Chapter 252: It Seems I

Although Bi Gelei suspected Xiao Lingdang was saying this deliberately because she had forcibly ended the divine descent, she still performed the spirit-invoking ritual again.

Feng Xue actually wanted to tell her not to doubt it, because the Virtual God had no subjective agency; its sinister behavior was merely triggered by Bi Gelei's actions activating its AI persona.

In short, it's like when you draw your sword on a bratty girl and she yells "pathetic trash!"—her sharp tongue and cunning are just part of the persona; she has no real desire for revenge.

But regardless, Xiao Lingdang re-entered Bi Gelei's body, and the entire experimental procedure began anew.

This time, however, Bi Gelei did not use the default skill—instead…

"Master, have that painter girl possess her!"

"Wait, that wasn't mentioned before…" Bi Gelei objected immediately upon hearing the unfamiliar term, but Xiao Lingdang gave her no mercy this time and said directly:

"Your coordination with me is insufficient—you can't grasp what I'm thinking. Only by surrendering your body to the painter can we achieve optimal synergy."

"But—" Bi Gelei tried to say more, but Feng Xue had no intention of wasting time; he signaled Xiao Lingdang to drop her guard, and a possession spell was instantly cast.

"Hey hey! You really are planning to conduct an experiment, right?" Completely losing control of her body, Bi Gelei asked through the mouth left to her by Seeing Mo Ying's boundless mercy.

Feng Xue found the vampire's attitude amusing and feigned deep thought before nodding and saying:

"I originally intended to run an experiment, but you clearly don't trust me. Oh my goodness, dear Bi Gelei, what have I done to earn such disrespect? If I don't do something extra now, wouldn't that betray your suspicions?"

"No, no, I deeply respect you! You're the Demon King among Demon Kings! I don't doubt you—I just… oh right, I just don't fully trust deities. You understand, after all, I'm a Demon King, a blasphemous vampire; being wary of gods is perfectly normal, right?"

Bi Gelei's mind was flooded with all sorts of absurd thoughts even Feng Xue found astonishing, and she frantically explained herself; her tearful expression made Feng Xue seriously wonder if her Demon King status was just exaggerated fluff.

But Bi Gelei didn't care about Feng Xue's skepticism—she was deeply unsettled by this loss of bodily control; if she couldn't even kill herself now, what was the point?

It was precisely through this psychological vulnerability that Xiao Lingdang suddenly pierced her, and Bi Gelei immediately opened her mouth—

"Gur—kill me!"

"That's the feeling! So satisfying!" Feng Xue instantly felt immense fulfillment, then his face darkened…

"Damn it, so Xiao Lingdang still remembered this demand of mine? I thought Bi Gelei was just self-sabotaging—but it was me who pushed her?"

Feng Xue, who had originally come to watch the show, now felt a twinge of guilt and immediately said:

"Enough fooling around—get back to the experiment!"

"Oh." Xiao Lingdang's projection nodded and immediately began adjusting parameters.

Just as Feng Xue, Xiao Lingdang, and Seeing Mo Ying had once merged into one form, Bi Gelei now existed in a similar state—except that while Feng Xue had acted as the central regulator, Bi Gelei was now more like an energy container, allowing Xiao Lingdang's repeated fine-tunings to be realized through Seeing Mo Ying's precise calibration, gradually altering the ratio of 【Transformation】 through repeated re-formulations before inputting it into the Integrated Talisman and Spell.

With each fine-tuning, all manner of bats coalesced and fell: from shrieking, uncontrollable self-detonating bats, to spirit-depleted ones that could barely flutter their wings and couldn't even glide like mindless bats, they kept appearing and crashing.

Feng Xue also analyzed the transformation patterns using the ritual adjustment suggestions Xiao Lingdang provided via her mobile interface.

Fortunately, he had never abandoned his cultivation of *Jie Yu*, and he had considerable insight into Transformation—otherwise, he truly wouldn't have understood Xiao Lingdang's pile of ritual diagrams that looked like circuit blueprints.

But…

"This part feels oddly familiar."

Feng Xue pondered this fragment, which didn't even qualify as a complete ritual, and his brow twitched slightly.

One advantage of Xiao Lingdang drawing rituals was her extremely formulaic brushwork—meaning she used identical formats to achieve identical effects. Not even the natural spells of the Anti-Heretic Front from the last world, nor the secret texts of the Folklore World, could achieve such precision.

And this gave Feng Xue the ground for that sense of familiarity.

"Xiao Lingdang, check this segment for me—I feel like I've seen it somewhere before!"

Upon hearing this, Xiao Lingdang immediately split a sub-thread, and soon delivered the conclusion:

"Excluding those derived by brute-force enumeration, among currently known original spells, three use a similar structure: Nuan Mian Yang Shen, Duan Xu Fa, and Cai Yuan Shu."

Xiao Lingdang listed the standard configurations of these three spells and highlighted the part Feng Xue found familiar.

But this raised new questions—

"I can understand Nuan Mian Yang Shen, but why do Cai Yuan Shu and Duan Xu Fa also have this structure…?"

In Feng Xue's view, "spirit-infused" elemental forces should resemble prayer energy—but spirit-invoking rituals contained no such structure, while it appeared in spells completely unrelated to prayer energy.

He tried analyzing the function of this structure within the full ritual, but it was difficult, because the structure itself wasn't a complete ritual unit.

A complete ritual of a spell could be viewed as a sentence, and Feng Xue's linked spell units were like breaking that sentence into individual words—each word being a unit. By linking commonly used units and activating specific ones during use, he could form corresponding spells—a principle similar to movable type printing.

But this structure wasn't even a single character in a word—it was merely several connected brushstrokes forming part of a character.

Just as "xié," "mài," and "cǎo" all contain the component "十"—a horizontal and vertical stroke—it's hard to say they share any common meaning.

But Feng Xue was the type to obsess over details, and since he didn't have to check himself, he applied AI correctly—

"Xiao Lingdang, pull up every spell that uses this structure—including those from your brute-force list, and also any original spells from the last world that, after standardization, contain similar structures. Then analyze their similarities and differences."

"Understood." Xiao Lingdang didn't complain; she immediately split threads to compile the list—but the spells that appeared were wildly diverse, covering nearly every category imaginable. Most astonishingly, even the angel-descending bombardment spell of the scientific fanatic contained this structure!

(End of Chapter)