A Brand New Conception

Listening to Ye Luochen's words and watching the soul guidance shield as it continuously shimmered with light, Xuan Ziwen's brows immediately shot up.

"The piece you carved earlier wasn't just an empty shell; you reserved specific energy interfaces inside it?"

"Then you carved two arrays that matched those specifications, inserted them into the reserved interfaces, and allowed the energy to circulate and function?"

Judging solely by the strength displayed by the soul guidance shield, it barely reached the threshold of a third-grade device.

Its defensive capabilities were quite ordinary.

However, this highly novel production process piqued Xuan Ziwen's interest.

Xuan Ziwen continued, "But by doing this, you've added several steps to a soul guidance core carving process that should be completed in one go, greatly increasing the complexity."

"Furthermore, you only succeeded this time because the array level is low and the energy is weak. If you were to go higher—to the fourth or fifth grade, or even beyond—the energy intensity would increase significantly. Even with better materials, there would be a high risk of explosion during assembly."

"On top of that, you would need to ensure the specifications of the interfaces are perfectly consistent. Otherwise, even if the material strength is sufficient, the best-case scenario is that they won't fit, and the worst-case is that they still explode."

Xuan Ziwen spoke at a rapid pace, immediately pointing out the flaws in Ye Luochen's approach.

Listening to the analysis, Ye Luochen couldn't help but nod.

Every word Xuan Ziwen said hit the mark, perfectly identifying the pain points.

However, Ye Luochen didn't mind, and instead said slowly, "That is true. In fact, this was my first time attempting this."

"This was your first time trying it?"

Hearing Ye Luochen's words, Xuan Ziwen was stunned for a moment before asking, "Can you tell me the reason why?"

"Could it be just for what I said earlier, that a soul master must have their own ideas?"

Ye Luochen nodded and said, "That is certainly part of it, but I've actually had this idea for a long time. It's just that I've been watched closely by my instructors over the past few days and haven't had the chance to try it."

Good grief, so you came to me to test something this dangerous?

Xuan Ziwen's mouth twitched uncontrollably.

"I've actually always been curious why soul guidance devices pursue integration, kneading all sorts of arrays together to form a single core," Ye Luochen's voice continued.

"Admittedly, doing so is simpler and more convenient, but an integrated design dictates that its repairability is extremely poor. As long as one of the arrays has a problem, all the other arrays kneaded together with it will be affected, and the entire soul guidance device is basically declared scrap."

"If the raw materials were very cheap, that would be one thing, but rare metals are incredibly expensive."

Listening to Ye Luochen, Xuan Ziwen nodded.

As an eighth-grade soul master, he had deep personal experience with this.

What Ye Luochen described was completely correct, and the higher the grade of the soul guidance device, the more true it became.

One move affects the whole body; they are extremely difficult to repair, and even if they can be repaired, the cost is prohibitively high.

Seeing Xuan Ziwen's reaction, Ye Luochen asked again, "In that case, why not consider changing the approach?"

"Make the core components modular, pluggable, and detachable. That way, if a component malfunctions, you can precisely replace only that specific part."

"Just like this soul guidance shield of mine—two arrays, one for charging and one for defense. Whichever array breaks, you just take it out and replace it with a new one, and the shield returns to normal function."

"Wouldn't doing this save a massive amount of cost?"

As Ye Luochen's voice faded, Xuan Ziwen pondered for a moment before responding, "It's a very forward-thinking concept, but have you considered that soul guidance devices have inherent variations?"

"Every soul guidance device made by every person is different. To achieve the modularity and pluggability you speak of, how immense would that difficulty be?"

"In essence, it's still one person doing all these things, and a person's energy is limited."

Ye Luochen had long anticipated such a question.

And he had already prepared the answer:

"That is not necessarily the case, because if one wants to achieve modularity, then it is no longer necessary for a single soul master to complete the entire process."

"For example, I only make the charging array, you only make the acceleration array, and someone else only makes the core framework with the interfaces pre-reserved."

"As long as we have a unified standard and follow these specifications, it will be very easy to assemble them together."

"Furthermore, since the difficulty of crafting a single array is far lower than that of a traditional, complete soul tool core array, the production speed and efficiency will definitely be greatly improved."

"In fact, if the technology matures further and the standards become more regulated, these steps will no longer require soul masters to perform them; instead, they could be handed over to stamping machine tools to achieve assembly-line production."

Listening to Ye Luochen's words, even Xuan Ziwen, who had been immersed in the field of soul tools for many years and possessed immense knowledge, fell into a long silence.

"Standardization... division of labor... stamping machine tools... assembly line..."

After repeating the terms Ye Luochen had mentioned several times, Xuan Ziwen's eyes gradually brightened.

Then, he cast his gaze toward Ye Luochen, his voice suddenly rising:

"Good lad, such a creative method—you are simply a genius!"

"If this can truly be realized, then the production of soul tools will enter an entirely new era."

"The production speed will be countless times faster than current manual crafting!"

Watching Xuan Ziwen's excited expression, a smile appeared on Ye Luochen's face.

Judging by the other man's reaction, it seemed his assessment this time was secure.

In truth, he didn't really possess the 'creativity' Xuan Ziwen attributed to him for this concept.

He had merely spoken of things he had seen on Blue Star before he transmigrated.

After all, Blue Star had fully entered the technological age, with all sorts of technological products emerging one after another.

And these products were rarely made by hand.

They were basically all processed and assembled on factory assembly lines.

Moreover, the vast majority of these products had high repairability.

For instance, mobile phones, computers, various electrical appliances, weapons, and so on—basically, if something broke, you could just take it apart, replace it with a new part, and it would continue to function normally.

To be honest, Ye Luochen truly could not understand why, despite also having entered a technological age, soul tools had completely failed to show a similar situation.

Instead, they maintained completely personalized production and extremely low repairability.

It was as if concepts like modularization and standardization had never even crossed anyone's mind.

This undoubtedly restricted the development speed of soul tools to a great extent.

Was it locked by some mysterious force?

Did it not want soul tool development to progress too quickly?