Chapter 32: Phantoms

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Night descended over East Sea City, and the neon lights gradually flickered to life.

Lin Xiao pushed open the shop’s glass door from inside, the wind chime ringing crisply through the night. He turned around, hung up the “Closed” sign, and locked the door, shutting out the noise and bustle beyond.

After returning from the Heavenly Dao Divine Palace, he had not rushed to use the “Phantom” supernatural ability crystal. Instead, he had carefully locked the wooden box inside the safe and hung up the shop’s “Open” sign as usual.

From afternoon until evening, he sold another fifty gourmet memory experiences, earning a total of twenty-five thousand yuan.

At last, his finances had entered a virtuous cycle.

Previously, he had diverted forty thousand yuan to purchase Yue Chongguang’s painful memory, leaving him without enough money for his essential expenses. Fortunately, he had sold sixty-three memory experiences yesterday morning and another fifty today. The influx of cash had greatly eased his anxiety.

Lin Xiao counted out forty thousand yuan from the banknotes and placed it in the lower compartment of the safe. This money was reserved for rent, utilities, and the purchase of ingredients—essential expenses that could never again be diverted for other purposes as they had been last time.

He then took stock of the resources currently at his disposal.

He still had ninety points of source energy. Since he constantly needed to expend source energy to replicate objects, he remained a considerable distance from the three hundred points required to break through to the third level of supernatural ability.

As for money, after deducting his essential expenses, he had roughly twenty-three thousand yuan left.

That might sound like quite a lot, but considering that it had to cover his daily expenses and allow him to save enough to purchase another painful memory…

Lin Xiao immediately felt that his money was insufficient again.

The two gourmet memory ambers could provide a total of four hundred experiences.

He had already used up one hundred and eighty-six, leaving only two hundred and fourteen.

“I need to think of something else from my past life to bring over and make money with.” Lin Xiao stroked his chin thoughtfully. “In this world, money really is important.”

His experiences over the days since crossing into this world had taught him just how important money was.

As long as one had enough of it, one could even buy a telekinetic ability.

“Is this the confidence that allows the Heavenly Dao Divine Palace to issue currency?” Lin Xiao mused.

Under normal circumstances, unless a currency system was exceptionally stable, a multi-track system would be adopted.

In other words, certain core resources could not be purchased with ordinary currency.

For example, mobile games in his previous life often used two currencies—gems and coins—because they feared that an excess of coins would disrupt the pricing system for core resources.

Yet this world operated on a single-currency system. Everything could be bought with money.

Despite that, its monetary system remained remarkably stable.

Looking at the smiling face of Lin Xuanguang printed on the hundred-yuan note, Lin Xiao could not help muttering, “You really are one hell of a genius.”

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Still cursing him with a laugh, he put all the money into the safe, then took out the wooden box containing the “Phantom Crystal.”

It was time to learn his second supernatural ability.

Lin Xiao reached toward the lid. Under the lamplight, the golden-grained wood gleamed with a muted luster.

The moment he lifted the lid, a chill rushed toward him. Nestled quietly inside was a fist-sized black crystal, its surface covered in countless fine facets, like a black diamond cut with exquisite precision.

But the strangest thing of all was what happened when Lin Xiao’s fingers touched the crystal. Countless tiny black points of light emerged across its surface, creating an inexplicably eerie sensation.

“It’s beginning…”

Lin Xiao drew a deep breath and gently pressed the crystal against his forehead.

The instant he felt its icy touch, the crystal began to tremble faintly.

“Hiss—”

He sucked in a sharp breath, feeling as though ten thousand needles of ice had pierced simultaneously into the center of his brow.

The black crystal began to dissolve, transforming into a viscous dark current that seeped inward along his temples.

His vision was instantly filled with black points of light, as though a vast black river were surging through his skull.

He could clearly sense marvelous changes taking place within his brain.

Neurons sprouted rapidly like fresh shoots in spring, forming an entirely new neural network within his parietal lobe.

The structure of his basal ganglia also began to reorganize in silence, opening up specialized pathways for multitasked consciousness processing.

Most astonishing of all, an unprecedented clarity surged through his mind, as if he had suddenly solved a riddle that had troubled him for years.

“So this is what it feels like to awaken a second supernatural ability…”

Lin Xiao murmured softly.

The crystal’s energy constructed a precise model of the ability within his mind. Knowledge of how to split his consciousness and allocate processing power surfaced as naturally as flowing clouds and running water.

When the final strand of black light vanished into his brow, the crystal soundlessly crumbled into powder.

In an instant, a vast amount of knowledge concerning the “Phantom” ability surged into Lin Xiao’s consciousness like a tide, as though its rules had always been engraved deep within his soul.

He immediately understood the two ways in which the ability could be used.

The first was to create temporary phantoms. By expending a small amount of spiritual power, he could summon a duplicate that would automatically dissipate after thirty minutes.

Given his current strength, he could maintain at most ten such phantoms simultaneously.

This was the ability Su Wan had described, so he already knew about it.

But when he learned that there was a second method of use, he was utterly astonished. What was going on?

The second method was to create permanent phantoms. These duplicates would continue consuming a portion of his spiritual power until he actively dismissed them.

At present, he could maintain at most three permanent phantoms at once.

“I’ll try a temporary phantom first…”

Lin Xiao raised his right hand and lightly pointed forward with his index finger.

A beam of black light shot from his fingertip and condensed half a meter in front of him.

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When the light faded, a second “Lin Xiao,” identical to him in every way, appeared in the center of the shop.

The same height and build, the same clothes and appearance—even the curve of every strand of hair was exactly the same.

Lin Xiao walked around the phantom once, unable to resist reaching out to touch it.

The sensation beneath his fingertip astonished him.

The skin was warm. The texture was real. Even the rise and fall of its chest with each breath could be clearly felt.

How could this be called a “phantom”? It was plainly a living, breathing duplicate.

“Absolutely flawless…”

He marveled inwardly and began testing how it could be controlled.

First, he tried controlling it while dividing his attention. Lin Xiao discovered that he needed to spare only a small portion of his focus to make the phantom perform complex movements.

“How is this possible?” Lin Xiao wondered. “It seems that when I control the phantom with divided attention, my subconscious fills in the trivial instructions according to my intentions, allowing the phantom to carry out my commands in a ‘semi-automatic’ manner.”

Lin Xiao tried investing more of his consciousness into it. To his surprise, he found that he could even transfer his primary consciousness over, using the phantom as though he had possessed it.

When he tried reducing his consciousness input in the opposite direction, he was delighted to discover that the phantom could also act independently according to preset instructions, almost as though it had been equipped with an intelligent artificial intelligence.

“Come on, show me a dance.”

On a sudden impulse, Lin Xiao issued the command.

The next second, a scene that left him dumbfounded unfolded before him.

The phantom immediately stretched its limbs and began dancing to the rhythm imagined in his mind.

Its waist twisted with the supple grace of willow branches, its arms traced elegant arcs, and it even improvised several breakdancing floor moves, flowing as smoothly as a professional dancer.

“This… it dances better than I do!”

Lin Xiao himself was famously uncoordinated. If he took the stage in person, he could probably turn any dance into calisthenics.

He had never expected that, in automatic mode, the phantom’s dancing could be entirely free of stiffness.

“How is this only a second-level supernatural ability? This is practically a divine skill!”

Lin Xiao sighed in amazement.

A series of questions inevitably arose in his mind.

Setting aside why the phantom now had a “permanent” mode, hadn’t Su Wan said that phantoms were incapable of carrying out complex operations?

That dance absolutely counted as a complex operation, didn’t it?

Had the “Phantom” ability always been this powerful?

Or had it evolved into this form after falling into his hands?

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