I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 785: The Mechanism of the Blood Sacrifice Method

Beyond the Infernal Sulfur continent, in the cold and silent space, a newborn “star” hung quietly.

It was of course no true star, but the first array eye of the All-Heavens Star Grand Array.

Dark golden radiance circulated slowly out of its depths, star patterns spreading endlessly across the sphere’s surface, the light and heat it gave off making the elemental tides for hundreds of millions of kilometers around unusually active.

Jie Ming stood in the void, looking at his first finished work, and was silent a long while.

Then he raised a hand.

In his spiritual sea, the All-Heavens Star Grand Array model he had spent a thousand years deducing unfolded slowly, countless points of light forming a vast star chart, and the position of the first array eye lit up abruptly.

“Right here.”

As his mental energy locked the coordinates, the space around the enormous array eye began to shake.

Relying on the power of the Incense Fire Divine Dao, in the space of a moment the whole region twisted and the enormous sun vanished into thin air.

The entire array eye was teleported away by the Incense Fire Divine Dao’s power and set down in an empty star region several light years from the Infernal Sulfur continent. In the black emptiness of space, amid a rippling tremor, the enormous sun abruptly appeared.

Hmmm…

Invisible ripples spread in every direction, and the array eye settled steadily onto its assigned coordinates.

The Star Power of the surrounding several dozen light years seemed to feel some pull, and began converging on the array eye with extreme slowness.

Jie Ming checked the Incense Fire Divine Dao’s feedback with the Fate Subsystem and nodded in satisfaction.

“Coordinate error, zero point zero zero zero three. Not small, but with continual fine adjustment using the Incense Fire Divine Dao’s power it should settle into the assigned trajectory in about a century.”

All told, the first array eye was formally in place.

But for now it was only one array eye.

Fortunately, while it could not form a complete array on its own, an array eye refined at such cost held all manner of wonders in itself.

Even without any other use, simply employing it as a sun had the effect of driving positive evolution in the life on the planets around it. Jie Ming called up the star chart again, and projections of several planets soon appeared around the array eye.

Those were worlds the Tentacle Tree Civilization had finished developing.

They had originally been ordinary migration planets, but now he had given them a new task.

“Notify the colonial governors of the planets at the following coordinates.”

Through the Incense Fire Divine Dao, Jie Ming’s voice reached the minds of those responsible for the planets in an instant.

“Relocate according to the new orbital parameters.”

“Yes, Sovereign.”

Several Tentacle Tree Civilization officials responded at once.

A few days later, several planets of varying size were teleported over by the power of the Incense Fire Divine Dao.

Still running on inertia after arriving, those planets rapidly left their original orbits under the combined action of a great many orbital propulsion arrays and gravity regulation devices, and rearranged themselves around the array eye.

Seen from a distance, it was like a genuine star system.

Even the orbital period of each planet had been precisely calculated.

Looking at a layout that resembled a real star system more and more, a trace of satisfaction finally showed at the corner of Jie Ming’s mouth.

“There. That is much easier on the eye.”

The Black Giant priest recording data beside him kept his head down, noting every parameter.

“My lord, shall we go on to lay out the outer warning arrays?”

“Later.” Jie Ming waved a hand. “No money at the moment.”

The Black Giant priest nodded silently.

The whole research team knew by now that their Sovereign’s greatest enemy of late was not any person.

It was poverty.

Still, though there was no money to refine a second array eye for the time being, there were a few cheap things he could set up while he was here.

Jie Ming flew back above one of the planets, pointed lightly with his right hand, and a great quantity of leftover material flew out of his inner world.

Alchemical metals, rune crystals and psionic nodes of every kind fell toward the whole planet like a rainstorm.

At the same time, the five-hundred-kilometer true body unfolded slowly.

Countless threads of mental energy manipulated billions of rune nodes at once, laying them rapidly across the planet’s entire surface.

Across the whole surface, a faint purple-gold tracery spread swiftly.

In less than half a day, the giant array covering the entire planet was complete.

Then.

The second, the third…

Only when every designated planet was finished did Jie Ming stop.

The Black Giant priest looked at the enormous array patterns covering the whole planet, somewhat puzzled.

“My lord. An array on this scale… what is it for?”

Jie Ming answered offhandedly, “Collecting Purple Qi of the East.”

The priest blinked.

“…Purple Qi of the East?”

“Mm.” Jie Ming nodded.

“When a sun first rises, an extremely small quantity of special spiritual qi is produced along with it. Decent quality.”

“Though for me as I am now the effect is too small, so I could never be bothered to collect it before.”

At that he paused, and his voice dropped considerably.

“But I am poor now.”

The Black Giant priest: “…”

That said, Jie Ming looked at the several planets turning slowly in their orbits and suddenly felt rather conflicted.

The All-Heavens Star Grand Array… really did burn money.

Having arranged everything in this star region, Jie Ming did not linger.

He took a step, the teleportation array lit, and his figure vanished from where he stood.

Before long, Jie Ming was back in the alchemy laboratory at Noren No. 147 Academy.

The cultivation pods stood in silent rows beside the laboratory, though the number of clones inside them was now several times what it had been at the start.

He checked the data from while he had been away, confirmed there was no deviation, and the experiment began again.

First group.

Two clones of the same level.

One kept intact, the other refined outright into a pool of blood.

Jie Ming activated the Blood Sacrifice Method.

The array completed smoothly as before.

Then he opened the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil, and the data surfaced slowly.

The increase in aptitude was exactly the same as with a normal sacrifice, without any change at all.

Jie Ming stroked his chin and wrote a line in the experiment record.

[The quality of the sacrifice is unrelated to the intactness of its flesh.]

For the second group, Jie Ming did not increase the number of sacrifices. Instead he used life transmutation to force one of the clones to grow continuously.

A moment later, inside the pod, an enormous clone fully twice the size of an ordinary person rose slowly to its feet.

More developed musculature, thicker bones, a body weight more than double an ordinary clone’s.

Then the blood sacrifice began.

The result came quickly. The increase was still only one portion.

Jie Ming stroked his chin and wrote down another conclusion.

[The effect of a sacrifice is unrelated to size or total mass of flesh. What determines it is the “number of individuals.”]

“Which is to say…”

“What the Blood Sacrifice Method recognizes is ‘one person,’ not how many pounds of meat.”

That result was not particularly surprising.

An increase in aptitude must consume something more fundamental, after all. Flesh, and even the soul, are only external things.

What genuinely made Jie Ming frown was the third group.

This time the recipient was not an ordinary clone but a specimen forced to maturity with resources, whose cultivation had reached the Foundation Establishment level. A moment later.

Jie Ming looked at the result, and his brows slowly drew together.

“The effect has dropped, and quite noticeably.”

The same single sacrifice.

The gain in aptitude for the Foundation Establishment specimen was barely half that of the ordinary mortal trial.

He ran several dozen rounds in succession and finally confirmed it.

The higher the recipient’s cultivation, the lower the return from sacrificing a low-cultivation offering.

The reason… unknown.

The experiments went on for several years.

The clones in the pods kept increasing and kept being consumed, and a great quantity of data was fed into the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror.

At last a complete model was successfully built.

Jie Ming looked at the final result it derived and let out a slow breath.

“Not bad. Rather better than I expected.”

By the results, the Blood Sacrifice Method really could be repeated without limit, but aptitude could not be raised without limit.

Or more precisely, every realm had an aptitude ceiling of its own.

Once the limit of one’s current cultivation was reached, further blood sacrifice no longer raised aptitude, and the surplus power was automatically converted into life energy to raise cultivation instead.

“Quite similar to the wizard system, actually.”

Jie Ming leaned back in his chair and gave a small laugh.

The wizards’ aptitude system worked the same way.

A mortal’s mental energy talent tops out at the tenth level because a mortal’s life level can only carry ten levels.

To go beyond that, one has to break through into the extraordinary.

Every time a wizard advances, body, soul and mind all make the leap together, and the talent ceiling naturally rises along with them.

The cultivation system worked on exactly the same principle, only expressed differently.

Jie Ming looked over the other data and ran a quick calculation in his head.

A number soon surfaced: six hundred and thirty-four.

What that number meant was that if he used clones all at the same Dao Integration Realm as himself, then sacrificing six hundred and thirty-four of them would bring his spiritual aptitude to the genuine limit of his current realm.

“Not difficult, then.” He finished his assessment quickly.

Given the wizard system’s capacity for producing cannon fodder, what was genuinely difficult had never been level, but combat power.

If he only needed to force cultivation to maturity, he had any number of ways to rapidly produce a batch of specimens that had realm and no combat ability whatsoever. There was only one problem: rapidly cultivating clones at that level meant burning through a great many resources.

At that thought, Jie Ming slowly lowered his head and glanced at his experiment budget, then at the not-yet-complete materials procurement list for the All-Heavens Star Grand Array. And finally at his own military merit balance, of which very little remained.

The air was quiet for a few seconds.

An extremely soft sound suddenly came from inside the laboratory. “…damn it!”

Jie Ming rubbed the space between his brows and let out a long sigh.

“I have to go save up again.”

He was silent a moment, then quickly rallied.

“No hurry. The clones can be cultivated slowly, and a few more years of saving should about cover the resources.”

“For now, let us take the Blood Sacrifice Method apart first.”

His gaze returned to the experiment records.

Every function of the Blood Sacrifice Method was now clear. The next goal was to extract, piece by piece, the core mechanism that actually did the work, and then rebuild it with the wizard civilization’s knowledge.