Chapter 148: Who Can Withstand This?

After completing the cleanup operations, the psionic cultivators departed one by one. This battered and scarred world was ultimately to be returned to its native humanity.

The trial of Artificial God Realm 2055.

Difficulty: Ultra-high.

Arguably the highest among all secondary trials.

With such extreme difficulty came correspondingly generous rewards. Beyond what the psionic cultivators had gained individually within their emotional domains, the Conquering Space—having successfully torn the Masked Realm to pieces—also granted rewards to the participants. Moreover, these rewards were often tailored with great consideration, providing things the psionic cultivators could put to immediate use.

As for what those rewards actually were, only the respective cultivators themselves knew.

In any case, following Lan Yi's plunge into slumber.

The first to leave and return to the primary world was Wang Aoja.

This chronically teenage-delusional, exceedingly tsundere fellow strolled over to the vicinity of the Shanghai ruins, loudly ranting and raving toward the massive void created by Lan Yi's slumber. He declared that he was leaving right away, telling Old Devil Lan to keep sleeping—just not too deeply—and that a final showdown awaited them once he returned to the primary world, alongside a string of other blustering nonsense.

In the end, however, Wang Aoja turned serious for a moment.

Even as enemies, some people commanded respect, especially after one came to understand them deeply.

To question Old Devil Lan, and then to come to understand Old Devil Lan.

As for actually becoming Old Devil Lan...

Most living beings in the primary world would likely scream: Spare me from such a fate!

Wang Aoja was the only one who came to say goodbye. Li Yang and Lin Cheng left without a word. One was cautious, unwilling to risk being forced into a life-or-death battle with Lan Yi before even returning to the primary world; the other simply knew he wasn't welcome, figuring it was better to help build up Artificial God Realm 2055 a bit before departing.

As for Juno.

She applied to the Conquering Space for a one-month extension on the trial.

This principal deity of the Ocean Civilization was in no rush to leave, choosing instead to stay behind under the pretext of continuing to care for this world's humanity. After all, post-calamity humans were either mentally impaired or emotionally deficient; even with the favor of the Heavenly Dao, their starting point was exceptionally arduous.

Of course, the true motive of this unlicensed older-sister-type deity was undoubtedly to wait for Lan Yi to awaken, as she still had a few tempting little secrets to settle with him.

There were also a couple of trailing ends.

Namely, the two lucky individuals, Chu Xuan and Zheng Cha.

Having survived the desperate emergency landing in the Masked Realm, these two transmigrators had effectively escaped their cage, free henceforth to soar like birds in a boundless sky. The Conquering Space required individuals like them to undergo ten or eight Artificial God Realm assessments—evaluations that were somewhat stricter than those for the primary world's psionic cultivators.

Should they pass, a place would await them in the primary world.

The two of them genuinely wanted to thank Lan Yi.

And by the way, see if they could glean some guidance from this supreme figure. But alas, the Conquering Space was pressing them hard, and they lacked an effective way to approach the massive void created by Lan Yi, leaving them with no choice but to depart with lingering regret.

Shifting the perspective back to Lan Yi.

As the time crystals shattered, the cycle was severed, and everything was brought to an end.

The Shanghai ruins where Lan Yi resided experienced a forceful overlap between future and past. Majestic waves of mind power surged and roared, while the lingering fallout of the Daoist magic from "Grandpa Ivan" wreaked havoc in all directions, transforming the entire expanse of Shanghai into a colossal spherical void. Within this cavity seethed violently active mind power!

It could also be considered Lan Yi's dream—the blue dream.

Within this dream.

Old Devil Lan was absorbing and undergoing transformation.

Forging a Dharma form was not a particularly difficult task for him.

The real challenge lay in filling his martial arts realm to the brim in one go, pushing the stage of the Dharma form to a level where personal advancement was no longer possible. Lan Yi was gestating his ultimate Dharma form—the complete iteration of the Dharma form—completing in a single stride a path that might take others decades to polish and grow along.

Therefore, inside the great void.

Within a dream comparable to reality, Lan Yi was undergoing a rigorous trial—one severe enough to drive countless mind-refining martial artists insane.

Cutting the feet to fit the shoes!

The idiom sounded absurd; how could anyone chop off their feet just to fit into a pair of shoes? If not madness, what was it? Yet what Old Devil Lan was doing was precisely that. Under the generous gift of accumulated cycles within this world, his mind power was in a state of perpetual oversaturation, to the point of being over-capacity at almost every second!

When a person's consciousness became overly bloated, brain death would ensue.

To avoid falling into an eternal sleep.

Lan Yi adopted two measures.

One measure was dreaming. Through intense dreamscapes encompassing the entire Shanghai region, he infinitely blurred reality and mind power, evolving the area into a top-tier hunting ground for the Thunder-Feathered Dragon Sparrow. Within this hunting ground, the Thunder-Feathered Dragon Sparrow engaged in fierce combat with mythical species such as White Lions, Yellow Roars, Divine Dragons, and Qilin—all materialized from various martial arts philosophies!

Witnessing once meant witnessing forever.

As an apex predator, Lan Yi's Dharma form possessed a single, absolute effect: suppression! Unconditional, tyrannical suppression!

Theoretically, once he deployed his Dharma form and locked onto a target for strategic suppression, the enemy's Dharma form would instantly malfunction. Such an ability was terrifyingly formidable to pure martial artists, equivalent to instantly stripping away their capacity to utilize mind power. Even psionic cultivators who dual-practiced martial arts and Daoism would find themselves in an extremely wretched state if suppressed.

From the perspective of psionic cultivators.

Lan Yi's Dharma-form ability was approaching the realm of Void-Refining, representing a qualitative or jurisdictional suppression.

As for Lan Yi's other self-rescue measure, it was the aforementioned "cutting the feet to fit the shoes."

With immense fortitude and supreme courage, he forcibly regulated the manifestation of his mental landscape rather than letting his power swell and drift unrestrictedly. Whenever even a shred of redundant mental baggage appeared—such as lust, slaughter, sloth, or malice—he would slice it away from his consciousness without a moment's hesitation, wielding the sword of his true self!

This was equivalent to.

Lan Yi carving flesh from his own body every single second.

Moreover, this flesh-carving agony that penetrated straight into the soul could not be avoided; he had to endure it purely through sheer willpower! The most torturous part was that before the Dharma form reached its ultimate completion, this mind-refining method of cutting flesh to solidify and shape one's state had no foreseeable end in sight!

Enduring both mental torments—the burden of self-framing and the agony of self-carving—Lan Yi's progress in mind-power martial arts could only be described as advancing by leaps and bounds.

The Dharma form.

The final stage within martial arts mind-refinement, the realm of the Dharma form, was divided into two overall steps: the first was condensing the martial arts intent, and the second was cultivating the martial arts physical incarnation. The so-called martial arts intent was the martial artist's supreme martial ideal, philosophy, and disposition. Martial arts intent represented the martial artist's comprehension of the ultimate martial path, while the martial arts physical incarnation was the materialized manifestation of that comprehension.

Lan Yi was not merely advancing in a straightforward manner.

While pushing forward his Dharma form, he was simultaneously condensing his insights regarding numerous Daoist spells into it.

Electromagnetism and electricity were inseparably linked.

The Dharma form possessed the capability to infuse and store mind power within physical matter to exert its effects. In other words, by superimposing the Thunder-Feathered Dragon Sparrow with the Magnetic Fiend Wanderer, Lan Yi had already preliminarily acquired the ability to materialize his Dharma form, intertwining the illusory with the real, and employing multiple methods to influence and interfere with reality.

With a single thought from him, all modern weaponry within the coverage zone of his primary-world Dharma form would be rendered completely ineffective!

Double-layered nullification.

Who could possibly resist that? What could they even use to defend against it?