Swallowing the Stars: Starting with the Steel of the Heart

"There's only one planetary level eight." Xiang Bei hid behind a huge tree, concealing his presence while keeping an eye on the group of lizards.

After a brief analysis, a decision was made immediately.

Charge in!

Just kidding. A single planetary level eight lizard is not enough to make him cautious. With his current strength, he can easily crush such an opponent. Why bother with any schemes?

Just charge in and take out these lizards, and that'll be the end of it.

Don't be fooled by the fact that he's no match for veteran second-tier elites like Sa Yanxu in the virtual duel space; that's because his physical advantages are suppressed to the minimum in the virtual universe.

In the real world, his physical strength, energy strength, and soul strength far surpass those of normal planetary-level martial artists like Sa Yanxu.

The Heart Steel's enhancement of him was comprehensive.

In reality, when he sparred with Thor and the others, he sensed that his strength was not only reflected in quantity, but also in the purity of his own energy, which was higher than that of Thor and the others.

It can be said that every time he uses the Colossal Devour skill, he improves both his quality and quantity.

This accumulation may be small compared to their own size, but over time, this intensity becomes extremely terrifying.

"Buzz!"

The moment Xiang Bei was exposed, several lizards resting on the ground immediately reacted and turned to look in Xiang Bei's direction.

However, reacting to the situation did not mean that his body could keep up. The moment the most powerful lizard leader turned his head to look over, Xiang Bei was already in front of him, and the second-tier battle halberd he had purchased fell like thunder.

"Pfft!"

"boom!"

The moment Xiang Bei's halberd made contact with the lizard leader, the layer of scales covering the lizard leader's body was as thin as paper, and was directly cleaved and shattered by the halberd, which then pierced into flesh and bone.

Then, a huge, fanged rabbit head shot into the sky, and the leader of the Tu Lizards, whose strength reached the eighth level of the planetary realm, died before he could even withstand a single blow from Xiang Bei's halberd.

Feeling the power of the Heart Steel returning to him, Xiang Bei smiled slightly, then looked at the other lizards around him.

But upon seeing their leader die, these lizards did not scatter and flee for their lives like other wild beasts. Instead, they all charged at Xiang Bei like madmen, their eyes red and their mouths full of fangs bared.

Unfortunately, the two strongest of the remaining lizards were only around the sixth level of planetary strength, which was no match for Xiang Bei.

After thinking it over, Xiang Bei didn't kill all these planetary-level lizards on the spot. Instead, he removed the limbs of these creatures that looked like a hybrid of a lizard and a rabbit.

Xiang Bei, considering the idea of ​​recycling the star-level and planetary-level slaves he had purchased, decided not to harm them too severely.

But they had no pity for these lizards.

Soon, when the time came, these lizards would all transform into the power for Xiang Bei's growth. As for those lizards that hadn't even reached the planetary level, Xiang Bei gave them a quick death, as they were too weak to even qualify as nourishment for his growth.

Don't say Xiang Bei is cruel. If he could grow into a domain lord right now, he wouldn't care even if he had to kill everyone in the entire Tu Lizard Secret Realm.

In this cold universe, anyone who wasn't ruthless would have died long ago. Besides, killing a few wild lizards isn't exactly cruel; there are plenty of people in this universe more ruthless than him.

Some beings don't care about these lizards, which are on par with wild beasts, or even intelligent creatures of their own kind. They turn them into food without any scruples.

Some beings even take pleasure in torturing and killing other intelligent beings who are also human.

Xiang Bei's purpose, however, was much purer.

His only goal was to cultivate and become stronger, and then protect the people he wanted to protect.

After eliminating the lizards, Xiang Bei quickly went to the lizard blueberry tree and looked at the more than one hundred blueberries of different sizes on the tree.

Xiang Bei picked one of the ripest and most plump fruits and began to chew it heartily.

It must be said that the taste of the blueberry from the lizard is quite good. It is sweet and sour, and after entering the mouth, a cool sensation flows through the whole body, making people feel very comfortable. Even without considering its benefits to cultivation, the taste alone is quite outstanding.

Of course, Xiang Bei was more concerned about its benefits to cultivation. After carefully experiencing it, he found that his mental strength had increased significantly after the icy sensation flowed through his body. However, this increase did not seem to be too great for his strength. Even if he ate a hundred of them, the amplification effect would not reach 20% of his current strength.

This kind of thing is obviously adaptable; its effects will probably diminish after taking a few pills, and taking more might even have no effect at all.

However, Xiang Bei had no intention of wasting such rare and precious materials. The reason why the Virtual Universe Company issued these missions was firstly to give Xiang Bei and his elite members enough experience, and secondly, naturally, to allow them to obtain these rare and precious materials in the secret realm, thereby further enhancing their strength.

In other words, these blueberries from the lizards were originally meant for them to eat, aside from being used for submitting tasks.

Xiang Bei naturally didn't stand on ceremony and picked off the twenty-odd ripe fruits from the lizard blueberry tree, storing them in his storage ring.

That said, storage rings are really expensive. When reading the original work, it seemed like they were common and almost everyone had one, but in fact, storage rings are luxury treasures among planetary and constant-level martial artists, much more expensive than second-tier psychic weapons.

In fact, we can tell from Babata's explanation in the original work that when this thing is made, it not only requires extremely precious space attribute materials as a carrier, but also requires a piece to be forcibly cut out from the universe and then the space and space attribute materials to be combined into one through the refining process.

This requires two essential factors. First, the weapon refiner must be extremely powerful. Otherwise, how could they cut a piece of space out of the universe? Even a universe-level expert probably couldn't do it. Only experts at the domain lord level or above could do it, and the best thing they could comprehend was the laws of space.

Secondly, it definitely requires excellent crafting skills. After all, to combine the cut-off space and the space attribute materials into one, and for this space to be stable enough not to collapse or break down, and to be able to hold the items, such a method is by no means simple.

There are probably not many powerful individuals in the entire Black Dragon Mountain Empire who can craft spatial rings.

Therefore, spatial rings are incredibly expensive. Xiang Bei's spatial ring, even the smallest model measuring 3m*3m*3m, cost him almost all of his net worth.