Chapter 417: Life and Death

At this moment, Li Mochen was sitting casually on the bow of the *Troia*, watching the sea with Angela.

He knew that Angela insisted on coming to the Antoria Continent because she wanted to stay by his side. But what shamed Li Mochen was that during the eighteen days since setting sail, he had either been cultivating or refining artifacts, leaving little time to accompany Angela.

Fortunately, the girl was very magnanimous. When Li Mochen devoted himself to cultivation, she focused on practicing illusion magic and mastering 'Loki's Deceitful Hand.' This third-level sacred artifact had many functions, and if Angela wanted to make the best use of it, she still needed to spend some time.

She also had two companions, Hazel and Lina. Although the former was also adapting to the fifth-level 'sacred artifact' sent by Anthony, and Lina was striving to improve herself, trying to truly control her archangel, the three girls interacted and encouraged each other in their free time, so they didn't find life on the ship tedious.

The next period would be better. After reaching level twelve, Li Mochen no longer had an urgent need to rapidly enhance his strength. In fact, at this stage, haste would not help.

After level fifteen came another threshold: the Nascent Soul stage. This was the so-called 'refining Qi to transform spirit,' a phase of condensing and sublimating one's soul, important not only for Eastern cultivators but also for Western magic professionals.

The former 'Divine Thunder Infinite Purple Void Immortal King' Tao Ran had long passed this stage, but Li Mochen had not.

He had started over and had the opportunity to rebuild his own path. He could make up for past shortcomings and achieve a more perfect level of his primordial spirit. Li Mochen planned to settle down and spend one to two years cultivating his mind and character, slowly polishing. After all, the cultivation of the soul could not be rushed; it could only be strengthened, purified, refined, and built day by day.

The main task was construction: he needed to build thick 'walls' in his mind to resist the intrusion of inner demons; he needed to inscribe vast, complex, and perfect immortal arrays within his soul to enhance the power of his spells and combat techniques, and to increase the efficiency of his soul power utilization.

For him, levels twelve and fifteen were essentially no different. With his current strength and various magical tools, he could threaten legendary fifth-level in some special circumstances. But even after level fifteen, he still could not harm demigod-level experts in direct combat, unless he acquired new, more powerful divine authority. Of course, if Li Mochen used the Dragon's Might sniper rifle, the situation would be different.

So now he could reduce his daily cultivation time from the previous 70% to 30%, and then have an extra 30% to 'daydream' during daily hours.

However, Li Mochen's absent-mindedness at this moment was not due to 'divine sense' cultivation. He was diverting part of his mind to observe his 'Yin-Yang Life-Death Mirror' and his external elixir 'Three Dragons.'

The former had been fully modified by Li Mochen, and then barely formed the 'divine authority' or 'dominion' of life and death.

Although this mirror was something Li Mochen used during his Primordial Spirit stage, at that time he was already a great power capable of contending with many Mahayana-stage cultivators, so the item in his hand was naturally not ordinary.

According to the classification of this world, it could be considered a first-level sacred artifact. So only now, at this stage, did Li Mochen truly meet the standard to use it.

A day ago, Li Mochen, with the help of Anthony's technology, had restructured and optimized the 'Yin-Yang Life-Death Mirror' from the inside out, incorporating his new insights into life and death.

Now, relying on his past life's accumulation, Li Mochen had manifested the authority of 'life' and spread it over this sea area, observing the states of the crew members on each ship.

The Great Emperor of the Southern Pole Longevity and the Great Emperor of the Northern Pole governed life and death, but when Li Mochen was at level seven, he had not accomplished much in these two aspects.

If Li Mochen were a holy healer or a druid, his 'healing technique' would be exceptionally powerful. But Li Mochen was not, so at that time, the manifestation of the life authority was merely that his true essence could infuse life force into others to sustain life; the death authority was to plunder others' life force and vitality, causing those who fought him directly to weaken particularly quickly.

But Li Mochen never had the chance to use these two abilities. They were unnecessary in the arena, and off the arena, he had no need. The few battles Li Mochen participated in were almost all long-range snipes or quick decisive engagements.

Now, however, after Li Mochen advanced to level twelve and gained control of the 'Yin-Yang Life-Death Mirror,' his abilities in this area had finally matured.

Within the range of his life authority, everyone's vitality and essence would be particularly vigorous; any injuries would heal rapidly. If someone cultivated within this range, their progress would be several times faster than usual, achieving twice the result with half the effort.

Under the coverage of the death authority, the constitution of all living beings would rapidly weaken until death.

Of course, if it were only at this level, it would be just a slightly advanced domain.

But what Li Mochen possessed was true authority! He could 'command' life and death within this range!

If it were someone at Lina's level, he could, with a single thought, cause Lina to die, and then with another thought, bring her back to life.

Of course, Li Mochen would have to pay some price for this, mainly in terms of mana consumption. To cause Lina's death would consume about one percent of his mana; if she were in the archangel-possessed state, it would require a third. Moreover, the level of life also determined the effectiveness of his divine authority. Against someone like Lind, a legendary lich, Li Mochen could do nothing.

Furthermore, when the two authorities of life and death were combined, they became exceptionally powerful. He could currently control a range of twenty li in radius, encompassing all beings between life and death. He could also greatly enhance the combat power of a person or an undead.

He could even deprive one person of their life force and give it to another, or to himself—if not for the time and loss required to convert life force into mana, then as long as there were enough living beings around him, he could be nearly immortal and inexhaustible in mana.

Besides, the life and death authorities had many other wonderful uses. Unfortunately, all the people on the ships here were his subordinates, and Li Mochen was not insane enough to conduct dangerous experiments on them. He only made slight adjustments to life force to observe and understand his own authority.

Next was the 'Three Dragons' external elixir. The naming of this external elixir was simple and crude: it was made by processing the dragon crystals of three dragons.

White dragons excel at controlling ice, red dragons are fire dragons, and green dragons are adept at harnessing the power of wind and wood.

Thus, the attributes of the 'Three Dragons' external elixir leaned toward these three aspects. However, since this external elixir was refined from the dragon crystals of three lord-level giant dragons, the magic source it provided was also complete in the five elements, only differing in strength.

What Li Mochen was now observing with his divided mind was the internal circulation state of this external elixir.

To test its performance and identify possible defects, the magic source within the 'Three Dragons' external elixir was, under his control, circulating at its maximum speed, converting and pouring a large amount of magic energy into the energy pool of the Death Home magic tower.

It must be mentioned here that although Lind·Amos had returned to Atlanta, his six-story magic tower remained, temporarily under Anthony's control.

This was Li Mochen's last resort. In the next few days, Anthony would complete the 'Light Demon No. 8' as quickly as possible.

Of course, their main combat strength was still Hazel. The 'Light Demon No. 8,' which had not been fully tested, was hard to trust in terms of endurance. But when Li Mochen took control of Hazel's body, his original body was fragile and could only be placed inside the core of the magic tower to ensure absolute safety.