CHAPTER 493: CHAPTER 369: TIME FLOW RATE 1 TO 4!

"Actually, training spiritual power and condensing nodes is supposed to be your reward."

Xu invited Li Zheng to sit down and slowly explained, "But I still want to thank you. You helped me alleviate... what’s it called? Awkwardness, right?"

"Ah, that’s not important. What’s important is that you need to remember what I am going to teach you next..."

Xu was really a chatterbox. Ever since the First Generation Lamp Holder left, he had been lonely for too long and unconsciously picked up the bad habit, evolving from a quiet listener to a gabber.

Even while explaining the secret techniques of spiritual power training to Li Zheng, he would instinctively bring up a few side stories, and after a long chat, he would finally steer the conversation back on track.

In the end, Li Zheng used all his strength and barely remembered anything about cultivation-related knowledge, but instead remembered a few small stories...

"...So, that’s why I locked that guy up and only released him after he felt the endless torment of solitude!" Xu paused here and asked Li Zheng, "How much did you remember?"

Li Zheng looked lifeless: "Three small stories, five incidents of revenge on others, and sixteen anecdotes about interactions with the First Generation Lamp Holder. I remember those roughly."

"Why did you remember all that useless stuff?" Xu scolded, "I told you to remember the method of training and condensing your spiritual power nodes!"

"So you knew those small stories were useless too!" Li Zheng lay flat, asking Xu, "Tell the truth, were you afraid that if you taught me, I wouldn’t come around anymore, so you used this method to interfere with my learning?"

"No, how could I?" Xu seemed a bit unnatural; it seemed he still hadn’t learned how to lie.

"Sigh... It’s fine, we have plenty of time. But I’ve stayed here too long this time, and I have things to do outside. I’ll come back next time to learn from you." Li Zheng sat up, calculated the time, and realized nearly four hours had passed without him noticing!

If he didn’t leave soon, he might miss out on completing the ten challenges for today, so he had to take his leave.

"Well... alright, I’ll see you out," Xu said a bit disappointedly, stood up, and made a strange gesture, pointing at Li Zheng.

The next moment, Li Zheng only felt a sudden pain in his hand holding the lamp, like it was burning and stabbed by needles.

He let go, wanting to rub his hands to relieve the pain, but then remembered that here he had no physical body.

"What did you just do?" Li Zheng was stunned, now realizing that in this form, he was something like a spiritual body, and yet Xu could hurt him in this state?

If he learned this trick, wouldn’t he be able to defeat enemies invisibly?

"Nothing, just forcibly bound the lamp to you. Don’t forget, the terminal you call X, I have some of its abilities too," Xu smiled slightly.

This meant that unless Li Zheng died, the Mysterious Declaration couldn’t be traded for others to use.

"Are you afraid that one day I’ll learn the method to cultivate spiritual power and trade the lamp to someone else?" Li Zheng sighed, "You’re too cautious!"

Although he indeed had this idea before, it seemed Xu had caught a glimpse of it, which was why he took this action.

"Better safe than sorry, right? Isn’t that an idiom from your memory?" Xu raised his hand slightly, "Rest assured, as I promised earlier, I won’t easily peek into others’ thoughts anymore, so this time it’s really just something I wanted to do myself."

Li Zheng couldn’t confirm if Xu truly kept his promise, but since it was already bound, he dismissed the idea of trading the lamp.

"Alright, send me back first. I still haven’t figured out how to use this broken lamp to get back." Li Zheng urged.

"Your spiritual power is too low to use it; once you condense the first spiritual power node, you can use it in the Dark Realm," Xu explained briefly and waved his hand.

Li Zheng only felt the world spinning around him, before falling into darkness.

In just a moment, when he opened his eyes again, he was back in his capsule residence.

’Master, what happened just now?’

The Bloodthirsty Demon Blade, still held in his hand, trembled.

Looking at his other hand, Li Zheng found the "Lamp Holder" lamp had disappeared, leaving a lamp mark in the palm of his hand, which flickered and vanished.

That was where he had been hurt by Xu in the Dark Realm.

"Is this completely bound now?" Li Zheng murmured, accurately sensing the presence of a lamp in his left hand that he could use to re-enter the Dark Realm with just a thought.

"Truly worthy of the First Generation Lamp Holder, able to craft such a stable tool to enter the Dark Realm," Li Zheng couldn’t help but admire.

In the Dark Realm, Xu had explained to Li Zheng that even for virtual-real life forms, entering the Dark Realm wasn’t something they could do at will.

Though many life forms appeared in Xu’s account, realistically, it took an unknown amount of time to accumulate such a number of entries.

In fact, if it weren’t for the First Generation Lamp Holder’s genius method to discover the way to traverse the virtual and real worlds through relatively stable Abyssal Walking,

the Dark Realm would still be a place reliant on pure luck to enter.

"Hmm? By the way, you said I was standing here the whole time?" Li Zheng asked the Demon Blade, glancing at the time.

Twelve forty-five in the afternoon?

He spent almost four hours in the Dark Realm, yet only one hour passed in the Physical Realm?

A one to four-time dilation?

Or was he mistaken?

Had he actually been standing here all day and night?

Since entering the Dark Realm, nothing from the Physical Realm could be brought over, so even the panel functions of the terminal system were inaccessible, leaving Li Zheng to estimate time on his own.

’Master has been standing there almost an hour after taking out that lamp, huh? The lamp’s gone?’

The Demon Blade’s assertion all but confirmed the time dilation between the Physical and Dark realms to be one to four.

After being subdued, the Bloodthirsty Demon Blade became quite obedient, so probably wouldn’t lie.

Li Zheng returned to the first floor where Xiao Ying was dozing off with an empty plate in hand.

This confirmed that the Demon Blade was telling the truth.

If he had spent more than six hours in the Dark Realm, Xiao Ying wouldn’t be sitting idly, dozing here.

’Master, master, that lamp disappeared at some point!’ The Demon Blade was still fixated on that matter, trembling in Li Zheng’s hand.

"Alright, I know!" Li Zheng comforted it by displaying the lamp, then put it back into the mark, calming the Demon Blade.

Looking at the lamp mark, Li Zheng harbored resentment toward the First Generation Lamp Holder.

Such an extraordinary trait, why make it a combination that disappears once assembled?

Screw this...

It’s aggravating!

He didn’t care about other traits, mainly that "Add-on," which he really hated to part with!

Furthermore, according to Xu, the "Add-on" feature was an unexpected byproduct, originally not planned to be added to the lamp by him and the First Generation Lamp Holder.

So if the other features were gone, so be it, but why did this unforeseen byproduct also disappear?

This is absurd!

The more Li Zheng thought about it, the more distressed he became, so he contacted Zhan Zhouzhou and the others to start today’s plan to challenge the mutants.

Venting all his frustrations on those mutants.