Without a second's hesitation, Lin Yi waved his hand, his movement a blur of speed. The remaining Thirty Six puppets instantly dissolved back into his storage space, saved from the fate of destruction from the aftermath. Simultaneously, his figure flickered, fusing with the void around. He shot away from the cliff face at an unimaginable, light-defying speed, searing through the void.
Just as his figure disappeared from sight, a deafening 'KABOOM!' ripped through the air behind him.
A towering mushroom cloud, a furious mix of earth, fire, and pulverized stone, instantly rose high above the Sky Flame Mountain Range. The shockwave... a palpable, destructive wind pressure... spread outward, impacting the entire forest, whipping up dust and thick clouds of vaporized rock and debris, fundamentally altering the landscape.
After a protracted period of settling silence, Lin Yi's figure flashed and reappeared. He landed gently at the edge of a new, steep cliff, which had been carved by the force of the explosion. His calm gaze scanned the devastation: a massive crater, almost a hundred miles in diameter, now marked the previous location. Half of the surrounding mountain peaks had been cleanly sheared off, their surfaces reduced to a smooth, black slate.
A lingering emotion flashed across his face, not of fear, but of profound realization. Previously, he had only used tiny, almost imperceptible threads of this energy for fine-tuning or subtle sealing, like the one he used to suppress Qingtan's berserk Pure Yin Qi. He hadn't anticipated that even a small, drop-sized amount of this raw, chaotic essence would result in such utter, immediate annihilation and devastation.
"Heh, looks like… I have to reach a very high level before using this chaotic power."
He slowly shook his head, a cold, dry laugh escaping his lips beneath the mask. His original plan... to use the Primordial Chaos energy at the Nirvana Stage and improve his strength, but such plan was now revealed as a supreme, almost fatal gamble. The chaos energy was simply too far above the conventional power scale of this dimension, easily rivaling and perhaps even surpassing the legendary Zenith and Desolate Qi.
'It is too early to touch the core essence,' he mused, the cold truth settling in. He concluded that he could only attempt to truly handle and master this power after reaching the Samsara and Reincarnation Stage, after successfully traversing the Life and Death stages. For now, the Primordial Chaos Talisman's energy was a controlled, limited weapon, to be used only in the form of tiny, meticulously regulated threads. It was a power capable of creating and destroying all things, and his current body and cultivation were barely equipped to manage its residual wake.
Lin Yi, however, was not one to abandon an immense asset without absolute certainty. He decided to attempt the experiment again, this time with a thread of Primordial Chaos energy so minuscule it was almost negligible... a single, atomic measure of the primordial force.
With a thought, the void shimmered, and a single Heavenly Grade Puppet, stark white jade with crimson lines, materialized on the newly formed cliff edge. He focused his spiritual will, guiding the Primordial Chaos Talisman to release an infinitesimally small thread of power.
The grayish thread of chaotic essence flowed from his palm and gently covered the puppet's surface, melting into its core. There was no shattering sound this time, no catastrophic failure. Instead, the puppet's pure white pupils flickered violently, immediately lighting up with an ominous, dark red glow. The puppet's entire jade body shone with an intense, powerful light that quickly stabilized.
The information instantly flooded Lin Yi's consciousness, sent directly from the puppet's newly energized core. The small, almost non-existent amount of Primordial Chaos energy was sufficient to allow the puppet to execute ten full-power attacks at the level of the Nine-Turn Nirvana Stage... the peak of the entire Nirvana Realm.
Lin Yi's red pupils brightened with frigid satisfaction. His idea had worked. This single, minute investment of energy had turned a Nirvana-level servant into a near-limitless weapon, capable of unleashing power far beyond its inherent grade. Even better, the residual energy held within the puppet, once integrated, would allow it to operate and defend for thousands of years without attacking, far surpassing the life-span limits of any conventional fuel source.
With a slight sense of pity for the loss of the first one, he immediately released the remaining thirty five Heavenly Grade Puppets from his meridian space, forming a precise arc around the first. He moved swiftly, directing the same precise, minuscule thread of Chaos energy into the core of each one. One by one, their white jade pupils gained the dark red glow, and the surge of terrifying power stabilized within them.
Finally, his gaze fixed on the Supreme Grade Puppet, the marble-swirled figure of black and white that stood at the formation's center. He began the infusion process, fully expecting this artifact, capable of Life and Death Stage power, to handle the Primordial Chaos energy far better than heavenly grade puppets.
He was not disappointed. He provided a hundred times the amount of Chaos energy, then a thousand times of heavenly grade, yet the Supreme Grade Puppet absorbed the primordial essence without a hint of destruction or instability.
The light in Lin Yi's pupils intensified. This was the good news he truly needed. He continued the infusion, carefully monitoring the artifact's core until it reached its maximum capacity. The flow ceased, and a new torrent of information flooded his mind, overwhelming the previous heavenly grade puppet information.
The Supreme Grade Puppet, now fully charged with the Primordial Chaos energy, could unleash a hundred top-grade attacks at the Life and Death Stage levels. More importantly, the primordial energy could be channeled defensively, creating a shield capable of resisting even a single, full-power strike from a Samsara Grade Expert.
...