Chapter Eighty-Eight: The First Step in Mental Research

In the frozen northwestern wastes of Xuanlu, beneath the earth, lay a containment facility.

This was once a secret military base, built to guard against the day foreign powers might break through Xuanlu’s defenses. Now it had been transformed into a prison for the impossible.

Here were held all manner of anomalous objects recovered by Xuanlu from the New World—things that defied the laws of this world.

Cold alloy formed walls of unyielding strength, radiating a numbing chill. Along the right-hand wall, every hundred meters, stood a metal door. Behind them came silence, strange noises, the roar of some monster, or the shriek of claws scraping against steel.

The sounds seemed almost unreal, as though sound itself had been stripped away. Everything was at once eerily quiet and unbearably noisy.

Then, from the far end of the corridor, came crisp footsteps. A line of white figures advanced from the distance.

At once, all the odd noises vanished. Everything that had just been heard felt like an illusion.

Wherever the white devils passed, silence fell. The monsters locked inside their chambers abruptly ceased their howling, and only the clear footsteps remained.

Containment Chamber 3-01: Corpse Locust Tree.

Several researchers stopped before one chamber, entered a password, verified their fingerprints, and with a soft metallic click the heavy door slowly retracted.

They stepped inside. The bright room was filled with all kinds of instruments. Ahead stood a special pane of tempered glass, and beyond it lay the deeper chamber.

Four walls of thick alloy enclosed the space, while the ceiling was studded with dense rows of gun barrels. In the center of the brightly lit chamber stood a gnarled, withered tree and a person in protective gear.

Inside the containment room, Li Zhiyuan stood quietly before the dead tree, his dark eyes calm and still.

“Want to eat?” he said. “If you do, cooperate with my work and launch another psychic attack on me.”

The next moment, the twisted face on the withered trunk slowly opened its mouth, and a piercing scream echoed through the room.

The cry was carried on a terrifying force, enough to chill the blood and split the skull.

Yet the man before it did not move in the slightest. He simply gazed down at the Corpse Locust Tree, his black pupils perfectly steady, a composure beyond measure.

“So that’s all?” he said. “Looks like you’ve had your fill.”

Li Zhiyuan reached out and gently stroked the trunk. “Use all your strength. Don’t make me help you.”

The twisted branches trembled faintly. For a moment, the Corpse Locust Tree could no longer tell whether it was the demon, or he was.

Ahhhhh!

An even more violent scream burst from the warped face on the trunk.

Li Zhiyuan took two steps back. Beneath the mask, he frowned slightly, then slowly smoothed his expression and nodded with satisfaction.

“Very good. Very good. Little Meng, you did well.”

The face on the trunk forced itself into an ugly smile, sycophantic and obsequious.

“Later I’ll have someone send you a few pigs. And there’s something else: our time together may have to come to a temporary end. Ah, happy times are always short. I’ll come see you often in the future.”

After bidding farewell with evident reluctance, Li Zhiyuan turned and left the chamber.

As the heavy door slowly sealed shut behind him, the Corpse Locust Tree let out a sincere breath of relief.

At last, that devil was gone.

Li Zhiyuan stepped back out into the containment area. Seeing several researchers in the room, he offered a polite smile and asked in a warm voice, “Doctor Du Haoxuan, you’ve arrived just in time. My research has been completed successfully.”

Du Haoxuan, the facility’s chief administrator, said coolly, “And the results?”

“The final results are the same as in my previous report. Psychic attacks are to some extent affected by the body,” Li Zhiyuan replied as he removed his hood.

“For example, when I was struck by the Corpse Locust Tree’s mental assault, at first it felt as though my head had exploded and my body was no longer under my control. But if I inject a dose of adrenaline and then take the same level of attack again, I only stagger back a few steps and feel dizzy.”

“Also, I suspect a person’s willpower plays a very large role. After all, this concerns the mind, and willpower also falls under the realm of the psyche. I don’t have direct experimental evidence, so this is only my conjecture. I recommend that fighters be used against enemies with psychic attacks. If my guess is correct, their survival rate should be several times higher than anyone else’s.”

Before this, he had already conducted experiment after experiment; the research was long since complete. Just now, he had merely been teasing Little Meng, after all. They had spent more than a month together.

“Li Zhiyuan, I will submit your merit report,” Du Haoxuan said with a slight nod.

Though he despised the man, he had to admit to his terrifying scientific ability. His routine was disciplined to the point of resembling a machine’s; once a goal was confirmed, he never let himself be distracted. In the field of research, he was like a drill bit that always found the correct direction.

At the same time, the study of psychic phenomena should end here as well. All the necessary experiments had already been done; to go further would require deeper supernatural knowledge.

“Honestly, I’d rather you report this merit to the major so he can reduce my sentence—say, by allowing me to end things myself,” Li Zhiyuan said, removing his protective suit and putting his glasses back on.

Expressionless, Du Haoxuan replied, “I do not have the authority to contact Major Qin Le directly.”

Li Zhiyuan smiled and said no more. Then, as if something had just come to mind, he said, “By the way, Doctor Du Haoxuan, there’s one thing I forgot to mention. I seem to have stepped into the supernatural.”

“Then put it in your report la—” Du Haoxuan stopped mid-sentence and suddenly looked up at him.

“I remember you never took an Enlightenment Pill.”

“I went to the New World,” Li Zhiyuan said, his tone still gentle. He raised his right hand, and a cluster of white mist appeared in his palm.

“At first I thought I’d gone mad from hundreds of psychic shocks and had lost my mind. But it turns out I wasn’t crazy.”

In the center of the base, beside the fighters’ barracks, stood a vast greenhouse.

In the rich black soil grew plants unique to this world: the Giant Vine, which grew with astonishing speed; the Hemostatic Herb, capable of stopping bleeding almost at once; the Detox Herb, which sped up the body’s metabolism and helped purge poison; Bloodflower Insects; Enlightenment Flowers...

For Xuanlu, a world said to be overflowing with useful plants, this place was nothing short of a treasure vault. They were simply too miraculous, utterly overturning the principles of modern biology.

Take the Detox Herb, for instance. According to a formula purchased from the Adventurers’ Guild and combined with several auxiliary herbs, once pounded into a paste and consumed, it could accelerate metabolism by more than a hundredfold. Through this heightened metabolism, toxins could be expelled rapidly from the body, curing the vast majority of poisons.

According to clinical trials on civilians within the base, carried out voluntarily, its drawbacks were that during use one had to keep drinking water, the skin would break into heavy sweating, and elimination would be constant. Its effective duration was about three hours.

At the same time, this abnormal metabolic state placed a tremendous burden on the body. A healthy adult man would be left weak for three to five days, and it was not recommended for children or the elderly.

The Hemostatic Herb was widespread throughout this world, growing in almost every forest. The Hunter’s Guild was its largest consumer. For the people of this world, its only function was to stop bleeding, and even then only to a limited extent.

But for Xuanlu, its use was not that simple. It could save patients whose metabolism had been impaired by certain diseases.

If the Detox Herb still lay within the bounds of understanding, the next two were entirely beyond the reach of modern science.

The Bloodflower Insect, resembling a winter worm and summer grass, and the Enlightenment Flower, the chief ingredient in the Enlightenment Pill.

The Bloodflower Insect could be processed into a liquid by special methods. Once drunk, it caused certain changes in the body, mainly affecting platelets. It could make blood coagulate into crystal-like structures, thereby sealing even fatal wounds.

The Enlightenment Flower, with the aid of other medicinal ingredients, could be refined into the Enlightenment Pill, a necessity for entering the supernatural. It had both powerful sedative effects and the properties of a stimulant.

One by one, researchers in the biological field wandered among these plants, examining roots, stems, and leaves with painstaking care.

“Dense planting, five-meter spacing, first batch of Enlightenment Flowers all withered.”

“Dense planting, ten-meter spacing, second batch of Enlightenment Flower samples show wrinkles in roots, stems, and leaves, with signs of withering.”

“Separated planting, one hundred meters apart, third batch of Enlightenment Flowers: all normal.”

The researchers gathered data as they would in daily work, the process so monotonous it made one want to yawn.

“The samples are down to almost nothing. Let’s pause the research and focus on large-scale cultivation first. The major needs a great many Enlightenment Pills.”

“Hasn’t the major already stepped into the supernatural?”

“Research from a few days ago found that taking Enlightenment Pills can speed up the process of entering the supernatural, though the effect is rather slight.”

“Huh? If the effect is so weak, why produce them in large quantities? This stuff is extremely scarce right now. Even a small pill costs more than ten thousand credits to make.”

The Enlightenment Flower was the key to entering the supernatural. At least for the vast majority of humans, one had to take medicine to awaken spiritual power; not everyone was a genius who awakened on their own. Thus Xuanlu classified the Enlightenment Flower as a national strategic resource and immediately began studying it, attempting cultivation.

“The higher-ups are probably aiming for scale. And not just enough for the major—they also want several fighters to take it first as a reference, to see whether large doses have any harmful effects. As for money and the like, that doesn’t matter at all.”

In Dayna City, the castle of Count Dayna welcomed several special guests that day.

In the reception room, opposite Count Dayna, sat two blond middle-aged men dressed in tailcoats, their bearing neither haughty nor overly formal, but elegant and appropriate.