137: Chapter 137 Stealing materials is pure suicide!
The morning sun fell onto the terrace of Tianshu Dragon Garden.
Steam rose from the kitchen.
The rich aroma of beef brisket seeped out from the gaps in the casserole, filling the entire first floor.
Long Nü, with her hair in a mess, poked her head out from the basement stairwell.
Two seconds later, she turned into a blur and stopped precisely in front of the stove.
She stood on tiptoe to look into the pot, drool dripping down her chin onto her apron.
She had long since forgotten the earth-shattering finger light from last night.
"Slow down, it's hot!" Liu Cuilan took a long-handled spoon and stirred the pot twice.
She fished out a large piece of meat coated in thick sauce, with translucent beef tendon, and placed it steadily into Long Nü's blue-and-white porcelain bowl.
"Thanks, Mom!" Long Nü pouted and sucked in a breath.
She didn't even use chopsticks, instead grabbing the scalding piece of meat with her hand and stuffing it into her mouth, stomping her feet from the heat.
Liu Cuilan looked back at the counter and shook her head.
"That bottle of soy sauce I bought yesterday was a rip-off. It's only twelve-sixty at the Red Flag Supermarket on East Street. It cost me two extra mao for nothing. Jiang Feng, have you finished chopping the green onions? Hurry up and sprinkle them into the pot, then cover it to simmer for a while."
"Right away."
Jiang Feng stood before the cutting board.
The kitchen knife rose and fell on the chopping block, cutting the green onions into uniform pieces.
His expression remained completely unchanged.
Tearing apart a Hunyuan-level channel with his bare hands or crushing the origin of a Supreme God was no different to him than chopping green onions.
However, in the gaps between the knife strikes, his spiritual power was already fully focused on his palm.
At the core of the Pangu Dao Fruit, that newly emerged, dim pattern was moving.
It was no longer quietly playing dead.
Instead, it extended dozens of microscopic tentacles, burrowing along Jiang Feng's meridians.
It was attempting to assimilate the few idle free attribute points within his body.
Trying to sneak a bite?
Jiang Feng pressed down on the back of the knife, his wrist pausing for half a second.
1,200 Jian of spiritual attributes slammed down.
There was no tug-of-war.
Only pure numerical suppression.
The pattern was struck head-on, and all its tentacles snapped in a single microsecond.
It contracted violently, emitting high-frequency vibrations, begging for mercy while simultaneously resisting.
Jiang Feng didn't give it a chance to struggle.
His spiritual power transformed into a massive millstone, pressing firmly down on the pattern and extracting it in reverse.
Once it entered his territory, it had to follow his rules.
A system notification exploded in his mind.
"Ding! Successfully parsed unknown underlying logic fragment!"
"Talent [Pangu Plunder] fusion progress updated! Currently in the precursor to unique evolution. Host, please collect the final piece of the Chess Player's origin as soon as possible to complete the final transition!"
Jiang Feng grabbed the chopped green onions and tossed them into the bubbling casserole.
The emerald green onion pieces hit the scalding sauce, kicking up a burst of steam.
The final piece.
Just one more piece, and he could elevate his talent by another dimension.
He covered the pot and turned to wash his hands.
At the same time.
In the Supreme Void, separated by countless dimensional barriers.
Beside the chessboard.
Half of Venerable Ming's body had turned into a translucent particle state.
Starting from his toes, it was disintegrating inch by inch, turning into nothingness.
Having lost the hongmeng ancestral source, the dimensional erasure was already in effect.
"Old Xuan..."
Venerable Ming gripped the edge of the chessboard with both hands, his finger bones digging into the wood, producing a grating friction sound.
His throat hissed with leaking air: "Share three tenths with me... just three tenths of your origin... let me stabilize my causality..."
Venerable Xuan sat opposite him, not even lifting his eyelids.
He picked up the cold tea in front of him and flipped his wrist.
The leftover tea, mixed with tea leaves, splashed onto Venerable Ming's dissolving feet.
"Stabilize causality? Stabilize it and then continue being someone's dog in this game of chess?"
Venerable Xuan stood up and looked down at this old friend he had partnered with for hundreds of millions of years.
"You and I are both looking for the so-called Three-Origin Unification." Venerable Xuan's voice was calm, devoid of joy or sorrow.
"Do you really think there's a third Chess Player hiding in the shadows?"
"You're wrong. There is no third ancestral source at all."
Venerable Ming's disintegration paused for a moment, and he looked up, staring intently at him.
"That is the keyhole."
Venerable Xuan reached out and grabbed Venerable Ming's neck, which was now just a skeleton.
"In the deepest part of the Blue Star's core, there is a valve."
"That colorless origin is the core key suppressing the monster. Now that the lock is loose, as long as I smash that valve and completely release what's underneath, I can earn the qualification to transcend this cage!"
"You're crazy!" Venerable Ming struggled wildly, his finger bones clawing golden bloody marks into Venerable Xuan's wrist. "If it comes out, all dimensions will be eaten! What makes you think you can transcend?!"
Venerable Xuan ignored his roaring.
Veins bulged on the back of his hand as he lifted Venerable Ming's broken body into mid-air.
"I don't care who it eats, but I won't die."
"This broken body of yours is the first wake-up bell I've prepared for it."
As the words fell.
Venerable Xuan, along with the Venerable Ming he was holding, vanished into thin air from the Supreme Void.
Above Blue Star.
Thirty thousand li outside the taixu barrier.
Xuanji suddenly opened her eyes.
She was not dead.
The pale golden mark on her chest that represented Venerable Xuan's control was completely gone, not even a trace remained.
Replacing it was an extremely complex gray-white pattern that pulsed with every beat of her heart.
Without the oppression of the High-Dimensional Adjudicator, this new mark directly raised her perceptual dimension by several levels.
She lowered her head.
She looked down at the Blue Star beneath her feet.
Just this one look.
Xuanji's Dao heart, which she had been proud of for over a hundred thousand years, completely shattered.
In her vision, that was not an azure planet at all.
It was a cosmic-level furnace, vast and boundless.
Blue Star's mountains, oceans, and crust were all the outer walls of the furnace.
The billions of living beings on it, as well as the monsters from the Demon Domain instances that had been forcibly merged in.
Even including herself, and those Hunyuan Supreme beings who had just fallen on the Taihuang Battlefield.
They were all pre-arranged materials to be refined in this furnace.
All their struggles, cultivation, and strengthening throughout their lives.
Were just to make themselves, as pieces of "coal," burn a little brighter.
Xuanji trembled all over, a wheezing sound coming from her throat.
She wanted to scream, but found she couldn't even draw enough extra air into her lungs.
Tianshu Dragon Garden.
Jiang Feng carried a large bowl of beef brisket noodles and walked out of the sliding door.
Noodles at the bottom, topped with a thick layer of juice-soaked beef brisket, with two golden fried eggs resting on the side.
He walked over to the rattan chair by the terrace, just about to sit down.
Thud.
Someone fell from the sky.
They slammed directly onto the marble floor of the terrace, rolled twice, and knocked over a pot of spider plants grown by Liu Cuilan.
Xuanji.
At this moment, she had lost all semblance of an Adjudicator.
Her hair was disheveled, and her clothes were tattered.
She lay on the ground, panting heavily.
Jiang Feng glanced at her.
He pulled out the chair and sat down.
He picked up his chopsticks, lifted a mouthful of noodles, and blew on the steam.
"The spider plant pot was two hundred and eighty. Remember to pay for it."
"Crazy... it's all crazy..." Xuanji crawled on her hands and knees to Jiang Feng's feet, gripping the armrest of the rattan chair with both hands. "That old monster... Venerable Xuan is crazy!"
Jiang Feng took a bite of the beef brisket, the aroma of the meat filling his mouth.
"Get to the point."
"Blue Star is a furnace! The core is a valve! Something incomprehensible is being suppressed underneath!" Xuanji spoke extremely fast, as if she were racing against death.
"Venerable Xuan has come down with Venerable Ming's broken body! He wants to blow up that valve, release that thing, and trade it for the qualification to escape this game of chess himself!"
Jiang Feng's hand, holding the noodles, paused in mid-air.
He turned his head and looked at Xuanji for two seconds.
He didn't reply.
Xuanji swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva: "The key to blowing up the valve is a colorless origin! That origin is the third piece of origin power that all Chess Players have been looking for over the past hundred thousand years! It has turned into a chain, stuck firmly in the core, and Venerable Xuan is going to snatch that chain!"
The air went quiet.
Only the sound of Jiang Feng placing the noodles back into the bowl remained.
The wind on the terrace stopped.
Jiang Feng put down his chopsticks, picked up the bowl, and finished the remaining mouthful of noodle soup.
He handed the empty bowl to Long Nü, who had just chased after him.
"Hold this."
He pulled out a tissue and wiped the grease from his lips.
His movements were slow, unhurried.
He crumpled the tissue into a ball and tossed it into the trash can.
Jiang Feng slowly stood up straight.
There was no earth-shattering aura, no surge of origin laws.
But Xuanji, who was lying on the ground, felt a sense of oppression even more terrifying than the thing in the earth's core in the movement of Jiang Feng standing up.
Jiang Feng lowered his gaze, looking at the trembling Xuanji.
He raised his eyebrows slightly.
"So, that old thing..."
His voice wasn't loud, no different from when he was discussing the price of soy sauce earlier.
"Not only does he want to blow up the foundation of my house..."
Jiang Feng flicked his right hand.
His wrist bone popped with a loud crack.
"But he also wants to snatch my upgrade materials?"
As the words fell.
The space above Tianshu Dragon Garden split open without any warning, creating a black rift spanning hundreds of kilometers.
Jiang Feng took a step forward.
And vanished from where he stood.