Li Huai: "It’s hard to put into words, specifically. But if I had to use an analogy, it’s like the relationship between a gas cylinder and a balloon."
Lan Qingyou: "Go on?"
Li Huai: "The cylinder represents the upper limit of your talent, and the balloon is our body."
Li Huai: "Our bodies right now are about the size of a finger balloon."
Li Huai: "If you try to force all the gas from that cylinder into a balloon that size, the only outcome is that you’ll pop."
Li Huai: "We simply can’t carry the full weight of our talent’s limit yet."
Li Huai explained.
To be honest, this was a lesson he had learned in blood.
Last time, because he had used just a fraction of power beyond his current limit in a moment of crisis, he had ended up covered in injuries and nearly didn't make it back.
So, strictly speaking, this piece of intelligence was something Li Huai had traded his life for.
However...
Lan Qingyou: "Got it, thanks."
After replying with that single sentence, Lan Qingyou went silent, leaving Li Huai feeling both annoyed and amused.
He was annoyed because back on Blue Star, he had been a successful young CEO, and even here, he was a powerhouse with an S-grade talent. Was this the treatment he deserved?
Used and then discarded?
The amusement came from the fact that this behavior perfectly matched the stereotypical image he had of Lan Qingyou.
Lan Qingyou, of course, didn't care what Li Huai thought.
Now that she had her answer, she could fully substantiate her hypothesis.
Reaching out to Li Huai just now had been the result of careful consideration.
After all, talents like hers or Gu Xiaobei’s couldn't serve as effective references.
Li Huai was different.
His talent was offensive and very pure.
He only needed to use it to attack; he didn't need to worry about anything else.
Therefore, his feedback was the most direct.
And now, Lan Qingyou had received his reply—the exact reply she wanted.
With her own conjecture and Li Huai’s confirmation, Lan Qingyou was now certain of her 'Talent equals Magic' formula.
With this formula, she had a breakthrough point for researching a potion to upgrade talents.
Lan Qingyou: "Do you have any mental-type magic creatures or herbs on hand?"
Shang Chuan: "I do."
Lan Qingyou: "Send them over."
Screeching bats, woolly alpacas, swaying flowers, blue spore mushrooms, worry-free grass, whispering grass...
After a brief conversation, Lan Qingyou had a batch of mental-type creature materials and herbs in her possession.
She then began her path of research and development.
Although talents were diverse—some acting on the self like Lan Qingyou's, some on external objects like Gu Xiaobei's, and some for attacking enemies like Li Huai's...
No matter how they manifested, they still fell under the extremely broad category of magic.
So, Lan Qingyou essentially set her parameters based on the conditions for upgrading magic.
Her personal information stated that magic could not be upgraded, but knowledge could be accumulated.
Evidently, magic wasn't something that could be leveled up just because one wanted to.
After producing another three batches, Lan Qingyou nearly had a breakdown.
Seriously?
Three batches—a full three hundred mugs—and not a single one glowed? She couldn't even find half a qualified sample?
Where exactly did she go wrong?
Scratching her messy, bird-nest hair, Lan Qingyou frowned, her eyes framed by dark circles.
It shouldn't be like this. Her ratios were definitely correct, and she had tried every possible permutation.
So where was the problem?
Lan Qingyou was feeling a bit irritable at this point, the result of not sleeping for dozens of hours.
She opened her personal panel and stared deathly at it, hoping to find some spark of inspiration.
But after several scans, there was no new harvest.
The personal panel only contained so much information; no matter how much she looked at it, it wasn't going to manifest a miracle.
Lan Qingyou closed the panel with a sigh of regret, then leaned her hands on the wooden desk, staring at the formulas in her notebook that she had crossed out one by one.
No, something was definitely wrong.
But if the blending and the proportions were absolutely normal, what was she overlooking?
Staring at the names of the materials on the formulas, Lan Qingyou’s frown deepened.
"Wait! The materials!"
While she was pondering, her gaze fixed on the material names, and she suddenly threw open her personal panel again.
Then, she locked her eyes onto a character she had been ignoring all along.
‘E’
That was it! It was the E!
How had she not noticed this before?
What she was trying to develop right now was a potion to upgrade talents.
Reasonably speaking, the over two hundred million people who had been forcibly transported here had all awakened talents, regardless of grade.
That meant the lowest grade was E, followed by D, C, B, A, and S.
If she wanted to research a potion to upgrade a talent from E-grade to D-grade, then the quality of the potion itself had to be at least D-grade. In that case, shouldn't she be using D-grade materials?
"Heh... heh heh..."
Lan Qingyou patted her slightly sweating forehead, feeling a sense of self-mockery.
She had actually tripped over such a basic mistake.
But she didn't seem to have any D-grade materials on hand, did she?
Even Shang Chuan likely didn't have any.
After all, those were D-grade materials. They hadn't even appeared in the entire Abandoned Forest yet. Even if they had, they weren't something current survivors could...
Thinking of this, Lan Qingyou suddenly remembered Li Huai.
Wait!
She actually did have one?
Floating over to the storage room, Lan Qingyou found the box Li Huai had given her earlier containing the volcanic worm.
Not only was this thing D-grade, but it also happened to be mental-type.
Unfortunately, there was only one.
She contacted Li Huai, and when he had no more, she contacted Shang Chuan. The result was as she expected—he didn't have any either.
Fine. Now she could only pin her hopes on this one specimen.
With no other choice, Lan Qingyou took the volcanic worm out, placed it on the table in the alchemy workshop, and began the dissection.
Fortunately, the core was still inside; that at least counted as a material.
There was also the blood—or more accurately, the fluids inside the volcanic worm—which she had to preserve.
Lan Qingyou performed the decomposition very carefully. It took her half an hour just to finish dissecting the relatively small volcanic worm.
After crushing the entire D-grade magic creature core and grinding it into a fine powder, Lan Qingyou brought out the various bottles and jars she had collected.
Measuring cups, beakers, alcohol lamps, funnels...
After a series of clicks and clacks, she managed to put together a crude distillation apparatus.
Assembling this distillation apparatus was for the purpose of purifying the volcanic worm's core. Since she only had this one core, she had to treat it with extreme seriousness.
Once all the preliminary preparations were complete, Lan Qingyou re-evaluated the upcoming steps, selected a few rare E-grade materials to serve as auxiliary ingredients, and began her production anew.
Rate on N.U.
