"Hallucination?"
Leilin murmured to himself, then turned his gaze to the Chip's log display.
"Main body subjected to unknown Field interference! Entering state of confusion!"
"Extra-planar wizard formation countermeasure program initiated, charging!"
"Annihilation Lightning prepared.
"Main body restored to normal! Warning lifted!" One blood-red log entry after another still left Leilin's expression grim.
Meanwhile, the spiritual power seed he had previously cast into the spatial rift had completely vanished without a trace.
"Tower Spirit!" Leilin called out.
"Master!" The green spirit immediately flew to Leilin's side.
"How much energy does the Wizard Tower have in reserve?"
"Currently 1.9 remaining. Recommend immediate activation of the positive-negative energy pool charging sequence!" the Tower Spirit reported briskly.
"Why was the consumption so high?"
"Records corrupted!" A rare look of bewilderment and confusion appeared on the Tower Spirit's face.
"Just as I suspected — everything that just happened was real, not a hallucination!"
Leilin let out a long breath. Exploring other planes always came with dangers; he had known that for a long time.
But what he had just encountered was the greatest crisis he had faced since beginning his experiments.
"Thankfully, the Three Laws of the Astral remain unbreakable. The other side couldn't come through this mirror — it could only project an illusory image!"
Leilin stroked his chin, replaying everything that had just happened in his mind.
"If an illusory shadow alone could do that much, then if I had opened an Astral Gate and allowed the other party's true body through, the entire territory would probably have been destroyed…"
Thinking of this, he couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.
"Fortunately! The other side didn't have enough power — all of the countermeasures in the planar Wizard Array were dealt with!"
He let out a long breath and turned around.
"You know—" A massive goat's head, severed from its body below the neck with yellow fluid still dripping from the wound, materialized directly behind him.
Two enormous, lifeless eyeballs locked straight onto Leilin's gaze.
"..."
Black scales erupted across Leilin's body in an instant, and both of his eyes transformed into amber slit pupils.
"Petrifying Gaze!" Rays of light charged with mysterious power shot forth, and a layer of grey-white stone skin immediately spread across the opposite wall.
But the goat's head had already vanished without a trace.
"This isn't over yet!" Leilin's expression turned dark. "Chip, scan!"
"Ding! Task established. Initiating scan!"
A few seconds later, the Chip's latest results came back: "Unidentified Field residues detected. Classification: planar contamination!"
Hummm!
Leilin waved his hand. The entire planar Wizard Array immediately shut down, and at its very center, the Astral Stone shattered into powder with a sharp crack.
This Astral Stone, obtained from Vance, patriarch of the Nonolifa family, had exhausted every last bit of its energy and reached the end of its life.
Leilin watched the scene unfold, sighed, and stepped into the outer chamber.
At the laboratory's entrance, numerous nozzles were suspended beneath the ceiling, and in the center sat a huge basin in which a pure white, fragrant liquid swished gently.
"A fifth-grade purification pool! Let's hope it works!" Defense against planar incursions was a required discipline, and Leilin had long since transplanted all of
Whoosh! Whoosh!
All of the nozzles sprayed down streams of green droplets carrying an intensely pungent disinfectant smell, sharp and overpowering, that quickly soaked Leilin from head to toe.
Under the wash of the green liquid, greenish fuzz surfaced on Leilin's protective suit before quickly being swept away.
"This time really is troublesome!" Leilin frowned at the sight, then stripped off his clothes, revealing his naked body, and jumped into the central pool.
Sssss!
A massive vortex formed, the milky-white liquid beginning to boil gently.
Thread after thread of black sludge, visible to the naked eye, oozed out from Leilin's pores.
After several rounds of cleansing, Leilin entered another purification chamber. There, enormous flowers the size of ordinary people stood with their great calyxes open, revealing scarlet tongues lined with suction cups…
After several purification cycles, Leilin wore a fresh loose robe and reclined half-upright in a lounge chair.
"Over these three months, I've opened the Star Gate multiple times, but without the Destiny Gold Coins to guide me, I simply can't locate the Black Rain World. Not only have my losses mounted, but this time I've even attracted this kind of thing…"
Leilin weighed his gains and losses.
He had conducted numerous Star Plane experiments and obtained some results, yet none of it compared to the reward he'd reaped from the Multi-Arm Clan — the body-tempering technique.
According to the Chip's analysis, the secret art had been largely simulated and reverse-engineered, and Leilin had named it: Power of the Multi-Arms!
The Chip's simulation experiments confirmed that this technique possessed the miraculous effect of breaking through genetic limits and enhancing physique and strength. It was potent enough to push Leilin's current physique rating up by five to ten more points!
For Leilin, this was simply irresistible.
The higher one's physique rating, the harder it became to push further. When it was only at ten or twenty points, gains like these hardly mattered to him. But at his current level, raising it even a little on top of the existing foundation was difficult beyond measure.
If this Power of the Multi-Arms were ever leaked to the public, it would drive every body-tempering Wizard into a frenzy.
This single reward alone was more than enough to recoup all of Leilin's investment over the past three months!
The Star Plane's immense appeal owed mostly to this kind of payoff.
But things always came with a downside. Without the pull of Destiny's power, the rest of Leilin's experiments had hit a dead end. Multiple Spiritual Power coordinate launches had yielded absolutely nothing.
And today, of all days, he had attracted some kind of utterly incomprehensible creature.
It could hardly even be called a creature — it was a conglomeration of pure concepts.
But when it flared up, it was often even more terrifying than ancient curse-memes.
"My luck really has been awful — it's time to call it quits!" This danger filled Leilin with a grim premonition.
"……"
He gently closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, that goat head had materialized before him once more. Within those dead, lifeless eyes, there now seemed to lurk an expression of mockery.
Leilin sighed and held the goat head's gaze, his face devoid of either sorrow or joy.
After a dozen seconds or so, the goat head vanished without a trace once more, as if the whole thing had been nothing but a hallucination.
"Enough of this!" The moment the goat head disappeared, Leilin sprang to his feet as if his fur had been set on end. "You think you can just keep hounding me?!"
He snatched up his clothes and hurried to a room at the center of the containment layer.
As his hand closed around the doorknob — whether it was a trick of the mind or not — the brass knob seemed to have transformed into that same goat head, baring an eerily human-like smile at Leilin.
A situation like this would be enough to drive any Wizard mad, to say nothing of whatever other effects it might bring.
"This is the Core Chamber! Only the master, Leilin Farrell, is permitted entry — all others will be eliminated!"
After he opened the door, a cold mechanical voice rang out, and a terrifying wave of wizardry immediately locked onto his entire body.
"Scan initiated! First-priority identity confirmed — alarm cleared!"
Blue, red, and green light swept over Leilin in succession. When the final voice spoke, he felt his body loosen in an instant.
The Core Chamber was quite small, containing only a single laboratory table. Atop the highest crystal sphere, a single white finger bone flickered in and out of visibility.
"Activate radiation!"
Leilin lay down on the laboratory table. At that moment, a chaotic burst of sound suddenly flooded his ears — the low growl of some creature, or perhaps the death wails of countless humans on the verge of death.
His expression did not change in the slightest as he issued his command in a cold voice.
"Radiation begins!" From the Serpent Woman's finger bone, a peculiar wave of radiation began to sweep across Leilin's entire body.
And within him, the Comoyin bloodline began to simmer faintly.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a deeply pleasurable process, but now, his expression shifted abruptly.
Wisps of gray-white mist rose from various points across his body, enveloping him like a cocoon, as though something within was writhing in its death throes.
"Minor Field reaction detected within the main body's interior — assessed as residual extraplanar radiation!"
Only then did the Chip's voice come through.
"Recommendation: immediately cease the Serpent Woman's radiation!"
"No! Increase the dosage — raise it to ten times the previous level!" A flicker of ruthlessness passed through
The Chip only had advisory authority over him, never decision-making power. And so, in accordance with his will, thin strands of blue current shot forth from the Serpent Woman's finger bones, forming powerful radiation waves that pierced straight through the gray-white mist and bathed Leylin's body.
"Ugh!!!" Leylin clenched his teeth, his hands gripping the edge of the workbench with all his might.
With his tremendous strength, he left deep handprints pressed into the surface of the alloy workbench.
Purplish-black skin lesions — similar to severe sunburn — immediately surfaced across his body.
"Main body surface cellular damage at 39.78%! Recommendation: immediately cease radiation!" The Chip's voice rang out once more.
"Doesn't look like it's enough yet! Increase the dosage again — set it to fifteen times!" Leylin gritted his teeth, forcing the words out through clenched jaws.
Sizzle!
The powerful radiation entangled with the gray-white mist, and before long, thin droplets of gray-white liquid began to form and drip downward.
Meanwhile, the cacophony of sounds growing in Leylin's ears became increasingly chaotic, their pitch rising sharper and sharper.
That white goat's head appeared before his eyes once more — but this time, the fur on the goat's head was falling away strand by strand, its two horns were retracting, and the entire thing was undergoing a massive transformation.
After the distortion, what had once been a goat's head had become a woman's face. Both of its eyes were nothing but white, and two trails of blood-red tears streamed down from them.