Cultivation is just so scientific! Chapter 1647 - 870: Divine Palace

Upon triggering the teleportation ring, a pure white light flashed before Li Shiming's eyes, utterly barren of any other shades.

His body got yanked with savage force; were it not for his sturdy frame bolstered by the teleportation ring's shielding energy enveloping him, a frailer cultivator's form would have crumbled long ago.

He lost all track of time—it might have spanned a mere second, an entire day, or even a full year. Within that endless white expanse, the flow of time held no significance.

Only when he was thrust out from that stark white realm did his unstable body tumble onto firm ground.

This marked the most humiliating moment since he rose to Great Cultivator status.

By reflex, he scanned the area, dreading that someone might witness his disgrace.

His fears proved groundless; the surroundings lay deserted. He stood at the base of a colossal mountain, with pristine white jade stairs winding upward toward the summit.

A majestic palace crowned the peak, radiating an overwhelming aura that jolted even a Great Cultivator like him to his core, shaking mind and spirit alike.

Rather than rushing up the mountain, he first surveyed his environment carefully.

The spiritual energy in this spot was staggeringly dense and pristine, rivaling the premium cultivation haven he had engineered inside the Treasure Lotus Hall of the Heavenly Person Cave Heaven.

To craft that personal cultivation space, he had funneled countless spiritual veins gathered across years into the Heavenly Person Cave Heaven; its 'Heavenly Human Dao' hall, as the Cave Heaven Master's private sanctuary, already brimmed with spiritual energy, yielding such superior conditions.

The Heavenly Person Cave Heaven ranks as a formidable Grotto Heaven, where even top sects' cultivation grounds barely outshine his own.

Still, this mountain's foothills overflowed with spiritual energy to a degree that left him stunned.

"Where is this place?" This thought gripped him as he gazed into the horizon.

Much to his dismay, not even his 'Divine Eye' pierced the distant vista. The mountain itself appeared to float amid nothingness.

The entire realm seemed confined to this solitary mountain, barren of anything beyond.

As he peered past the mountain's edges, a chill of peril prickled him, warning that straying from its domain could spell dire peril.

His instincts rang true, so he refrained from venturing out.

In unfamiliar realms like this, mere survival took top priority.

Li Shiming eyed the white jade steps, sensing no threat from them.

He avoided flight, deeming even hovering above ground too risky.

Raising his foot, he placed it on the white jade steps—nothing stirred; they felt utterly mundane.

With no other path, he began ascending toward the palace above.

Naturally, given that half-step Great Power Yang Xing had ventured here and returned unscathed, the perils ought to remain manageable.

He ascended steadily, step after step; at first, all stayed calm. Yet past the tenth step, each new one brought a subtle tolling in his ears, like distant bells reverberating.

Yet his natal treasure IBMz15 registered no actual bell tolls.

Deeply linked to him, his natal treasure IBMz15 would detect any bells if they truly sounded— so whence came these echoes?

While Li Shiming mulled this over, the bell tones posed no danger signals, prompting him to press on upward.

The chimes persisted, vibrating straight into his soul.

His soul grew purified, refreshed as if washed clean. Years of relentless slaughter had tainted it with foul residues from the fallen foes.

Prior to this, he had never detected those soul impurities; absent these bell sounds today, their presence might have forever eluded him.

Further up he went, his thoughts sharpened free of clutter, all the while his natal treasure IBMz15 vigilantly tracked his state, ready to warn at the slightest anomaly.

Traversing these white jade steps clearly offered a boon, proven by the ongoing soul cleansing.

Once the bell sounds purged the soul's impurities, they synced with his mind, as if beckoning his awareness into some profound state.

Right then, however, IBMz15 blared an alert: suspicious data sought entry into his mind.

IBMz15 excels at dissecting invasive data, functioning akin to antivirus defenses.

Any alien data probing Li Shiming’s mind first passes IBMz15's rigorous scan.

Should it harbor threats like mind domination, mood manipulation, character shifts, or possession attempts, IBMz15 blocks it outright and alerts Li Shiming.

"Analyze the information!" Li Shiming's gaze turned piercing as he ordered IBMz15.

Even scaling the mountain harbored risks, demanding a sharper upward revision of its threat level.

Soon enough, IBMz15 delivered its breakdown of the blocked data.

The data lacked overt hostility, serving merely as a subtle mental seed to foster cultivators' attachment to this site while enforcing silence about its location.

For typical cultivators, such mental seeding would fail outright, yet here the prior soul cleansing stripped away all defenses—under ordinary conditions, not even a Peak Great Cultivator could fend it off.