Chapter 71: The First Spiritual Tide Arrives, Life Will Be Redefined

But for this cultivation session, Ye Xuan did not use the Bengyu to guide himself; he used a new method.

Ye Xuan sat quietly in the cultivation chamber, the visor of the Emperor Armor glowing with a faint golden sheen; at this moment, his consciousness seemed to transcend the limits of his physical body, resonating mysteriously with the laws of heaven and earth.

Countless insights into the Way of the Sword flowed through his mind like a river of stars.

Every sword intention, every sword technique, decomposed and reassembled before his eyes, reduced to their most fundamental rules; the sword principles that ordinary swordsmen spent decades to master now appeared before him without concealment.

The sharpness of metal, the endurance of wood, the flexibility of water, the fury of fire, the weight of earth.

To take a human as teacher is nothing compared to taking heaven and earth as teacher.

Now that all things under heaven and earth lay before him, how could his Way of the Sword not advance?

Why had he never thought of this before—cultivating the Way of the Sword while wearing the Emperor’s Armor?

If he had thought of it, why would he have needed the Bengyu at all?

He had assumed that after breaking through his power’s limit, he would enter a long “bottleneck period”; his strength would rise visibly, but no longer as swiftly as before.

His next evolution seemed impossibly distant.

But now, with the Emperor Armor’s enhancement, his non-human Wuxing and heaven’s favor meant his next evolution might not require much time at all.

Moreover, he sensed this enhancement would remain even if he one day reached the Saint Lord realm; by then, the Emperor Armor manifested by the Rat Talisman would offer only cultivation benefits, and transforming into it would become a restriction.

Damn, why did he feel a pang of envy toward whoever in the real world might one day obtain the Emperor Armor?

Compared to the limited Emperor Armor manifested by the Rat Talisman, the one who earns the true Ultimate Emperor Armor’s recognition truly ascends in a single step.

Time slipped away unnoticed, and before he knew it, seven days had passed.

As the clock’s hands silently crossed midnight, a faint ripple stirred across the blue planet’s atmosphere.

“Boom—!!!”

With a thunderous roar, the previously dark night sky suddenly blazed with intensified starlight.

The atmosphere grew transparent; starlight poured unimpeded onto the earth, and occasional meteors streaked across, their trails not the usual white, but dreamlike seven-colored luminescence.

A pale green torrent of spiritual energy surged from the depths of the universe, like a celestial river collapsing, crashing into the blue planet.

The earth groaned under the spiritual flood; deep in the soil, roots grew wildly, emitting a rustling “shasha” sound; on the streets, tree trunks twisted and swelled, bark cracking and peeling away to reveal emerald-green wood beneath.

Their roots shattered sidewalk tiles, writhing across the surface like giant serpents, crushing parked car chassis with creaking groans, while branches sprouted new buds at visible speed.

Rivers began to glow; a thin layer of pale green luminescence floated atop winding waterways, making the currents clearer; majestic mountains shrouded in mist exuded crystalline spiritual fluid from their rock faces, nourishing plants stubbornly growing in crevices.

The calm sea suddenly erupted in hundred-meter-high waves, shimmering with green spiritual light.

Beneath the deep ocean, countless marine creatures began to mutate wildly.

Sharks swelled in size, their dorsal fins sharpened like blades, cutting through water at high pressure to slice fish schools into fragments; giant octopuses grew grotesque bony spines on their tentacles, their suckers extending sharp mouthparts to violently tear apart nearby fish.

Countless fish schools fought each other for nutrient-rich waters; coral reefs grew wildly, their sharp branches piercing marine creatures too slow to flee, greedily absorbing spiritual energy from blood-tainted seawater.

On land, animals grew restless.

Wolf packs in the forests halted hunting, all raising their heads to howl at the moon, their cries filled with inexplicable joy; rats in the city sewers surged in numbers, their oily fur beginning to thicken.

Domestic cats and dogs suddenly awoke, instinctively barking at windows, some even trying to claw open doors and windows to get outside.

In the Tian Shu Bureau.

Piercing alarms blared, crimson warning lights flooding the entire Capital Tian Shu Headquarters with blood-red glow.

【WARNING! FIRST SPIRITUAL TIDE HAS ERUPTED!】

【CURRENT SPIRITUAL CONCENTRATION: 1027% ABOVE BASELINE!】

【ALL UNITS IMMEDIATELY ENTER LEVEL ONE WAR PREPAREDNESS!】

The broadcast repeated three times, cold and urgent.

In the command center, real-time spiritual monitoring data flashed across giant screens; the Director leapt to his feet, snatching up the communicator:

“All branches activate emergency protocols immediately! All combat teams deploy! Maintain 24-hour surveillance! Report anomalies instantly!”

No extra orders, no complex deployments; in this era still uncharted in spiritual laws, the Tian Shu Bureau could only respond with maximum speed.

Everything they needed to do, everything they needed to prepare—they had already done so; now, they only needed to execute.

In the corridors, fully armed combat personnel sprinted toward the equipment rooms.

Weapons, bulletproof vests, spiritual monitors were swiftly distributed; no one spoke, only near-perfectly synchronized movements echoed.

Simultaneously, lights flickered across Tian Shu Bureau branches nationwide; from the northern snowfields to the southern seashore, countless headlights pierced the night, racing toward every corner of the cities.

The arrival of the Spiritual Tide marked the crossing of a critical threshold in spiritual revival; a brand-new era had crashed into existence.

From tonight onward, the world’s rules would be rewritten entirely; “Power resides within oneself” was no longer empty rhetoric—it was reality unfolding.

All things began to evolve; life was being redefined.

Plants, animals, humans—all would become either bearers of power or witnesses to the age, shaped by fortune or misfortune.

This was the best of times:

Countless ordinary people would gain the chance to alter their fates, shatter the chains of life, and touch the threshold of the extraordinary.

This was the worst of times:

The old order was crumbling; the jungle law of survival of the fittest would once again rule the world.

On the monitoring screens, spiritual curves across the nation continued to surge; no one knew what tomorrow would bring, but all knew—after tonight, the world would never be the same.

Hangcheng, deep night.

Ye Xuan stood on the balcony, gazing upward at the sky.

The previously thin spiritual energy now surged like a tide; an unprecedented energy fluctuation filled the air; he squinted slightly, sensing the changes around him—

“Spiritual concentration has increased more than tenfold, and is still rising rapidly…”

“Has the first Spiritual Tide arrived?”

(End of Chapter)