"Nine hundred ninety-eight, nine hundred ninety-nine, one thousand, one thousand and one, one thousand and two..."
In the laboratory in the Inner Valley of Broad Cloud Peak, the utterly placid synthesized female voice announced the count every five seconds, letting the Puppet Masters present and the Shaman Folk warriors participating in the experiment hear exactly how much time had elapsed.
Splash!
Suddenly, water churned as a Shaman Folk warrior lunged up from the bottom of the pool, leaped onto the floor, and gasped for breath.
"I... I can't... hah... hah..."
The Puppeteer Apprentice waiting nearby glanced at him, then said to Li Chen, who sat a short distance away in his Mechanized Flying Chair, deep in thought, "Grand Artisan, another result is in. He lasted one thousand and eighty-three breaths."
Li Chen nodded silently. Holding their breath for a little over an hour was something even Qi Refining experts among the Shaman Folk could scarcely accomplish through sheer physical strength alone.
With the right incantations, one could use magic power to replace the respiratory cycle. Back when Li Chen had just reached Foundation Establishment, he had even dared to cut off his own head, but that did not mean someone in the Qi Refining Realm could do the same.
Such feats lay far beyond the limits of mortals and Qi Refining cultivators.
"Most of the earlier mortals lasted fewer than a hundred breaths. A few exceptionally gifted ones managed two or three hundred, but in any case, none ever broke past five hundred."
"Yet after bloodline injection and the application of the Blood-Merging Secret Art, those people generally displayed traits that far exceeded their previous limits..."
Li Chen turned his gaze toward the pool. Several people remained at the bottom without the aid of any external equipment, sitting or lying