Cruel Experiments

Inside the room, Huo Yuhao officially began his secluded cultivation.

He sat cross-legged, his consciousness sinking into his sea of spirit. Here, the Sky Dream Iceworm was lazily yawning, its enormous body occupying nearly half the space.

"Kid, no matter how awesome your plan is, you still need strength to back it up. Come on, I'll teach you a few tricks to keep yourself alive."

As the Sky Dream Iceworm spoke, golden light flashed across its body, and an invisible ripple instantly spread outward.

Under that ripple, Huo Yuhao's consciousness avatar actually felt a faint wave of dizziness.

"This is my innate soul skill, Mental Impact." The Sky Dream Iceworm sounded immensely pleased with itself. "Silent and impossible to guard against. Against someone with weaker spiritual power than yours, one hit can turn them into an idiot."

Huo Yuhao said nothing. He merely began frantically analyzing the soul skill within the [Thought Palace].

[Skill analysis in progress... Essence: high-frequency spiritual power oscillation, triggering resonant disharmony in the target's sea of spirit through a specific frequency...]

"And there's this too—Mental Barrier." The Sky Dream Iceworm demonstrated again, forming a transparent barrier around itself. "The true path is to combine offense and defense."

Huo Yuhao discovered that the soul skills Tianmeng had bestowed upon him were all deeply tied to spiritual power. Moreover, using them produced almost no signs of soul power leaking out, making them absurdly difficult to detect.

"Kid, stop analyzing everything with that lousy palace of yours and feel it properly!" the Sky Dream Iceworm roared in exasperation. "You're sitting on a mountain of gold right now! My million-year soul ring is nourishing your sea of spirit with the most fundamental energy every moment of every day. Your spiritual power is growing dozens, even hundreds of times faster than an ordinary person's!"

That was indeed true.

Huo Yuhao could clearly feel his spiritual power steadily increasing at a terrifying rate. It felt like a sponge desperately soaking up water, growing stronger every second.

"Don't just think about fighting." The Sky Dream Iceworm abruptly changed the subject and began imparting the real good stuff. "Your advantage lies in all those strange and bizarre things in your head. Try combining them with your current abilities."

"[Concept Armament]..." Huo Yuhao's consciousness avatar murmured.

His spiritual power began circulating in an entirely new manner.

The soul skill he used most often was "Spiritual Detection." Like radar, it radiated spiritual power outward and received feedback, thereby constructing a three-dimensional map.

But this method was like shining a flashlight in the dark. It might illuminate the path ahead, but it also made him the most conspicuous target.

"What if... instead of actively 'transmitting,' I passively 'receive'?"

In Huo Yuhao's mind, Earth's geophysical theory of "electromagnetic waves" instantly underwent an explosive chemical reaction with the concept of "Spiritual Detection"!

"Everything has fluctuations—air, walls, human bodies... even emotions leave behind unique 'spiritual ripples' in space. I only need to be like a radio, adjusting the frequency of my own spiritual power, and I can 'tune in' to these different 'channels'!"

[Beginning construction of the "Passive Wide-Area Spiritual Scan" model...]

[Integrating the "Electromagnetic Waves" concept...]

[Model construction successful! Designation: "Spirit Eyes"... No, that's too cringey. Designation: "Deep Space Detection"!] ```

Buzz!

An invisible kind of spiritual power, completely different from before, quietly spread from between Huo Yuhao's brows.

No longer did it radiate outward with domineering force. Instead, it was like an infinitely extending, delicate spiderweb, silently covering the entire secret base.

"What the hell?" The Sky Dream Iceworm was stunned. "Kid, what kind of move is that? Your spiritual power... why is it flowing out like water?"

In Huo Yuhao's "vision," the entire world changed.

He was no longer "seeing" the shapes of objects, but "hearing" their "voices."

The walls were a dull murmur, the metal doors a cold, harsh tremor, and the operation of the instruments in the distant laboratory gathered into a cacophonous symphony.

He could even "smell" the faintly restless emotional fluctuations emanating from Lin Mu in the room next door due to her anxiety.

This new detection ability was more than a hundred times more covert than his previous Spiritual Detection! Its range was broader as well, and the dimensions of information it gathered were far richer!

"Amazing! That move is insane!" Though the Sky Dream Iceworm did not understand the principle, that did not stop it from bowing in admiration. "Kid, you're a real genius!"

Huo Yuhao ignored its flattery. Completely focused, he controlled Deep Space Detection like a top-tier hacker, quietly probing this secret fortress known as the Light of Truth.

He swept past the dormitory area, past the public activity area, and past the central office where Xu Qingsong was located.

Soon, he "saw" an area wrapped layer upon layer in thick lead plates and special alloys.

This was the most heavily defended part of the entire base. Even his Deep Space Detection had difficulty penetrating it.

Something was off!

Huo Yuhao concentrated, twisting his spiritual power into a single strand and adjusting it to an exceptionally tricky frequency. Like the most precise probe, it carefully searched for gaps in the defensive formation's energy.

Sizzle...

After a faint sound like an electric current, he successfully infiltrated it!

The next second, a hellish scene flooded into his perception!

It was a massive underground laboratory.

Inside rows of cold metal cages were all kinds of soul beasts, covered in wounds.

Some of the soul beasts had tubes emitting eerie light inserted all over their bodies. Their soul power was being frantically extracted and injected into a huge metal construct resembling a heart.

Other soul beasts were secured to experiment tables, where several people dressed in white research uniforms were cruelly cutting into their bodies with soul tool scalpels, seemingly searching for something.

"Record it! Test Subject No. 32's forced martial soul fusion has failed. Genetic collapse has occurred!"

"Warning! The soul core transplant project is experiencing rejection. Energy readings are rapidly rising!"

"Quick! Increase the sedative dosage! Its spiritual power is about to spiral out of control!"

Painful wails, frenzied roars, the researchers' cold and merciless voices... Countless chaotic fragments of information stabbed viciously into Huo Yuhao's sea of spirit like sharp knives!

Light of Truth!

In addition to pursuing the so-called "divine legacy," they had been secretly conducting such evil, cruel soul beast experiments!

A chill ran through Huo Yuhao's entire body.

This was not merely an academic organization!

It was a group of lunatics willing to stop at nothing to achieve their goals!

His previous judgment of this organization had been far too optimistic.

Behind the thirst for knowledge and idealism displayed by Xu Qingsong, Lin Mu, and the others lay such bloody darkness.

Huo Yuhao slowly withdrew his spiritual power, his expression becoming incomparably grave.

"Sky Dream." Within his sea of spirit, he spoke in an unprecedentedly serious tone.

"What is it, kid? Scared?" Sky Dream Iceworm dropped its playful manner as well. "These humans really know how to get wild. They're far crueler than us soul beasts."

"Tell me, apart from accumulating years of cultivation, are there any other paths for soul beasts to grow stronger?" Huo Yuhao asked. "And regarding soul rings, aside from obtaining them by hunting, is there some deeper secret to them?"

He desperately needed power!

The kind of power that would allow him to completely seize control of his own fate!

"Other paths? Of course there are!" Sky Dream Iceworm's voice grew solemn as well. "Some powerful races can accelerate their growth by devouring heavenly treasures or sacrificing their own kind. As for soul rings... their essence is the combined source of a soul beast's soul and its lifetime of cultivation. Hunting is merely the crudest way of obtaining them..."

As he listened to Sky Dream Iceworm's explanation, Huo Yuhao's thoughts raced.

Within the Thought Palace, he unhesitatingly crossed out more than half of his original growth plan.

A brand-new path—more aggressive, but also more efficient—was taking shape.

"Sky Dream, put soul power cultivation aside for now."

"Huh? Why? Don't you want to level up quickly and equip a few more soul rings?" Sky Dream Iceworm asked in confusion.

Huo Yuhao's consciousness slowly opened its eyes, an icy, rational light flickering within them.

"I'm going to sharpen this 'blade' to its keenest edge first."