But because this technology connected directly to the brain, excessive stimulation could also cause brain injuries.
As for each Primary Spirit Ascension Platform having only 1,000 slots a month, that had never entered Xu Qingjia's considerations.
Xu Qingjia lay down inside the machine.
After a tingling sensation, his consciousness seemed to drift into sleep, then quickly awakened.
Bright sunlight spilled over lush branches and leaves, casting shadows across the earth. The fresh, rich breath of nature enveloped Xu Qingjia's senses, and blue skies and white clouds filled his vision. Though Mingdu's air quality regulations were quite strict, such beautiful natural scenery was virtually impossible to experience in that forest of steel.
"Find some prey."
After glancing at the exit device on his wrist, Xu Qingjia summoned Nether Moon, intending to have the little girl fly overhead and look for movement.
Just then, a series of "Ooh, ooh, ooh!" cries suddenly rang through the dense forest.
"Looks like there's no need."
Accompanied by rustling branches and leaves, two baboons, each two meters tall, appeared in a large tree not far ahead of Xu Qingjia. Their familiar forest home made their movements incredibly nimble, but no matter how fast they were, they could not escape Xu Qingjia's reactions, backed by his superior stats.
Yellowish-brown fur, brown eyes, long arms, and savage faces.
With his extraordinary memory since childhood and extensive reading, Xu Qingjia quickly identified them.
"Wind Baboons."
As the "god-slaying soul beast" that had once nearly slain a young God King beneath its claws, it had undoubtedly been a T0 pick in a former meta.
But...
"Soul Lock."
At Xu Qingjia's quiet command, a purple soul ring manifested beside his hand. A gray fissure suddenly appeared in midair, and with the clatter of dragging metal, an ink-black chain shot straight out like a roaming dragon.
"Ooh, ooh!" Its beastly instincts warned the hundred-year Wind Baboon targeted by the attack of immense danger. Its bloodthirsty desire to hunt instantly turned into the panic of flight, and without the slightest hesitation, it tried to flee into the forest behind it.
Clatter-
Just as the Wind Baboon leaped into the air, the ink-black python lashed viciously across its body.
Thud!
The dull sound rang through the quiet jungle. Blood and bone splattered in the sunlight as the man-sized Wind Baboon felt an immense force slam into its chest, as though tearing its body in two, folding it straight into a flip phone.
Everything happened within seconds.
"Ooh!" Seeing its companion smashed into pulp, the other Wind Baboon froze on the spot. But its survival instincts still sent it scrambling away without delay.
"Soul Hook."
Xu Qingjia fixed his gaze on the fleeing Wind Baboon. The soul-hooking Yama opened his eyes, and an invisible chain-python shot out like an arrow loosed from its bow.
A perfect bull's-eye.
The spiritual chain plunged into the Wind Baboon's body and coiled around it like a giant python. Its body, which had leaped into the air to flee quickly through the trees, was flung by its momentum into another tree like a heap of sludge. An invisible, illusory mass hung entangled at the other end of the invisible chain and was dragged toward Xu Qingjia.
Just another roadside nobody.
That Spirit Eyes boy from back then is almost a God King now. Wind Baboon, take a good hard look at whether you've been putting in the effort.
The Soul Hook chain casually crushed the Wind Baboon's soul. The two corpses and the red-and-white matter scattered across the ground dissolved into specks of light, some of which flowed into Xu Qingjia's body.
"Not much of an improvement."
Xu Qingjia carefully examined the change.
Killing soul beasts granted one-tenth of their age. For instance, each of the two Wind Baboons he had just killed was only a little over a hundred years old, giving him twenty years in total. Those twenty years had to be divided equally among all his soul rings, rather than adding twenty years to every ring. But he only had one soul ring, so that ring gained the full twenty years, and his soul spirit also gained twenty years.
But his first soul ring was already over four thousand years old.
Keep going.
Two Wind Baboons that knew nothing but running away were nowhere near enough to satisfy him.
Experiencing supernatural power so tangibly for the first time had left Xu Qingjia positively buoyant.
He strolled through the primeval jungle with such relaxed ease that he might have been out enjoying a spring outing.
The natives living here hid in the shadows, watching the intruder with eyes full of animal savagery, unaware that death's shadow had already enveloped them.
Clatter-
The invisible Soul Hook chain roamed around Xu Qingjia like an unseen dragon, harvesting one life after another.
Wherever Yama passed, only deathly silence remained.
His high-level Spirit Connection Realm spiritual power allowed Xu Qingjia to utterly overwhelm these ordinary hundred-year soul beasts.
Meanwhile, as Xu Qingjia harvested soul beasts and searched for stronger ones, the forest's original apex hunter had already noticed that a powerful foreign predator had entered its territory.
Eight long, two-meter legs allowed its relatively small body to flit through the trees like a phantom. Its gleaming black carapace provided natural camouflage in the shadows, and the spider spears stabbing into the ground revealed their sharpness. Eight small eyes glowing dimly within the white, human-face-shaped markings on its lower abdomen watched its prey.
Outside, Xu Shengqun and Shen Xi had already spotted the hunter emerging in the shadows.
"Between eight hundred and a thousand years," Xu Shengqun judged the Man Faced Demon Spider's age. "It can already hunt ordinary thousand-year soul beasts with ease."
"Should we..."
Force him out?
"Qingjia can handle it." A trace of worry flashed through Shen Xi's eyes, but she steadied herself.
No matter how she thought about it, her son could not possibly lose to a mere little spider.
Elsewhere.
"Hm?" Xu Qingjia sensed an unusual presence.
The ink-black chain coiled around his arm like a giant python.
"Go!"
Clatter!
Like a giant python entering hunting mode, the Soul Lock chain connected to an unknown space darted toward the shadows beneath several towering trees at tremendous speed.
"Hiss!"
A threatening hiss rang out.
An enormous white web suddenly shot from the shadows, its tiny gaps and incredible toughness trapping the Soul Lock chain outright. Just as Xu Qingjia dismissed this Soul Lock
chain, the hidden hunter slipped back into the shadows, its relatively small form moving rapidly through the trees.
"A spider-type soul beast?"
Whoosh-
Something sliced through the air behind him.
Clatter!
An ink-black chain thrust out of the unknown space and met it head-on, intercepting the spreading web in midair. Yet the chain, which could whip a hundred-year soul beast to death with sheer force, could not immediately break free of the white web's restraints.
Another, larger figure leaped from the shadows high in the trees. Its white, human-face-shaped markings seemed to grin viciously at Xu Qingjia, yet what met those eight dimly glowing eyes was inhuman composure and divine indifference.
Soul Hook.
Mermaid Duet.
Two invisible chains intertwined like roaming dragons and crashed straight into the Man Faced Demon Spider as it leaped through the air, unable to find purchase to change its position.
Soul Lock.
Thud-
After dismissing the soul skill and summoning it again, the soul-locking chain lashed the Man Faced Demon Spider's body aside, its soul already dragged out.
The meta's T1 pick, known as the nightmare of small soul beasts, hit the ground like a rag doll. After sliding across the grass for a while, it came to a firm stop before Xu Qingjia.
Show your face and get deleted!
Such was the sheer unfairness of the esteemed spiritual-type soul master.
Every attack dealt true damage.
No matter how high your armor was, it was utterly useless if you could not protect your soul.
Xu Qingjia checked his condition. After that bout of slaughter, his spiritual power was gradually tiring, and more than half his soul power had been consumed.
"I'll come back to grind levels next time."
Three or four hundred years gained, and a successful extraction!
The lush primeval jungle vanished from his sight.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the room brimming with technology.
"Qingjia, beautifully done," Xu Shengqun said with feeling. "A soul master barely past rank ten soloing a nearly thousand-year-old Man Faced Demon Spider. Even your father never managed that when he was young."
"Just luck," Xu Qingjia replied modestly.
He had benefited from the early-game advantages of being a spiritual-type soul master with top-tier resources.
For now, he still lacked close-combat options.
He certainly did not want an assassin picking him off as a squishy backliner.
Having achieved their objective, mother and son said their farewells.
Meanwhile.
Elsewhere.
Near the Xu Family's imperial palace in Mingdu.
Pedestrians hurried to and fro, as though someone had pressed fast-forward on all of Mingdu. If Shrek City was a gathering place for genius soul masters, then Mingdu was a gathering place for useful people. Here, talent and potential were all empty notions. Only by demonstrating one's usefulness could one remain in the Federation's political center.
One was an ivory tower for young geniuses; the other was the brutal competition of real society.
Yet one petite figure seemed completely at odds with the atmosphere around her.
Her naturally fluffy silver hair fell like a dazzling river of stars, and two braids swayed gently with her movements. A silver-white dress exposed her slender, fair calves, while her delicate feet, wrapped in white ankle socks, wore a pair of sneakers.
It was Na'er, who had been sent out on a mission.
Yet her adorable, exquisitely sculpted face was now filled with displeasure, her little mouth puffed into a sulky pout.
The hunger in her belly had left the little girl, so full of life back in the Star Dou Great Forest, looking rather forlorn and listless.
"Stupid Gu Yue, mean Gu Yue..."
Na'er muttered resentfully.
She was still just a baby of six years and over nine million months.
Heartless Gu Yue had actually thrown her into this enormous Mingdu all alone to carry out a mission.
Worst, worst, worst of all, she had not even given her any travel money, claiming it might expose her identity or something...
What was that supposed to mean? A little girl of unknown origins like her already had a suspicious identity to begin with!
Besides, she had supposedly been sent to carry out a mission, yet all she had been told was that her target was here. How was a little girl like her supposed to find her target in such a huge city?
"I can hear you." An extremely faint spiritual fluctuation came from the pendant hanging around Na'er's neck, which resembled a Silver Dragon scale.
"I didn't say anything wrong," Na'er retorted softly, disgruntled.
"Someone has appeared nearby."
After transmitting that faint spiritual fluctuation, the Silver Dragon scale returned to its ordinary appearance.
"Ugh."
A pitiful whimper escaped Na'er's cherry lips.
So what if someone was coming?
Clutching her stomach with both little hands, Na'er crouched pitifully by the roadside like an abandoned silver kitten, her bright silver eyes brimming with grievance.
She really was so hungry.