Chapter 347 - 296: The Clan Leader’s Sea of Spirit
The night was deep.
In the Laboratory, only a single Crystal Wall Lamp was lit, its halo of dim yellow light enveloping a corner of the lab bench.
Ian sat cross-legged in the meditation area, his Spiritual Power sinking into his Sea of Spirit.
The Crystal Core rotated slowly, the Star Orbit patterns on its surface glimmering with a faint silver light.
The Starry Sky Festival Meditation Method cycled through his consciousness as countless stars arranged themselves into formations above his Sea of Spirit.
Each star drew in the intangible Star Force from the Void.
HUMMM...
The boundaries of his Sea of Spirit expanded slightly.
The resonance between the stars was clearer than usual. He could feel that the Star Force was exceptionally active tonight.
It was as if something... was responding to him.
Just then, deep within his Sea of Spirit, the Runic Mark he had just solidified using the Potion suddenly trembled lightly.
The tremor was extremely faint, like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings.
But Ian’s Perception was exceptionally sharp.
He "saw" an extremely fine, inky-black Energy Thread appear on the Rune’s surface.
The thread twisted and squirmed, carrying a familiar, nauseating aura.
’Abyssal contamination...’
In the depths of his consciousness, Ian’s pupils contracted sharply.
Almost simultaneously, the panel vibrated silently!
At the edge of his vision, dark red text appeared like bloodstains.
[Abyssal Contamination Energy detected...]
[Analyzing Pollution Source strength...]
[Warning: Contamination Level has exceeded threshold...]
[Contamination Level: Level Four (Morning Star Level)]
[Contamination Type: Abyssal Will Infiltration (Primary), Flesh Curse (Secondary), Bloodline Mutation (Carrier)]
[Contamination Spread: 87%]
[Core Contaminant: Center of the Sea of Spirit, Abyssal Tentacles (Active Stage)]
[Recommendation: Immediately sever the connection or break close contact. Otherwise, the contamination strength will exceed your current Purification limit.]
The last line of text hadn’t even fully appeared.
The scene before Ian’s eyes suddenly shattered!
Before him was a... suffocatingly vast space.
No, it couldn’t be called a space.
There was no up or down, left or right. There were no boundaries, only an endless, twisted "existence."
The sky was dark purple, like congealed blood.
The ground was grayish-white, its surface covered in cracks. From the depths of every fissure flowed an inky-black, viscous liquid.
Countless tiny Tentacles, invisible to the naked eye, extended from the Void, squirming slowly all around.
The surfaces of the Tentacles were covered in small, fleshy nodules. The nodules split open, revealing densely packed eyeballs inside.
The eyeballs swiveled, the depths of their pupils reflecting scenes of madness, pain, and despair...
Burning cities, collapsing mountains, and shattered stars.
And... countless twisted human faces, each one screaming silently.
’This is...’
Ian’s consciousness hovered at the edge of this space.
He looked down to "see" his own "body."
There was no physical form, only a halo of faint silver light.
Countless tiny specks of starlight swirled around the halo’s edge, forming a thin, protective shield.
Outside the shield, the inky-black Tentacles lunged frantically, crashing against the starlight with a corrosive SIZZLE.
With each impact, the starlight dimmed a little.
’This is... Titus Justice’s Sea of Spirit...’
Ian understood.
He had entered Clan Leader Titus’s spiritual world through the Solidified Mark.
This was the very depth of the consciousness of the Level Three Peak Wizard, the Clan Leader of the Justice Clan.
It should have been a vast, orderly spiritual palace filled with the Power of Time.
Now, however, it had been reduced to a den of Abyssal contamination.
Ian’s gaze swept across this twisted space.
In the distance, he could vaguely make out some ruined "Runic constructs."
They were huge, translucent crystal fragments.
Sealed within each fragment was a complex Witchcraft Model.
Some fragments were still slowly rotating, the Runes on their surfaces occasionally glowing faintly.
But the light was quickly extinguished by the swarming inky-black Tentacles, like a snuffed-out candle flame.
Even farther away, the phantom of a shattered clock floated.
The clock’s face spanned over a hundred meters in diameter. Its hands were broken, and the dial was etched with ancient Time Trace patterns.
’This is... the bloodline imprint of the Justice Clan.’
Right now, the clock’s surface was crawling with inky-black hyphae. The filaments squirmed, slowly eroding the golden luster on the edge of the clock face.
Every time the hour hand trembled, dark red liquid would seep from cracks in the face and drip down.
Below, a bottomless pit had been corroded into the grayish-white ground.
’The Abyssal contamination... has already eroded the very source of the bloodline.’
A chill rose in Ian’s heart.
Level Four Contamination...
This meant that the Abyssal Erosion within Titus’s body had already reached the intensity of the Morning Star Wizard Level.
Under normal circumstances, when a Level Two Wizard faced this kind of contamination, their consciousness would be instantly devoured and assimilated.
But Ian was different.
He "looked" toward the core of his faint silver halo.
There, the phantom of a small panel floated silently.
Around the edge of the translucent Light Curtain, faint golden Runes swirled.
The structure of the Runes was complex to an extreme degree; each stroke embodied some kind of Rule that defied comprehension.
Right now, the panel was releasing ripples of an extremely faint, yet incredibly resilient, orderly fluctuation.
Wherever the fluctuations passed, the surrounding inky-black Tentacles retreated frantically, as if they had met their natural enemy.
But they soon surged forward again, endless like the tide.
’Is my panel’s rank... higher than that of the Abyssal Will?’
’No, that’s not right. This isn’t even a sliver of a projection of the Abyssal Will.’
The thought flashed through Ian’s mind.
But he had no time to ponder it, because a scene even farther in the distance captured his full attention.
In the center of this twisted space...
...floated a massive Crystal Core, over a hundred meters in diameter.