Fading Light Meditation Method

After hesitating for a moment, Luo Lin decided to go in and investigate.

Ancient ruins like this could very well contain valuable information or items.

He had Baha remain above the entrance to keep watch while he activated a simple illumination rune attached to his shoulder armor and carefully walked inside.

The interior was not large. It seemed to be an antechamber.

The floor was littered with decayed fragments of tools and dust.

There might once have been murals or inscriptions on the walls, but they had long since become indistinct.

His gaze swept across the corner before suddenly settling on a relatively intact metal cabinet.

The cabinet's surface was likewise covered in rust, but its latch appeared to remain intact.

Luo Lin tried prying it open with his dagger, but it did not budge.

He then tried channeling a thread of mana into it, but the latch still showed no reaction.

After thinking for a moment, Luo Lin recalled a simple unlocking technique recorded in ancient scrolls, one based on energy-frequency resonance.

He adjusted the fluctuations of his mana, imitating several common ancient energy frequencies and trying them one after another.

When he simulated the third frequency, a faint click sounded from inside the latch.

Luo Lin's heart leaped with joy. With a gentle pull, the cabinet door opened.

There was not much inside the cabinet.

There were several pieces of magic crystal debris that had long lost their energy, some heavily rusted metal components of unknown use, and a small stack of sheets made from a special waterproof and fireproof material, covered in ancient writing and diagrams.

Luo Lin picked up the stack of sheets, and the [Literacy] spell quietly began operating.

Obscure information flowed into his mind. These seemed to be fragments of experimental logs concerning "energy stability monitoring."

The writer complained about the increasingly unstable energy field of the secret realm, mentioned abnormal fluctuations in the Element Pool of the core region, and recorded several methods for drawing simple rune arrays used to temporarily stabilize energy fields.

Although this information did not involve any core inheritance, it provided valuable reference for his understanding of the secret realm's environment.

Those simple stabilizing runes in particular might prove useful when dealing with energy turbulence.

He carefully put away the sheets.

After leaving the small ruin, Luo Lin continued exploring.

Following the direction of the Element Pool mentioned in the experimental logs, he adjusted his route.

The farther he traveled in that direction, the more active the energy particles in the air became. Visible arcs of energy even began jumping through the air.

Suddenly, Baha let out a sharp cry, its Dark Gold Eye fixed firmly on a seemingly peaceful patch of scorched earth ahead.

Luo Lin immediately stopped, his mental power fully focused.

In his perception, an extremely concealed yet destruction-filled energy fluctuation lurked beneath that patch of ground.

It was an unstable energy node—or rather, a natural energy trap!

Luo Lin slowly backed away and circled around the area.

His heart tightened. The secret realm was indeed filled with deadly dangers at every step. One moment of carelessness could see him swallowed by these hidden threats.

Over the next two days, Luo Lin encountered danger several times.

Once, he accidentally entered an area where the flow of time was abnormal. He felt as though he had taken only a few steps, yet nearly half a day seemed to have passed outside. Cold sweat drenched him as he quickly withdrew.

Another time, Luo Lin encountered a group of metal constructs resembling giant scorpions, mutated by contamination from the secret realm's energy.

These constructs possessed extremely strong defenses and high resistance to acid attacks. Luo Lin had no choice but to use a [Corrosive Rune Bomb] to blast them into scrap metal, consuming quite a bit of mana himself.

There were gains as well.

Luo Lin found several strange crystals unique to the secret realm that contained unstable energy. Though they could not be used directly, they might serve as ingredients for certain special potions.

Inside a broken metal pipe, Luo Lin also discovered a small, perfectly sealed bottle of liquid shimmering with seven-colored light. Judging by its energy properties, it was very likely a high-purity [Elemental Harmonizer], an important supplementary ingredient for brewing many advanced potions.

Through Baha's keen senses and his own cautious exploration, he gradually developed a certain understanding of the area's environment and drew a simple map of the terrain.

On the afternoon of the third day, when he climbed over a low slope formed from piled metal wreckage, the sight before him made his breath catch.

Ahead lay a relatively open basin.

At the center of the basin was not the Element Pool he had expected, but an enormous bottomless pit.

The edges of the pit were irregular and torn, as if some terrifying force had forcibly gouged out a massive chunk of land.

The inside of the pit was not completely dark. Instead, heart-palpitating, multicolored energy turbulence continuously churned within it.

Violent energies collided and annihilated one another, producing deep roars. The occasional energy aftershock that splashed out instantly vaporized the rocks along the pit's edge.

At the center of that violent energy turbulence, several clusters of pure-colored, exceptionally dazzling light could vaguely be seen bobbing up and down.

The pure and immense elemental aura emitted by those light clusters made Luo Lin's Mental Sea resonate faintly even from such a distance.

"Elemental Essence!"

Luo Lin was almost certain.

Those clusters of light were precisely one of his primary objectives for this journey.

Yet as he looked at the all-devouring violent energy turbulence and the scorched remains scattered across the ground around the pit—clearly left behind by previous explorers—Luo Lin's heart sank.

This Element Pool had clearly gone out of control and run wild.

Obtaining Elemental Essence from it would be far more difficult and dangerous than he had imagined.

Luo Lin concealed himself behind the low slope and observed carefully.

The space around the pit was extremely unstable, with visible spatial ripples constantly spreading through the air.

The energy turbulence followed no pattern at all, sometimes swirling at the center and sometimes violently erupting outward.

Charging in directly would undoubtedly mean death.

He had to find a relatively safe moment—or a way to temporarily resist or guide the violent energy.

His gaze passed over the scorched remains at the pit's edge, then fell upon the stack of sheets in his hand concerning energy-stabilizing runes. An extremely risky plan slowly began taking shape in his mind.

Luo Lin took a deep breath, and his eyes sharpened.

He discovered that although the energy turbulence appeared completely irregular, the intensity and range of its eruptions seemed to have some faint connection with the movement trajectories of the Elemental Essence clusters at the pit's center.

When the essence clusters approached the edge, the turbulence was usually relatively calm.

When they sank deep into the center, the eruptions became most violent.

Perhaps... I can use that gap?

Luo Lin pondered.

But even during relatively calm periods, the energy turbulence at the edges was far beyond what he could withstand head-on.

He needed some additional means of protection or guidance.

He turned his gaze toward the scorched remains scattered around the pit's edge.

They were most likely belongings left behind by previous explorers. Perhaps he could find something useful among them.

During a lull between energy eruptions, he sprang out like a cheetah and rapidly approached the edge, sweeping several relatively intact remains with his mental power.

Most of the items had already been destroyed, but beside the remains of a metal box burned out of shape, he found a leather scroll case made from a special material that seemed to possess a certain degree of energy resistance.

The surface of the scroll case was charred black, but its structure was largely intact.

Luo Lin immediately picked it up and quickly retreated to a safe distance.

When he opened the scroll case, he found inside a tough scroll made from some kind of beast hide.

The words at the beginning of the unrolled scroll made Luo Lin's heart skip a beat.

Fading Light Meditation Method!

This was exactly the Advanced Meditation Method he had dreamed of!

But as he carefully read it using [Literacy], his excitement quickly cooled.

This Fading Light Meditation Method was indeed a meditation method that led directly to a First-Circle Wizard, but its contents... were incomplete!

It contained only about two-thirds of the full text. The most crucial portion concerning the guidance of mental-power crystallization, as well as the method for stabilizing the First-Circle realm afterward, was entirely missing.

There were obvious tears at the end of the scroll.

Of course it wouldn't be that simple...

Luo Lin sighed.

The value of an incomplete meditation method was greatly diminished.

Forcibly cultivating the incomplete portion might barely guide crystallization, but the risks were extremely high. Worse still, the road ahead would be cut off, practically amounting to ruining his own future.

That was likely one of the reasons this scroll had been left here.

To most people, it was like tasteless meat—better than nothing, but hardly useful.

Somewhat disappointed, Luo Lin put away the incomplete Fading Light Meditation Method.

Although incomplete, the first half's ideas on how to temper and compress mental power still gave him some inspiration and could serve as reference.