Chapter 323: The Answer Lies In Books (1)
By the night of the 3rd, Su Yu’s name had spread far and wide. A bunch of students were itching to challenge him, but he seemed to have disappeared since the 3rd. Some said he had entered seclusion, some said he was injured, and some said he was hiding from fear to escape all challenges.
According to the academy rules, if Su Yu was challenged yet did not accept the challenge before the 25th, he would be automatically removed from the ranking during the next update. This was a precaution put in place to prevent students from deliberately avoiding battles to monopolize their ranks after getting into the ranking.
...
But in truth, Su Yu was completely clueless. He was fully immersed in a magical world. The world of blood essence ability research. The world of ability blood essence production.
Third underground floor.
Main laboratory.
Su Yu exclaimed in admiration, "Teacher, the imprint in blood essence can actually be peeled out! This is too magical. Is this the ability imprint?"
Every drop of blood essence would have an image of the blood's owner in it. The more powerful the blood essence was, the clearer the image was. For example, the first time Su Yu bought some iron-winged blood essence, he saw a miniature iron-winged bird in it.
They were in the midst of researching the soul devouring bug blood essence. Within the drop of blood essence, a miniature bug could be vaguely seen.
While carefully controlling the machine to peel the imprint off the blood, Bai Feng replied, "Exactly. This is the ability imprint. What is blood essence? It is something left by a living being after death. Or it can also be obtained from a living being by exhausting a large amount of blood and source qi. In truth, blood essence can be further split into dead blood essence and living blood essence. You need to learn how to differentiate the two."
"Is there a difference, Teacher?"
"Yes." Bai Feng was very knowledgeable in this subject since it was something he specialized in. He explained, "Generally, people don't care about the difference. But as researchers, we must be clear about it. Dead blood essence is taken from dead beings. Within dead blood essence, some willpower can be found.
"The grievances of the dead might leave a lot of other things in the blood essence, such as some memories the owner of the blood couldn't forget even in death. Thus, you might be able to see some scenes from the owner’s life through the blood essence. But this situation is more commonly seen in the blood essence of divine and devil experts.
"Living blood essence, such as what we can extract from the creatures locked in our research center, does not contain these things."
Suddenly, the two looked at each other.
"How many days since you last fed them?"
Su Yu made a short calculation before exhaling in relief, "Not long. It's only the 4th today. It has been less than five days."
"Oh, good." Bai Feng exhaled in relief. It had only been a few days. Those creatures would be fine.
At this point, Bai Feng had completed the peeling process.
His willpower appeared and wrapped around the tiny bug as he said, "This is the imprint. But it might not necessarily only contain the ability. It might also include some other things. Thus, we need to continue the peeling process."
He proudly said, "In the past, many people were able to reach this step. Many people were aware that there might be some other things in this imprint. But none were able to peel the part corresponding to only the ability from the imprint. This rapid peeling method is your teacher's unique creation."
Su Yu's eyes widened as he hurriedly fawned on his teacher, "Amazing, Teacher!"
"Of course."
Bai Feng was very satisfied. Finally, the kid was aware of how amazing his teacher was.
To not give the kid a chance to say anything that would hurt his feelings, he hurriedly said, "The rapid peeling method is not difficult, but you need to be very attentive and careful. Not only can you peel out the ability imprint, you can even peel out some memories of the blood owner."
Bai Feng solemnly said, "And this is very important. I dare say that currently, very few cultural researchers are able to peel out all these different elements from blood essence."
Su Yu felt like his teacher was boasting. Was it really that difficult? Was it difficult enough that those Invincible experts wouldn't be able to do it as well? Very few?
"You doubt me? Watch carefully. Listen carefully." Bai Feng rolled his eyes, "This is the unique skill of your teacher. Apart from your grandteacher who had learned it without permission, I had never taught anyone about it."
Learned without permission? That was...an interesting choice of words. Regardless of whether Su Yu believed his teacher, he still focused fully on what his teacher was doing.
With his willpower, Bai Feng moved the imprint onto a workbench. A small sword appeared in his hand. That was his character technique.
Bai Feng solemnly said, "This thing is both corporeal and incorporeal. In a sense, it is similar to Divine Characters. In the past, I didn't understand what this thing was. But now, I believe that this might be the projection of the racial ability character or the sea of willpower after its collapse.
"To further separate the different elements within the imprint, you need to use your Divine Characters. This is where most experts are stumped. Even your grandteacher had failed the peeling process many times back then. And he had tried doing so with the powerful willpower of a Mountainsea cultivator.
"Most people aren't aware that you only need to use your Divine Characters for the peeling process."
While talking, Bai Feng carefully made several cuts with his character technique. The singular bug turned into multiple bugs.
"You need to know what you're doing to not fail this step. Each image contains a different element."
He pointed at one of the bugs and said, "This pitch-black image is the grievance of the bug. Or to be more precise, it is the impurity of the blood essence. When consuming blood essence, this is why your body would accumulate impurities."
He then cut the image with his sword, turning it into a wisp of smoke.
"This is the memory fragment." He pointed at a different image, "If you crush this, you will be able to see the memories that had left the deepest impression in this bug while it was alive. Of course, this bug is too weak so you won't be able to see much."
He crushed the image. Next, a scene appeared before them. They could see a dark space filled with countless soul devouring bugs. A certain bug was climbing off the body of a massive bug. Then, the scene flickered before vanishing.
Bai Feng frowned and said, "That is a female soul devouring bug. It is very powerful. If you happen to encounter one in the Allheaven Battlefield, flee. Flee as far as you can. This thing is the bane of all cultural researchers. Even the weakest female bug will be at the Cloudbreach Realm. Even Mountainsea cultural researchers would have a hard time defeating one of them."
"I understand." Su Yu nodded and said, "Teacher, this looks scary. You can actually read some of the creature's memories through it. In that case, can't we learn more secrets by killing some divines and devils?"
"Yeah." Bai Feng nodded and said, "But like I said, very few people are capable of peeling memories from blood essence. Thus, this isn't that impactful for humanity as a whole."
"But it's quite simple."
Su Yu felt like it looked simple. Bai Feng only needed to make several cuts to do it.
Bai Feng rolled his eyes and said, "Nonsense. It looked easy because I am already very familiar with it. I am also very experienced and incredibly talented. When you're looking at a single image, how to cut, which part contains the memories, which part contains the grievances, and which part contains the ability? Can you even determine that?"
Su Yu thought about it and shook his head. True. It wasn't easy to determine which was which.
Bai Feng asked, "You have to slowly learn all that. When you finally reach my level, you will be able to see through it with a single look."
"Teacher, how about the human race?"
"What?"
"When a human dies, will blood essence be left behind? Can we peel the memories of a dead human?"
Bai Feng frowned and said, "There is a rule for all cultural researchers. We are not allowed to experiment on humans, including those from the Myriad Race Cult. Even killing them is better than experimenting on them. That is a bottom line that can't be crossed. The moment we cross that line, we will be no different from monsters."
"You need to understand that there are some things that once we let go, we can never get back. It doesn't matter if you are dealing with an enemy or a friend. At most, just kill them. But if you decide to cut them open and experiment on them...Su Yu, don't forget this. This is taboo. Do not cross this line."
Su Yu nodded in understanding. Bai Feng thought about it and added, "Of course, if you're in the Allheaven Battlefield and have killed some cultists possessing some extremely important information you urgently need, you can extract some blood essence from these cultists and extract their memories for what you need..."
Bai Feng warned, "But that is the extent of it. It doesn't matter if you wish to whip the corpse of your enemy or even burn the corpse to ashes. But never experiment on humans."
"I understand."
Bai Feng moved on from the topic and returned to his work. Before long, the other images were destroyed, leaving only a single bug image behind.
"This is the ability imprint." Bai Feng solemnly said, "I'd experimented a few times on soul devouring bugs before and failed all of them. Perhaps their ability is not very suited to be made into ability blood essence."
"Why?"
"Maybe that has something to do with the nature of the ability. It is able to alter your source qi, granting it burning and corrosive properties against willpower. Because of that, the outer layer of blood essence wrapped around the imprint itself would always suffer some damage from the corrosive power.
"This is only an ability imprint. To properly turn it into a drop of ability blood essence, you will need to wrap a layer of unique blood essence around it. I had not separated the imprint from the original blood essence just to separate the other elements from it. I also did so because the original blood essence is not the most suitable outer layer for this imprint."
Su Yu nodded again, behaving like an obedient child. This all sounded quite complicated. Even the outer layer of blood essence had to be manufactured through a special production method.
When Su Yu recalled the fake production method he had come up with, he couldn't help but admire his courage.
Holy shit.
The fake production method he came up with was utterly ridiculous. And his scam had even succeeded. He felt somewhat speechless. Weren't those people a tad bit too stupid?
After a series of complicated procedures, Bai Feng started working on the outer layer of the imprint. But the moment he applied a new layer of blood essence on the imprint, it exploded. At the moment of explosion, the image spat at Su Yu. He couldn't move away in time and was suddenly assaulted by a burning pain to his willpower.
"Ahhh!"
Bai Feng's willpower descended upon Su Yu as he rolled his eyes, "This is no big deal. What are you screaming for? It wasn't even powered by blood essence so it can't even harm a Source Opening cultivator."
"But it hurts."
Su Yu felt aggrieved.
Holy shit. That was so painful. It basically felt the same as being killed one more time in his dream. And unlike his dreams, this was a death that he would gain nothing from. What a loss.
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