What appeared in his mind this time wasn't a scene he was pulled into like before.
It was a memory.
And it wasn't a memory from Laurina's perspective.
The images Lu Yuan “saw” were from the ground up.
His field of vision was extremely low, as if he were peering out from a cramped space.
Around him were transparent, curved walls with a slight refraction that distorted the outside world into blurred blocks of color.
It was glass.
The owner of this perspective was currently inside a glass jar.
The mouth of the jar was open. Looking up, he could see the dim yellow glow of a lamp.
Then a face leaned down.
The outline was distorted by the glass wall, but Lu Yuan still recognized it.
Chestnut hair tied back loosely, light brown eyes, and a fair face.
It was Laurina.
Her face loomed large through the glass, dominating his entire field of vision.
She leaned against the workbench with several scrolls in her hand, peering down into the jar.
She was looking right at “him.”
Lu Yuan realized in that instant: he was experiencing the memory of a knowledge-derived insect.
What Laurina left behind was the memory of this worm... wait, why would a knowledge-derived insect have memories???
As his mind wandered, a violent jolt to his Sanity struck, making his head feel heavy.
【Sanity: -3... 88/120】
He had to keep his Sanity stable.
Then, Laurina spoke.
Her voice drifted in through the opening, distorted by the glass, but every word was clear.
“Mentor's experimental direction is flawed.”
She wasn't talking to herself; she was talking to the thing inside the jar.
Talking to “him.”
“He wants you to feed on each other—the worms eat the host's knowledge, and the host gains new knowledge from the worms' waste. Sounds perfect, doesn't it?”
Laurina's lips curled slightly, her expression grave.
“But the price is a host's brain riddled with holes. Those students eventually forget even their own names.”
She unfurled a scroll and held it up to the jar so “he” could see the contents.
“What if we try a different approach?”
Her finger pointed at a line of words on the page.
“I won't let you enter a human body. In-vitro feeding, in-vitro binding... I'll use my own knowledge as an anchor to establish a contract first, then feed you external knowledge.”
She paused, as if weighing her words.
“Domestication. Ranching.”
“If I can pull this off... knowledge can be refined, stored, and released at will without the need to sacrifice lives.”
After Laurina finished speaking, she didn't immediately act.
She looked at “him” in the bottle, silent for a few seconds.
Then she opened the first scroll and began to read.
She read slowly, enunciating every word as if telling a story to a child who couldn't yet understand.
It was basic alchemical theory.
Elemental classification, material characteristics, reaction conditions.
Lu Yuan realized he wasn't hearing her words with his ears; they were being transmitted through the worm's perception.
As Laurina spoke, “he” became increasingly active inside the jar.
It wasn't excitement, but an instinctive reaction to being fed.
The knowledge she recited was like the scent of food drifting through the opening. “He” instinctively moved toward the source of the sound, his body's writhing frequency accelerating.
The image began to shake.
Then shattered.
Darkness lasted for two or three seconds.
The second segment of imagery flooded in.
【Sanity: -5... 83/120】
Still the view from inside a jar.
But it was a different jar.
It was larger than the previous one, and a label was stuck to the side. Looking from the inside, Lu Yuan could see the reversed handwriting—it was Laurina's, but the content was illegible.
Laurina's face appeared again above the bottle mouth.
This time, her expression was completely different.
Eyes full of expectation.
It was the same look he had seen at the Alchemy Workshop—the expression she wore after completing a project and verifying a hypothesis.
She was barely contained with excitement, though she tried to remain composed.
“Twenty-first experiment.”
Her voice was a bit faster than in the previous segment.
“I think I've discovered a completely new way to utilize knowledge. If this works, it might even become a new pathway.”
She took a deep breath, as if organizing her thoughts.
“Based on one's own knowledge reserves, one can tame... no, contract a Knowledge Worm! The method works, though there seems to be a limit.”
She reached out and tapped the edge of the bottle mouth, as if calculating something.
“With alchemy as my anchor, I can contract twelve at most. That's far fewer than I expected.”
Laurina paused slightly.
“But... the amount of knowledge they can store is actually comparable to my own.”
Through the worm's perception, Lu Yuan realized “he” wasn't alone in the jar.
Other worms were curled in various corners at the bottom, pulsating quietly.
Each one carried a different “flavor” of knowledge aura.
Laurina's finger tapped the bottle mouth twice more.
“But in-vitro feeding is still too slow...”
She frowned, as if thinking about a technical problem.
“I have to find another way. Refine the knowledge to speed up the feeding process.”
As she spoke, she couldn't suppress her grin.
“This might actually work. If I can achieve a balance, please address me as Laurina, the Super Invincible Genius Creator, Founder, and Queen of the New Knowledge Pathway.”
Lu Yuan's eye twitched as he listened. If Laurina ever found out he'd seen this, she would definitely kill him to keep him quiet...
Immediately after, the image shattered again.
This time the darkness lasted longer.
But Lu Yuan was far from comfortable. During the darkness, invisible fragments of memory swarmed over him.
These weren't human memories, but rather a vague “understanding.”
He now knew what a knowledge-derived insect truly was, understood Laurina's logic for the contracts, and much more.
This non-human experience left Lu Yuan's forehead covered in cold sweat.
Before Lu Yuan could react.
The third segment surged in.
【Sanity: -8... 75/120】
As soon as the image appeared, Lu Yuan felt something was wrong.
It was no longer the quiet atmosphere of the laboratory.
But panic.
The perspective was still in the bottle.
But the bottle was shaking.
In the refraction of the glass wall, Laurina's face flashed by.
Her expression was nothing like the first two segments. Her brow was furrowed, her lips were a thin line, and the excitement in her light brown eyes had been replaced by something Lu Yuan recognized.
The kind of calm after making a decision.
The bad kind of calm.
The bottle was put down.
With a thud, a slight vibration came up from the bottom of the bottle.
Then Laurina's hand reached in.
Her fingertips precisely scooped “him” up.
The sensation of being lifted was bizarre. To the worm, it felt as if the entire world had suddenly flipped. Light flooded in from all directions, no longer filtered by the glass.
Lu Yuan saw the complete laboratory from the worm's perspective for the first time.
It was the room he was standing in now.
But it hadn't been emptied yet.
The cabinets were stuffed, alchemical arrays hung on the walls, and the small table by the window held a tea set and a half-eaten piece of bread.
Laurina held “him” up to her eyes.
Then she spoke.
Her voice was barely a whisper.
“This isn't something I should have touched.”
She bit her lip.
“They've all gone mad.”
Lu Yuan wasn't sure who she meant by “they've all gone mad.”
Students? Mentors? Or what she was about to do herself?
Laurina took a deep breath.
Then, she pressed “him” against her forehead.
The field of vision darkened instantly.
It wasn't the darkness of closed eyes, but the void of all senses being severed simultaneously.
“He” passed through the skin.
Passed through the bone.
Entered a world Lu Yuan had never seen from this angle.
Not seen with eyes.
It was the instinctive perception of a knowledge worm: a vast, churning ocean woven from infinite threads of information.
But this wasn't the Sea of Knowledge; the flavor of the knowledge was too consistent. Was this Laurina's mind?
What was she doing? Before he could think, the worm's perspective sent his mind reeling.
To be precise, it drove the knowledge worm into madness.
To the worm, the memories and knowledge of an eighteen-year-old alchemical genius were like a city illuminated by a million lights.
Lu Yuan could feel the worm's instincts screaming. It wanted to feed.
Everything here was food.
Endless food.
Yet it struggled to restrain itself.
Obviously the contract was binding it.
Laurina's mental anchor was a chain around its neck, yanking it back and preventing it from taking even a single bite.
Then, a massive force pushed “him” downward.
Not Laurina's power.
Something from deeper within.
“He” was shoved past the deepest layer of Laurina's memories, through a rift that shouldn't have existed—
Falling.
Endless falling.
Colors surged from all directions.
A magnificent sea composed of words spread across his vision, stretching into infinity.
Every word glowed. Countless lights flowed, collided, and intertwined beneath the surface.
The Sea of Knowledge.
Lu Yuan's consciousness shuddered violently in the worm's memory.
He had been here.
That aura—the essence of infinite knowledge converging—was something he would never forget.
The worm was sinking.
Deeper and deeper.
Everything the worm carried—all of Laurina's research data, everything concerning the knowledge-derived insects—was stripped away as it sank.
Like ice melting in hot water, layer by layer dissolving into this ocean.
But at the last moment.
Before “he” completely dissipated.
A voice came from the last trace of memory the worm carried.
It was Laurina's voice.
She had purged every memory of the knowledge-derived insects from her mind.
Only one sentence remained.
“Only those who have stepped into that place and survived can find a trace of me here.”
Then the worm's consciousness completely dissipated.
The image broke.
Lu Yuan snapped back to reality, stumbling backward. His waist hit a wooden cabinet with a dull thud.
He bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air.
Cold sweat dripped from his forehead to the stone floor.
Lingering worm perceptions, Laurina's voice, the colors of the Sea of Knowledge.
【Sanity: -10... 65/120】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +2.5... 25.9/100】
【Pharmacology: +1... 34.4/50】
【New Knowledge Entry Unlocked: Knowledge Worm Pathway (Basic)】
【Warning: Your existence has drawn the gaze of a certain entity...】
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