The white rock here was the same white rock, yet the stone quality inside this wall was countless grades higher than the loose rubble outside.
Lin Xiao was not sure if it was because these rocks were saturated with the power of time.
He did not dwell on it too much. Instead, he focused on refining the stone. Billows of stone qi surged into his hand sea.
This caused his hand sea to begin boiling.
His hand sea was like a ravenous wolf, rapidly devouring the stone wall.
Soon, one layer of the wall had been completely refined by him.
Lin Xiao could already feel that his petrification power had advanced a little.
“If it works, then with so many layers of white rock, how far will my petrification power progress?”
Joy appeared on Lin Xiao’s face. Without delay, he excitedly continued refining.
The hand sea was like a second dantian. Unlike evil power, which required communication through dantian energy, it formed its own independent system and could not merge with vital force.
In the past, after refining some walls from the Prosperous Age, his hand sea had reached the level equivalent to a Ninth Layer Martial Venerable in vital force.
After that, it had not progressed further.
Over such a long period, his dantian cultivation had already reached First Layer Martial Emperor, leaving his hand sea two major realms behind.
Relatively speaking, a lower-realm hand sea was easier to break through.
However, advancing the hand sea from Ninth Layer Martial Venerable to Martial Lord still required enormous amounts of stone qi. Lin Xiao spent several whole days refining a huge section of rock layers before finally succeeding in the promotion.
Yet this was still far from matching his vital force cultivation. Day after day, Lin Xiao continued refining.
From the equivalent of First Layer Martial Lord to Second Layer, Third Layer… all the way to Ninth Layer Martial Lord.
Then, he spent a great deal more time breaking through from Ninth Layer Martial Lord to First Layer Martial Emperor.
The Sealing Heaven Stone Hand had always allowed Lin Xiao to fight above his level. After raising it layer by layer to the equivalent of First Layer Martial Emperor, its ability to fight above its level became equally terrifying, almost matching the cross-tier combat strength of his vital force.
Once his hand sea broke through to First Layer Martial Emperor, Lin Xiao could already sweep aside Ninth Layer Martial Emperors. His strength was now not far from a half-step Martial Saint, and the petrification power of the Sealing Heaven Stone Hand was the same.
Unlike the dantian, the hand sea did not undergo massive changes when entering the Martial Emperor realm.
Breaking through from Ninth Layer Martial Lord to First Layer Martial Emperor was not as difficult as breaking through in dantian cultivation.
After reaching First Layer Martial Emperor, with an endless supply of stone material here, Lin Xiao refined madly and continued to improve. He broke through from the equivalent of First Layer Martial Emperor to Second Layer, then Third Layer.
Now, Lin Xiao was confident that, by fully unleashing the Sealing Heaven Stone Hand, he could sweep all half-step Martial Saints and be invincible beneath Martial Saint level.
Nevertheless, his hand sea did not stop. As Lin Xiao continued his frenzied refining of the rock layers, it broke through again from Third Layer Martial Emperor to Fourth Layer, Fifth Layer, and finally Sixth Layer Martial Emperor.
Moreover, his Sealing Heaven Stone Hand technique had reached the third stage: the stage where power itself turns to stone.
The first stage of Sealing Heaven Stone Hand was to cultivate a special stone-attribute power, allowing the arms to petrify and block weapons bare-handed.
The second stage granted the ability to petrify others, causing the opponent’s flesh to solidify into stone.
The third stage meant the power itself could petrify. The force blasted out could turn to stone in mid-air, forming defensive stone blocks or wrapping the opponent in stone.
Now Lin Xiao had completed the third stage. Further cultivation of the Sealing Heaven Stone Hand only required making the petrification stronger and stronger.
Having reached this step, judging from the attacks he had previously observed from Zhan Meng and Ji Lian, Lin Xiao even felt that the petrification power in his hand sea could almost rival a First Layer Martial Saint.
Even if he could not achieve a draw, he should at least be able to resist for a while and preserve his life. That much should not be a problem.
Of course, the gap between Martial Saint and Martial Emperor was enormous. Since he had never truly fought a Martial Saint, Lin Xiao could not accurately gauge it.
From Ninth Layer Martial Venerable to Sixth Layer Martial Emperor in the hand sea, this enormous leap had taken him more than a year.
In other words, Lin Xiao had been trapped inside the Death White Rock for over a year.
During this year and more, that giant infant had never appeared.
In between, Lin Xiao had gone out many times, yet he still found no way to escape.
The others who remained inside the Death White Rock also showed no activity, and for some inexplicable reason more than half of them had died.
Lin Xiao even suspected that the giant infant was responsible.
Naturally, without evidence he could not be certain, and in any case those people had nothing to do with him, so he did not pay them any attention.
What worried him was the Continental Spirit Controller Grand Competition.
By his reckoning, he was now only three or four months away from turning twenty-two.
When Zi Ling had mentioned that the Continental Spirit Controller Grand Competition was three years away, more than two years and eight months had already passed.
At that time Lin Xiao had only been nineteen. Now he was nearly twenty-two.
Only three or four months, more precisely just over three months, remained until the Continental Spirit Controller Grand Competition.
Spirit Pool Island lay in Sacred Continent, extremely far away. To reach it, one had to use a province-level teleportation array.
With the competition starting in three months, the province-level teleportation array controlled by the Ji family would probably open soon. Lin Xiao did not know whether he could still make it in time.
After all, he had promised Zi Ling that he would fight for places in the Spirit Pool Island competition for An Miao and Miao Ling.
Furthermore, Spirit Pool Island contained destructive spirit energy. If he could fuse another type of spirit energy, his strength would undoubtedly advance greatly once more.
Both of these goals, if he could achieve good results and make Spirit Pool Island value him, or even infiltrate the island itself, would be enormously helpful for rescuing his mother in the future.
The Tianji Demon Suppression Tower could not be taken by brute force alone.
In the days that followed, Lin Xiao searched everywhere for the giant infant. The only way to get out quickly was to rely on that creature.
Now that creature.
Now that his strength had improved tremendously, even if the giant infant was powerful, if it entered the rock zone Lin Xiao might be able to hold his own against it.
However, after searching for several more days, he still found nothing.
“Am I really going to have to wait until the Death White Rock opens on its own?”
Lin Xiao hesitated. Should he go and find that other old monster, Feng Wuchen?
Yet compared to the giant infant Mo Luo, Lin Xiao always felt that Feng Wuchen was far more dangerous.
If he simply waited, who knew how long it would take. No one knew when the Death White Rock would open again.
Whoosh!
Just as Lin Xiao was wavering, a stream of black qi sped over from the horizon.
As the black qi drew near, the figure of a giant infant faintly appeared within it.
Clearly, the newcomer was none other than the giant infant Mo Luo.
After more than a year, the giant infant’s body showed no change. It was still the appearance of an enormous baby.
“Heh heh, you even possess the power of the Stone People race. Kid, your opportunities really are plentiful!”
The giant infant sat on the demonic diagram and smiled at Lin Xiao.
Its appearance was as innocently cute as a baby’s, but Lin Xiao did not find it cute in the slightest.
In his eyes, the other party was a devil.
“Senior, is it not time for you to honour your promise?”
Lin Xiao did not respond to the taunt. Instead, he calmly asked in return.
“Oh? Kid, you’ve grown some confidence in your speech?
You actually dare to talk to this old devil like that.”
The giant infant said, “Don’t think I don’t know your strength has improved. Still, compared to this old devil, you are still far, far behind.”
With those words, billowing demonic qi surged from the giant infant’s body and swept towards Lin Xiao.
