158: Chapter 158 Celestial Bodies! His body is a planet!

When Su Ming and Ye Xiao came out of the third basement level,

the sky was already pitch-black.

Ye Xiao limped in front,

half of his face still swollen, yet his spirit was incredibly high.

He was mumbling things like, "Showing off in front of others is truly the simplest Dao."

Su Ming's lips twitched.

This kid, he didn't get beaten stupid, did he?

Too lazy to explain, he waved his hand,

"Alright, alright, stop nagging. I'm hungry."

Shen Qingci had said she wanted to consult Kong Ming on some cultivation matters,

so she wouldn't be joining them for dinner.

The two of them walked into the courtyard,

where Da Huang was dozing off next to his doghouse.

In front of him was a giant metal dog bowl,

which wasn't filled with normal dog food,

but rather blocks of special alloy gleaming with a metallic luster,

of various sizes,

all high-energy substances carefully selected from the scrap.

These were special "teething snacks" that Shen Hongyuan had custom-made for Da Huang.

"Holy crap, high-purity alloy!"

"This is way better than the scrap metal outside!"

Su Ming's eyes gleamed as he stared at the bowl of metal scrap.

The background devour function in his System space

had a daily limit of twenty thousand mass points.

With these high-density alloys,

eating just a random piece would yield several thousand points.

Damn it...!

This dog ate way better than he did!

Su Ming squatted down,

naturally reached into the bowl,

and a fist-sized titanium alloy bearing vanished from his palm.

To be exact, it vanished into his System space.

One piece...

Another piece...

And another...

Da Huang's two heads opened their eyes at the same time.

The head on the left let out a low growl,

while the one on the right immediately started whining,

his four legs pushing off the ground as he lunged toward Su Ming.

Su Ming pressed down on the dog's head,

his hands not stopping for a second.

"Be good, Da Huang. You're still young, you can't eat too much at once."

"Look how fat you've gotten."

"Your master is helping you lose weight, understand?"

"A Tier 4 Demon Dog shouldn't indulge himself like this..."

Da Huang struggled frantically,

both heads howling together,

sounding as miserable as if his wife had been stolen.

While Su Ming was busy hoarding,

Ye Xiao, who was standing to the side, suddenly squatted down as well.

Under Su Ming's astonished gaze,

Ye Xiao copied his movements, reaching out,

and starting to sweep alloy fittings into his own storage bracelet.

Su Ming was dumbfounded.

"What are you doing?"

Ye Xiao looked up blankly:

"I don't know."

Su Ming: "???"

Do you even hear yourself, you motherfucker?

Ye Xiao scratched his head:

"I saw you taking them, so I took some too."

"Even though I don't know what they're for,"

"it can't go wrong to just follow your lead!"

Su Ming opened his mouth,

only to realize he actually couldn't argue with that.

The two exchanged a glance,

reaching a silent understanding,

and both sped up their hands.

The entire bowl of metal dog food, weighing over a thousand catties,

was split clean between the two jokers in the blink of an eye.

Da Huang went completely wild,

his two heads taking turns nudging the empty bowl,

his claws scraping sparks on the ground as his howls echoed through the entire Scrap Yard.

Su Ming clapped his hands

and patted Da Huang's head with a look of loving affection.

"Da Huang, your master is leaving."

"Knowing you can eat and drink well here puts my mind at ease!"

"Next time I come to see you, make sure to prepare some more for me...!"

With that, he grabbed Ye Xiao and bolted.

The two figures quickly vanished through the factory gates,

looking exactly like two petty thieves who had just pulled off a heist.

Da Huang used his two heads to take turns nudging the food bowl, which was now cleaner than a dog's face,

and finally looked up blankly,

letting out a sorrowful and indignant "woof-howl" toward the gates.

You two...

are the real dogs here!

...

In the first-floor office.

Shen Qingci stood behind the glass,

watching the two figures fleeing in panic,

and couldn't help but burst into a giggle.

The shock and oppression that had built up in the Training Room earlier

were diluted quite a bit by this comical scene.

"Qingci."

A gentle voice sounded behind her.

Kong Ming had appeared behind her at some point,

his moon-white robes shimmering under the light.

His gaze passed over Shen Qingci's shoulder,

landing on the young man running outside the window.

"Don't you find... his rate of growing stronger strange?"

Shen Qingci's smile froze.

It was true.

From Tier 1 Iron before the entrance exam,

to being able to clash head-on with the Tier 7 Scorpion King now.

It had only been a few days.

She had been so focused on desperately catching up,

only thinking about not being left behind out of his sight,

but she had never seriously thought about...

how was he doing it?

"I..."

Shen Qingci opened her mouth,

but found herself at a loss for words.

Kong Ming didn't give her any more time to daze off.

He turned and walked toward an inconspicuous wall in the corner of the office,

his slender fingers pressing lightly on a certain spot on the wall

in a specific rhythm.

Click.

The seamless wall slid open silently to both sides,

revealing a dark corridor extending downward,

with a metallic texture and dim blue lighting.

Shen Qingci's pupils contracted slightly.

She only knew that her father had a Hidden Vault underground for storing valuables,

but she had never known that such a place was hidden in the factory.

"Come with me."

Kong Ming took the lead and walked in.

After a moment of hesitation,

Shen Qingci stepped in to follow.

...

On both sides of the corridor, energy isolation chambers and data terminals were neatly arranged.

Military-grade security markings could be seen everywhere on the walls.

This place no longer had the rugged style of the factory;

every equipment chamber gleamed with a cold light,

its operating hum low and steady.

"This is the Federation's top-tier Field Imaging and Micro-Analysis Laboratory,"

Kong Ming introduced as he walked,

"specifically used to study high-tier Source Beasts and extraordinary Physiques,"

"many of the devices here haven't even been deployed in the military headquarters yet."

"Especially that 'particle analysis array'—"

"it can capture the movement trajectories of Source Energy particles at the nanometer level."

The two finally arrived at a massive master control room.

As Kong Ming operated the console,

a giant holographic screen in the very center suddenly lit up.

On the screen was the exact scene from the third basement Training Room just now,

perfectly reconstructed at a one-to-one scale.

Source Energy, gravitational fields, spatial fluctuations...

Various data streams intertwined in the form of three-color light and shadow,

deconstructing what seemed like a simple spar

into an extremely complex energy interaction.

Kong Ming tapped the light screen lightly with his finger.

The screen froze at the moment Ye Xiao's [Nine Heavens Thunder Fist] struck Su Ming's chest.

"Look here, the conventional energy spectrum."

On one side of the screen, a dizzying series of data popped up.

Shen Qingci only understood the most critical line—

The originally violent cyan lightning-attribute Source Energy flow, with a peak of up to 7,200 units,

the instant it contacted the surface of Su Ming's body,

its energy reading instantly plummeted to 3,510 units.

A decay rate of over 50%.

Moreover, it wasn't blocked, nor was it dispersed.

In the footage, the moment that cyan energy collided with Su Ming's body,

most of it directly vanished.

It didn't bounce off, nor did it dissipate—

it was as if it had been sucked in.

Only scattered bits of energy grazed the surface of his body and then dissipated.

Shen Qingci's delicate brows furrowed slightly.

Normal defense

was to tank it, to block it,

or to use even stronger force to counter it.

But Su Ming...

he had straight up "eaten" the energy?

"Shocked already?"

Kong Ming's lips curled up slightly

as his fingers slid across the console again.

"Switch mode, activate the nano-microscopic observation array, magnification... one hundred thousand."

Buzz—

The equipment in the master control room emitted a slight hum,

and the image on the screen changed rapidly.

The lens focused on the area of skin where Su Ming had been struck by the thunder fist,

penetrating the epidermis to reach the nanometer-level microstructure.

Under a hundred-thousand-times molecular scale,

the contours of the microscopic world were revealed in vivid detail.

Shen Qingci's breath hitched for a moment.

The dark golden patterns on the surface of Su Ming's skin,

at this magnification,

were actually composed of countless extremely fine, miniature vortexes.

Every single vortex was slowly rotating,

pulling and dragging the surrounding energy particles,

causing them to spontaneously plunge toward the center of the vortex.

"Do you see that?"

Kong Ming pointed to the dark golden gravitational field patterns on the screen.

"This is the gravitational field naturally formed by Su Ming's Physical Body."

"Before Ye Xiao's fist even touched him,"

"it was already pulling and binding the external Source Energy."

"This is absolutely not something any Enhancement Type talent can achieve."

Shen Qingci stared at the screen, her fingertips trembling slightly.

Kong Ming's voice was calm and clear:

"Then what kind of object can possess such a powerful gravitational field that is capable of bending energy?!"

He paused.

The answer he gave made Shen Qingci's scalp tingle!

"A celestial body!"

"His Physical Body, in terms of its characteristics at the microscopic level, is identical to a celestial body!"

!!!