Chapter 132: Spiritual Energy (1)
Upon pa.s.sing through the flower garden, Su Chen found himself in a stone room.
He entered the stone room and found that it was filled with the fragrance of a variety of medicinal herbs.
Su Chen immediately knew that this was the Divine Shrine’s alchemy building.
The Divine Shrine’s alchemists were a bit different from human alchemists —- the way they refined medicine was by gathering the materials, then using the most primitive way to break them down into a medicinal powder, which they used to achieve the desired effect.
This was a very low-level way of using medicines. Humans could basically overlook this technique.
However, this didn’t mean that there was nothing to be gained from the Divine Shrine’s alchemical area. They had been making medicine for tens of thousands of years, and they had developed procedures to preserve the medicinal properties of these herbs, and they were unparalleled in their preservation processes and crude mixture methods.
Su Chen had drooled over the Divine Shrine’s method of concocting medicine for a while, but he had never been able to obtain it himself; even having Reina as a hostage wasn’t good enough.
Now, however, he could finally take the Divine Shrine’s secrets openly.
The Divine Shrine’s techniques for concocting medicine were all recorded in bone books. These books were created using special types of bones, each sheet as thin as a cicada’s wing. Words written on this book would last for a long time without disappearing.
Within the medicinal hall, there were hundreds if not thousands of books chock-full of information. Su Chen didn’t stand on courtesy and stuffed them into his Origin Ring without even looking them over - after giving the Heavenly Might Battalion all of his rations, his Origin Rings were much emptier.
After emptying out the medicinal hall, Su Chen walked in another direction without stopping.
Near the right side of the stone room was a large hall made out of white bone.
Upon entering the hall, the first thing he saw was a young Ferocious Race individual. He seemed like he was an Ancestor candidate, and he was dressed in a white robe. Upon seeing Su Chen appear, he gritted his teeth and charged at him.
Su Chen didn’t waste time talking. He placed his hand on the youth’s head and twisted, snapping the youth’s neck.
Upon killing that youth, Su Chen stepped into the white bone hall. He found piles of skulls everywhere, most of them human but a few of the Ferocious Race as well. Apart from skulls, there were also humeruses, collarbones, femurs, etc.These bones seemed to be carelessly arranged, but in actuality they were ordered carefully, split up by type.
Su Chen had learned from Reina that different kinds of bones had different uses.
For instance, skulls could be used to store souls and practice witchcraft, humeruses and femurs were used for Bone Divining, collarbones were used for medicinal purposes, etc. - there was a mult.i.tude of ways to use them.
Su Chen wasn’t interested in the piles of bones, but there was a large wall at the back of the white bone hall that was filled with mysterious inscriptions.
These inscriptions were the most important component of the Divine Shrine’s bone refining and divination process.
The Ferocious Race had over a thousand tribes, each one with their own unique way of divining bones. Most of them were similar, but a few of them were unique to every tribe.
The common ones Su Chen had obtained from Reina, but the ones from the individual tribes could only be obtained by visiting each tribe’s Divine Shrine.
Thankfully, there weren’t too many of them here. Su Chen was able to identify the s.h.i.+vering Chill Tribe’s unique incantations with a quick glance and memorized them.
After doing this, Su Chen went to the next location.
This place was a large pit, which was filled with tons of corpses.
There were human corpses, Ferocious Race corpses, and even Demonic Beast corpses.
The most shocking thing was that, above this pit, a somewhat transparent image was floating.
A Spirit Race individual!
This was obviously a Spirit Race individual, who had been imprisoned above the pit via a unique method. It wasn’t clear what method was being used to make it impossible for the Spirit Race individual to escape. All it could do was flicker like an undying flame above the pit.
When he saw this strange scene, Su Chen slowed his movements.
He carefully walked closer, finally stopping when he was around thirty feet away from the pit of corpses.”
“A Spirit Race individual was imprisoned in the Divine Shrine? That’s quite a rare sight,” Su Chen said slowly.
“Save...... me......” the Spirit Race individual cried out bitterly, reaching out its crystalline hands towards Su Chen.
“Sorry. I’ve only killed Spirit Race individuals before, but I have never saved them.”
“I can...... give you what you want......”
“Then you need to first know what I want.”
“Power......”
“Wrong answer,” Su Chen laughed coldly.
He glanced at the surrounding setup, as well as the countless inscriptions sealing the Spirit Race individual inside. Many of the questions he had were being answered at this moment.
“An a.s.similation ceremony? They’re currently extracting your consciousness energy,” Su Chen muttered.
This Spirit Race individual was obviously being used as a ceremonial sacrifice. Its powerful consciousness was exactly what the Ferocious Race needed; as for the corpses in the pit, their purpose was to supply the Spirit Race individual and serve as its food so it wouldn’t die.
In some sense, this Spirit Race individual was like a consciousness energy converter. It constantly extracted the consciousnesses of the corpses in the pit before pa.s.sing the energy contained along.
What ceremony would be important enough for the Ferocious Race to kill so many lifeforms in order to complete it?
Even Su Chen didn’t know the answer, but his curiosity was piqued.
“Knowledge, limitless knowledge!” the Spirit Race individual began to yell again.
“You don’t have unlimited knowledge yourself, but you want to talk about giving me knowledge?” Su Chen shook his head.
“But I have enough!” the Spirit Race individual yelled as he grasped onto this last ray of hope.
That was indeed true. All Spirit Race individuals were scholars and well-learned. Because their life span was unlimited, and they were proficient in performing experiments, each Spirit Race individual was like a rich library.
“That does sound pretty good. However, the question is: how will I control you?”
“I can open up my consciousness defenses and allow you to brand my soul.”
Su Chen replied, “That’s pretty good, but unfortunately I don’t know how to do it.’
The Spirit Race individual hurriedly said, “I can teach you. Open up your mind, and I can pa.s.s along that information to you. There’s no way of faking this kind of transmission; you’ll understand once you see it.”
“Is that so?” Su Chen said, playing along.
“Believe me, I just want to get out of this suffering. Even being your slave is better than enduring this torment!” the Spirit Race individual began to yell. “Having a slave like me will not be of any detriment to you.”
“Fine, I’ll give it a shot. But don’t try anything funny,” Su Chen replied.
“Grab my hand!” the Spirit Race individual yelled.
Su Chen stepped forwards and grabbed his hand. The two of them connected, and the Spirit Race individual’s body began to glow brilliantly.
“Relax your will. I will impart all of the knowledge I have regarding soul branding to you,” the Spirit Race said calmly.
Su Chen closed his eyes and opened his mind.
As his sea of knowledge began to expand, a powerful will began to charge in.
“Hahahaha, you idiot! Hand this body over to me!” the Spirit Race individual’s howl reverberated in Su Chen’s mind.
“So you did just want to use this opportunity to take over my body, right?” Su Chen laughed coldly.
“That’s right!” The Spirit Race individual laughed loudly. “Even though I need to give up my undying spirit body for this, it’s better than being your slave. Don’t worry, I will preserve your ident.i.ty in the future, and I will even help you achieve even greater fame!”
“Thank you, but I don’t need you to do that for me,” Su Chen said coolly. “You’re just a Spirit Race whose consciousness power is around 2500 units, and you have been tormented for so long. I want to see how exactly you’re planning on stealing my body!”
As he spoke, Su Chen’s eyes began to glow with a strange light.