Lin Ming washed the stone clean with water. He hesitated for a moment, then picked up the axe from the ground and used its blunt side to gently tap the cubic stone. Not a single scratch appeared.
This was expected. The fact that this stone could remain perfectly intact inside the Golden Backed Pangolin's stomach was proof enough that its material was extremely hard. Lin Ming gradually increased his strength, and finally, he used all his might to smash it. In the end, both the axe and the anvil were dented, but the cubic stone didn't even have a chipped corner.
Holy shit!
Lin Ming was stunned. He had expected the stone to be hard, but not *this* hard. 'Just what in the world is this thing made of?'
Lin Ming couldn't make heads or tails of it. The stone was very strange, and its shape was peculiar. 'Perhaps some master of Artifact Refining forged it from some kind of incredibly hard material?' With this thought, Lin Ming casually slipped the stone into his pocket. If he really couldn't figure it out, it would make a nice decoration.
After putting away his tools, Lin Ming returned to the room assigned to him by the Da Ming Pavilion and began to rest.
He had practiced his punches for a whole day and then spent two hours on Bone Dissolving. Lin Ming was truly exhausted.
After a short session of meditation to regulate his breathing, Lin Ming, without even taking off his clothes, collapsed onto the bed and quickly fell asleep. The bed provided to the staff by the Da Ming Pavilion was very comfortable, and besides, the Military Lord's son wouldn't have the guts to cause trouble here.
Lin Ming slept soundly and peacefully. He had a very strange dream. In it, he saw a palace of Jade Mansions. Every single pavilion was actually crafted from beautiful jade, and the workmanship was so exquisite it was breathtaking.
Groups of beautiful women in flowing robes, all with exceptional bearing and looks, moved through the palace. Auspicious rare birds and beasts occasionally streaked across the sky. It was truly an Immortal Realm on earth.
Lin Ming had never seen such a beautiful palace, not even in a painting. But just then, the scene shifted. The beautiful palace collapsed with a thunderous roar. In the sky, countless overlapping figures appeared. Innumerable streams of light flashed between them. The lights looked beautiful, but when they fell upon the earth, thousand-zhang mountains were instantly annihilated!
The earth was torn asunder, and the heavens were dyed red by Demon Flames. A gigantic Array that covered a range of several hundred li appeared out of thin air, its various mystical symbols filling the entire sky.
A battle of this magnitude was simply beyond Lin Ming's imagination! Experts! Experts whose Realms he couldn't even begin to fathom! This was definitely not something that the Body Cultivation Stage or the Gathering Element Stage could compare to!
Every single person in the vision was an existence that Lin Ming couldn't even look up to. 'But where in the world could there be so many god-like figures?'
Then, the scene shifted again, changing to a world of ice and snow. A woman with an otherworldly disposition and celestial beauty held a one-inch cube, alone, facing tens of thousands of figures standing in the void.
This woman was standing less than three feet away from Lin Ming. Although he knew in his heart that this was all an illusion, Lin Ming could still clearly feel an incredibly powerful, yet sacred and gentle, aura from her!
What shocked Lin Ming the most was that the cube in the woman's hand was the very same strange stone he had found inside the Golden Backed Pangolin's stomach earlier that day!
The woman opened her mouth and spoke a string of words, but they were extremely indistinct. Lin Ming only managed to clearly hear two words: Magic Cube!
'Magic Cube?'
For some reason, the moment Lin Ming heard those two words, he immediately associated them with the cubic stone. 'Could it be that the stone's name is the Magic Cube?'
BOOM!
A ferocious explosion tore space apart. A massive vortex swirled across the entire sky. This vortex was infinitely powerful, sweeping across heaven and earth. Wherever it passed, mountains crumbled, space collapsed, and glaciers were instantly annihilated into nothingness. Within this terrifying vortex, the bodies of those tens of thousands of figures turned to dust, and their souls were churned into countless fragments and sucked into the Magic Cube!
And Lin Ming was standing right in the center of this storm, watching with his own eyes as the vortex swept away everything. Everything around him turned to ash, yet he himself was completely untouched. The feeling was impossible to describe in words, something he would never forget for the rest of his life!
Lin Ming felt he was covered in cold sweat. At this moment, he found himself in an incomparably vast, pitch-black space. Here, countless shimmering specks of light floated about like shattered mirrors. The specks varied in size; the large ones were the size of a palm, while the small ones were only the size of a grain of rice. And in the center of these countless specks of light, there was a one-foot-wide white sphere of light. The sphere emitted a hazy, soft, and holy halo.
Somehow, Lin Ming felt that the aura of this sphere of light was very similar to the aura of the holy woman he had seen before. No, it was exactly the same!
'Could it be that this sphere of light was formed from that holy woman?'
Lin Ming remembered that after the Space Storm erupted, the woman had transformed into a stream of white light and merged into the Magic Cube...
'A stream of white light... Could that be this sphere? Then is this place the inside of the Magic Cube? And these specks of light...'
Lin Ming sucked in a sharp breath of cold air. 'Could these specks of light be the fragments of the souls of those countless figures, which were shredded by the Space Storm and then absorbed into the Magic Cube?'
Lin Ming felt an incomparable shock!
He was wide awake now. Every scene that had just occurred was still vivid in his mind. Although his reason told him he was dreaming, he couldn't believe it was just a dream. Everything in it had been incredibly realistic. The world-destroying storm was still etched in his mind. How could an ignorant youth like him, who had never even seen a Peak of Meridian Condensation Realm master, possibly have such a strange, grand, and shocking dream?
'Then... could these illusions all be real? This strange stone called the Magic Cube once devoured countless experts so strong I can't even look up to them?'
Lin Ming couldn't imagine what nation could possibly possess so many experts whose auras alone were enough to suffocate him. He stared at the countless, multicolored specks of light floating scattered through the pitch-black space. After a long while, he hesitantly reached out his hand and gently touched the one closest to him—the smallest and also the dimmest.
The instant Lin Ming touched the speck of light, it suddenly shot into his fingertip. Before he could react, he felt as if a heavy hammer had smashed into his skull. He let out a muffled groan and fell directly to the ground.
"AAAAAH!"
Lin Ming clutched his head tightly. He felt as if something was desperately trying to drill into his brain. The heart-rending pain made him want to smash his own skull open just to get the thing out!
Irresistible! Lin Ming felt as if he was about to be devoured!
'Devoured?'
'That's right! That ownerless Soul Fragment is instinctively trying to devour my Spiritual Sea!'
"Damn it!"
Lin Ming realized this and felt a brief moment of panic, but he quickly calmed down. 'The fragment is just a tiny speck, and its master has long since died. How can I lose to such a small piece of ownerless consciousness!'
With a sudden roar, Lin Ming clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug deep into his flesh. 'Hold fast to my original intention! My Martial Arts Heart!'
'I've sworn to pursue the pinnacle of Martial Arts! How can I die here!?'
Lin Ming didn't know how to expel that ownerless remnant will. He could only grit his teeth and desperately resist. All sorts of chaotic scenes flooded his mind, and the inhuman pain nearly caused him to faint. But he continued to grit his teeth, holding on to the last shred of clarity in his mind, holding on to his unwavering Martial Arts Heart!
He didn't know how long this inhuman torture lasted before it gradually faded. Lin Ming finally woke up from his sleep. He opened his eyes to see the sky was already brightening. His whole body was soaked in cold sweat, and his palms were dripping with blood where his nails had dug in!
Seeing this scene, Lin Ming was one hundred percent certain that what had happened before was definitely not a dream. No nightmare could have such an effect.
He calmed his mind and thought about it, feeling a lingering fear. A person's Soul was composed of two parts: the Spiritual Brand and memories. A Soul with its Spiritual Brand erased was an ownerless soul, possessing only instinct. The speck of soul he had touched was only a fragment half the size of a grain of rice, and its light had been extremely dim, yet it had almost devoured him. It was simply too terrifying! If he had touched a larger fragment, he might have already become an idiot!
'That Magic Cube is just too dangerous!'
As Lin Ming thought this, his expression suddenly changed. 'Huh... in my mind...'
There was a lot of new stuff!
Magic Arrays... Inscriptions... Engraving... all sorts of strange symbols, mystical characters, and ancient weapon diagrams that radiated a powerful aura...
'What is all this?'
'Could it be the memories contained within that ownerless soul?'
This thought shook Lin Ming's Heart Spirit. He faintly realized that these memories might be a treasure of unimaginable worth...
Although the complex memories had entered Lin Ming's mind, they couldn't be accessed at will like his own memories. They needed to be sorted and integrated bit by bit.
Lin Ming first skipped over things like Arrays and Inscriptions. This information was somewhat fragmented and chaotic, and it all seemed to originate from a profession that involved engraving Inscriptions onto weapons.
For now, Lin Ming had no intention of studying this profession. He had more pressing and desired things to find. He continued to search, holding his breath, until at a certain moment, his spirit jolted. A Body Cultivation Stage, Body Cultivation Technique—the "Chaos Gang Fighting Scripture"!
An Inheritance Technique!
Why was the Celestial Fate Martial Mansion so much weaker than the Seven Profound Martial Mansion? It was because of their inheritance!