Chapter 94: The Crystal Palace and Cosmic Energy

by cnwebnovels

Picking up from the last chapter — Silver Pearl had suddenly hauled me into the air and flown straight for the largest stretch of swamp. I knew exactly what she was after: taking me back to her home beneath the water.

That scared me half to death. I couldn’t swim. Was she trying to drown me?

Silver Pearl didn’t care what I thought, and she paid no attention to my struggling. She pulled me straight down into the water.

I hadn’t expected it — that pool in the swamp, small as it looked from above, turned out once we were inside to be enormous, deep, and perfectly clear, shaped like a funnel that widened the farther down it went.

Silver Pearl kept pulling me toward the bottom. At some point, without my noticing, a thin layer of air had formed around me, and none of the drowning I’d braced for ever came. I could breathe just fine.

I lost track of how long we sank, or how deep the water ran. All I knew was that we kept descending until we reached a place where no sunlight could follow — and there, impossibly, stood a crystal palace.

Silver Pearl led me inside. I looked around at everything, feeling exactly like Sun Wukong stepping into the Dragon Palace of the Eastern Sea for the first time — every last thing new and strange to my eyes.

There was no water inside the Crystal Palace, so drowning was no longer a concern. It was bright in there too, as though some luminous substance ran through the walls themselves, glowing in every color imaginable. Beyond the palace walls swam fish, drifted water plants, and moved creatures I couldn’t begin to name.

The Crystal Palace wasn’t really one palace at all, but a whole cluster of structures — countless halls, walkways, pavilions, towers, and corridors lined with strange ornamental rock, quiet and elegant, like something out of an imperial garden.

Perhaps out of respect for me, Silver Pearl kept her human shape the entire time. But most of the creatures moving around us inside the palace were smooth, round, crystal-ball shapes.

Like a queen presiding over her domain, Silver Pearl led me into the grandest of the palaces. Only once we reached a lavish reception hall did we finally sit down. The hall was filled with ornaments and fixtures, every one of them clearly worth a fortune.

Silver Pearl took a high seat and had me sit beside her. A round crystal ball came over and served us tea. Only then did she speak.

“I’ve examined your abilities closely. You’re not strong enough. Not nearly. As things stand, you couldn’t carry Xuanze and Hanming’s consciousness bodies. You need to grow stronger, and fast.”

I glanced down at my own arms and said,

“I think I’m pretty strong already. I could beat Xiang Bianfeng, rank thirty-five in the Shadow Pavilion. And this trip through the virtual Future World has already pushed my force of consciousness up noticeably.”

Silver Pearl looked at me and said,

“No. You’re not strong. Hit me once, and you’ll see for yourself.”

I felt a flash of embarrassment. Now that I knew who she really was, striking her felt wrong somehow.

Silver Pearl said,

“If I tell you to hit me, then hit me. Full strength. When we fought earlier, did you actually use everything you had? It didn’t feel like much — nowhere close to what you’d need to carry cosmic energy. That won’t do.”

I said,

“How about I hit that crystal pillar instead?”

Silver Pearl said,

“Fine. Use everything you’ve got — martial technique, force of consciousness, all of it. Let me see you at your absolute strongest.”

So I gathered every scrap of strength I had, wrapping martial technique and force of consciousness together, and drove it straight into the crystal pillar.

Boom—

A thunderous crash rang out.

But noise was all it was. The pillar didn’t so much as tremble.

Silver Pearl said,

“Just as I thought — you’re still nowhere close. At this level, you can’t even condense a single consciousness avatar. You have no way to communicate with the intelligent bodies of deep space through ether, let alone carry Miss Hanming’s consciousness body.”

I said,

“Then what do I need to do to reach that ether-communication level? I’ve heard that’s supposed to count as the third cosmic tier.”

Silver Pearl said,

“I’m not familiar with however you people divide up your ranks, but I do know ether communication is a genuine threshold. All right — come with me.”

I followed her out beyond the Crystal Palace, and to my surprise, I could still breathe fine — none of the crushing pressure or airless suffocation I’d expected at that depth.

Silver Pearl said,

“Don’t worry about drowning. Everything here has been treated with ether. It won’t touch you.”

The two of us followed a deep current, sinking further still, straight down beneath the earth itself.

Was she taking me underground now?

Diving from underwater straight into solid ground — no science I knew of could account for that.

And yet, with Silver Pearl leading the way, she made it happen effortlessly — wherever our bodies moved, water, mud, and rock were simply as if they didn’t exist. We passed straight through.

I remembered Uncle’s base, hidden inside bedrock — but that had relied on the phase-dislocation method to construct an asymmetric spatial structure, all of it powered by high-energy nuclear equipment.

But Silver Pearl was nothing more than a living being. No nuclear apparatus, no equipment of any kind — and yet she could pass through solid matter as she pleased. How?

I stayed close behind her, running my hand carefully along the stone walls and ceiling as we passed. Their surface, to my touch, felt like some kind of ionized state — this wasn’t true spatial tunneling at all.

Was alien technology always this far ahead?

Silver Pearl noticed my confusion and said,

“Once cosmic force of consciousness reaches a certain level, it becomes possible to alter cosmic matter through ether. I don’t know if you’ll follow this, but everything in the universe, at its core, is nothing more than a form of vibration.”

Still confused, I asked,

“And what scientific principle explains that?”

Silver Pearl smiled.

“Science? That’s only how your world understands itself. We’re simply born knowing how to tunnel using force of consciousness. If you want the scientific version — surely you understand that everything vibrates? That when matter breaks down to its smallest unit, it’s essentially empty. It’s only energy. It’s xuan. It’s wave — or, if you like, a vibrational state.

“Everything you see as matter is only the portion you’re capable of perceiving, the portion that actually interacts with you. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of tons of matter that never interacts with you passes straight through your body, and you feel absolutely nothing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s always there. You simply can’t sense it, because it never interacts with you.

“A vibrational field can only obstruct you when it interacts with your perception — because that interaction has occurred. But when I use ether, I can make sure none of the matter you’re looking at interacts with me at all. At that point, that matter is effectively zero to me. Because the interaction is zero. Do you follow?”

I understood some of it, and not the rest, so I asked,

“I follow the theory, but that’s all happening on the microscopic level. Right now we’re moving through the macroscopic world. Where did all that mass, that volume, go? Matter can’t just disappear.”

Silver Pearl said,

“It seems you still don’t quite grasp the laws of cosmic physics. Here’s all you need to understand: you Earth humans only developed the sensory organs suited to perceiving vibrations within Earth’s own environment. You never developed organs for what you can’t perceive. Humans, for instance, have no organ for detecting ultrasonic waves, so you can’t sense them — but that doesn’t mean ultrasonic waves don’t exist. They’re always there. That’s why humans can’t see in the dark — because what you perceive is light. But bats and dolphins on your own planet can sense things clearly in total darkness, because they have the organs to receive ultrasonic waves. Everything is vibration, and vibration is what gives rise to matter. We were simply born with the sensory organs for it, so to us, ignoring most of it comes naturally.”

I still felt a little lost, but it seemed unwise to keep pressing.

The logic made sense in theory, but applying it in practice always seemed to bring a flood of complications and confusion. If she truly wanted to explain it in full, one conversation clearly wouldn’t be enough. No wonder Earth humans struggled so much with cosmic force of consciousness — we simply lacked the lived experience, and the senses, to match it.

When Silver Pearl finally brought me to a place deep beneath the surface, I suddenly sensed a violent mass of flame ahead — though there was no light to it, only an intense, scorching sensation.

Silver Pearl came to a sudden stop, pointing toward the flame I could sense, and said,

“That’s a cosmic energy mass. I brought you here so you could draw from it directly. It’s the most immediate source of energy the universe has to offer. It’ll raise your cosmic-energy power fast.”

A cosmic energy mass?

Before I’d set out, Feng Du had told me Future World was full of cosmic traps and cosmic energy — but he’d never once said where to find them, or how to actually absorb one.

Silver Pearl pointed again at the mass and said,

“I’ll open a channel for you here. Walk straight into it now — open your entire sea of consciousness, your flesh, your whole cultivation, and merge yourself into it completely. That’s the fastest way. You could take it in gradually instead, but that’s far too slow. Merging is only a little uncomfortable.”

The idea of a dragon vein flashed through my mind. I’d read plenty of novels where some massive energy core sat buried underground — the so-called dragon vein — and whoever claimed it ascended to godhood. Surely this wasn’t the legendary dragon vein itself?

Silver Pearl caught my hesitation and said,

“Don’t tell me you’d rather take it in bit by bit? At that rate, it would take several hundred years just to absorb what one day of merging would give you. Bear with it. Merging is the better option.”

That wasn’t actually what I’d been hesitating over — I just wanted to understand the difference between the two methods.

But since she’d put it that way, I couldn’t keep stalling. I steeled my nerve and walked forward.

The deeper in I went, the hotter it grew, until I felt certain I was about to melt outright. And still, Silver Pearl showed no sign of telling me to stop.

Fine. Worst case, I’d simply lose this virtual code-body.

So I threw myself forward, throwing open every organ, every sense, my entire consciousness body, my whole cultivation, holding nothing back. With the grim resolve of a man ready to die, I plunged straight into that raging cosmic energy mass.

Hum—

A wave of heat swept through me, and then — nothing. All sensation gone.

Was I dead? And yet this virtual code-body of mine still held onto a clear, waking sense of self.

I’d assumed that the moment I entered, dissolution and death would begin. I’d already braced myself for it. But nothing unfolded the way I’d imagined.

I hadn’t died. My form hadn’t been destroyed. I didn’t even feel the discomfort Silver Pearl had warned me about. Inside, there was no scorching heat, no pain, no unpleasantness whatsoever. If anything, there was something closer to pleasure, some kind of comfort for the consciousness itself.

Yes — I was actually enjoying it.

I basked in that warm, rich, comforting sensation, as though I’d become an infant again, cradled in my mother’s arms. I couldn’t even remember what that had actually felt like — I’d been far too young back then — but this feeling of closeness, warmth, love, care, and devotion felt utterly familiar, something woven into me since birth.

This was the scent of a child and its mother. The bond between the earth and everything it raised and sheltered upon it.

I felt myself dissolving — no longer human-shaped at all, but formless.

I couldn’t find my own body anywhere, and yet I could still feel my consciousness, present and whole. It was a feeling of pure freedom for the soul, an exhilarating sense of doing exactly as I pleased, as though every chain that had ever bound me had simply ceased to exist. I felt like Pilgrim Sun with no golden headband to restrain him, itching to swing his staff and shatter the heavens themselves.

This was a bath in cosmic energy. A total baptism of life itself.

Everything about me — soul and flesh alike — was being reset.

My consciousness body was ascending, evolving, at astonishing speed.

This was no simple act of absorbing energy.

It was, plainly, a full systemic overhaul of body and mind together — a complete upgrade and reset of both hardware and software.

I had no idea how much time passed.

It felt like sleep — impossibly sweet, warm, comfortable, and clear. I slept so deeply I never wanted to wake. I wanted to stay like that forever.

Forever, and ever.

Until I woke, and found myself lying on a soft bed inside Silver Pearl’s Crystal Palace.

I couldn’t remember leaving the cosmic energy mass, or how I’d ended up back in the Crystal Palace, or even how much time had gone by.

All I knew was that the moment I woke, every bone in my body felt weightless, and my mind felt impossibly full.

I lifted my hand. It wasn’t a hand anymore — it was an incarnation of energy.

I tried condensing consciousness avatars. One. Two. Three. Countless versions of myself gathered around me — some watching me and smiling, some chatting with each other, some even scuffling among themselves.

I drew the avatars back in and glanced up at the dome of the Crystal Palace. That too was nothing but condensed energy. Everything my eyes touched was no longer matter in the way it used to be, but energy, wave, particle, vibration.

Time seemed to have turned into a controllable space. Space, in turn, could be converted into time.

Back when I’d faced Xiang Bianfeng, I’d already been able to glimpse past, present, and future, even bend a fragment of spacetime here and there. But that had only ever been on a minuscule scale — a single ladleful drawn from an endless sea.

Now, though, I could disregard the whole process of spacetime and energy shifting and flowing entirely. Dismantling and reshaping spacetime happened at the speed of thought, exactly as I wished.

At that moment, Silver Pearl walked in.

I sat up quickly.

Seeing that I was fully awake, she said softly,

“Three months have passed. Have you adjusted? Does everything around you look different now? Once you’ve settled into this new cosmic-energy system, you’ll be able to travel through the depths of space whenever you like — not just through the entangled-photon-pair virtual mirror image you’re relying on now. I look forward to your true body’s arrival. Bring Miss Hanming with you.”

With that, Silver Pearl gave me a huge hug.