【Mad Alchemy Lab: Provides different alchemy functions based on the affixes fused with the lab. Current affixes: Distillery, Corrupted, Aberration, Trick, Vile Curse, Secret Art.】
【Trick: Enchants an item or equipment with a trick enchantment. The enchanted item or equipment will gain trick skills of random tiers, quantities, and costs.】
【(Randomness is the greatest joy! The unknown is the most terrifying existence! Do you dare to bet whether there is a bullet in my gun?)】
【Vile Curse: Applies a curse to any item (be it dead or alive). The curse will not take effect immediately; instead, it will have a delayed release and spread its effects to other nearby targets.】
【(Killing them one by one is the least efficient way to pull up roots. Releasing a sick tiger back into the mountains is how you truly end everything. Reunited at last! My enemies! Huddle together and weep on the other side of the Underworld!)】
【Secret Art: Secret arts are a niche branch of magic. This path blends a large amount of folklore, local sorcery, and mysterious taboos, resulting in secret arts that are usually far more powerful than magic of the same tier.】
【However, the cost required to cultivate and cast secret arts is also higher—ranging from a single hair or a drop of essence blood to your bone marrow, your brain, or even your soul. Secret arts are endless, and so are the costs.】
【Current secret arts provided by the fragment: Soul Disintegration, Soul Purification, Soul Fusion. (Additional secret arts can be provided by continuing to fuse fragments with related affixes like secret arts or secret methods.)】
【Casting secret arts through the lab can greatly reduce the negative costs, or even eliminate them entirely.】
【(First Law of the Transcendent World: Everything has a price. Second Law of the Transcendent World: The greater the price, the greater the reward. Third Law of the Transcendent World: The weaker the strength, the greater the price; the greater the strength, the smaller the price. This is because the strong can force the weak to pay the price for them.)】
"Crack! Bang! Clatter!"
After a series of noisy sounds, the Mad Alchemy Lab grew from its original three floors to six.
Not only did it increase in height, but its width and length also expanded significantly, covering a much larger area.
It seemed that fragments improved the lab not just by adding functions, but by upgrading existing ones as well.
However, the three newly acquired affixes weren't particularly useful for Chen Xu's current experiments. Trick and Vile Curse were both applied to items, similar to equipment enchantments.
If Chen Xu were an ordinary job-holder, he might use these modules to mass-produce enchanted equipment and items, selling them to others to gain startup capital.
But unfortunately, he was far from ordinary. His strength was just a little bit too high; he had already moved past the stage of using one-time enchanted gear.
Of course, these features weren't useless. He could perhaps open up these functions through the Undead Network for transcendents across the myriad worlds to use.
These two functions were still very practical for low-tier transcendents.
Chen Xu could collect a small fee from them, earning a profit on the margin. After all, the number of low-tier transcendents was considerable, and this group had immense consumption potential—they were Chen Xu's primary targets for harvesting.
With a single thought, he sent his idea to Miracle. Then, Chen Xu pulled the Whispering Tree along as he headed directly to the sixth floor of the lab—the Secret Art module.
Secret arts were a magic school with an extremely high ceiling and a very low floor, whether it came to harming enemies or oneself.
Of the three secret arts acquired this time, Chen Xu was most interested in Soul Purification.
【Soul Purification: Cast a secret art to write a large number of runes into the target's soul. The energy released between the runes will continuously refine the soul, removing impurities and achieving purification.】
【Cost: For every rune written into the soul, an offering of one portion of flesh essence and one portion of soul essence must be made to the Great Filthy Union. Otherwise, the runes will be contaminated, causing the soul to undergo mutation.】
This secret art used the energy emitted by runes—the manifestations of the world's Dao principles—to refine the soul. It was incredibly creative.
Generally speaking, runes were used to create various types of magic equipment, like runic swords or runic armor.
They were also used in everyday tools, such as runic carriages or runic teleportation arrays.
Cases where they were used directly on a person were very rare. Usually, runes were carved onto the skin so their power could soak into the flesh over a long period, allowing the body to change gradually.
Applying them to the soul was similar to how Chen Xu had first practiced his mental strength by condensing soul protection runes.
However, condensing soul protection runes didn't involve writing the runes into the soul itself; rather, it meant condensing them outside the soul to form an effective defensive structure.
Writing runes into the soul was a truly mad idea. It was no different from the cultivators in eastern myths who merged their Dao with the heavens.
One involved turning oneself into the Heavenly Dao, becoming the underlying logic of the world's operation. The other involved letting runes remodel the soul, allowing it to be refined under the influence of the Dao principles.
The skill description called it simple refinement, but as a unique-tier existence who mastered multiple Dao principles, Chen Xu knew exactly what kind of impact they had on souls and biological bodies.
Rather than calling it Soul Purification, it was more like "Soul Dao-fication" or "Soul Runification."
Yet, this secret art was indeed useful to Chen Xu.
Every rune corresponded to a Dao principle. Although these were only simple, basic principles—like the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth, or natural elements like wind, lightning, ice, and darkness—they were enough.
Chen Xu could find several ghosts and use the secret art to write a large number of runes into them. Once the runes remodeled their souls, new characteristics might emerge.
It would be similar to having a single-element root, granting them the characteristic of increased comprehension for that specific element.
Since ghosts themselves had elemental variant advancement forms, Chen Xu might be able to quickly build a mythic-tier elemental variant ghost legion this way.
Although this didn't solve the difficulty of the Nephalem's Dream project, it was a happy accident—an unintended harvest.
With a flick of his finger, a normal ghost and a Blazing Soul filled with solar power were snatched up and brought before him.
Next, he activated the secret art and cast Soul Purification, writing three gold-attribute runes into each of them.
The three runes were successfully written into the normal ghost without any issues.
However, the runes inside the Blazing Soul were extremely unstable. Under the interference of the solar power within its body, they showed signs of collapsing.
Seeing this, Chen Xu canceled the spell and removed the three runes from the Blazing Soul.
"It seems ghosts are better suited for this secret art."
With the experiment a success, Chen Xu looked at the Whispering Tree behind him.
"The Nephalem's Dream project still has to wait for soul particle materials. For now, you can use this floor of the lab to create a few more special ghosts. Don't worry about the 'cost.' No one dares to enter my territory to collect."
Indeed, Chen Xu simply ignored the cost of casting the secret art. That so-called Filthy Union was, at most, an eternal-tier monster.
While casting, Chen Xu had sensed a tiny soul connection, but the other party had quickly and proactively severed it, releasing a series of interferences in an attempt to evade his perception.
However, relying on his unique-tier characteristics, Chen Xu still locked onto that union. It was just an eternal-tier being that enjoyed 'fishing.'
It grew by spreading various techniques and secret arts to collect 'costs.'
Chen Xu didn't bother dealing with it personally; he silently noted the coordinates and sent them to Xuan Chu.
Once the Wanbao Pavilion's merchant team returned, he would send the Black Knights and the undead army to handle it.
A mere eternal-tier entity couldn't make any waves.
Suddenly, Chen Xu paused. His clone had just received a very important piece of news.
"The Sea of Spirit?"
Rate on N.U.
