Chapter 101: Psychic Ability

Chapter 101: Chapter 101: Psychic Ability

The sky had fully brightened.

Xiang Yi parked the hover car at the ruins of the junkyard and made his way back down into the sewers.

After two straight days of it, he felt oddly clear-headed — refreshed, even.

The weight that had been pressing down on him for so long had lifted. Most of the rage and darkness he’d been carrying had finally bled out.

What remained was buried deeper — a slow-burning hatred for the warden, He Dong, and the company, quietly accumulating, waiting for the day he could let it loose completely.

Not that killing was his goal. He knew that much.

All he wanted was a stable enough foothold to keep growing stronger. Violence was a tool, not a pleasure. The act of killing alone did nothing for him.

That was exactly why, instead of resting when he got back to the sewers, he set off toward the outskirts of the city.

Today was the day Ning Ye had said she’d be back, and he had no shortage of things he needed her help with.

And while the junkyard was gone, all the materials they’d gathered were still safe — tucked away in Shi Tie’s pack, not a piece missing.

Using the ghost-fire he’d lifted from those thugs and the Permission Card Ning Ye had given him before she left, Xiang Yi made his way through the underground passage and slipped into the research facility without a hitch.

First thing he did was check the containment room.

Every last corpse inside had been fully converted into Blood Crystals.

The bodies that the Blood Crystal Worms had fed on — the ones that should have rotted — had instead turned into some kind of transparent crystalline substance. He had no idea what to make of it.

Xiang Yi didn’t dwell on it. Ning Ye would be back soon enough, and she’d tell him.

He had Shi Tie set down the pack, then walked up to the Living Iron Extraction Device and pulled up its interface panel.

He selected the damaged components, activated his Spiritual Energy, and the liquid metal that had been pooled in the pack seeped into the machine.

No fanfare, no drama. The Living Iron Extraction Device was now fully operational.

Progress on Master Chang’s end had stalled for the time being.

But he’d never liked keeping all his eggs in one basket, and that habit was paying off now.

He was just starting to look into the Living Iron Extraction Device’s functions when the elevator door at the far end of the facility slid open.

Ning Ye stepped out, dusty and road-worn. She spotted Xiang Yi, did a double-take, and blurted out, "What the hell happened to you?"

"Minor accident."

She set her bags down and reached over to squeeze his arm, frowning. "Most of the muscle’s still there, but you’ve got basically zero body fat left. Your Spiritual Power was completely drained and you kept using Spiritual Energy anyway?"

"Yeah."

"Something wrong with your head?"

Xiang Yi knew she wasn’t insulting him — she was genuinely asking whether his mind had been damaged by the Spiritual Power depletion.

"I’m alright. It only hurts when I actually use Spiritual Energy."

"Overuse aftereffects. Could be worse. Just eat a lot — get some nutrient paste if you can, that’ll speed things up."

Ning Ye had studied Spiritual Energy theory, so her having some working knowledge of Spiritual Ability Users’ conditions wasn’t surprising to Xiang Yi.

Since the opportunity had presented itself, he went ahead and asked, "Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you — about Spiritual Energy."

"The Abnormality you ran into by the mines — that was a Level 1, right?"

"Can you walk me through the Abnormality ranking system and the Spiritual Ability Levels? I was going to ask before you left."

Honestly, he’d wanted to ask since the moment he’d first stepped into the facility.

Because the Continuous Psychic Pulse Generator’s readout had clearly shown it was emitting Level 1 Spiritual Fluctuations at first, then Level 2 after Spiritual Enhancement kicked in.

But the other device he’d seen in the facility had been showing "Low-Grade" instead. He wanted to understand the difference.

He’d tried searching for information on Spiritual Energy afterward, and come up almost completely empty. Virtually nothing had leaked out into public channels.

What he did find were a handful of universities with "Spiritual Energy" in their names — every single one located in a critical Star Realm of the Human Federation, every single one under direct Federation administration.

It wasn’t hard to see that knowledge of Spiritual Energy had been completely monopolized by the Federation — which was, in effect, a way of controlling the number and strength of Spiritual Ability Users among the civilian population.

That had only made his curiosity grow. Now that Ning Ye was finally back, he could get some answers.

When she heard the question, Ning Ye’s expression shifted into something that practically said: I’ve been waiting for you to ask that.

Ever since she’d found out Xiang Yi was a recently awakened Spiritual Ability User who’d broken out of prison, she’d been mentally gearing up for exactly this conversation.

The fact that he’d taken this long to ask had been quietly driving her crazy.

"Spiritual Ability Users are divided into six levels. Levels 1 and 2 are low-grade, 3 and 4 are mid-grade, 5 and 6 are high-grade."

"In most cases, a Spiritual Ability User’s specific level is determined by their Spiritual Fluctuation strength. Want me to measure yours? I’ve got the equipment right here."

Xiang Yi’s gaze drifted toward the device he’d already been messing with earlier.

"Sure."

With Ning Ye’s help, he got the various sensor attachments fitted onto himself fairly quickly.

Once the device powered on, a number began flickering across the display.

After roughly half a minute of fluctuating, it settled on a final reading: 54P.

"Higher than I expected," she remarked.

Ning Ye explained, "The unit for Spiritual Fluctuation strength is P — Psycasts. It refers to psychic output capacity."

"Normal people sit somewhere between 1 and 3. Level 1 Spiritual Ability Users range from 10 to 100P. 100 to 1,000P puts you at Level 2. Anything above 1,000P is Level 3 territory."

"A freshly awakened Spiritual Ability User usually clocks in around 10 to 20P. You’ve only been awakened for a few days and you’re already at 54P."

Xiang Yi gave a small, humorless smile.

When you’re staring death in the face every single day, of course your Spiritual Power Strength shoots up fast.

If it hadn’t, he’d probably already be dead. That’s just how it worked — human potential gets squeezed out when there’s nowhere left to run.

That said, he still hoped he’d run into fewer of those do-or-die situations going forward.

"What about Level 4 Spiritual Ability Users?"

"No concrete numbers there."

Ning Ye started helping him remove the sensor attachments as she continued, "Past that threshold, the gap in Spiritual Fluctuation strength between different Spiritual Ability Users varies wildly depending on the type of Spiritual Energy they use — but their actual combat performance tends to be roughly comparable."

"So for Level 4 and above, classification is basically done by combat power."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Not really — I’ve never seen one. Word is they can wipe out a large colony single-handedly. A small colony like ours, they could just casually demolish."

Xiang Yi was pretty sure the city in the Anka Star Colony covered around eighty thousand square kilometers. And a Level 4 Spiritual Ability User could just casually demolish it? That seemed a little hard to believe.

And if a city of eighty thousand square kilometers with tens of millions of people only counted as a small colony, just how massive were medium and large ones?

"What about Abnormality ratings? How are those classified?"

"Same six-level framework — it’s shared across Spiritual Ability Users and Abnormalities alike, though the actual criteria are different."

"The offensive Spiritual Fluctuation an Abnormality emits is one factor, but classification is mostly based on a combined assessment of threat level, controllability, and containment difficulty."

"Take the Shuffling Monster and Dead Spirit Dust as examples."

"A Shuffling Monster can be handled solo by one experienced person with basic equipment."

"On top of that, Shuffling Monsters are confined by Dead Spirit Dust and drawn to fresh human blood, which makes them highly controllable."

"Break their limbs and containment is trivial. When you add it all up, they only qualify as a Level 1 Abnormality."

Ning Ye paused there and turned to Xiang Yi. "Alright, take a guess — what level do you think Dead Spirit Dust is?"

"Level 3? It took over an entire abandoned district."

Ning Ye crossed both index fingers into an X.

"Wrong. Dead Spirit Dust only rates as a Level 2 Abnormality. Yes, it can spread over a huge area, and it appears completely at random, making full containment nearly impossible."

"But its actual threat level is extremely low. It needs corpses to generate Shuffling Monsters and Corpse Ghosts — and these days, the vast majority of bodies are cremated. Except in large hospitals, there are almost no corpses left lying around. That’s why it only gets slotted into Level 2."

"Abnormality classification is based on a composite assessment. You can’t just look at how much area it covers."

"A lot of Abnormalities have weak Spiritual Fluctuation readings but possess genuinely bizarre abilities."

"Here’s another example — there’s an Abnormality that was given the designation ’The Watcher.’"

"It appears in the darkness as a face — a smiling face. It watches a person for a period of time, the smile slowly shifting into a look of anguish. Once the expression has fully changed, the person being watched dies instantly. No discernible cause."

"The Spiritual Fluctuation it emits is incredibly faint. But once someone finally identified it and its nature was properly studied, it was classified as Level 4."

Xiang Yi took a moment to process everything Ning Ye had just laid out, then nodded. "Alright, I think I’ve got a decent handle on how both the Abnormality and Spiritual Ability User level systems work."

"There’s also a separate threat level system for Abnormalities — but that one’s tied to large-scale Abnormality outbreak events, and it gets complicated. I can go over it with you another time if you’re interested."

Xiang Yi thought back to the black markers he’d seen on the Abnormality Incident Response Department’s website. "My guess is the threat level scales with how much the event impacts people — the more widespread the danger, the higher the rating. Something like the abandoned district incident, where it cleared up on its own without spreading, probably doesn’t rank very high."

"Exactly. That incident in the abandoned district would be Level 2 at most — probably Level 1."

"Anything else you want to know?"

Seeing Xiang Yi had gone quiet and thoughtful, Ning Ye left him to it.

She grabbed a cup of water from the facility’s dispenser, took a long sip, and wandered over to the Blood Crystal containment room to peer inside.