The heavy crystal door, forged from mana crystals, groaned open under the gentle push of Melancholic Smile.
The moment the thick crystal door parted, a dense torrent of mana surged outward. Even Miao Wuyin, who was already accustomed to high-mana environments, felt her mind sharpen instantly — her thoughts became crystal clear, as though she had just woken from a deep slumber.
Beside Miao Wuyin, Yi Han and Southern City Old Dream felt a refreshing clarity unlike anything they had ever experienced, staring at the research workshop before them in disbelief.
"How can this room possibly have such an exorbitant mana density?" Yi Han's face was nothing short of incredulous.
Inside the ancient civilization's towns, special magic arrays condensed unimaginable amounts of mana — far beyond anything available in the outside world. And among all locations within a town, the intermediate meditation rooms boasted the highest mana concentration. Yet even those paled in comparison to this research workshop by a wide margin.
She couldn't understand how a mere shop could possess such an extraordinary level of mana density.
However, once they actually stepped inside the research workshop, the sight that greeted them left Yi Han and the others completely dumbfounded.
The entire research workshop was constructed not only from massive quantities of mana crystals but also incorporated large sections made of magic crystals. The room was essentially a natural mana crystal mine.
"The research workshop is a specialized facility for developing new blueprints and formulas," Melancholic Smile explained in her usual unhurried manner. "Not only is the mana here extremely dense, but there are also dedicated instruments capable of analyzing various items, enabling players to enhance and modify them. This makes it far easier to create new blueprints and formulas."
"Help players create new blueprints and formulas? How is that possible?!" Yi Han and Southern City Old Dream reacted almost instinctively, refusing to believe what they had just heard.
Any player who had lived in the Lunar God World understood just how difficult it was to improve in life professions. And the single greatest bottleneck in advancing a life profession was the creation of new blueprints and formulas.
If something could genuinely improve the chances of creating new blueprints and formulas, it would accelerate life profession advancement by an enormous margin. For life profession players, skill proficiency was relatively easy to accumulate — the truly troublesome part was creating blueprints and formulas. That required vast quantities of materials and relentless experimentation, consuming resources and money beyond imagination.
That was precisely why every major power was so meticulous when selecting which life profession players to invest in.
Even the best intermediate meditation rooms in their Dark Alliance could only clear a player's mind and allow them to craft items more efficiently. The idea of something that could actually assist in the creative process itself was beyond anything they had dared to imagine.
"I see you two are both advanced alchemists. Why don't you give it a try? Then you'll know whether what I said is true or not." Melancholic Smile showed no surprise at their disbelief. When she had first learned of the research workshop's capabilities, she had been just as skeptical.
For life profession players, a tool that could genuinely assist in creation was no less valuable than a divine-grade weapon for a combat player. Skepticism was entirely natural.
"In that case, we'll trouble you, Shopkeeper Smile."
Yi Han accepted without ceremony. In her mind, what Melancholic Smile had described was far too outlandish — surely this was nothing more than a bluff Zero Wing had concocted to strengthen their bargaining position in a potential alliance with the Dark Alliance.
The woman probably expected them to be too polite to actually test the claim. But Yi Han intended to test it all the same, so she could expose Zero Wing's lie for what it was.
Melancholic Smile then spent one thousand mana crystals to activate the workshop's instruments, and the mana density inside the room surged yet again.
"Incredible mana," Southern City Old Dream murmured, awestruck by the palpable energy surrounding them. "No wonder they were so confident. Under this level of mana, even without the claimed functions, it would still provide considerable assistance to a player's creative process."