The Primordial Sacrificial Altar.
Upon receiving feedback from Guide, Qi Sheng immediately switched his view to the area where the explosion had occurred.
The explosion had not been powerful. It had only shattered three blue stone tiles on the ground, which completed their self-repair with just 0.05 points of sacrificial power.
But he was very curious about what had caused the explosion.
Puzzled, he had Guide replay what his duplicate had seen.
When he saw the player Qin Ye studying a level 1 spirit stone, Qi Sheng was puzzled, then magnified the view of the spirit stone's interior.
"Is he rearranging the spirit stone's internal structure?"
[Boss, I extrapolated from the structure he arranged, and I think he might be trying to make a Psionic Bomb.]
"What do you mean?"
[Simply put, he's changing the arrangement of the energy particles inside the spirit stone to create a new structure that will instantly undergo an energy collapse reaction when triggered by thought. But this is only my extrapolation and speculation. I can't be certain that's the answer.]
Guide's answer sparked Qi Sheng's keen interest in this player.
When he first established the Challenger System, what he valued most was not the players' fearlessness in the face of death after gaining unlimited resurrection, but their imaginative creativity.
For example, turning a War Game into a Farming Game, or exploiting specific bugs to pull off wild tricks even the developers had never imagined.
Before transmigrating, he had been an avid gamer himself and had seen plenty of players' ingenious ideas in games.
To verify the conjecture, he retrieved the archived memories of this player's replicated body in Monster World.
The conclusion was just as Guide had said: this player wanted to apply real-world Psionic Bomb technology to the game.
This discovery gave Qi Sheng even more to look forward to in the players' future development.
Stepping out of the Game Pod, Qin Ye realized that Darklands had far more terrifying potential than he had imagined.
Perfectly simulating reality meant that many extremely dangerous real-world experiments could be simulated in the game world, and the resulting data would directly advance real-world technology.
He went to his desk and emailed his findings to the Sky Dome Technology Research Center.
The Sky Dome Technology Research Center was a special institution established by the Human Federation specifically to study other races' technology. He was one of its members, assigned to serve as an administrator at the Cavern Trading Market.
While waiting for his resurrection cooldown, Qin Ye began reviewing information on the other races that had recently applied to enter the trading market.
Half an hour later, an email notification popped up in the lower-right corner.
Opening the email, Qin Ye discovered that it was actually from the Sky Dome Technology Research Center's headquarters.
[Sender: Sky Dome Technology Research Center] Content: Greetings, D-rank administrator of the Cavern Trading Market. Headquarters has received your proposal to test dangerous weapons in a virtual environment. After consulting my superiors, I have the following response for you: 1. After Darklands was released, the Sky Dome Center began preparing to enter the game and attempt experimental testing of dangerous weapons in a virtual environment. 2. Darklands, developed by the Eclipse Race, uses the Star Network's real-name purchase system. We have no special privilege allowing us to bypass the purchase application process and enter the game directly. Unfortunately, no one at headquarters has managed to secure Game Access yet. 3. The Sky Dome Center has submitted an application to the Human Federation's Federation Council, seeking to request a batch of Game Access from the Eclipse Race that can be obtained directly without competing to purchase it. (The Federation Council has not responded yet.) ...
After reading the email, Qin Ye was speechless.
He had never expected that Sky Dome headquarters, which held top-level clearance in the Human Federation, would be unable to obtain access to try the game.
It showed just how outrageous Darklands' scarcity marketing was.
In this new era, when virtual Game Pods were widespread in households everywhere, the Human Federation had a population of two billion, yet the Eclipse Race issued only one million Game Access slots to the Human Race each round. It was a drop in the bucket.
At that moment, he thought of the Perks Officer who had sent him the pirated link, and a bold idea sprang to mind:
Maybe I could send the pirated download link to the Sky Dome Center and let them download the pirated version to enter the game.
Without hesitation, he immediately emailed the link to Sky Dome headquarters.
Four hours later.
Three deafening explosions rang out across the Ancient Battlefield outside Emperor Tomb Village, sending flesh and blood flying.
[Challenger notification: Killed evil spirit life-form: Blood Corpse. Gained 125 evolution points. Gained a reward of 24 sacrificial power points. Eagle-Headed Demon Form level +1.] [Challenger notification: Killed evil spirit life-form: Blood Corpse...]
As notifications sounded in his mind one after another, Qin Ye could not help bursting into laughter.
He had never expected an idea that had occurred to him by chance to actually become reality in the game.
It took just three Psionic Bombs made from level 1 spirit stones to kill Blood Corpses above level 10.
More importantly, Psionic Bombs dealt area damage. The three bombs had killed eight Blood Corpses in total, raising his Eagle-Headed Demon level to 10.
He could imagine how powerful bombs made from level 2 or even higher-level spirit stones would be.
Although making Psionic Bombs cost resources and required purchasing spirit stones from the shop, the returns far exceeded the costs.
This discovery gave Qin Ye a wild idea.
Perhaps he could construct a Star Meridian School around Psionic Bombs.
With that idea in mind, Qin Ye immediately returned to Emperor Tomb Village and entered the Testing Tower.
Over the next several hours, Qin Ye tried pairing different combinations of life souls with Psionic Bombs.
His first choice of life soul was not the Eagle-Headed Demon, but the sea stone life soul.
The sea stone primordial ability allowed continuous, rapid recovery of mental power even under normal conditions.
Making Psionic Bombs required substantial mental power to support the process. The three level 1 Psionic Bombs he had just made had drained his mental power, leaving him unable to make any more for a while.
But after slotting in the sea stone life soul, his mental power sustain would improve considerably.
For the remaining life souls, he chose ones that increased mental power or aided mental recovery, focusing on sustained bombardment.
After briefly testing his first Star Meridian combination, Qin Ye discovered a major problem.
The game had no mechanic granting immunity to friendly damage, so the powerful Psionic Bombs could easily catch him in their blasts.
He thought of two viable ways to solve this problem.
First, he could find life souls capable of withstanding the bombs' impact and incorporate them to improve his defense.
Second, he could find a life soul that allowed extremely long-distance throwing and hurl the Psionic Bombs far enough away that their blasts could not reach him.
After carefully considering which of these two approaches to choose, Qin Ye concluded that the second was more reliable.
There were plenty of defensive life souls to choose from, but maximizing defense required combining multiple defensive life souls. For example, the Unkillable Turret Build popular on the Forum used the Gargoyle as its core, paired with a series of life souls that restored health and increased defense.
But Star Meridian Slots were already scarce in the early stages, and increasing explosive power was the key. Slotting in multiple defensive life souls did not fit the growth path he envisioned for Psionic Bombs.
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