Temporary Summons and the Importance of Gene Engines

Once again, the ground vanished beneath his feet, followed by the sensation of landing.

After steadying himself, Wang Lei looked around. He had returned to the room where he had set out from. Judging by the dust and the arrangement of the surrounding objects, he had not been gone for long. No one had noticed his disappearance either.

He turned on his computer and checked. Sure enough, Wang Lei found that from crossing over to returning, he had spent no more than ten minutes. No wonder no one had noticed he was gone.

Yet he had spent less than nine days in Inazuma. So was the conversion rate one minute in the Super God Universe to one day in Teyvat? Or was each trip through worlds fixed at this amount of time?

But seeing the full seven-day cooldown for the Teyvat world on the system list, Wang Lei decided to test that question next time. It was time to sort through his gains. The system seemed to have popped up some notifications just now. Did traveling between worlds come with an achievement system? Or other rewards? Reality, however, told Wang Lei that he was overthinking it. The system notifications were not achievements, but they were still good news.

Yang Jie, Shi Chuan, Song Ping, and Xiao Ye of the Teyvat world hold the host in awe. Temporary Summon unlocked. Summoning cost reduced by 90%.

A Xing of the Teyvat world has a secret crush on the host. Temporary Summon unlocked. Summoning cost reduced by 50%.

Kujou Sara of the Teyvat world is friendly toward the host. Temporary Summon unlocked.

Yae Miko of the Teyvat world is friendly toward the host. Temporary Summon unlocked.

Raiden Ei of the Teyvat world trusts the host. Temporary Summon unlocked. Summoning cost reduced by 20%.

Wang Lei took one look and damn, this system actually had an affinity system. There had been no such notifications in the Super God World before. For example, even now Wang Lei had no idea how high Qi Lin's affection for him was, and he was afraid of falling for one of life's three great illusions.

Now things were better. Whenever he encountered girls in worlds he traveled to in the future, he would be able to judge their feelings easily. He only needed to check the note after summoning them to know their attitude toward him. This was practically encouraging him to pick up girls in other worlds. Raising their affection could also unlock Temporary Summons, while reducing the summoning cost at the same time.

This was great news. After all, while summoning people from other worlds through the system guaranteed their loyalty and maxed-out affection for him, anyone with a name cost tens or even millions of Energy Points. Summoning a few Emanator-Level combatants cost hundreds of billions, while Aeons required figures in the trillions. And it explicitly stated that only avatars could be summoned.

The price of Emanators was actually easy enough to understand. At the Emanator level, even the weakest was probably comparable to a Fifth Generation God from the late stages of the Super God Universe. If Death God Karl were placed in the Honkai Star Rail world, he probably would not have abandoned his physical body so casually to create some Phantom Body. There was a reason Huan Long ranked on the weaker side among the Destruction Emanators in terms of combat power.

And a Mikage Furnace burning Remnants of the Demon God could provide Wang Lei with one hundred thousand Energy Points. To put it bluntly, those Energy Points were extracted from the bone marrow of the dead great serpent Orobashi. And that was only a small portion of its marrow. Orobashi could only be considered mid-tier among Teyvat's many demon gods, which showed just how high the quality of Teyvat's demon gods was. The top-tier ones were at least at the level of Fourth Generation Gods. They just did not have as many flashy tricks as the Fourth Generation Gods here.

But when he looked at Temporary Summon just now, Raiden Ei's cost, for instance, had dropped from fifty billion to a mere fifty thousand. The price was that the Temporary Summon system did not guarantee the summoned person's actions. Moreover, they could only remain in reality for seven days.

In other words, a Temporary Summon turned a green card into a tourist visa. The system would not alter the summoned person's will, either. If Raiden Ei were temporarily summoned and then turned around and cut Wang Lei down, the system would not care. No wonder there were affection requirements. The cost of altering their will must have made up a substantial portion of the price for a complete summon.

Fortunately, according to the description, Wang Lei could send the summoned person back at any time during a Temporary Summon.

Wang Lei could not help complaining, "Is this some kind of Heroic Spirit summoning? It even comes with the risk of getting killed by the summon and an instant return function."

Lastly, he had to mention Miss A Xing. I treated you as a friend, yet you wanted to sleep with me. People these days really have no moral compass. Next time they met, he definitely had to find a way to have a proper talk with her about this.

But for now, Wang Lei decided to turn his Energy Points into immediate strength.

As for Temporary Summons, he would keep fifty thousand points just in case, for summoning Raiden Ei. He would ignore the rest. There was no point summoning ordinary people like Yang Jie and the others. Although Miss A Xing could make effective exorcism talismans, they would be completely useless against the technology-based enemies he would face in the future.

Of the remaining fifty thousand-plus points, Wang Lei planned to spend thirty thousand directly to learn Punklorde Planet's Aether Editing Technique. Though Wang Lei had always felt that the Super God Universe's upper limit could not compare to Honkai Star Rail's, the Super God Universe possessed one thing that no other world had.

That was the Gene Engine. With it, several of the Super God Universe's top races had basically achieved race-wide immunity to erosion—the unavoidable calamity suffered by long-lived species in the Star Rail World, known by the Xianzhou as the Mara-Struck Body.

Queen Keisha had lived for a full thirty thousand years before feeling that she had lived long enough. Yet she had never become mentally unstable or developed self-destructive tendencies. Meanwhile, for a Xianzhou native to live a thousand years without falling into a Mara-Struck Body was considered an exceptionally fulfilling life.

In angel society, a thousand years only placed one among the youngest generation. Teyvat's Geo Archon, Morax, had lived for over six thousand years and was called the oldest demon god still alive today, yet he was not even older than Angel Yan.

That alone showed just how absurd Gene Engines were. Unfortunately, Gene Engines were critical technologies fiercely guarded by every faction.

Right now, Wang Lei was only borrowing a tiger's might, using the system's undetectability and the fact that Angels could not analyze the Stellaron to bluff Angel Yan into giving him two of the Angels' most basic Gene Engines. Even that was not yet securely in hand.

So Wang Lei needed something similar to keep bluffing with. Punklorde Planet's Aether Editing Technique was an excellent choice.

First, it was a learning-type skill that required practice, which made its exchange price relatively low.

Second, it could directly edit reality. He could absolutely cosplay a Void Engine. Since Angels could not read his information, others most likely could not either. Let them fill in the blanks themselves.

Third, and most importantly, it was a programming-type skill. Once Wang Lei obtained the Angels' basic Gene Engines, it would be equivalent to obtaining the underlying architecture of a Gene Engine. After that, he only needed to slowly build upon that framework. In principle, the Aether Encoding that came with the Aether Editing Technique was like the Angels' Holy Divine Encoding—perhaps even superior.

Thus, Wang Lei directly exchanged for the Aether Editing Technique. Then an immense amount of information transformed into memories, like stuffing meat into gluten, tearing open a hole in Wang Lei's mind and cramming a mountain of knowledge inside.

The headache caused by such a crude method of knowledge injection was so intense that Wang Lei instantly passed out from the pain.