Chapter 161: Post-Leave Application Form

Post-Leave Application Form

Post-Leave Application Form

Beyond the rock wall.

Lin Qi glanced at the storage box sitting in the corner, reached out a hand, and a force seized the box, carefully extracting it from the space.

"Indeed, it's a heritage metal plate."

After pulling out the metal plate, Lin Qi slashed his palm and pressed it against the silver-black plate; mysterious runes on the plate glowed, and a stream of information imprinted itself into his mind.

Only after more than ten seconds did Lin Qi finish absorbing all the information, his eyes filled with shock and wild joy.

"No wonder Isaak hired Red Moon Guild assassins to kill me—just this one heritage metal plate, he could never let go." Lin Qi stared at the silver-black plate in his hand, unable to suppress a sigh.

If he were in Isaak's position, he'd likely make the same decision—even at great cost, he'd reclaim this heritage metal plate.

Not for any other reason, but because this heritage metal plate was too important—so important it surpassed even the severed arm.

The severed arm's value was high only because players accidentally damaged the transparent container, causing a tiny crack—so small, yet enough to no longer fully contain the arm's psychic shockwaves.

If the transparent container were perfectly sealed, the severed arm would hold little value—or rather, no value at all to cultivators at their level, merely an ornamental object.

Because the heritage metal plate's information clearly stated the arm had existed for over a million years; even the stellar civilization that created the metal plate, using every method imaginable, had failed to inflict even a single scratch upon it, making research nearly impossible, let alone with today's Starlight City's technological level.

Yet after countless years of study, that stellar civilization wasn't entirely empty-handed.

They obtained three heritage metal plates!

More precisely, it was an entire set of secret techniques called Star Energy Construct—crafted by imitating the severed arm, it allowed one to absorb vast amounts of star energy and, at peak cultivation, theoretically enable the body to temporarily achieve one ten-thousandth of the arm's physical capability.

The complete Star Energy Construct technique was divided into three parts: Body Strengthening Secret, Mental Secret, and Energy Secret; only when all three were mastered and fused into one could one truly learn Star Energy Construct, achieving a qualitative leap in life level.

A technique capable of altering life level—just thinking about it was terrifying.

Because this went far beyond genetic modification; it wasn't merely turning a human into a monster, but the difference between a two-dimensional being and a three-dimensional being.

If this technique were leaked, it would shake every major city—perhaps even the Domain Cities would spare no cost to seize it, for the gap between human and monster was merely physical strength, but this technique was a gap in life level, two entirely different dimensions.

The most crucial part of the complete Star Energy Construct technique was this heritage metal plate containing the Energy Secret.

This heritage metal plate differed from the other two; as the core of the entire technique, it didn't require the inheritor to touch the plate directly—only that the holder, after touching the plate with the inheritor's blood, then touched the inheritor, allowing the inheritor to directly receive the Energy Secret transmission.

Moreover, how much of the Energy Secret one received depended entirely on the plate's holder.

The entire Energy Secret had five levels; Body Strengthening Secret and Mental Secret merely served as auxiliary training—the higher their cultivation, the better the auxiliary effect.

In other words, even without Body Strengthening Secret and Mental Secret, an ordinary person who obtained this Energy Secret heritage metal plate still had a chance to master the Energy Secret—this was why no restrictions as strict as those on the Energy Secret were placed on the Body Strengthening and Mental Secrets.

Previously, when players seized the White Feather Gang's stronghold and stationed numerous cultivator players there—even forcing the Deputy Commander of the City Guard to retreat—Isaak, as a single cultivator, had virtually no chance of retrieving the Energy Secret heritage metal plate from the stronghold.

And for Isaak to make a comeback, the Energy Secret was absolutely indispensable.

Though he'd only skimmed the Energy Secret, Lin Qi was certain it was monstrous—a technique that absorbed energy, then burned it to drastically enhance one's physical potential.

But absorbing energy from outside was extremely difficult, and storing it within oneself was even harder; one misstep meant instant death; mastering it was far too difficult.

Yet learning to burn energy was not difficult at all, and this energy burning aided cultivators in breaking through bottlenecks—if controlled well, it was as effective as cheating.

Of course, if one burned energy without first learning to absorb and store it, one burned one's own life force; without replenishment, each use shortened one's lifespan irreversibly—essentially borrowing life to break through bottlenecks.

But even so, Lin Qi was certain countless people would willingly do it; as long as Isaak held the Energy Secret heritage metal plate, he'd never lack the means to build a powerful faction.

"I must find a way to kill Isaak." Lin Qi looked at the silver-black plate in his hand, his urgency to eliminate Isaak increasing, "Otherwise, my secret of the Energy Secret will eventually be exposed—and become my downfall."

Currently, only the White Feather Gang's high-ups knew the secret of the Energy Secret; now, apart from Isaak, all others had been dealt with by the City Guard—meaning Isaak was the only one left who knew the secret.

If Isaak still harbored ambitions to rebuild his faction, he'd surely keep the secret—but there was no guarantee his ambition would last; he might trade it for resources and benefits.

At that moment, his situation would become dangerous.

After all, he now possessed a priceless treasure, yet he was far from invincible in the Mist Mountain Region; if Isaak revealed this secret to a faction like the Smiling Skull, and they believed him, Lin Qi would face annihilation.

The only solution to this problem was to kill Isaak before he leaked the secret.

But killing Isaak now was no easy task.

Isaak was hiding in the Dead Mountains; the Smiling Skull's strength left every city in the Mist Mountain Region helpless—only Domain Cities could suppress them. Lin Qi's current strength was merely comparable to a Deputy Mayor's; entering the Dead Mountains alone to assassinate Isaak.

Not only did he not know if he could kill Isaak under the Smiling Skull's nose, he didn't even know where the Smiling Skull's base was located.

You have to understand that the planet he now lives on has been completely transformed after the great catastrophe, and the entire planet is many times larger than before. No one, not even the Martial Artists Association, knows exactly how big it is, and the mobile cities can only operate in a few regions, with most places being completely inaccessible.

According to the Martial Artists Association's records, the Foggy Mountain region alone covers several million square kilometers and contains dozens of cities. The Death Ridge mountain range, based on the maps provided by the Association, is roughly one-third the size of the entire Foggy Mountain region, and it serves as a monster nest.

Finding the Smiling Skulls' hideout in a place like this would truly be like searching for a needle in a haystack, which is one of the reasons why Domain City has never been able to deal with the Smiling Skulls.

After pondering for quite a while, Lin Qi still shook his head and temporarily set aside the thought of killing Isaac.

Killing Isaac is inevitable, but right now neither he nor the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall possesses the strength or conditions to do so. Under these circumstances, rather than worrying about Isaac leaking secrets, it would be better to first strengthen himself and the hall.

"Looks like I need to put the branch hall matter on the agenda," Lin Qi said as he opened the two branch hall rewards from the system. These two branch halls could immediately convert a building the size of a stadium into an advanced martial arts hall.

An advanced martial arts hall comes with ten basic training rooms and three basic gravity rooms.

As long as the branch hall exists, even if the current Obsidian Martial Arts Hall were destroyed, the impact on him would be minimal, and he could still bring players into this world.

For safety reasons, the branch hall should be set up in as hidden a location as possible—ideally like the Smiling Skulls, where only their own people know where the hideout is, and no one else does.

Once Isaac's exposure of the Energy Secret Art becomes known, he could hide in the branch hall, develop slowly, and lie low until he becomes invincible in the Foggy Mountain region before emerging.

Afterwards, Lin Qi walked into the space within the rock wall and used his spiritual domain to probe what useful things the White Feather Gang had left behind. As for the players' investigation results, he wasn't holding out hope.

Once those guys learned that dying could increase spiritual intensity, they probably wouldn't report any investigation findings to him at all—they'd be eager to die as many times as possible.

He now understood the situation inside the space: the only dangerous thing was that severed arm. Since Fang Zhen and the others had thoroughly explored the place without incident, he naturally had no reservations.

"Why is the White Feather Gang still researching this stuff?" Lin Qi wondered as he looked through his spiritual perception at the research data left behind on various instruments by the gang.

According to the paper research materials and results on the table, through extensive experiments using lord-type monster remains, the White Feather Gang could screen out people more suited to cultivating the Energy Secret Art.

Among those screened, more than fifty percent could learn part of the first level of the Energy Secret Art—namely, the ability to burn energy and dramatically enhance their own potential.

Meanwhile, for other people attempting to learn the Energy Secret Art, the mortality rate was as high as 99%.

Because the White Feather Gang mastered this technique, the number of people who learned the Energy Secret Art increased dramatically. Instead of the troublesome process of passing it down one by one and waiting to see who survived, they only needed to first screen a massive pool of vagrants. This way, the Energy Secret Art wouldn't be casually exposed, while efficiency could be greatly improved.

However, this approach genuinely left Lin Qi puzzled.

The silver-black inheritance metal plate clearly stated that the Mental Secret Art and the Physical Secret Art were both excellent auxiliary cultivation methods; anyone who learned either of them had a high probability of mastering the complete Energy Secret Art, while learning pure Energy Combustion was essentially effortless.

Moreover, after mastering the Mental Secret Art and the Physical Secret Art, control over Energy Combustion would become far more precise—it was hard to imagine what purpose Bai Yu Bang's research served.

If the goal was simply to teach people Energy Combustion, it would suffice to have them learn only the Mental Secret Art and the Physical Secret Art; though these two arts were somewhat difficult to master, they were vastly safer than learning the Energy Secret Art directly—anyone below the Warrior realm could be revived with a Type-1 Healing Elixir. As long as Type-1 Healing Elixirs were plentiful, nearly everyone below the Warrior realm could learn the Mental Secret Art and the Physical Secret Art.

Warriors, however, required Type-2 Healing Elixirs—there was absolutely no need for such complicated screening, wasting the flesh of Lord Monsters.

"Wait—did Isaac never obtain the Mental Secret Art metal plate?" Lin Qi stared at the White Feather Gang's years-long research results, stunned.

The Mental Secret Art metal plate he had obtained originally came from Bai Yu Bang's vice-leader; he had assumed Bai Yu Bang had long known of the plate's existence and had used it countless times, and that the vice-leader had merely accidentally taken it out, letting him profit from it.

But now it seemed the vice-leader had embezzled the Mental Secret Art—Isaac knew nothing of it. Otherwise, with the incomplete Physical Secret Art left in the metal space beneath Chi Yue Mountain, plus the Mental Secret Art metal plate, Isaac could have trained a large cohort of experts as long as he had enough Healing Elixirs, without wasting so much Lord Monster remains in experiments.

Wasting so much Lord Monster flesh could have bought countless bottles of Type-1 and Type-2 Energy Elixirs.

Thinking of this, Lin Qi suddenly smiled.

Isaac had schemed and plotted to the end, only to be ruined by his own vice-leader—wasting years on this research. If Isaac ever found out the truth, he'd probably die of rage.

"But this research outcome and development model is quite good—it can directly select a group of talented individuals to learn the Energy Secret Art, accelerating their growth while avoiding widespread dissemination and leaks." Lin Qi carefully reviewed the reports and couldn't help but brighten.

The full Star Energy Construct system involved too much—unsuitable for complete teaching to untrusted individuals—but learning only part of Energy Combustion was an excellent way to rapidly produce strong fighters.

Especially becoming a Bone-Forging expert was absurdly simple.

The Black Obsidian Dojo was desperately short of Bone-Forging experts; if he could train a batch of them in a short time, he could freely let players gather resources without worrying about holding onto them.

Moreover, compared to Isaac, he had four enormous advantages: the Mental Secret Art, the Basic Meditation Chamber, that severed arm, and the Qi-Melon reward from the dojo's spinning wheel.

Practicing the Mental Secret Art reduced the difficulty of learning the Energy Secret Art; the Basic Meditation Chamber enhanced mental activity, further lowering the learning barrier.

The mental shock from that severed arm, though devastating in lethality, could subtly strengthen one's mental strength if one remained at a safe distance and endured it over long periods—no need to push oneself as brutally as players did, shattering their own mental core to forge it; such methods might yield rapid gains, but repeated use would turn a person into an idiot.

After all, being shattered by an external object was entirely different from the self-explosion visualization of a supernova; self-generated mental explosion simultaneously forged and elevated one's will, whereas being shattered by an external force did nothing to strengthen the self's will.

The mind is the soldier; the will is the general. If the general lacks strength, commanding too many soldiers only backfires.

The truly correct approach was to practice the Mental Secret Art and visualization techniques within a safe range—this not only accelerated mental strength growth but also steadily strengthened the will, with no side effects.

Among his four advantages, the Qi-Melon was a divine artifact: the Qi-Melon itself infused massive energy into the body, briefly enhancing vitality and dramatically boosting blood qi; if one burned energy immediately after consuming the Qi-Melon, the enhancement speed would be explosive.

Moreover, now that he possessed the Energy Secret Art, players could learn the full Star Energy Construct system; once they mastered it, their combat power would leap a full tier—even the Dead Mountains, where domain cities dared not tread, might become accessible to players.

"But leaving this severed arm here isn't a solution—can I take it back and use it as a Mental Cultivation Room?" Lin Qi's mental probe reached the ten-meter radius around the arm, and he wondered if he could carry away this divine tool for mental cultivation.

(End of Chapter)