Lin Feng left the Lost Bookstore.
He had recorded its location and could return anytime with a thought.
However, Lin Feng did not go back to Blue Star or his own universe. Instead, he teleported to an empty expanse of space.
This trip had yielded what Lin Feng desired: a method to strengthen his soul.
The ways to strengthen the soul were limited, as he had previously deduced.
One was to devour other beings, or to nourish the soul through certain methods and items.
During his reading, two books left a deep impression on Lin Feng.
One was the Book of Radiant Magic that Lin Feng had taken.
The other was the book written by the disembodied soul race mentioned earlier…
The book detailed the development history of the soul race.
They had not always been bodiless; like the ordinary humans of Blue Star, they had possessed flesh and blood.
The planet they inhabited also bore many similarities to Blue Star.
The key difference was that their planet was too small, while their population continuously swelled.
Their procreation seemed like a curse, an unstoppable urge, as if something in their genes compelled them to reproduce endlessly.
Soon, their homeworld could no longer bear the strain and began to collapse.
At this critical juncture, their leader stepped forward.
Using an ancient, unused method passed down through generations, they instructed all their people to abandon their physical bodies and continue their existence on the planet as souls.
This method originated from something embedded in their genes from the very moment life began on their planet.
Their transition to a soul state and their continued existence were also closely related to the planet's core.
After transforming into souls, they no longer needed to eat, nor did they require vast houses for shelter.
The consumption of resources on the planet's surface was alleviated, and the overburdened planet gradually stabilized.
Lin Feng did not dwell on why this miraculous race could not colonize other planets.
Every race had its own way of life, and according to the books, the soul race did not possess such technological capabilities.
However, even as soul bodies, their peace was short-lived.
For the first few decades after becoming soul bodies, they lived in harmony and developed peacefully.
To improve their lives, the soul bodies began to cultivate their souls, strengthening their spiritual essence, based on knowledge passed down through their lineage.
But as more and more individuals adopted these methods to temper their souls, at some inexplicable point, a phenomenon known as "irritability" began to spread rampantly among the soul bodies.
This irritability led to endless arguments and fights.
The leader who penned the book wrote:
“Procreation was like a mission, like our race's mark.”
“But soul bodies could no longer procreate.”
“Without knowing when, everyone began to become exceedingly irritable, and the inability to procreate, like a fuse to destruction, amplified everyone's negative emotions…”
The irritability mentioned in the book spread like a virus, gradually infecting every soul body.
Under its influence, the soul bodies began to warp.
Why am I a soul body?
Why am I not as strong as him?
Why can't soul bodies have offspring?
Countless questions and shortcomings, amplified by the irritability, erupted, giving rise to jealousy and arrogance.
And even… greed.
Their eyes turned bloodshot, and their reason began to crumble.
When some soul bodies discovered that devouring other souls could strengthen themselves, the internecine war of extinction within the race finally erupted on a massive scale…
Silent struggles of soul bodies unfolded in every corner of the planet, without exception, without mercy…
A soul race met its end in such a ridiculous manner.
The leader of the soul race who wrote the book was the last to perish on the planet…
Reading this book was emotionally taxing.
The book ended there, and the development history of this race struck Lin Feng as being filled with strangeness.
Firstly, why did their memories inexplicably contain inherited knowledge about soul bodies?
Secondly, the book did not mention the origin of the irritability.
Both the emotions and the war seemed to arise mysteriously, as if orchestrated by someone.
The more he thought about it, the more chilling it became.
Lin Feng read the book thoroughly, twice.
He was convinced that behind the development of this planet and its soul race, there was an invisible hand at play.
As for the reason behind this, Lin Feng thought of a fitting analogy: a…
Petri dish!
It was a laboratory vessel used for culturing microorganisms or cells.
Microorganisms grew and developed in the petri dish for people to study and observe.
This planet was like a petri dish.
The entity behind it provided a method for souls to survive, allowing them to observe the race's eventual fate.
And the subsequent irritability was like a growth-promoting agent added during the petri dish experiment.
With this explanation, everything made sense…
Thus, the chilling implications were undeniable…
The starfield Lin Feng had arrived at was the location of the soul race's homeworld as described in the book.
He easily found the planet of the soul race.
The star system where the planet was located also had a sun-like star.
However, the light emitted by this star was red, a deep crimson.
Lin Feng stared directly at the red star. Its light, cast upon the other planets, was like a blood mist, creating a profoundly unsettling sensation.
Lin Feng muttered about the strange star system and then turned his gaze towards the soul race's planet.
It was a small planet, about one-fifth the size of Blue Star.
The surface of the planet was like the moon, pockmarked with numerous craters and deep holes of varying sizes. Lin Feng felt that only four words could describe this planet: riddled with holes.
The lush vegetation, mountains, and rivers described in the book were nowhere to be found.
However, when the soul leader wrote the book, the planet should still have had mountains and green trees. How had it become this way?
It was a completely dead world.
Lin Feng narrowed his eyes and used his super vision to peer through the entire planet.
Under his penetrating gaze, the planet revealed no trace of past life.
Even the planet's core was a vast, circular void.
It was as if something in the center had been removed.
Hmm, an intriguing result…
But this result also indirectly validated some of Lin Feng's speculations.