Forbidden Technique

Long Xuan took a deep breath, brought out all the materials, then placed them into a massive cauldron one by one.

There were simply too many Spirit Insects. The original Gu vessel could not hold them all, so he could only use a great cauldron now.

After placing all the Spirit Insects inside and sealing the lid, he began observing the progress.

If no progress appeared, it meant the Gu could not be formed. Long Xuan would remove all the Spirit Insects, change their order, and put them back in.

After repeating this process thirty-seven times, progress finally appeared on the cauldron: [0%].

At the same time, all the Spirit Insects inside the cauldron instantly fell silent.

That eye radiating evil energy was exceedingly strange. Any Spirit Insect it gazed upon would freeze in place, its eyes vacant and body utterly motionless.

It was as though they had fallen under an Illusion Technique and been dragged into some Illusion Realm. Once their souls were pulled into that realm, the bodies left outside could only be devoured bit by bit by this evil insect.

Once the progress appeared, Long Xuan let out a long breath. At least he had not had to grind for too long.

The success rates of different Gu Recipes varied. Some could produce Gu after only two attempts, while others might fail to produce Gu even after ten thousand attempts.

He had truly feared that this was a Gu Recipe with an extremely low success rate. So many Spirit Insects would be a nightmare to toss around.

All that remained was to wait patiently. Long Xuan was deeply curious what kind of powerful Illusion Technique this Eye Gu, which had cost so much to create, carried. It felt like opening a blind box—both nerve-racking and thrilling.

Waiting always felt unbearably long. Long Xuan checked the cauldron's progress every so often, anxious as if his heart were on fire.

Perhaps the lower a Gu's quality, the faster it formed, while the higher its quality, the slower the process.

This Gu made him wait a full eighty-one days, each day feeling like a year.

Because he had the progress prompt, he was waiting beside it early on the day the Gu was to form. When the progress reached 100%, his spirits jolted. He immediately lifted the cauldron lid and saw an Eye Gu steeped in sinister energy lying at its center, staring at him with an exceptionally bewitching gaze.

Long Xuan could not wait another moment and immediately formed a blood contract with it.

Had he never eaten pork, yet never seen a pig run? Eye Gu were a type of Internal Gu. Smaller ones parasitized the eyes, while larger ones parasitized the center of the forehead.

The Long Family had an exclusive Gu Recipe called the Evil Dragon Emperor Eye. Old Long had even refined one himself, so Long Xuan had some understanding of how to use Eye Gu.

This Eye Gu was on the larger side, so Long Xuan placed it on his forehead.

The Eye Gu lay on his glabella for a moment before, driven by instinct, breaking through his skin and burrowing into the center of his brow.

Once it entered his brow, the skin swiftly closed without leaving even the slightest seam. From a distance, no wound could be seen, much less the evil eye buried within. Its concealment was impeccable.

At the same time, after Long Xuan felt a sharp pain between his brows, his spiritual power was frantically drawn there and ravenously consumed by the Eye Gu.

Once the Eye Gu had eaten and drunk its fill, it bestowed its ability upon Long Xuan. Thus, man and Gu formed a symbiotic bond, sharing glory and ruin alike.

Not everyone was qualified to refine an Eye Gu. It imposed extraordinarily high demands on a Gu Master's spiritual power. Anyone whose spiritual power was insufficient would be drained dry at this stage and die.

Long Xuan did not know exactly how strong his spiritual power was, but having lived two lives, powerful spiritual power was a shared advantage among all transmigrators. He had complete confidence in his own spiritual power.

He experienced no discomfort as he completed the symbiosis with the Eye Gu. He could fully bear the expenditure of spiritual power needed to sustain it.

At the same time, he learned what Illusion Technique this Eye Gu carried.

This Illusion Technique was called the Origin Realm. It perfectly replicated the scenery of the real world into an Illusion Realm.

Everything in that Illusion Realm was exactly the same as reality. Those trapped within could not expose the Illusion Technique by finding differences from the real world.

An absolutely realistic Illusion Realm made it extremely difficult for its victims to spot any flaw. They could be inside the Illusion Realm without realizing it.

That was the strength of this Illusion Technique.

Long Xuan was overjoyed and impatiently began testing the Eye Gu's basic ability again.

At his mental command, an eye soon opened between his brows, exuding a seductive, sinister aura.

He tightly shut his own eyes and attempted to use this eye to see a new world.

As spiritual power poured into it, the world before him began to stretch and enlarge bit by bit. This was precisely the ability of a microscope.

Long Xuan was beside himself with joy. He had truly succeeded. By blindly tinkering around, he had truly developed the ability to magnify tiny objects.

He held his breath, drew in a deep breath, calmed his pounding heart, and began testing where the Eye Gu's limit lay.

He increased the flow of spiritual power once more. His field of vision enlarged further, quickly entering the microscopic level.

At this point, he could already see microorganisms on the micron scale. He could now search the whole world for tardigrades.

But he was not satisfied. He magnified further, his vision delving deeper still, and began to see bacteria and viruses floating in the air. By then, his eye could already see at the nanoscale.

But this was still not enough. He poured in spiritual power like mad, and his field of vision began expanding another hundredfold, a thousandfold...

As his view enlarged, every image he saw rapidly shifted outward from the center, making him somewhat dizzy and disoriented.

He did not know how many times it had magnified already, but he could now see molecules. Going further, he saw atoms, and then atomic nuclei...

Long Xuan's heart pounded wildly. He had wanted to create this ability only to prevent others from planting Gu in him, and incidentally to capture tardigrades.

Yet this Eye Gu was so astonishingly powerful. It could magnify his vision down to the atomic level, and this was apparently not even its limit.

After Spirit Insects became Gu insects, their growth progress was reset to zero.

This Eye Gu was still merely an infant with only 0% growth progress. It was already this formidable in infancy—what heights would it reach once it matured?

Long Xuan did not dare continue imagining it.

The magnification limit of this Eye Gu far exceeded his expectations. Once it reached full growth, it might explore a world even smaller than anything known in his previous life. He could not wait to learn what such an even smaller world looked like.

Long Xuan began considering how this ability could be used. It could not simply magnify things and accomplish nothing.

Not long ago, he had learned that Gu insects' abilities could be deeply developed. A Gu insect clearly possessed only one ability, yet a Gu Master could use the power of imagination to make that ability more complex and varied.

Magnifying objects appeared to be only a single ability, and an inconspicuous one at that, with little killing power.

But Long Xuan prided himself on his imagination. He would develop several more abilities based on it. Even if they were merely auxiliary abilities for magnifying objects, he would force them into becoming forbidden techniques.

What could magnifying images do? Long Xuan's imagination began spinning wildly.

First, he activated the Eye Gu to its limit and swept his gaze around the room. In the end, he discovered that magnifying his vision to the utmost gave him a slight see-through effect, though it only worked on very thin, low-density objects.

It was probably impossible to accurately see what insects lay inside a fossil. He could only see through a thin layer of the ground and could not penetrate very deeply.

But even so, Long Xuan was already more than satisfied. What would it matter even if he could see deep underground? Without night vision, he still would not be able to see what was beneath the earth.

Soon, he thought of magnifying other people's spirit pills, Spirit Insect feed, poisons, and various other resources, then deciphering their formulas through microscopic analysis.

Next, he thought that this ability seemed capable of bringing movement techniques to the finest detail.

So-called movement to the finest detail meant evading an opponent's attacks with the smallest possible movements. It was highly useful in actual combat and could at the very least save a great deal of stamina.

Did that not give it practical combat value?

But this was still not enough. These ideas did not have terrifying enough killing power. He wanted to develop forbidden techniques—techniques no weaker than the Light Convergence Art...