Chapter 434: Cloud Marsh Cup Committee's Discussion

Three days later.

In the Plutarch family's public potion room at the White Dragon Tower, Locke mixed the potion liquids from two crucibles together. The two blackish potion liquids, after being mixed together, didn't produce the phenomenon described in the magic book where the potion liquid would immediately become clear. Instead, a vortex began to form.

With a 'bang', the liquid in the crucible splattered everywhere. Each drop of liquid was full of corrosiveness, corroding holes in the four walls of the room. Many precision instruments had magical protection applied by the Abjuration School, which immediately deployed magical barriers to protect these instruments.

Locke himself deployed his permanent defensive field, Life Force Field, blocking all these corrosive liquids in front of him.

Locke raised his eyebrows. "Still failed. Refining the Hive Mind Potion is even more difficult than I thought. It should be that some heat control wasn't handled properly, causing problems with the medicinal properties. During the natural magical power structural component fusion reaction, it led to corrosive changes."

Locke used the technique of compressing his permanent defensive field, covering his finger with a layer of light green Life Force Field crystal wall system, then pinched the black corrosive liquid and observed it briefly. "This liquid would actually be quite good as an offensive weapon."

"This corrosive liquid I accidentally configured actually has some corrosiveness even against Abjuration School magical barriers."

"Many potions originally emerged from failed refinements. Continuing to research this might be a good project, it's just that I don't have extra energy recently."

Locke took out special Time Gold Crystal potion bottles made by alchemists, filled these black liquids inside, filling a total of three bottles, and casually put them into his Synthesis Cube to synthesize and see if he could synthesize something special.

Since his Augustus series potions and magical plants in the southeastern quadrant contributed sixty thousand magic stones to him every month, after half a year in the Land of Six Towers, he had already saved three hundred thousand magic stones.

This was mainly because he basically had no expenses here.

He held large amounts of project funding in his hands, and his usual food, clothing, housing, and material expenses were all included.

Alicia also often gave him some potion refining materials, so aside from the fairy family bank's handling fees and previously purchasing a separate set of Hive Mind Potion materials, he had no additional expenses.

This naturally allowed him to save money.

Opening sources and reducing expenditures, opening sources was important, but reducing expenditures was also a major part of being able to save money.

At this moment, Locke reached out with his left hand, and immediately a primordial fire fell into his palm. He placed the primordial fire under a crucible and simultaneously began skillfully processing various materials. Ice element magical flames purified residual psionic energy, wood element magical flames extracted natural magical power structural components, thunder element magical flames extracted difficult-to-extract components...

A single primordial fire underwent multiple transformations in an extremely brief period of time.

Finally, two hours later, Locke mixed the liquids from the two crucibles together. The liquid in the crucible shimmered with crystalline spiritual light, becoming semi-transparent, with crystalline bubbles rising from it.

Locke finally used the primordial fire to harmonize the internal medicinal properties of the potion, then poured it into a Time Gold Crystal potion bottle.

The potion quickly stabilized, and within the liquid inside the potion, a phantom spiritual brain appeared faintly.

This indicated that this was indeed a successfully refined Hive Mind Potion.

Locke drank the entire bottle of potion in one gulp. Immediately, his original psionic pool rapidly expanded, its scale quickly growing larger, able to support an even more massive distributed psionic network.

The virtual psionic organ behind Locke's head became more complex. Dozens of virtual psionic tentacles continuously extended toward the surroundings, while more tightly connecting him with his various magical plants. The degree of tightness increased more than double compared to before.

A phantom forest spirituality spread out from behind Locke.

One person was an entire forest!

"The Hive Mind Potion is indeed very important to me, greatly improving my strength. It's just a pity that without using the primordial fire, I cannot complete refining the Hive Mind Potion. And the Feathered Serpent test requires that I don't use the primordial fire."

Locke said, "But this doesn't prevent me from first successfully refining the Hive Mind Potion, then using this successful experience to feed back into my potion refining level."

"Combined with Alicia's help and guidance, I believe I'll soon be able to complete the second round test of the Feathered Serpent."

After taking the Hive Mind Potion, Locke's psionic pool expanded again. His psionic pool was approximately equivalent to a liquefaction stage wizard's psionic energy now. It could be imagined that if he continued to regularly take the Hive Mind Potion long-term, he could definitely push his psionic pool's total psionic energy to a level equivalent to a First Circle crystallization wizard.

It was just a pity that aside from the dragon's might obtained through Plant Mimicry: Green Dragon, he hadn't learned any other Enchantment School magic and couldn't manifest the power of this psionic energy.

If this psionic energy just directly impacted others, its power was limited and had very low practicality in same-level battles.

"My Forest Sanctuary, after stabilizing over these six months and my usual maintenance, has once again reached the level where I can transplant First Circle magical plants and expand the total organism quantity." Locke said, "I can go to White Dragon Street to purchase some materials I need, and the research group also needs to buy a batch of new materials."

...

In the beautiful Cloud Marsh Wetland, the scenery here was picturesque, with green waters and verdant mountains. The environment was so beautiful it made one's heart feel open and at ease.

At this time, the Cloud Marsh Cup competition committee of Bonifacius University, after three days of reviewing and advancing twenty project proposals from various major wizard lands, finally had results.

Wizard Trix displayed the results as a table for the various wizards to see. "Everyone, if there are no objections, we'll announce the competition results according to this table. Those eliminated project applications from various major wizard lands weren't bad either, it's just that this year's Cloud Marsh Cup is exceptionally competitive, with excellent geniuses emerging one after another, so we could only reluctantly reject them."

The various wizards in the office were all observing the table and couldn't help but nod, believing that this competition's evaluation standards were still very objective. Not only were their Bonifacius University wizard mentors serving as judges, they had also invited four other top wizard organizations from the Cloud Marsh Wetland to serve as judges together.

Therefore, this competition result wasn't completely controlled by the wizards in this office.

They were only responsible for maintaining the overall operation of the competition and managing the expenditure of competition funds, while the specific judges came from comprehensive evaluations by specially invited breeders from their university and Bonifacius University and four other universities, even those Second Circle breeders.

A wizard looking at the rankings on the table frowned and said, "First place is the Ancient Life Tree project led by Edgar David Wizard from Sunshade Peninsula. Tracing back to this mythical existence, and he himself has also successfully traced back the War Ancient Tree project. It's completely normal for him to rank first."

"If he really successfully traces back the Ancient Life Tree in the Cloud Marsh Cup, even if he only successfully traces back part of the Ancient Life Tree treants and wins first place in the Cloud Marsh Cup finals, this could even increase the gold content of our Cloud Marsh Cup competition itself."

"Second place is our Cloud Marsh Wetland's Witch Diana. The Luna Laurel Tree project she proposed is also good. She herself has a large number of related treant projects, especially in the lunar-type treant family."

"Witch Diana undoubtedly has amazing insight. At the First Circle crystallization stage, she proposed unique viewpoints, proposing that with double moons in the sky, modern things are definitely better than ancient things. Therefore, she wants to compete with Wizard Edgar in the treant field, using double moon treants to compete with ancient treants like the Ancient Life Tree."

"As for third place, it's that Wizard Yennefer from Spiral Basin. His Mushroom King project is also quite good. The Mushroom King proposes the viewpoint of 'both one and ten thousand', believing that one Mushroom King equals an entire mushroom garden."

"The top three are well-deserved, like gods battling, bringing our Cloud Marsh Cup to heights that previous editions couldn't reach. But this time, a project from the Land of Six Towers actually got approved and was even ranked sixth?"

"The seventh-place wizard is even a First Circle liquefaction wizard from a Second Circle wizard's laboratory, also exceptionally talented."

"Eighth, ninth, and tenth place are all the most excellent breeder teams that emerged from various major wizard lands. How can the project proposal submitted by their Land of Six Towers wizards be ranked sixth? How can they be in sixth place?"

Not only was this wizard who raised objections puzzled, the other wizards in the office also felt completely baffled.

Wizard Trix looked helpless and said to this wizard, "Wizard Nara, I feel as baffled as you do, but there's no helping it. This is a decision collectively made by the senior wizard mentors from five wizard universities. Unless you can cite actual critical flaws, some obvious problems, otherwise this result cannot be changed."

"Moreover, if you look at their project proposal, you'll feel that aside from their chaotic format and the project proposal being written without structure, the other parts are flawless, whether it's the preliminary experimental data or the project content."

Wizard Nara pulled up the project proposal submitted from the Land of Six Towers. After reading it, he questioned, "This project proposal is truly laughable. The goal is also too grand, right? A magical plant targeting permanent defensive fields? Even in our Cloud Marsh Wetland laboratories, we might not be able to create this. Do they in the Land of Six Towers have the conditions to create it?"

Wizard Trix said, "If it weren't for the Second Circle wizard teachers above considering that their team has no past high-quality articles or high-quality project backing, no titles in the team, no solid teaching positions, and thus suspecting that this project proposal is just them exaggerating to improve their grades, they wouldn't be in sixth place now, but in first place."

"But setting that aside, you have to admit that this project proposal is written very well. At least it even lets us see some hope of completing parts of it."

Wizard Trix said, "The Cloud Marsh Wetland competition is fair. We can't let their background affect the evaluation results, so we only lowered their ranking and placed them in sixth place."

"But we still let them pass."

"Even so, this has caused debate among the Second Circle wizards. Some Second Circle wizard teachers even believe that this project proposal should be ranked at least second or third."

"In short, this project proposal is indeed very controversial. If it didn't come from a place like the Land of Six Towers, its ranking would be at least top three."

Wizard Nara opened his mouth. He hadn't expected that such a project proposal from the Land of Six Towers would actually cause debate among the Cloud Marsh Wetland's Second Circle wizards.

Wizard Nara said, "Fine. Whether it's a mule or a horse, we'll know when we lead it out. Just let them pass the first round of the main competition. The second round requires producing actual works, not 'perfect' plans written on paper."

"No matter how well the plan is made, if they can't produce the actual object, then it's meaningless."

As soon as Wizard Nara said this, quite a few wizards in the office nodded in agreement.

Like Wizard Nara's prejudice, many wizards had always looked down on research groups from the Land of Six Towers and remained skeptical about whether they could produce the finished products planned in their project proposal.

"Hmm... the equipment in the Land of Six Towers is indeed rather crude. I hope this team can overcome this difficulty and bring us amazing achievements." Wizard Trix frowned. Unlike before, his attitude had undergone subtle changes after reading that project proposal.

Essentially, he was a designer who extremely loved magical plant weapons.

He liked seeing excellent works appear before him.

He didn't have the talent to create excellent magical plant works, so he placed his hopes on those talented contestants.

Although Wizard Trix also somewhat doubted whether the Land of Six Towers could actually realize this project proposal, at this moment, what emerged in the depths of his heart wasn't doubt, but hope that this project proposal could truly be completed.

At least complete part of it.

This magical plant that could unite everyone's permanent defensive fields, once completed, even if only part of it was completed, would definitely be amazing.

Wizard Trix stamped the magical seal on the project proposal submitted by Locke's team. It read, "Approved, 500,000 magic stones in funding subsidy."