If you die, I will be able to inherit your cultivation.

As Zhou Ming sat cross-legged in the secret chamber, the purple-gold nascent soul within his body began to undergo unprecedented changes as streams of heat flowed into his dantian.

The nascent soul absorbed all the incoming heat without hesitation.

But gradually, the speed and amount of heat flow increased.

There are far too many broken links in the causal network.

One after another, so densely packed that there were almost no gaps.

The light surrounding the nascent soul grew brighter and brighter, gradually changing from purplish-gold to blazing white, and then a faint, pure golden light shone through the blazing white.

Zhou Ming sat cross-legged on the futon, his eyes closed.

He could feel the nascent soul in his dantian expanding and contracting wildly, expanding and contracting again, with each breath perfectly synchronized with his own breathing.

As the nascent soul's body expanded and contracted, it became increasingly solid, and dense Dao patterns began to appear on its originally smooth, jade-like surface.

The Dao patterns were no longer the pale gold lines they had been during the Golden Core stage; they had become intricate patterns interwoven with purple and red gold.

Each one contained some kind of law of heaven and earth that he could not yet fully comprehend.

After an unknown amount of time, the expansion of the nascent soul suddenly stopped.

The entire dantian fell into a strange silence, and even the continuous flow of heat seemed to be temporarily blocked by some invisible force.

Then, the nascent soul opened its eyes.

Those eyes had pupils of an extremely deep purple-gold, and deep within the pupils, it seemed as if two burning nebulae were slowly rotating.

The nascent soul opened its mouth and silently exhaled.

The breath exhaled from the Nascent Soul's mouth transformed into an extremely thin and bright golden beam of light, shooting straight upwards from the very center of the dantian.

The golden beam of light pierced through the barrier of the dantian and the obstruction of the meridians.

It passed through layer after layer of invisible barriers that even Zhou Ming himself did not know where they existed, and finally crashed into his sea of ​​consciousness.

In the deepest part of his consciousness, in that void that could originally only be reached by divine sense, the golden pillar of light illuminated it as bright as day.

As the light gradually subsided, a blurry human figure slowly coalesced in the center of the light.

First the outline, then the limbs, then the facial features.

In the end, it transformed into a figure exactly like Zhou Ming, but different from a Nascent Soul cultivator.

The nascent soul is purplish-gold in color, tangible, and a substantial entity residing in the dantian.

This figure was semi-transparent, ethereal, and a wisp of pure divine soul floating in the very center of the sea of ​​consciousness.

It has no color, yet it emits a light brighter than any other color.

He has no physical form, yet he is more solid than any physical form.

This is the primordial spirit.

The primordial spirit slowly opened its eyes in the sea of ​​consciousness.

In that instant, the entire secret room, the entire Minister's mansion, and the entire Yongning City...

Everything within a radius of nearly 100 kilometers was reflected into Zhou Ming's perception in a way he had never experienced before.

It's not the kind of detection that requires active exploration like a divine sense scan, but a more advanced, almost instinctive insight.

Even with his eyes closed, Zhou Ming could see every tiny chisel mark on the stone wall of the secret chamber.

You can see Butler Meng carrying a teacup, tiptoeing through the corridor. The tea in the cup sways slightly with each step, and ripples spread out on the surface of the water.

Wu Shijun could be seen sitting in the main hall of the front courtyard, reviewing official documents. The sweat on his forehead had not yet been wiped away, and his official robe was soaked under the armpits. He was muttering to himself as he checked the list of confiscated property.

They even saw Su Mingyue standing in front of the map in the Qianwen Hall, leaning on the table with one hand.

With his other hand, he held a vermilion pen and drew a circle at a certain location on the map.

The primordial spirit and the nascent soul reside, one in the sea of ​​consciousness and the other in the dantian, each independent yet interconnected.

The nascent soul is the vessel of his magical power and the foundation of his cultivation.

The primordial spirit is an extension of his soul and an embodiment of his will.

A very thin and bright ray of light connects the two, running from the dantian directly to the sea of ​​consciousness, with magical power and divine thoughts flowing back and forth along this ray of light.

With each cycle, Zhou Ming felt his cultivation level become more stable.

This is the Nascent Soul stage.

Just as Zhou Ming was preparing to carefully sense the newly born primordial spirit in his sea of ​​knowledge, something resembling a tile suddenly caught his attention.

The thing floated quietly in the depths of the sea of ​​consciousness, its outline appearing exceptionally clear under the soft light emanating from the primordial spirit.

Zhou Ming was certain that he had never seen this tile-shaped object before.

In his past life, he touched countless Qin and Han dynasty bricks and tiles at archaeological sites; in this life, he flipped through countless ancient books and records in the library of a marquis's mansion.

Nothing in the room matched the tiles in front of them.

When did it appear in my mind?

"How did you get in?"

Before Zhou Ming broke through to the Nascent Soul stage, this tile was definitely not in his sea of ​​consciousness.

After the breakthrough, he hadn't had time to carefully examine his sea of ​​consciousness.

Only now did I notice this strange object that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

Zhou Ming frowned, focusing all his attention into his sea of ​​consciousness, and carefully separated a wisp of his divine sense to slowly probe towards that tile.

The tentacles of divine consciousness drew closer and closer, little by little.

The moment his divine sense touched the tile, a dizzying sensation suddenly arose.

It was a bizarre experience of being forcibly pulled up from the spot, torn apart, and then pieced back together by some irresistible force.

Zhou Ming felt everything go black before his eyes, and before he could even struggle, he completely lost consciousness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in front of the stone wall of the secret chamber of the Minister's mansion.

The ceiling above us transformed into a natural dome that seemed to stretch endlessly.

The gray-brown rock walls converged from all sides, enclosing the entire space into a huge, sealed cave.

The interior of the stone cave is extremely spacious, at least a hundred feet square.

The ground was so flat it looked as if it had been cut with a knife; there were no gravel or dust, only a smooth, almost mirror-like rock surface.

In the very center of the cave, a sphere emitting a faint light floats quietly in mid-air.

The light was extremely soft, a warm color between milky white and pale gold.

The sphere of light slowly rotated, each rotation creating a faint, fine halo in the surrounding air, spreading out like ripples before silently dissipating before touching the stone wall.

Zhou Ming did not stand up immediately.

He first examined himself.

The purple-gold nascent soul in his dantian was still there, the Dao patterns on his body were still complex and profound, and his magical power flowed slowly through his meridians without any obstruction.

The storage ring on his hand was also there, and all the jade slips, ores, spiritual herbs, and the black flying sword inside were still there.

"This...this...could I have time-traveled again?"

Zhou Ming muttered to himself as he stood up from the ground.

He began to look around the stone cave, and the more he looked, the more he felt something was wrong.

The cave is sealed off and has no exit.

There were no doors, no passageways, no gaps, and you couldn't even feel a breeze.

The entire cave looks as if it was carved out of a single, massive rock. Even the jagged rock textures on the dome are seamless, without any trace of splicing.