pjbooks Chapter 87 [Alchemy in a Cage]
Chapter 87 [Alchemy in a Cage]
This discovery helped them see the path ahead more clearly.
Although the power of the Seed of Chaos is immense, it is extremely unstable.
Li Yao is the only one who can control it.
But real problems soon confronted them.
"Ahem." Chen Kai pointed to the large hole corroded in the wall, "Our lab is leaking air."
Chen Kaiyan, perhaps in a voice only he and a few others could hear, warned, "The guards outside are making a ruckus with their footsteps."
The tribal warriors outside the hut had clearly noticed the change, which made them very uncomfortable.
"Block it!" Wang Xuan suggested.
"What should we use to plug it? The wood has already rotted away." Chen Kai frowned.
"Use it!" Ai Jia and Wang Xuan said in unison, both looking at the floating Seed of Chaos.
Since it was the one that broke it, it should be the one to fix it.
"Let's change the concept," Ai Jia calmly instructed. "We can no longer use concepts like repair or growth."
She looked at Wang Xuan.
"I need a stable, unambiguous result," Wang Xuan thought, his mind racing.
"Complete," he blurted out. "Restore this wall to its original, intact state!"
"Great idea!" Ai Jia's eyes lit up.
"Li Yao, get ready."
Li Yao nodded vigorously. She was no longer afraid; instead, she was curious about how far she could go.
Ai Jia grasped the crystal and conveyed the complete concept that Wang Xuan had explained.
Li Yao then placed her hands on the crystal, covering it with her desire for peace.
hum-
The Seed of Chaos lit up once more.
This time, the light was no longer violent; under Li Yao's will, it became docile, and the stream of light flowed out to cover the large hole in the wall.
The hole vanished into thin air, and the wall remained intact.
"It's done!" Wang Xuan was about to speak.
"Wait!" Chen Kai noticed something and his expression turned serious.
He walked up to the wall and gently knocked on it.
The sensation coming from my fingertips was strange; it wasn't wood, nor anything else.
It looks like a wall, but it's not the original wall anymore.
Just then, a terrified whisper came from outside the door, spoken in the tribal language by the guards.
"It's gone... that hole... it's disappeared..."
"Ancestral spirits above, what kind of witchcraft is this... stay away!"
The footsteps outside didn't get any closer; instead, they startled the person and made them take a dozen steps back.
The four people in the shed looked at each other, feeling both amused and exasperated.
The crisis was thus resolved.
Their roles as the four people were also determined during this collaboration.
Wang Xuan was responsible for providing bold ideas and was the source of the concepts.
Ai Jia is meticulous and is responsible for defining the logic and controlling the process.
Chen Kai remained calm and composed, and was responsible for execution and evaluation of the results.
Li Yao looked at her hand, then at the crystal that had become docile under her will.
She is the only one who can harness this insane power.
"Continue the experiment." Aija pushed up her glasses, completely absorbed in the research. "We must secure our own survival before Kahn loses patience."
"Agreed." Chen Kai placed a stone spear in front of everyone. "Theory must be put into practice; let it become a weapon."
"Let's start with something simple, something sharp," Wang Xuan suggested.
Ai Jia nodded.
The concept was simple and the risk was low, so she felt she didn't need Li Yao's help.
She held the crystal, aimed it at the tip of the stone spear, and transmitted the concept to it.
The spearhead's shape remained largely unchanged.
But Chen Kai picked up the stone spear and gently scratched it across the strange wall, leaving a smooth cut.
"This..." Chen Kai was prepared, but he was still surprised by the effect.
This directly endows the stone spear with the ability to cut through anything.
"Again! Weightlessness! Make its weight disappear!" Wang Xuan had another idea.
Ai Jia did as instructed.
The stone spear in Chen Kai's hand suddenly felt lighter, and he almost dropped it.
The heavy spear was now as light as a feather.
"Terrifying," Chen Kai commented. "An ordinary soldier wielding this weapon could increase their stamina and attack speed by more than tenfold."
"Next! Track!" Wang Xuan pointed to a crawling beetle in the corner. "Make the spearhead automatically point at that beetle!"
Aija began to give this concept a more complex meaning.
The crystal became much brighter.
Chen Kai could feel the tip of the stone spear being forcibly pulled, fixing the moving beetle in place.
No matter how he twisted his wrist, the spear tip stubbornly remained pointed at the target.
"With this, even a blind man can hit the bullseye every time!" Wang Xuan exclaimed happily, as he pondered all sorts of new and crazy ideas.
"That's enough," Ai Jia interrupted him.
"We've already tried assigning a single concept; now let's try a complex concept."
"This time, we need a controlled attack test."
Aijia's gaze fell on the extinguished fire in the center of the room.
She picked out a black stone the size of a fist from among them.
"The target is it." Aija placed the stone on the ground. "But the attack can't be physical. It has to be long-range, invisible, and deadly."
Wang Xuan realized what she meant: "You mean... you want to create an attack out of thin air?"
"Yes." Ai Jia nodded, "An attack that can bypass defenses and strike the core directly."
"Internal collapse," Wang Xuan thought for a moment and offered a solution.
"Inside the stone, define a point smaller than a dust particle; then, make this point exert an attractive force, drawing all the material of the stone towards it, causing it to collapse."
Chen Kai and Li Yao didn't quite understand, but they knew the idea was terrifying.
"The risk is very high," Aija said. "The concept definition must be very precise, otherwise the target of the collapse may not be the rocks, but ourselves, or even this shed."
"Li Yao," Ai Jia looked at her, "this time I need your full attention."
Li Yao nodded vigorously, her face tense, completely focused.
The experiment begins.
Aija raised the Seed of Chaos.
Wang Xuan closed his eyes and began to visualize the process in his mind.
Aija transmitted this through the crystal.
The crystal's light turned as black as ink, radiating a sense of devouring everything.
"Keep it steady!" Ai Jia whispered.
Before that power went out of control, Li Yao poured all her will into it.
The two are locked in combat within the crystal.
In the end, Li Yao forcibly controlled that power.
The result was that nothing happened.
"Failed?" Wang Xuan opened his eyes, somewhat puzzled.
Chen Kai frowned, completely baffled.
Only Li Yao was pale, covered in sweat, and in very poor condition.
Wang Xuan stepped forward to examine it, but unexpectedly, with a "poof," the hard stone collapsed into a small clump of very fine black powder.
The wind blew in, the powder scattered, as if it had never existed.
Wang Xuan and Chen Kai felt a chill run down their spines as they looked at the empty ground.
"We...successfully." Wang Xuan's voice was hoarse.
The soldiers' previous reports also came back, and the war leader, Kahn, blocked the doorway of the shed with a blank expression.
He glanced at the four people in the room, his gaze landing on the wisp of drifting powder.
Behind him were countless soldiers, armed and looking tense.
Further away, flames soared into the sky, but Kahn ignored their petty antics.
However, this time, his words carried a hint of pleading for help that he himself was unwilling to admit.
"Something from the swamp."
"They're here."