32: Chapter 32 Spiritual Transformation, Unlocking the Eye of Truth
The dormitory was so quiet that one could hear their own heartbeat.
Wang Pingan sat cross-legged on the bed like a gambler preparing to step up to the table, counting his final chips.
Two hundred and five pay-to-win points.
This was his entire net worth.
This was the hard-earned money he had gathered during this period through swindling, acting, and intimidation—wool pulled from Instructor Chen Feng—combined with the junk he had painstakingly scavenged.
In the past, this amount of money would have kept him happy for days.
But now...
Looking at the number, he only felt a pang of sorrow.
As a Second-Rank Martial Artist, increasing an attribute by 0.1 required three pay-to-win points.
Throwing this bit of money into Strength or Speed would barely make a sound, let alone a splash.
Poor.
He was truly, damnably poor.
Wang Pingan exhaled a long breath of turbid air, but his eyes became exceptionally bright.
Wealth is found in danger.
Since the usual path wouldn't work, he had to take a risky gamble.
He stared at the greyed-out eye icon on the system panel, a ruthless determination to go all-in flickering in his gaze.
【Eye of Truth】
Activation Condition: Spirit attribute reaches 50.0.
His current Spirit attribute was 46.7.
He was still 3.3 short.
That required ninety-nine pay-to-win points.
“System.”
He spoke in his mind, enunciating every word.
“Add all ninety-nine pay-to-win points into Spirit.”
There was no hesitation.
When this thought finally solidified in his mind, his entire being actually became calm.
The gambling table was set, and the dice were in his hand.
Whether it would be a win or a loss depended on this single roll.
【Command received, beginning conversion...】
A cold, mechanical voice sounded.
The next second.
There was no heart-wrenching pain as expected, nor the crackling sound of bones restructuring.
An indescribable, cool, and refreshing sensation surged from his tailbone all the way to the crown of his head.
It felt like having a bucket of iced Sprite poured over his head in the middle of a scorching summer.
From inside out, every pore felt comfortable.
His brain, at this moment, became clearer than ever before.
Those usually chaotic thoughts were instantly smoothed out and organized by an invisible force.
His thinking seemed to break free from some kind of shackle, beginning to operate at a terrifying speed.
The world, in his perception, changed.
His eyes were closed.
Yet he could "hear" the sound of a falling leaf outside the window, spinning as it drifted to the ground.
He could "see" the electricity running joyfully through the dense wiring inside the dormitory walls.
He could even "smell" the distinct, floral-like scents of the various free-floating spiritual energy molecules in the air.
It was magnificent.
This was a brand-new perception of the world brought about by a leap in the level of life.
On the system panel.
The numbers representing his Spirit attribute were flickering rapidly.
47.0...
48.0...
49.0...
The moment the number finally jumped to "50.0."
Deep in Wang Pingan's mind, that previously grey and inconspicuous eye icon suddenly lit up.
No.
It didn't just light up.
It opened.
A deep blue halo, seemingly containing the stars of the universe, erupted from that "eye," instantly illuminating his entire mental sea.
【Congratulations host! Spirit attribute has reached 50.0!】
【Auxiliary function [Eye of Truth] has been activated!】
Wang Pingan snapped his eyes open.
Boom.
The entire world was completely overturned in his vision.
The wall before him was no longer a solid entity.
He could clearly see that it was a loose structure composed of countless constantly vibrating molecules.
He reached out his hand.
He could see the blood and qi surging like a river beneath his skin, and the cells joyfully dividing and restructuring under the wash of that blood and qi.
He took a deep breath.
He could see the multicolored specks of spiritual energy being inhaled into his lungs, converted, integrated into his blood and qi, and finally flowing into his limbs and bones.
Everything became transparent.
Everything had nowhere to hide.
Is this... the Eye of Truth?
Wang Pingan's heart pounded violently.
He suppressed the shock in his heart and, almost instinctively, concentrated his entire mind into his eyes.
His gaze penetrated the dormitory walls, pierced through the layers of obstacles in the Elite Base, and cast toward the distant direction of the city's west.
Toward the forbidden zone of the Scrap Station he had been obsessing over.
Buzz.
His vision zoomed in at high speed.
The blood-colored mist that once shrouded the forbidden zone—which even the system could not analyze—was instantly pierced through by his [Eye of Truth].
That wasn't mist at all.
It was an energy field composed of countless types of violent, chaotic, and decaying energy particles.
And in the very center of that energy field.
A broken starship, massive beyond imagination, lay there quietly.
The starship was pitch black, its hull covered in hideous wounds as if it had endured a war of extreme brutality.
A dense energy carrying the aura of death and silence continuously radiated from the starship's wreckage, polluting everything around it.
Wang Pingan's pupils constricted into dangerous pinpricks.
He pushed the [Eye of Truth], driving his vision further in.
Through the thick hull armor made of an unknown alloy.
He saw the starship's core power chamber.
There.
He saw that abnormally active energy fluctuation that had once made his heart skip a beat.
That energy fluctuation was slowly throbbing.
Once.
And again.
Like a heart that had been slumbering for billions of years.
But Wang Pingan's [Eye of Truth] told him clearly.
That was not a heart.
That was a...
A long-dead lifeform imprisoned deep within the starship's core.
What is that? For a moment, Wang Pingan's mind went completely blank.
He felt as if his breathing had stopped. The images fed back by the [Eye of Truth] were so clear, yet so bizarre.
At the core of that massive starship's wreckage, inside a complex spherical cage composed of countless runes and energy conduits he couldn't understand.
A massive biological remains, long devoid of all life characteristics, floated quietly. The remains were strange in form, somewhat like an arthropod, yet also like some deep-sea behemoth.
Its body was already shriveled, its shell covered in cracks, emitting a decayed aura that had been washed by billions of years.
Dead, completely dead; any living being seeing these remains would come to that conclusion.
But strangely, right at the chest position of these remains.
A fist-sized energy core emitting a faint blue halo was throbbing slowly and rhythmically. Once.
And again.
With every throb, a burst of extremely pure energy carrying a dense life aura would escape from it, only to be tightly locked in by that spherical cage, unable to leak out in the slightest.
A dead lifeform.
A heart that was still beating?
What kind of sick joke is this?
Wang Pingan felt his worldview receive an unprecedented shock.
Having lived two lives, this was the first time he had seen something so preposterous.
“System, analyze this thing.” He forced himself to calm down and issued a command to the system in his mind.
【Command received... beginning analysis...】
【Analysis Target: Unknown Higher Civilization Biological Remains (Incomplete)】
【Analysis Result: This biological entity possessed extremely powerful life energy while alive; its life form has surpassed the current understanding of human civilization.】
【Warning! Warning! Unknown energy field interference detected in this area, deep analysis impossible! Cage device integrity 99%, energy core is in a dormant state, risk of activation exists!】
A series of prompts rang out in Wang Pingan's mind.
And the images fed back by the [Eye of Truth] suddenly vanished.
He finally understood now.
Why this forbidden zone was shrouded in such a dense, chaotic energy field.
That wasn't some naturally formed energy field.
That was the "energy toxic mist" formed by the reaction between the energy remaining in that biological corpse after death and the starship's energy core, fermenting over an unknown number of years.
And that starship, rather than saying it crashed here...
It was more like a giant, mobile coffin.