Cultivation is just so scientific! Chapter 1550 - 821: Preparation (Part 2)

"Mr. Li, I won't let you down—I'll get in touch without delay!" Master Liu Ziyun declared with thrill, having hustled to deliver the array materials at top speed and at last claiming his prize.

Li Shiming kept his eyes locked on the array materials stored in the Mustard Seed Ring, paying no heed to the man.

As a shrewd merchant, Master Liu Ziyun instantly grasped the unspoken cue.

"I'll head back right now and connect at once—no time to waste!" he assured Li Shiming, then shot up into the air and vanished from sight.

Li Shiming observed Master Liu Ziyun's fading silhouette, chuckling softly while shaking his head.

He held zero faith in Master Liu Ziyun; the man was a sharp trader who'd peddle heaps of secrets for gain, even spilling details from Central State Commerce.

Though the leaked intel came from rival groups inside Central State Commerce, it showed Master Liu Ziyun's moral threshold sat perilously low.

Yet so what? Li Shiming knew this flaw well, making it easy to exploit the fellow's skills.

Turning his focus forward, he pulled out a batch of Fourth-grade Array Materials from the Mustard Seed Ring and flung them into the controlled space.

He channeled the 'Nanming Leaving Fire' into that space, employing five thoughts at once to forge five array bases simultaneously.

Refining just five array bases each round stemmed not from his own constraints but from the controlled space's boundaries.

The controlled space remained quite confined, leaving him occasionally frustrated since it stood as his most distinctive domain, one that had journeyed with him into this realm. Unlike the IBMz15, which delivered data crunching and mental boosts to amplify his fighting prowess indirectly.

Still, the controlled space played no small part. It was his command over this special area that let him etch runes with pinpoint accuracy to 0.05 nanometers during artifact crafting.

Beyond that, in pill-making or any task needing exactness, the controlled space gave him flawless support.

Array base creation flew by swiftly; IBMz15's designs looked intricate on the surface, but inside the controlled space, their intricacy unraveled into pure simplicity.

After days of nonstop work, eighteen hundred array bases stood neatly arrayed at his side.

For this setup, he burned through every bit of Fourth-grade Array Materials from Master Liu Ziyun, plus a hefty chunk of his own reserves.

With the array bases ready, he moved on to laying out the formation.

Eighteen hundred array bases made for a massive setup; even a team of ten Array Masters would toil for months to finish, and snags could drag it out further.

Yet Li Shiming's approach to the formation felt as effortless as scattering toys.

Guided by Divine Sense, he positioned each array base precisely where it belonged, wrapping up the full eighteen hundred in mere hours.

He positioned the jade compass right at the formation's heart and triggered the array.

A fierce wave of spiritual power erupted as the formation kicked in—thankfully, no cultivators lurked close by, or this uproar would draw swarms of them.

Li Shiming outshone the Cultivation World's current Array Masters in formation knowledge, but this marked his debut with an array of such grand size.

He took his post at a key node in the formation, shielded by its multiple defenses; should cataclysmic forces shatter the setup, it would buy him precious moments to flee.

He refused to downplay the might of Half-step Great Power and their grotto heavens. Since he posed no direct mortal threat to a Half-step Great Power yet, and they cowered in shell-like grotto heavens without detecting doom, they wouldn't lash out in frenzy.

His goal was to force a Half-step Great Power toward ruin. If they resisted with all they had, he'd merely forfeit eighteen hundred Fourth-grade Array Bases and the formation itself.

In his eyes, such a loss meant little.

Through Divine Sense, he commanded the formation, summoning a cluster of arcane runes on the jade compass at its center.

These runes' intent was clear: to pull out, to drain the spiritual energy from the target.

Inside a tight grotto heaven, Yang Xing's face twisted in heavy gloom.

This grotto heaven paled against the sprawling domains of the Cultivation World's true Great Powers. Spanning just thirty meters across, its standout trait was the thunderclouds dominating the upper reaches.

Lightning flickered through the thunderclouds, warding off total blackness in the grotto heaven.

Among the grotto heaven's governing rules, the Thunder Rules in those clouds reigned supreme, forming the core framework of the space.

Thunder Rules alone sustained the grotto heaven's form, bolstered by lesser Fire Rules and Wood Element Rules, plus faint rules that propped up its physical makeup.

Naturally, the grotto heaven's material foundation stayed underdeveloped, providing only a basic divide of sky above and earth below—or more like a sliver of heavens overhead and a scrap of land underneath.

The upper section mimicked the sky, though too tiny to claim more than a fragment of it.

The lower part evoked earth, yet deserved only the name of a mere patch of ground.

Yang Xing floated amid this heaven and earth, gripped by despair and annoyance.

He had been deep in grasping the grotto heaven's rules, planning to stay put within the sect's safeguards.

Leaving the grotto heaven spelled out two paths: failure first, where collapse would claim him too, maybe letting him catch one last glimpse of the outer world before the end.

Or success as the alternative, bursting forth into the vast sky as a Mahayana Realm powerhouse.

But Li Shiming's overwhelming battle prowess changed everything—he'd wiped out multiple Great Cultivators and crushed Peak Great Cultivator Ren Mu of Central State Commerce.

Li Shiming had gone missing earlier, enraging Yuqing Sect's Great Power. The theft of the 'Shenxiao Thunder Pearl' gutted his fighting edge, breeding suspicion toward Nascent Soul cultivators and prompting him to send Yang Xing instead.

To Yang Xing's shock, he struck at the ideal moment, certain he'd trap Li Shiming for good.

But Li Shiming didn't get sealed; he burst forth with shocking force, overpowering two Peak Great Cultivators and locking down Yang Xing's grotto heaven.

Now cut off, Yang Xing couldn't reach the outer Cultivation World or pull in external spiritual energy.

Still, the grotto heaven brimmed with spiritual energy, and he could tap the void for more; since he wasn't pushing heavy cultivation or draining vast amounts, supplies inside held steady.

That said, the total isolation from the outside gnawed at him with worry.

He realized the compass holding his grotto heaven now belonged to Li Shiming, leaving him to pray the man had no clue how to handle it.

Mid-thought, a pulling force suddenly arose from every direction around the grotto heaven.

Spiritual energy surged out through the walls under this pull, swiftly thinning the once-dense reserves.

Yang Xing scrambled to stem the outflow, but no single breach existed—it seeped from the entirety of the grotto walls.

He knew his grotto heaven remained vulnerable, not fully tucked into the void. Even a perfected one kept a link to the Cultivation World, an anchor that could pierce inside.

However, a finished grotto heaven concealed that anchor expertly, slashing detection odds, while its master could shift it at will.

Unlike Yang Xing's flawed version, where the anchor stayed fixed, and the ongoing spatial lockdown trapped him, helpless to budge it.

He couldn't fathom the technique Li Shiming used to yank spiritual energy from the grotto heaven by force.

Unbeknownst to him, draining the grotto's spiritual energy took Li Shiming a formation rivaling a mid-tier sect's defenses in scope, harnessing its might to siphon the power—a feat that guzzled immense resources, where materials paled against the grueling labor of assembly.