"Centrifuge ready! Commencing joint operation..."
Leilin closed his eyes and sent out thread-like strands of black energy from his brow, connecting them to the various instruments throughout the laboratory.
Click! Click!
After a flash of light, every instrument previously arranged in the laboratory hummed to life, gauges and dials beginning to display digits and flickering needles.
Through his threads of spiritual power, Leilin began operating them with pure mental force, conducting a delicate dissociation experiment...
Two hours later, Leilin looked at a half-finished product on the workbench and nodded.
Resting on it was, unmistakably, a slab of pink flesh.
This was the fossil from before, which Leilin had fully revitalised, extracting every trace of the dark-green eyes from within.
The eyes of the Thousand-Eyed Starfish all contained highly troublesome toxins that had to be separated out completely.
The Thousand-Eyed Starfish now appeared to have recovered to its former state — the tender pink flesh was covered in a layer of watery lustre, as though one could wring moisture from it simply by squeezing.
"Good! The separation was a success! Now for the final step!"
Leilin picked up the remaining half-vial of high-activity potion from the table — a grey-black liquid — and poured every last drop onto the pink flesh.
Sizzle! Sizzle!
The instant the grey-black potion touched the flesh, a thick plume of white steam erupted. Within that vapour, the pink flesh shrank at a pace visible to the naked eye, its surface withering and charring to black.
Leilin, expression unchanged, used up every drop of the potion, then intoned an ancient incantation!
"Wuu... wuu... wuu..." The incantation carried a primitive, archaic tone steeped in an aura of boundless antiquity. It sounded something like a multitude of conch shells being blown in unison, as wave after wave of blue energy surged outward like ocean tide, engulfing the Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh on the workbench...
When the blue radiance finally dissipated, all that remained on the surface of the workbench was an object the size of a longan fruit.
Its surface was grey, etched with faint striations of muscle tissue — it looked like a piece of poorly preserved salted meat.
A faintly singed aroma began to drift from the "meat," spreading through the air.
"Gulp!"
Yet the moment Leilin caught that scent, he swallowed involuntarily. From the depths of his being surged an overwhelming craving!
"Eat it! Eat it!"
"Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!"
The craving seemed to issue from every single cell in his body, immense and impossible to resist, with the area around his heart pounding with the fiercest intensity of all.
Leilin felt every blood vessel in his body cheering and throbbing, driving him to devour the flesh on the workbench!
"Heh... heh heh... a primal desire, is it? And you think that can control me??"
Leilin's eyes flushed faintly red, and even his hands trembled slightly.
But he did not immediately eat the Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh. Instead, he activated his Chip to run a full series of compositional and property analyses, recording every piece of data in meticulous detail.
The flesh in his hand radiated an overwhelming seductive pull throughout the entire experiment. Although Leilin's body shook, the expression on his face remained utterly unmoved — as severe and cold as a glacier that had stood for a thousand years.
In his previous life, he had forged a willpower of extraordinary resilience. No matter how fierce or deadly the temptation, he could always maintain inner tranquillity and composure.
"Specific composition recorded! Saved to category: Item — Ancient Organism — Thousand-Eyed Starfish!" The Chip's confirmation came through.
Only after all the data streams had finished did Leilin toss the longan-sized morsel into his mouth.
BOOM!
It was like a bomb detonating — his entire body went numb with electric shock. It was like a teetotaller who had gone years without a drop finally tasting fine wine again. It was like a traveller in the desert, dying of thirst, at last drinking from a spring so sweet the cold seeped into his very bones!
Leilin felt his body gently floating upward, as though he were lying atop a cushion of white clouds, with every cell throughout his body erupting in jubilation.
An extraordinarily sweet and delicious sensation spread from Leilin's mouth, sliding down his throat in a continuous, blissful stream.
The Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh first reached his stomach, where a flood of gastric juices surged forward, digesting it completely in mere seconds.
Warm currents, like those of a hot spring, began permeating every part of Leilin's body. The area around his heart, like a man on the verge of dying of thirst, greedily absorbed this flow of heat.
Leilin quietly closed his eyes. Right now he felt as though he were entirely naked, drifting at ease along the gentle currents of a warm, vast river.
A single drop of moisture suddenly traced a path across his cheek — the flavour was so exquisitely delicious that it stimulated his taste buds to their absolute limit, bringing tears to his eyes without his volition.
With a constitution that far exceeded that of an ordinary person, this was essentially impossible under normal circumstances — yet the Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh had achieved it!
"This taste! It could probably make someone addicted!" Leilin let out a sigh of deep satisfaction.
The process of consuming the Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh was simply far too pleasurable. That intense dual stimulation of mind and body would absolutely addict any normal person!
But Leilin was a
At that moment, the Chip's mechanical voice rang out.
"Alert! Host has ingested a large quantity of Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh essence. Judging it to be a beneficial component for the Host. Commencing absorption..."
In an instant, Leilin staggered back two steps. He could feel his body's rate of absorption stepping up to an entirely new level — particularly around his heart, which had essentially transformed into a black hole, ceaselessly drawing in the essence of the Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh.
"Alert: Host absorption of Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh — cardiac modification progress rising sharply..."
The Chip began scrolling data frantically before Leilin's eyes. Then he watched as the number representing his heart modification progress on his status panel soared like a rocket.
70%... 75%... 80%... 85%... 90%!!!
The progress figures climbed like a launch sequence, pausing briefly at 90% before a fresh wave of heat burst forth and the number shattered past 90%, landing at 91%! Then it kept climbing!
97%... 98%... 99%... 100%!!!
The moment the cardiac modification progress hit 100%, Leilin's head went blank, as though struck dead-on by a massive iron hammer!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
His heart seemed to pause for a beat, then was completely enveloped in a ring of deep crimson-purple light.
Immediately after, his heart resumed beating with tremendous force!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The power was so immense that his heartbeat could be heard clearly from outside his body!
Wave after wave of blood, tinged with flecks of purple-red, surged forth ceaselessly from his heart, pumping through his arteries to every extremity.
The purple-red blood carried a trace of cold, icy sensation that stood in stark contrast to the warm currents of the Thousand-Eyed Starfish flesh.
Leilin experienced a sensation of extremes — fire and ice cycling through nine heavens. After several minutes the warmth dissipated, and his entire body settled into a refreshing, cool clarity. It was profoundly comfortable.
"Alert: Host cardiac modification complete! Physical attributes rising across the board. Beginning recompilation of statistics!"
The Chip's voice continued, and Leilin watched as his status panel refreshed once more.
"Leilin Farell — Warlock, First Rank — Bloodline: Coromonos Giant Serpent — Strength: 21.1 — Agility: 14.4 — Constitution: 27.9 — Spiritual Power: 85.6 — Mana: 85 (Mana synchronously determined by Spiritual Power) — Spiritual Elementalisation Progress: 99%."
In that instant, an overwhelming surge of power radiated through every limb and bone in Leilin's body.
"With the cardiac modification complete, it means the fusion between me and the Coromonos Giant Serpant's bloodline has reached the deepest possible level. From now on, the bloodline entirely replaces my own! Even if I sire offspring in the future, they will automatically inherit this Warlock bloodline!"
Leilin seemed to sigh as he gazed once more at his status panel.
"Strength and Agility haven't increased much, but Constitution received a massive boost. That makes sense — the body is the vessel of the mind. When Spiritual Power rises, a more powerful physical frame is necessarily required to support it!"
In Leilin's view, the body was like a cup and Spiritual Power was the water within it. The larger the cup, the more water of spiritual power it could hold. Conversely, no matter how abundant the water, if the cup was too small it would be useless — the cup might even shatter under the pressure.
For this reason, many formal Wizards employed various methods to fortify their physiques in order to accommodate their formidable spiritual power.
However, what truly shocked Leilin was the increase in his Spiritual Power and Elementalisation progress.
"Spiritual Power has actually reached 85.6, and Spiritual Elementalisation is even more terrifying — it shot straight to 99%! Even ancient elemental organisms probably topped out around this level... At this degree, I could attempt to advance to Second-rank Warlock!"
Leilin let out a sigh of satisfaction.
The conditions for a Warlock's advancement were largely the same as those for a Wizard, with one additional requirement — bloodline.
Leilin's current bloodline was drawn directly from the ancient Coromonos Giant Serpent, so that posed no issue whatsoever. The conditions for a First-rank Wizard to advance were a Spiritual Power of at least 80, combined with an Elementalisation progress of no less than 80%.
These were the most fundamental prerequisites for advancing to Second-rank.
Many Wizards managed to meet the Spiritual Power requirement, but they remained stuck at the threshold of Spiritual Elementalisation, never able to push through.
Then there were the ambitious ones like Xishan and Tigaite, who met the advancement criteria yet deliberately held back, wanting to push their Elementalisation progress above 90% in order to reap greater benefits and clear the way for the future!
And now Leilin not only exceeded the baseline requirement in Spiritual Power — his Elementalisation progress had reached a staggering 99%!
Aside from those ancient elemental organisms composed entirely of elemental particles, nothing surpassed this.
Leilin was, after all, a bloodline-based being whose body was not composed of elemental particles. Reaching 99% was the absolute limit of what was possible.
He understood this clearly and did not harbour any unrealistic hope of pushing it further.
"Thanks to the bloodline enhancement, my physical attributes already far surpassed those of an ordinary Wizard. And now my Elementalisation has reached 99%! There is not a single First-rank Wizard on the entire South Coast whose foundation is more solid than mine..."
Leilin had a very clear picture of where he stood.