Chapter 33: Research (1)

This was Su Chen’s most brilliant attack to date. In that moment, a blinding light illuminated the surface of the entire sea.

Amidst this shocking attack, the soldiers on the flotilla even forgot about the Demonic Beast for just a moment.

“How beautiful!” the soldiers sighed as they stared at the scene before their eyes.

After that blinding flash, they could see that behind this beautiful scene, a shocking, mangled hole had been bored into the Demonic Emperor’s body. The hole penetrated the Demonic Beast’s body completely. Not only so, but the lightning power had also spread when it had contacted the Demonic Emperor’s body. Even the areas surrounding the hole were badly charred.

The Demonic Emperor looked just like a roasted duck that had had a giant chunk taken out of it. Its body was burnt to a crisp, and it had lost most of its mobility.

Defeating a Demonic Emperor in a single strike!

The soldiers stared at Su Chen in disbelief, and even Su Chen himself was stunned.

He knew that, with his comprehension of lightning and thunder, a full-strength attack of his was more than capable of wounding existences at that level of power. Doing this much damage, however, should have been impossible. He had taken more than thirty seconds to gather his full power in that moment.

He was surprised that he had managed to unintentionally create a new kind of attack - an attack that concentrated and condensed elemental power to an incredible degree.

The destructive power that could be unleashed by an attack like that had completely surpassed his expectations.

Unfortunately, because of how long the cast time was, this skill was totally impractical in a one-on-one fight. In a battle, however, there were situations indeed where it would be useful.

This was the second Theurgy Art Su Chen controlled. It required an incredible amount of consciousness energy to gather that much lightning energy, but Su Chen’s mastery of lightning also needed to be very high in order to compress it to that degree.

This was also one of Su Chen’s most powerful attacks at the moment.

Actually, Su Chen had been conducting all kinds of different research these past few years, but he hadn’t spent much time focusing on increasing his own strength. As such, he had no new skills to show for it. Even so, the solid foundation he had developed was enough to help him create a new skill in a moment’s inspiration. This was all just a result of good preparation.

Su Chen’s lightning Theurgy Art was still in its preliminary stages, but once he had refined it, it would be even more effective. But that would happen in the future.

Even though the Demonic Emperor hadn’t been killed by Su Chen’s attack, it wasn’t far from death. The flotilla attacked with renewed vigor and very quickly captured the Demonic Emperor, dragging it off. In the end, the hunting expedition had been quite successful.

When Lin Zuiliu saw Su Chen drag Shang Li back to the research lab, he said, “All that for this brat? And you even went yourself?”

Su Chen chuckled. “Don’t look down on him. If we want to deal with those moles hiding in the darkness, we will need to find how far their reach goes. And the first one is usually of particular importance.”

When Shang Li heard this, he harrumphed. “Even if you have captured me, the others will be on guard and will restrain their actions a little. How will you capture them then?”

Su Chen replied, “The Fragrant Bait Pellets you carried on you clearly show how you were making trouble for the fleet. I already issued a command to search everyone when we return. Anyone who is carrying these Fragrant Bait Pellets on them will be arrested immediately.”

Shang Li’s expression froze. He was obviously not expecting Su Chen to pull something like that.

Su Chen continued, “Of course, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be people who get rid of their pellets in time, or that there aren’t cautious individuals who don’t carry the pellets with them until they are formally given a mission. Some of the lucky ones might have already used their pellets, but in any case we will be able to catch a few. As for the rest……”

Su Chen chuckled. “Well, we’re in no hurry. We’ll take our time to catch them.”

Shang Li said, “If you miss this opportunity, we won’t give you any new ones.”

“But you will continue to make trouble, won’t you?” Su Chen countered. “If we make new plans, it’s only natural that you would try to find new ways to sabotage our operations.”

Shang Li couldn’t resist asking a dumb question. “So what if we insist on not doing anything?”

Su Chen guffawed. “Isn’t that even better? You can just obey and act as my servants. As long as you obey my commands, I don’t care if your heart belongs to me or not.”

Shang Li was rendered speechless, but he didn’t want to give in. “You won’t be able to catch my master anyways. My master is brilliant. With him present, your plan will not succeed.”

“This is exactly the reason why I captured you,” Su Chen calmly replied. “From today onwards, my research will have expanded yet again.”

“What?” This time, both Shang Li and Lin Zuiliu couldn’t help but ask.

“Consciousnesses,” Su Chen replied calmly as he placed his hand on Shang Li’s forehead. “Researching how to help someone escape from the control of an Astral, and how to discover traces of the person pulling the strings.”

Lin Zuiliu squinted his eyes. “This won’t be easy. You have the Deep Sea Sorrow, bloodline-less techniques, bloodline mixture, and now consciousness research to worry about. Do you have enough time?”

Su Chen smiled. “You underestimate my research capabilities.”

Having the Origin Bone Scepter was like having a bunch of time. This was precisely the reason why he dared to pursue so many different research targets all at once.

To Su Chen, the research process went like this.

First, he would perform some foundational research and analysis in order to determine the principles by which something operated. The Origin Bone Scepter wouldn’t be able to help him in this regard; he would need to do his own research and build up a suitable foundation first.

Once he had reached a certain point, he would begin to consider different experimental designs and setups.

That was when the Origin Bone Scepter would come in handy. The Origin Bone Scepter could help Su Chen avoid some of the incorrect setups and choose the most accurate one. If Su Chen was the one who had come up with the accurate setup, then the cost would be even lower - perhaps only a low-tier Origin Crystal would be necessary, since the Origin Bone Scepter only needed to tell Su Chen whether the path he was considering was wrong or right.

After saving a lot of time on this trial-and-error side, Su Chen would need to reflect on his findings.

His knowing that one route was right and every other route was wrong was also a means to help him better apprehend these foundational principles. This way, he would be able to earn back the experience that he had skipped by using the Origin Bone Scepter.

After this, Su Chen would proceed to the next round of experiments.

This was how Su Chen conducted his research. Discovery experiments and the use of the Origin Bone Scepter went hand in hand, and the rate at which he accumulated knowledge was accelerated by the Origin Bone Scepter. It wasn’t like the Origin Bone Scepter had halted his creativity.

Actually, the Origin Bone Scepter’s main purpose was to help Su Chen learn faster so that he could put his findings into practice.

Oftentimes, discovering a scientific truth would take decades, but once the truth was found, it would be possible for a student to learn it in only a few days.

By relying on the Origin Bone Scepter, Su Chen was acting as the role of a student. Some research that might have taken him decades to do otherwise would only take half a month’s worth of planning, one minute of making predictions, and a month or so to go back over his findings. If things didn’t necessarily go according to plan, he could just repeat the first two steps a few more times, and eventually the right path would reveal itself to him. The amount of time he would need to spend on these issues was really quite pitiful.

For this reason, the others believed that Su Chen would need to spend a lifetime in pursuit of each of his individual goals, but Su Chen didn’t feel like he was busy to the point that he found it impossible to cope yet.

As a result, he still had time to cultivate every day and manage some basic sect affairs.

Su Chen had never used the Origin Bone Scepter in front of Lin Zuiliu before, so Lin Zuiliu had no idea what Su Chen’s true strength was in this regard. He scoffed, clearly in disbelief, and said, “If that’s the case, don’t think I’ll go easy on you. And my Bloodline Mixture Pills are complete. Where are the experimental subjects you promised me?”

“The effects of the Bloodline Mixture Pills haven’t been determined yet. More research needs to be done.”

“That’s why I need research subjects.”

“There’s no way I’m giving you human subjects right away.”

“Then find me a pig or a chicken or a dog that’s cultivated the Boundless Sect’s Flying Immortal Cultivation Techniques before,” Lin Zuiliu replied bluntly.

The two of them bickered quite often. Lin Zuiliu had always hoped that Su Chen’s disciples would be able to inherit the mixed bloodlines he had created. However, Su Chen felt that enduring the power from all of those bloodlines was still out of their reach, so he wanted to carefully test the power of these Bloodline Mixture Pills first, as well as potentially weaken their effects or convert part of their power into latent potential.

The two of them had been working hard on this issue for a while now.

Now, they had managed to jointly complete the Bloodline Mixture Pill. Lin Zuiliu viewed human life as nothing but chaff and wanted to find a human subject to test it out on immediately, but Su Chen shut him down immediately.

At that moment, Su Chen said, “You don’t need to ingest the medicine to determine its effects. I have other methods.”

Lin Zuiliu rolled his eyes. “I have heard for a long time that you perform experiments on living creatures as well. How come you’ve become so soft all of a sudden?”

Su Chen inspected the pill, using his microscopic eyes to observe its composition as he replied, “I used my enemies in the past, many of them evil people. Even so, I think my actions may have violated the will of the Heavens, so I don’t do that anymore. People will always grow and mature. When I was young, I was willing to achieve my goals by any means possible. But now that I’ve grown a little, I’ve learned to think a little more carefully before I do things. There aren’t many people like you, King of Chaos, who can maintain this juvenile attitude forever.”

As Su Chen spoke, he smirked.

He sounded like he was praising Lin Zuiliu, but he was actually mocking Lin Zuiliu for not maturing. However, Su Chen’s skill in mocking others was so great that Lin Zuiliu found that he had no way of retorting. After a while, he harrumphed, “You’ve been staring at that thing for forever. Have you found anything yet?”

“The fiery nature of the medicine hasn’t retreated yet. Its medicinal power is still a bit too barbaric, and there is an excess of energy inside. It’s not an issue of the recipe but of the refining process. You still need to improve your skills a little, King of Chaos, but I’m not too surprised - after all, you haven’t been studying alchemy all your life. I already told you that I could have some of the disciples in my Hall of Medicine concoct it, but you just wouldn’t listen to me.” Su Chen tossed the vial back over to Lin Zuiliu. “Make it again.”

Lin Zuiliu took the pills and turned them over carefully. “You were able to spot the problem just by looking at these pills?”

“If you don’t believe me, cut out a little of the powder and feed it to some stray dog or cat. Before you are able to refine the pills properly, I must attend to other matters,” Su Chen said as he turned around to leave.

“What are you going to be doing?” Lin Zuiliu asked, but he saw Su Chen walk over to Shang Li and say, “Look into my eyes.”

He activated Fata Morgana.

Lin Zuiliu was momentarily taken aback before he realized that Su Chen had merely begun his consciousness research.