On a weedy slope.

The Heavenly Might Battalion had set up camp at this strange area. Apart from a few groups of soldiers who were on guard duty, most of the soldiers had fallen asleep.

Su Chen was one of the few people who couldn’t fall asleep. His consciousness power made it so that he rarely needed to sleep. If need be, he could go ten days and nights without sleeping and be completely fine.

Within his tent, Su Chen played with the consciousness crystal in his hand and stared at it intently.

As he did so, the consciousness crystal glowed stably in his hands, and strange images gradually began to appear on its surface.

“How interesting! It can resonate with my will and I can project my will upon it.”

“It’s a consciousness crystal, the physical manifestation of consciousness energy. If you were to place me in it, I could use it to reform my own spirit body!” Patelocke said as his old, grizzled figure appeared above the surface of the Mountain-Beheading Blade.

“That would be the most pointless usage possible. Wasting such a precious crystal like this on a Spirit Race slave?” Su Chen laughed as he shook his head. “I wouldn’t ever do something as silly as that.”

“But you can obtain my undying loyalty!” Patelocke said agitatedly.

“I don’t need your loyalty, Patelocke — I just need your knowledge. However, the knowledge you’ve been giving me lately has been growing less and less,” Su Chen replied bluntly, shattering Patelocke’s hopes.

“You cheapskate! All that this crystal will do for you is raise your consciousness power a bit, but you’re not lacking in that in the slightest! All you need to do is diligently cultivate the True Spirit Scripture I gave you and that will be enough to augment your consciousness’s strength.”

Su Chen shook his head. “I’m not going to use it just to increase my consciousness power.”

“Then what else can you use it for? To deal with being attacked by someone with a stronger consciousness than you? Only a Ferocious Race individual would need to use it like that. Your consciousness is so powerful that not many people should be able to successfully control you.”

“Of course it’s not for that either. I have an even better use for it,” Su Chen replied.

“What?”

After thinking for a moment, Su Chen said, “Patelocke, do you remember what got you into those dire straits in the first place?”

Patelocke froze momentarily before replying, “Of course. I wanted to realize the glorious ambition in my heart.”

“More specifically, you were trying to accomplish something. If I recall correctly, you were trying to manipulate a person’s memory, am I right?” Su Chen asked casually.

Memory manipulation was the main problem Patelocke had been trying to resolve back in his days as an Ancient Arcana Master.

He wanted to find a way to pass on memories, which was the first great hurdle in achieving control over the various races.

Even though he had failed in the end, his work wasn’t completely useless. The Beast Spirit Controller profession was a side-effect of his research, after all.

This was something that far away in the past. Patelocke’s ambition had been buried in the harsh, unforgiving sands of time, along with the failure of his plans and the Arcana Kingdom’s decline.

At this moment, however, Su Chen had suddenly brought it up again, confusing Patelocke slightly.

He asked, “Why are you asking me about this again?”

“I’ve read some of your records regarding memory manipulation awhile back, and I must admit that they were quite well-written. Unfortunately, I have focused most of my recent attention on increasing my personal combat strength, making it so that I haven’t had much spare time to focus on this specific area of research. Even though I have inherited your knowledge, I haven’t been able to make much of it yet.”

“Oh...... that’s not really a big deal.” Patelocke felt uncomfortable and speechless.

After pausing momentarily, Su Chen continued. “Even so, this knowledge has inspired me from time to time. For various reasons, I haven’t been able to come up with a solid research path, but occasionally I’ll try an experiment or two. For instance, when I was at Clear River City, I tried to reshape my sea of knowledge by solidifying some of the knowledge that I already possessed. That way, it would forever be imprinted in my memory, and many things that I normally have to calculate on a daily basis again and again would become much more manageable as it would all take place within my head. In this way, I wouldn’t need to do as many extra experiments. Like so......”

Su Chen snapped his fingers. A swath of flames appeared in the air and assumed the form of a research workbench, followed by the formation of a few research tools. After absorbing the fire Origin Substance, Su Chen’s control over flames had increased significantly, and giving fire physical form was not a difficult task for him anymore.

He continued, saying, “By using this method, I can quickly accomplish things that would normally take a lot of calculations to perform.”

Patelocke quickly understood what Su Chen was saying.

All research and experimentation was established on top of a mountain of prior knowledge, from which it was possible to hypothesize about what might happen under unfamiliar conditions. This was the fundamental principle of carrying out research.

For this reason, it was impossible for Su Chen to avoid repetition when performing most of his experiments.

Su Chen had tried to use this method to compartmentalize the most repetitive aspects of his work. If he succeeded, his work efficiency might increase by tenfold if not a hundredfold.

It had to be said that his way of thinking was quite creative.

“You succeeded?” Patelocke asked.

“No, I failed,” Su Chen sighed. “Molding things in my sea of knowledge requires too much consciousness energy and mental power. Even creating a mental image of a research workbench already greatly drains my consciousness power. My sea of knowledge just couldn’t endure performing so many calculations unless I had a frightening amount of consciousness power like the Lord of the Dreamrealm. No, perhaps not even the Lord of the Dreamrealm could have succeeded; after all, the Dreamrealm wasn’t created by him alone, but rather the joint efforts of him, his descendants, and the Dream Spirits. If I had a vast dreamrealm like that, I could obviously conduct countless calculations, but I don’t. I gave up on this idea soon after.”

“But for you to bring it up now...... Are you thinking of......!?” Patelocke began to yell in shock.

“That’s right.” Su Chen picked up the consciousness crystal, his eyes glowing intensely. “Do you not feel like this could be a calculatory processing unit? This crystal is the substantialization of consciousness energy and is the most suited material for recording down all kinds of numbers to perform tens of thousands of different calculations. Any experiment whose results have been validated can be recorded down in it so that I can combine it with my sea of knowledge. This way, I’ll basically have two minds, one of which I can dedicate to performing calculations. A mind that is calm, cool, emotionless, and only processes numbers...... That would be too perfect.”

“That would be inconceivable,” Patelocke muttered.

He had never expected Su Chen to be so creative, and based on what Su Chen was saying, there was a high probability that he would succeed.

Because the crystal was the materialization of consciousness energy, Su Chen didn’t even need to waste energy to try and refine it.

“I just need to place it within my sea of knowledge, and then mold it into the shape that I desire.”

“Be careful, Su Chen. If you fail, it might blow your brains out.”

Su Chen smiled slightly. “I won’t fail. This will definitely become the most effective tool in anticipating and calculating the changes in Origin Energy!”

As he spoke, Su Chen placed the crystal on his forehead. The consciousness crystal disappeared from view, reappearing inside Su Chen’s sea of knowledge.

An instant later, a powerful wave of consciousness energy surged into Su Chen’s sea of knowledge.

The consciousness energy violently blew everywhere like a hurricane.