These items had all been swallowed by the Stone Puppet into its belly while inside the Corpse Cave. At the time, Yang Kai and Yang Yan had been preoccupied with finding a way to collect the Solar True Essence and hadn't had much time to deal with the mountain-like piles of minerals and Holy Crystals, so they'd asked the Stone Puppet to help.
Inside the Corpse Cave, there had been seven or eight small mountains of various minerals and Holy Crystals. The Stone Puppet had only consumed about half, but that alone was a staggering amount.
Among these minerals, a portion had been absorbed by it to strengthen its body and repair the damage caused by the Solar True Fire. The rest — a massive quantity — now sat in a heap before Yang Kai.
Back then, things had been too hectic for Yang Kai to inspect the quality and types of these minerals. But since they'd been left outside, they were clearly inferior in both quality and rarity to the ones stored in his space ring. After sweeping them with his divine sense, he confirmed his suspicions.
Still, this wasn't something he needed to worry about. All of these minerals were to be handed over to Yang Yan anyway.
He was about to store them back into his space ring when he suddenly let out a soft exclamation, his gaze locking onto a particular spot in the mineral pile ahead. He reached out with a casual wave of his hand, and a fist-sized object — perfectly round, smooth, and flawlessly white like a marble — floated into his grasp.
He examined the sphere with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Shortly, as though remembering something, a look of surprise flashed in his eyes. He circulated his cultivation technique and felt the vast, pure energy seeping out from within the sphere. Yang Kai's expression turned odd as he stared blankly at the Stone Puppet and asked in astonishment: "You can purify even this kind of thing?"
The Stone Puppet tilted its head at him, silent.
Yang Kai smiled faintly, knowing it likely couldn't express its emotions — after all, the Stone Puppet's intelligence was quite limited.
He reached out and produced the stone house restriction token that Yang Yan had given him earlier, channeling Holy Origin into it to send a message.
Moments later, the restriction on the stone house was deactivated from outside, and Yang Yan strode in, asking with a hint of confusion: "Aren't you in seclusion? What do you want me for?"
"Look at this!" Yang Kai tossed the sphere over. Yang Yan caught it and gave him a suspicious glance before examining it carefully.
A few moments later, her beautiful eyes went wide, her face a mix of shock and delight. As though she'd discovered something incredible, she rushed up to Yang Kai and asked eagerly: "Where did you get this? Do you have any more?"
Yang Kai pointed toward the mineral pile before him.
Yang Yan turned to look. When she saw that the pile contained numerous spheres identical to the one in her hand, she went momentarily blank.
It took a good dozen breaths before she let out a shriek and darted over to the pile, scooping every last item into her space ring without hesitation.
"Leave a few for me," Yang Kai said, his face creased with frustration.
"What do you need these for?" Yang Yan sniffed, one small hand nonchalantly shielding her space ring from view.
"Cultivation. You can tell what these were condensed from, can't you? I only broke through not long ago — this would help me stabilize my realm even better." Yang Kai scratched his cheek.
"Of course I can tell. These were condensed by Little Stone, weren't they?" Yang Yan grabbed the Stone Puppet and planted several kisses on its small face, leaving Yang Kai thunderstruck. The Stone Puppet itself looked completely flustered.
"I never imagined that Little Stone could even purify and compress Holy Crystals! This solves one of my biggest worries in one fell swoop — hee hee!" Yang Yan gazed at the Stone Puppet with shimmering eyes, looking as though she wanted to kiss it a few more times.
"The Stone Puppet can purify and compress Holy Crystals now? You didn't know about this before?" Yang Kai asked, bewildered.
Yang Yan shook her head. "I tested it before, and Little Stone couldn't do it. But Stone Puppets have an innate ability to absorb the essence of various minerals and convert it into their own power. That it can do this now — I suspect it's related to the Solar True Essence. I can't be certain, but I'm probably not wrong."
Hearing this, Yang Kai nodded gently. The Solar True Essence was said to be the supreme heat essence refined from the source of stars. The Stone Puppet had absorbed and refined some of the Solar True Fire, so it wasn't strange that its abilities had changed in some way.
But to be able to purify and compress Holy Crystals — transforming individual crystals into sphere-like objects like these — was nothing short of sensational.
Within the Star Field, the highest-quality Holy Crystals known to date were merely Superior Grade Holy Crystals. Yet these spherical objects shattered that universally accepted limit and set an entirely new precedent.
The energy contained within a single sphere was far purer and more abundant than that of a Superior Grade Holy Crystal. Having felt it briefly just now, Yang Kai estimated that one sphere held roughly the equivalent of five or six Superior Grade Holy Crystals combined.