Chapter 624: The Law of Vitality

"The Law of Vitality." Lin Yu pointed at the faint glow that pervaded the space outside the crack. "They don't absorb external energy to store it in their dantian. Instead, they merge themselves into this heaven and earth, drawing power through resonance with the Life Essence of the land."

"This evolution path has one terrifying advantage." Lin Yu said in a low voice. "As long as they stand on this land, as long as the Life Essence of this world hasn't dried up, they will never run out of spiritual energy. What they wield is the power of the entire earth."

Hearing this, Ying seemed to find it somewhat dull. She let out a huge yawn, buried her head under her wing, and closed her eyes to rest.

Su Ming, however, felt a chill run down his spine.

An enemy who never runs out of spiritual energy? In a world like this, once a human cultivator got dragged into a prolonged battle, there was only one outcome: being slowly ground to death.

"What about the weakness?" Su Ming immediately shot back. No cultivation method in the world was flawless; that was an iron law of the path of formations.

"The weakness is obvious." Lin Yu sneered. "Their bond with the earth is too deep. Once the earth veins are damaged, or if they leave this land saturated with Life Essence and step into the human realm, their power will be instantly stripped back to square one. They might not even measure up to an ordinary human cultivator at Foundation Establishment."

Su Ming nodded, already forming a plan in his mind.

He lowered his gaze to his own dim, lustreless Golden Core.

"Master, now that we understand the enemy's methods, it's time to solve my problem." Su Ming's gaze turned pragmatic. "I have fewer than ten bottles of Qi Restoring Elixirs left. With their potency halved here, they won't last me more than a few battles. If I can't absorb the Life Essence in this air, forget about finding clues to return to the human realm, even walking out of these woods would be a pipe dream."

Lin Yu hovered motionless within the Xuantian ring, seemingly lost in thought.

Outside the crack, the occasional eerie cry of some unknown beast drifted over, but the soundproofing arrays firmly kept every trace at bay.

A full half-incense stick's worth of time passed before Lin Yu finally spoke.

"Disciple, while I was refining Qingyan's memories, I discovered an interesting detail." Lin Yu's voice dropped very low. "The 'Spirit Nourishing True Explanation' I cultivate is itself an ancient technique of the spirit races. Within my soul power, there has actually always been a trace of the Law of Vitality's imprint, naturally present since the very beginning."

Su Ming's eyes lit up instantly, but he didn't interrupt, waiting for Lin Yu to continue.

"Since your Ruo Shui spiritual energy can't directly accommodate this violent Life Essence..." A wild, almost maniacal arc curled at the corner of Lin Yu's ethereal mouth. "Then what if we use my soul power as a bridge?"

"Worth a try." Su Ming raised his head, a rare determination blazing in his eyes. "Master, how do we do it?"

"It's simple, but it's also lethal." Lin Yu's soul body gleamed so brightly it was almost blinding. "I'll release a wisp of weak soul power from the ring. You wrap it with your Ruo Shui spiritual energy, then use this clump of mixed energy to make contact with the external Life Essence."

"Remember this." Lin Yu's tone turned unprecedentedly severe. "I'll only act as bait to lure the Life Essence over. The rest, the filtering, the suppression, the absorption, all of that depends on your broken water art. If you can't hold it together, I'll sever the soul power immediately, and you can just wait to die on your own."

"Understood." Su Ming took a deep breath, spreading his hands flat on his knees, palms facing upward.

"Begin." Lin Yu gave a low shout.

A faint azure light suddenly flashed across the surface of the Xuantian ring. A wisp of soul power a hundred times finer than a spider's silk emerged silently from the ring's surface like a spirit snake leaving its den, hovering just above Su Ming's palm.

The soul power was pure, yet its surface faintly radiated an ancient, primordial rhythm of vitality that differed from anything in the human realm.

Su Ming dared not show the slightest negligence.

He immediately mobilized the last remaining bit of Ruo Shui spiritual energy in his dantian, slowly forcing it out through his meridians to his palm.

The azure spiritual energy condensed in the air, forming a water droplet no larger than a needle's tip, carefully wrapping that wisp of soul power completely within it.

"Steady your mind." Lin Yu cautioned.

Su Ming didn't reply. He guided the tiny orb of light encasing the soul power, slowly drifting it toward the edge of the formation, reaching for the wild vitality that saturated the air beyond.

One inch. Two inches. Three inches.

Just as the orb was about to touch a sliver of outside air at the formation's edge, Ying, who had been lying in the distance, suddenly shuddered. As if struck by lightning, she shot to her feet and let out a sharp, piercing warning cry.

"Contact!" Su Ming barked in his mind.

The instant the orb touched the air beyond the formation, the invisible, pervasive essence of wild vitality that filled the surroundings suddenly erupted into chaos, like sharks catching the scent of blood!

"HMMMM-"

An extremely low-frequency vibration rumbled at the entrance of the crack.

Those formless Life Essences, as if finding a vent for release, surged toward the needle-tip-sized orb at terrifying speed!

In the blink of an eye, a small vortex of Life Essence had formed around the orb, faint purple light flickering continuously within the swirl.

"It worked!" Su Ming's heart leaped with joy, and he instinctively moved to draw the vortex into his body.

"DON'T RUSH!!!"

"Are you trying to get yourself killed, you little bastard?!" Lin Yu's soul body was practically hopping with fury inside the ring. "The amount of Life Essence flooding in is way too much, and it's all untamed, savage laws! If you dare absorb that into your body right now, your meridians will burst instantly and you'll explode into a pulp of meat!"

That roar jolted Su Ming back to his senses in an instant.

Cold sweat broke out on his forehead again as he forcibly suppressed the urge to channel the vortex into his body.

"Master, there's too much. How do I handle it?" Su Ming gritted his teeth, straining to maintain control over the orb that had already begun trembling violently.

"How the hell should I know? I'm not a filter!" Lin Yu cursed irritably, but his words came at a rapid-fire pace. "Use your Ruo Shui spiritual energy! Isn't it supposed to embrace everything? Filter it layer by layer! Grind down the wildness of the Life Essence, then channel it into your dantian!"

Su Ming took a deep breath, his eyes snapping shut.

"Using soul power as a bridge, using water spiritual energy as a net."

Su Ming leveraged the extremely strong dissolving and seeping properties of Ruo Shui spiritual energy, transforming the water net into countless fine swirling currents. The Life Essence was washed again and again within the vortices, while those impurities laced with the spirit realm's toxins and corrosiveness were gradually dissolved and stripped away by the water spiritual energy.

This process was incredibly taxing on the mind.

Sweat dripped from the tip of Su Ming's nose. His lips had been bitten bloody, but he didn't let out a single grunt.

Finally, the Life Essence, washed through twice, entered the innermost layer of the water net.

There, it came into contact with that wisp of Lin Yu's soul power carrying the same origin imprint. Under the soul power's soothing influence, the Life Essence that had originally rejected human meridians finally fell completely still.

Wrapped in Ruo Shui spiritual energy, it transformed into a strange, gentle energy radiating a soft interweaving glow of deep azure and pale purple.

This energy was now seventy percent similar to the spiritual energy of the human realm.

"It worked..." Su Ming breathed a silent sigh of relief, carefully guiding this wisp of converted energy through his meridians and slowly channeling it into his parched Golden Core.