Translator: AnubisTL
Decades passed in a blur of ceaseless research and preparations for the planar transformation.
Inside the laboratory, the lights were dimmed, leaving only the faint, eerie red glow emanating from a massive cylindrical vat of reinforced glass at its center.
Jieming stood before the vat, his brow furrowed. His fingers unconsciously ran through his disheveled hair, his eyes betraying the frustration unique to a researcher stuck in a rut, hitting a bottleneck.
The vat was filled with a viscous, crystalline liquid that resembled molten rubies. Within it, phantom shadows of energy, seemingly alive, swam and spiraled like fish. These energy phantoms radiated pure, active elemental fluctuations.
At the center of the liquid, a gaunt male wizard apprentice floated silently, his eyes closed. His body acted like a black hole, greedily absorbing the energy and the swimming "fish" from the surrounding fluid.
"How's it looking?"
Accompanied by light footsteps and a ripple in space, Viola materialized from the teleportation formation in the corner of the laboratory.
She strode to the vat and peered inside with keen interest.
Jieming didn't turn around. His gaze swept over the several precision instruments connected to the vat, their screens displaying complex streams of fluctuating data.
He nodded, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "It's going well. The aptitude enhancement process is proceeding smoothly, with no rejection reactions. Energy absorption efficiency is meeting expectations. It's estimated that after the enhancement is complete, his elemental affinity talent will be directly boosted by ten tiers."
"Wow!" Viola clapped her hands lightly, her eyes sparkling with astonishment and undisguised interest as she looked at the apprentice in the vat. "Junior, your skills are getting scarier by the day! How many years has it been? You've already developed alchemy that can even enhance aptitude? And with such powerful results!"
Jieming finally turned his head, but there was no hint of triumph on his face. Instead, he looked regretful.
He shook his head expressionlessly. "The results are acceptable, but at this stage, the technology has no practical significance."
"How can it be meaningless?" Viola clearly disagreed. She crossed her arms and retorted, "I bet that no matter how expensive the materials for this technology are, the long-established wizard families would be willing to pay an astronomical price at the critical moment of cultivating their core offspring! And those old wizards, trapped in the low tiers by their own aptitude, with their lifespan about to end and no way to break through, will bankrupt themselves to beg you for help!"
She paused, lowering her voice slightly. "You don't know—among high-tier alchemy wizards, those who can touch upon the domain of aptitude enhancement are few and far between. But every single one who possesses a similar technique, even if its effect isn't as exaggerated as yours, is dripping with wealth and treated as an honored guest by the major factions!"
Jieming shook his head again, not continuing the argument.
He knew in his heart that the key issue wasn't just the cost Viola mentioned.
The core of this aptitude enhancement technology didn't originate from the alchemy of the wizard system, but was instead a modified immortal cultivation secret technique from the Great Dao Library Pavilion that used a "nature spirit" to cleanse one's innate aptitude and enhance their potential.
The core raw materials were none other than the strange "crystal fish" he had discovered and captured in the Purgatory Sulfur Plane (Chapter 154).
After in-depth research, he confirmed that these crystal fish were not ordinary elemental creatures, but the manifestation of an extremely rare "nature spirit."
Subsequently, Jieming adapted the secret technique from the cultivation world, successfully applying it to individuals in the wizard world.
In terms of effect, it was truly heaven-defying—it could unconditionally raise a creature's elemental affinity aptitude by a full ten tiers!
It was an increase of ten tiers, not an increase to the tenth tier.
This meant that an apprentice who originally had only a fifth-tier aptitude could leap to the fifteenth tier after use!
However, the limitations of this technique were equally immense.
Beyond the purely technical issues, there were also major restrictions in its practical application.
First, it was virtually meaningless for mid- and high-rank wizards.
The saying that wizards are no longer limited by their aptitude after advancing in rank is no mere joke.
On the wizard's path, every advancement to a major realm is accompanied by a leap in life level and a qualitative change in mental power. This leap itself naturally brings about a significant boost to all aspects of one's aptitude.
If quantified with data, when a wizard apprentice advances to a formal wizard, their aptitude increases by an additional 10 levels on top of their previous base.
For a second-tier wizard, it's another 20 levels. For a third-tier wizard, another 30 levels... and so on.
Therefore, even the most exceptional tenth-tier geniuses can usually only maintain their aptitude advantage until the third or fourth-tier wizard stage.
Beyond that, the advantage brought by innate aptitude becomes negligible. Hard work, opportunity, and the depth of one's understanding of knowledge become far more important than initial aptitude.
Moreover, Jieming's technique only enhances the "elemental affinity" aptitude. Besides that, there are over ten other related aptitudes.
Thus, for mid-to-high-rank wizards, this technique is not as crucial as it might seem.
Secondly, and most fundamentally, is the issue of raw materials.
"Nature Spirits" are treasures nurtured by the plane's nature, nearly irreplaceable.
The number of such spirits born in each plane is extremely limited, and most are hidden and difficult to find.
In some respects, their value is even higher than that of the plane origin.
Factions or individuals wealthy enough to afford such a resource for aptitude enhancement typically already possess more mature, stable, and less volatile alternative techniques.
While these alternatives might not offer as dramatic a boost in aptitude, they can be combined to achieve a comprehensive improvement.
Therefore, in Jieming's view, his technique was somewhat "chicken ribs"—a niche product that was too good to discard but not good enough to be truly useful—for the very clientele who could actually afford it.
"The enhancement is complete," Jieming said, putting aside his thoughts and returning his focus to the experiment.
He manipulated the control panel. The red liquid inside the glass jar, as if imbued with life, was swiftly absorbed by the recovery system in the walls and base.
Deprived of the liquid's buoyancy, the wizard apprentice's body went limp and began to sink.
Jieming raised a hand and pointed vaguely. An invisible force caught the apprentice, who still looked dazed, as if lost in some wondrous sensation, and gently lifted him into a stable hover.
Then, with a flicker of alchemical light from his fingertips, the last remnants of red mucus on the apprentice's body instantly restructured and reshaped, transforming into a clean, neat gray wizard's robe that draped over him.
Ignoring the apprentice, who was staring at his hands in astonishment and feeling the surging elemental affinity within him, Jieming turned to Viola.
"Since you provided this qualified test subject and helped me collect the key data, I'll only charge you two hundred million military merits for this 'self-service' enhancement," he said.
Viola showed no sign of distress at the price. Instead, her smile widened. She immediately pulled out her magic net terminal and started operating it. "No problem! Military merits transferred! Thanks, junior!"
With a swift motion, she grabbed the wizard apprentice, who was still savoring his transformation, as if he were a new, fascinating toy. She waved cheerfully at Jieming and stepped through the teleportation formation, leaving the laboratory.
Jieming watched the two disappear into the pillar of light, his gaze lingering on the apprentice's irrepressible joy. He shook his head with a hint of pity.
Judging by Senior Viola's expression—as if she'd just found a priceless treasure—the "lucky" (or perhaps unlucky?) apprentice had probably just been saddled with a colossal debt that would take him centuries to pay off.
Of course, that was only if he survived long enough to pay it back on the perilous planar battlefield.
The battlefield was merciless. No matter how high the expected returns, if you died, everything reset to zero.
But all of this had nothing to do with Jieming anymore.
He hadn't unveiled this technology to benefit the masses or earn military merits—though military merits were indeed a nice byproduct.
His true goal was to further strengthen his Black Giant Legion!
Constructing the Incense Divine Path required more than just technology, energy, and a planar foundation; it also needed an indispensable element—believers, or rather, intelligent beings to form the foundation of a "society."
His Purgatory Sulfur Plane was a brutal environment, choked with sulfurous gases and raging fire elements, fundamentally uninhabitable for ordinary carbon-based life.
Of course, he could have transformed it into a habitable world through large-scale terraforming, but that would have been immensely costly and time-consuming.
Jieming had a better idea—he would settle his "cannon fodder units," the Black Giants, in the plane as a servant race.
They would become the first, and most crucial, "residents" of the Incense Divine Path!
With their inherent traits, the Black Giants were indeed perfectly suited to be "believers" of the Incense Divine Path.
First, they could not only survive the Purgatory Sulfur Plane's harsh environment but also possessed high intelligence, fully meeting the criteria for believers.
Secondly, as beings personally created by Jieming, they naturally held an immense divinity in the Black Giants' faith, eliminating the need for him to painstakingly fabricate miracles.
Furthermore, in Jieming's long-term plan, once the Incense Divine Path was established, the Black Giants' formidable strength and racial qualities would allow them to be easily transformed into Dao Soldiers.
However, the key to achieving this lay in conceptually altering their nature—shifting them from being mere "war machines" and "expendables" to beings with "sociality."
A core foundation of sociality is the ability for natural reproduction—the capacity to propagate and sustain their own race without the creator's continuous intervention.
Therefore, Jieming turned his attention to the core of the Black Giants' cultivation: the hatchery.
The hatchery's predecessor was derived from the lava giants' reproductive system.
Despite Jieming's numerous modifications—integrating the snow monster's innate talent, the energy-absorbing trait, the Five Viscera Divine Sacrifice Art, and even self-destruct modules—its most fundamental layer, the one governing "life creation and continuation," still retained the core architecture of the lava giant hatchery.
Now, Jieming's goal was to absorb the hatchery's core technology and then create a new hatchery technology.
(End of the Chapter)
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