Chapter 656

The shadowless lamp on the operating table went out.

Eric opened his eyes, and what met his eyes was the silver-white ceiling, those dense runes slowly dimming in the aftermath of the light.

He lay for a few seconds, then sat up, lowered his head and looked at his hands, feeling no different from before the surgery.

He clenched his fists, then relaxed, moved his wrists and shoulders, confirming there was no unusual feeling.

He even felt a bit hungry.

"Seems—no change at all." He touched his chest, the location of the core node of the fifth round of sealing, the skin smooth, without any bumps or scars.

Jie Ming stood beside the workbench, tidying up the surgical instruments.

"In your body, there were already four bizarre entities before." Jie Ming's voice came from the workbench direction, his speech speed steady. "Flesh, soul, vitality, mind, these are the four you are most familiar with. You have already used the first two rounds very skillfully when treating patients; flesh distortion allows you to perceive and repair flesh trauma, soul resonance allows you to touch and repair soul cracks. You use the vitality and mind bizarre entities less, but you have mastered the basic operations."

Eric nodded.

Flesh distortion and soul resonance were his signature skills as the attending physician of "Nolen Clinic."

Without these two bizarre entities, he could not have stood firm in front of the Association's doctor group.

"The fifth bizarre entity now sealed in your body." Jie Ming put down the instruments in his hand, turned around and looked at him. "Is specifically used to coordinate those four bizarre entities."

He walked to the operating table, took a palm-sized mirror from the shelf, and handed it to Eric.

Eric took the mirror and finally discovered what was different about himself.

His eyes looked deeper, the color of his pupils changed from light gray to dark gray, and the white part of his eyes had a layer of dark golden luster that was almost invisible.

"Its name is not important," Jie Ming said. "What is important is its characteristic: scheduling. It is not the strongest one, not even the second strongest. Without it, the four bizarre entities in your body can operate on their own. But they will conflict with each other, just like four musicians with their own ideas playing together without a conductor. The rhythm will be chaotic, the pitch will be off, and over time, your soul will be torn by the disharmony between them."

"And with it, those four bizarre entities can work like a team. But this thing is not a conductor either, it is just—a harmonizer. You need to pay attention to this point."

Jie Ming took the mirror from Eric's hand, put it back on the shelf, then leaned against the operating table, arms crossed, looking at him with a calm gaze.

"Your bizarre sealing can be considered complete. Each performs its own duties, and after that, it mainly depends on your own development and application of bizarre abilities. You need to learn to understand, fuse, and recreate the bizarre power in your body. Treat the power of the five bizarre entities in your body as paint, and paint it yourself. Instead of letting them scribble on the canvas themselves."

Eric jumped off the operating table, his knees bent slightly when his feet landed, feeling the weight and balance of his body.

Everything was normal, even better than normal.

He felt like he had just had a good sleep, full of energy, light in body, and every joint moving freely.

"Teacher." He looked up at Jie Ming. "Ordinary psychics wouldn't seal five bizarre entities in their bodies, right? That's simply courting death."

Jie Ming glanced at him.

That glance was very calm, but Eric felt huge pressure from that look; Jie Ming didn't speak, just hummed lightly.

That light hum was as clear in the quiet underground laboratory as a glass bead falling on a metal countertop, the lingering sound carrying an undisguised, even arguably deliberate mockery.

Knowing he asked a stupid question, Eric honestly shut his mouth.

He climbed back onto the operating table, sat cross-legged on it, placed his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and began to use his consciousness to feel the existence of the five bizarre entities in his body.

They were like five stars of different colors, floating in the depths of his soul, each emitting energy fluctuations of different frequencies.

Eric took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.

He understood the teacher's thinking.

After all, starting a few years ago, Jie Ming had been permeating this idea to him bit by bit.

Through those increasingly in-depth bizarre theory classes, through those research topics that were increasingly close to the essence, he also understood what he was doing.

The technology to let humans and the bizarre fuse perfectly was much more difficult than Jie Ming originally expected.

It wasn't because the bizarre was too difficult to control, but because the human soul was too fragile.

No matter how well it was controlled, after the collision between the bizarre and the human soul, the human soul would inevitably be assimilated by the bizarre over time.

Of course, if it were completely isolated, this problem could naturally be avoided.

But if the human soul and the bizarre were completely isolated, it would also be completely meaningless.

So to complete this technology, one must first change the soul of ordinary people.

After studying all the materials left by the professor, Jie Ming reached a conclusion: the professor's direction was correct, but the path was wrong.

The professor had been trying to improve the "compatibility" between the bizarre and humans, modifying the sealing structure, adjusting the energy frequency, and optimizing the fusion process.

But this path had a limit, and the professor had already reached the end of that path.

So Jie Ming chose a completely different path.

He decided to combine the bizarre fusion theory he discovered with sealing at the technical level.

Let the bizarre entities adapt to each other first, forming a stable, self-consistent, and self-regulating system, and then fuse this system as a whole into the human soul.

Eric was the first "experimental subject" of this idea.

Jie Ming specifically selected three types of bizarre entities related to essence, energy, and spirit from tens of thousands of bizarre samples, and additionally selected two types of bizarre entities related to mind and coordination ability.

To ensure the success rate of the experiment, Jie Ming deliberately selected the lowest-grade danger-level bizarre entities, and they were the weakest ones even among danger-level bizarre entities.

With essence, energy, and spirit as the foundation, mind as the commander, and coordination as the "adhesive," the affinity between the ultimately born bizarre entity and the human soul would become extremely high!

From the final result, the effect of Jie Ming's idea was not bad.

The reason Eric could become the doctor he was now was not only because of his talent and diligence, but also because of the five bizarre entities in his body.

Especially the flesh distortion and soul resonance bizarre entities, which had fused with him to a depth far beyond ordinary psychics in day-to-day use.

"Teacher." Eric opened his eyes, his expression serious. "I roughly understand. When I can fully control these five bizarre entities, can skillfully use their abilities, can make them cooperate with each other, and fuse with each other—

By that time, my own life form can also be transformed."

He paused, his voice lower: "I will be the first human to fuse perfectly with the bizarre."

Jie Ming shook his head: "Theoretically, this is the case. But you know the distance between theory and practice yourself."

"And—even if you succeed, it only represents you as a special case; if you really want to complete the perfect fusion of humans and the bizarre, there are still several steps to go."

Thinking for a moment, Jie Ming added: "However, after you really complete the transformation of your life form, using you as a foundation, extracting bizarre power from you and fusing it with other humans, it would be much simpler."

"Without considering the strength of the power obtained after fusion and the limitation of the number of samples, the bizarre power extracted based on yourself should be the most suitable material for completing the human and bizarre fusion project."

Eric fell silent; in such an atmosphere, he suddenly thought of a question, a question that had nothing to do with serious academic discussion.

So his mouth opened before his brain: "Teacher, speaking of which—ever since I mastered that flesh distortion bizarre entity, my appearance hasn't changed much. Sometimes looking in the mirror, I feel like I'm no different from five years ago. Will I also be like you in the future, with my appearance not changing?"

He looked at Jie Ming's face, which was exactly the same as ten years ago, with time leaving no traces on it.

Jie Ming glanced at him, the mockery in that gaze deeper than the light hum just now.

"This is a manifestation of your insufficient control over the flesh distortion bizarre entity and insufficient mastery of related knowledge." Jie Ming's tone was still that unhurried manner. "Otherwise, you could completely manipulate your own flesh and change various forms at will. Not just appearance, but height, body shape, skin color, hair color, even sex—"

The words were not finished.

Jie Ming's face suddenly changed.

His pupils contracted in an instant, then expanded violently, and dark golden light exploded in the depths of his pupils.

His body did not go through any thinking, directly leaping up and crashing through the ceiling of the underground laboratory.

The silver-white metal plate tore like paper above his head, and fragments of concrete and brick splashed to both sides on his ascending path.

He turned into a stream of light, rushing from the underground to the bookstore on the first floor, and then crashed through the roof of the bookstore, rushing into the gray sky.

Eric was stunned for a moment, then subconsciously followed.

His body made a reaction faster than his brain.

The flesh distortion bizarre entity in his body operated at full power at that instant, raising the strength of his muscles and bones to the limit in zero point a few seconds.

Knees bent slightly, he kicked the ground violently, like an arrow off the string, rushing upward along the passage Jie Ming crashed open.

Gravel and dust hit his face, his skin automatically hardened, blocking all the impact outside.

His hands reached forward during the flight, grabbing the edge of the hole in the bookstore roof, flipped over, and landed steadily on the roof ridge.

Jie Ming hovered in the air about fifty meters above the bookstore, his robes fluttering in the wind.

His head was tilted up, his gaze staring straight at the sky.

Eric followed his gaze, and his face also became ugly.

Because, the sky had changed.

The sky of Fog City was never blue.

For decades, except for the day Jie Ming blasted it open with a punch, the rest of the time, whether sunny or cloudy, it was gray-white.

Eric and the residents of Fog City had long been accustomed to that kind of gray, just like they were accustomed to breathing and heartbeat.

But now, the gray was gone.

Replaced by an extremely strange, unnatural dark purple that could be seen at a glance.

This dark purple was evenly distributed, not looking like it was formed naturally at all, more like someone had covered the entire sky with a huge purple canvas.

The purple was mixed with subtle black patterns, and those patterns were slowly wriggling, looking like the blood vessels of some huge creature at first glance.

"This is—" Eric's voice was a bit hoarse.

He stared at that dark purple sky, feeling like he was looking at something that shouldn't exist in this world.

Jie Ming hovered in the air, not descending.

His gaze withdrew from the sky and landed on the ordinary people walking on the street.

The landlady of the bakery was wiping the counter at the door, her movements as slow as usual.

Two children were chasing in the alley, their laughter crisp and cheerful.

A man in a gray coat walked past on the stone road, carrying a cloth bag in his hand, a cigarette that hadn't been lit in his mouth.

Except for a part of the people who were attracted by the sound of Jie Ming crashing through the room just now, the vast majority of the remaining residents appeared very normal, and no one had any reaction to the color of the sky.

This explains that they cannot see the bizarre changes in the sky.

That is to say, this kind of change can only be detected by high-perception crowds similar to psychics or wizards.

"Teacher." Eric heard his own voice squeezed out of his throat, hoarse and not like his own. "What is this?"

Jie Ming did not answer.

He hovered in the air, his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he had detected something.