Chapter 292

The secret chamber at the deepest part of the air-raid shelter.

Gu Xuan Ce squatted on the ground, bearing no semblance of a True Immortal.

Around him hovered hundreds of miniature formation disks, each etched with countless formation patterns and nodes.

Over the past half month, this Formation Dao Master of the Primordial Immortal Realm has gone crazy.

The surveillance network, city defense command system, and even the massive Star River Spirit Gathering Array's Sub-array Eye of Tian Shu City Eleven were all disassembled and reassembled by him.

The four stewards thought their false accounts were flawless, but in fact they were all being manipulated with Gu Xuan Ce's help.

Otherwise, the financial consortium's core would have known long ago.

"Young Master, using these four's permissions, we've pretty much figured out everything below the ninth stage."

Gu Xuan Ce dispersed the formation disks, rubbed his sore eyes, and his tone could barely conceal his excitement,

"If we integrate into the Great Array now, we can already ensure a ten percent reduction; if we want to achieve the envisioned twenty or even thirty percent, we would probably…… need deeper permissions, or…… a True Immortal's crystal core?"

It's obvious that Gu Xuan Ce's meaning is…… he's already set his sights on those four True Immortal ancestors.

He is very interested in their method of producing True Immortal-level power through mechanical means.

Gu Yuan sat on a piece of zitan wood chair moved from some financial consortium's warehouse, playing with a seventh-rank crystal core that had just been delivered.

This was offered by Su Wan.

It counts as providing considerable help for Gu Xuan Ce's research.

"Ten percent; even if something unexpected happens later, this setup isn't much of a loss."

A ten percent energy loss.

Rounded up, that's basically two Immortal Kings.

Gu Xuan Ce nodded and voiced the doubt he had been holding inside:

"Young Master, we've spent a month here just to have those lowly commoners pick up trash and cultivate?"

"If you truly want to reshape this world's order, with our means we could directly assault the core of the Star River Great Array, slay those four whatever financial consortium ancestors, smash the array, and return the spiritual energy to heaven and earth—wouldn't that be satisfying?"

Gu Yuan lifted his teacup, brushed away the foam on the surface, and spoke in a calm voice: "Uncle Xuan Ce, killing is easy, saving the world is hard."

He set down the teacup, his fingertips lightly tapping the table.

"You've studied that Star River Spirit Gathering Array; you should see that the Great Array has completely fused with the planet's ley lines, and the financial consortium's four ancestors have largely bound their lifespans and Dao fruits to the array's core."

Gu Yuan's eyes grew dark as he perceived the crux of this world.

"Forcibly dismantling the array would rupture the ley lines, causing global spiritual energy to run rampant; then the ecosystem would collapse, and the mortals on this planet would die out in a short time—that would be apocalypse, not order reshaping."

Gu Yuan is certainly no saint who pities heaven and mourns for humanity.

What he truly cares about is the extra reward the system offered—the Enlightenment Dao Mat.

The system states its price plainly, demanding the use of gentle means to guide the cultivation civilization onto the proper path.

If violent destruction turns it into a wasteland apocalypse, that treasure which could help Grandfather break through to the Giant Immortal King will surely be ruined.

"So we need to lure those four old turtles out from the core of the Great Array."

Gu Yuan clarified his thoughts,

"They've dwelled in the heavens for three thousand years, accustomed to looking down on all beings from above. When the lowly stop buying crystal cores, cutting off their harvest chain, that's a famine for them. But simmering frogs in warm water isn't enough to throw their formation into disarray."

"They might just think it's a lowly skin rash and send a few fleets down to suppress it."

"By then, having them come in batches, one after another, would also be quite a hassle."

Gu Xuan Ce read between the lines: "Young Master, are you going to use a strong medicine?"

"To catch a big fish, you must use heavy bait, and moreover..."

Gu Yuan rose, smoothed the wrinkles on his robe, glanced toward a corner, and a cunning smile appeared on his face.

Gu Xuan Ce could tell at a glance that his young master was about to come up with another bad idea.

"The timing is also about ripe."

His heart stirred slightly, communicating with the perfect great world within his dantian.

In an instant, a hundred streams of light fled from the void, hovering in midair of the secret chamber.

They were ten thousand supreme-grade spirit stones.

Supreme-grade spirit stones from the Primordial Immortal Realm.

Each was the size of a fist, entirely clear like glass, inside flowing with thick liquid spiritual energy that could not be dissipated.

Such items, in the Primordial Immortal Realm, might only serve as scraps for the Great Array or as trinkets bestowed upon subordinate forces.

But placed on the barren wasteland of Tian Shu Source Realm, where even breathing incurs a tax, it is nothing short of a dimensional strike.

Compared to these supreme spirit stones, the crystal cores of the cyber world, tainted with industrial waste and locked by layers of formation patterns, are not even fit for sewer sludge.

At the sight of ten thousand supreme spirit stones, Gu Xuan Ce knew what the Young Master intended to do.

If ten thousand supreme spirit stones erupted simultaneously, placed across the entire Tian Shu Source Realm it would hardly be anything.

But crammed into the tiny Tian Shu City Eleven…… it would be…… a spiritual energy revival!

Gu Yuan hesitated not, raising his right hand, five fingers grasping at the void.

"Crack—"

The crisp shattering sounds joined together.

Ten thousand supreme spirit stones were crushed by him in one grasp.

Boundless pure Immortal Dao spiritual energy, like a heavenly river bursting its banks, exploded with a roar inside the cramped secret chamber of the air-raid shelter.

Gu Yuan did not let this power run rampant.

In his eyes appeared the phantom of the World Tree, the domineering laws of his inner world surpassing this heaven and earth permeating his body.

"Go."

He stomped the ground heavily with one foot.

The inner‑world law turned into countless invisible chains, wrapping that massive prime spiritual Qi, and brazenly drilled through the alloy base plate of the air‑raid shelter, piercing straight into the deep underground.

The earth vein of the Heaven Pivot Source Realm, dried up for three thousand years, was forcibly pierced by this strike.

Gu Yuan is reversing the earth vein.

He intends to use these ten thousand prime spiritual stones, beneath the tightly monitored Eleven City of the conglomerate, to artificially create a miniature prime spiritual vein.

It belongs to the old‑era immortals, free from the conglomerate's Great Array control, the purest spiritual vein.

……

……

A marvel unfolds in the Heaven Pivot Eleventh City without any warning.

Outside the air‑raid shelter, the gloomy sky that had been drizzling acidic rain was suddenly pierced by an upward‑rising multicolored pillar of light.

That pillar is not a destructive beam; it is a tide of spiritual Qi intensified to the extreme.

Above the waste‑land where the airflow plates have solidified, the perennial poisonous clouds are shattered and dispersed by this pure celestial phenomenon.

The long‑absent sunlight, for the first time in three thousand years, falls unimpeded onto the shabby iron‑sheet roofs of the slum.

Immediately after, the earth begins to revive.

In the fissures of the heavy‑metal‑polluted, iron‑hard soil, specks of dazzling green shoot up.

They are not mutated spore plants, but crystal‑clear spiritual herbs emitting a faint medicinal fragrance.

They grow at a visible speed, climbing over the rusted tracks and covering the decommissioned mechanical prosthetics.

The smell of machine oil and acidic rot is swept away, replaced by a soothing, pure spiritual air.

The lower levels of Eleven City become a holy land for cultivation.

In the square, the poor who are practicing the Reverse Spirit Technique on iron plates are all stunned into silence.

An old miner equipped with a battered mechanical lung subconsciously draws a deep breath.

With that single breath, the noisy mechanical lung inside him is suddenly enveloped by a warm true essence.

The previously blocked meridians flare open, and the old miner lets out a long howl to the sky, a tiny vortex of spiritual Qi forming above his head.

Second Realm!

In one breath, he leaps from mortal to Second Realm!

Comparable to foundation establishment in this world!

This is not an isolated case.

The entire slum, hundreds of thousands of people, under this spiritual Qi rain, experiences a collective breakthrough celebration.

No discarded crystal chips, no guiding technique; the ultra‑pure spiritual Qi seeps directly through their pores.

A Qi stands at the entrance of the air‑raid shelter, watching the sky rain down spiritual light, his mind buzzing.

He trembles as he pulls from his pocket the half‑piece of top‑grade spiritual stone.

The trump card that he once cherished as his life and took pride in now, amid the dense surrounding spiritual Qi, dims like a stone in a cesspit.

The immortal has acted.

With that act, he tramples his pitiful sense of superiority into the mud.

At the same time, in the upper district, the top floor of the Tianyuan Conglomerate branch.

Lin Si and three other stewards stare rigidly through the floor‑to‑ceiling windows at the scene below.

They are not moved by this miraculous sight, only filled with endless fear.

"Can't hide it any longer…"

The iron‑faced mechanical head emits a desperate electronic tone,

"An energy burst of this magnitude doesn't even need to pass through Eleven City's monitoring network; the Star River Spirit Gathering Array… must already be sounding the alarm."