Chapter 83: Astrals (1)

One morning, while Su Chen was still doing experiments, a notice he had been waiting to hear for a long time finally came.

Ji Hanyan had arrived.

Within the Su Clan’s guest lobby, Ji Hanyan was dressed in patrol uniform. She wore a pair of Flying Clouds Boots and had a Hunting Clouds Blade strapped to her waist, giving her a valiant and formidable presence.

Behind her stood another person. It was Jiang Xishui.

“You guys are finally here. I heard nearly thirty days ago that you guys were coming, but in the end I waited for nearly a month. Isn’t that too slow?” Su Chen laughed as he motioned for Mingshu to pour them some tea.

“We’re on government business. How could we be as carefree as you, Knowledge Executor Su?” Ji Hanyan replied.

“Oh? Are you saying that I’m holding down my job without doing any work?”

Ji Hanyan harrumphed coldly, “That’s how it was before too.”

Her reply was curt and impolite.

Su Chen laughed helplessly, “You haven’t changed a bit. Right, Brother Jiang, how have you been lately?”

Jiang Xishui fanned himself and sighed, “If you’re holding down a job without doing any work, what good outcome can I possibly have? Naturally, I’m just idling the time away, dawdling about and neglecting my duties; I’m just a piece of nouveau riche trash that only knows how to admire beautiful scenery.”

Su Chen laughed loudly when he heard this.

The three of them squabbled for a bit before Ji Hanyan pulled the topic of conversation back to the main point.

“The reason we are here this time is mostly to catch a certain individual. There’s some things that we want to ask you.”

“I knew you wouldn’t just come and visit me out of the goodness of your heart,” Su Chen sighed. “Let’s hear it. What do you need my help with?”

“I heard that this residence you’re living in had a ‘demons sending babies’ incident?”

When he heard this, Su Chen’s expression began to tighten.

When he saw Ji Hanyan’s expression grow serious, he said, “You’re not trying to tell me that something similar has been happening in Bachuan, right?”

“It’s different, but not that difference. Nearly three years ago, there was a string of cases in Bachuan of disappearing females. At the beginning, the Investigations Bureau only treated these cases as common kidnappings of women, but they never found any more leads. It wasn’t until two years ago that one of the Investigations Bureau’s constables accidentally stumbled upon a cave. In that cave, they found dozens of female corpses; they were the women who had disappeared during the past year or so.”

Su Chen immediately said, “Let me guess...... These women all had physical signs that they had given birth before, right?”

Ji Hanyan nodded. “This matter triggered public shock, becoming a case that the Investigations Bureau needed to solve quickly. Thankfully, the cave had been sealed previously, and all of the arrangements inside were there, including a large-scale Tempering Transformation Formation and a consciousness receiver. As such, everyone was quickly able to determine who the culprit was.”

“The Astrals,” Su Chen muttered in a low voice.

Ji Hanyan smiled. “Indeed, you already know about it.”

Yes, how could he not know about it already?

Long before, when they were discussing the “demons sending babies” matter, Shi Kaihuang and Su Chen had already begun to suspect that this matter was related to the Astrals. However, they never had any evidence to support that claim.

But after Wei Liancheng and the Purple-Colored Glass appeared one after another, their suspicion of the Astrals’ involvement became concrete.

Only they were the ones who would need to research this kind of metamorphic transformation.

Yes, this was all for the sake of research.

If there was a race that was the most similar to the Arcanists after the fall of the Arcana Kingdom, it was probably the Astrals.

——————————————

The Astrals were descendants of the Dark Astrals. They had an exceptional ability to sense Origin Energy, and were the closest Intelligent Race to the Origin Races in that aspect.

The Astrals had a liquid heart and were constantly in a shifting state of existence. This made them much more sensitive to and more able to absorb Origin Energy, but their bodies were exceptionally weak as a result. Under the Origin Race’s system, the Dark Astrals were a delicacy. Their bodies were filled with energy, yet they were very tender and mellow.

This made it so that the early Dark Astrals had extremely cruel and sorrowful fate.

In reality, during the Ancient Era, apart from the dense, flourishing Beast Race, no one had a good fate.

The Dark Astrals was the first race that embarked on a resistance campaign. During the Chaos Era, they relied on their exceptional sense for Origin Energy to first develop a system for using Origin Energy, successfully establishing the first Intelligent Race Kingdom, the Origin Spirit Kingdom.

The first rebels were always the mightiest, but they were also the most heavily persecuted.

After the Origin Spirit Kingdom collapsed, the Dark Astrals were forcefully suppressed by the Origin-related lifeforms. Many of the Dark Astrals died; very few of them successfully hid underground, holding on even at death’s door.

To adapt to the dark, underground lifestyle, the Dark Astrals’ bodies began to adapt.

Their consciousnesses grew stronger, while their bodies continued to wither. Their ability to see in the dark and their hearing advanced.

During the 32nd millenium of the Chaos Era, a few Arcanists stumbled upon the Dark Astrals.

They were shocked at the massive changes to the Dark Astrals’ bodies, especially their powerful consciousnesses and sensitivity towards Origin Energy, and began to capture them in hordes to analyze their biological makeup.

After two thousand years of capturing, most of the Dark Astrals had been captured and turned into the research subjects of the Arcanists.

At this moment in time, it was another powerful Arcana Master like Mainbrooke, Patelocke, or Lamier that completely changed the fate of the Dark Astrals.

This was the Consciousness Converter Instrument’s inventor, Ignatius.

Unlike Mainbrooke, Patelocke, and the others, Ignatius’s goal was both simple and direct, but it was what most lifeforms pursued - immortality.

Ignatius thirsted for immortality, so he was always focusing his attention on ways to prolong and extend life.

In his extensive research, he discovered that as long as a biological organism continued to exist in physical form, death was an unavoidable outcome. All of his efforts could only delay it, but not stop it from coming.

As such, Ignatius thought of a bold and extreme tactic.

He believed that while a physical body would rot and decay, a consciousness would never disappear.

Since biological organisms were always doomed to die, what about letting their spirits live forever?

As such, he began to focus his research and energy on how to preserve a person’s consciousness after they died.

If you wanted a consciousness to not be extinguished, you needed to alter the lifeform and give it a powerful enough consciousness so that the consciousness could be stored in Origin Energy.

As such, the Dark Astrals, who inherently possessed powerful consciousnesses, were great research targets.

During this period of time, the Arcanists were innovating the most. This was their most flourishing period of time.

The Bloodline Extraction Instrument, Sark’s Nuclei, and Consciousness Converter Instrument were all developed during this period of time.

The endless research made it so that the Arcanists became incredibly proficient in converting a person’s consciousness energy and improving and modifying organisms. Ignatius finally succeeded!

He had developed the Consciousness Converter Instrument.

Based on this kind of instrument, the Arcana Kingdom could give consciousnesses a unique form, allowing them to persist in this world like specters.

This kind of conversion had a lot of limitations.

Firstly, it could only be used on lifeforms already alive. Only when a lifeform was alive would their consciousness be condensed. If they died, their consciousness would dissipate and couldn’t be converted in time. As such, the Consciousness Converter Instrument was called a converter and not an immortality machine for this exact reason, because you needed to first kill an organism before creating another unique organism.

Secondly, only the Dark Astrals could be converted. The Dark Astrals had an innately powerful consciousness, making them the only ones that could withstand a consciousness conversion.

Thirdly, the Astrals had no reproductive abilities.

Even so, it incited a frenzy all across the Arcana Kingdom

They believed that as long as they continued to unceasingly do their research, one day they would be able to create an even more powerful Consciousness Converter Instrument.

As such, they began to perform a lot of research and experiments, creating large amounts of undying specters.

From that day onwards, the Astrals were born.