Dark Energy

Biodata

Power Progression

• Scope: Jiang Ziliu’s documented dark energy development illustrates its accumulation, purification, and relationship to rank. Dark energy itself is not a ranked individual.

Nature and Distribution

• Universal presence: Dark energy permeates the universe like a boundless ocean, giving rise to the name “dark energy sea” 1.
• Supernatural foundation: Both tamed-beast growth and beast-tamer strength depend on it 1.
• Variable concentration: Dungeon Spaces contain five to ten times the concentration found on Blue Water Star. Opening them can raise the surrounding base’s dark energy level 7.
• Artificial concentration: Pattern arrays in public energy chambers increase local density, supporting awakening and rapid energy recovery 1 22.
• High-grade Dungeon Spaces: The SSS Grade Dungeon Space entered by Jiang Ziliu has a dark energy level nearly ten times that of the outside world or greater 147.
• Depleted regions: Some western wastelands have such thin energy that powerful visitors lose their own reserves rather than replenish them. The region Jiang Ziliu investigates drains his energy until only a Bronze-level amount would remain 137.
• Human energy attributes: Human beast tamers’ energy has no designated single attribute; it is more accurately described as possessing an all-element chaos attribute 152.

Dark Energy Springs

Dark energy springs arise when unstable gravity from massive celestial bodies or powerful spacetime disturbances open fissures into the chaotic void between the Positive and Negative Universes. Violent energy pours through these fissures, producing unusually energy-rich star fields 186.

• Regions containing springs can have energy levels 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 times those of other star fields 186.
• Such environments are unsuitable for ordinary life, but support powerful lifeforms, rare resources, and certain higher-dimensional spaces 186.
• An Ancient Battlefield requires at least three nearby dark energy springs to sustain its existence. Without sufficient energy, it becomes unable to resist void turbulence and is destroyed 186.
• A greater number of springs, or springs of higher quality, supports a more powerful Ancient Battlefield. The Barbaric Star Region’s three springs sustain a Demigod Rank battlefield 186.
• Spring eruptions can generate dangerous spatial-turbulence shock waves 186.

Cultivation Mechanics

Contract Mark Awakening

• High concentrations temporarily enhance soul strength while nourishing the soul 1.
• Public awakening chambers use this effect to assist sixteen-year-olds in awakening their Contract Marks 1.
• Awakening a Contract Mark does not necessarily grant an immediate personal energy reserve: Jiang Ziliu initially has no dark energy because his first beast has not hatched and supplied feedback 2.

Contract Feedback and Soul Stars

• Contract feedback delivers dark energy through the Contract Mark. During Jiang Ziliu’s first feedback, it flows through his meridians, strengthens his body, and gathers in his sea of consciousness to ignite Soul Stars 3.
• Feedback from different contracted beasts can stack, while their later growth can supply additional increases 6 12.
• Each major rank has nine primary Soul Stars forming a Soul Domain. These stars determine how much dark energy the soul can contain 14.
• At Gray Rock Grade, Jiang Ziliu must increase his energy from 4.6 to 5.0 to light the fifth Soul Star and reach Five-star Gray Rock Rank 3.
• His Black Iron breakthrough lights the first Soul Star on the second layer. Black Iron energy quantity generally ranges from 10 to 100 27.
• The stated rank sequence is Gray Rock → Black Iron → Bronze → Silver → Gold → Diamond → Supreme 2.
• A breakthrough can increase energy capacity before the actual reserve catches up. After reaching Six-star Bronze, Jiang Ziliu has 236.3 points against a proper level of 657.1; his Soul Stars continuously absorb ambient energy to fill the difference 53.
• Beast tamers and their beasts have a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. If all contracted beasts exhaust their growth potential and cannot advance, the beast tamer also encounters an advancement bottleneck 126.
• Beyond Supreme Rank, the Demigod breakthrough unifies life force, dark energy, and soul power into a higher form of power 178.

Hidden Soul Stars and Energy Quality

Each major realm also contains nine Hidden Soul Stars. Unlike primary stars, they purify energy rather than store it 14.

• Activation: Soul power controls dark energy to ignite a Hidden Soul Star. Jiang Ziliu uses a Soul Crystal to support this process 22.
• Circulation: Each awakened Hidden Soul Star links with its corresponding primary star, forming a binary-star Lesser Celestial Circuit 22.
• Compression: Energy passing through these circuits decreases in quantity but rises in quality. A falling numerical value therefore does not necessarily indicate declining strength 22.
• Full foundation: The biography Jiang Ziliu discovers states that opening all nine gives energy five times the quality of ordinary same-rank beast tamers, while substantially strengthening the soul and enabling an additional beast contract 14.
• Recorded comparison: After entering Black Iron Grade, Jiang Ziliu estimates that one point of his energy is equivalent to about 1.7 points of another beast tamer’s energy 27.
• Repeated refinement: Opening the nine Black Iron Hidden Soul Stars produces another nine Lesser Celestial Circuits and further improves his energy quality before his Bronze breakthrough 53.
• Cross-realm foundation: By Silver Rank, opening Hidden Soul Stars in three successive realms has given him dark energy quality spanning nearly a major realm, alongside similarly exceptional soul strength 62.

Recovery

• Concentrated environments accelerate replenishment, including recovery from the compression caused by Hidden Soul Star awakening 22.
• Public dark energy chambers are available to beast tamers for a fee, specifically allowing rapid restoration 22.
• After exhausting 90% of his reserve through Electromagnetic Cannon practice, Jiang Ziliu recovers half his energy over three hours 32.
• His battle against the Blood Eye Adventure Group completely depletes his energy and leaves him mentally exhausted; he expects to need at least three days to recover 45.
• Recovery to a newly increased capacity need not be immediate: his Bronze reserve reaches 657.1 three months after he settles into a stable life 61.
• Energy preservation remains important at higher ranks. While searching for the Origin Divine Ship, he keeps nearly one-fifth of his reserve available and recovers before attempting to retrieve the treasure 147.

Diamond Rank Transformation

Gold, Diamond, and Supreme are described by the Forging Throne as the Three Steps of God Forging: Gold transforms life and the body, Diamond transforms energy, and Supreme transforms the soul 139.

• Compression and state change: At Diamond Rank, absorbed and controlled dark energy is compressed toward a higher state. Jiang Ziliu’s energy becomes liquid and acquires characteristics of Quasi-Divine Power, improving the fineness of his perception 139.
• Attribute sublimation in beasts: Thousand Faces transforms her energy by gradually merging life energy from Tree of Life leaves, Water of Life, and Tree of Life sap into it. Her resulting life-attribute dark energy possesses tremendous vitality even when released without a skill 152.
• Complete conversion: All of a beast’s dark energy must undergo this enhancement before its nourishment raises the beast into a Diamond Rank lifeform 152.
• Repeated transformations: Each additional star within Diamond Rank involves another small-scale transformation of the beast’s entire dark energy reserve 152.
• Risk and duration: Insufficient talent, bloodline, or willpower can cause backlash and regression to Gold Rank or lower. Thousand Faces’ first transformation takes nearly three years 152.
• Automatic transformation in beast tamers: Contract patterns and universal laws automatically handle the corresponding transformation of a human beast tamer’s all-element chaos energy; the tamer does not have to manually perform the attribute-conversion process required of beasts 152.

Demigod Conversion

At the Demigod breakthrough, life force, dark energy, and soul power merge within the Divine Kingdom, becoming a unified higher force. Although described as divine power, this Demigod Rank energy is more precisely half divine power or quasi-divine power, rather than true divine power 178.

• Continued energy source: Demigods primarily extract power from ambient dark energy and convert it into half divine power through their Divine Kingdoms 178.
• Production rate: An ordinary demigod cultivates approximately one drop per month. Jiang Ziliu’s exceptional foundation permits 1,000 drops per month 178.
• Storage and expenditure: Half divine power can be stored in the Divine Kingdom and allocated to strengthening the divine body, divine soul, or contracted beasts 178.
• Cultivation aids: Certain Demigod medicines, resources, and special artifacts increase production 178.
• Further advancement: Nine lightning tribulations and nine transformations of half divine power are required before it becomes true divine power 178.

Applications and Limitations

Skill Fuel

Efficiency and Suppression

• Attribute compatibility: An earth-attribute weapon is easier and cheaper for the Azurite Rock Man to carry through its skills than a metal-attribute weapon 11.
• Established skills: Using related abilities for an operation that is not itself a skill can be inefficient. The Azurite Rock Man’s tunnel construction costs three to ten times as much energy as a normal skill 20.
• Transformation exceptions: The Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit’s dedicated plant and animal transformations make it a genuine plant or animal without continuous energy consumption, unlike Flesh Shapeshifting 40.
• Summoning restriction: Suppressing both dark energy and mental power to extremely low levels prevents the captured elf from summoning her contracted beasts 50.
• Soul-guided precision: Strong soul power enables efficient, precise dark energy control, including changing the trajectories of electromagnetically accelerated knives at high speed 125.
• Variable judgment costs: Jiang Ziliu’s attempt to locate his eldest brother exceeds his maximum reserve. Subsequent judgments about the Gray Light Area consume nearly one-tenth and nearly three-quarters of his energy respectively 137 138.
• Ambient absorption blockade: The Origin-Sealing Meteorite Crystal seals the surrounding dark energy so that people in its area cannot absorb it. Human authorities deploy it against the Jiang Family 140.

Detection and Residual Traces

• Residual signatures: Dark energy left behind can identify a practitioner’s presence. Nangong Qingliu extracts a trace belonging to Jiang Ziliu from Thousand Faces’ evolution site even after he has cleaned up his residual energy 116.
• Limits of cleanup: Supreme Rank beings can recover remnants that Jiang Ziliu at the time cannot completely remove 116.
• Detection thresholds: Warning devices can detect energy fluctuations, but sufficiently faint fluctuations evade them. A Kun bypasses the Jiang Clan’s underground energy and spatial-energy alarms in this way 133.
• Refined perception: Jiang Ziliu’s liquid energy has some characteristics of Quasi-Divine Power, enabling him to discern subtle presences and hidden arrangements in finer detail 139.

Energy-Bearing Resources

• Elemental Crystal quality depends on impurities and energy density, ascending through D, C, B, A, S, SS, and SSS 3.
• Soul Crystals are distinct from dark energy crystals: they consist of high-quality soul power and support Hidden Soul Star awakening 14 22.
• Jiang Ziliu mines 326 A-grade fire-attribute Elemental Crystals over three days, illustrating their occurrence in natural mineral deposits 58.
• For Diamond evolution, beginning with weaker resources before stronger ones helps manage the resistance to evolution that develops through continued absorption 152.

Effects on the World

Mutation and Ecology

• Native plants and animals can evolve into exotic beasts in dark energy environments 15.
• Dark energy can make otherwise disadvantageous mutations beneficial. A two-headed snake, for example, can gain greater strength and growth potential under its influence 5.
• Purple-Patterned Leeches evolved individual-fission reproduction in energy-rich environments; surviving tissue fragments can regenerate into smaller leeches 15.
• Some beasts use dark energy for perception. Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves sense the life fields of other exotic beasts through it 17.
• Lingering resentment from beings with sufficiently powerful souls or strength can condense with ambient dark energy into Sha Qi. Jiang Ziliu observes vast quantities of this power in an Ancient Battlefield 198.

Environmental and Planetary Change

• Dark energy activity produces unusual natural conditions, including mountains combining snow and lightning where Snow Thunder Treasure Ginseng grows 39.
• During the Great Cataclysm, its mysterious influence caused the planet to expand nearly tenfold, greatly increasing distances between human bases 47.
• In the western wastelands, old battles involving super-high-energy-state nuclear weapons and catastrophic beast attacks shattered something in the region. Although radiation eventually dissipated, its dark energy failed to recover 137.
• The region’s persistent depletion is explained by a natural connection to the Negative Universe: local dark energy is continually consumed neutralizing incoming gray light energy 137.

Infrastructure

• Dungeon Space gateways incorporate dark-energy runes, precious essence crystals, and high-level beast cores 7.
• Bases invest heavily in Dungeon Spaces partly because their higher energy concentrations and resource production support long-term development 7.
• The Jiang Clan uses cave-patterned dark energy silver, an alloy extracted from mutated Cave-Patterned Metal-Eating Bears’ metallic waste, in warning devices sensitive to dark energy 133.
• Bone towers built around Void-Eyed Sparrow eyeballs detect spatial dark energy fluctuations, providing another form of intrusion warning 133.

Negative-Universe Energy and Gray Light Areas

The Negative Universe also contains dark energy, but its energy has sinister, anomalous properties and appears as gray light to beings at the Forging Throne’s level. Areas infiltrated by this foreign energy are called gray light areas 137.

• Universal neutralization: Under the universe’s rules, normal dark energy prioritizes combating gray light energy. Continuous neutralization can leave surrounding regions chronically depleted 137.
• Natural connection nodes: A persistent gray light area indicates a natural spacetime fissure connecting the two universes 137.
• Contamination: Gray light energy is dangerous contamination for normal life and is extremely difficult to remove once acquired 137.
• Hazard to both sides: Low-grade gray light energy is continually neutralized in the region Jiang Ziliu explores. The resulting instability makes it unsuitable for survival or travel by either normal-universe life or Negative-Universe beasts 137.
• Conversion by invading beasts: Negative-Universe exotic beasts can convert their power into normal-universe dark energy by devouring an intelligent lifeform from the normal universe. This also grants intelligence and greater growth potential 137.

Ancient Battlefield Energy

Ancient Battlefields sustain a more complex energy environment than an ordinary concentration of dark energy. Positive-Universe energy and Negative-Universe energy combine amid conflicting and fusing rules, generating higher-grade ambient energy resembling Origin Rank energy 226.

• Energy quality: The resulting energy can reach one hundred-millionth, one ten-millionth, or one millionth of Origin Rank energy quality 226.
• Spacetime structure: This environment supports multilayered spacetime and makes spacetime over a million times more stable than in either universe 226.
• Resource transformation: Plants, animals, rocks, and minerals undergo qualitative improvement. Some resources exist only in this environment and degenerate if removed to the outside universe 226.
• Elevated wellsprings: Positive-negative energy wellsprings are higher forms of dark energy wellsprings. These quasi-Origin Rank sites support Origin Rank cultivation and are highly contested 226.
• Limits of equivalence: These mixed energies and wellsprings are higher-order developments, not merely ordinary dark energy at greater density 226.

Deeper Cosmological Context

Blue Water Star’s unusually stable spacetime conceals three immense Ancient Battlefields where the powers of the Positive and Negative Universes’ Seas of Origin collide directly. These sites reveal mysteries beyond the scope of ordinary laws and are dangerous even to Kings of Origin 250.

• The Ancient Tortoise of Time conjectures that the two universal wills use these collisions to probe and learn the mysteries of each other’s power 250.
• The universes themselves do not operate according to moral categories of good and evil; their interaction serves their capacity to accommodate more phenomena and grow 250.
• At these collision sites, manifested rules provide exceptional cultivation opportunities for Origin Rank beings, but prolonged exposure causes rule-level injuries 251.
• The Positive Universe’s rules are characterized as relatively stable and ordered, while those of the Negative Universe are characterized by absolute motion and disorder 251.

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