Chapter 600: Traces of Dreams Left in the Expanding Realm
“Wow~ Such pure energy extracted from high-purity crystals, do such crystals really exist?”
At a spot marked outside the city of Ninglan New City, close to the nearest mine.
Two teaching assistants who had come here together looked at the area of light blue crystal blocks and marveled.
Even with a terrifying wave of energy radiation coming toward them, they cast protection spells and charged right in.
“What’s the big deal, let’s get to work.”
“If you don’t understand alchemy, you wouldn’t know about the energy crystal blocks we need for alchemy. Those are carriers of extraordinary energy made from natural white crystals, but this, on its own, is extraordinary energy! Just how terrifying must the energy density be for extraordinary crystals to form in a natural environment…” the young girl exclaimed.
“I don’t have time to listen to your musings.” The indifferent girl waved her hand, burning away the surrounding obstructive plants, then casually said.
As they got closer to the crystal mine, the surrounding plants twisted and deformed, probably because they were absorbing extraordinary energy and mutating in some way.
“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t use fire! We haven’t finished testing the energy properties of this crystal mine yet. Using explosive fire elements makes it seem like you want us to d*e! If a chain explosion happens, we’ll be finished!” Seeing her companion use magic carelessly right away left the other girl speechless.
“Tch, it’s not that serious. If we’re going to test it, let’s do it quickly. Don’t waste time.”
“How did I end up teaming up with you? Can’t you have a bit of common sense?” the young girl muttered as she started taking out a series of equipment, then began to collect samples.
After a series of complex operations, she looked at the recorded information, then compared it with her completely memorized reference list, and finally drew a conclusion.
“What terrifying purity, it’s almost reaching the theoretical limit of the laboratory…”
“Just give me the results, what should we pay attention to?”
“This is a composite element crystal mine, the main extraordinary element is water. Consider yourself lucky, the fire element here is negligible.”
“Since the main element is water, how could there still be fire elements?”
“It’s the water-fire element, not water and fire! The material layer and the elemental energy layer are different, you know! The stable state of the water-fire element coexists! But once the balance is disturbed, element conflicts occur. Anyone who has dealt with energy alchemy knows this basic knowledge.”
“Why are you yelling at me? I’ve never dealt with alchemy; I’m never touching that hair-loss-inducing stuff in my life.”
“Suit yourself. If you want to be a spell cannon for the rest of your life, no one will stop you.” The young girl said helplessly, “Let’s go over the mining rules; don’t use your fire element shaping spells. Try to use water element shaping spells for water cutting, or use professional alchemy equipment designed for water cutting instead.”
“Water cutting? That sounds troublesome. What about you?”
“I’m planning to take more samples to see the distribution of elemental energy in this crystal mine area. With such a large area, you can’t expect every spot to have a uniform element, right? You’d better do water cutting within this range, and don’t mess with the areas I haven’t marked for our safety.”
“Got it, got it, sigh, seriously…” The girl extended her hand, and a water ball appeared in her palm, glancing at the crystal cluster beside her, eager to try.
Meanwhile, the other girl proficient in alchemy packed up her things and eagerly moved to another spot.
For an alchemist, this place was simply paradise!
With so much laboratory-level pure extraordinary energy, she could hardly imagine!
So she immediately began to conduct random sampling throughout the entire area, while the other girl started doing manual labor.
This crystal mine was destined to be unsuitable for large-scale magical collection; the uneven energy density and the uneven distribution of elemental energy would prevent large-scale repeated operations, requiring specialized guidance for mining.
If a reckless rookie just came in to start digging, they’d probably not even know how they died.
If the protection spells were not done right, they could also harm the body.
After all, this issue was discussed during the teaching assistant meeting; one needed to use resonance energy protection spells to absorb the corresponding extraordinary radiation.
This meant that lower-grade students weren’t even qualified for hard labor like mining.
They were still very weak; their mental power wasn’t enough to interfere with magic power, and naturally, they couldn’t adjust energy properties on their own.
At that moment, the teaching assistant adept in alchemy completed testing and analysis in a certain area, then focused her gaze on the central region.
The central area was definitely the core of this crystal mine, and in her mind, it was also a crystal mine that approached theoretical purity.
And indeed, there stood a massive crystal in the center, like a blooming flower, with surrounding crystal clusters radiating outward.
This crystal particularly caught her eye.
“Hmm? What’s this…” She looked at a strange “impurity” in the center, curious, as her instincts told her it didn’t seem like an ordinary impurity.
She carefully leaned over the surface of the crystal, observing a fist-sized foreign object, and eventually recalled what Teacher Lina had shown them back then.
“This is… a soul crystal? Hey! Don’t mine anymore, come here! I found a soul crystal!”
“What?!” Hearing her companion’s call, the girl who was still doing water cutting immediately stopped her work, “Are you sure it’s a soul crystal?”
After all, the value of a soul crystal far exceeds that of these extraordinary energy crystal blocks, and it could provide substantial improvements, enhancing a person’s life level!
Although they had also asked their instructor, soul crystals could indeed elevate life levels, but they couldn’t directly brainlessly elevate a person to an extraordinary level.
Yet even so, its value was still unimaginable.
The two of them arrived in front of the giant extraordinary crystal in the center of the mine, staring at the fist-sized soul crystal inside in awe.
“Is it only this big?”
“Yeah.”
“Then should I decompose it? Or water cut it?”
“No, wait… well, fine, let’s start with water cutting, but don’t cut it out directly; at least leave a 30-centimeter margin for me to use energy alchemy techniques…”
“Is it that troublesome? Why not just cut it out directly?”
“Have you forgotten? The complete term for a soul crystal is unstable soul material condensed state crystal. If you use your rough method, do you still want this soul crystal?”
“Fine.” She huffed lightly, suppressing her current conflict; after all, interests were paramount.
Then, after significant effort, they removed the soul crystal and its surrounding energy crystal blocks, only dissolving the last energy crystal block shell wrapping the soul material afterward.
“Wait… do you feel something’s off?”
The alchemist who was dissolving the shell suddenly felt a daze and quickly asked.
“What’s off? Don’t mess this up at such a critical moment. If you’re out of it now, we’ll just have to take it back and deal with it slowly.”
“Yeah, let’s take it back… I don’t know why, but I feel a bit dazed.” The girl nodded, not rushing to continue.
“Could it be that the energy shield wasn’t adjusted properly? You can’t have your brain messed up by extraordinary energy radiation, right?”
“I’m more professional in analyzing energy properties than you are; it’s you who comes in making all sorts of nonsensical remarks…” She stood up, one hand on her forehead, her vision still slightly dazed.
“Say what you want, this time it’s your fault for dropping the ball first.” The other girl lightly huffed, then reached to put the soul crystal, along with the surrounding decomposing energy crystal blocks, into her storage equipment.
Just as she was about to store it, a pitch-black shadow emerged from the exposed soul material!
“What the hell! What is that?!”
The appearance of that thing startled her, causing the hand she had extended to retract reflexively.
And the explosion spell she instinctively wanted to release was held back because she remembered where she was; she didn’t want to d*e.
Immediately afterward, both of them saw the black, formless creature burrow into the soul crystal, like a worm draining the soul material!
“d*mn! What dares to eat my soul crystal!”
“Don’t! Be careful!”
But before they could retaliate in anger, the black entity popped out again, its formless body passed right through both of them before vanishing, leaving the two of them collapsing to the ground uncontrollably.
As they fell, the space where the soul material was located exploded outward with some force, spreading like a drop of ink, staining the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, the original soul crystal gradually diminished, as if an invisible mouth was devouring it entirely.
“What on earth is happening?”
At this moment, both bodies were lying on the ground, yet two voices continued to converse.
“This… this is my body! What’s going on? Am I dead? No way!!”
As the space expanded to engulf the entire mine, two transparent “bodies” appeared over their physical forms. They stood atop their own bodies, looking down at “themselves” lying on the ground.
“This… I remember now, this is probably that.”
“What exactly is it? Hurry up and say!”
“Dream space! We’ve been pulled into dream space! Haven’t you ever used the Primordial Dream Pod? Doesn’t this state feel just like entering a dream?” The girl forced herself to calm down, analyzing the current situation.
“How could that be? But we didn’t enter the dream pod!”
“It must be that monster from just now…” The girl squatted down, looking at the previous soul crystal, which was now empty, surrounded by just the outer shell of energy crystal blocks. “It consumes soul material… and can drag consciousness into a dream. This is it! I read about it in a book, dream creatures! No… this has happened before! Those new students initially experienced the sleep curse: it’s a nightmare… we’ve encountered a nightmare.”
“What nightmare or whatever, what do we do now?”
“Cool it…”
“So we just have no way out? Back then, those new students had a way out when they were trapped; why can’t we just wait to d*e?”
“Among those new students was Yang Yuelan; you must know her, right?”
“Tsk… she can figure something out as a new student, can’t we?”
“Of course, there’s a way, but we just don’t know it… we need to do something, or else we’ll just wait to d*e… d*e, yes! This is a dream! If we d*e in the dream, our consciousness might return to our body!”
“What if our consciousness really dies?!”
“Then we wait for someone to find our bodies and bring us back for revival.”
“d*mn! Why, we just wanted to gather some materials, and we encounter something like this!” The spell cannon girl said indignantly.
“This dream space… is quite different from the Primordial Dream we used; we can still see reality. The dream is expanding… perhaps once the secret realm spreads large enough, we might encounter other people.”
“Are we just supposed to wait for others to rescue us? We are teaching assistants!”
“Well, then calm down and help me test some things; it’s just a dream, right? Are you going to back down when you encounter difficulties?”
“Who’s backing down? What should we test? Hurry up and say; I don’t want my body lying on the ground using undying to resist this extraordinary energy radiation!”
……
At the Wanlian Main Network Tree.
After a long process of information integration, I have completed data sharing within the Wanlian Main Network Tree through the Great Knowledge Tree.
However, the current situation of the Wanlian Main Network Tree… is hard to describe. It is in a robust growth phase, experiencing a second spring.
But having lost the order established by humans, the Plant Network can hardly be structured through this form of Wanlian Main Network Tree.
To put it simply, it’s like a civilization’s people cultivated the Wanlian Main Network Tree to be an arts student, but now, having fallen out of control, it chooses to be an athlete. Now asking it to pick up a paintbrush again, it can no longer follow the old path of an art student.
However, it must be said that the essence of the Wanlian Main Network Tree has made a leap in growth.
If structured under the current framework, it could provide a foundation of order far more terrifying than the previous form of constructing the Plant Network, but… it will also take me more time.
Looking at this big tree… another idea flashed through my mind!
Since we cannot rebuild the Plant Network system, let’s… apply the system of my Great Knowledge Tree!
Isn’t that exactly what I was thinking earlier—incorporating the Wanlian Main Network Tree into the system of my Great Knowledge Tree?
Moreover, this tree exists as a physical entity, making it well-suited for the experiments I’m currently conducting.
Simulating the linking relationship between the Great Knowledge Tree and the Great Knowledge Seed, reconstructing the Plant Network again through the Wanlian Main Network Tree.
This newly constructed “Plant Network” merely inherits the previous generation’s name, but its structure and foundation are already completely different.
Then, I sighed and dissolved the primitive rune. Next, I would expand the field and attempt to assimilate and transform the Wanlian Main Network Tree using the order of Knowledge Power.
After that, I looked down at the people; although they had hidden far away, they were still watching my actions.
“You might want to stay back a bit; I’m about to make a big move. If it encompasses you, don’t blame me for not warning you. You only have half an hour.”
I stood in the air, glancing at the gaze still fixed on me, and then spoke.
My voice, enhanced by magic, became remarkably penetrating, enough for everyone present to hear. As for why I gave a half-hour warning, it was naturally because there were still injured individuals and pregnant people who couldn’t move.
This was my final mercy for them.
If my plan goes smoothly and succeeds, I’ll be in a good mood… I wouldn’t mind helping these people fully perfect this shelter, allowing them to settle down completely at the Wanlian Main Network Tree.
After all, the Wanlian Main Network Tree also requires guardianship, and there’s no better form of protection than having people settle here, so I wouldn’t mind lending them a hand, or even providing them with powerful weapons and means.
