Lava Shadow

Dungeon, meditation chamber!

Yin Ming finished his daily meditation, took a gray-skinned ancient book from his gourd, and began flipping through it.

"Is this the original rune for Wizard's Hand?"

The first page of the book contained a rune rubbing of Wizard's Hand.

The spell energy circuit was similar to the rune Yin Ming had drawn, but there were subtle differences in the finer details. It was more—streamlined.

"After replacing the original rune, the time needed to draw the rune can be shortened by 0.5 seconds, but it doesn't mean much."

Yin Ming shook his head. What Wizard's Hand lacked was power; such a minor enhancement could be ignored.

He decisively turned to the second page.

There, the Wizard's Hand rune rubbing had been broken down into three parts.

The crooked, twisting Wizard Script that entered his sight immediately seized all of Yin Ming's attention.

[0-ring spell: Detailed Diagram of Wizard's Hand.]

Was the core of a spell a rune?

And what were runes made of?

The answer was: spell formulas and energy circuits.

Even among 0-ring apprentice-level spells, Wizard's Hand was considered a relatively simple spell.

It contained only the two spell formulas of Elemental Shaping and Mind Sense Manipulation, linked together through energy circuits to form a rune.

"..."

Yin Ming nodded, gaining some insight. This book described things with extreme straightforwardness. Compared to Daoist texts that hid their true teachings amid countless cryptic phrases and concealed metaphors, the difficulty of learning had dropped by far more than one level.

Spell formulas were like light bulbs and semiconductors; energy circuits were electrical wires, while mana was the power source that supplied the energy for operation.

"Third page: Detailed Explanation of Elemental Shaping!"

"Fourth page: Detailed Explanation of Mind Sense Manipulation!"

"Fifth page: Principles of Energy Circuit Construction."

The detailed explanation of basic runes only covered the spell formulas and energy circuits related to Wizard's Hand, but once he understood the underlying principles—

If Wizard's Hand were compared to a mobile phone—

Previously, Yin Ming had merely learned how to operate that phone.

Now, Yin Ming finally knew what components the phone contained and how they could be assembled into a phone.

It was equivalent to transforming from an ordinary person who used a phone into a young electrical repairman.

Yet Yin Ming's grand undertaking of merging the immortal and wizard paths required, at the very least, the ability to independently develop chips, backed by quantum-computer-level computing power.

Half a day later, Yin Ming frowned as he closed the book. Yet there was one point he simply could not understand. "A wizard's spiritual power cannot leave the body, so how can it control a giant wizard hand formed from elemental energy outside the body?"

No! That was wrong! Wrong!

Spiritual power was not incapable of leaving the body.

Rather, it had not been integrated into a model of the five senses and had not formed perceptive ability.

The wizard's sixth sense, wizard intuition, had likewise not formed an information circuit, making it unable to transmit perception back.

Mana wrapped around spiritual power to control Wizard's Hand, much like the positive and negative charges of a living creature, transmitting information in one direction through nerves.

"This... is the hidden side of the wizard system?"

"It feels as if I've pushed open a corner of the wizard world. Those two thousand merit points were truly not wasted."

Countless thoughts collided in his mind in an instant—for example, how to train spiritual power into divine sense, how to strengthen wizard intuition for fortune-telling...

Yin Ming felt that his brain's computing power was severely insufficient.

"Gourd: Brain neural optimization at 36%..."

"When the day comes when I can construct rune spell formulas on my own, the immortal path and the wizard path will no longer be any different in my eyes."

Yin Ming shook his head. His thoughts had scattered too far afield. For now, he still had to keep his feet on the ground and begin developing the spell Wizard's Hand.

[0-ring spell: Wizard's Foot.]

[0-ring spell: Wizard's Head.]

"..."

"0-ring spell: Wizard's Body."

After experimenting a few times, Yin Ming used his entire body as the target of the Elemental Shaping spell formula.

A massive amount of mana flowed into the newly constructed spell energy circuit.

At once, a transparent giant seven or eight meters tall appeared behind him.

"It worked!"

A smile appeared on Yin Ming's face.

From the very first day he had obtained Wizard's Hand—

He had thought that since there could be a Wizard's Hand, if he gathered the left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot, and head—

How could a dark archmage who had not been sealed away fail to create a "pseudo" version of the Dharma Form of Heaven and Earth?

"Walk, lift, grab, pinch..."

Yin Ming controlled the transparent giant to stand, walk, sit, lie down, and grasp an iron ball as it began exerting force.

[0-ring spell: Wizard's Body.]

Duration: 15 seconds.

Spiritual power consumed: 4 points.

Mana consumed: 2 points.

For every additional 2 points of mana and 2 points of spiritual power consumed, it can be maintained for another 15 seconds.

Characteristics: Like a suit of external armor. Grip strength is approximately four thousand kilograms, and it can move up to twelve meters away from the body.

After measuring the data for Wizard's Body, the smile on Yin Ming's face instantly vanished. He frowned deeply in thought.

"The power hasn't changed! It doesn't deserve to be called a 'pseudo' Dharma Form at all—not even Susanoo. Other than becoming bulkier and consuming more energy, it has not gained the slightest boost."

Whether it was Wizard's Hand or Wizard's Foot, even if both hands gripped something and exerted force at the same time, their combined force still did not exceed the four-thousand-kilogram limit.

"That's it! That's it! The reason a person can concentrate the strength of an arm into a single finger, even draw upon the power of the waist and abdomen to unleash force, is because the human body possesses muscles, tendons, and bones—media that transmit strength."

"But Wizard's Body, constructed from elemental energy, has none of that. No matter its form or size, its power is entirely determined by spiritual power and mana."

"I lack a spell with a detailed biomimetic structural model. Otherwise, if I wanted to create a mech capable of stacking strength, even if it were only one arm, the scale of the project would be terrifying."

"No wonder! No wonder! It wasn't that other wizards had failed to think of constructing a pseudo Dharma Form based on Wizard's Hand. They knew this road was impassable."

Yin Ming's brain was operating at high frequency. Energy rapidly drained away, and his lifespan irreversibly ebbed away, but fortunately, he soon found the cause.

However, knowing the problem did not mean he could solve it.

Constructing basic models for tendons, bones, and muscles would require adding at least dozens of spell formulas and linking them with new energy circuits.

Not to mention that the difficulty of building the spell was like dismantling a radio into parts to assemble a computer.

The enormous expenditure of mana and spiritual power was something a 0-ring wizard apprentice simply could not bear.

"..."

"Hah... I failed!"

Yin Ming let out a breath of turbid air and chose to temporarily set aside his research into Wizard's Hand.

He took out the Bloodline Potion, preparing to analyze it.

Suddenly, his eyes locked onto the totem secret pattern of the Lava Troll.

"This thing—isn't it a ready-made biomimetic structural model spell? And one at the structure-model level of an extraordinary creature, at that."

Yin Ming's heart pounded, and two sharp rays of light burst from his eyes.

Where mountains and rivers seemed to end with no road ahead, beneath willow shade and bright flowers came another village.

Put plainly, a totem secret pattern was the true-name rune of an extraordinary creature.

The totem secret pattern engraved on the leather was the true-name rune displayed by the 2-ring abyssal Lava Troll when it was at the 1-ring stage.

It was a genuine 1-ring rune, capable of being combined or separated, and could be dismantled into ten 0-ring runes.

"0-ring spell: Lava Shadow."

Yin Ming drew the rune once more. As mana within his body poured into it—

A massive humanoid figure appeared behind him, a ferocious giant whose skin was formed of rock and flame.

[Question 1: The body formed from elemental energy has no material substance. How can a totem secret pattern be inscribed onto it?]

"Answer: Me! As long as Lava Shadow envelops me, then I am the true blood. Raising my wizard cultivation is equivalent to raising my warlock cultivation."

"This also resolves the conflict between wizards and warlocks, the issue of them mutually draining one another."

[Question 2: How can the erosion of my original fleshly body by the warlock bloodline be resolved?]

"Answer: Immortal Golden Core Method—External Elixir Art. Although extraordinary energy has changed from spiritual qi into elements, the sacrificial refinement methods of the two worlds are connected."

Yin Ming tossed two Grain-Repelling Pills into his mouth. His lifespan visibly declined, but he could not be bothered to care. Lifespan was meant to be spent in places like this, and he still had several decades left to squander anyway.

Again and again, he deduced and refined every detail of each step, confirming that its feasibility was as high as 90%.

Suddenly, two beams of light burst from Yin Ming's eyes. He muttered in disbelief, "Wait! I fucking... seem to have met the prerequisites for cultivating the Eight-Nine Mystical Art."