After the Third Elder personally escorted Xia Li out of Lingxu Cave Heaven.

  He even released his soul-force to thoroughly sweep the surroundings, confirming no one was following before preparing to return.

  However, Xia Li suddenly called out to the Third Elder. Sensing the Third Elder's oppressive soul-force up close had sparked Xia Li's curiosity.

  "Third Elder, please wait. I have a question about cultivation I'd like to ask you—may I?"

  "Go ahead."

  "It's about soul-force. What exactly is the difference between divine sense, divine thought, and soul-force?"

  On Earth, divine sense, divine thought, and soul-force had an evolutionary relationship. The public network already had plenty of explanations, but Xia Li still wanted to know how this world viewed soul-force.

  This was crucial, because Earth placed great importance on soul-force—it was the power that could help Heaven Chip break through its performance limits.

  He currently possessed divine thought, already a major advantage. Understanding soul-force in advance could only benefit him.

  "It's a process like a child growing up. A newborn infant only responds noticeably to touch—that's the most basic body-sense. Thus the first step in cultivating sense is inner visualization."

  "Then the infant opens its eyes, seeing the world for the first time. At that point, the infant begins to think, and thus develops thought. So the characteristic of divine thought is the soul opening its eyes."

  "When the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose are all developed, and understanding of the world reaches a rich and complete degree, will emerges—soul-will."

  The Third Elder used simple words to explain the relationship between the three. In other words, possessing divine thought in the path of the soul was merely equivalent to an infant that had just opened its eyes.

  "The Six Roots?"

  "Yes. When the Six Roots are perfected, the Three Souls are born. If you wish to cultivate the soul, you must also temper the Six Roots."

  "How to temper them?"

  "Eyes see reality, ears hear the void, nose scents guidance, mouth tastes qi, body harbors the source, and mind is never at peace."

  After the Third Elder finished, Xia Li fell into thought. This wasn't a direct method for tempering the Six Roots, but rather pointing to a direction.

  "May I ask Third Elder—why is the final one 'mind is never at peace'?"

  "Heh heh. If the mind were settled and body-spirit complete, why would one seek the Dao or pursue immortality?"

  The Third Elder patted Xia Li's shoulder, then vanished with a wave of his sleeve, leaving Xia Li alone to ponder the deeper meaning.

  However, the general direction for strengthening his soul was now clear—ears hear the void.

  But what ears to use to hear what void?

  The soul's eyes had already opened to perceive the Great Void, but the Great Void was actually real.

  Between this void and reality, he still needed to slowly comprehend the key.

  Waiting in place for a moment, Xia Li successfully activated the divine ability Realm Fusion, indirectly confirming no one was watching him, then closed his eyes and used the mysterious ring.

  One second...

  Two seconds...

  Even with eyes closed, he could see brilliant spots of light.

  Waiting for the spots to fade, Xia Li opened his eyes again. An indescribable stench immediately rushed into his nostrils.

  This was within the great garbage dump—a garbage hole beneath a garbage mountain.

  Xia Li reached out to push aside the garbage pile blocking the hole entrance. After crawling out, he looked at the unsightly surroundings and inexplicably felt a hint of familiarity.

  "Next... let's go to Sister Ke's place first."

  Ke Xiao's underground modification station was practically his base of operations. He needed to stop there first before doing anything else to feel at ease.

  Even if he wanted to contact Ke Xiao, he could reach her directly through Heaven Chip, but he still preferred face-to-face conversation.

  An hour later...

  Red Crowbar Sundries Shop.

  Xia Li pushed open the door and walked in. Ke Xiao was yawning and spacing out, who knows what she was watching in her head through Heaven Chip.

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  "Welcome... oh, you're back?"

  Ke Xiao had thought it was a customer. Her sundries shop did have legitimate business—selling legal small tools and consumables. The monthly profits were actually decent.

  "Weren't you heading deep into the danger zone, kid? Back so soon? Let me guess—did you realize your own weakness and retreat before even starting?"

  "No, it's something else."

  "What is it?"

  "Let's go downstairs to talk?"

  Xia Li felt talking in the shop wasn't safe.

  "What's so mysterious?"

  Ke Xiao yawned again before getting up. Her mental state looked poor—clearly she hadn't rested well.

  "Sister Ke, what happened to you? Insomnia?"

  "What insomnia? It's from last time. The mine, the old research facility, and what you experienced are all connected. The organization recently had me stay up investigating all the cryogenically frozen individuals' information from that research facility."

  "Oh?"

  Xia Li immediately became interested. He'd originally wanted to inquire about these matters, and it turned out the organization's upper levels were already on it.

  "Stop 'oh'-ing. Let's talk downstairs."

  Ke Xiao walked to the door, locked the shop, and led Xia Li into the underground modification station. But instead of immediately getting to business, she first went to make two cups of coffee.

  Before long.

  In the modification station's information room, Ke Xiao sat before a row of screens, coffee cup in hand, gesturing for Xia Li to come closer.

  "The organization has recently made new progress on the case of awakening frozen individuals. You're one link in this case. Before you, Corporate Union had already been doing this for some time."

  "I know that."

  After learning of Ning Ge's fate, Xia Li understood that Ning Ge had awakened at least nearly twenty years before him—after all, Lin Ge appeared to be sixteen or seventeen years old.

  "Then let's go back to the beginning—the mine. The ancient ruins within the mine... Qiming Mining had discovered them long ago but kept it hidden without excavating. That's very strange."

  "Through investigation, we discovered that unexcavated ancient ruins form a special energy field before being disturbed. It's an unknown phenomenon that develops in ancient ruins over time."

  "How to put it? It's like fermentation—a phenomenon that requires hundreds or thousands of years to form. The nearby spiritual energy becomes severely inactivated, becoming a different type of heterogeneous spiritual energy."

  "Currently, the organization has named it Desolation Qi. This heterogeneous spiritual energy has an obvious effect on living organisms—it suppresses biological activity, greatly slowing or even halting spiritual energy's influence on organisms."

  After Ke Xiao finished, she moved her fingers, and many photos and data appeared on the screens.

  Xia Li immediately examined them carefully. It was human body function data. Desolation Qi's greatest effect seemed to be "mortalification."

  "People born after Spirit Qi Resurgence—their parents' generation had already been transformed by spiritual energy, so we possess a certain level of spiritual power from birth that can resist Desolation Qi's effects. But..."

  Ke Xiao didn't finish, but the latter half was already very clear.

  People after Spirit Qi Resurgence could resist Desolation Qi. So people from before couldn't.

  How to find people from the past?

  Simple—find the old frozen individuals!

  "So my body has already been affected by Desolation Qi? Making Desolation Qi affect me was the key—mining was just a cover?"

  "You could say that. Compared to machines, bottom-level manpower doesn't even save much money. Unfortunately we didn't detect the anomaly in time."

  "But you were lucky. Before your body became spirit-severed, you blew up the mine shaft and damaged the ruins' protective array."

  "I see..."

  Making frozen individuals mine—how many spirit stones would that earn? What these people really wanted was to turn frozen individuals into Spirit-Severed Bodies.

  What exactly were they trying to do?