Eternal Swordmaster
Chapter 544 - 538: Reincarnation 3

Chapter 544: Chapter 538: Reincarnation 3

A colossal stone wheel.

Standing before Lin Xin was a gray-white stone wheel whose edges were not visible at a glance.

He merely stood in front of the stone wheel and could clearly feel its slow rotation.

Yet when he looked to either side, he could not see the edges of the curve.

It felt like a wall that was constantly moving from left to right.

But his spiritual sense could roughly detect the specific size of the stone wheel,

with a diameter of at least hundreds of miles, even his spiritual sense couldn’t discern its exact size.

He could only estimate the approximate diameter by observing how the stone wheel continuously crushed the floor of the grand hall beneath it.

The deafening roar incessantly forced its way into his ears, and Lin Xin, standing a few dozen meters from the stone wheel, stood still.

"This must be the Shattered Wheel Hall."

He took a deep breath, already guessing where he was.

"The Shattered Wheel Hall, a place of legend that grinds all soul consciousness into dust, dispersing them as nutrients, scattered across other worlds.

It’s a major component of the cycle of reincarnation."

He rapidly recalled the relevant information.

"First let’s try and see if we can get directly there."

He narrowed his eyes and, spreading his hand, a pitch-dark, glowing red special crystal immediately appeared in his palm, surrounded by many tiny white particles constantly orbiting like satellites.

"Go."

He gently tossed the crystal forward.

Hiss....

The crystal instantly transformed into a huge, semi-transparent tiger. Before the tiger could react, it was sucked into the massive stone wheel and, noiselessly, ground into countless light points, absorbed by another side of the wheel.

A tiger, over three meters tall and eight to nine meters long, was sucked into the wheel in an instant, without any chance to resist.

Lin Xin’s eyes deepened.

He took out another handful of the same crystals, dozens of them.

All the crystals automatically levitated, slowly hovering in front of him.

Whoosh.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh...

The crystals continuously flew toward the stone wheel, transforming mid-flight into various forms of semi-transparent creatures.

These were the various types of soul bodies that Lin Xin had collected over the years.

He stored these soul bodies in crystal stones and then used them one by one as test subjects, throwing them into the Shattered Wheel Hall to probe its patterns.

Time slowly passed.

After an indeterminate period, Lin Xin discarded the thousandth soul, watching as it, a massive soul from the Outer Regions, was caught and sucked into the wheel, then shattered into fragments of light.

His expression was calm, seemingly indifferent about personally destroying thousands of souls.

Becoming crushed by the Shattered Wheel Hall meant one’s consciousness was completely erased then recycled as nutrients to nourish other worlds.

It was essentially the destruction of soul and spirit.

Yet he was unaffected.

"I’m starting to see some patterns..."

He murmured softly to himself.

He then took out a fist-sized blood-red crystal stone from his sleeve.

The storage crystal he brought this time contained hundreds of thousands of various souls, mostly dangerous creatures from the Outer Regions, ranging from low to high levels, including every tier up to the Yuan Jing Layer.

"Continue..."

Lin Xin still incessantly began throwing out the crystals from his hand, releasing the souls within.

Then calmly watched as the soul bodies were sucked into the massive stone wheel of the Shattered Wheel Hall amidst their screams.

One thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand...

After an unknown period, Lin Xin finally began to slow his actions.

He somewhat understood the patterns of this place.

After a cycle of continuous rotation lasting one hundred and eight days, the massive stone wheel would have an extremely slight pause.

He was not at all impatient and continued to slowly toss in two thousand more soul bodies, dropping them continuously in twos or in groups.

Observing the patterns again.

Half a year went by.

Lin Xin did not wander around this grand hall, but stayed in place, continuously testing and observing the stone wheel’s pattern, and then jotting them down.

Through various experiments adjusting factors such as different levels, different degrees of conscious awareness, different quantities, and different races and mental states.

Lin Xin roughly mastered the subtle pause in the pattern of the massive stone wheel.

During this time, since he was still in his physical body, he would feel hunger and thirst, but fortunately, the storage ring was loaded with tens of tons of various types of food and water, enough to sustain him for several more years.

"Next is to deal with the issue of concealing my own power," Lin Xin mused deeply, staring at the massive stone wheel, his mind buzzing with countless thoughts.

This step had to be achieved by a special secret technique he created, after thoroughly collecting and analyzing many secret manuals.

To carry one’s power completely into the Mortal Realm without being detected by the powerful beings there,

the best method was concealment.

Lin Xin referred to some secret techniques on projecting avatars, along with some characteristics of the Star Spirit, in combination with extensive analysis of numerous secret manuals.

Finally, he created a special cultivation technique that allowed him to place his power in the void—called the Void Spirit Hosting Technique, briefly the Void Spirit Technique.

The void refers to a special level world, like that shadow butterfly, existing within all things, capable of disintegrating itself into countless fragments.

For that shadow butterfly, the void was its world of survival, the sight it saw, the everything it could come into contact with.

It naturally wouldn’t be that simple and also involves extremely complex and arduous principles and laws.

But the ultimate effect would be for Lin Xin to be able to transfer most of his power, everything about himself, into stars, which he would then entrust deep in the Void.

Simply put, his true form would turn into a Star Spirit, existing deep in the Void, with his main consciousness temporarily detached from his body, passing through the Stone Wheel, and then reclaiming his original form through a special method afterward.

This ability originates from the innate characteristics of the Desolate Vault Demon God.

The Desolate Vault Demon God itself is actually one of the Star Spirit Demon Gods, owning a massive mother star that represents itself—the Yuan Dou Mother Star.

This is what other sects refer to as the Heavenly Cloud Star.

The Heavenly Cloud Star has existed in the Void since ancient times, an entity even more ancient than the Underworld. Its Star Force is unparalleled and tyrannical, and many Ancient Demon Gods and Evil Gods have used its Star Force for cultivation.

After achieving Great Achievement in their cultivation, part of these Demon Gods, upon their natural deaths or deaths in battle, would return to the Innate and rejoin their mother star, becoming a part of it. This, in turn, further strengthens the power of the Heavenly Cloud Star.

Using the Void Spirit Technique, Lin Xin entrusted his own power back to the Heavenly Cloud Star, and after crossing Shattered Wheel Hall, he would summon it back using a secret technique.

This was just like using it as a storage box to temporarily keep his power, which would then be retrieved later.

Whether he would be disintegrated into pure Star Force or undergo Star Spirit Transmutation depended on how long his Sacred Body could endure.

With more than six thousand in constitution, he could at least sustain it for a short period.

For this, Lin Xin had tested it many times.

As long as he could retrieve his Sacred Body in the instant after passing the massive Stone Wheel and being crushed, he would perfectly avoid any potential destruction of power.

Although the scriptures say that reincarnation leads to the loss of some power, isn’t it better if the Void Spirit Technique could avoid any loss at all?

"Next, it’s time to see how to solve the problem of the memory iceberg."

Lin Xin sat cross-legged before the Stone Wheel, starting to meditate slowly in Shattered Wheel Hall.

Time continued to pass.

He remained motionless.

Months passed unknowingly.

Suddenly, Lin Xin opened his eyes and flicked his fingers, releasing a speck of red light.

The red light zipped into a tiny crack under the Stone Wheel—the only place it could pass through the wheel.

With a snap, the red light shattered, turning into countless red dots that were sucked into the back of the Stone Wheel and disappeared.

Lin Xin’s face turned pale, and his expression grew grim as a hint of pain flickered in his eyes.

"As expected, a part of the spiritual sense I separated was completely destroyed."

He used a secret technique to separate a tedious memory about his cultivation practice, and as expected, that memory was instantly crushed, causing his soul to suffer a slight injury.

This was still him taking advantage of a brief pause to send his spiritual sense through; under normal circumstances, it would have been crushed even more brutally.

"Forget it, it seems it can only be like this."

He pondered for a moment, finally sighing deeply.

With a wave of his hand, suddenly dozens of blackish-red beads appeared beside him, floating and slowly rotating around him.

"Primordial Soul, appear."

He uttered a soft command.

Instantly, the greatest reliance prepared over these decades slowly appeared in front of him.

Dozens of peerless treasures capable of replacing a cultivator’s life, the Soul Substitute Beads.

Together they formed a formation, gathering into a special soul body that looked almost exactly like him.

The soul body had all his memories but no consciousness or cultivation, merely a simulated soul.

"Dissolve."

Lin Xin pointed again.

Suddenly, the human-shaped Lin Xin in front of him disintegrated into thousands of black fragments, shooting rapidly toward the Stone Wheel.

Crack.

With a soft noise, the Stone Wheel effortlessly crushed the thousands of fragments into hundreds of thousands of pieces, then absorbed them back in.

"Again."

Lin Xin narrowed his eyes and pointed again.

Another Lin Xin identical to the previous one appeared; this time, he used all his strength to split the simulated soul into tens of thousands of Shadow Fragments.

Following the special rule like the shadow butterfly, the voluntarily split fragments could perfectly reassemble into the original soul body.

This time, he let the soul body charge towards the Stone Wheel again.

Crack.

The same result.

The soul body did not escape destruction, being directly crushed into even finer remnants and absorbed back behind the Stone Wheel.

"Again!"

Lin Xin kept trying time and time again, continuously splitting the soul body into differently-shaped tiny fragments. As he continued to practice, the split fragments became more and more numerous and finer.

Finally.

Crack.

With a crisp sound, the three hundred fifty-first soul body miraculously had a small portion of an arm that wasn’t completely destroyed. This section of the arm didn’t disappear forever but, under Lin Xin’s settings, flew back out after entering the Stone Wheel and reassembled into a segment of an arm.

Lin Xin’s eyes grew even brighter.

The Soul Substitute Beads in front of him were now densely packed with cracks, clearly about to fail in sustaining repeated soul body conglomeration.

"I set the consciousness so that it would immediately return here if it successfully penetrated through and reassembled."

"This arm segment managed to return, which means some of its fragments were not completely crushed."

He reached out and pulled this arm segment over, studying its split structure closely.

He wanted to see what kind of fragments could survive being crushed by Shattered Wheel Hall.

Though it was referred to as a segment of an arm, in reality, it was just a tiny piece of forearm bone that had likely survived by mere coincidence.