Chapter 41: The Decision is Made

Thinking about this, Feng Xue tried to apply the usage of the Golden Body Incantation, spreading his mana across the surface of his skin. Although his attribute-based mana was more than sufficient after locking the "Jade Transformation," his control was far from enough to cover his entire body. After racking his brains, he managed to wrap his entire index finger.

As a modern indoor hermit who could carry nothing on his shoulders and lift nothing with his hands, Feng Xue already had reasonably good skin. Once plated with this mana, however, it took on a crystal-clear appearance, and his nails emitted a faint, lustrous sheen, much like a piece of antique jade that had been fondled and played with for many years.

Flexing his finger slightly, he did not feel the stiffness described in the Golden Body Incantation. Feng Xue was not entirely sure whether this was due to the different nature of "Jade" and "Gold" mana, or simply because he was controlling too little mana.

However, this did not hinder his subsequent experimentation.

Tapping his fingertip lightly against a stubborn stone, a crisp sound immediately rang out. When he applied a little more pressure, the sound became muffled, but his fingertip only felt the feedback of the contact without the slightest trace of pain.

Fumbling into his pot-heaven bag, Feng Xue fished out a small camping knife. He gently pressed his fingertip against the blade, paused to think, withdrew his hand, and instead pulled out a pair of nail clippers, clipping down toward the jade-transformed fingernail.

"Clang!" The sound of the collision was accompanied by tremendous resistance. Feng Xue exerted force with his hand, yet could not make the nail clippers close by even a fraction. Releasing the clippers and inspecting his fingernail closely, he could only see a white mark that could not even be considered a scratch.

Pondering for a moment, he walked over to the window. As his fingertip brushed against the glass, a scratch—not deep, but very distinct—appeared in its wake. Pressing the pad of his finger hard against the sharp corner of a table, though there was a slight indentation, there was likewise no sensation of pain.

"Both hardness and toughness have been significantly enhanced. Unfortunately, the only thing the Jade-Nurturing Technique can likely lock is 'Jade Transformation.' Even if subsequent parts that need to be independently filtered and replaced can generate traits, they won't have much practical utility."

Feng Xue dispersed the mana at his fingertip and instead fished out his natal magical treasure.

He directly initiated the Spirit-Attachment Incantation at point-blank range.

Although it was several grades inferior to a Spirit-Attachment Incantation cast in a locked state, the jade-transformed mana genuinely adhered to the seal. Indeed, it even began to permeate the un-attributed mana originally within the seal, dyeing it with the jade attribute.

Seeing this, Feng Xue immediately and forcibly terminated the output of mana while simultaneously realizing the crux of the problem—

"Fixing Fate" seemed to directly lock his mana onto the "trajectory" of "Jade Transformation." While it made things convenient to use, any of his mana would be transformed into jade. Other uses aside, if applied to his natal magical treasure, it would cause it to lose its original flexible stance capable of accommodating any spell, turning it into a mere mana converter that converted all mana into the "jade" attribute.

"Hmm, actually, is that really unviable?"

Remembering his previous thought, Feng Xue did not use his seal for this experiment. Instead, he pulled out the carving tools bought from the ivory-carver and picked out a thumb-sized, extremely poor-quality fragment from the pile of scraps. After grinding it casually, he set up an altar for spirit-attachment.

First, he cast several Fix-Fate-locked Spirit-Attachment Incantations onto it. Completely ignoring physical refinement and pursuing only results under Feng Xue's guidance, in a short moment, this piece of inferior green jade already took on a measure of luster. After recovering some mana by locking his lifespan, Feng Xue then locked "Jade Transformation" and began inscribing the ritual scripts.

The traces of mana were carved by Feng Xue into this coin-sized jade plaque, and its originally extremely poor texture and appearance slowly grew lustrous. As the "Jade Transformation" ritual script completely permeated the center of the jade plaque, the mana within the plaque—amounting to roughly the cultivation of a sixty-year cycle for an ordinary cultivator—rapidly condensed. The green jade, riddled with flocculent impurities and black spots, instantly became translucent and lustrous. Had those impurities and patches not genuinely failed to vanish, one would hardly have connected the two objects.

However, what Feng Xue intended to do at the moment was not nurture jade. He unlocked "Jade Transformation," pinched the jade plaque between his index finger and thumb, and with the connecting flow of mana, "Jade" attributed mana surged forth!

"It worked!"

Though it was merely a useless jade-attribute converter, this small step of success meant the feasibility of Feng Xue's mass-production plan for natal magical artifacts.

Since changes in the nature of mana could be inscribed, what about changes in form? For instance, shaping mana into mana spheres or mana arrows?

Going a step further, if two magical artifacts were connected in series, would it be possible—simply by outputting mana indiscriminately—to fire mana bullets of different attributes according to his own arrangement?

When all was said and done, the spells Feng Xue currently mastered were basically just extensions of those four basic applications. Therefore, through disassembly and permutation combinations, could all his spells be turned into magical artifacts? In future battles, would he only need to act as a ruthless mana-output machine?

Naturally, Feng Xue understood very well that such magical artifacts would inevitably possess disadvantages such as low precision, complex craftsmanship, and vulnerability to being seen through. Nonetheless, this was currently the fastest scheme allowing him to form combat effectiveness.

Ultimately, the resources in this world were still too scarce. Given his current progress in nourishing his divine soul, Feng Xue could not yet foresee any hope of attaining Dao within nine years.

After all, his talent in the realm of the divine soul was not particularly high. Despite having an endless supply of primordial Qi, he could not utilize it properly.

What was even more fatal was that there were simply no schools of thought in this world that studied how to increase the single-absorption capacity of the divine soul—

After all, the profound cultivators of this world—even those demonic cultivators who practiced by utilizing other people's primordial Qi—hardly possessed his conditions.

Without demand, naturally no one researched it, and Feng Xue was not arrogant enough to expect an outsider like himself, who hadn't even figured out the theoretical foundations, to develop such a set of techniques all on his own.

Therefore, the paths available to him boiled down to just two options—

Either find some rare heavenly treasures capable of strengthening the divine soul.

Or else take another massive gamble and seek opportunities in other worlds.

Did rare heavenly treasures exist? Feng Xue reckoned there was a high probability they did, but finding them would be exceedingly difficult. To reiterate, without demand, no one researched them. The profound cultivators of this world did not need to enhance the efficiency of their divine souls, so naturally no man would investigate what kind of rare heavenly treasures could achieve the corresponding efficacy. Even if they did exist, they would surely be side effects of other properties, and such side effects were difficult to notice even when flipping through compendiums.

Thus, for Feng Xue, taking another massive gamble was actually the more realistic option.

Ever since he obtained the cultivation technique in Ping'an County, Feng Xue had considered gambling big again. However, firstly, he worried that this world possessed unknown characteristics that might render him unable to cultivate if he went to a different world, and secondly, because he had only just begun practicing at the time and lacked a clear understanding of his divine soul's absorption rate.

Now, bringing up the old matter again (though it had only been a few days), he had firmly made up his mind.

However, not today.

This was not procrastination. Rather, under the premise of not knowing what kind of world he might cross over into, he had to maximize his risk-resistance capabilities within this very world first!