In Devourer Starry Sky, at Luo Feng's villa.
Inside a gravity chamber, a figure wearing beast-skin clothes possessed a body with inner divine radiance and bulging muscles, resembling a celestial general descended to the mortal world. His heartbeat thundered like a drum, clearly showing he was extraordinary. At this moment, this figure was swinging a specialized broadsword, drenched in sweat.
"Chat Group Leader, how long have you been in closed-door cultivation? You can come out now!" Xu Xin was in a good mood. Luo Feng's body had already finished nurturing, and he was at home playing with building blocks with Luo Ping and Luo Hai, who had just learned to walk.
"Chat Group Leader! You can't keep hogging my gravity chamber anymore; I need to use it too! Babata already made one for you and sent it to you in a red envelope. Why are you still lingering here? This is the Luo residence, not Shi Village!" Luo Feng was also left speechless by Shi Heng, who refused to use the gravity chamber he had been given and instead came over to occupy his.
"It's just that I don't want Willow Deity to find out! Besides, you guys have such good food and drinks here, while I eat meat all day in Shi Village and get excessive internal heat!"
"You're traveling back and forth like this, and Willow Deity doesn't know you disappear?" Xu Xin pointed out the crucial issue.
"Heh heh! I'm smart, that's why! Except for the first few times when my strength was low and I disappeared right under her nose, after that I always went out alone into the mountains and then ran over here." Shi Heng now possessed about 500,000 jin of arm strength, which was the Advanced God of War level. The Devourer cultivation method required a gravity chamber to assist cells in compressing energy, so he had Babata build a new one later on.
Unfortunately, it took up too much space, which was too cramped in Shi Village, and with Willow Deity around, it wasn't convenient. Running deep into the mountains to use it a few times was too much trouble, so he simply ran over to Luo Feng's house and took over Luo Feng's gravity chamber to train.
Nearly two years had passed. Luo Feng had recently emerged from closed-door cultivation, and after pinching a few grasshoppers to death, he had returned home to live a life with his wife, children, and a warm kang bed.
Unlike Shi Heng, who acted like a madman day in and day out—the moment he came over, he would plunge into the gravity chamber for days on end. Coupled with the assistance of his own Ziyun aura, the results were extremely pronounced. He had long since broken past the normal Blood-Moving Realm limit of 108,000 jin; if his current arm strength were to be spoken aloud, it would probably make the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Earths tremble.
Ever since he broke the ultimate realm, the great universe and heavenly laws of Perfect World had been constantly urging Shi Heng to break through to the Grotto-Heaven Realm. Do not ask how Shi Heng knew; deep down, he could sense it—it was not just the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, but the entire great universe rule of the Perfect world.
However, Shi Heng was not in a rush, since he had not yet reached the ultimate limit he deduced. Yet he also vaguely sensed that the limit was 540,000 jin of arm strength!
That was five times the Blood-Moving Ultimate Realm!
And that was just counting pure physical body strength; adding the runes he had learned from Old Chief made it even more formidable.
The Grotto-Heaven Realm and the Planetary Level were a fork in the road. Shi Heng and Luo Feng had been researching this for a long time. The Grotto-Heaven Realm required comprehending runes to communicate with the power of heaven and earth's order, seizing the creation of heaven and earth, and then opening up grotto-heavens, while the Stellar Level required having one's own genetic energy star in the sea of consciousness.
However, both required the physical body to assist. Cultivating both simultaneously would place too much of a burden on the body, so they ultimately killed this option.
They discussed it for a long time, and in the end, Shi Heng still chose to open up grotto-heavens. Deducing from the battle traces deep in the Desolate Mountain Range, nine grottoes in the Grotto-Heaven Realm were already able to rival the ninth stage of the Planetary Level, meaning the physical body gap of the Blood-Moving Realm would be leveled by the opening of grotto-heavens.
Much like a mathematical formula, sometimes swapping the positions of two numbers would yield vastly different results; the physical body and grotto-heavens were no different.
Shi Heng and the others' grandest hypothesis was guessing that the Grotto-Heaven Realm was not limited to ten grotto-heavens.
Instead, there were three theoretical limits: twelve, fifteen, and eighteen!
Which specific one it was remained unknown.
One could only say that the combination of the cultivation methods of the two universes was extraordinary. Luo Feng was also endlessly covetous of Shi Heng's runic precious body, for this was the power of the laws of a great realm made manifest.
Shi Heng ended this training session, enjoyed a free dinner, and when returning to Shi Village, he said to Luo Feng, "I've been cultivating in closed-door cultivation at your place for two years now. Should we have your Golden Horned Beast body come over to my side to cultivate after a while?"
"No rush. By the way, Bai Yuekui asked us to go over and hold down the fort in a bit, saying she's preparing to clear out the Manna ecology. She should have found the main body of the Manna Flower." Luo Feng was now at the seventh stage of the Planetary Level. Coupled with the Stellar Level Golden Horned Beast and retired God of War Xu Qi'an's Universe Level strength, dealing with a planetary internal ecological plant could be said to be 100% foolproof.
Shi Heng replied, "Don't you have the Cloud-Contacting Vine? Just go over and absorb it directly; it might even advance. After all, it's all cosmic energy, and we shouldn't waste it in vain."
"The Chat Group Leader is quick-witted, possessing the demeanor of King of the Sea Ning Yi!" Xu Xin laughed when she heard this, and immediately added, "Because Xu Xin had the Chat Group, she was able to accompany Luo Feng much more closely, and she became much more lively than in the original work."
As for Ning Yi, unlike in the original work, once Ning Yi had the Chat Group, although he was in ancient times, with the ferocious beast meat and Devourer cultivation method given by Shi Heng, he was now an unrivaled fierce warrior with an arm strength of two thousand jin. Right now, he was playing Unrivaled in Hangzhou, and his world was about to be turned into a grass-cutting game by him...
Moreover, he had shamelessly dragged his beautiful master Lu Hongti into the group, giving the high-sounding excuse that being far apart made it hard to contact each other. Shi Heng expressed that he had never seen such a brazen person.
Perhaps because of the butterfly effect generated by the duel between Shi Heng and Xu Qi'an in Jiangning City, Lu Hongti and Ning Yi had sparked romantic feelings ahead of time, which led to her joining the group recently.
However, Lu Hongti possessed fine natural talent. After entering the group and getting the gravity chamber provided by Luo Feng, her arm strength had already reached three thousand jin. Shi Heng expressed that he was very much looking forward to the subsequent development of Ning Yi's world.
As for Bai Yuekui's side, Mark had already transformed into an Abyssal Beast, and his movements looked practiced and fluid.
Shi Heng would check and search the Chat Group every once in a while. Unfortunately, after two years, it still hadn't lit up. It seemed that finding a new world in the Void Boundary Sea was no easy task either.
Therefore, the Chat Group currently had only seven members, which could only be called a small group chat. Yet he also had a premonition that the Chat Group was holding back a big one! Sometimes people's intuition was very accurate.
...
A streak of white light.
Shi Heng returned to the deep mountains a hundred miles outside of Shi Village. For the current Shi Heng, aside from those few Archaic descendants deep in the mountain range, he could crush any other ferocious beasts and evil birds with a single hand.
After casually swatting a 30,000-jin Dragon-Horned Elephant to death, he headed straight back toward the village.
"Chirp!"
Just as he was about to reach Shi Village, he heard a burst of eagle cries at the village entrance.
"Haha! Little Tot and those little rascals got cornered at the spring!" A delightful scene unfolded before Shi Heng, curving the corners of his mouth into a grin as he laughed all the way to the village entrance.
"Whew!" He let out a whistle, running into Shi Village from the side rear of the Cyan-scaled Eagle, which provoked another angry, shrill cry from the bird.
"A'heng, you really have a lot of nerve, daring to run straight past it into the village aren't you afraid of getting hurt!" A strong young man looked at him in admiration and said.
"Afraid of what! We've been neighbors for how long, who doesn't recognize who! It's just these little rascals who don't know any better and go provoking it." Seeing a group of little rascals hiding in Old Chief's courtyard refusing to come out, Shi Heng chuckled again.
So he walked toward the sacrificial altar, tossed the prey from his shoulder onto the altar, and crossed his arms, wanting to lean against the Willow Deity stump to continue watching the show.
"Slap!" A willow branch exuding divine radiance lashed across his shoulder, sending Shi Heng flying onto the sacrificial altar.
"..."
Shi Heng looked at the willow branch with black lines across his forehead. Willow Deity didn't pay him any mind either, and as in the original work, gently stroked one of the eggs, activating its genetic material. Instantly, colorful radiances overflowed, and golden patterns covered the eggshell.
The villagers were also dumbfounded. Most of the young men were still in the Blood-Moving Realm and had never seen anything so miraculous.
Even having witnessed Little Tot's attainments in runes, they weren't as shocked as they were by the brilliant and dazzling textures on the eggshell now.
In the end, just like in the original work, the Cyan-scaled Eagle did not take this miraculously atavistic egg away.
After Old Chief arranged for someone to incubate the egg, the villagers dragged their respective rascals away one by one, until only Little Tot remained, squatting beside the Willow Deity, scooping the beast milk in his bowl while staring at the five-colored sparrow on the Willow Deity tree, wondering what he was thinking in his heart.
Shi Heng walked over to tease Little Tot for a while, bid farewell to Old Chief, and then walked back to his own stone house. After all, he had just returned from cultivating at Luo Feng's place for a few days, and being extremely exhausted, he urgently needed to sleep deeply.
Little did he know that the mindful figure within the Willow Deity was currently sizing up his body back and forth, her phoenix eyes—deep like autumn water and revealing wisdom—flashing with a look of astonishment for the very first time.