Ancient alchemists had a much harder time compared to modern alchemists. They did not have so many established prescriptions to refer to. Your modern alchemist did not have to worry about failure, as long as they were moderately intelligent, decently skilled, had sufficient mental energy, and used ingredients with passable quality.
However, the first alchemists of ancient times had to explore for themselves, experimenting with different combinations of materials over and over until they discovered a new recipe. Back then, even a low-Grade prescription was worth the wealth of entire kingdoms and plenty of blood was shed over them.
This was especially so, as Heaven’s Martial World was incredibly conservative. Most people were selfish and preferred to hoard their knowledge to themselves. The alchemists would hold back, even when teaching their own disciples. The value of pill prescriptions back then was unthinkable.
Of course, this culture also resulted in the loss of many valuable ancient prescriptions.
However, no matter the world, the time, or the place, there will always be greedy people who want more than they deserve. Naturally, the idea of stealing prescriptions naturally arose. However, alchemists had powerful mental energy, which gave them excellent memory. This meant that they had no need for paper prescriptions, when they could simply memorize the whole thing.
How were you supposed to steal something like that?
Well, if something’s written on a piece of paper, you read the piece of paper; if something’s etched in a mind, you simply read the mind!
Your ability limits your imagination.
An alchemist with tremendous mental energy embarked on this journey. After many human experiments, he finally discovered a method of reading minds— soulsearching!
It was a technique where you reach into someone’s mind with your mental energy and forcibly read their memories. However, every alchemist possessed powerful mental energy. Invade an alchemist’s mind without preparation and it was very likely you would be the one getting injured instead. There had been cases of inexperienced alchemists suffering severe backlash from soulsearching, which almost crippled them. It was an incredibly risky maneuver.
Moreover, powerful alchemists often had very long lifespans. That meant that they had accrued far more memories than the average person within their minds. Attempting to read all those memories at once would overload anyone’s mind.
Well, if that was the case, why not separate the memories into pieces and read them one by one?
Thus, soulsearching became even more brutal. The usual procedure involved destroying the opponent’s mind and shredding it into pieces, before picking through the fragments for useful information. Fragmented memories increased the difficulty of reading them significantly, and often resulted in loss of information, but it made the whole procedure much safer.
Between risk and safety, it only made sense to choose the latter!
The soulsearch of the past was extremely dangerous for the user, and very safe for the victim. However, the modified soulsearch was a vile technique. The victim was guaranteed to be lobotomized by the procedure.
Setting aside the fact that mental energy was fundamental to martial artists to create soul energy, soulsearch was far more evil in what it did to the person itself. Think about it, if your mind was torn to pieces and your innate mental energy shredded completely, you would naturally lose all sense of self and be left in a vegetative state. It was a fate worse than death.
The moment that Old Lei’s mental energy surged into Bat Yun’s mind through his fingers, Bat Yun’s fate was sealed.
“Aaaaaah!” cried Bat Yun in agony. He wanted to clasp his head in pain, but his limbs were still bound tight by the blue flames. He could only scream painfully with the last of his strength, his voice alternating between high-pitched screeches and hoarse cries. His vocal cords were on the brink of snapping in half. Spit came out of his mouth as he screamed, every drop mixed with blood.
Old Lei’s mental energy forcefully breached Bat Yun’s mind and shredded it to tiny pieces.
That kind of pain was unbearable for a human being.
It was painful, it was torture, it was agony.
It felt like someone sticking a stick up your nose, then thrusting it all the way through your nose, your skull, and finally, into your brain, before they swirled the stick around, turning your brain into a gooey mess. It was like having a terrible brain freeze, except that sensation was amplified hundreds, thousands, millions of times! That was how it felt to have your mind torn to pieces.
This was no exaggeration.
“Heh. The Green Wolf Gang, was it? Interesting,” said Old Lei as he instantly read through most of the memory fragments. He had an odd smile on his face as he read the memory fragments, looking more and more interested as he did so.
Wun Fan couldn’t help but grow curious, but he didn’t dare to speak up and risk interrupting Old Lei. After all, Old Lei had never explained to him what soulsearching was. He didn’t know what the risks were and he didn’t want to get scolded for asking a question.
Hung Yu Fei and Fung Ching didn’t know how to react when they saw ‘Wun Fan’ standing still like that. They could only watch on quietly as Bat Yun’s screams slowly died down, and turned into vacuous laughter. He would cough once in a while, his drool running down his cheek onto his shirt.
A Martial Master had been turned into an idiot, just like that.
‘Wun Fan’ pulled out his five fingers. Brain matter and blood dripped onto the ground. He swung his head and decapitated the man.
He calmly wiped his bloody hand on Bat Yun’s clothes. Meanwhile, Hung Yu Fei was almost throwing up from the sight alone.
“Alright, that’s it for now. We’ll talk later tonight. I’ll return control to you,” said Old Lei before retreating into the Spiritstartler Ring to recover his mental energy. He returned control of the body to its original owner as he did so.
“Mm…” moaned Wun Fan as he stretched his body. His bones cracked and popped as he stretched.
“Wun Fan, what was up with those flames earlier?” asked Hung Yu Fei. She couldn’t hold back her curiosity. This kid’s martial soul was clearly…right, she didn’t know what it was, but it definitely wasn’t fire.
Fung Ching couldn’t help but be curious as well. Martial artists with twin martial souls weren’t unheard of. There were a few of them in Naap-Lan Empire as well, but it was strange for one martial soul to be so strong while the other was so weak.
At least, it shouldn’t be possible for one martial soul to be several realms stronger than the other one, so much so that it could defeat a Martial Master with ease.
Fung Ching had a feeling that this young boy would one day become someone important. It didn’t seem like a bad thing to know him now.
“Girl, curiosity killed the cat,” said Wun Fan, clearly not intending to tell her anything. He even put on a show of looking embarrassed, swaying from side to side as if he was just an innocent eleven-year-old boy, before saying in a cute tone, “Could you not look at me so intently? You don’t happen to like me, do you?”
“Who would, idiot!” shouted Hung Yu Fei, before stomping her feet and running away. Fung Ching was stunned by her response. This wasn’t a good sign.
“Tsk. Kids these days. Can’t take a joke,” said Wun Fan disdainfully.156Please respect copyright.PENANA2RcidfjSQn
The moon was bright and accompanied by tiny stars. A cool breeze blew across the forest. Nighttime.
After cleaning up the battlefield, the death aura Wun Fan absorbed was more than enough for him to ascend to Martial Vassal realm. He couldn’t help but let out a satisfied moan when he ascended. Hung Yu Fei and Fung Ching were surprised to see this. Wun Fan was simply too strange.
If he continued killing his enemies like this and growing stronger with every kill, wouldn’t he turn into a monster very quickly? A monster that feasted on death and murder.
The world was unpredictable and no one could claim to know the future. Fortunately for them, right now, Wun Fan was not their enemy.
The three of them continued walking for a long distance. They finally set up camp for the night when they were two hours away from their destination. Once Hung Yu Fei entered the tent, Wun Fan sat on a tree branch and began his lookout duty. At the same time, he talked to Old Lei to find out what he learned this afternoon.
Strangely enough, Hung Yu Fei did not request to bath tonight. She only asked Wun Fan for some water, which she mixed with red ore powder to turn into warm water. She then simply wiped herself down and called it a night.
That said, Wun Fan couldn’t be bothered to figure out why she was behaving differently. She was a bothersome girl anyway. Better to not get involved with her. He still felt a little worried about that mysterious martial technique of hers.
“Old Lei, how did the soulsearch go with that Martial Master?” asked Wun Fan.
He didn’t understand soulsearching too well, but the name alone was enough for him to deduce what it did. It was probably an ability to read memories.
Old Lei’s elderly voice rang in his mind with a hint of amusement in it, “This Green Wolf Gang is very interesting.”
What the hell does that mean?156Please respect copyright.PENANAmdYBc47dxn