"Heh! Collecting souls to restore its strength?"
Leilin quickly figured out the Gegewu's purpose.
This Gegewu, suspected of having fallen from the Morning Star realm, was probably trying to collect a massive number of human souls to restore its own strength.
As an artificial collective of resentment, the Gegewu didn't need to advance its spiritual power through meditation the way wizards did. All it had to do was absorb large quantities of souls — the more terrified, the more anguished, the more deranged the soul, the greater the boost to its power!
Once it had collected enough souls, it would naturally recover to its original strength.
This would be an outright catastrophe for the South Coast!
For the Gegewu to restore Morning Star-level strength, it would need at least thirty million ordinary human souls — roughly a third of all mortals in the South Coast. Neither the Dark Wizards nor the Light Wizards could possibly allow that.
And what the Gegewu would do after recovering its strength was anyone's guess!
Leilin let out a cold laugh. "But what does that have to do with me? Let the leaders of the Dark and Light Wizards worry about this headache!"
He was no saint, nor some fanatic from the Jenna family who fancied himself a guardian of world peace.
Thanks to the old ghost's guidance from before, Leilin knew the town's layout like the back of his hand. He walked through the desolate town center and arrived at the two-story wooden villa from his last visit.
The location had always been rather remote. Cobwebs and dust covered the doorframe, and now the whole place looked rotted and dilapidated, as though a gentle breeze could send it toppling.
Leilin was hardly fooled by such surface appearances. He extended a finger, and a wisp of white light trembled at its tip.
Hummmm!
As if the orb of light in Leilin's hand had triggered some resonance, concealed runes began emerging from the cracks like ants, crawling over to Leilin's feet.
"The concealment barrier I set up before is still active?"
Leilin was mildly surprised. He then made his way to the second floor of the villa. At the end of the corridor, there had once been a painting of a noblewoman in traditional court attire — the entrance to the secret realm — but Leilin had already destroyed it.
"This secret realm is only a small one; the spatial barrier's resistance isn't particularly strong. If it were something like the Ganges Secret Realm, one of those super-large resource domains, that Gegewu would probably be trapped inside for good."
Leilin extended his right hand and ran it along the dark, rough wall.
A thin layer of fine grey-black residue coated the surface, and his palm picked up the feel of tiny granules as he traced across it.
Leilin's expression turned grave. On the wall, besides sensing the damage from his fire elemental particles, he detected an additional presence — a soul-force imprint!
It was extremely faint, practically undetectable without careful attention, yet it gave Leilin a distinctly familiar feeling.
"This thorough blending of all manner of souls, brimming with chaotic malice! No mistake — it's the soul-imprint of that Gegewu. It's already gotten out…"
Though his intelligence had suggested as much, seeing the actual evidence eased Leilin's expression noticeably.
"It also left an early-warning barrier, then? It must have been waiting for me…"
Leilin smiled. The Gegewu's precautions were well-hidden, but only by the standards of an ordinary wizard. Leilin might have had a chance of detecting them with the Chip before, and now, at the second rank, the Gegewu's little tricks were completely transparent to him.
This was simply a case of Leilin's progress outpacing the Gegewu, which still judged him by the strength it had seen the first time they met. A miscalculation like this was inevitable.
"Chip! Scan!" Leilin murmured.
A ring of scanning waves invisible to anyone but Leilin swept across the wall. After his advancement to Second-rank Warlock, the Chip seemed to have undergone a major upgrade as well — the scan completed in an instant.
"Detected concealed spiritual power. Assessment: left behind by a creature of Second-rank Wizard strength. Type: Ancient Soul Barrier, Sense Variant II. Decryption sequence found…" the Chip reported faithfully.
Leilin's Chip database contained a vast collection of books and documents, and after gaining control of the Ganges Secret Realm's headquarters, he had reviewed every resource he could get his hands on, feeding it all into the Chip's library. Leilin was now a true polymath — the kind the entire South Coast could scarcely produce more than a handful of.
A thin strand of silvery spiritual power, carrying a distinctive luster and exuding a powerful, mysterious texture, extended from the center of Leilin's brow. It coalesced in midair, twisting into a distorted magical rune that imprinted itself upon the wall.
Crack! As if something had shattered, the detection barrier the Gegewu had set up was utterly destroyed.
Leilin was now a Second-rank Warlock; dismantling this sort of arrangement was child's play, and he could do it without the other party ever finding out.
"Materialized spiritual power! Truly formidable!"
Leilin felt the solidity and terrifying strength of his spiritual thread and allowed a smile to play across his lips.
Unlike First-rank Wizards, Second-rank Wizards had reached a higher stage. At this level, they could radically reshape their own bodies and acquire all sorts of extraordinary abilities. The fundamental path and its branches had already been set, allowing them to delve deeper and further within their chosen domain.
But there was one ability that every Second-rank Wizard was required to master: the materialization of spiritual power!
This meant transforming ethereal spiritual power into the most fundamental energy particles of the real world, making it fully tangible.
Materialization could only be attempted after raising one's spiritual power elementalization to eighty percent or above, and materialized spiritual power was far more effective at channeling ambient energy particles than ordinary spiritual power. It was also the cornerstone for advancing to Third-rank Wizard!