Chapter 738: Progress and Gift |
**Chapter 738: Progress and Gift**
Ten years passed quietly.
“Finally… I’ve completely mastered it…”
Jie Ming lifted his head from the simulation setup of the All-Heavens Star Grand Array. He habitually introspected his spiritual sea, then paused slightly.
In the Ring of Truth, the golden line representing his mastery of the Spiritual Qi Law had quietly risen to ninety percent at some point.
He remembered it clearly.
Decades ago, that line had been stuck at eighty percent, as if blocked by an invisible wall that refused to budge.
Now, it had advanced a full ten percentage points.
The golden line itself had thickened compared to ten years ago, its law fluctuations resonating and intertwining with the other golden law lines inside the Ring of Truth, faintly exuding an aura of impending perfection.
All-Heavens Star Grand Array.
After all, during this period, he had devoted almost all his energy to researching this grand array and had not specifically set aside time to arrange the construction of the Creation System.
In these ten years, although he had not truly deployed the array, to ensure he could set it up smoothly, he had essentially dismantled the entire grand array from the inside out.
From the arrangement patterns of the array eyes to the energy flow paths of the auxiliary stars.
From the rune structures inside each main array eye to the resonance frequency bands of Star Power within the array—every detail had been repeatedly deduced and simulated by him. He had conducted no fewer than dozens of miniature experiments. Each simulation revealed new problems, and every problem required tracing back to the fundamental principles of the Spiritual Qi Law for solutions.
This process was essentially using the top-tier All-Heavens Star Grand Array to reverse-engineer the deep structure of the Spiritual Qi Law.
The value of the All-Heavens Star Grand Array was not something ordinary methods could compare to.
Even among the grand arrays recorded in the Great Dao Book Pavilion, it stood at the very top. Thoroughly grasping its core principles and passively increasing his mastery of the Spiritual Qi Law by ten percent was not particularly outrageous.
The corners of Jie Ming’s mouth curved upward slightly. He then formulated an idea and sent it via the Incense Fire Divine Dao system to the black giant priest overseeing the construction of the Creation System. The construction plan for the Creation System needed to be adjusted.
The original plan was to complete all sub-modules step by step before activating them together.
But now, his mastery of the Spiritual Qi Law had reached ninety percent, with only the final stretch left to one hundred percent.
As long as the most basic functional modules of the Creation System were completed first—even just the foundational spiritual power regulation and spiritual material maturation functions—the understanding of the Spiritual Qi Law gained from carefully studying them would be enough to cross that final threshold.
The black giant priest’s reply arrived quickly.
“The rune array for the spiritual material maturation zone has been calibrated. We only need to adjust the laying sequence of the energy conduits and prioritize connecting this module to the seventh-level elemental pool’s supply network. It can be completed in the short term.”
Jie Ming closed the communication, roughly estimated the time, and felt his mood relax.
Once the basic functional modules were completed first, reaching the standard for condensing the law solidification domain with his Spiritual Qi Law mastery should happen within the next few years. This could truly be considered an unexpected pleasant surprise.
Rarely in the mood for some leisure, he stood up from the experiment table, walked over to the miniature climbing frame built specifically for the activated test tube in the corner, and reached out to gently poke the bottom of the test tube hanging upside down from the topmost bar.
The test tube wobbled from the poke. Its quartz body spun in the air, and two tiny arms as thin as hairs extended from its sides, angrily waving at him twice.
The test tube then flipped over, landing steadily on the second level of the climbing frame. It turned away, leaving him only an arrogant back view.
Jie Ming looked at it and couldn’t help but smile.
At that moment, the magic network terminal emitted a very short notification tone.
He withdrew his finger and glanced at the reminder that popped up on the terminal. His movements froze.
It was a pre-set reminder: David’s wedding was in one month.
Only then did he remember that he had completely forgotten about it.
In these ten years, his attention had been almost entirely on the All-Heavens Star Grand Array; he had barely paid attention to the passage of time.
If the terminal hadn’t had the reminder set in advance, he might have only remembered on the day of the wedding itself.
“Oh no!” Jie Ming suddenly sighed softly.
Because he had just realized he hadn’t prepared a gift yet.
Jie Ming raised his hand and patted his own head, this time with a bit more force, then sat back down at the experiment table and began seriously considering what to give.
Military merits?
Too perfunctory.
Besides, David was now following the family route. Sending a batch of military merits would be spent clean in no time, leaving no trace. More importantly… he was poor right now!
Rare materials?
He did have plenty of good things on hand.
Supreme Yang True Fire, Star Power, sealed samples from the Reflection Dimension… any one of them was rare.
But these things were either too eye-catching or unsuitable as wedding gifts.
Wizard tools?
He could refine quite decent ones, but David was already sixth-ring.
Custom-crafting a sixth-ring wizard tool would take at least several years, which was clearly too late now.
Jie Ming’s fingers unconsciously tapped on the workbench as his gaze swept across the dragonman bloodline rune crystals scattered on the surface, the Strange sample data records, and the few old research files in the corner marked “suspended.”
Soon, Jie Ming knew what to send: “Looks like… the most suitable thing is to give some techniques.”
Knowledge was hard currency in wizard civilization and perfectly suited someone as “broke” as him.
He quickly filtered out a suitable technique from his database.
This technique was one Jie Ming had researched very early on.
Back then, in the Infernal Sulfur plane, he had captured a group of fire elemental spirits that swam through magma like fish.
At that time, he had only recently acquired the Infernal Sulfur plane, and his understanding of spiritual qi was still at a relatively elementary stage.
He had found a method for improving aptitude in the Great Dao Book Pavilion, combined it with the wizard civilization’s existing research on elemental spirits, and localized it into an embryonic aptitude enhancement technique.
This technique had been used only a handful of times.
Aside from a few experiments, the only actual application was the aptitude enhancement he had performed for his junior, Ang, a very long time ago.
“This technique feels a bit crude now.”
Jie Ming flipped through the old file and muttered to himself.
Looking back at it with his current perspective, he saw flaws everywhere.
The core idea was not wrong: using elemental spirits as a medium to strengthen the soul and elemental compatibility of the embryo.
But the specific implementation methods were far too rough.
Things were different now.
He had accumulated over a century of research on the Strange, and his understanding of spirituality had reached the level where he could stably cast temporary enlightenment techniques. All of this could be integrated into the embryonic aptitude enhancement technique.
The Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror quickly cleared his workspace, and Jie Ming began the modifications.
He extracted several key parameters for spiritual activity frequency bands from his Strange research data and grafted them onto the soul and law compatibility adjustment segment of the aptitude enhancement process.
Originally, this segment could only passively influence the embryo through the elemental spirit’s inherent law affinity, resulting in low efficiency and effects limited by the quality of the elemental spirit itself.
Now, by simulating spiritual fluctuations, the embryo’s soul could actively “merge” with the elemental spirit’s frequency band, turning passive acceptance into active resonance.
Jie Ming then brought out the improved version of the temporary enlightenment technique.
He extracted the portion concerning intelligence activation and added it to the aptitude enhancement technique.
This would ensure that when the embryo’s nervous system developed to a specific stage, its spiritual intelligence instincts could be briefly activated.
This activation window was extremely short, but it was enough for the embryo to surge far ahead during its development period.
With the modified technique, the embryo’s aptitude in terms of soul and corresponding elemental compatibility should be able to be directly raised to tenth level.
It was known that the innate talent ceiling for ordinary human beings was tenth level.
This was a conclusion reached by wizard civilization after countless years of research; no method could break through this ceiling.
Or rather, once this ceiling was broken, the target would naturally awaken transcendent power.
This technique allowed the user to directly reach that ceiling.
The drawbacks were also obvious.
The core material was an elemental spirit.
These were not something one could casually buy on the market.
The conditions for an elemental spirit’s birth were extremely harsh, requiring gestation in a specific elemental environment for tens of thousands of years to produce even the most basic self-awareness. A decent-quality elemental spirit could fetch a very high price in the Star Ring Federation’s trading houses.
Moreover, this technique could only be used on embryos and had no effect on already-born individuals.
For Jie Ming’s own forces, neither the black giants nor himself had any use for it.
Black giants were mass-produced via incubation pools, with aptitudes determined by the templates he set; no additional enhancement was needed.
He himself had even less need for it.
But as a wedding gift, this technique was extremely suitable.
David had chosen the family route. For a wizard family, improving the aptitude of descendants was quite important.
A technique that could stably raise descendants’ aptitude to the maximum level was far more valuable than any one-time resource.
Furthermore, the usage threshold of this technique was not high.
Although elemental spirits were expensive, with David’s family’s financial power, they could afford to buy a few at a high price.
More importantly, this could serve as a family foundation to be passed down through the generations.
Jie Ming compressed the modified technique into a recording crystal, attached a detailed instruction manual and precautions, and finally wrapped the crystal in a sheet of silver-gray wrapping paper.
He casually traced a spiritual power pattern on the surface of the wrapping paper with his finger. The pattern automatically coiled into a faint golden ring, sealing the entire gift tightly.
Jie Ming put the gift away, leaned back in his chair, and quietly glanced at the date on the light screen.
“I hope he’ll like it…”