Matrix Survival: One random treasure chest per day

"It's so annoying."

Looking at the endless, surging tide of alien beasts, Li Zheng rubbed his forehead in distress: "At this rate, even if those alien beasts stronger than me don't come, I'll be worn down to death, won't I?"

It seems there is some being deep within the realm of sin who does not wish to see me for the time being.

A thought struck Li Zheng, and he landed from the air, reaching out to grab Ma Long's arm. He ran his mental energy over Ma Long's surface and, sure enough, sensed a pure negative emotion.

This negative emotion, though pure, is far from being comparable to the threat deeper within the realm of sin. In other words, Malone did not, as he thought, master the rules of the Great Sin, but rather, for some unknown reason, regained his sanity after being completely distorted.

"Let's go back first."

Ignoring Ma Long's questioning gaze, Li Zheng pulled him into the sky and retreated towards the golden area.

Looking back, he saw that as he moved further away from the depths of the Sin Domain, the surging beasts slowed their attack.

When he saw the golden zone reappear in his sight, the tide of beasts completely stopped and showed signs of returning.

"Why did they retreat again?" Malone noticed this and asked in confusion, "Aren't they said that alien beasts have no reason and act solely on instinct? Could it be... that these alien beasts were controlled by some rational being to attack us?"

That's roughly it.

Li Zheng lowered the altitude and threw Ma Long down: "We'll go back to the Golden Light Zone first. You can walk down by yourself."

Boom!
Ma Long landed steadily, stirring up a cloud of dust.

"..."

That guy surnamed Li went too far. He was almost at the golden zone and then he threw himself off. Couldn't he have just taken me with him when he flew over?
Shaking his legs, which were numb from the shock, Ma Long followed Li Zheng in the sky and ran towards the golden area.

Li Zheng observed Ma Long's condition: "At that height, if it were his previous strength, he would probably have been smashed to pieces upon landing. Now he's completely unharmed, and can even barely keep up with my speed by running on his own two legs?"

It seems that after being twisted, Ma Long's body also underwent extremely terrifying changes, even tens of millions of times stronger than the actively twisted Divine Might that Li Zheng had encountered!
The divine might of yesteryear could be extinguished with a breath in front of Li Zheng today.

Given the physical strength that Ma Long was displaying at this moment, Li Zheng had some doubts about whether his full-force attack could injure him.

"perhaps……"

The outer city residents who tried to master the rules of the Great Sin did not succeed; they all failed, and some of them ended up like Malone.
If that's the case, where are those people now?

Were those outside the city residents the ones controlling the beast tide and blocking their way?

What exactly is the condition of those people?

Are you under the control of an emotional storm, or are you free?

Every time Li Zheng came to the Sinful Realm, he would have many questions, but he could only answer a few of them.

Returning to the sky above the golden zone, dispersing the thunderous wings on his back, a gentle breeze enveloped Li Zheng's body as he slowly descended.

This is a new superpower he has given himself, belonging to the wind or air element.

Combining wind-type and fire-type abilities can increase the maximum power of fire-type abilities, but they can also be used separately.

"What do we do now?" Ma Long asked impatiently as Li Zheng landed, waiting below.

"Wait here for a bit, let me improve a bit more." Li Zheng knew that with his current strength, it was unrealistic to fight his way in. His strength was limited by the amount of genetic energy in his body, and once the energy was depleted, his strength would drop dramatically.

So he wanted to fix his battery life issues and then launch another attack on the Sin Domain.

"promote?"

Marlon was stunned: "Here?"

What can you improve in the Sin Domain?

Mental strength?

"Right here."

Li Zheng found a quiet spot, sat down cross-legged, and instructed Ma Long, "Keep an eye on things for me, and don't let anyone get close to me."

He had originally entrusted the task of trying to cultivate using the black energy of the Sin Domain to Zhan Zhouzhou, while he was responsible for trying to cultivate using the black hair of resentment behind him.

At this moment, however, he personally came to the Sin Domain because of a commission.

"The Ten Thousand Evils Demon Art, don't let me down."

With his eyes closed, Li Zheng calmed down and quickly found the feeling of cultivation.

With a thought, several spirit stones appeared in his hand.

While absorbing the spiritual energy from the spirit stone, he tried to make contact with the resentful black hair behind him.

From Ma Long's perspective, Li Zheng remained motionless after sitting down, except for the strange, waterfall-like black hair behind him, which seemed to be trying to escape from behind Li Zheng.

Not long after, seemingly in the blink of an eye, Ma Long noticed that two extremely thin strands of black hair had split off and connected to Li Zheng's nostrils.

In the blink of an eye, a small portion of the resentful black hair had disappeared!
"What?!" Marlon was stunned. "What kind of cultivation method is this? Didn't I hear that the black thing behind him was cursed because he killed too many Muddy People? How come it seems like he's using it as nourishment?" Cultivating with a curse?
What kind of fantasy plot twist is this?!
"It's possible, but why is it so slow?"

Li Zheng sensed that he could indeed successfully absorb the resentment from the black hair, and that the portion he absorbed, after circulating through the method described in the cultivation technique, entered the Dao spiritual world, forming a thin layer that adhered to his spiritual essence.

However, the speed was far slower than when he was simply absorbing spiritual energy not long ago, and it even slowed down his current efficiency in absorbing spiritual energy.

"How the hell am I going to finish this training?"

Li Zheng was not satisfied with the status quo, but he was helpless, since he could not control the speed of cultivation.

Or rather, he can slow down on his own but cannot speed up.

As more and more resentful black hairs were absorbed into the spiritual world, that thing began to travel down the spine, passing through the middle dantian in the chest, turning the middle dantian into a jet black.

Once the middle dantian turns pure black, it continues to descend, eventually settling in the lower dantian, forming a pathway between the lower and upper dantian.

Immediately afterwards, Li Zheng discovered that his absorption speed of the resentment black hair suddenly increased dramatically. Almost instantly, he absorbed all the remaining hair into his lower dantian, expanding his lower dantian a hundredfold!
That wasn't all. The black energy seemed to sense that there was other energy in Li Zheng's body, and it mixed with the blackened spiritual energy and rushed out of his dantian, launching a fierce attack on all the "foundations" in Li Zheng's body.

Before Li Zheng could even stop it, the various "bases" that had been injected into his body less than a week ago were already shattered.

"I'm sorry..."

Li Zheng was dumbfounded. How could cultivating this demonic art have side effects? It had just achieved some results and destroyed the means by which he used to survive.

However, on the other hand, the fact that the black energy could so easily destroy the small matrix formed by genetic abilities within the body suggests that demonic powers are more powerful than genetic abilities.

So now comes the problem.

The resentful black hair behind him has been completely absorbed. What should he do if he wants to continue to improve in the future?
Like before when he obtained the black hair of resentment, will he drag out people from other countries and slaughter them all?

Regardless of whether Liu Qishao and others would stop him from doing this, he himself was very resistant to such behavior.

or……

Can I try to absorb the dark energy of the Sinful Domain?

Just as this thought crossed Li Zheng's mind, he discovered that the black energy within his body, after destroying all his genetic abilities, began to expand outwards, eventually spreading to every corner of his body, seemingly to prevent Li Zheng from injecting any more of those messy things into his body in the future.

Subsequently, most of the black energy curled back into the lower dantian, turning into a round ball that remained motionless.

"Things have settled down?"

not at all.

Li Zheng discovered that a breath was being inhaled into his body through his nostrils. After circulating for a while, it merged with the spiritual energy absorbed in his palm. The spiritual energy seemed to dislike this new breath, squeezing it forcefully.

For some reason, an image popped into Li Zheng's mind: a small white figure punching and kicking a small gray figure.

As the fight went on, the little gray figure turned black.

When the gray figure turns into a black figure, the white figure and the black figure put their arms around each other, forgetting their past grievances, and crawl into the small, dilapidated house together, which is the lower dantian.

"Is this gray mist the aura that permeates the Sin Domain?"

Li Zheng wondered, "Judging from this, the black energy in the Sin Domain and the black hair of resentment are actually the same thing, just an extremely diluted version? So after the spiritual energy combines with it, it refines and purifies the gray energy, and only when the quality is up to standard is it collected into the dantian?"

No wonder the ancient texts say that spiritual energy is "spiritual," and that it can make self-adjustments according to the characteristics of the cultivation method, actively refining and purifying substandard gray energy.

What's the difference between this and keeping a small animal inside your body?
However, using gray energy for cultivation appears to be very fast and continuous.

In reality, although it was eventually integrated into the dantian, there was not much noticeable growth, which cannot be compared with absorbing resentment and black hair.

Feeling that he wouldn't be able to make any significant progress in the short term by relying on the gray energy for cultivation, Li Zheng simply stopped cultivating and opened his eyes.

A flash of pure black light appeared deep within his eyes, staining the whites of his eyes completely, before returning to normal.

"Uh……"

Li Zheng stared at his surroundings, stunned: "What's going on?"

A large group of hooded residents from the outer city had gathered around him without him noticing. He roughly counted at least two hundred people, and the atmosphere among them was very heavy.

Feeling the golden light was a bit dazzling, Li Zheng looked up and found that the battle spirits of the Heavenly Dragon Clan had also been triggered, floating above his head, each with a solemn expression.

"What happened?"

Malone remained by his side, his hood tattered, revealing his fleshy, skinless body.

It looks like Ma Long has played a match with someone.

"You're still asking me?" Malone spat out a mouthful of purplish-red blood and laughed bitterly, "You didn't know you made this commotion? I was almost attacked and killed while trying to protect you from being disturbed by others."

"What...did I make a sound?" Li Zheng looked bewildered. He had only been sitting here cultivating for about half an hour; he hadn't done anything else. (End of Chapter)