Wizard Apprentice

The sky was dim, a crescent moon hooked like a sickle.

Seeing that the two were fast asleep, Yin Ming quietly slipped out through the crack in the door and headed behind the black stone house.

To the left and right of Tulip Manor lay other serf manors. Straight ahead stood Count Golden Lion's castle, while behind it stretched the endless Magic Beast Mountains.

"If I go any farther, I might run into a Magic Beast. This is far enough!"

Yin Ming found a hidden thicket and took the Scavenger Gourd from his robes.

It swelled against the wind, becoming a gigantic object over a zhang tall.

The mouth of the yellow-skinned gourd opened, releasing a faint suction force.

Yin Ming did not resist, and his entire body was drawn inside.

[Name: Yin Ming (Eno).]

[Lifespan: 17/45 (99).]

[Constitution: 5.]

[Spiritual Power: 6.]

[Extractable: Brain, muscles, blood, five viscera, bones...]

[Note: This item possesses self-awareness. Any trace of resistance will result in operational failure.]

The Scavenger Gourd.

It contained a complete Innate Divine Prohibition.

Its function was to maximize the utilization rate of everything it collected.

It was not merely a machine for analysis, decomposition, and purification, nor was it restricted to use on dead objects.

It could entirely maximize the utilization rate of one's own body, achieving the goal of enhancing innate talent?

"This is my current physical condition. It's even clearer than a game character's status panel."

Inside the gourd, Yin Ming's body gradually became transparent, and countless pieces of information were perceived by him through the gourd.

From the gourd's perspective, Yin Ming could see the blood flowing through his body, his heart thumping, billions upon billions of cells dividing, growing, aging, and dying. He could also clearly sense life slipping away with time.

Every function his body possessed appeared before his eyes with incomparable clarity, as though it had been digitized.

"Extract!!!"

Yin Ming saw gray-black mist coiling around his limbs and bones.

These were the toxins and hidden injuries that this body had accumulated over seventeen years.

As two streams of black mist overflowed from his body, Yin Ming felt light all over.

Looking at the two pitch-black poison pills that had condensed, he sucked in a cold breath.

These stubborn toxins extracted from the body had become terrifying beyond measure after being strengthened by the Scavenger Gourd.

[Lifespan: 17/99.]

His lifespan immediately changed.

The previous forty-five years had been the maximum lifespan his body could reach in its current condition.

The ninety-nine years, meanwhile, was this body's true upper limit of lifespan.

"..."

Then!

Yin Ming lightly tapped his head.

He decided to increase the utilization rate of his brain's nerve cells.

Nerve cells were not the same as spiritual power, but they determined the strength of one's innate spiritual power—namely, one's so-called wizard talent.

This was the conclusion Yin Ming had reached after countless experiments in the laboratory.

"It's rumored that ordinary people only develop a few percent of their brains. Though there's no scientific basis for it, it still shows that the brain has enormous potential for improvement. I'll raise it by twenty percent first and see!"

In an instant.

Yin Ming's thoughts became incomparably clear.

The sensation he had once possessed only with the Corpse-Liberation Immortal's blessing returned once more.

The energy stored within his body was consumed at an accelerated rate. Countless cells began to shatter and decompose, transforming into biological energy to supply his active nerve cells.

He visibly grew thinner.

If this state continued for ten minutes, his body would devour itself to death from hunger.

At the same time, his spiritual power and lifespan changed again: [Lifespan: 17/18.] [Spiritual Power: 15.]

Yin Ming hurriedly swallowed a Grain-Repelling Pill, temporarily stopping his body from devouring itself, but the lifespan field did not change.

"Whew..."

Fortunately, he had played it safe at the critical moment.

He had not chosen to enhance his entire body, nor had he pushed his brain to its limit. Otherwise, he would already have been reduced to a skeleton.

The yellow-skinned gourd only helped you grow stronger.

As for how long you could survive after becoming stronger, that was not the yellow-skinned gourd's responsibility.

"Raising it by twenty percent makes life drain away hundreds of times faster. This is already burning lifespan for power!"

Taking shortcuts would definitely require paying the corresponding price.

But as long as the price was within an acceptable range, it was still a good deal.

Take the Corpse-Liberation Ascension Method, for instance. For a true immortal like Zhu Bajie, who had feathered and ascended, even taking one more glance at it would be a pure waste of time.

But for an ordinary human like Yin Ming, without the Corpse-Liberation Ascension Method, he simply could not even cultivate his way to immortality.

"..."

He entered meditation!

Meditation!

For his second meditation, he was already familiar with the process.

Yin Ming quickly visualized an endless, vast sea.

A wild gale rose, whipping up towering waves that turned into a hundred-zhang-high curtain of water and crashed heavily toward Mirror Reef.

The waves shattered into pieces, and countless droplets scattered back into the vast sea. Yin Ming hurriedly used his spiritual power to forcibly fix each droplet onto the absolutely smooth Mirror Reef.

The tide receded!

Upon the reef, smooth as a mirror.

One hundred and twenty round water droplets stood arranged in neat rows.

Yin Ming revealed a faint smile, feeling that he had not yet used his full strength. "Give me a little more time, and I can raise the number of intercepted droplets to one hundred and fifty."

His spiritual power had reached the requirement.

The next step was to permanently solidify a spiritual power rune.

Yin Ming did not waste a moment and immediately used his spiritual power to inscribe the rune.

Every stroke he made felt as laborious as writing while holding a brush the size of a millstone.

His suddenly enhanced spiritual power was not yet under perfect control, and small amounts of it would always spill away.

At this moment, Yin Ming's spiritual power was more than enough to permanently solidify one rune. He simply ignored the small amount of spiritual power leaking away and accelerated the inscription of the rune.

"It's done!"

As the final stroke fell, the beginning and end of the rune joined together, divine light flowing through it.

Somewhere unseen, elemental energy drifting between heaven and earth was absorbed through this complete rune, condensing into a tiny thread of magic power.

The rune entered an activated state.

It would continuously transform magic power until it reached the upper limit of his current realm.

With this thread of magic power, he was qualitatively different from an ordinary person. He had truly stepped onto the path of the extraordinary and become a Junior Wizard Apprentice.

"..."

"Restore!"

Yin Ming immediately lifted his brain's high-frequency state.

Maintaining that high-frequency brain state for about two hours had consumed a full three months of his lifespan. Only an immortal deity with eternal life could afford such consumption.

Then a needle-pricking pain came from his brain, and his spiritual power began to plummet rapidly—15, 14, 13...

In the end, his spiritual power settled at 10. As long as the permanently solidified spiritual rune did not shatter, his spiritual power would not fall below 10.

"Knights wield semi-extraordinary power. Wizards are the true extraordinary power. As long as I master a wizard spell, my safety will finally be completely guaranteed."

Yin Ming's emotions surged. Across two lives, he had cultivated for thirty-five years.

He had not condensed even a thread of mana, much less cast a genuine spell even once.

Now, he possessed magic power akin to mana and could cultivate wizard spells akin to magic arts. Only now could he be considered a true cultivator, rather than an emotionless ascender.

"..."

The snakeskin book recorded three Level 0 wizard spells and one Level 1 wizard spell.

Wizard apprentices could only use Level 0 wizard spells. The three Level 0 wizard spells were: Wizard's Hand, Crimson Flame Ring, and Flesh Strengthening.