This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!
Chapter 355: This is Just the Beginning

Chapter 355: Chapter 355: This is Just the Beginning

The alarm in the hall was blaring.

The walls and underground structure of the spherical containment station had a six-meter-wide hole blasted through them by Chen Ke’s gunshot.

Corrigan was dead, but the danger for Chen Ke and Parker was far from over.

The Administration Bureau’s people must have arrived by now; they needed to leave quickly.

Corrigan’s body had broken into a pile of black rotten flesh that blossomed on the floor, and Chen Ke kicked it aside, discovering a blue stone fragment inside.

He scuffed the blue stone against the ground with his shoe before picking it up to examine it closely.

This was the blue stone previously embedded in Corrigan’s forehead.

It used to be a large piece, the size of a flashlight, but after being continuously smashed by Xu Jing and shot by Chen Ke, it was now only the size of a thumb.

A blue halo flowed on the surface of the stone; it wasn’t very intense, nor was there much of it—feeling like it was about to flicker out. As Chen Ke’s eyes rested on it, a pop-up suddenly appeared.

[Mutated Artifact: Symbiotic Stone]

[Status: Fragment]

[Effect: Substitute for damaged organs, extend host’s life.]

Upon reading this information, Chen Ke instantly understood why Corrigan had embedded it in his head.

It was clear that Corrigan had survived this long because his physical condition was very poor, perhaps all his organs were failing, kept alive solely by the power of this stone.

Obviously, having a stone stuck in one’s forehead wasn’t a long-term solution, so Corrigan must have been looking for alternatives all along.

"Si’s consortium’s activities might just be aimed at helping Corrigan find a way to extend his life," Chen Ke sighed.

The root of everything Chen Ke had experienced up to now was merely because a wealthy old man wanted to escape death.

The Symbiotic Stone in Chen Ke’s hand lost its last bit of power and turned into a gray-black stone. He had thought he could still use it for a while...

That one shot had consumed 90% of Chen Ke’s lifespan. Originally having hundreds of hours left to live, he now found himself with less than a day, feeling as though he had returned to square one.

As the saying goes, it’s easy to shift from frugality to luxury but hard the other way around; having gotten used to a cycle of over one hundred hours, reverting to just 15 hours was uncomfortable for him.

Considering the time needed to travel from Norton City back to Opportunity City, Chen Ke crushed 10 souls to raise his lifespan to 25 hours, keeping 20 pieces in hand for emergencies.

"Chen Ke, what just happened?! How did you kill it instantaneously?" Parker was curious, and Wang Ailin also walked over, curious about the chunks of the corpse and the huge hole in the wall.

After Chen Ke had made contact with the gods, all subsequent events had occurred in a paused space-time; naturally, they had no idea what had happened. It’s likely that time started to flow for them only after the gun had been fired.

"Do you feel uncomfortable now?" Wang Ailin asked Chen Ke while pulling out her notebook.

"No... I’m fine," Chen Ke replied.

"That stone... where is it now? I saw you making contact with it..." Wang Ailin asked suspiciously.

"I don’t know, it just turned into a gun and I fired it, and then it disappeared," Chen Ke said.

"This is different from the previous contact test results... I’ll take note," Wang Ailin muttered to herself.

"Should we leave now? The Administration Bureau will handle everything... but I suspect we’re already surrounded by them outside," Parker really wasn’t that concerned about the black stone.

"Let me take a photo first..." Chen Ke took out his phone, snapped a few pictures of Corrigan’s body, and pocketed the now-useless Symbiotic Stone.

Hopefully, Li Moyang would believe it...

The three of them stopped chatting and took the maintenance pathway through the hall into the repair department. After walking down the maintenance conduits for half an hour, they finally emerged back on the surface.

The Administration Bureau folks had indeed arrived, but they acted cautiously. Combined with the memes spreading from the research areas, the agents and P.W.A.Ts did not burst in; instead, they established a public front on the perimeter and immediately implemented a blockade.

In fact, after Chen Ke destroyed the phonograph, the spread of the memes wasn’t as severe.

Chen Ke and Parker needed to avoid the Administration Bureau to leave, but Wang Ailin didn’t. The surface was much safer than below, so she decided to stay and wait for rescue.

Chen Ke and Parker found some time and located a drivable car under a building, threw the unconscious driver on the ground, and then drove off.

Though they expected at least some friction with the Administration Bureau folks, the escape went unexpectedly smooth. Several times, Chen Ke saw Administration Bureau vehicles parked a hundred meters away through the car window, but they did not intercept them.

And like that, the two drove the research institute’s bus into the city area and immediately abandoned the vehicle to proceed on foot.

Chen Ke’s clothes were tattered and made him look like a beggar. Parker was already a grey mass; since his clothes were materialized, they remained intact.

Now, they were free. But each had their own concerns and worries.

For Parker, he was finally back in the normal world, the familiar place he knew. Though time was a bit skewed, it wasn’t important.

The important thing was, Parker himself was no longer normal. He didn’t know how to explain to his wife and kids—a man made entirely of ash, could he still fit into his family?

Chen Ke comforted Parker, hoping he would at least try, since this world wasn’t exactly normal either...

Though he said this, Chen Ke had his own worries.

The black stone was like a piece that compensated for the deficiency of his missing heart, and it had become a part of him. He could feel it quietly sleeping inside him.

It was a deity, and apparently, it seemed to be an old acquaintance of humanity. Throughout the ages of human mythological legends, it had incarnated as the weapons of gods and kings, assisting them to write history...

If Chen Ke walked out of the research institute, it meant this deity would also re-enter the world...

He didn’t know what the god was called—as life countdown never named any living creature, nor was he clear about what would happen if this deity returned to the light of day.

Gods and Clans, and the gun in Chen Ke’s heart, essentially recognized the existence of mythological figures like Zeus and Odin, but if they truly existed, where were they now?

The short four thousand plus years of human history was probably just the conjecture of contemporary people—perhaps human civilization wasn’t just over four thousand years... and also had gaps?

Wang Ailin had helped him understand the essence of Spiritual Energy, but also brought forth new problems and, what exactly do the letters H.C.P represent?

Chen Ke scratched his head, not wanting to think about these issues.

With the help of a long-haul truck driver, Chen Ke and Parker left Norton City. There were still things waiting for them in Opportunity City, and the adventure had just begun.