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The Science of Cultivation - Chapter 197: Rough Waters
🕑 Added 2024-12-06 23:30:01 +0000 UTCWhile Li Lang waited for his students to reach the peak of Energy Gathering, he used his time wisely on creating artifacts.
For the past two years, he had been practicing on and off within Ruby’s artifact space after consuming each type of beast core.
Now that he had completed his printer artifact, he naturally set his sights on weapons and armor that a typical cultivator would have. However, it was a far more challenging endeavor than he thought. He hadn’t succeeded a single time throughout the years.
For the printer artifact, Li Lang used a mimeograph machine as a base and customized it to fit in with a beast core, along with using materials that conducted Qi in the right way. That way, the exotic energy could power the machine to move as the creator intended. Then, he used programming knowledge as a base to repurpose the beast core’s remnant spirit into a working operating system.
The same process didn’t translate well when it came to weapons and armor. At first, one may conclude it should be significantly easier, as cold weapons were simply chunks of sharpened metals. Unfortunately, that simplicity was what made it so challenging.
There was no direction to program the artifact’s spirit, which meant there was no will or goal for the artifact’s spirit to focus on. Li Lang suspected that normally this wasn’t a problem, as artificers used the remnant spirit of the beast core. It could grow freely, as all life did. His programming method just happened to not be suitable for it.
To verify if his programming method did indeed do anything, he even used a few of the remaining neutral affinity beast cores to recreate more printer artifacts. They never succeeded if left to the traditional method of taming the remnant spirit, but did once he programmed their spirit into existence. When he tried with a blade, the elementary AI he programmed never worked. He surmised the lack of direction disqualified it from being deemed an artifact spirit.
With that figured out, the obvious solution was to create a more sophisticated weapon with a theme in mind, but that proved to be an even bigger hurdle. With the printer artifact, it wasn’t meant to be wielded in combat, which meant it didn’t need to take into account weight and wieldiness.
If he tried to make his custom spear into an artifact, the lack of cohesiveness and structural integrity due to the hidden compartments made it fail every time. After all, artifact weapons were supposed to be durable. Those that didn’t meet this requirement would never be able to become an artifact.
Li Lang’s success with his first artifact was largely owed to the few restrictions imposed. It could be as big as he desired, whatever form he desired. For weapons, the forms were less flexible. On the limited platform of a sword or spear, he had to finely engineer it so that both its spiritual aspects and physical aspects were extraordinary and synergized. It was like inscribing a talisman, but on a tiny piece of paper.
All this caused Li Lang to take the time to slowly improve his artificing skills so that he could practice how to create a true artifact despite these stringent requirements.
Today, he would be making his first attempt in reality.
He had practiced numerous times with the water-affinity beast core and achieved success before within his lab. Ruby couldn’t simulate the interaction with the remnant spirit of the core, but the other processes appeared to be sound.
He accomplished this by moving the hidden compartments where the poisons were stored, toward the exterior of the spear and under the tip.
The artificing session began without any special fanfare. He dove straight into it one afternoon, inside his room.
He fetched some materials from his space ring and used his artificer techniques to manipulate the metal to conform to his desired shape. It was a lot of convenient than using a forge. It was also the easy part.
The challenge came when it was time to install the beast core. That was when the remnant spirit would act out aggressively at him. He would either have to tame it, as the traditional artificer did, or program a new spirit to control the artifact. Of course, Li Lang chose the latter method.
The basic AI he had in mind was focused on injecting the poison into its intended targets. It wasn’t hard to program but tedious. Basic AIs weren’t sentient but were a comprehensive database that had numerous pre-saved responses to various stimuli. Li Lang believed this would be enough to qualify as a Mortal-grade artifact like his printer artifact did.
After waiting for the remnant spirit to die out, Li Lang began implementing his artificial spirit. It took half the day and made him wear a frown all day.
When it was done, the nascent spear instantly began to glow. However, it only lasted a few seconds before it disintegrated into tiny pieces.
“It failed—”
Li Lang knew it wasn’t likely to succeed on the first try every time, but deep down somewhere, he believed he would.
He didn’t let it bring him down and quickly recorded the process before letting Ruby consume the debris, so the auto-analyzer could examine the remains.
“Hmm, it didn’t have a good success rate in my lab here either, so maybe there is some flaw in my design,” Li Lang muttered.
“Master, it’s too soon to say that already. Artifact creation is not easy for a reason. Give it a few more tries first.”
“You’re right. Just let me record everything from the previous tests first.”
Like that, Li Lang attempted again, despite knowing he had a limited supply of beast cores. Of the ones with water affinity specifically, there were only eight left. He had to make it count before they were all used up.
He the entire night studying the matter before trying again the next morning.
Again, it ended in failure.
The same happened the day after that, too.
After experiencing three consecutive days of failure, Li Lang finally decided to take a break to digest the results. He wanted to see if he could identify exactly was the reason for failure was. Each beast core was unique in that the remnant spirit of the beast was different, but other than that, all the variables remained the same. His programming method shouldn’t have been affected too much by it.
Spiritual issues are the hardest for me to solve. Ruby can’t simulate it, and I can’t do anything about it, either.
With much filled in his mind, Li Lang went to breakfast again like any other day. Except today, he wouldn’t be in such a rush due to deciding to take a break.
“What’s with the long face?” Long Yi asked upon seeing his friend sit down.
“Nothing serious. Just some roadblocks in my artificing. Doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to make you an artifact anytime soon as I promised.”
“Ha, that’s fine. If I really wanted one, I could try to buy one or just wait until you break through, too. I’d rather you make me an Earth-grade artifact, anyway.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure how long that’ll take either. I need one of the kids to reach the peak of Energy Gathering, so I can start testing how to improve the success rate of breakthroughs. It’s better than to fail again, wasting yet another Foundation Pill.”
Li Lang had tried a few times over the years to break through already. He didn’t use any of the techniques back then, as they were untested, and he wanted to try out the traditional method first. Every time he tried to accumulate enough Qi in his navel area, he would soon lose control of it.
He knew each spiritual root acted as muscles that manipulated Qi as well, thus he was too weak to hold it together.
He needed the children to reach the same stage, so he could verify if his theories were correct. He could monitor each one, and observe their results based on the number of spiritual roots they had, and then test if his techniques that purposefully inducted the Qi to flow in certain ways would work.
The wait had been excruciating and hadn’t gotten any better as time passed. Failure upon failure piled up, and it seemed like nothing was going well for Li Lang. Everything except for the flavored Nourishment Pills he was developing.
After more than a year of testing the pill, he verified it was safe to consume over the long term, and the shelf life was deemed stable. Li Lang finally went to sell it during his routine trip to The Orchid Covenant’s headquarters.
“The usual?” the clerk asked.
“No, I have new variants of Nourishment Pills I would like to sell.”
“New variants? Please give me a moment. I’ll get someone from the Alchemy Hall, then.”
With Li Lang selling to his organization on a regular basis, his usual transaction could be done with only the clerk. Now that he planned to sell a new pill, they needed to get someone more knowledgeable to assess the product.
It didn’t take the clerk long to summon someone. The person who came startled Li Lang for a moment because he knew the man with the full beard that stretched down to his chest. It was Zhao Longwei, Li Lang’s own alchemy mentor. As a member of The Orchid Covenant, it was naturally possible he would be working on behalf of the organization.
However, of all the possibilities, Li Lang didn’t expect his own mentor to show up. He hadn’t visited Zhao Longwei often in recent times, but even he knew the man usually left most mundane matters to his students or subordinates.
He was one of the more transactional mentors he had. He previously only agreed to teach him in exchange for the knowledge he learned in the pocket realm.
“Li Lang, I heard you brought a variant of some pill. Come up and show me. It’s been some time, after all.”
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Comments
MRKING 3
Great Chapter!
