Chapter 12: The Golden Tower

Inside the apartment, Li Mochen was still sitting slumped on the floor, lost in a daze.

It wasn't because of the injury on his face; Oliver's healing spell was quite effective. Within less than ten seconds after the green light enveloped him, his wounds and pain had almost completely healed and disappeared.

The reason Li Mochen sat there motionless was that he was suffering from a headache.

Just now, when he was talking with Jennifer, he was nothing like the Tao Ran from the Primordial Vault Realm, who could remain calm and composed in any situation or crisis.

If it were the old him, he would never have acted that way. No matter how much he disliked that Jennifer, he could have easily brushed her off back then. Bluster without strength is just the barking of a house dog.

As the saying goes, a wise man knows better than to court disaster, so why provoke with words and earn a slap for nothing?

Unfortunately, at that time, both this body and his own will were in a state of being beyond his control, unable to govern themselves.

Obviously, this was due to the original owner of the body. This residual consciousness, instinct, obsession, and even temperament were all influencing him, driving him to act this way.

This implied three things: first, his control over this body was even worse than he had imagined.

Second, he had underestimated the impact of merging with Li Mochen's remnant soul on his own spirit.

Although he had obtained this body and accepted the memories of Li Mochen's remnant soul, at the same time, he himself had changed. He had incorporated a part of what once belonged to Li Mochen into his body, and even into his soul.

Third, the influence of Li Mochen's remnant soul on him had been amplified at least tenfold by the secret technique that Dugu Tianyi had cast on him, making his current situation even worse.

Speaking of which, earlier at the gymnasium, he had already sensed something was off. How could he have become so enraged just because of two heavy blows and some contempt from his opponent? To the point of disregarding the consequences and directly executing a technique that this body could not withstand?

Although the 'Divine Firmament Ultimate Void Purple Immortal King' of the Primordial Dome Realm was notoriously narrow-minded, he was far from losing his reason over such a trivial matter.

Li Mochen thought this was truly troubling. Although he had long known that merging with another's remnant soul would inevitably bring various aftereffects, he had never before imagined the situation could deteriorate to this extent.

The only thing Li Mochen was grateful for was that the fusion of their souls was still dominated by Tao Ran. He conducted a deep self-examination and felt no major abnormalities; he was still himself, not being led by another's thoughts.

However, it was also true that his personality had changed, and to a large extent, he could no longer act according to his own will. So in the future, no matter what he wanted to do, he would have to take this into account.

Li Mochen spent a full ten minutes in self-reflection before staggering to his feet and closing his door.

The lock on the door was broken and couldn't be fully fastened, but it was enough to block out the prying eyes of the neighbors outside.

Only then did Li Mochen glance up at the light fixture above. Fortunately, there were no signs of tampering; his belongings and assets should still be there.

In this chaotic neighborhood, it was indeed never wrong to be cautious.

After resting for just a short while, Li Mochen began moving the various pieces of furniture inside, piling them up in the corners.

A third-level magic swordsman's physical constitution was nearly at the limit of human potential, so Li Mochen's current body had a strength of three to four hundred kilograms, making it easy to move large items like the bed and sofa.

After that, he used a fruit knife to carve a series of visually mysterious runes on the cleared floor in the center of the room.

Each time one was carved, a hazy numinous light shimmered on the wooden floor.

If it were in the Original Dome Realm, Li Mochen would need some immortal stones, immortal jade, or other materials as a foundation to arrange such a talisman array.

But in this world, the primordial spirit was so abundant that Li Mochen found it hard to imagine, so he directly skipped this step.

He was a renowned talisman array grandmaster and could compensate for this deficiency through other means.

After about three and a half hours, a talisman array resembling the innate eight trigrams diagram gradually took shape in the center of this dimly lit basement.

Once Li Mochen had handled all the details and checked them repeatedly, he sat down with a thump in the very center of the array. Then, with a fruit knife, he made a small cut on his wrist, letting a large amount of blood spill down and merge into the array.

Moments later, a trace of excitement gradually appeared in Li Mochen's eyes.

First, he traced a strange rune before him, then reached his hand into the patch of black void that gradually manifested ahead.

If someone were watching from the side, they would see that most of Li Mochen's right hand had vanished into thin air.

This was actually the top secret technique of the Divine Thunder Sect, the 'Qiankun Divine Seal.' In the Original Dome Realm, spiritual power was scarce, and the output of various heavenly treasures declined year by year. Spatial artifacts, common tens of thousands of years ago, were few and far between by Li Mochen's time.

However, thirteen hundred years ago, a peerless grandmaster of the Divine Thunder Sect created the technique 'Qiankun Divine Seal,' allowing all cultivators above the Golden Core stage to create their own personal space to store various items.

Although the size of this space was far inferior to that of a true spatial artifact, it was economical, environmentally friendly, consumed no energy, caused no pollution, and had some potential for development.

At the Golden Core stage, the 'Qiankun Divine Seal' could at most create a space one foot square. But for someone like Li Mochen, at the Mahayana stage, it could be expanded to three zhang in diameter.

What Li Mochen had never expected was that after the calamity he encountered in the Boundless Void, even his several life-bound immortal treasures had turned to powder, yet his own 'Qiankun Divine Seal' had survived without collapsing on the spot.

After a long while, Li Mochen suddenly pulled out an object from the black void. It was two mirrors, entirely silver-white in color, but he didn't even glance at them and casually tossed them to the ground.

Next came four gleaming gold ingots, seven pigeon-egg-sized gems, five jade talisman plaques, and nine five-inch-square spirit stones, all of which he grabbed one by one from the black void.

As time passed, a hint of anxiety gradually appeared in Li Mochen's eyes. With each grab, the already scarred space within the 'Qiankun Divine Seal' was continuously collapsing due to external spiritual disturbances, yet he still hadn't found the thing he truly wanted.

He could only search in this clumsy manner because everything inside was in disarray, and his severely injured spirit had lost its ability to sense.

It wasn't until a moment later that his expression finally relaxed slightly as he retrieved a nine-tiered purple-gold pagoda from the black void.

At that moment, the space within the 'Qiankun Divine Seal' happened to collapse completely.

Li Mochen looked helpless, grabbed two more gold ingots at random, then quickly formed a strange hand seal before him, completely sealing the spatial gap. He let his many years of accumulated treasures drift away into the void beyond the realm.

But then, instead of feeling regret, Li Mochen collapsed to the ground, looked at the purple-gold pagoda beside him, and burst into hearty laughter. He thought to himself that his luck hadn't run out yet.

Even in the Original Dome Realm, no one knew that the so-called 'Divine Thunder Supreme Void Purple Immortal King' Tao Ran, hailed as the 'genius among geniuses' in the cultivation world, whose attainments in the Way were unprecedented and likely never to be surpassed, was actually only of average talent in cultivation—not much better than ordinary mortals. The reason he had attained Mahayana in just a few decades was precisely because of this extraordinary treasure he named the 'Divine Thunder Spirit Fortune Purple Gold Pagoda.'

He obtained this item at the age of nine, and then soared to prominence. As an ordinary mortal, he was accepted into the Divine Thunder Sect, and his cultivation advanced by leaps and bounds, encountering almost no significant obstacles. All techniques and scriptures were understood at a glance; all immortal arts, talisman arrays, alchemy, and so on were learned as soon as he tried.

Others thought it was due to his exceptional talent, but Li Mochen knew it was all because of this treasure, which could govern his own 'fortune' and 'momentum' through the power of merit. Without it, he wouldn't even have been able to enter the gate of immortality.