128: Chapter 128 Your Pain? Now it's my asset!

The abyss passage was forcibly "closed," and Wailing Canyon returned to a state of "calm," though this calm was still filled with a distracting background of wailing.

Lin Chen looked at the "distressed asset" he had just acquired, its property rights still fresh, and began to ponder how to make it profitable. That rich, pure energy of pain was too wasteful to just let drift away.

His gaze fell upon the massive White Bone Altar in the center of the canyon, now dim and its runes extinguished.

"This thing is an eyesore," Lin Chen muttered, curling his lip and raising his hand to completely dismantle and recycle it.

"Boss! Wait!" Zhang Hao seemed to have discovered something and suddenly floated down to the base of the altar. Pointing at an inconspicuous corner, his Mind Reading captured an extremely faint ripple of cunning and greed. "There seems to be... something hidden under here! It's good at hiding! Its thoughts are slipperier than a loach!"

Almost the moment Zhang Hao finished speaking—

"Whoosh!"

A dark red energy spike, formed from highly condensed pain energy mixed with a trace of abyssal aura, shot out from the shadows of the altar's base like a venomous snake from its hole, aimed directly at the investigating Zhang Hao! The strike was fast and fierce, coming from a tricky angle and containing a malicious power meant to corrode soul bodies!

"Holy crap!" Zhang Hao was so startled his soul body almost dissipated. He excelled at Mind Reading and walking through walls, but frontal combat was definitely not his forte!

Just as the energy spike was about to pierce through Zhang Hao—

"Hmph."

A cold snort rang out like a clap of thunder.

Lin Chen didn't even move. With just a thought, the spatial rules of the canyon, whose property rights he had just bought out, rippled slightly.

The hurtling energy spike, less than three inches from Zhang Hao's soul body, seemed to hit an invisible, insurmountable wall. It jerked to a halt in mid-air, then with a soft "poof," it crumbled into primordial energy particles and was absorbed by the canyon itself.

"Attacking my people on my turf?" Lin Chen's eyes turned cold. "It seems the cleanup wasn't thorough enough."

He wasted no more words and directly invoked his ownership permissions.

"Strip."

At his command, the entire bone altar shook violently. From the base, a twisting, struggling mass of dark red energy was forcibly squeezed and pulled out by an invisible, titanic force!

At the core of the energy mass, a miniature, crack-ridden skeletal phantom was faintly visible—the very same one that had previously merged into the altar's foundation! A light of madness and malice flickered in its eye sockets as it let out a silent shriek.

"There really was a little mouse hiding here." Lin Chen looked at the energy aggregate that had tried to hide and even launch a sneak attack, his face wearing the expression of a capitalist spotting surplus value. "I almost forgot, the 'pain' accumulated by you (referring to the one who made the Ghost General cry) and this canyon over all these years is a considerable asset in itself."

He stopped looking at the struggling skeletal energy and turned his gaze toward the entire Wailing Canyon—the massive, pure negative emotional energy permeating the air, seeping from the cliff walls, and even contained deep within the earth!

"System, scan all 'pain energy' within the canyon and evaluate the feasibility of purification, compression, and packaging."

[Ding! Scan complete... Target total energy assessment: Extremely High. Purity assessment: Mid-High.]

[Suggestion: Can be converted into a single-use mental attack magic treasure, the ten thousand souls wailing pearl. Estimated to package 1,000 standard units (each containing a strike equivalent to the ultimate pain of ten thousand soul bodies).]

[Conversion cost: 1 billion nether talismans.]

[Execute?]

"Execute," Lin Chen said without hesitation.

[Command confirmed... Invoking spatial permissions... Gathering energy...]

In an instant, the entire Wailing Canyon seemed to come alive! But it wasn't the previous frenzy; it was an orderly "life" under absolute control!

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

An invisible energy storm erupted within the canyon! The dark red mist in the air, the energy seeping from the face carvings on the cliffs, and even the resentment buried deep in the ground were all forcibly extracted by an irresistible force. Like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, they converged frantically toward the center of the canyon, right in front of Lin Chen!

The sight was incredibly magnificent, yet equally terrifying!

Countless wails of pain were amplified, compressed, and purified, forming visible dark red energy streams that swirled into an energy furnace made of system rules that had appeared out of thin air before Lin Chen!

The stripped-away skeletal energy mass let out a desperate and mad shriek. Composed of the purest pain energy and a trace of abyssal essence, it bore the brunt of the force, being pulled and torn apart by the massive suction, becoming the thickest energy stream to be cast into the furnace!

All its schemes, its hiding, and its cunning became a joke in the face of Lin Chen's absolute "property rights" and "capital," eventually becoming part of the raw materials.

Within the furnace, refining, compression, and shaping took place...

A few breaths later, the energy storm subsided.

Floating before Lin Chen were exactly one thousand beads, each the size of a longan fruit. They were dark red and smooth as glass, yet inside, countless pained faces seemed to be silently roaring and struggling!

Each one radiated heart-pounding mental fluctuations! It felt as if a mere touch could drag a person into an illusion of boundless pain, tearing their soul apart!

[ten thousand souls wailing pearl x1000], packaging complete!

Lin Chen casually picked one up and toyed with it between his fingers. The terrifying mental pollution, enough to make even a Ghost General-level being turn pale, seemed non-existent to him.

He looked at the already dumbfounded Zhang Hao and tossed the bead over.

"Here, compensation for your mental distress."

Zhang Hao scrambled to catch it. Feeling the world-destroying pain energy within the bead, his ghost body shook like a sieve. "B-boss... this... this is too valuable..."

"Just a small toy," Lin Chen said dismissively. Looking at the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine beads, he nodded with satisfaction. "Next time you find someone annoying or run into a bunch of enemies, don't waste words—just throw this at them."

His casual tone made it sound as if he were discussing what to have for dinner.

Using the accumulation of countless years from the entire Wailing Canyon, plus the remnant soul of an abyssal monster, to refine one thousand high-powered, single-use mental bombs...

This scale and this way of thinking once again shattered the worldviews of Zhang Hao, Lei Xiao, and the others.

So, a battle could be fought like this? Resources could be used this way?

(Hook: Just as Lin Chen was about to put away this batch of newly refined "weapons of mass destruction," Zhang Hao looked at the ten thousand souls wailing pearl in his hand. His Mind Reading accidentally swept over the chaotic and pained collective of thoughts inside the bead, and he suddenly captured an extremely fragmented piece of chaotic information that seemed to point to a specific coordinate! That coordinate... seemed to faintly overlap with the location of the second Thousand Faces Cult stronghold on the Tombstone Guardian's star map, yet there was a slight difference!)