Chapter 183 The Ancestral Mansion_2
To determine whether the Six-fingered Sound Demon was truly immobilized, it was necessary to provoke a reaction from him and thereby confirm that he was alive.
As Li Shiming thought this, the drone flew towards the fingers of the Six-fingered Sound Demon, its undercarriage moving closer to the Space Ring as if trying to use the mount to lift the ring off.
How could the Six-fingered Sound Demon pretend to be dead again? His life's accumulation and legacy were all contained within that Space Ring.
His Divine Thought swept across the guqin before him. One of the strings on the instrument vibrated, emitting a low sound.
The drone exploded instantly, and during the disintegration, a small charge of explosives inside it was ignited.
This small charge was not intended for the Six-fingered Sound Demon; after all, even with a hundred times more explosives, it might not be enough to kill someone of his power.
The purpose of the small charge was to destroy an unstable fifty-cubic storage bag, which was the device attached under the drone.
This was a gift prepared by Li Shiming, especially for the possibly immobile Six-fingered Sound Demon—a carefully crafted present.
With a targeted blast, the already damaged fifty-cubic storage bag exploded due to its instability, and the substance stored inside surged out.
C130 concrete rained down from the void, burying the Six-fingered Sound Demon, the guqin, and even the entire room.
This C130 concrete was a byproduct of Li Shiming's research into reviving technology from his past life. After grinding repellent water rock, a First-grade Material of this world, into a powder and adding it to the C130 concrete, he had created a new type of C130 concrete that could solidify rapidly upon contact with air.
The sudden appearance of C130 concrete took the Six-fingered Sound Demon by surprise, and he tried to use Divine Thought to fend it off.
But the problem was that the entire room was filled with the new C130 concrete. Its rapid-solidification property meant it did not flow out of the room, solidifying instead at the doorway, sealing the door shut.
Although the new fifty-cubic C130 concrete hadn't submerged the whole room, submerging the Six-fingered Sound Demon was definitely not an issue.
As his Divine Thought pushed away the concrete on one side, more poured down on the other, quickly submerging him in the new C130 concrete.
He wanted to use the guqin, a treasured item, but it too was buried under the new C130 concrete, leaving no space to produce sound.
The new C130 concrete on the outside solidified upon contact with air, but the concrete inside did so much slower.
The Six-fingered Sound Demon faced concrete like mud. His Divine Thought could easily scatter it, but dispersing the concrete merely stirred it more, which had no effect on the concrete anyway.
After struggling to survive for hundreds of years, his Divine Thought was already overtaxed. He fought hard for a while, only to feel its exhaustion.
A powerful Late-stage Golden Core Cultivator, he had managed to hold on for hundreds of years despite severe injuries—a testament to his formidable cultivation.
At this point, he gave up resisting, wanting to reserve the last bit of his strength to face the cultivator who had designed this trap.
His final strike was certain to make the culprit pay a hefty price, he was sure of it.
One day, two days, three days passed, and Li Shiming was nowhere to be seen; the new C130 concrete had dried thoroughly, becoming a solid mass.
The new C130 ultra-high-strength concrete had a strength of 149.5 MPa, higher than granite. A square meter of its surface could withstand 15,000 tons of weight.
The Six-fingered Sound Demon was trapped within such concrete, without a trace of air.
Li Shiming sent out another drone, which entered the mansion, took a familiar path to the garden, and came to a stop outside the room.
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The room was sealed with concrete, making it impossible to know what was inside—but one could imagine the scene within.
Of course, he knew that cultivators could survive without air, and even someone like him could sustain his body for a while with Spiritual Energy.
Not to mention a Golden Core cultivator—it was not surprising that they could live for decades more.
However, as long as he confirmed that the Six-fingered Sound Demon was trapped, he could begin his next course of action.
"Fellow, please stay outside!" Li Shiming returned to the entrance of the mansion and spoke to Li Yuanba.
Although it would be best to have Li Yuanba enter, the operation he intended to perform was not something Li Yuanba could do; it had to be carried out by himself.
Li Yuanba sat cross-legged at the entrance of the mansion, while Li Shiming entered the dwelling.
Arriving in the hall, Li Shiming did not touch any of the items, instead, he paced back and forth continuously throughout the hall.
The Six-fingered Sound Demon sensed that a cultivator had entered; even though its body was trapped, hatred and resentment within its heart surged with increasing intensity.
Even at its most destitute, when chased by the Senluo Sect, it had never experienced such humiliation as being trapped by an early-stage Foundation Establishment Cultivator using strategies.
Once that early-stage Foundation Establishment Cultivator got closer, it could use its Divine Thought to capture him.
The Six-fingered Sound Demon was extremely vicious. Knowing that falling into the trap was inevitable, it decisively gave up resistance, precisely to lure Li Shiming closer.
Li Shiming's Spiritual Thought swept through the hall, where all 190 CPUs of the IBM z15 in the machine room participated in calculations, analyzing the Spiritual Power Patterns within the hall.
He had never encountered this Formation before, and it could be said that on some level, it exceeded the limits of his understanding.
While formations varied greatly, the fundamentals remained the same. With the computing power of the IBM z15 as the foundation, what he needed was to continuously supply it with a vast amount of data.
Li Shiming was extremely cautious as he extended his Spiritual Thought, and he minimized its intensity to the weakest degree, so that even if it was intercepted, the impact on him would not be too significant.
The Spiritual Thought entered the garden and began to collect data on the Spiritual Power Patterns within it.
Within his Array Formation Starlight Sea, new stars emerged as he communicated with the IBM z15, each new star shining exceptionally bright, representing a higher level of formation knowledge.
This was the longest he had ever spent analyzing a formation. He spent ten days collecting data through his Spiritual Thought and participating in the analysis with the IBM z15, before they managed to construct a rough design of the formation.
"Found it!" Li Shiming said with a joyous expression.
To completely analyze this formation would take an unknown length of time, mainly because he dared not get too close to the room where the Six-fingered Sound Demon was located.
This made the formation data he collected somewhat incomplete, but his goal was not to completely control the formation but to find the energy nodes of the formation.
If this formation had lasted for hundreds or even thousands of years, there must be a Spirit Vein present.
Through his analysis, he located the position of the Spirit Vein, right below the pond in the garden.
In the days that followed, he repeatedly attempted to modify the formation, and after five days, he managed to redirect the Spiritual Energy from the Spirit Vein into the hall.
He remodeled the formation, adding a special feature that continuously drew Spiritual Energy from all areas except the hall into the hall itself.
As the Spiritual Energy was guided into the hall, not only did it support the formation of the hall, but the rest of the formations began to collapse.
With no supply of Spiritual Energy from the Spirit Vein, relatively impure air from the outside entered every part of the dwelling, first causing a massive die-off of Spirit Plants in the garden.
Li Shiming had no time to regret the loss of those Spirit Plants, even though he recognized that they were all second-grade plants, their loss was negligible compared to the threat to his life.
The Six-fingered Sound Demon continued to persevere, but its heart grew cold, for without Spiritual Energy, its already depleted body could not last long, let alone the absence of air which made it impossible to breathe. This forced it to continuously consume its internal Spiritual Energy to sustain life.
And that cunning cultivator showed no sign of haste, actually starting to cultivate in retreat within the hall, treating it entirely as his own dwelling.
Of course, Li Shiming was not in a hurry. He was certain that the Six-fingered Sound Demon's cultivation level had severely declined. Unable to move its body, how much fighting strength could just its Divine Thought maintain?