The sun slowly sank, its entire form suffused with an orange-red glow.
Beneath the shadows of the setting sun, the small town looked all the more dilapidated and weathered.
In the center of the town, inside the only inn, a cacophony of voices still filled the air, thick fumes of rum, roasted meat, and the stench of sweat freely mingling and rising.
Because the nights were bitterly cold, the inn had long since sealed every window and door without leaving so much as a crack—and it was precisely this that made the atmosphere inside even more stifling.
But the red-faced drunkards and the travel-weary patrons paid no mind to any of it. In this climate and environment, having a place to warm oneself by the fire, down a cup of strong liquor, and enjoy some roasted meat was already a life close to heaven.
"My lord, your meal!"
The large, broad-handed cook efficiently placed several plates before a table that held only a single patron. Blushing, she couldn't help stealing another glance at the young guest before retreating with a satisfied smile.
"By the Solar Throne! How can there be such a handsome man? He must be some noble lord!"
The cook's inner musings naturally had nothing to do with Leilin. At this moment, he stared at the lavish spread of food on the table, his eyes unfocused—clearly lost in thought.
After issuing his orders and ensuring that the entire Ouroboros Ring was properly arranged, Leilin had set off on his journey.
Since there was no great rush, and he had never had the opportunity to travel before, he naturally wanted to take his time and see the sights. The Central Continent stretched out vast and boundless, with all manner of strange races and hybrids living alongside humans, the geography complex and ever-changing, further complicated by the personal radiation contamination of high-level Wizards and other factors. As a result, nearly every place had its share of bizarre occurrences—some even resulting in unsolved mysteries.
Having abandoned the convenience of an Airship, Leilin had to admit that at his pace of travel, circumnavigating the entirety of the Central Continent would take at least centuries!
While the journey had offered no shortage of strange and wondrous sights, Leilin had long since ascended to Morning Star, granting him extraordinary perception. Under the probing of his Soul Power, there were very few phenomena left that could genuinely baffle him.
The reason he had made a point of traveling to this particular small town was to witness a rumored marvel.
Don't let Leilin's leisurely demeanor and taste for sightseeing fool you—in truth, he was studying these eerie phenomena in order to feed more data into the Chip, bolstering its analytical capabilities.
Thinking of this, Leilin couldn't help but pull up his status:
"Leilin Farell. Warlock Rank 4. Bloodline: Comorin Giant Serpent (Perfect Form). Strength: 50. Agility: 45. Constitution: 65. Spiritual Power: 503.7. Mana: 503 (Mana is synchronously determined by Spiritual Power). Soul Power: ???"
After his ascension to Morning Star, the method of representing data through Spiritual Power had shown its limitations. And since the Chip lacked sufficient data on Soul Power, it had been unable to successfully digitize his Soul Power—something that vexed Leilin to no end.
"Wizards below Rank 4 all accumulate Spiritual Power through Meditation Methods, but after Rank 4, matters of the soul come into play. The Eye of Comorin no longer offers any advantage…"
Leilin sighed. His Meditation Method was far too low-grade—these insights had come from the Wings of the Sun.
The cultivation of the soul was far more complex and profound than Spiritual Power. Even the Wings of the Sun could not explain it entirely and correctly, much less integrate that knowledge into the Chip's supreme directives.
And so, Leilin had reverted to his earlier approach: studying various spiritual beings in order to accumulate data and information on Soul Power, ultimately completing the database.
Thinking of this, Leilin glanced at the two columns beside his data: "Eye of Comorin Meditation Method, Layer 5—Projection Progress: 6.92%. Soul Power Database Completeness: 26.8%!"
"A long road indeed…" Leilin smiled bitterly to himself.
The deduction of the Meditation Method was one thing, but the Eye of Comorin itself only had four layers—a barrier that countless Comorin warlocks had never broken through. For Leilin to fabricate it from nothing using only the Chip's simulation and deduction was simply too great a task.
The collection of the Soul Power Database, however, was even more difficult.
Only after condensing a Particle Point and purifying his Spiritual Power into Soul Force did Leilin realize just how laughable his research had been back when he was an apprentice and a first-level warlock!
The laws governing the birth and death of spiritual entities—how could they possibly be discovered so easily? In fact, many times a rule that still held as a theorem on the first day would completely lose its validity and be overturned by the next.
"The soul's jump-projection rules are such a scam!" Leilin muttered with a dark expression. Moreover, the spiritual entities he had encountered back then could hardly even be called spiritual entities—they were merely the products of lingering, unwilling memory fragments that had undergone energetic materialization.
Therefore, while that data still held some utility, it was only useful as a reference at best.
Only after advancing to Morning Star and mastering Soul Force would he have the confidence to restart his exploration of the soul. Leilin was currently working toward that very goal.
In general, the physical constitution of humans on the Central Continent was far superior to that of the South Coast and the Dark Polar Region. Furthermore, due to the abundance of energy particles, the probability of a soul transforming into a spiritual entity after death was much higher. When combined with the radiation emitted by numerous high-level Wizards, this created a very primitive yet complex spiritual environment here.
Whenever such an environment manifested, Leilin would make every effort to be present, collecting data and running analyses.
"The 'Spirit Tide' phenomenon that inevitably occurs during the Year of the Cold Crow's Lament, in the Month of Haze, at the stroke of midnight!"
Leilin murmured silently. This was precisely the reason he had come to this small town.
And at that moment, he keenly sensed numerous glances sweeping over him with feigned casualness, and he couldn't help but smile self-deprecatingly.