213: Chapter 212 The Golden Pagoda Displays Its Power! The Gray Mist is Suppressed on the Third Floor

Those two voices took turns whispering in his ear.

One was gentle, the other cold; one eroded him with fear, while the other enticed him with promises.

Lin Feng stood amidst those flashing images of death—the young mother pounced upon by a Void Unicorn Hound at the convenience store entrance, several Explorers resisting to the death at the police station entrance, the white-coated researcher rushing out of the underground lab clutching experimental records, and Eris, who had been given a mission of slaughter the moment she opened her eyes.

The images continued to play out as the two voices took their turns on stage.

One said your parents are here too, and they will die just like these people; the other said stay, become a part of us, and you can see them again.

Lin Feng did not break down on the spot like those previously possessed by the gray mist.

It wasn't because his willpower was stronger than everyone else's—it was because he suddenly discovered something.

The timing didn't match up.

In those images just now, the scenes of the apocalypse descending were all during the day—the sunlight was blinding, the glass curtain walls reflected the afternoon white light, and pedestrians on the street wore summer clothes, holding iced coffees they had just bought from the convenience store.

But the sky inside the Void Corridor was always the same murky gray; there had never been any sunlight.

No matter how realistic the deaths in those images were, or how desperate that silver-haired woman's eyes looked before she died, the point in time when this world was swallowed by the Void Realm was always the morning of that day, with the street clocks frozen at the time when the sun was at its brightest.

Yet when his parents entered this Dungeon six years ago, this city had already been swallowed by the Void Realm for several years.

They couldn't possibly have died in the same disaster.

The deaths of everyone in the images—including those stitched monsters torn apart when Eris lost control—all occurred before his parents stepped into the Void Corridor.

These images weren't fragments of his parents' experiences; they were the collective death memories of the city's destruction, copied by the gray mist into a picture book to intimidate him.

"You can't even make your lies consistent."

Lin Feng spoke indifferently from the depths of his consciousness.

The deep voice suddenly fell silent, and the gentle voice followed suit.

The surrounding images faded rapidly as if torn apart from the middle, revealing the churning, pitch-like, grayish-white consciousness entity behind them—this was its true form.

The gray mist could mimic death memories, create illusions of fear, and use both sticks and carrots to tempt one's consciousness, but the more it exposed itself in Lin Feng's Sea of Consciousness, the clearer his resistance became.

Just then, the Small Golden Tower deep within his Sea of Consciousness vibrated slightly.

It wasn't the violent vibration of automatic protection from before—like when the tower soul's vibration had split the darkness like golden lightning when an artifact spirit tried to perform Possession in the Secret Realm.

This time was completely different: extremely light, extremely slow, like rolling over in a half-dreaming state in the dark.

But with just this extremely light tremor, the mass of gray mist that was constantly eroding his Sea of Consciousness suddenly froze.

All the grayish-white tentacles that were penetrating deep into his consciousness stopped at the same instant, as if their lifeblood had been pinched by something invisible; even the flickering grayish-white light solidified.

Then the small tower moved.

It wasn't a vibration, nor was it glowing—it was a real 'movement'.

The tower body rotated gently, and a soft golden halo that carried no hint of aggression lit up from the base.

The light was very soft, like the warm color of a hearth fire reflected on a wall on a winter night, slowly expanding and rising layer by layer from the base of the tower, as if it were waking up and stretching its limbs.

The gray mist began to struggle frantically.

It no longer maintained the illusions of death scenes or emitted gentle or deep whispers; all the grayish-white tentacles scattered throughout Lin Feng's Sea of Consciousness retracted simultaneously, trying to reconsolidate into a mass to escape.

But the small tower gave it no chance.

That soft, warm golden halo drifted sluggishly above the gray mist and then descended like a shroud.

The gray mist struggled desperately within the light net, letting out sharp screeches—the sound wasn't heard through the ears but exploded directly in the depths of his Soul, like someone scratching glass with their fingernails.

Lin Feng felt his Sea of Consciousness go slightly numb from the screeching, but the golden light net remained motionless.

The small tower rotated again, and the mouth of the net tightened, dragging the desperately twisting mass of gray mist from the center of the Sea of Consciousness toward the tower body. The gray mist's tentacles clawed at the Divine Sense barriers along the way, leaving shallow marks, but the golden light net pulled back steadily.

Finally, it was dragged into the third floor of the tower body.

The tower doors closed, and golden light seeped through the cracks, illuminating the entire floor with a warm, dark golden glow.

The gray mist crashed around inside the third floor, letting out dull thuds and increasingly faint wails.

The small tower did not refine it, nor did it devour it; it simply locked it inside, like an unruly small animal, waiting for the master to deal with it when he had time.

Then the small tower slowly descended, returning to its original position and resuming its previous posture of quietly rotating, as if it had just rolled over and swatted a mosquito.

Watching this scene from deep within his consciousness, a subtle feeling brushed through Lin Feng's heart.

He hadn't paid attention to the small tower's changes for a long time.

After devouring the taixu small golden furnace previously, the automatic Alchemy function was activated, and he had assumed that was the extent of the small tower's current abilities—after all, a 100% success rate plus a several-tier increase in quality was already a top-tier support that any Alchemist would dream of.

But during this suppression of the gray mist, the small tower hadn't used any energy impact from start to finish. It hadn't erupted with a golden light pillar capable of illuminating the entire Sea of Consciousness as it had the previous two times. Instead, it had used an extremely delicate method to precisely identify the gray mist's position, cut off its retreat, and then use a soft energy net to drag it into a designated tower floor for imprisonment.

This was more than just automatic protection.

This was judgment, selection, and execution—from perceiving the threat to choosing the means of response to completing the imprisonment, every step bore clear traces of 'choice'.

It wasn't a mechanical programmed response, but more like a little fellow with its own temperament.

He remembered the last time in the Secret Realm, when the scroll illusion had almost tempted him into touching a Restriction, the small tower had also vibrated gently to pull his consciousness out of the illusion.

At that time, he hadn't thought much of it, just assuming some passive defense mechanism had been triggered.

But looking at the small tower's smooth sequence of operations just now—detecting the intrusion, giving a gentle warning, judging whether the host could handle it himself, actively intervening upon discovering the host was being interfered with by illusions, and choosing imprisonment over direct annihilation—this was clearly the discretion of a discerning guardian.

It was becoming more and more sentient.

"Thank you."

Lin Feng said softly in the depths of his consciousness.

The small tower did not respond, only rotating leisurely, the dark golden light from the third floor flashing slightly.

It was as if to say: Understood, go back to sleep.

Lin Feng opened his eyes.

The Law of Heaven and Earth had deactivated automatically at some point, and his body had returned to its normal size, lying in the open left palm of the Xiao Guang mecha.

With the back of his head resting on the cold alloy armor, he could feel that the temperature of the mecha's palm surface was maintained within a perfectly controlled range, not so cold as to freeze his scalp.

The taixu sword and dragon slaying sword lay crossed by his side, the silver-white runes and golden patterns on the blades still glowing slightly.

His senses gradually returned, and those fine cracks deep within the Meridians of his chest still existed—the surface layer Elder Zhang had stitched together hadn't been broken, but the load from the Law of Heaven and Earth had caused these cracks to expand slightly more than before, and they were currently healing slowly on their own.

With every heartbeat, he could feel a dull pain coming from the fissures in his Meridians, a familiar, fine, dense sensation, like being gently pricked by countless extremely thin needles.

He had previously prepared to take a Huitian Pill to treat his Meridian injuries, but now it seemed that although the Meridians throbbed with pain, the situation wasn't so serious that medicine was mandatory.

After a moment's thought, he put the Huitian Pill away; such a life-saving item should be saved for when it was truly needed. For now, he could rely on the self-healing power of the Source of Life to recover slowly.

He took a handful of pink peaches from his void mithril ring and placed them in the mecha's palm, picking the softest one and taking a bite. The sweet juice slid down his throat, and the healing effect of the Source of Life was gently boosted by the warm wood-attribute essence in the spirit fruit, easing the dull pain in his Meridian cracks quite a bit.

He then took out several more spirit fruits of different attributes from the ring—green Wood Spirit Fruits to replenish life essence, red Fire Spirit Fruits to accelerate blood circulation, and ice-blue Frost Spirit Fruits to soothe Meridian inflammation.

These spirit fruits were all spoils of war gathered from Explorers of various nations in the Secret Realm earlier. Their quality wasn't exceptionally high, but they were mild in attribute, making them suitable for post-injury recovery.

Xiao Jin crawled over from the side and poked his arm with its antennae, its purple light patterns flashing twice, confirming if his consciousness had fully recovered.

Lin Feng reached out a finger and gently stroked its carapace: "I'm fine now."

Seeing him wake up, Xiao Guang's V-shaped eyepiece flashed, and its previously tense voice finally relaxed: "While your eyes were closed, the core of your chest suddenly lit up dark purple. I thought you'd been—never mind. How do you feel now?"

"My Meridians hurt a bit, but otherwise nothing. That gray mist has been dealt with."

Lin Feng leaned back in the mecha's warm palm, chewing and swallowing the third ice-blue Frost Spirit Fruit.

He didn't want to move right now; he just wanted to lie in this unexpectedly comfortable mecha palm and finish eating the spirit fruits.

Xiao Guang flattened its other hand as well and poured all the spirit fruits previously stored in the Storage Ring next to Lin Feng, forming a small red and green mountain: "These were all brought out from the lab, plus some we picked up on the way. Take your time and eat more."

With that, it controlled the mecha to stand up, carefully placing its left palm holding Lin Feng onto a relatively flat section of a broken wall by the roadside. Then it turned around, its right arm deploying the Dark Energy Cannon and its left arm deploying the alloy combat blade.

The dark red core on the mecha's chest returned to combat status within seconds, and the V-shaped eyepiece coldly scanned the Void Creatures peeking out from the distant ruins.

Those Void Unicorn Hounds and Stone Scorpions, sensing that the powerful aura on Lin Feng had temporarily gone dormant, began to pour out from the depths of the ruins again.

Xiao Guang set the mecha's foot thrusters to standby and looked down at Xiao Jin: "Leave the Void Beasts to me; you guard him."

The purple light patterns on Xiao Jin's antennae lit up, its six legs treading several times on the broken wall platform before it squatted next to Lin Feng's shoulder, its antennae held high in a state of alert.

Xiao Guang controlled the mecha to charge toward the swarm of Void Creatures.