Chapter 16: Forbidden Move

Long Xuan took a deep breath, retrieved all the materials, and placed them one by one into a large cauldron.

The number of spirit insects was simply too vast for the original Gu vessel to hold, so he had no choice but to use the large cauldron.

After placing all the spirit insects into the cauldron and securing the lid, he began to monitor the progress.

If no progress appeared, it meant Gu refining would fail; Long Xuan would then remove all the spirit insects, change their order, and place them back in.

After repeating this step thirty-seven times, the large cauldron finally displayed a progress of 【0%】.

At the same time, every spirit insect inside the cauldron instantly fell silent.

That eye, radiating evil qi, was bizarre; any spirit insect gazed upon by it would freeze in place, its gaze dull and motionless.

It was as if they had been struck by an illusion technique and dragged into an illusion realm; with their souls pulled into the illusion, their outer bodies could only be eaten bit by bit by this evil insect.

With progress finally appearing, Long Xuan let out a long sigh of relief; at least he hadn't spent an excessive amount of time grinding.

The success rate for forming a Gu varies for every Gu formula; some succeed after only two attempts at Gu refining, while others may fail even after ten thousand attempts.

He truly feared this was a Gu formula with an extremely low success rate, as dealing with so many spirit insects was genuinely troublesome.

Next came the patient wait; Long Xuan was very curious about how powerful the illusion technique carried by this exorbitantly expensive Pupil Gu would be, and the feeling of opening a blind box made him both nervous and excited.

Waiting always felt interminable; Long Xuan checked the cauldron's progress repeatedly, his heart burning with anxiety.

Perhaps the lower the quality of the Gu, the faster it forms, while the higher the quality, the slower the formation speed.

This Gu actually made him wait a full ninety-nine days, making each day feel like a year.

Thanks to the progress indicator, he had been waiting nearby long before the day of completion; when the progress hit 100%, his spirit surged, and he immediately lifted the cauldron lid, revealing an evil insect brimming with malevolent qi—the Pupil Gu—crouched at the center, staring at him with eyes that were exceedingly demonic.

Unable to contain his eagerness, Long Xuan immediately dripped blood to establish a blood contract with it.

Even if one hasn't eaten pork, one has surely seen a pig run; the Pupil Gu is a type of inner Gu, parasitizing the eye if small, or the brow center if large.

The Long Family possessed a unique Gu formula named Evil Dragon Emperor Eye, which Long Lao had personally refined one of, so Long Xuan still understood somewhat how to use a Pupil Gu.

Since this Pupil Gu was slightly larger in volume, Long Xuan placed it on his forehead.

The Pupil Gu rested on his brow for a moment before, driven by instinct, breaking through the skin and burrowing into the center of his brow.

After it burrowed in, the skin quickly fused back together without a seam; viewed from a distance, no wound was visible, let alone the evil eye hidden within, making its concealment thoroughly effective.

Simultaneously, after feeling a sharp sting in his brow, Long Xuan's spiritual sense was frantically drawn toward that spot, voraciously consumed by the Pupil Gu.

Once the Pupil Gu had eaten and drunk its fill, it bestowed its abilities upon Long Xuan; from that moment on, man and Gu completed their symbiosis, sharing glory and ruin alike.

Not everyone qualifies to refine a Pupil Gu; it demands extremely high spiritual sense from the Gu cultivator, and those with insufficient spiritual sense will be drained dry and die at this stage.

Although Long Xuan did not know exactly how strong his spiritual sense was, having lived two lives meant possessing strong spiritual sense was a common advantage among transmigrators, so he had complete confidence in his own.

He experienced no discomfort whatsoever while completing the symbiosis with the Pupil Gu; he could fully afford the spiritual sense required to sustain it.

At the same time, he also learned what illusion technique this Pupil Gu carried.

This illusion technique was named Original Realm, capable of perfectly replicating scenes from the real world into an illusion realm.

Everything within this illusion realm was identical to reality; those trapped inside could not expose the illusion technique by finding differences from the real world.

An absolutely realistic illusion made it difficult for victims to discover flaws, leaving them unaware they were within an illusion.

This was the true power of this illusion technique.

Long Xuan was extremely excited and could not wait to test the Pupil Gu's basic abilities.

Driven by his intent, an eye soon opened on his brow, radiating a bewitching evil qi.

He tightly shut his own eyes, attempting to use this new eye to view a new world.

As he injected his spiritual sense, the world before his eyes began to stretch and magnify bit by bit; this was precisely the ability of a microscope.

Long Xuan was ecstatic; he had actually succeeded, truly managing to research the ability to magnify tiny objects through mere tinkering.

Holding his breath, he took a deep inhale to calm his pounding heart and began testing the limits of the Pupil Gu.

He increased the intensity of his spiritual sense injection once more; his field of vision expanded further, quickly entering the microscopic level.

At this point, he could already see micron-level organisms and could go search the entire world for water bears.

But he was not satisfied with this; magnifying further, his vision penetrated deeper, allowing him to see bacteria and viruses floating in the air, meaning his eyes could now perceive the nanometer scale.

Yet this was still not enough; he frantically injected spiritual sense, and his vision began to magnify a hundred times, a thousand times...

As the vision magnified, everything he saw seemed to rush outward from the center, making him feel dizzy and disoriented.

He did not know how many times it had already magnified, but now he could see molecules; magnifying further, he saw atoms, and then atomic nuclei...

Long Xuan's heart pounded wildly; his original purpose in creating this ability was merely to prevent others from planting Gu on him and to facilitate catching water bears.

He never expected this Pupil Gu to be so effective, capable of magnifying vision down to the atomic level, and this was not even its limit.

After a spirit insect transforms into a Gu worm, its growth level is reset to zero.

Currently, this Pupil Gu was merely an infant with a growth level of only 0%; if it was already so effective in its infant stage, what degree of achievement would it reach upon maturity?

Long Xuan dared not imagine further.

The magnification limit of this Pupil Gu far exceeded his expectations; once it reached full growth level, it might explore worlds even more minute than those known in his past life, and he could not wait to discover what that tinier world looked like.

Long Xuan began pondering how to utilize this ability, for mere magnification without utility was pointless.

Not long ago, he had just learned that a Gu worm's abilities could be deeply developed; although a Gu worm possesses only one ability, a Gu cultivator could, through their own imagination, make that ability complex and diverse.

Magnifying images seemed like a single ability, moreover an inconspicuous one with no killing power.

But Long Xuan was confident in his extraordinary imagination; he intended to develop several more abilities based on this foundation. Even if it was merely an auxiliary ability for magnifying images, he would force it into becoming a forbidden move.

What could magnifying images accomplish? Long Xuan's imagination began to churn wildly.

He first pushed the Pupil Gu to its extreme and scanned the room, ultimately discovering that magnifying vision to its limit produced a slight X-ray effect, though limited to very thin, low-density objects.

Accurately identifying what insects lay within a fossil was probably impossible; he could only see through a thin layer of ground, unable to penetrate deeply.

But even at this level, Long Xuan was already extremely satisfied; even if he could penetrate deep underground, what of it? Without night vision, he still could not see what lay beneath the earth.

Soon, he thought of another application: magnifying various resources like others' spirit pills, Gu insect feed, and poisons to decipher their formulas through microscopic analysis.

Immediately after, he realized this ability could seemingly enable movement techniques to reach the state of entering the subtle.

The so-called Entering the Subtle of a Movement Technique means dodging an opponent's attack with the smallest possible margin; it is highly practical in actual combat, at the very least saving a tremendous amount of stamina.

Wasn't this exactly the practicality needed in battle?

However, this was still not enough; the destructive power of these wild ideas was not yet terrifying enough—he needed to develop a Forbidden Move, one no weaker than the Light Gathering Technique...

(End of Chapter)