Chapter 293: Black Hole
Xiao Lin set aside Song Junlang’s issue for the time being. After lunch, he reinvested his energy into another attempt at necromantic meditation. The idea was to enter ordinary meditation using his Miracle state and then eliminating the stars in that galaxy.
Although Xiao Lin’s efficiency had improved a bit, the process was still very cumbersome. For Xiao Lin however, it could only be considered an unorthodox solution.
Once he entered his meditation world once again, the starry sky was as vast as before, with stars of all colors glimmering all around his spirit. Since the Miracle state could not be maintained for too long, there was not a lot of time for him to waste. He quickly began to target each area and carried out his plan to disconnect himself from those stars.
It was hard to grasp the flow of time in the real world when Xiao Lin was inside the meditation world. He had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been a dozen seconds, or perhaps even a few minutes. All of a sudden, he suddenly noticed a strange place in his meditation world—a completely blank area of sky had suddenly appeared.
It was very strange. Could it be the Milky Way? Probably not, as the place was created through connecting with the elements—it was a mere figment of Xiao Lin’s imagination. Due to the distribution of those elements, it was impossible for such an empty vacuum to appear. Furthermore, he had never discovered that unusual place during his usual meditation.
Rather than describing the place as one that Xiao Lin dominated, it was much more accurate to say that Xiao Lin’s subconscious was dominating it. He therefore started exploring the vacuum without much thought.
Indeed, it was completely empty there. No trace of basic elements could be sensed there, and the nearest stars went no farther than the edge of the zone, as if there was an uncrossable restricted area up ahead. Xiao Lin’s Miracle state heightened his perception to an unprecedented level and he concentrated his spirit toward the centermost area of that vacuum, a place so dark that no light could pass through.
Pain!
In an instant, Xiao Lin’s subconscious conveyed painful feelings throughout his body. Even the meditating Xiao Lin could not help but groan. The vacuum was a place that even Xiao Lin was unable to go through. As soon as his spirit made contact, the entire darkness became chaotic, with the pitch-black matter churning itself over and over. In it, Xiao Lin’s spirit was like a boat in an ocean, ready to capsize at any moment.
What was going on!
The realm was his own spiritual realm. It was analogous to a dream whereby he was the ultimate master and he could do whatever his heart desired. That was a basic piece of information conveyed to the students by the tutor during their meditation course.
However, the scene in front of him was clearly different, and the surging darkness even produced instability in his spiritual realm. The starry elements which had gathered around as a result of his meditation seemed frightened and began fleeing farther away.
The instability of that spiritual realm meant that it was difficult to maintain a meditative state, but when Xiao Lin was on the verge of exiting the state, his subconscious noticed even more weird phenomena.
The turbulent darkness began shrinking rapidly, before finally condensing into a huge, pitch-black, cotton-shaped hole. It was the same as a black hole in the universe!
However, that black hole was not completely empty, and a dragon-like roar could faintly be heard. The black hole bore the essential characteristics of a black hole, which was its suction force!
The completely inescapable suction force began spreading at an unimaginable speed. Those elemental stars that were already about to escape from the meditation range had no room to resist under the fierce suction. Each of them was restrained and prevented from moving any further. They were subsequently pulled toward the center of the black hole at a speed that became progressively faster.
The meditation world, which had been on the verge of collapse, returned to calm and stability, but Xiao Lin seemed to have become a bystander even though he was the master of his own realm. He could use his spirit to feel the elements being pulled into and swallowed by the black hole, before finally disappearing without a trace.
After all the stars had disappeared from his perception, the black hole began turning fuzzy before vanishing slowly. It did not really disappear though, because Xiao Lin’s Miracle state had reached its limit and was lifted, thereby restoring all his converted attributes. As was usual the case, his mental strength and perception would also decline.
The entire meditation world fell into a pitch-black darkness. Darkness in the spiritual realm did not really mean darkness though; it meant that there was no trace of the elements near Xiao Lin. It was an elemental vacuum!
Xiao Lin felt inexplicably excited even though he did not know why things turned out like that. That was the exact effect he has been trying to achieve for several days already. The meditation world that isolated all elements from the connection could then be treated as the beginning of necromantic meditation.
On Planet Norma, it was believed that natural force and death energy existed in addition to the basic elements. Those basic forces constitute the normal cycle of that world. Each force maintained balance and the scale would temporarily lose its balance once the basic elemental force was lost. That would make it easier to perceive the death energy.
According to that principle, it should be easier to perceive the death energy if the natural force was also stripped off, but since the natural force was also the lifeforce, both sides complemented and restricted each other. Like darkness and light, it was practically impossible to disengage oneself from both at the same time.
According to the method recorded in the book, Xiao Lin had started to perceive the death energy in that empty and dark meditation world. The entire process took longer than imagined.
Based on the narrative in the book, as long as a meditation world that excludes the elements can be constructed, perceiving the death energy was a matter of course and posed little difficulty.
During the whole three-hour meditation process, Xiao Lin tried his best to explore in the dark but only sensed a very faint white energy. Like the description stated, that energy was like stagnant water in a deep pool. With no fluctuations, it was silent, cold, and typical of death energy. However, it was a bit too weak.
Xiao Lin opened his eyes once again, feeling slightly tired but much more confused. He picked up the necromancy book and read it carefully, but was unable to find any further clues. He had followed the book’s method judiciously when meditating, so he could not possibly have made a mistake.
He proceeded with another attempt in spite of his doubts. Just like before, he was still only able to enter the elemental meditation world, but he soon got the hang of it even though it was unfamiliar in the beginning. Once Xiao Lin activated his Miracle state, the black hole reappeared just as he expected. Again, like before, the black hole tumbled and churned before sucking up all the stars in the entire galaxy.
“It’s still not working!”
Xiao Lin sighed and finally exited his meditative state after a long time. Other than that thread-like death energy, he could not sense any other energy at all.