The Reason Why Spiritual Energy Does Not Deplete

"System!"

Gu Changyuan tightly clenched his fists, his eyes surging with uncontrollable excitement.

After a thousand years, he had finally escaped from that hellhole.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Every inhalation made his internal organs feel an unprecedented sense of comfort.

Compared to the Void of Chaos, this place was simply a paradise.

In that chaotic land, even "air" was a luxury.

The so-called "air currents" were actually a mixture of chaotic energy and spatial fragments. Inhaling them required consuming a massive amount of spiritual power to purify and convert.

Looking around, there was nothing but boundless darkness.

Not to mention the endless slaughter and the desperate situation of resource scarcity. Gu Changyuan felt it was a miracle that he hadn't been driven mad after surviving in that place for a thousand years.

[Host, welcome back!]

"System, exactly how long has it been since I left the Nine Heavens Realm? Since you could bring me back, you must also understand the situation in the Void of Chaos."

[It has been one thousand, one hundred and eleven years since the host left the Nine Heavens Realm. The standard connection channel between the system and the host was forcibly severed.]

[However, the core binding was not removed. The system could still maintain minimal contact with the host through the Sect Cultivation Synchronization function.]

[In other words, over the past millennium, the disciples of the three major factions under the host have continuously provided you with cultivation bases and spiritual power.]

"So that's how it is."

Gu Changyuan pondered in his heart. No wonder his spiritual power had been constantly recovering without any signs of depletion during his thousand years in the Void of Chaos.

One must know that there was no spiritual Qi—or rather, no "spiritual Qi" in the conventional sense.

All cultivators used their own reserves of spiritual power. Once exhausted, they could only rely on external items like spirit stones and pills to replenish it.

And spirit stones and pills were the absolute hard currency there.

Two powerful experts could fight for three days and three nights over a single top-grade spirit stone, ultimately perishing together.

If a mighty figure took out half a bottle of spiritual power recovery pills in public, it would immediately attract hundreds of people to besiege him, ending in a bloodbath that spanned thousands of miles.

But he himself... had never suffered from the trouble of spiritual power depletion.

When he first entered the Void of Chaos, he was only at the Void Refinement Realm—in a place where Chaos Realm experts walked everywhere and Daluo Realm experts could occasionally be seen, the Void Refinement Realm was no different from an ant.

Yet, he survived.

The reason was that his spiritual power was inexhaustible.

Every time it was consumed, it would recover on its own in an extremely short period.

After every battle, his total spiritual power capacity would even slightly increase.

This allowed him to unleash divine abilities without restraint, fight battle after battle, and not have to pinch pennies over every sliver of spiritual power like others did.

He never told anyone this secret.

In the Void of Chaos, bearing a treasure is a crime in itself.

If people knew he possessed a near-infinite spiritual power recovery ability, probably all the experts in the Void of Chaos would unite to hunt him down.

After all, who wouldn't want to obtain such a heaven-defying ability?

[Over the past one thousand and one hundred years, the system continuously attempted to rebuild a stable connection channel, but due to the special spatial structure of the Void of Chaos, it never succeeded.]

[Until the system detected a large-scale spatial tremor in the Void of Chaos and deduced that a temporary 'weak point' might appear. Thus, it concentrated its energy to forcefully tear open a temporary channel to pull the host back.]

Gu Changyuan nodded slightly, digesting this information.

"In that case, System, you must have consumed quite a bit."

[Yes. To complete this extraction, the system consumed the vast majority of its energy. For at least a few years, the system will be unable to provide any additional functions other than querying the basic information it possesses.]

[However, the core binding is still present, so the host need not worry about that.]

"Thank you."

[It is my duty.]

Gu Changyuan said no more. He raised his right hand and slowly curled his five fingers inward.

The movement was very light, but as his fingers bent, the air around his palm began to twist and compress, emitting subtle crackling sounds.

That was the wail of space unable to bear the pressure.

Without needing to exert force, just a casual grasp possessed such terrifying might.

Gu Changyuan looked down at his hand. The palm lines were clear, the skin was fair, and there was not a single callus on the joints.

These hands had once torn off the heads of Chaos Realm ferocious beasts in the Void of Chaos, crushed the spines of ancient remnants, and laid down life-and-death-reversing sword arrays in desperate situations.

But now, they simply hung quietly by his side.

"The current me..."

Gu Changyuan murmured.

"Indeed, I don't need the system to provide any abilities other than information."

This was the truth.

The slaughter and plundering in the Void of Chaos over the past millennium had allowed him to accumulate wealth that would drive any faction mad.

Those experts he had slain, which one of them wasn't an old monster who had lived for thousands or tens of thousands of years?

The storage treasures they carried with them were piled high with rare treasures, ancient cultivation techniques, and lost pills from their respective worlds.

Gu Changyuan roughly estimated that if he took out all the resources in his Chaos Pouch, it would be enough to pile up ten mountains, each ten thousand feet high.

With such a foundation, why would he need the system to provide other assistance?

It was more than enough to elevate the strength of his three major sects.

"Right."

Gu Changyuan suddenly remembered something and asked in his Sea of Consciousness.

"System, how are the three major sects I founded back then doing now? Do you still know?"

This was the question he cared about the most.

One thousand, one hundred years could bring great changes to the world.

Those disciples he had personally taken in, those cultivation techniques he had casually left behind, those sects he had roughly established... what had they become now?

[After the host left, the system's main body was trapped in a spatial interstice and unable to move.]

[The only information it could receive was the spiritual power feedback transmitted from the three major sects, as well as the disciple identity information attached to each feedback.]

As soon as the system finished speaking, three semi-transparent light screens instantly appeared in Gu Changyuan's mind, densely listing names and cultivation bases.

He roughly swept his gaze over them. The registered disciples of the Heavenly Human Sect alone had surpassed ten thousand, and the Heavenly Demon Sect and Heavenly Fiend Sect combined exceeded eighteen thousand. The three sects totaled nearly thirty thousand disciples.

"Damn, is this still that shoddy little sect from back then?"