162: Chapter 162 Combat Power Barrier

When stepping out from the light gate, the soles of Lin Xuan's feet had not yet recovered from the glass-like smooth sensation of the Heart Mirror Platform, but what he stepped onto was solid stone flooring.

Rough, hard, and slightly uneven—there were tiny granular protrusions on the stone surface, and even through the soles of his boots, he could feel where those granules were digging into his feet.

He looked down; the color of the stone slabs was dark gray, the same material as the solid rock of the first Stone Chamber, but there were many things on the ground.

Not dust, but traces.

The four walls of the Stone Chamber were unpolished, and the rough stone surface was covered in dense slash marks and burn marks.

A sword mark extended from the middle of the left wall all the way to the corner, the cut wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, slashed in at an angle; the stone at the edges had been scorched deep black, a carbonized layer left behind by burning Thunder Spiritual Energy.

Next to the sword mark was a dense cluster of pits, a dozen or so of various sizes, the large ones like the mouth of a bowl, the small ones like knuckles, with radial cracks at the edges, having been continuously smashed by some hard object.

Some traces were already covered in a layer of grayish-white stone powder, and only by wiping them with his hand could he see the charred black underneath; these were old, weathered marks.

Some traces were so fresh they seemed to have been left only minutes ago, the edges still carrying the residual heat from high-temperature burning, and a faint, scorched odor lingered in the air, not yet fully dissipated.

This Stone Chamber was not large. Lin Xuan swept his gaze across it; it was ten zhang square, much smaller than the thousand-zhang grand hall of the first stage.

The dome was not high, at most three zhang, and he could reach the ceiling if he jumped.

Embedded in the ceiling were several fist-sized fluorescent stones, emitting a cold white light that illuminated the entire Stone Chamber without any blind spots.

The air was very dry, without a hint of moisture, and breathing it in made him feel his nasal mucosa tightening slightly—this degree of dryness was exactly the same as the feeling when the Thunder Spiritual Energy was dense in the first Stone Chamber.

In the center of the Stone Chamber stood three Puppets.

The moment Lin Xuan saw them, his pupils instinctively contracted.

They were not dolls. They were not the kind of mannequins assembled from wood and metal by mechanism arts; there were no gears at the joints, and no clicking sounds of springs turning inside.

They were a mass of living light, purely condensed from thunder-light, bound into the shape of a human by some kind of Formation.

The Puppets were eight feet tall, more than half a head taller than him, with slender limbs, their torso outlines flickering within the thunder-light.

In the intervals between each flicker, one could see purple-white electric currents weaving through their bodies, knitting together textures resembling muscle fibers.

It was not real human flesh, but the way those current bundles were arranged was almost exactly the same as the direction of human muscle fibers.

There were horizontal current bundles at the pectoralis major, longitudinal current bundles at the biceps, and independent current circuits at every joint of the fingers.

The Puppets had no faces. Where a head should be, there was only a blurry oval-shaped light mass, inside which countless tiny electric arcs flickered constantly, like the discharge of brain neurons magnified a thousand times.

In the center of the light mass were two dark purple light spots; they were not eyes, but they were indeed "watching"—Lin Xuan moved half a step to the left, and the positions of those two dark purple light spots remained motionless, but their brightness changed, shifting from dark purple to light purple, as if adjusting focus.

It stood motionless in place.

But the sound of electricity inside their bodies hummed; that sound was not a static buzzing, but a continuous, low-pitched vibration like a cat purring.

Lin Xuan could feel the stone slab under the soles of his feet trembling slightly in time with that frequency, very faintly, so light that if he didn't deliberately try to sense it, he would have ignored it.

The air was permeated with an extremely faint smell of ozone, exactly the same as the scent that remained on him every time he finished Cultivating the "Purple Heaven Divine Thunder Art".

The three Puppets stood in a triangle.

The one at the very front was closest to him, about three zhang away, the sturdiest in build, with the densest thunder-light on its torso; the current was particularly dense at its fists, and the light on the fist tips was a shade brighter than the rest of its body.

The one in the middle stood slightly further back, its right hand stretched out in front of it, a mass of thunder-light constantly compressing and stretching in its palm, as if kneading a ball of light.

The one at the very back stood in the deepest part of the Stone Chamber, its build slightly smaller than the first two, but the thunder-light on its body was not purple-white, but purple-gold—a color Lin Xuan was all too familiar with, exactly the same as the radiance of the thunder seed in his Dantian.

Several lines of text were carved on the stone wall to the right of the Stone Chamber.

They were not carved with a knife, but burned directly onto the stone surface using Thunder Spiritual Energy; the strokes of every character were charred black, with a ring of grayish-white ash slightly oozing out from the edges.

The handwriting was neat, with no connected strokes, as if written with the help of a ruler: "Thunder Spirit Puppet, condensed into three units based on the challenger's cultivation. The Puppet's cultivation is one layer higher than the challenger's. Defeat the three Puppets to pass. You may not use Talismans, Magical Artifacts, or other external items exceeding your own Rank. Beast Tamers may use one Spirit Beast for the battle."

Lin Xuan read this passage twice.

One layer higher than the challenger. His current cultivation was Qi Refining Stage 7, and these three Puppets all possessed the strength of Qi Refining Layer 8.

The gap between each layer of the Qi Refinement Stage was not an insurmountable chasm; only between the Early Stage and Middle Stage, or Middle Stage and Late Stage, would the difference in combat strength be significant.

He touched the Thunder-Striking Thorn in his sleeve. The anti-slip texture on the hilt dug into his fingertips, cold and dry.

He also touched the startling thunder whip at his waist; the whip body was coiled around his belt, and through his robe, he could feel the Thunder Spiritual Energy sealed within the whip body pulsing slightly.

The Silver-Backed Bull in the Beast Taming Space sent a thought through the contract—not specific words, but a vague feeling of "ready to come out at any time," like someone gently tapping you on the shoulder from behind.

The Pangolin also moved, turning over underground, and the rustling sound of its scales scraping against the soil of the space was transmitted into his Sea of Consciousness through the contract.

Lin Xuan hesitated for a moment.

The Silver-Backed Bull had dual Earth and Thunder attributes, with solid defensive power, making it very suitable for tanking the Puppets head-on in this enclosed Stone Chamber.

The Pangolin could burrow underground for sneak attacks; the last time he fought the Silver-Backed Bull, it was thanks to its Earth Evasion that he caught the opponent off guard.

Releasing either one would make this battle much easier.

But he did not summon them.

It was not about being stubborn. It was that he also wanted to know. Without using his trump cards, how far he could go now.

The two talents shared by the spirit control tower—Thunder Gathering and Extreme Speed—had already merged into his combat instincts.

The purity of the thunder seed had solidified significantly after the first stage.

His Physical Body at the Peak of Body Refining Level 6 was becoming increasingly accustomed to impact after tanking several battles head-on.

He wanted to know what level he was truly at when he mobilized all of these things.