NOVPUBWang Qi's hands were shrouded in Holy Light, but what he was doing didn't look so holy—he was capturing a soul with his spells.
Holy Light, as a variant of the Divine Skills derived from Life Flame, could forcibly keep dismembered physiological tissues alive, including souls.
However, Wang Qi's Holy Light was so close to Life Flame that it could easily endow the soul with excess vitality. Everything in moderation, including "vitality" and "life force." A cell that might gain the characteristics of infinite replication and immortality is generally referred to by Earth People as a "cancer cell." The same was true for souls; a one-time absorption of too much life force could lead to imbalances across its sections, ultimately causing it to lose stability.
Fortunately, Wang Qi had some experience with this step. After countless failures, he had escalated his mastery of Holy Light, managing to maintain the soul's stability.
But the real test was yet to come.
He needed to observe the soul, to perceive it.
Since he wasn't a disciple of Tianling Ridge and hadn't undergone professional training, he couldn't understand the data fed back by the Soul Spectrum Analyzer, rendering the device somewhat useless. Chen Feng wanted him to observe by hand.
It was fortunate that Wang Qi wasn't conducting a scientific experiment but rather an educational one—it was essentially akin to a middle or high school chemistry experiment. The process, principle, and what happens at each step were all written in the textbooks. He simply had to follow them and gain a firsthand understanding.
The soul was a unique spirit energy field, manifesting microscopically through electromagnetic force; both electromagnetic mental methods or soul-related spells could be utilized for observation. Usually, Wang Qi used mana to flip through the books, planning what to do next while cautiously reaching out with the Heavenly Song Power to establish a connection with the soul, then using his own soul to sense it.
It was like dissecting a little white mouse.
"Oh! So, this is what the power of the soul is like... and this Intrinsic Form in the book demonstrates it like this... functional zones, they indeed exist! Next is this part... validating it, damaging this section can prolong the soul's stability..."
However, Wang Qi was not Chen Feng, and his handling of Soul Power was quite crude. A quarter of an hour later, the small lump of soul began to crumble and dissipate.
Wang Qi dispersed the Holy Light and then turned his gaze to a small Liu Li cage at the corner of the table which still housed seven little white mice. 𝒏𝙤𝙫𝒑𝙪𝙗.𝙘𝒐𝙢
Wang Qi was somewhat conflicted. To do or not to do?
Running educational experiments was quite intriguing. A biologist might feel weary from repeating an experiment hundreds of times, but for a neophyte like Wang Qi who'd only conducted a dozen experiments, such validation was still quite exciting.
The only problem was—these mice were just too damn expensive!
According to Wang Qi's knowledge, the medical and biological departments on Earth used the most common mice for students to practice dissection, considering anything of a higher sterility grade a waste. However, Chen Feng didn't raise regular mice; his mice were engineered with special bloodline defects making them extremely expensive, each costing more than Wang Qi's daily salary.
In the biological industry, the cost of chemicals consumed by a laboratory technician often amounted to several times their salary, even tens of times.
This left Wang Qi exceptionally conflicted.
Just then, Chen Feng walked in and asked, "How well have you learned the 'Soul Introduction'?"
"I have finished most of it, only a small part I haven't had the chance to look at yet, but I have gained a basic understanding of the soul," Wang Qi truly believed this since, in his mind, this "Soul Introduction" book was roughly on par with high school biology—it was very basic, only useful under laboratory conditions, but its principles could be applied in many ways.
"Fine, you can look at the few books I gave you when you have time, and it's okay if you don't when you're busy. Now your skill level is enough to be an assistant," Chen Feng sounded nonchalant, but there was a subtle, scarcely noticeable change in his expression.
It was too fast. Whether it was grasping knowledge or increasing power.
To a Yangshen Pavilion Disciple, this "Soul Introduction" was merely an introductory textbook, yet it required half a month of hard practice to master. Yet, Wang Qi had only been experimenting for about eight days since day one.
Additionally, Wang Qi's soul power was increasing too quickly. Those involved confuse, while the bystanders see clearly. Wang Qi simply felt energetically drunk, but to Chen Feng, it was a different story entirely. Just a few days and a noticeable change had occurred. What shocked Chen Feng was that this pace of growth was even faster than when he had just started. This wasn't the speed that "Qujianji" could produce.
Was his Holy Light a specialized Lower Divine Power aimed towards soul and spirit within Life Flame?
Wang Qi was pleased to hear he didn't need to "play" with mice every day. He darted straight to the study. Meanwhile, Chen Feng started cleaning up the cluttered experiment table Wang Qi had messed up, eventually moving the leftover mice to a somewhat lower-level wire cage.
He wasn't extravagant enough to give high-level white mice to Wang Qi for practice. These were the most ordinary kind, which one could buy several with a large silver bar. However, to prevent Wang Qi from recklessly wasting experimental animals, he always told him he didn't keep ordinary mice and then placed those ordinary mice in the highest-grade cages. When Wang Qi returned to the study, Chen Youjia was still buried in her drafting paper. After several days together, Wang Qi had grown accustomed to her demeanor. The girl rarely spoke, and her dealings were quite detached, but she wasn't too difficult to get along with—as long as one didn't bring up mathematics.
But...right now, she didn't look like someone who would lose control over a rant about "Heartbroken." Even if she were a rebellious girl at heart, opting for applied mathematics against her father's purely theoretical work, surely it wouldn't be enough to burst into tears?
This was truly unusual...
"What is it?" Chen Youjia seemed to notice something different in Wang Qi's gaze and looked up to ask.
"This." Wang Qi placed a stack of papers in front of Chen Youjia. "The story I talked to you about last time."
Unexpectedly, Chen Youjia did not show any different expression, which somewhat disappointed Wang Qi who had been expecting one. She counted the pages as usual, "That's a lot less than I imagined. Didn't you say you had already finished writing? It took you half a month just to transcribe this little?"
"I still have to cultivate, Senior Sister!"
"It's 'Senior Sister.'"
Actually, the main reason it had taken Wang Qi so long to write was that too much time had passed, to the point where his memory of the "Heartbroken" novel wasn't complete. Another reason was that the history and culture of the two worlds were not entirely the same, necessitating changes to someone else's original work.
Chen Youjia didn't say anything but put away the novel manuscript and continued her calculations.
It seemed that it would be a while before he could find out why she liked that story so much.
Wang Qi sighed and also sat down, picking up Chen Youjia's drafts to check her progress.
