November 3rd, Tuesday, the second day after Halloween, and also the second day after Zhang Yan's departure from the Ashen World. At 10:30 in the morning, Qin Island City, Xingfuli District, Household 505, bedroom.

After working continuously for eight hours, Zhang Yan successfully cleared out the ghosts in Qin Island City and its surrounding provinces, capturing a total of over eleven thousand ghosts, averaging about a thousand captures per hour. The efficiency was actually quite good, or it could be said that due to the increased movement speed, the capture speed was significantly faster than before.

Unfortunately, since ghosts are scattered things, often hiding in various dark corners and crevices, it's far from achieving the high efficiency of monster hunting.

As a result, Zhang Yan spent a considerable amount of time just searching for ghosts. Even with the help of time pause, it was still the case.

Moreover, because some ghosts were relatively close to humans, Zhang Yan often couldn't simply capture them directly. Doing so might inadvertently harm nearby ordinary people, requiring more meticulous operations instead. While meticulous operations are safe and don't harm the innocent, the trade-off is slower speed.

For example, if a ghost is hiding in a house, whether he smashes the house with a slap to capture the ghost instantly, or directly swallows the house along with the ghost into the Stomach Space, both are relatively quick.

But there's often people living in the house, and nowadays, houses rarely stand alone; most are multi-story buildings. If he were to suck one of them directly into his Stomach Space, the entire building could become a dangerous structure.

Although his alchemy can repair it quickly, it's still a hassle. Moreover, he can't just go around repairing things everywhere, right? Otherwise, wouldn't he become a big fool providing free house renovations for people?

Therefore, at times like these, some more time-saving and safer meticulous operations than alchemy are inevitably needed.

And precisely because he spent a lot of time in these miscellaneous areas, it resulted in Zhang Yan's current capture efficiency of only a bit over a thousand per hour.

Fortunately, though capturing ghosts is time-consuming, converting them into Soul Power and further refining them into the Wise Man's Stone is still extremely fast. After just taking over ten minutes, Zhang Yan had already converted over ten thousand ghosts stored in the Stomach Space, along with some rebel and human souls previously absorbed, into a palm-sized Wise Man's Stone.

Upon refining it, Zhang Yan immediately swallowed the Wise Man's Stone into the Stomach Space. As before, as soon as it entered the Stomach Space, the Wise Man's Stone rapidly shrank at a speed visible to the naked eye due to the quick absorption by the Stomach Space, disappearing without a trace in just a little over ten seconds.

And Zhang Yan also felt a surge of energy currents constantly raging and expanding within his body.

At the same time, absorbing the Wise Man's Stone also caused Zhang Yan's body size to increase once again by nearly thirty centimeters. However, for current Zhang Yan, these thirty centimeters of height were just at an acceptable level. After all, he is currently growing at a rate of 116 centimeters per hour, so these thirty centimeters are just a matter of fifteen minutes for him.

Of course, the most important thing is still the increase in lifespan, so Zhang Yan quickly opened his XXX Talent of Infinite Life to check.

[Infinite Life]

[Quality: XXX (0/177147)]

[Ability One: Unwearied – Constitution +19.]

[Ability Two: Energetic – Physical Strength +760%.]

[Ability Three: Longevity – Life Span +500 years + 20 years × 125 (+2) [Constitution] = 3000 years (+40 years).]

[Ability Four: Longevity – When remaining life span exceeds 1000 years [currently 8270 years (+1363 years)], increases 8270 years (life span) × 0.2% = 1654% (+273%) attack power, increases 8270 years (life span) × 0.2% = 1654% (+273%) defensive power.]

[Ability Five: Heavenly Mandate – Luck +1, when remaining life span exceeds 10000 years [currently 8270 years (+1363 years)], for every additional 10000 years of life span, increases 1 additional point of luck, current additional luck value bonus is [0].]

"Along with the improvement of my Constitution Attribute, Ability Three Longevity has helped me gain another forty years of life span. These forty years of life span, if placed in the past, were still quite good, but now I can only say better than nothing. The real life span increase still depends on the Wise Man's Stone.

Originally, I only had 6907 years of life span in total, but now it has increased to 8270 years, equivalent to an increase of 1363 years of life span. Subtracting the forty years of life span from Ability Three Longevity, there are still 1323 years of life span left."

For using over eleven thousand ghosts plus some human souls to help him increase his life span by 1323 years, Zhang Yan was quite satisfied.

"If I continue to develop this way, perhaps if I try harder, I might be able to directly accumulate ten thousand years of life span today. Currently, I'm only 1730 years away from ten thousand years of life span, and I can probably achieve it in just a few more hours."

Of course, a lifespan alone is of no use to him. It still needs to be combined with Ability Four Source and Flow to increase Zhang Yan's strength. Originally, Ability Four could only provide him with a 1381% attack power and defense bonus, but now it has increased to 1654%, equivalent to an increase of 273% attack power and defense bonus.

"Including the bonus from the Divination Tarot Card, now just in terms of attack power bonus, just one punch can basically achieve nineteen times the attack power. Truly impressive."

Zhang Yan felt more and more confident about destroying dwarf planets. As for what a dwarf planet is, as everyone knows, Pluto, demoted from the nine major planets of the Milky Way, has been downgraded to a dwarf planet.

The Vesta he previously destroyed had a diameter of less than six hundred kilometers, while Pluto's diameter is 2400 kilometers, with Vesta only having a quarter of its diameter.

However, unlike Vesta, which is mainly composed of iron-nickel alloy, Pluto is brittle because its outer parts are primarily various layers of ice, including nitrogen ice (solid nitrogen) and dry ice, ordinary ice, carbon monoxide ice...

And besides that, the rest are mostly rocks and water, with a significantly low metal content.

As for why Pluto is covered in ice, it's because there's even more ice beneath its surface, or maybe there are special subsurface oceans below its strata that overflow to the surface and freeze due to the lack of an atmosphere.

So, to some extent, Pluto is a frozen planet, consisting mainly of ice and rock, with little metal. Even the metal content in its star core is not substantial, being replaced by high-density ice-rock composites.

Therefore, with the same diameter, Pluto's structure, characterized by a thin shell and thick filling, is much more fragile than Vesta. Although ice increases in hardness with decreasing temperature, even in the ultra-low temperatures of outer space, which are about minus 270 degrees, its hardness is only slightly greater than iron.

The hardness of ordinary iron is usually around 6 or 7 points, while the hardness of iron-nickel alloy can reach above 40 points. The super-high-density iron-nickel alloy at high temperatures in the star core is even harder, reaching at least 60 points, which is ten times that of Pluto's hardness.

Because Pluto is indeed quite fragile, Zhang Yanhang feels confident that he could even smash Pluto at the fifth tier, especially since his strength hasn't yet reached the peak of the fifth tier. He's only upgraded two skills, with ten more to go. When all these skills are fully upgraded, that will be the true peak of the fifth tier.

After reviewing the Infinite Life Talent Effect, Zhang Yanhang casually took out three heavenly materials and earthly treasures from his waist bag and ate them into his stomach space, all of which were meant to increase his energy value limit.

He wondered if Multiple Choice truly discerned his current lack of energy value limit, because this morning, he triggered two adventures in succession. The first adventure had two options concerning the energy value limit, and the second still had one option about the energy value limit, which pleased Zhang Yanhang greatly.

Feeling the massive surges of energy within him, Zhang Yanhang immediately checked his energy value limit.

[Energy Value: 62116/62116 (Intelligence×105, current body has been officially datafied, energy value recovery speed, 480 points per hour.)]

"Initially, my energy value limit was only 51,661 points, but now it has increased to 62,116 points, equivalent to an additional 10,455 energy value limit. I didn't expect these three heavenly materials and earthly treasures to provide so much energy value limit."

Of course, this result comes after the 100% bonus from Heaven and Earth Devourer and the 105% energy value limit bonus. Zhang Yanhang estimated that, on average, each heavenly material and earthly treasure could increase the energy value limit by only a few hundred points.

Moreover, Zhang Yanhang believes that part of the energy value might also come from the daily refresh in Nuclear Fusion Status, but a mere sixty points of fixed increase is indeed negligible here, even after the bonus.

"Previously, despite my hard effort, my energy value limit only increased by 17,000 points, but now just by randomly triggering two adventures, it has already increased by 10,000 points. Indeed, making Multiple Choice aware of my energy value deficit is immensely important."

Zhang Yanhang doesn't know if the next adventures will still allow him to acquire heavenly materials and earthly treasures that can improve the energy value limit. If they do, he feels that he might even boost the energy value limit to over 70,000 points today.

"My prior small goal was to increase the energy value limit to 52,000 points, which was easily achieved. Additionally, I completed the subsequent ten small goals as well."

Though this time the small goal was completed smoothly, it was achieved through adventure, which is not sustainable. Therefore, Zhang Yanhang plans to set the next small goal at 63,000 points. Currently, he still needs another 884 points of energy value limit to achieve this small goal.

"But most importantly, the gap between my life value limit and energy value limit has finally narrowed to some extent. Initially, the life value limit was 5.4 times the energy value limit, but now it has directly reduced to 4.5 times, which is a one-time reduction of 0.9 times."

Previously, Zhang Yanhang thought it would be great to maintain a fivefold gap and not let it break through to six times, but unexpectedly, it has reverted to four times, something he hadn't anticipated. After all, who would have thought Multiple Choice would suddenly show goodwill and provide three heavenly materials and earthly treasures that increase the energy value limit?

"If Multiple Choice continues to provide more heavenly materials and earthly treasures regarding the energy value limit, I might even be able to reduce the current 4.5-fold gap to below fourfold."

Before the adventure was triggered, Zhang Yanhang thought that reducing the gap to this extent would certainly have to wait until the Scroll Dragon Bloodline upgrade, but now it's been managed with heavenly materials and earthly treasures.

For this reason, he is even more looking forward to the Scroll Dragon Bloodline because it provides percentage bonuses. The higher his baseline is now, the more he'll improve and the more he can narrow the gap between the energy value limit and the life value limit.

"A normal fifth-tier Awakener generally has an energy value limit of about 7,500 points. Now my energy value limit has increased from 6.9 times that of a fifth-tier Awakener to 8.3 times, equating to another 1.4 times increase in the energy value limit."

Zhang Yanhang had previously been considering achieving a sevenfold small goal, but now, with the triggering of the adventure, even the eightfold small goal has been accomplished. It seems that the hopes for achieving his original tenfold short-term goal have increased once again. It might even be possible to achieve it before entering the Ashen World.

His next small goal naturally is to increase the energy value limit to nine times that of a fifth-tier Awakener. He is currently short by 0.7 times. In the past, this might have been a lot, but concerning the adventure, just one more trigger might be enough to accomplish it.

But the prerequisite is truly being able to trigger relevant adventures again. If not, then this small goal probably won't have much likelihood of being achieved.

After checking the energy value limit, Zhang Yanhang also took a glance at his Heavenly Earth Form Skill Effect. Logically, after such a long period of growth, his maximum transformation limit should have received another significant boost.

[Heavenly Earth Form · Original Scripture LV.6 (Active Skill)]

[Active Effect: After skill activation, Heavenly Destiny Master can freely transform (enlarge) the body, with the maximum transformation limit being 2400%+2700%=5100%[currently 1821 meters (+214 meters)], power effect +600%. No cooldown time, slight consumption of physical strength.]

[Additional Attributes: Maximum transformation limit +2700%.]

"Originally, my body size was only 3,150 centimeters, but now because over eight more hours have passed, my body size has grown to 3,571 centimeters, equivalent to an increase of 421 centimeters."

At the same time, Zhang Yanhang's maximum transformation limit also increased from 1,607 meters to 1,821 meters, which is a further increase of 214 meters in maximum transformation limit.