"Pound the medicine and feed it to the octopus."
"Pound the medicine and feed it to the octopus."
In the dream, at the port, Zhu Zhengwei continued this simple and brutally direct experiment.
The Qi Consumption Method was the first, simplest, and most brutally direct path he had pioneered. In essence, it was the process of "consuming soul energy to strengthen one's spiritual power."
It was just that in this four-dimensional world, soul energy permeated heaven and earth in the form of qi.
"Then here's the question. Back then, Zhang Zhi happened to eat a hundred Servers by himself and gained a massive amount of soul energy. His spiritual power became terrifying, and he became an immortal. What about this octopus?"
"Give it a hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred."
Zhu Zhengwei continued experimenting.
However, Zhu Zhengwei soon discovered something.
The octopus's bodily capacity was incredibly small. It became full after absorbing only three Servers' worth of energy.
But how could Zhu Zhengwei be satisfied?
Keep pouring it in!
Pour it in until it died!
This approach had an extremely low cost-performance ratio.
He discovered that he had spent more than a dozen Servers' worth of energy just to raise its upper limit from 3 to 3.1.
But Zhu Zhengwei did not care. After all, the supply of Servers was abundant now, unlike before, when they had been in short supply.
Tap tap tap tap!
As he pounded the medicine, Zhu Zhengwei was extremely focused and able to endure the loneliness.
"Huh?"
"Wow, did I enter this pharmacy scene too? The architectural style and the ships in the harbor have a fantastical, epic feeling."
"There have been so many sleep scenes lately. This game's development team is slacking off."
Tap tap tap tap!
He continued pounding the medicine.
"Wow, this ASMR sleep aid sound is great. The pounding of the medicine sounds so nice. I'm getting sleepy."
"Come and favor me."
Tap tap!
He continued pounding the medicine.
"Ah, that feels so good!"
"That's the kind of stimulation I'm talking about. Handsome, hurry up! Ah~~"
Although, during the pounding process, his ears were constantly filled with the strange whispers of countless plants—evil, blasphemous, indescribable, illogical, mysterious, and horrifying.
"It seems that producing the Longevity Potion also requires enduring astonishing side effects and terrifying mental pollution," Zhu Zhengwei muttered to himself.
After a long while, he harvested another two hundred Chives' worth of energy. Only then did he push the octopus from level 3.1 to level 3.9. Once it possessed nearly four units of energy, a violent mutation occurred in its body.
Zhu Zhengwei felt every cell in the octopus's body become active, filled with soul matter.
Hungry!
Hungry!
Hungry!
A frenzied hunger surged out of the octopus.
Zhu Zhengwei fed it a massive amount of food.
"As expected!"
Zhu Zhengwei could not help smiling.
Just as he had imagined, animals basically had no "brains," so the energy easily permeated its brain.
"Its physique is beginning to be nourished by soul energy and is becoming stronger!"
Zhu Zhengwei clearly sensed this.
But the side effects were also obvious:
Because they had no brains, they remained beasts.
Even though Zhu Zhengwei had chosen the octopus, reputed to be the most wondrous creature in the animal kingdom, with nine brains and three hearts, it still seemed rather unintelligent.
An octopus had one main brain and eight auxiliary brains, with one auxiliary brain in each tentacle.
It had many brains, but their quality was too low!
Over the next several full years, Zhu Zhengwei switched to other biological cultivation templates and began soul-injection experiments, giving them "qi."
Crabs, sea snails, and tuna.
Their upper limits were even lower, only 0.6 soul units. Even after breaking through their limits and filling their bodies with qi, they reached only 0.8 units.
"As expected, my first impression was right."
"They're even more stupid than the octopus!"
"But I can't choose dolphins or similar creatures. Their intelligence is so high that they're practically human, and their bottleneck is too great. I can only choose creatures in the middle range."
On this day, Zhu Zhengwei was constantly cultivating octopuses in a water tank and studying their bodily structures.
Over the years, Miss Zhong's Dark-Skinned Girl from back then had grown into an adult. She had sent her younger brother to study at an academy. Her brother had lived up to expectations, and her family had gradually grown wealthy.
"Is that a giant octopus? What a huge octopus!"
As Miss Zhong looked at the water tank, she noticed all sorts of abnormalities.
She stared at the writhing octopus and its sliding tentacles. Suddenly, she felt something strange. She wanted to be wrapped up and devoured by it, to enjoy the warm embrace of its tentacles.
It was a wondrous kind of magic.
It was as if a gigantic soul creature was drawing in a weak soul creature.
"Be careful. This octopus is very dangerous."
Zhu Zhengwei tidied the medicinal herbs in his hands and revealed that he was a biologist from Bronze Country who had obtained books and records from the Old Civilization and was conducting a special biological experiment.
She believed him.
Zhu Zhengwei casually revealed some fishing knowledge, allowing her family to grow rich. They began hunting tuna.
Ten years passed, and within that short decade, her family became wealthy.
They controlled several independent shipping routes and had a large number of sailors under their command, becoming one of the most prominent wealthy families in the entire Ghost Country.
They also built numerous Tuna Pointer Clock Towers, which towered over the ocean and emitted a ghostly light to guide the way while telling travelers at sea the time. The people at the ports called them the "Tuna Family" and the "Ocean Clock Family."
Their clan quickly expanded greatly, and they wore Tuna Pointer Ocean Clock Emblems as their family insignia.
They were also extremely grateful and provided Zhu Zhengwei with enough financial resources for his research.
Zhu Zhengwei now had a laboratory on an island.
Civilization was like a calendar on a scroll, turning its pages one by one.
New Era 0271.
Stone Light Emperor Changshou was assassinated and disappeared without a trace, throwing the entire nation into turmoil.
All the powerful figures searched for Stone Light Emperor Changshou, eager to obtain the "Power of Kingship."
The two aging emperors of Bronze Country and Seaside Ghost Country secretly went to the Slave Dynasty. Using qi to sense the traces of Stone Light Emperor Changshou, they wanted to steal the "Power of Kingship" belonging to the Slave Dynasty.
New Era 0275.
A piece of news that shocked the entire world spread.
The movements of the Bronze Emperor and the Ghost Country Empress were exposed in the Slave Kingdom. Both were assassinated and ambushed by several thousand elite imperial troops of the Slave Dynasty.
"Outrageous!"
"How dare they!"
"That Revolutionary Mortal had already calculated that the two emperors would secretly come here. He actually abandoned the search for Stone Light Emperor Changshou long ago and poured all his strength into setting up an ambush at the border beforehand. He struck with Scythe of God Slaying a second time, catching them off guard!"
"Who could have imagined it?!"
"And who would dare imagine it?!"
"He's insane! He's completely insane!"
"How did he dare? He actually challenged three human gods who swallowed wind and consumed qi in succession!"
"This is the first man in human history who dared to swing his blade at every god and demon!"
"As expected of the Slave Dynasty. We've witnessed history once again! An even more brutal tyrant is rising!" someone shouted, believing that an even worse tyrant who disrespected the gods was emerging, and that the two countries should send troops to eradicate him as soon as possible.
But others sighed in admiration, recognizing this as a terrifying strategy:
"This is advancing by retreating! The Slave Dynasty is currently in a precarious position, making this the perfect time for the other two countries to invade. Yet he used an ambush that no one could have imagined to suppress the attacks of the other two countries. When the two injured and aging emperors returned, the various forces within their countries would inevitably watch them like tigers eyeing prey. With such a precedent, those forces might dare to slay gods just as he did. The two Kings would certainly have to establish new Kings in advance. Though they hate him, they no longer have the energy to send troops against the Slave Dynasty!"
"Brilliant! What a brilliant strategy! History is always like this. In every chaotic era, a hero emerges."
Zhu Zhengwei clapped his hands and laughed. Listening to the evil whispers of the plants in the laboratory, he recalled the calm face of that middle-aged traveler. He was clearly an ordinary mortal, yet he was so bold that Zhu Zhengwei could not help sighing.
"He actually managed to catch two big ones and launch a sneak attack. He has no sense of martial virtue. No wonder he's an old hand at setting up immortal jumps. He's very experienced."
Zhu Zhengwei finally learned the name of that middle-aged traveler from the people of the world: Chong Dao.
Had he seen the idiom in books from the Old Civilization?
"Repeating the same mistake"?
He did not know whether it was mocking the Mortal World or carried some deeper meaning.
New Era 0283.
The three countries were all in turmoil, facing an era of transition between the old and the new.
At the port, the Tuna Clock Family took advantage of the opportunity to rise and became a wealthy family in a single leap.
New Era 0293.
The Ghost Country Empress hanged herself.
She passed the torch of civilization to the next generation. The "Kingship" was transferred to a little girl.
"New Civilization began with the Three Hundred Empresses of God and was passed down through the hands of Ghost Country. This is the God-given Power, the God-given Great Power of Civilization. We are the true orthodoxy of the Mortal World!"
"Civilization and history are already the past. Civilization and history are still the future."
The little girl hugged the old woman's corpse and wailed bitterly.
She swallowed wind and consumed qi, dotted a tear mole beneath her eye, bore the Crown, and shouldered its weight.
Zhu Zhengwei watched the outside world but did not stop his experiments.
"New progress!"
He discovered that after long-term cultivation, the Giant Octopus had finally entered Secondary Development.
The octopus's body continued to swell, growing to half a meter in size. But it possessed only the simple intelligence of a puppy, and then its development stopped.
"Could it really end here?"
Forty years passed. Zhu Zhengwei tried all sorts of methods to stimulate it.
He discovered that no matter what he did, at best it would become a relatively powerful Fierce Beast Octopus.
Qi had given it a terrifying body. In terms of combat strength alone, it was no weaker than those Blessing Shamans, yet its mind remained simple.
"Is this the price?"
Zhu Zhengwei murmured and stopped the reagent in his hand.
"In normal humans, qi is concentrated in the brain. Their intelligence is terrifying, but their bodies are weak."
"In these animals, qi is concentrated in the body. Their physiques are terrifying, but their minds are simple."
The two were opposites.
Zhu Zhengwei felt somewhat unwilling to accept this, but repeated attempts yielded no results.
He wanted to succeed!
Because in reality, his own qi was also concentrated in his brain and did not descend below his neck, leaving his body fragile!
He was like that Stone Light Emperor Changheng. He possessed powerful mental hypnotic abilities, yet his body was laughably weak. If someone got close to him, they could easily stab him to death.
Qi could not circulate through the entire body!
It seemed to be the bottleneck on the path of cultivation, the true difference between the mundane and the extraordinary!
"What a pity."
Zhu Zhengwei sighed.
He released the crabs, sea snails, tuna, and octopuses into the sea and let them reproduce on their own.
"Although it wasn't a success, extraordinary creatures have appeared to some extent. The road must be walked one step at a time. The initial design of an extraordinary species has already appeared. The seeds have been sown, and now we only need to wait for the era to change on its own."
Zhu Zhengwei looked at this vast ocean. He knew that this was a beginning.
"So be it. The experiment is over. It's time to leave."
On this day, Zhu Zhengwei quietly departed, leaving behind the bewildered Tuna Clock Family and a woman who delivered his meals every day.
The woman found a medicinal herb he had left for her, which counted as a gift.
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