Cultivation is just so scientific! Chapter 1551 - 822: Inner Demons

Yang Xing sensed the swift drain of spiritual energy inside the Grotto Heaven; once it fell to a particular level, the density within hit a perilously low threshold.

Even though he had never faced such a drop in spiritual energy before, he knew precisely the consequences if the Grotto Heaven's energy diminished sharply.

He hurriedly pulled out a vein-locking plate that held a spirit vein at the Peak Great Cultivator stage.

This spirit vein came from his former home, saved as a reserve, and now it offered the only chance to rescue the Grotto Heaven.

Yet this merely handled the urgent threat without fixing the core issue; the spiritual energy's drain rate in the Grotto Heaven slowed down but didn't halt.

With the added backing of this extra Peak Great Cultivator Spirit Vein, it provided just a short-term delay.

As moments ticked by, Li Shiming noticed the spiritual energy pull from the formation spike abruptly; this made sense, considering his Half-step Great Power rank, which came with many treasures, so the energy loss demanded countermeasures.

He was convinced that whatever tricks the Half-step Great Power employed, they couldn't outpace the extraction speed of this meticulously set-up formation.

Within the Grotto Heaven, Yang Xing watched the spiritual energy dwindle powerlessly, after exhausting all his options.

At last, when the energy density sank beneath the vital threshold, the thunderclouds over the Grotto Heaven started to thin out, hinting at their imminent dispersal.

"No!" Yang Xing let out a desperate cry.

He couldn't be faulted for his outburst; the key element in the Grotto Heaven was the Thunder Rules inside those thunderclouds, and losing them meant the thunder itself would fade away.

Since his Grotto Heaven lacked the power to fix rules in place yet, if the thunder vanished, so would the Thunder Rules, wiping out his millennia of labor.

And he would crumble with the Grotto Heaven, staring death in the face.

In a frantic bid, he poured his Spiritual Power Pattern into sustaining the thunderclouds.

However, regardless of the spiritual power he funneled in, the thunderclouds would swallow it up and turn it into spiritual energy, which the outer formation then siphoned off.

"What exactly do you want to do?" he bellowed fiercely.

Still, his words couldn't break through the Grotto Heaven's barrier on their own, and Li Shiming hadn't probed inside with Divine Sense, so no matter his volume, Li Shiming remained oblivious.

Even if he yearned to plead for mercy or beg Li Shiming to let him go, reaching out proved impossible.

Li Shiming ignored whatever was happening inside the Grotto Heaven; he simply monitored the spiritual energy the formation drew out to grasp the broad picture within.

Right now, the pulled energy's density had grown quite sparse; he realized his scheme had worked, uncovering a way to counter the Half-step Great Power.

He had no idea what occurred without the spiritual energy supply, but he grasped that both the Half-step Great Power and the Grotto Heaven demanded energy to function.

Though the Grotto Heaven could draw in energy from the void to cover its minimal needs, leaving a bit extra.

Externally, however, with the formations pulling energy away and no fresh supply, the spiritual energy would keep falling until it couldn't meet the Grotto Heaven's basic demands, spelling major disaster.

Li Shiming had no better option, stuck with this flawed strategy.

He had barely dodged death at the Half-step Great Power's hands, so naturally, he refused to let him off.

Above all, allowing the Half-step Great Power to survive was out of the question; if he broke through to Great Power, Li Shiming's peaceful life would shatter.

The Half-step Great Power harbored a deadly grudge against him, and upon reaching Great Power, his top priority would be chasing Li Shiming down.

Li Shiming lacked faith in evading a Great Power's hunt, especially after seeing Sword Elder's feats, and the Half-step Great Power's opening strike had shown him the vast gap between his strength and a true Great Power.

Li Shiming kept layering on spells, boosting the formation's pull on the spiritual energy.

Slowly, the drawn energy dipped below even the outside world's levels, and it kept dropping further.

This spot was just a regular zone lacking spirit veins; no cultivators settled here due to the thin spiritual energy.

Thus, the Grotto Heaven's spiritual energy state was clear: too meager to support its needs, locked in a dire deficit right now.

In the Grotto Heaven's depths, Yang Xing kept fueling the thunderclouds' persistence with his spiritual power, knowing full well it was like sipping poison to slake thirst; if his reserves drained too far, survival would slip away.

But in this moment, his fate intertwined with the Grotto Heaven's; they shared a single destiny. As a Half-step Great Power in this crucial phase, he had to stay linked to it; its endurance meant his, its fall would claim him too.

So, despite the pointlessness, he persisted in channeling his spiritual power to uphold the core Thunder Rules foundation in the Grotto Heaven.

At present in the Grotto Heaven, only the Thunder Rules, propped up by his might, held firm; the other rules, starved by the thinning energy, could no longer endure.

Each rule's fade tore at his soul with agony; every one embodied years of his tireless toil.

These fruits of his dedication, unraveling so quickly; even surviving this ordeal, his path to Great Power would turn desperately remote.

"I will become a Mahayana Realm cultivator; I’m the sect’s most talented cultivator in three thousand years!" he roared in delirium.

Terror, horror, anxiety, bitterness, fury—all merged into a frenzied outburst.