Chapter 154: Holy Light Perpetual Motion Machine
After a bout of extreme tug-of-war and shirking, Yuan Zhu still endured a foul smell and arrived at the abandoned second floor. Standing in the corridor and looking both sides, more than 50 listless disabled goblins were divided into three groups and imprisoned in different rooms.
Their necks were tightly bound by iron chain shackles, with the other end of the chains nailed to the wall. Each one was either missing an arm or leg, or had severe internal injuries, broken bones or damaged internal organs, listlessly eating nonstop.
As for the food (swill), and the environment at the imprisonment site, it was truly indescribable, a horrific sight.
No wonder Lu Rang said it was about to “explode the warehouse,” which was practically a beautified term. If he were to describe it, it was truly a cesspit hell. The air was filled with a stench, yet it didn’t affect the goblins’ enthusiasm for eating at all.
Looking at it more would make one’s eyeballs explode. So Yuan Zhu decisively retreated, averted his gaze, and began worrying about how to clean up this group of trash and bring them back to the haunted house. And given their state, did they still have any experimental value?
“Snake Snake, I have a question. Last time I also captured a batch of goblins. Among them, Group A stayed in the haunted house for ‘shadow pollution observation experiment,’ why haven’t I seen them become this troublesome?”
Little Spicy Stick responded in his mind: “Naturally, there are kind little fairies you can’t see, quietly coming out at night like U.S. child labor to secretly do the work.”
“???”
Yuan Zhu was startled upon hearing this: “The haunted house still hides ‘fairy tale little fairies’ I don’t know about?!”
“…” Spicy Stick was stunned for a moment, “Are you dumb? I was just saying it casually. Actually, it’s the eggplant head ghosts. You left them in the haunted house, so naturally they clean the hygiene. As for the goblins in the disease garden, that bit of biochemical attack was long since reversely devoured and digested by disease pollution.”
“It’s eggplant ghosts, do they also hide the attribute of ‘poop-eating ghosts’?”
Thinking of this, Yuan Zhu’s face was full of disgust and loathing, even making him feel the tiger demon was unclean.
Spicy Stick comforted: “You’re overthinking it. It’s the shadow eggplant vines released by the eggplant ghosts that digest and decompose the filth. Shadow eggplant, though twisted into shadow life, still possesses strong plant characteristics. Plants decompose poop and absorb nutrients, isn’t that normal? The walls, floor, and roof of the haunted house are full of shadow eggplant root tendrils, forming a primitive barrier prototype, absorbing mere organic filth is a piece of cake.”
Hearing this, Yuan Zhu breathed a sigh of relief and said satisfiedly: “Now my mind is clear. It’s a pity the eggplant ghosts are all staying in the haunted house, otherwise they could clean this batch of goblins. Whatever, I’ll leave them here for now, and come pick up the goods in the afternoon.”
Yuan Zhu decided to head back to the haunted house right away, bring the professional cleaners to purify the site, and said to Lu Rang at the same time: “I’ve memorized the place. I’ll arrange manpower to pick up the goods in the afternoon. Let’s leave now.”
Lu Rang: “Brother Yuan, you’re not going to inspect it more carefully?”
“No need, I trust you.”
“Alright then, I’ll give you the key to the first floor door lock, and the keys to unlock this group of goblins’ chains. Next, should I continue acquiring goblins?”
Yuan Zhu nodded: “Of course continue!”
Lu Rang looked at the ‘goblin rolling hell’ he had personally created before him, his mentality somewhat collapsing. He really didn’t want to step in dragging the chains again: “But the environment here is too awful. How about we switch to another abandoned building and start over?”
Yuan: “About that, no need. I’ll arrange a professional team to clean up. In the future, no matter if newly captured or bought goblins, imprison them here. I’ll come regularly to pick up goods. If I can’t pick them up in time and it’s about to explode the warehouse, just timely notify me with ‘mouse mouse’.”
“Got it.”
The two chatted while walking out of the abandoned building, re-locking the iron gate with the large door lock, and both left this smelly demon’s den.
“Right, Big Brother Yuan, was your mission this time stimulating? What did you encounter? Can you tell me?”
Yuan Zhu checked the time, it was almost 1:30 PM. Although he had eaten and drunk heartily in Yellow Millet Town, the food and alcoholic beverages there could only nourish spirit and consciousness, having no effect on satiating the physical body.
So he hooked one arm around Lu Rang’s neck, pulling him toward the bustling street while walking and talking:
“Let’s go! Find a restaurant, I’ll tell you slowly. This bubble world is not ordinary. It has clothing materials needed by Mao Mao King, and also a vast potential consumer market. In the future, our Happy Home will establish close ties with the bubble world for key development. You and I will go back and forth to this world multiple times.”
Lu Rang asked curiously: “Brother Yuan, what’s so special about this bubble world?”
Yuan Zhu: “It’s quite special! You’ve read a lot of cultivation novels, so you should understand the meaning of Heavenly Dao, right? The Heavenly Dao of this bubble world is interwoven from three fallen filthy supernatural roots, not only remnants of Kunlun Immortal Path, knight system undead pollution after death, but also qi refining insect cultivators of ‘entering the dao through martial arts’.”
“It’s a world with scale, historical heritage, and pollution degree far surpassing Little Xihong Realm. It once had a glorious history, but now it’s on the edge of doomsday extinction. The surface ecosystem is completely destroyed, heavenly disasters rage, hard to survive; almost all life lives underground, coexisting with multiple pollution erosions, forming a unique pollution balance.”
In a private room of a restaurant, Yuan Zhu took over Meng Xiyue’s banner and began boasting to his little brother about his experiences and sights in the underground world.
The underground world centers on three pollution systems, rejecting Holy Light but inclusive of shadow and knowledge school, affinity with Zhou Chu’s law knight system.
For Lu Rang who cultivates flying sword, there is neither amplification nor suppression weakening. Probably like sitting at the same table as tiger demon and Meng Xiyue.
His sword cultivator path gains little benefit from the qi refining system. But the underground world produces bug gold resources, which can be used to refine ritual implements, even reinforce flying swords, counting as an opportunity.
Yuan Zhu remembered that in the technician alliance, there was an iron weapon depot specialized in ritual implement/weapon forging. Perhaps it could become Lu Rang’s opportunity?
So he planned around this direction, devising strategies for the other. Planning to pull Lu Rang as his lackey next time back to the underground world, doing free labor for him. And he only needed to slightly help, using bug gold to upgrade the youth’s pipe wrench flying sword a bit.
The youth listened excitedly and hurriedly responded: “Brother Yuan, when I attended classes at the security bureau, I learned that senior sword cultivators often need to collect precious metals, especially active metals to incorporate into flying swords, further enhancing the flying sword’s spirituality and endowing it with life characteristics. This bug gold, I think it’s a rare kind of active metal.”
Yuan Zhu, not knowledgeable in this area, asked directly: “Are there many types of active metals?”
Lu Rang nodded: “Many, and divided into different factions. From what I heard, there’s golden law’s ‘divine gold’; some food miner’s ‘chief copper’; knight system’s ‘source steel’… Different active metals all have corresponding pollution roots, not easily refined.”
“Sword cultivators wanting to refine swords must find specialized ritual refinement methods according to the flying sword’s own attributes and school, then calculate and select corresponding metals to perform sword refining. One misstep could lead to reverse pollution risk, very high risk. Fortunately, my pipe wrench isn’t an innate flying sword, and bug gold isn’t some terrifying pollution metal, so I can exchange for a sword sacrificing technique to try.”
…
This meal took a full 2 hours. Yuan Zhu, who boasted crazily throughout, slowly waved goodbye in the adoring gaze of his fanboy, and agreed that if time allows, they’d adventure in the sewer together, guide cultivation, deepen friendship, and cultivate tacit understanding.
Having successfully cast the seal, he also wanted to return to the sewer to test his current strength. But the premise was first condensing the soul crystal, opening a true exclusive storage space of his own. Otherwise, travel was too inconvenient.
At 4 PM, Yuan Zhu rented a small pickup truck at the second-hand market, then returned to the haunted house and took away four lively eggplant head ghosts.
Around 4:30, the tiger demon let the eggplant head ghosts wildly release shadow eggplants in the abandoned building, spreading countless shadow root tendrils, directly performing eggplant seedling parasitism on all 51.
Through shadow eggplant root tendrils parasitizing the limb-disabled, severely injured paralyzed, organ necrotic goblins, kukuku furiously pouring shadow pollution to resurrect them, and letting madly growing root tendrils pierce the skin, cleaning up the second floor’s pollution entirely.
This time, Yuan Zhu no longer planned deeper experimental exploration of the disease system.
His foundation is shadow, and human body is Holy Light. Therefore, he needed to intensify exploration of shadow pollution, especially since he brought back a large amount of insect system shadow wetware from the underground world, just needing goblins to test on bodies, blazing a trail of shadow meridians qi refining path.
Around 6:20 PM at dusk, night fell. The goblins on the abandoned building’s second floor had stopped their painful groans and screams, each emitting sounds blending into darkness, eyes reflecting dark red light, nose and mouth issuing suppressed eerie laughter.
After their flesh was parasitized by shadow eggplant, black eggplant seedlings sprouted from their heads. The physical bodies were still living goblins, but the flesh was gradually polluted by shadow, becoming living humanoid flower pots. At the tailbone, even an ink-green tail interwoven from flesh and plant veins grew, with the tip blooming an ink-colored flower.
Due to the boss template undergoing a round of expansion and upgrade, the tiger demon controlled a mere 51 goblins effortlessly through high-ranking suppression over shadow eggplant.
This group of living goblins weren’t even ghost companion reserves yet, still living things that couldn’t be stuffed into shadows, so he drove them to learn the advanced Indian mode, all crammed into the pickup truck’s cargo bed, layer upon layer. A small pickup truck was overloaded with 51 goblins, escaping into the haunted house under night cover.
At this time, it was too late to find the senior student for questions. So after simply checking the shadow magic worms in each room that were steadily mutating by devouring diseased crops, he charged into the disease garden again to start madly burning.
Mouth emitting strange yells and roars, he began wildly unleashing big moves in the garden, beams of Holy Light appearing in light-speed mode, force field form, or barrier state.
He channeled through the holy mark, highly condensing and focusing exclusive Holy Light, unleashing a wave of ultimate Holy Light on the diseased crops and trees everywhere, shouting: “Aaaah… burn you to death!”
Behind him, over a dozen wild goblins parasitized by shadow eggplant, missing arms or legs, followed this mad young master step by step, faces showing fear as they observed his expression.
Under Yuan Zhu’s repeated beatings + orders, they acted cautiously, no longer daring to casually touch the ground’s diseased crops, nor stupidly eating randomly. Instead, each carried big frogs and held big mice, sneakily following Yuan Zhu.
Whenever his Holy Light was greatly consumed and he couldn’t release skills, these goblins would eagerly come forward, offering ‘biological batteries’ one by one for their master to ignite and continue wildly releasing skills, harvesting disease ash.
As for the other 30-plus goblins, he scatter-raised them out of the haunted house, scurrying around the residential area, hunting mice, frogs… and other rampant pests.
With shadow eggplant parasitism in their bodies, and Yuan Zhu inserting shadow memory sticks into their hindbrains. These goblins, even regaining freedom, couldn’t escape back to the sewer.
Once too far from the haunted house, the smart program recorded by Little Spicy Stick in the memory sticks would activate, triggering the shadow eggplant to torment the goblins endlessly painfully, and take over the body to return to the haunted house spontaneously.
Moreover, the memory sticks recorded a large number of instructions, including guiding goblins how to silently find wild small animals, how to control shadow eggplant root tendrils to drill into mouse holes and dig out prey…
Just like that, in a short night, over 50 newly on-duty goblins, under the combo of shadow eggplant + memory sticks, took shifts in the residential area performing unpaid wild animal cleanup activities.
Greatly improving the residential area’s environment, the annoying frogs and toads went silent, the detestable mice disappeared.
At dawn, Master Yuan, after a hard night, pulled the soul crystal’s condensation to 47%. The crystalline body in his soul also showed an irregular ‘spherical outline’, with a damaged ‘space’ prototype seemingly condensing inside, massively absorbing and stably storing the Holy Light released from last night’s chaotic burning of ‘frogs and mice’.
Now, without burning his own life, he output Holy Light externally solely through the soul crystal. If not in intense combat, just maintaining daily Holy Light blessing, Holy Light blessing, purification, he could sustain 20 minutes undefeated.
Note that simple Holy Light blessing and purification didn’t require continuous Holy Light release, but segmental releases. Then he could last even longer.
If during this, he could continuously add ‘living fuelwood’, it would enter infinite refill mode! Continuously burning externals to convert Holy Light and recycle storage, achieving a Holy Light perpetual motion machine!
The price was merely a bit of fading. Fall seal demonic path, within reach!
