on a chaotic scribble.

It felt unfamiliar, but... not unpleasant.

[Target resistance level decreased by 3.4%...]

This could work!

Huo Yuhao's spirits soared!

He knew that, at this moment, his identity as a transmigrator and his knowledge system that surpassed this era had become his strongest "pass."

Striking while the iron was hot, he immediately began constructing a second "conceptual model."

This time, he conveyed the two most fundamental, primal urges.

"Rescue!"

"Freedom!"

He did not explain what those two words meant.

Instead, he used the [Thought Palace] to conduct a "live broadcast" directly within the spiritual realm!

In the image, the enormous ice cocoon encasing the Sky Dream Iceworm shattered inch by inch!

The ancient formation that had bound it for a million years dimmed, its runes collapsing!

In the image, it broke free from its underground prison, once again feeling the warmth of sunlight, breathing fresh air, and seeing the boundless sky!

It was the exhilarating, all-consuming pleasure of being completely released after a million years of suppression!

Huo Yuhao projected this "mental film" directly into the depths of the Sky Dream Iceworm's consciousness with astonishing clarity!

"..."

That silent sea of consciousness fell quiet.

But the very next second!

BOOM!!!

An unprecedented spiritual storm, violent to the extreme, surged from the deepest part of that sea of consciousness!

It was no longer mere resistance, but something mixed with longing, confusion, rage, and a faint trace of awakening madness!