160: Chapter 160 The Ultimate Bet

The passage was much shorter than expected.

Jiang Feng stepped on the stone stairs, making two sharp turns in a row as the ground beneath him dropped away like a cliff.

Half of the edge of the final stone step was shattered.

He kicked off the remaining jagged edge with both legs, sliding three or four meters down the slope.

The intense friction between his soles and the rock created a piercing screech that echoed through the narrow mine shaft.

His backside scraped hard against the rough rock, leaving a large white scuff mark on the back of his tactical trousers.

Using both hands and feet, he gripped the protruding rocks on the ground tightly, forcing himself to a halt.

A muffled sound of collapsing rock layers came from the passage above, the aftershocks traveling down the stone walls and making his feet tingle.

Jiang Feng didn't look back.

The Lethal Array above had completely locked down, sealing his retreat with massive boulders; now, he could only follow this path to the end.

After steadying himself in a crouch, Jiang Feng lowered his head and took a couple of heavy breaths.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up with his hands on his knees and looked ahead.

The space before him was on a completely different scale compared to the domed rotunda above.

There were no traces of artificial craftsmanship here.

All around were primitive, dark rock walls with uneven surfaces, covered in strange textures left behind by cooling magma from tens of millions of years ago.

Above him was a jagged layer of cracked rock.

Sharp rocks hung at varying heights; a few droplets of water fell from their tips, hitting the ground with a crisp echo.

The space wasn't large, thirty square meters at most.

The object right in the center completely stole Jiang Feng's attention.

A natural stone platform.

Its material was entirely different from the surrounding rock walls, darker in color with extremely fine bedding textures on the surface.

This was definitely not a product of ordinary geological movement.

Instead, it looked like a base formed by years of energy erosion and condensation, with the edges even developing a jade-like translucent quality.

The air around the stone platform was shimmering violently.

Ripples radiated outward from the center of the platform, the rock wall behind it seemingly pulled into a soft, rubbery texture by the force.

The magnetic field was so dense that even light couldn't travel in a straight line.

Jiang Feng pulled open the collar of his tactical jacket that had been covering his nose and mouth.

His chest expanded forcefully as he took a deep breath.

Just that one breath made him raise an eyebrow.

The air was filled with an extremely crisp scent of earth.

It was the scent of fresh soil, just overturned after a heavy rain.

It carried the sweet fragrance of grass, clean and smooth.

Such a smell appearing at the end of a mine shaft over ten meters underground was jarringly out of place.

Outside was full of lethal danger, yet inside was like a natural greenhouse.

Jiang Feng leaned against the rock wall, walking toward the stone platform step by step.

With every step, the sense of spatial distortion grew more severe.

By the fifth step, his shadow on the ground split into three.

One elongated, one shortened, and one faded in color.

By the eighth step, the uneven patterns on the rock walls began to rotate.

The edges of his vision spun, and his brain's balance system suffered severe interference.

He narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to remain steady.

Ignoring the visual chaos, he pushed through the dizziness and edged forward.

His passive skill [Empathy Shielding] automatically activated to protect him, forcibly filtering out some of the overloaded spatial information.

Until the tips of his shoes touched the edge of the stone platform's base.

The beam of his flashlight fell directly onto the surface of the platform.

In the center of the platform sat a mass of something.

A golden-brown shimmer radiated from its surface, which also seemed to emit a faint warmth.

The earthy fragrance throughout the cave, so pleasant it made one want to breathe deeply, was coming from this very mass.

Jiang Feng dimmed his flashlight to its lowest setting and leaned in for a closer look.

The texture of the soil's surface was moist and smooth, without a single crack or any sign of being scorched or deactivated.

The energy fluctuations were surprisingly stable.

The illusion of spatial shimmering vanished completely within three inches of this mass of soil.

The air became refreshing, and even the lethal magnetic interference was suppressed by it.

Jiang Feng wiped the dust off his palms onto his trousers, reached into his canvas bag with one hand, and pulled out the kraft paper file left by the Prophet.

Turning to the third page, the flashlight beam hit the copy of Fiend, Devil's manuscript.

He compared the text in the file line by line with the object before him.

His gaze darted back and forth between the paper and the soil.

Size: about the size of an adult male's fist—a perfect match.

Color: golden-brown with its own glowing effect—a perfect replica.

Energy behavior: maintains constant radiation without external stimulation, actively suppressing surrounding abnormal magnetic fields—fits perfectly.

Jiang Feng flipped back to the fourth page, the Huake Institute's survey file.

It listed a set of mineral element analysis data, with a red-circled annotation at the end:

"Non-deactivated remodeling mineral; theoretically, it should possess continuous energy output capability. If a finished product exists, it will exhibit high-activity characteristics, forming an absolute contrast with carbonized, deactivated grayish-black residue."

On the edge of the manuscript, an encrypted note was recorded, mentioning correlation experiments between the excision of the emotional center and the Remodeling Miracle.

Looking at this Living Soil, a clear logical chain formed in Jiang Feng's mind.

This thing could not only remodel the physical body, but the magnetic field it emitted could even reshape the way neural signals were transmitted.

Scenes from yesterday afternoon flashed through his mind.

The moment Xun Bai opened his left palm.

Grayish-black, rough, shriveled, and crumbled into dregs.

That pinch of stuff was dead as could be, not even fit for fertilizer.

The mass of soil before him radiated a uniform golden-brown shimmer, each tiny particle wrapped in living energy.

Living, dead.

The difference was so vast it was hard to believe these two lumps shared the same origin.

The residue in Xun Bai's hand was at most the corpse of this soil.

And this soil was the peak state of that residue before it died.

That two-thousand-year-old monster stayed in the town with nothing but a pinch of dead ash in his hand.

All because he simply couldn't get here.

The Lethal Array outside blocked Xun Bai's path, and the natural magnetic field was the Achilles' heel of an Alchemists's techniques.

For two thousand years, Xun Bai could only satisfy his cravings by picking up burnt scraps at the edge of the mineral vein.

Jiang Feng raised his hand and touched the back of his head.

The Mutant Glioblastoma there was lying dormant.

The Crystallized Second Nervous System, which modern medicine had declared incurable, required power of an equivalent dimension to suppress or even reconstruct it.

Rewriting the physical laws of causality.

Suppressing the mutant brain tumor.

The ultimate answer to forcibly extending his life.

It was right before his eyes.

He reached into the bottom of his canvas bag and pulled out a sealed bag with a foil lining.

This bag was originally meant for anti-static storage of electronic components and had cost him twelve yuan.

A twelve-yuan industrial-grade plastic bag, used to hold a supernatural artifact capable of rewriting the laws of physics.

Jiang Feng felt this move was quite reasonable.

Pragmatism was the only way; things like red sandalwood boxes or white jade cases were just scams to trick laymen into paying an "intelligence tax."

Anti-static was true hardcore science.

He pinched the top of the sealed bag with two fingers and gave it a sharp pull.

The plastic seal made a crisp ripping sound, revealing the foil lining.

Then, holding the sealed bag, he stepped closer to the glowing mass of soil on the stone platform.