Chapter 1424: Chaotic Vicious Circle, Finished Product Completion

As for how to verify whether a soul has been collected, that is actually very simple; on the way back to the Arcane Union, he placed the Soul-Locking Amulet into his Personal Space.

The moment the Soul-Locking Amulet entered the Personal Space, one large and five small—a total of six—points of light flew out from the amulet, exploding into six minuscule Planes within the space before rapidly vanishing.

And the Personal Space expanded slightly as a result.

Compared to the souls of sentient beings, the soul quality of these sheep, chickens, and ducks is truly far too inferior!

However, this act of collecting and consuming souls might be easier to offend the Lord of Death than resurrection spells, and it is fortunate that they were all non-sentient creatures; otherwise, Xia Duo would really not want to repeatedly conduct such experiments!

……

The subsequent direction for improvement is very clear.

On one hand, the basic functions of the Soul-Locking Technique have been determined; the next step is to add the remaining steps required for resurrection, such as collecting blood and preventing the corpse from being destroyed or failing to be repaired in time, and one could also add a teleportation function to ensure the soul is foolproof.

On the other hand, it is to fix some unnecessary defects, such as the Soul-Locking Technique's collateral effect on living creatures around the amulet's attuned user, the interference issues of spells with multiple combined functions, and so on.

Xia Duo did not design and produce the Soul-Locking Amulet solely for those subordinates who are about to participate in the Blood Trial; there is another very important reason, and that is—

The Soul-Locking Amulet can serve as an important specialty of the Tower of Time!

As of now, resurrection is still a benefit that only a very small number of people can enjoy, but after the appearance of the magic-version resurrection, more people will have the opportunity to enjoy this benefit.

Combined with the industrialization process of Magic Items, this will be a huge income pillar.

Moreover, compared to financial income, the influence that a miracle-like spell such as resurrection can bring is also extremely astonishing!

What Xia Duo needs to do in the future requires not only a large population and a large amount of money, but also extremely high influence; otherwise, the best outcome would be nothing more than enclosing land for self-amusement, failing to fully utilize such a large foundation as Netheril.

……

In the days that followed, Xia Duo lived a busy and fulfilling life; on one hand, he had to continue the research on the Arcane Fire Device with Iolum, and on the other hand, he had to use his already limited free time—often late at night—to perfect the Soul-Locking Amulet.

With the arrival of September, the temperature gradually turned cool, and the Langasi's Blood Trial finally kicked off; Yarman and the others temporarily stayed at the Grey Eagle Tribe and have already launched several external raids.

Eliminating hostile forces, plundering food, and plundering population to prepare for the winter—this is both the prelude to the Blood Trial and the absolute theme of the Blood Trial.

Through Feishe'er's reports and the observation results from his own casting of Scrying spells, Xia Duo has a relatively sufficient understanding of the current living state of the Langasi.

The Langasi are not good at planting; the vast majority of food comes from hunting and gathering. Whenever autumn and winter arrive, food is scarce, so war becomes an inevitable product.

Either plunder enough food to survive the winter, or reduce the population enough to survive the winter.

Apart from these two, there is almost no other choice.

Many lucky Langasi have come to Netheril, and even if they remain here as Slaves, they are unwilling to return to their original homeland.

From this, one can see the cruel life on the Langas Plain.

If it were just based on humanitarian aid, perhaps teaching the Langasi to develop planting would be the most correct solution, but Xia Duo prefers to believe that only under his own leadership can the Langasi truly live a good life they have never imagined.

Of course, the difficulty of guiding the Langasi to develop planting is no lower than absorbing the Langasi population, and in reality, it might even be greater.

Developing planting, or agriculture, would cause a large amount of young and strong labor to be restricted to the land; in that case, the tribe's overall strength would see a significant decline (hunting and fighting increase martial power).

Even if there is a harvest, if they cannot defeat those surrounding nomadic tribes, it is equivalent to harvesting for others.

Unless the vast majority of Langas Tribes are made to abandon nomadism and switch to agriculture at once, agriculture on the Langas Plain will be very difficult to develop.

As for the (magic) industry after agriculture, that is even harder.

The current Langas Plain can be said to have fallen into a vicious circle: the more martial power is developed, the more backward it becomes, and the more backward it is, the more it cannot abandon the development of martial power.

All tribes are impoverished and bellicose together, and then they decline together.

If this continues, let alone hundreds of years, even thousands or tens of thousands of years, without the addition of external forces, this situation is highly likely to have no change at all.

Will a Langasi "Qin Shi Huang" or "Genghis Khan" appear among the Langasi?

Xia Duo thinks it is possible, but he is not optimistic; by the time the Langasi awaken on their own and even move toward unification, the outside world might have already been turned upside down.

He is absorbing the Langasi now not only to save them from their current plight, but also to promise them a bright and progressive future.

……

In mid-September, the single Arcane Fire tests for the new Arcane Fire plan have all been completed; what follows is the testing of linkage and stability, and the overall plan can be said to be seventy or eighty percent complete.

And the 【Soul-Locking Amulet】 researched by Xia Duo himself has finally met all his requirements: efficient, stable, and safe, plus simple to use and convenient to operate; it can be called an essential product for home and travel.

This night, Xia Duo came to the Azure Manor again to conduct the final test before the official production of the 【Soul-Locking Amulet】.

The previous four sheep and four cows had long been used up in various test experiments; not only those, but for the previous main samples, besides cows and sheep, Xia Duo also used various large and medium-sized animals.

And the protagonist of this final test, just like the first time, was still a domestic goat produced from the Territory near Seventon, which can be considered starting and ending well.

Xia Duo skillfully put the 【Soul-Locking Amulet】 on the experimental goat and attuned the amulet to it, then summoned a Flying Sword; the same process, he has done it countless times over this past month.

The Flying Sword, with its Space-Piercing Array turned off, triggered the high-speed effect, bringing out a shrill, sharp sound, instantly piercing through the sample's head.

Almost only a second or two later, the 【Soul-Locking Amulet】 flickered with spiritual light, but the Magic Net around it vibrated violently; the next moment, the 【Soul-Locking Amulet】 had already disappeared from the sample's neck.

"Aiwa—"

"Yes, My Lord."

Aiwa trotted over and retrieved from the Study on the second floor of the manor's central villa a 【Soul-Locking Amulet】 that was the size of two fingers, entirely silver-white, and inlaid with a Standard Arcane Crystal only at the end.

Xia Duo took the amulet and placed it into his Personal Space; it was the familiar expansion of space, and there was only one soul. Although the chickens and ducks around the sample were too scared to make a sound, they were indeed still alive.

Afterward, Xia Duo took out the Soul-Locking Amulet and snapped it hard; the seemingly sturdy amulet immediately broke into two pieces, one of which was hollow, preserving the sample's active blood inside.

The spell 【Blood Extraction】 was obtained by Xia Duo from Iolum; it was originally a lethal spell, but after Xia Duo's improvement, it became a new spell of a medical nature.

It extracts only about 10 milliliters of fresh blood at a time.

As for the spell to keep blood active, he had already mastered it in the Projection Plane; that spell is very widely used in the major bases of 【Projection Plane: Empire Remnants】.