After hanging up the phone, Li Xingkong was still on his way to Ximen Feng's university, but he was no longer in a hurry.
Because of Reiko's phone call, it's clear that the Body Tempering Grass has been exposed, and its whereabouts are probably no longer here.
Even though I'm already a cultivator, why am I acting like the protagonist of some four-character game, running around asking people for help to complete quests?
Li Xingkong's idea wasn't unreasonable. Logically, since he had cultivated immortality, everything should be more convenient for him, but it hadn't been much more convenient for him yet.
I ran around here and there, looking for an NPC; I ran around there and asked an NPC. It seems like I'm playing some kind of pay-per-play online game.
My spiritual practice is still not up to par. Logically speaking, when the same need arises a second time, I should have come up with a way to organize the methods for solving similar problems into a spell.
I've made this trip several times now, and what I'm really facing is the same problem: finding people and asking for information.
If only there were a spell that could directly obtain information.
Unfortunately, the tracking spells provided by the system had significant limitations, making them beyond my capabilities.
It either requires a medium or a server; either way, it's quite difficult to manage.
Reiko is definitely not the type to give up easily; she'll surely have more dirty tricks up her sleeve. I need to find a way to keep an eye on her.
Li Xingkong felt it was time to devise a new spell.
The spells provided by the system aren't very helpful, so I'll just have to come up with my own.
Is there any way to have news fall from the sky while you're sitting at home?
Few people in the cultivation world can achieve this; it would be even more difficult to do so in the real world.
"I'm saying, aren't you overthinking this?"
The system spoke in a low voice, startling Li Xingkong.
"Huh? Isn't that difficult?"
Li Xingkong couldn't think of any way to do it.
"I said, don't you usually go online?"
The system was somewhat speechless.
"Sure, I'm not some old person, of course I'll go every day..."
Li Xingkong's speech was somewhat halted.
Yeah, isn't the internet already there?
"It's truly a case of the blind being right under the nose."
Li Xingkong couldn't help but slap himself.
The internet, the greatest invention of the 21st century, is a crystallization of human wisdom. As a purely human creation, it is a true crystallization of civilization.
It truly achieved the feat of having news arrive from the sky while one is at home.
The thing I'd been obsessing over for so long is now already in my hands.
Li Xingkong quickly came up with a solution.
Modern network communication is not a point-to-point transmission.
All network information, within cables and electromagnetic waves, is a meaningless signal; it cannot find a receiver on its own.
All information exchange only begins after the address pairing is completed.
It's like when a man goes out to play mahjong at night, and the woman doesn't know which place he's at, so she goes into each place one by one to ask until she finds him, then she grabs him by the ear and drags him home.
That's how signals on the internet find your computer and then send the corresponding information back to you.
Moreover, although there is a lot of information on the internet, it is transmitted as an electromagnetic wave.
Whether it's a video, a phone call, or a document, it's essentially the same thing; it can't be transformed into anything else.
Therefore, Li Xingkong doesn't need to learn any complicated spells to obtain information from the internet.
He only needs to learn a Spirit Vision Spell, which will allow him to see this endless flow of information electromagnetic waves with his naked eye.
Then, he would construct a Magic Power structure and copy how a mobile phone interprets these network signals, so that he could directly see the entire virtual network world with his naked eye.
The whole world will unveil its mysterious veil to him.
Like a goddess who has shed all her clothes, once the veil of secrecy of the internet is lifted, there will be nothing left to hide from her in this world.
"Okay, okay, I've decided on you."
Thinking of this, Li Xingkong wished he could stop right then and there and begin practicing magic.
Unfortunately, it's in the middle of nowhere, so it's not very convenient.
"Since I came up with this spell, let's call it ' Heavenly Eye Express Edition '."
Although there was no place to practice, it didn't stop Li Xingkong from giving the spell a name first.
When he arrived in the city where Ximen Feng was, Li Xingkong immediately found a quiet hotel to stay in.
If I master this spell, I'll lose 99% of my skills. Sharpening the axe won't delay the work of chopping wood; I should practice first.
Li Xingkong first asked the system for a standard Spirit Vision Spell. This kind of standard Spirit Vision Spell is generally used to observe yin energy and ghosts, but unfortunately there is no such thing in reality, so this technique is quite useless here.
But Li Xingkong didn't want to learn it; rather, he wanted to refer to its principles to build his own version of the Spirit Vision Spell.
His Spirit Vision Spell will be used to directly observe network signals.
Let's keep the first step simple: observe the specific signals from mobile phones.
After pondering the theory of the Spirit Vision Spell for a while, Li Xingkong began his own adjustments.
He took out his phone and started playing a random video. Then, he focused his gaze on the area around the phone, rather than on the screen.
Besides vision, one also needs the assistance of Magic Power structure. Based on the Magic Power structure of the Spirit Vision Spell, and with the experience Li Xingkong gained over the years, Li Xingkong began to modify his own Magic Power structure of the Spirit Vision Spell.
As the structure gradually adjusted, many strange things naturally appeared before Li Xingkong's eyes.
It's not this kind of ripple, but rather that strange, flowing water-like thing.
These are the electromagnetic waves that became visible after his adjustments. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to separate these electromagnetic waves by frequency yet; they're all jumbled together.
Even if there is some information, it's impossible to discern it.
To extract useful information, he also needs to be able to segment and distinguish the waves, seeing only the frequencies he wants to see and filtering out other irrelevant signals.
If he can do the first point, this one is not difficult for him either.
He added a regulator-like device to the spell's structure, so now he can Magic Power to control which specific frequency band of signal he wants to see.
After adjusting the frequency, the ripples became much neater. What looked like static on an old-fashioned TV screen before now looks like stripes. It's an improvement over before, but it's still not perfect.
The idea of using Magic Power powers to make electromagnetic waves visible to the naked eye is only useful in modern civilization. In some traditional spiritual civilizations, the internet simply doesn't exist, so there's no way to see them.
The scope of this spell's application is extremely narrow according to the system, but that doesn't affect its usability.
At least for now, it's much better than Shotgun Spell.