A male corpse lay on the experiment table.
The chest cavity was sliced open horizontally, the ribs pried apart with metal retractors, revealing the dark red internal organs inside.
The heart, lungs, and liver—each organ was carefully pushed aside by hair-thin vines, leaving a palm-sized space in the center.
This area had originally been the location of the spine and nerve plexus. Now, a small section of the spine had been excised, replaced by a dark green crystal the size of a fingernail.
The crystal was embedded between the severed ends of the vertebrae, its surface carved with runic lines even thinner than hair.
The runes spread outward from the edges of the crystal, crawling up the spine to the medulla oblongata and extending down to the lumbar vertebrae, digging into the surrounding flesh like tree roots.
Ethan stood before the experiment table, holding a long, slender silver needle in his hand.
The tip of the needle tapped lightly on the surface of the crystal. A faint ripple of energy radiated from the tip, spreading in all directions along the runic lines.
Wherever the ripple passed, the runic lines lit up in sequence with a dark green fluorescence, glowing all the way from the spine to the nerve endings.
The corpse's right middle finger twitched.
Then the index finger.
Then the entire right hand began to spasm. The five fingers splayed open and clenched, clenched and splayed open again, the fingernails scraping against the metal tabletop with a screeching sound.
Ethan stopped the silver needle and scribbled a few notes on the record board in his hand.
“Neural signal transmission pathway successfully established. Connection efficiency is roughly forty percent, with a transmission latency of about zero point three seconds. Quite a bit stronger than the last one.”
He set down the record board and tapped the crystal's surface with the silver needle once more.
This time, the energy ripple was a size larger than before. The runic lines shone with a blinding intensity, the light spreading from the spine to the entire chest cavity, then further to the limbs and skull.
The corpse began to convulse violently. Its legs thrashed against the experiment table, its back arching and collapsing, its mouth opening and closing as a muffled, gurgling sound escaped its throat.
Ethan watched the scene, his face devoid of emotion.
The gurgling continued for about half a minute before abruptly stopping.
The corpse ceased its convulsions, slumping back onto the table. A few fine cracks appeared on the surface of the dark green crystal embedded between the vertebrae, spreading from the edges to the center, growing wider and denser.
In the next second, the crystal shattered with a crisp crack, sending dark green shards flying in all directions, embedding themselves into the surrounding organs and muscles.
The corpse suddenly snapped its eyes open.
Those eyeballs no longer had human pupils, but were instead two expanding pools of dark green light.
The light spilled from the sockets and dripped down the cheeks, past the chin and neck, and into the sliced-open chest cavity.
Wherever the light touched, skin and muscle began to dissolve at a visible rate, exposing the grayish-white bones beneath.
Ethan took a step back.
The corpse's chest cavity began to swell.
Dissolved flesh and bone fragments mixed with the dark green light, churning and expanding inside the chest cavity, growing larger and larger.
The chest cavity burst through the metal retractors, and the severed ends of the ribs curled outward under the pressure of the expansion, like a blooming flower of flesh and blood.
“Tsk.”
Ethan extended his right hand and lightly tapped his index finger toward the corpse.
A spark of fire shot from his fingertip.
The moment the spark landed on the corpse's chest, it exploded.
Flames spread from the chest cavity, burning upward along the ribs to the skull and downward to the leg bones.
Skin, muscle, organs, bones—everything turned to ash silently within the flames.
The ash settled on the experiment table.
The metal surface of the experiment table remained perfectly intact, without even a single scorch mark.
The flames extinguished themselves less than half an inch above the tabletop, as if choked by an invisible hand.
Ethan withdrew his finger and watched the pile of ash get automatically sucked away by the cleaning array at the edge of the table.
“The forced artificial mental power enhancement on ordinary humans has failed again. Honestly, brother, you should just stay a normal duke.”
He casually set the silver needle on the instrument rack next to the experiment table, picked up the record board, and scribbled a few more notes.
The board was densely packed with experimental data. From the first corpse to this one, two full years of experimental records were compressed onto a few thin sheets of parchment.
Two years.
From the moment he received those one million magic crystals, from the moment he erected his Wizard Tower in the Undeveloped Area at the southernmost edge of the academy—two full years had passed.
The outer walls of the Wizard Tower were constructed from massive blocks of dark blue-green granite, each stone measuring five meters square.
The tower rose from the ground, pointing straight into the sky. It had no superfluous decorations, no carvings, and no visible runes—only bare stone walls and several rows of narrow windows.
The tower had nine floors in total, each with its own functional division.
The top floor was his private meditation room; the eighth floor was the alchemy lab; the seventh floor was the material warehouse; the sixth floor was the summoning room; the fifth floor was the sealing room; the fourth floor was the elemental pool; the third floor was the study; the second floor was the living quarters; and the first floor was the reception hall.
The open ground surrounding the tower was enclosed by a dark green thorn wall.
The thorn wall stood ten meters high, with vines thicker than an adult's waist and thorns half a meter long, their tips secreting a dark green, poisonous sap.
Inside the thorn wall was a jungle accelerated to its absolute limit, where all kinds of wood-element supernatural plants grew wildly.
Blood vines, dark thorn trees, ghost-face flowers, bone-eating grass—each species was meticulously selected from the academy's database. They were either poisonous, thorny, blood-sucking, or a combination of all three.
Over the past two years, he had spent the vast majority of his time holed up in this tower.
Conducting experiments.
Cultivating.
Conducting experiments.
Cultivating.
Conducting experiments.
Practicing alchemy.
Conducting experiments.
Today's corpse was the seven hundred and seventy-seventh.
The results of the previous seven hundred and seventy-six had been largely the same as this one: either their mental seas could not withstand the energy infusion from the crystal and exploded, or their physical bodies mutated under the backlash of the mental power, or both occurred simultaneously.
Not a single one had succeeded. None could survive the dual modification of mind and body.
For an ordinary person to acquire supernatural power was barely any simpler than a Wizard creating a world out of nothing.
Ethan placed the record board on the rack beside the experiment table, then reached out to press a runic groove on the side of the table.
The residual ash on the tabletop was swept up by an invisible force, sucked into the groove, and then discharged directly to the waste disposal area outside the tower via a teleportation array.
He turned around, his gaze sweeping over the row of shelves on the opposite wall of the laboratory.
On the shelves stood over a hundred potion bottles, arranged in neat rows.
Spirit-Refreshing Potion, Ignis Paste, Minor Wound Ointment, Lesser Mana Recovery Potion, bone-tempering potion, blood vine extract, dark thorn tree sap essence—next to each potion lay a stack of experimental records.
These were only a small portion of his alchemy achievements over the past two years.
With his Alchemist's Touch passive, the success rate and efficacy of anything he crafted were significantly enhanced. With the same materials, where others would produce mid-grade items, he would craft high-grade or even peak-grade ones.
Of course, he spent money incredibly fast.
One million magic crystals seemed like a lot, but building a Wizard Tower, purchasing experimental materials, buying knowledge, maintaining the elemental pool, and cultivating those supernatural plants—each was a bottomless pit.
After two years, his magic crystals had decreased by nearly thirty percent.
Due to his experimental demands, the entirety of Blood Bone Tower had entered a frenzy of cultivating and searching for materials.
If not for the annual income from the development rights of thirteen small worlds, he would not have spent so lavishly.
Still, it was worth it.
Rate on N.U.
