Exploring and Practicing the Meditation Method

Having finished organizing his ideas, Blade Tusk immediately threw himself into putting them into practice.

The first step went smoothly. In just two or three days and nights, he had constructed a Troll body modeled after himself.

But the second step ran into trouble.

Filling in the organs had gone well. Each time, he could use his exceptional "brainpower" to perfectly "create" the parts he needed. The problem was that the organs he created were basically empty shells. Other than looking similar, they served no purpose whatsoever.

That would not do. According to the plan, at the very least, the organs had to be more or less functional.

So Blade Tusk hurriedly had the warriors secretly obtain several living Trolls from hostile tribes for him to study. Since he had limited materials, he needed to reuse each body as much as possible. A Troll's terrifying vitality could support research that a human body from his previous life could never endure, but that was not necessarily true in other respects. Trolls were not insects. When their bodies suffered injuries—especially prolonged injuries like "surgery"—the accumulated pain was enough to kill them mentally.

And honestly, Blade Tusk himself did not have the mental toughness to ignore the pain and wails of his test subjects while completing his experiments. So, perhaps it was hypocritical, but he still wanted to alleviate their suffering as much as he could.

Fortunately, it was not impossible.

The tribe's witch doctors had inherited recipes for things similar to "sleeping potions" and "pain-relief potions," all brewed from plants found in the forest. The former was widely used in hunting traps, while the latter was essential "medicine" for Troll warriors facing powerful enemies. With slight adjustments to their ingredient ratios, the two potions could easily be turned into a new medicine with long-lasting effects that induced sleep and blocked pain, sufficient for use as a "surgical anesthetic."

Of course, Blade Tusk had not completed this task alone. Of the tribe's three witch doctors, the one neither oldest nor youngest had spent years studying potion-making and possessed exceptional understanding and insight in the field. He resolved the issue easily; Blade Tusk merely assisted him.

Now everything was ready but the east wind, yet that wind refused to blow.

The bone knives were not sharp enough. The room had poor lighting. He repeatedly found excuses like these. Until one day, Blade Tusk discovered that his "work pouch" had been stuffed with bone knives of every size, while the warriors had blasted holes of varying sizes through the walls and roof of his house to serve as "windows."

Knowing he could delay no longer, Blade Tusk muttered trivial nonsense under his breath and reluctantly entered the "workshop," stopping before the "operating table." Before him lay a sleeping blue-skinned creature, one whose appearance was far too similar to the Trolls he lived alongside every day. Or rather, it looked exactly the same, constantly reminding him of something.

This is an intelligent life-form no different from you. Now, for your own selfish desires, you are about to dissect and study him like a lab rat.

A voice seemed to be questioning his conscience.

No, this is just a blue-skinned beast. There is no time left for you to waste. Hurry up and do it!

Another voice seemed to have been urging him on, and had continued to do so for several days and nights.

"Medical students are seriously incredible. No way around it."

He slapped his cheeks hard, took out the prepared bone blade, and began the next stage of work despite himself. The anesthetic had already been administered. He pressed the bone blade down, trying to cut open an incision.

The surgery proceeded intermittently, and the research continued day after day. Many problems arose along the way.

Troll skin was far tougher than he had imagined, and bone blades were not as useful as he had expected. Hemostasis, suturing, and many other tasks could not be fully handled by a single Troll like him. Such problems were relatively easy to resolve. The former only required adjusting the force of his cuts, while for the latter, he piqued the youngest witch doctor's interest in bodily structures and quickly dragged him in as cheap labor.

Yet the experiments still could not progress quickly. The reason was probably that the functions of human organs from his previous life had given him considerable mental inertia. Whenever he studied the structure and functions of Troll organs, Blade Tusk instinctively thought in terms of the human body, painstakingly searching for the familiar organs of his previous life—"heart, liver, lungs, spleen, stomach, kidneys, intestines"—or their substitutes.

But reality proved that these human organs and their corresponding functions did not necessarily exist within Trolls. Some functions had been eliminated, leaving no trace behind; some had been retained but merged with other functions to form entirely new organ systems; still others had been strengthened to an unbelievable degree, and the organs formed to support such strength had become utterly unrecognizable.

Of course, these so-called "eliminations, retentions, and enhancements" were merely conceptual differences born from viewing things through the lens of his previous life. From a Troll's perspective, all of it was the result of life's evolution. It was simply how things were meant to be.

The research continued in fits and starts for a relatively long time.

Fortunately, Trolls did not fear infection and possessed tremendous vitality, so the experiments did not consume too many subjects. Furthermore, there were many Troll Tribes throughout the forest. He could steal someone from the east today, then switch to the west after some time, without causing much of a stir.

As for research gains, they came every so often. Some results were significant, others minor; some complemented one another, while others contradicted each other. Old conclusions were overturned by new ones, only to be reborn within the latest conclusions. Such occurrences were countless, but all of them provided immensely valuable directions for the advancement of Blade Tusk's Meditation Method.

Without realizing it, not only had the "visualization target" within the Meditation Method developed through repeated revisions, but the speed, accuracy, and depth of his visualization had also improved tremendously. In the past, Blade Tusk always needed to spend some time creating a "target" from nothing whenever he meditated. But now, after meditating over and over again, it had almost become an instinct. So long as he willed it, the "body" in his visualization would take shape according to its "systemic logic." This "systemic logic" was a product of his research, successfully replicated within his meditation through "simulated surgeries" in his mind.

As the Meditation Method steadily improved, Blade Tusk failed to notice the progress he had made in mental processing and other areas. On the rare occasions when he wondered, Huh, why is visualization getting easier and easier? he simply attributed it to practice making perfect.

Until one day, seeking a mental break from his research, he went to the storeroom where Magic Crystals were kept, intending to tidy it up while he was there. When he picked up a low-grade Magic Crystal, he casually tried to "channel" power into it out of habit. A fireball formed and shot out with a whoosh.

Accompanied by a rumbling crash and the collapse of the "shelves" before him, Blade Tusk stood frozen in place.

At that moment, as a faint sense of exhaustion washed over his body, he finally realized what had happened. He had awakened!