Chapter 210: The Flame of Life, Spatial Enhancement (II)

A hundred meters away, Chen Chu stood with his halberd, slowly calming the burning vitality and true power within him. The god-like aura around him gradually disappeared.

Despite the spatial rifts that kept appearing and disappearing around him and the Rampage Ape's lifeless body, Chen Chu's gaze remained calm.

This Rampage Ape had been at a higher stage than the Blood Armored Beast King, but its strength had only been marginally greater; its aura had actually been weaker compared to the king beast. It could only be said to have had decent strength, average among peak level 5 mutated beasts.

Chen Chu had used it to explore the valley environment, figuring out which areas had distorted space and which were more stable, then unleashed his full power in a single explosive strike to kill it.

After all, his cultivation was only at the late stage of the Fourth Heavenly Realm. Although his usual combat strength was stronger than this Rampage Ape's, there was a difference in difficulty between defeating something and actually killing it.

His usual method would be time-consuming and prone to accidents, and it would have been troublesome if unstable spatial collapses had been triggered due to the battle. So it was better to unleash all his power in a single explosive strike to kill it. Even if he would be weakened for a while afterward, based on his experience from last time, enduring that burst of power was still within his tolerance range.

After taking a brief moment to recover, Chen Chu approached the Rampage Ape's corpse and jumped onto it. Soon, he dug out a fist-sized crystal from the ape's chest. It was almost completely clear, emitting circles of green light and a pure life aura.

A smile spread across Chen Chu's face. A level 5 Life Crystal worth 160 points, plus the corpse of a mutated beast worth around 150 points. Even if he hadn't found any other resources on this trip, it was still profitable, even with a level 5 Life Crystal only having a value twice that of a level 4 crystal.

The growth of mutated beasts was similar to that of the avatar. Once the avatar accumulated enough energy, each evolution would improve its body in leaps and bounds. Similarly, after reaching the peak stage of their current level, these mutated creatures would gradually form a crystal containing pure life energy in their bodies, which served as the catalyst for igniting the flame of life that fueled their evolution.

Higher level Life Crystals, however, only contained slightly more energy in terms of quantity; this was something that could be seen from the size difference between different levels of crystal. Instead, it was the purity of the energy that determined the crystal's level and worth.

As a result, the cost of exchanging for higher level Life Crystals wasn't as expensive as one would imagine. If not for the higher purity of energy, which could significantly enhance the physical bodies of practitioners in the same level, they would likely be even cheaper.

Most of the parts of a higher level beast would also fetch higher prices, with the exception of the flesh, which would relatively plummet. The meat and blood was the most abundant part, yet ordinary people couldn't digest it, and just like these creatures, advanced practitioners could sustain themselves on vast amounts of transcendent energy, reducing their reliance on physical food.

As a result, most high-level creatures' flesh was processed into either feed for domesticated beasts, or provisions for long-term wilderness expeditions.

With the Life Crystal in hand, Chen Chu's voice echoed in his mind.

Convert into attribute points.

"You have converted one level 5 Life Crystal and gained 165 attribute points."

Just like that, Chen Chu's attribute points, which had been depleted from enhancing his arts, had jumped back up to 168. However, he was still far from the 300 points needed to enhance the Dragon Elephant Tyrant Body to its sixth stage.

Chen Chu's gaze turned toward the end of the distant mountain wall, where the Rampage Ape's cave was located. While large, it became narrower the deeper it went, and there were strong spatial fluctuations deep within, with rifts potentially appearing at any moment.

The milky white crystals Chen Chu had seen earlier were located among these rifts, mixed among some small scattered rocks that had likely been brought about by the spatial collapses.

According to official research over the years, these spatial collapse points were nodes of conflict between two worlds' forces, often collapsing and piercing through certain places of both worlds.

This situation would create twisted and dangerous spatial zones, but could also bring in materials from the mythical world; minerals, plants and fruit containing special powers, or special energy aggregates, all serving as the origin for many resources.

Ethereal Crystals generally formed veins in places where spatial energy was dense or unstable and prone to collapse, almost as if materializing from the void.

Once he was deep enough in the cave, Chen Chu cautiously used his halberd to hook out some Ethereal Crystals. A brilliant smile lit up his face at the sight of the three fist-sized ones he had managed to get.

Each of these crystals was worth 100 contribution points. Coupled with the carcass of the peak level 5 mutated beast and the Life Crystal, this harvest amounted to 600 points.

Indeed, the greater one's strength, the better the resources and the more quickly they were obtained. This was why Xia Youhui always had an abundance of high-quality resources; having an older brother who was a high-level cultivator of the Seventh Heavenly Realm was quite a blessing.

Now that he had these crystals, however, Chen Chu fell into contemplation, pondering whether to enhance his Sumeru Bracelet's spatial capabilities first or to save up attribute points until he had accumulated enough to break through to the sixth stage of the Dragon Elephant Tyrant Body.

Soon, Chen Chu decided to first enhance the Sumeru Bracelet. For him now, the three cubic meters of space was too small; after placing his halberd and armor inside, there was hardly any space left for anything else. If he were to discover larger resources or precious items later, it would be inconvenient to bring them back.

He briefly thought about selling the crystals to the school for contribution points, only to just as quickly dismiss the idea. When students sold resources to the school, it was at eighty percent of the item's sale value, effectively giving the school a twenty percent discount.

As a student with higher access, Chen Chu had a thirty percent discount on the things he bought. However, not only did that discount go both ways, it also stacked with the school's default discount. As a result, a crystal worth 100 points would only net him 50 if he was to sell it to the school.

With his decision made, Chen Chu took a deep breath as he held the three Ethereal Crystals and the Sumeru Bracelet in his hand, and his thoughts echoed in his mind.

Consume attribute points to enhance the Sumeru Bracelet.

At that moment, a row of translucent text appeared before Chen Chu's eyes.

"This mineral belongs to the independent spatial category. Each enhancement can only fuse one Ethereal Crystal, consuming 30 attribute points. Would you still like to fuse?"

Well, that was unexpected. He hesitated slightly before confirming his choice. Immediately, the special power for enhancing items flowed along his hand, covering both the Sumeru Bracelet and one of the crystals.

The Ethereal Crystal gradually faded away, forming a faint void space that slowly merged with the Sumeru Bracelet until they finally became one.

Suddenly, Chen Chu felt the internal space of the Sumeru Bracelet expanding, increasing in length, width, and height until it reached a volume of five cubic units.

"Huh!" Chen Chu briefly exclaimed in surprise.

Continue enhancing.

With 90 attribute points, all three Ethereal Crystals were integrated into the Sumeru Bracelet one by one, and the internal space continued to expand, reaching a final volume of fifteen cubic units.

This result surprised Chen Chu. Since the description of the Ethereal Crystal mentioned a weak internal void space of one cubic unit, he had always assumed that each enhancement would only increase the space by one unit as well.

However, this enhancement had increased the length, width, and height exponentially, resulting in a larger increase in space with each enhancement.

With a void space now five times larger, Chen Chu nodded in satisfaction, then returned to the Rampage Ape's carcass and placed eight anti-gravity disks beneath it.

With the activation of the magnetic field, the sixty-ton Rampage Ape slowly floated one meter above the ground.

Four anti-gravity disks could create a powerful magnetic field capable of lifting up to fifty tons, but it required an explosive force of twenty to thirty tons to move objects due to the magnetic field's entanglement. Eight disks, one the other hand, could lift a hundred tons. While the entanglement force with the Earth's magnetic field would be stronger, it would still make movement much easier.

However, this usage was quite expensive, costing 8 contribution points each time. In addition, for a journey of over a thousand kilometers, the disks would need to be recharged and then activated again. Most people usually weren't so wasteful as a result.

As Chen Chu returned, laden with his bountiful harvest and carrying the mutated beast's carcass, the large screen in the school base's square suddenly flickered as a row of red characters appeared.

"Mingcheng Martial Arts High School, Ning Fei, with cultivation at the middle stage of the Fourth Heavenly Realm, defeated Bai Feiyu from Qiyuan Martial Arts High School. Current ranking on the Achievement List: 898."

"Damn! This freak who's ranked first on the first-year genius list was completely quiet, but now he's making waves. He's directly entered the top 900 on the Achievement List."

"Impressive."

"Haha

,

but the people from our Mingcheng are still more impressive."

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"True. There's those two freshmen from Nantian who made it to the Achievement List earlier, but they're ranked over 940, much weaker than Ning Fei."