Wild cultivation begins with wielding the Taiyin talisman.

The sunset is still on the horizon, so how could there be a moon at this moment?

Moreover, the moon seemed to be getting bigger!

Ning Che was surprised and about to turn around to ask. But suddenly he realized that he could no longer feel his own body!

The moon before him grew ever larger, almost filling his entire field of vision. He could even see magnificent palaces and pavilions within it, with blurry figures carrying glass lanterns moving about. Celestial music filled the air, otherworldly and ethereal, unlike anything on earth. Yet, this sight only made Ning Che more uneasy.

Humans are instinctively afraid of the unknown, let alone such sudden changes.

But Ning Che is now unable to move and can only watch helplessly as the moon rushes towards him.

The excessive tension, ironically, heightened his mental focus. He still couldn't find his body, but he discovered something else entirely.

He could hardly describe this existence in words, just as he could not explain the body itself with words beyond the body. It was ethereal and mysterious, shimmering with light, gathering all thoughts and displaying all memories, whether they belonged to Ning Che or were left behind by the original owner.

But just as one cannot see one's own cells when looking at oneself, those thoughts and memories are vague, shining in patches. Even if Ning Che wanted to see them clearly, he could not distinguish them.

This must be what they call the soul. Ning Che remembered Shi Ying's words and immediately tried to explore the external world.

While achieving enlightenment through meditation can easily lead to trouble, it also offers the possibility of becoming a spiritual practitioner. Rather than waiting and seeing what happens, he prefers to take a gamble.

Unfortunately, understanding and being able to do are two different things. In such a pressing situation, the more he tried to ignore his soul, the more he couldn't ignore it. His perception of the outside world seemed to be blocked out, and only his soul shone brightly and flickered with the surge of his thoughts.

Just then, Ning Che suddenly regained some consciousness.

"Did I accidentally develop something special?"

The doubt vanished in an instant, and Ning Che made a decisive move, shifting his body with all his might.

Moved!

But it wasn't that the body moved.

Ning Che seemed to have broken free from a layer of constraints, his "perspective" floating in the air. He could see his body gripping the well pulley, his left half hidden behind it, and his right half slightly protruding, looking down into the well.

The next moment, before he could figure out the situation or how to respond, a blinding white light engulfed everything in sight.

……

After an unknown amount of time, when Ning Che was able to "see" again, the world had completely changed.

The ground was an endless expanse of white sand, and in front of him stood palaces built against the mountain, their materials as if sculpted from ice and jade, crystal clear, just like the place he had glimpsed in the moonlight just now.

However, the palaces here have collapsed, and most of the hundreds of exquisitely crafted buildings of various styles have been reduced to ruins. The remaining few have been razed to the ground, making the once well-arranged architectural complex look like a net with holes. As for the figures of people coming and going, and the celestial music being played, they have all vanished without a trace.

Ning Che tried to shout, but no sound was heard.

Why is that?

There were too many mysteries surrounding him, and Ning Che's mind was filled with questions. But he understood that without almost any information, any thoughts he had were just wild guesses. He calmed his turbulent thoughts slightly and then tried to walk into the palaces where some parts remained.

He first took steps in place, then slid forward, and then jumped up and down. After a few minutes of trying, he realized that he was actually floating.

He floats slightly faster than he walks, can adjust his height freely, and can even "fly underground." Moreover, in this state, exercise doesn't seem to cause him any fatigue.

Ning Che floated into the nearest palace, his fingertips touching the broken wall. The cool, delicate touch was clearly felt, exactly like the sensation of touching a real object. He tried to lift a piece of broken metal about half the size of his palm, but it wouldn't budge, as if it weighed a ton.

Everything here, except for himself, was heavier than he could have imagined.

Giving up the rummaging, he began to stumble and carefully search for things other than the palace fragments.

What first caught Ning Che's attention were the plaques and inscriptions, which clearly contained some information. However, the writing was too abstract. Judging from the number of characters, it should be pictographic, but all the hundreds of symbols looked like they had been drinking fake alcohol, twisted and crooked, making it impossible to tell what they were.

Ning Che casually picked out a well-preserved plaque and spent some time memorizing the shapes of the four characters on it. He planned to find an opportunity to ask what it meant when he got back.

He immediately changed his approach: since he couldn't read the local script, he would look for clues such as murals.

Each hall's walls were adorned with fragmented bas-reliefs, their lines flowing and graceful, their figures lifelike. Ning Che examined over a dozen halls in succession, attempting to piece together a story from the still-standing half-standing parapets and the shattered carved beams and painted rafters.

But not.

Some of the reliefs appear to be auspicious patterns, featuring a six-eared rabbit and various lunar phases, all highly similar to each other, as if they were made by the same person.

The other parts have some narrative elements, but they are too incomplete. Even the most complete image Ning Che pieced together wouldn't exceed half the total image. It's unlikely to provide a clear interpretation; it's mostly guesswork.

But he didn't come away empty-handed.

The palace before him seemed different: the reliefs on the walls featured toads he had never seen before. Moreover, because the toads were smaller, more details could be preserved on fragments of similar size, allowing Ning Che to find a relatively complete section.

On a raised area of ​​the ground, a toad opened its mouth and sucked up the flowing liquid from a suspended half-sphere.

The half-sphere was very likely the lunar phase they had seen before. The bulge might be a mountain, or something else; it was too badly damaged to tell. As for the flowing object, Ning Che believed it was a representation of moonlight.

The reliefs depict spiritual practice; does this mean the palace is related to spiritual cultivation?

Ning Che remained true to his original intention and immediately began a meticulous search of the palace. Not only did he take advantage of his soul to observe from various angles, but he also reached out and felt around in any gaps to ascertain the situation inside.

Persistence pays off, and he actually found something extraordinary.

It was a thumb-thick, bluish-purple dried fruit, oval-shaped, with a wrinkled skin, indicating it had been there for an unknown amount of time. This was the only thing Ning Che could pick up, so it must be something special.

A special dried fruit could very well be a spiritual object!

Ning Che had no pockets or belongings, so he had to carry it in his hand. After confirming that nothing had been missed, he did not continue searching the other palaces, but instead tried to float upwards.

Before long, his gaze passed over the mountains where the palace was located and he saw the scene in the distance:

The earth was riddled with craters, and there were destroyed buildings everywhere. A towering mountain thousands of meters high had been cut in half. Huge corpses were pierced by equally huge weapons, and the blood seemed not yet to have congealed, glistening on the blades that were wider than buildings.

Ning Che was shocked and speechless. He looked up and saw that the sky was a hazy gray with no light source.