Anyone who had read the original Lord of the Mysteries knew that Cross-Pathway Medication was extremely dangerous. Losing oneself or going mad were the mildest outcomes. One careless mistake would lead directly to Loss of Control.
If the human body were compared to a game, then potions were like mods. Potions of the same Sequence were like mods from the same series; as long as they were installed in order, there would be no problem.
Mods from adjacent Sequences, meanwhile, were mods that could be compatible under certain conditions. Once the foundational mods—the low and Mid Sequences—were installed, they could be swapped around.
As for non-adjacent Pathways, they were naturally conflicting mods. Installing them at random would cause the game to crash.
Yet the Pathway provided by Sno's Golden Finger violated that rule. Every one of its Sequences required directly consuming potions from other Sequences in order to advance.
The reason was that the Origin Quality called White Horse is Not a Horse could imprint the Mental Imprint of this Sequence onto a potion—
It was like applying a compatibility patch to a mod.
For example, when he had still been an ordinary person, he had consumed the Secret Speaker Potion and advanced to Sequence Nine, Donkey of Buridan.
When he wanted to advance to Sequence Eight, Pavlov's Dog, aside from consuming the Listener Potion from the Secrets Suppliant Pathway, he could also advance by drinking one of three Sequence Eight potions: Unwinged Angel, Lunatic, or Beast Tamer.
However, a compatibility patch was still just a compatibility patch. It could make things run together without issue, but minor bugs such as clipping, texture tears, or feet hovering off the ground were unavoidable.
White Horse is Not a Horse only modified potions by imprinting a stronger Mental Imprint onto them. That meant the original Mental Imprint within the potion had not been removed. Therefore, when digesting a potion, Sno had to digest two Mental Imprints at once.
Of course, that did not mean Sno had to play two roles while suffering from split personality disorder, because acting for the Paradox Path was mandatory—
Simply put, it was a negative status effect akin to "forced acting." Once one tried to resist it, one would slide toward Loss of Control.
Take the Donkey of Buridan he currently possessed. While acting as a Secrets Suppliant to digest the potion, he also bore a debuff known as indecisiveness. Whenever two relatively equal options appeared, unless he could provide a reason for choosing one, he would fall into a deadlock from being unable to decide. If he tried to force a choice, he would begin to lose control until he stopped that dangerous behavior—or completely turned into a Monster.
Fortunately, aside from this debuff, which weakened as the potion was digested, Cross-Pathway Medication did not add any extra risk of Loss of Control, nor did it affect the potential for further advancement. The only difference lay in the Beyonder Abilities gained after advancing.
Take his current Donkey of Buridan as an example. The characteristics of this Sequence Nine were endurance and intuition several times greater than that of ordinary people, a certain ability in appraisal, and considerable knowledge and talent in Ritual Magic.
The potion it required could be Seer, Monster, or Secrets Suppliant. Depending on which potion was consumed, there would be certain directional changes. For example, drinking the Seer Potion gave stronger appraisal abilities, drinking the Monster Potion gave stronger intuition, while the Secret Speaker Potion granted more Ritual Magic knowledge.
But to the current Sno, those were all secondary. The most important function of this Origin Quality was actually its higher-Sequence abilities from this Pathway. For instance, the most crucial power that had shielded him from Starry Sky contamination, the gaze of true gods, and the perception of 0-08—Concept Swap.
Judging from the consumption, the Sequence to which this ability belonged should not have been very high. Yet when activated through the Origin Quality, it could receive the support of true-god-level status.
But powerful abilities often came with enormous costs. The reason Sno could sustain an ability that could even block the contamination of the Starry Sky was entirely because of the Uniqueness that had completely fused with him—A Foot of Rod. In a sense, Sno could be regarded as a Uniqueness that had become sentient, like Ammon, except he lacked Beyonder Characteristics.
As the saying went, "A foot of rod, halved each day, would never be exhausted even after ten thousand generations." The ability of this Uniqueness was simple and brutal. It was the manifestation of the authority of the Paradox Path, directly distorting the rules of infinite subdivision and orders of magnitude, allowing it to produce spirituality almost without limit.
The price was merely that half of Sno's spirituality became unusable.
If there was any flaw, it was that the upper limit of spirituality this Uniqueness could output was only one-quarter of Sno's total spirituality.
It was precisely through this near-Perpetual Motion Machine-like power that Sno could keep White Horse is Not a Horse activated around the clock, resisting the risks brought by the knowledge of Lord of the Mysteries within his mind.
The headache caused by activating White Horse is Not a Horse gradually eased. Sno pulled himself together, pushed open a crack in the window, and gently pressed his hand against the little kitten's head. As a white horse appeared in his mind, the spirituality in his body began to drain once more.
But this time, the expenditure was not excessive. It was only a trace faster than Sno's spiritual recovery speed while in a half-meditative state.
As his spirituality was drawn away, Sno found a comfortable spot and lay down. The little kitten transformed into a streak of Dark Light and shot out through the window...
The Rune Shorthair Cat, as its name suggested, was a breed native to Loen. Due to its gentle temperament and excellent adaptability, it was beloved by people of every class. In particular, its remarkable talent for catching mice made it equally popular among commoners. During the Age of Sail, they had even been kept as ship cats.
In such an environment, a kitten wandering through the streets was hardly something that drew attention, even if it ran much faster than others of its kind.
After all, in most people's eyes, cats had always been elusive creatures.
Within a dilapidated courtyard, on the second floor of a gray-blue house, inside an unlit bedroom.
A young woman with a round face and a gentle, sweet appearance sat before her dressing table, toying with a wooden doll that was far from exquisite.
But at that moment, her spirituality suddenly gave her a faint premonition. Almost instinctively, she turned her gaze toward the silver mirror placed in one corner of the dressing table, yet there was nothing unusual on its deliberately scuffed surface.
"You rely too much on Beyonder Abilities." A somewhat shrill voice came from overhead. The young woman nearly reached for the hidden pouch at her waist in an instant, but stopped the next moment.
She raised her head and stared at the black kitten that had entered the room at some unknown time, then said coldly:
"Didn't I give you a way to contact me?"
"I'm not so reckless as to use a method provided by a Witch to communicate, just as you never use the method of making sacrifices to my Lord to transfer items." The kitten deliberately stressed the word "Witch." The young woman frowned slightly, but still said:
"I've already helped you obtain the notes you wanted. What else is there?"
The protagonist's shielding against true gods and Great Old Ones was not because Concept Swap was so absurdly powerful that, with only the amplification of an Origin Quality, it could directly affect true gods and Great Old Ones. Rather, it used a more ingenious method to avoid the perception of true gods.
The reason he could contemplate knowledge of the Starry Sky, know the secrets of true gods, and even discuss Adam in Ancient Dragon Language without drawing attention was that before such knowledge and language interacted with the world, the ability Concept Swap erased their "toxicity" and eliminated their mystical "influence," leaving them unable to attract the attention of true gods or Great Old Ones.
To use a police officer catching a thief as an analogy, if a true god was the police officer and the protagonist was the thief, then what Concept Swap did was not affect the police officer's intelligence. It erased the traces of the crime, making the police officer completely unaware that a crime had even taken place.
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