NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 348
CHAPTER 348: The Divine Core
The torment at the hands of Moonfiend had begun. Lin Feng’s agonized screams filled the confined space, echoing off the barrier that trapped them both. His terror was palpable, a constant reminder of the grim fate that awaited him. Every fiber of his being screamed for escape, but deep down, he already sensed his impending doom.
Locked inside with this enraged, vengeful madwoman—what hope could there be for him?
Lin Feng’s mind raced as fear overtook him. He knew what awaited: torture beyond imagination—his skin would split, his bones would shatter, leaving him in a state where neither life nor death would be merciful enough to claim him. The panic in his voice reached a fever pitch.
“No, don’t… please, don’t…” Lin Feng choked out through sobs, the sheer terror constricting his throat.
But just as the words of his plea formed, Moonfiend’s hand clamped over his mouth, silencing him. Her grip was as cold as her heart, and Lin Feng could barely see her face, twisted and unrecognizable with rage and despair.
“Lu Ming!” Moonfiend spat, her voice filled with venom. “Is this the punishment you’ve prepared for me? You’re too ruthless! Even if I become a ghost, I won’t let you off!”
Her words carried the weight of bitter hatred, but little did she know, Lu Ming had never even considered Lin Feng. To Lu Ming, Lin Feng was nothing more than a minor player in the grand scheme. If those who were sent to kill him were jesters, Lin Feng was the king of jesters—amusing, perhaps, but ultimately insignificant. His presence had no bearing on the larger picture.
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Meanwhile, in the depths of Boshi Tower, Lu Ming’s advancement was in full swing. As he drew in vast amounts of source energy, something more potent began to flow toward him—divine essence. This essence, far more valuable than mere energy, was being absorbed into his body, fueling his growing power.
There were only two sources of divine essence in the entire Boshi Tower: Qing Jue and Moonfiend. Qing Jue, still comatose, remained unaffected by the siphoning of power. But Moonfiend’s fate, on the other hand, was becoming tragically clear.
A large amount of Divine Origin began to seep from Moonfiend’s pores, drawn involuntarily toward the barrier that enclosed them both. The essence surged out of her body in waves, rising toward the ceiling where it disappeared, sucked into the vortex of power that Lu Ming had created.
The process was swift—so swift, in fact, that Moonfiend froze in her torture of Lin Feng, her eyes widening as she noticed the unnatural change in her own skin.
She stared in shock at her exposed arms, watching helplessly as the source of her strength—her Divinity—was drawn from her body, leaving her weaker with each passing moment. It was as if her very essence was being stolen before her eyes, siphoned away by an invisible force.
The rapid depletion of Moonfiend’s divine essence was nothing short of catastrophic. What had once been a manageable loss, occurring at a speed of 1, had now accelerated to a devastating pace of 10,000. Before, Moonfiend’s self-recovery had been nearly equal to the rate of loss, allowing her to maintain equilibrium. But now, that balance had been violently shattered, sending her reeling into a state of weakness.
Her body struggled to cope. Her limbs grew limp, and her head spun, disoriented by the sudden drain of her essence. The giant hand that had been tormenting Lin Feng collapsed, unable to sustain itself. Lin Feng fell from the air and hit the ground with a dull thud, his body rolling a considerable distance. Yet, in this moment, Moonfiend couldn’t have cared less about him.
All she could do was stare at her trembling hands, wide-eyed and in a daze. In just a few seconds, a golden light seeped from her body—a light that signified the rapid escape of her divine essence. She could feel it leaving her, draining her life force at an unprecedented rate. And with it came a tremendous wave of weakness, crashing into her like a tidal wave.
Three seconds.
That was all it took.
In just three seconds, Lu Ming had absorbed the entirety of the outer and middle layers of Moonfiend’s divine essence—an essence she had relied upon to maintain her power. Without it, her aura plummeted, and her connection to the divine realm was severed. The essence within her entered a state of dormancy, leaving her exposed and vulnerable.
Moonfiend felt a crushing dizziness wash over her. Her vision blurred as she tried to comprehend what had just happened. But before she could even process the loss, an even greater sense of withdrawal surged within her.
Deep inside her body, her godsource—a slightly smaller version than that of a typical Divine Realm entity—began to rotate. Tiny droplets of golden liquid emerged from it, leaking out like sap from a tree. This liquid, her divine essence in its purest form, was being siphoned away, drawn into the ever-hungry vortex created by Lu Ming’s advancement.
The extraction was ruthless.
A loud bang echoed through the chamber as Moonfiend’s knees buckled, and she collapsed to the ground. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but the overwhelming weakness rendered her speechless. Her body, once so strong and formidable, was now reduced to a fragile shell.
With a final tilt of her head, Moonfiend’s consciousness faded. Her body lay motionless as she fainted—a victim of Lu Ming’s forceful extraction of her divine essence.
From a distance, Lin Feng had witnessed everything.
Though he had no understanding of the mechanics behind what had just occurred, he could tell that Moonfiend had been severely weakened. The torment she had inflicted upon him had ceased, and the terrifying aura she carried had disappeared, replaced by a quiet stillness.
Was his torment… over?
Not entirely. Lin Feng’s momentary relief was quickly replaced by a sense of dread. Moonfiend was only unconscious. She hadn’t died. When she awoke, she would likely be even more enraged, and he would still be at her mercy. Worse yet, she would probably intensify her torment, unleashing all the pent-up frustration and anger she had from her defeat at Lu Ming’s hands.
Lin Feng could see the future that awaited him. His fate, once she woke up, was sealed—he would face an even more ruthless, more insane version of Moonfiend, who would stop at nothing to make him suffer.
His thoughts spiraled as he imagined the horrors to come, and in that moment, something in him snapped. His eyes slowly turned red, his mind clouding with rage and desperation.
“If you want to mess with me… I’ll mess with you first!”
Driven by a sudden surge of madness, Lin Feng’s gaze fell on Moonfiend’s unconscious form. Her once formidable body now lay defenseless, her skin smooth and exposed. In his desperation, Lin Feng’s courage swelled. What did he have to lose now? He was already doomed, his survival chances were slim to none.
A twisted thought entered his mind.
“Since I probably won’t survive anyway… I’ll satisfy my goddess first.”
He took a step toward her, his boldness fueled by the dire situation. The darkness of his intent grew as he approached her fallen form, completely unaware of the greater forces at play around him.
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Meanwhile, in the sealed space of Boshi Tower, Lu Ming remained entirely indifferent to what was happening between Lin Feng and Moonfiend. To him, they were merely prisoners, insignificant in the grander scheme of things. They could not stir up any storm that would affect his true objective. His focus remained singular: the analysis of the divine nucleus.
As Lu Ming advanced from the fifth to the sixth level of the Physique Realm, the explosion of his power had caused the number of his Primordial Dao Pattern to multiply from thirty-six to seventy-two. In addition, his Origin Points had increased by more than three million—an impressive gain that had further solidified his position.
However, despite this overwhelming success, something still bothered him.
When he turned his attention to Qing Jue, Lu Ming realized that a small portion of energy still remained locked within Qing Jue’s godhood. This meant that the array protecting the divine nucleus was not yet fully revealed to him. Despite his significant progress, a barrier still existed—one that Moonfiend had unknowingly helped reinforce by bearing some of the pressure on Qing Jue’s divine essence.
“Moonfiend helped Qing Jue bear some of the burden,” Lu Ming thought. “Otherwise, leveling up once should have been enough to reveal everything.”
But now, it wasn’t enough.
However, this was only a temporary setback. Lu Ming remained calm, knowing that it was only a matter of time before he would break through the final barrier. He wasn’t worried. He had come too far to be thwarted by this last hurdle.
If one level wasn’t enough, he’d go for another.
With a mere thought, another storm of source energy erupted from Lu Ming, surging through the tower. The energy once again targeted Qing Jue and Moonfiend, violently extracting their divinities. The intensity of the extraction increased, sending waves of torment through Moonfiend’s already weakened body. Her body convulsed uncontrollably, her consciousness flickering as she teetered on the edge of awareness.
Somewhere, deep within her, she could vaguely sense the presence of another—someone violating her very essence, her body, her Divine Origin. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move, nor could she comprehend the full extent of what was happening.
The process of having one’s Divine Origin forcibly extracted was far more torturous than any physical pain. When the extraction pierced into the inner layers of the divine nucleus, the nominal owner of that divine power—Moonfiend in this case—lost all ability to resist. She was utterly defenseless, her divine essence no longer under her control.
Her divine nucleus was being stripped from her.
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Golden light, mixed with raw source energy, flooded toward Lu Ming with the force of a tempest. The energy flowed into him with relentless intensity, fueling his rapid rise in power. Within a short span of time, he completed another advancement.
Level seven of the Physique Realm.
Lu Ming’s Primordial Dao Pattern multiplied once again. His three-dimensional attributes surged, once more reaching the bottleneck of 100 million. But this was not what truly mattered to him.
No, the most important revelation came when he turned his attention back to Qing Jue. As Lu Ming examined Qing Jue’s godhood, he noticed a significant change. The divine nucleus had become completely transparent, its layers revealed in intricate detail, like the unveiling of a hidden masterpiece. It was as though the layers of protection had been peeled away, leaving the divine nucleus exposed, vulnerable, and fully open to his scrutiny.
To Lu Ming, the divine nucleus was now as clear as the naked form of a young girl, stripped of all pretense and laid bare before him. At the very core of this complex structure, deep within the stacked layers of arrays, something remarkable caught his eye.
A colorful, nano-sized light spot.
This light spot, though small, drew all of Lu Ming’s attention. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. The sheer density and complexity of the Array Formations surrounding it had obscured his vision, making it difficult to perceive clearly. Yet, instinctively, he knew what this light spot was.
It was the core—the heart of the divine nucleus itself.
“What is this?” Lu Ming murmured, his eyes narrowing in curiosity.
He tried to focus, but the dense and convoluted Array Formations surrounding the light spot made it nearly impossible to discern its full nature. But Lu Ming needed no intuition to know the truth. This light spot was the key—the very essence of the divine nucleus, the core around which everything else revolved.
“Step by step,” Lu Ming muttered to himself, already forming a plan. “First, I’ll analyze this divine nucleus array, then study that light spot…”
With that, Lu Ming’s meticulous work began. Using his vast knowledge of Array Formations, he began systematically analyzing the divine nucleus, from the outermost layers to the very core. His mind worked like a finely tuned instrument, breaking down the complex relationships between the array of patterns and deciphering the functions and structures of each intricate layer.
It was a slow and deliberate process, one that couldn’t be rushed, not even with the aid of his void space. Each layer required careful examination, and each formation held secrets that took time to unravel. Yet, despite the arduous nature of the task, Lu Ming reveled in it.
This was no ordinary analysis—it was the path to something far greater.
The vision that Jiu Han had left for Lu Ming, the path to becoming an Outer Dao God, was an enticing one. It dangled before him like a tantalizing promise of untold power, offering a way to bypass the restrictions of a typical Divine Realm. Now, with the divine nucleus fully exposed before him, Lu Ming had the chance to complete what Jiu Han had left unfinished.
If he could fully analyze the divine nucleus, he would be able to transcend the limitations of the divine body. He could become an Outer Dao God, wielding divine power without the dangers or restrictions that plagued those of the regular Divine Realm. He would harness the Divine Origin while avoiding the crippling hazards that others would face.
It was a path far more promising than any cultivation of the Primordial Dao Pattern alone.
And so, Lu Ming worked with a singular focus, determined to complete the analysis of the divine nucleus and unlock the light spot that represented the core of divine power. Every discovery brought him one step closer to his ultimate goal, and he knew—it was only a matter of time.
End of Chapter 348