"Good, good, good! I never thought our Investigation Department would find such a promising talent this year..."
Yuan, make sure you take good care of Li from now on."
"Don't worry, Department Chief. I'll definitely take good care of him..."
Yuan Chengfang's face was full of excitement. After all, a prodigy like Li Feng was her subordinate.
If one of her subordinates became a powerhouse, she would share in the glory, wouldn't she?
Li Feng stood there watching the three of them discuss him, feeling so embarrassed that his toes nearly dug a three-bedroom apartment out of the floor.
He thought he was pretty good himself, but surely they were exaggerating?
Only after everyone's excitement settled did they begin preparing to grant Li Feng the Ghost Eye.
The atmosphere gradually grew solemn.
Bestowing and fusing supernatural entities was dangerous under any circumstances.
And Li Feng had only just reached perfected skin refinement.
Had Li Feng not easily controlled three supernatural Vengeful Ghosts without any problems, Wang Jianfeng might not have agreed.
Now that they had discovered Li Feng was a cultivation prodigy, everyone was naturally even more cautious.
They certainly didn't want the prodigy their Investigation Department had finally found to die at their own hands instead of falling to supernatural monsters and demons.
"Now, Li, have you decided where you want to fuse the Ghost Eye?"
Wang Jianfeng looked at Li Feng and asked.
"Yes. I'll fuse it into an eye too. My left eye..."
Li Feng named the location he had long since chosen.
Rather than trying to be different, he had decided to follow the crowd.
The popular choice might not be the best, but it was definitely the safest.
"All right. Stand in the middle."
Wang Jianfeng pointed to the center of the floor in the spacious Office.
Li Feng followed his gesture and only then noticed a circular design on the Office floor. At its very center was another circle, just large enough for one person to stand in.
That central circle was where Wang Jianfeng was pointing.
Without hesitation, Li Feng walked straight into the center of the circular design and stood there.
"Focus. Whatever happens next, you must hold your mind steady and not let anything outside disturb you..."
Once Li Feng was in position, Wang Jianfeng approached the circular design and gave him these solemn instructions.
"Understood!"
Li Feng nodded firmly.
The next instant, he saw Wang Jianfeng's eyes suddenly turn an eerie, pitch-black.
For a moment, Li Feng felt as though he had returned to the underground chamber at the Investigation Department's South City branch.
Under Wang Jianfeng's gaze, he felt stripped naked, with no secrets left to hide.
Forcing down his discomfort, Li Feng watched Wang Jianfeng continue.
Streams of Paranormal Entity power flowed from Wang Jianfeng's eyes.
Under his control, they fell into the circular design before him.
Hum!
In an instant, the circular design flared with a dim glow, enveloping Li Feng's entire body.
Viewed from above, the glow radiating from the circular design would have formed a deep, dark eye.
Li Feng stood at its very center, like another eye inside the eyeball, or perhaps its pupil.
Only this pupil sat in the center of the eyeball rather than at the corner where it would normally be, making it look distinctly like a Paranormal Entity.
Then the dim glow flickered slightly, as though the eye had blinked.
Streams of Paranormal Entity power slowly spread from that eye toward Li Feng.
Inside the circular design, as it lit up, Li Feng felt his surroundings instantly darken. Wang Jianfeng, Yuan Chengfang, and Zhou Xing vanished from sight.
The next instant, points of crimson starlight began flickering in the darkness around him.
When he looked closely, he realized with a shudder that they were no stars at all. They were eyes shining with crimson light.
Under the gaze of those crimson eyes, Li Feng felt as though he stood naked in a crowd, all his secrets exposed for everyone to see.
The next instant, another wave of dizziness struck him.
When the dizziness passed, he found that the space around him seemed to have changed.
In the distance, a single eye tens of thousands of feet tall hung in the air, wisps of crimson light seeping through its closed lids.
One look was enough to stir an irresistible urge to throw himself into it.
The instant Li Feng noticed the eye, countless illusions began forming in his mind. Crimson light filled his vision, and he felt as though eyes were pushing out of every part of his body.
Within his mind space, the doors to the Bedroom and Living Room remained tightly shut. Outside them, mind fog churned, resisting the invading eerie power.
Even so, all manner of illusions continued to surface in Li Feng's mind.
Fortunately, within the blink of an eye, streams of dim light rose around him.
In an instant, it was as though countless stretches of space had opened between him and that single eye.
Then, before Li Feng could process this succession of changes...
He saw a strand split off from the crimson glow shining through the closed lids of the eye, now separated from him by an endless distance, and shoot toward him.
Noticing it, Li Feng instinctively tried to dodge.
But an instant later, he caught himself and forcibly suppressed the impulse.
In a flash, that crimson light crossed the endless distance, reached Li Feng, and plunged straight into his left eye.
"Ngh!"
His left eye instantly became a crimson blur, and a fierce, swelling pain shot from it into his mind.
But he had already endured intense pain constantly during his daily cultivation.
He could therefore bear it now, letting out only a quiet grunt.
Outside the array, Yuan Chengfang and the others were surprised to see Li Feng merely frown and grunt, and approval showed on their faces.
Li Feng's rapid attainment of perfected skin refinement owed not only to his talent, but also to his diligence and willpower.
The cultivation methods of this world did produce various illusions and pain as they altered the body's fundamental nature.
But in truth, unless someone cultivated like Li Feng—using mind fog to forcibly merge with world spiritual force, channeling vast quantities into his skin, and even cultivating around the clock...
There would still be pain, but it would not be unbearable.
In other words, Li Feng had brought upon himself the pain that made his body tremble, and even the agony of being sliced apart during his breakthrough.
Still, it was not without benefits. It had tempered and strengthened his will, giving him an extraordinary tolerance for pain that would be immensely useful in battle.
In fact, some other prodigies, especially those who had awakened special abilities, cultivated in the same way as Li Feng.
They used their abilities to gather World Spiritual Force and forcibly channel it into their bodies, both to accelerate their cultivation and to temper their will.
However, they could not escape the onslaught of illusions during cultivation.
Their talent even allowed them to draw in more World Spiritual Force, making those illusions worse.
They could never cultivate around the clock like Li Feng.
Cultivating three to five times a day would already bring them close to their mental limits.
Thus, rather than saying Li Feng was a cultivation prodigy who reached perfected skin refinement in less than a month, it would be more accurate to say he had compressed the time into less than a month.
He might have spent less time cultivating than an ordinary person, but not by much. In that respect, he could not compare with other prodigies.
He had crammed an enormous amount of cultivation into a short period and advanced through sheer volume, rather than cultivating as effortlessly as eating and drinking like other prodigies.
Well, Li Feng could only be called the hardworking kind of prodigy.
After two or three breaths, Wang Jianfeng began withdrawing his power, and the Magic Array's power slowly weakened.
At the same time, the pain in Li Feng's left eye rapidly subsided, and his vision gradually cleared.
Once the dim glow around him disappeared, both the pain in Li Feng's left eye and the illusion of the giant eye vanished, and his sight returned.
He looked down. The circular design had disappeared, as though it had been erased along with the dissipating power.
A dim light flashed through his left eye as he looked at Wang Jianfeng, Yuan Chengfang, and Zhou Xing.
Instantly, Li Feng saw things he had never seen before.
A faint radiance enveloped the three of them, with wisps of power swaying around them like thin smoke.
Zhou Xing gave off a faint metallic sheen, wreathed in wisps of blood-colored mist.
There was also an extremely faint trail of cold, blood-colored light extending from where he stood and out through the door.
Yuan Chengfang was enveloped in a layer of moonlight, with red-and-white mist swirling around her.
A similar trail of red-and-white moonlight wound several times around the Office from where she stood before extending out through the door.
But when he looked at Wang Jianfeng, he seemed to see a blazing sun and nothing else.
A sharp pain instantly stabbed through his left eye, and a tear ran down his face.
Li Feng involuntarily squeezed both eyes shut.
"Heh, now you know. Don't go looking around carelessly for no reason..."
Seeing Li Feng's reaction, Yuan Chengfang chuckled and teased him, though her words also served as a warning.
"Mm, understood..."
Li Feng nodded, taking the lesson to heart. When he opened his eyes again, the Ghost Eye's power in his left eye had already gone dormant, and his surroundings had returned to normal.
Seeing how deftly Li Feng used the Ghost Eye's power, the three of them were surprised once more.
Sure enough, his control over supernatural Vengeful Ghosts far exceeded the norm. He was a promising Ghost Cultivator, and Wang Jianfeng's personal efforts to bestow the Ghost Eye had not been wasted.
"All right, you can go now!
Yuan, explain the precautions for using the Ghost Eye to him..."
After they stayed a little longer, Wang Jianfeng pinched the bridge of his nose and spoke with a smile.
Clearly, bestowing the Ghost Eye on Li Feng had not come without a cost.
Under normal circumstances, there would have been no need for the Investigation Department Chief to handle it personally.
It was only because Li Feng's circumstances were unusual that Wang Jianfeng had performed the procedure himself.
"Yes, Department Chief!"
"Thank you, Department Chief. Thanks for all your effort! I won't forget what you've done for me today..."
"Mm. Off you go!"
After thanking him several more times, Li Feng finally turned and left the office with Yuan Chengfang and Zhou Xing, chatting and laughing as they headed downstairs.
Before you continue