Chapter 249: Four Arms
After lunch, Xiang Yu returned to teaching, although he had decided to cancel the lectures because of Li Yao’s mental state, he hadn’t expected it to be resolved so easily.
This time, he gave a one hour runesmithing lecture to the talisman making students. Just like with spirit farming, he also made sure to explain both the base and evolved profession.
After the lecture, he spent the remaining allocated time drawing runes, well, more like talismans. He had originally planned to craft a weapon during his blacksmithing session and then inscribe runes directly onto its surface, creating a treasure for himself. However, due to Li Yao’s interruption he wasn’t able to.
Still, he wasn’t disappointed. His blacksmithing profession had already crossed the halfway point toward its next breakthrough, which meant he would soon be capable of creating even more impressive items.
Similarly, his runesmith profession had also reached the half way point so he just made some relatively low level talismans for trading and for disciples venturing on dangerous missions.
When his runesmithing time concluded, Xiang Yu transitioned to formations. He gave another comprehensive hour-long lecture on formations before moving on to formation making.
For formation making, Xiang Yu felt genuinely satisfied with the current defensive formation protecting the sect. Its capabilities far exceeded anything he could reasonably improve upon without significant advancement in his profession.
The only thing he could possibly add on would be creating a similarly powerful attacking formation, but such an undertaking would require quite some time which he didn’t have at the moment. He already had plans for what to do after dinner...
Instead, he focused on producing relatively low-level formations for trade.
After completing his formation work, Xiang Yu sought out the presidents of both the cooking and medicine schools. He informed them that there wouldn’t be any lectures for the remainder of the day. The medicine students didn’t seem particularly disappointed, after all, they had already received a few instruction sessions already.
The cooking school students, however, were quite disappointed by the news. Seeing their dejected looks, Xiang Yu smiled warmly at them. "Tomorrow, I’ll prepare something special for you guys," he assured them. Immediately, their spirits soared.
After dinner, Xiang Yu made his way back to the spirit vein.
Settling into a meditative posture, Xiang Yu reflected on his recent breakthrough. Now that his enlightenment had finally reached the divine level, he could finally research the cloning techniques he had been thinking of. While he doubted he could immediately create a fully functional clone, he had a few promising ideas.
He concentrated deeply, entering a state of profound meditation that allowed him to analyze every fragment of knowledge he possessed. With his divine level enlightenment, extracting genuine insights from his surface-level understanding of modern scientific concepts became significantly more manageable than before.
The primary challenge he faced centered on the soul component. The Empress had stated that the cloning techniques she knew could only be utilized by cultivators at the Soul Formation level or above. His interpretation of this was that successful clones required some form of soul clone to function properly.
Unfortunately, Xiang Yu’s own soul hadn’t yet reached the adult stage where soul cloning might become possible.
However, he refused to accept defeat so easily. He believed alternative approaches existed if he could think creatively enough about the fundamental problem.
The core issue was control. To operate another body effectively, a soul provided the most straightforward solution—this principle explained phenomena like soul possession. But souls weren’t the only possible control mechanism.
Xiang Yu’s idea was simple: instead of relying on a soul clone, he would use consciousness splitting. He recalled studying animals in his previous life that possessed multiple brains, each capable of independent function while remaining part of a unified organism.
He would create another "body" that could be considered an extension of his original body—kinda like developing an additional limb. If successful, he could divide his consciousness between two bodies, allowing each to operate independently while maintaining overall unified control.
...
For the issue of consciousness control, Xiang Yu spent nearly two hours in deep contemplation until he finally came up with something:
[Sacred-Grade Mind Partition]
This was the scripture he had created, the scripture would allow him to divide his consciousness into multiple independent segments. Each partition could carry out complete thought processes simultaneously, operating in parallel without interfering with the others. Even Xiang Yu felt genuinely impressed with his own creation—the complexity required to develop such a technique from scratch was staggering.
He had drawn primary inspiration from his current ability to think simultaneously through both his physical body and his soul form. However, implementing this concept into a practical technique proved extraordinarily challenging. The delicate balance required to maintain multiple conscious streams without causing mental fragmentation demanded precise control over his spiritual sea.
With the consciousness problem theoretically solved, Xiang Yu turned his attention to creating an actual clone "body" that could house one of these partitioned mind processes. For this challenge, he didn’t think it would be as difficult—mainly because he already had an idea in mind, though it was quite primitive.
After another hour of focused meditation and theoretical development, he arrived at his second breakthrough:
[Sacred-Grade Regeneration]
The scripture would harness his body’s incredible regenerative capabilities to literally grow a clone. Given his enhanced healing abilities from multiple physique buffs and bloodline, failing to take advantage of this would be a waste.
This particular scripture would deliberately overstimulate his body’s regeneration processes, forcing them into overdrive mode. As long as he maintained precise control over the regenerative growth patterns, he could theoretically shape the developing tissue into whatever form he desired.
Excitement building, Xiang Yu decided to conduct an immediate test of his theories.
He activated the regeneration scripture and concentrated intensely on the area just below his existing arms. In the next moment, something burst violently outward from his torso—he had successfully grown an additional pair of hands, complete with wrists and partial forearms extending from his ribcage.
Without hesitation, he implemented the mind partition scripture, creating a small conscious segment specifically dedicated to controlling these new appendages. When he attempted to flex the extra hands using only the partitioned consciousness, they responded seamlessly, moving with the same natural fluidity as his original limbs.
A satisfied smile spread across his face as he deactivated both techniques. His body immediately began repairing the artificial stimulation, quickly returning to its original configuration as the extra appendages dissolved back into normal tissue.
This successful experiment confirmed that he could indeed create additional "bodies" and assign them independent consciousness control.
However, a critical limitation became apparent. The "body" he had created wasn’t truly a separate clone but rather a controlled mutation of his existing form. The extra hands remained connected to his original body through shared circulation and nervous pathways.
Most problematically, if he were to sever these additional parts from his main body, the connection allowing conscious control would be permanently broken. The detached pieces would become nothing more than lifeless tissue.
He needed to develop a method to create a completely independent body outside his existing form while somehow maintaining the consciousness link necessary for control. But how exactly?
...
Author’s Corner
Sometimes I’ll refer to scriptures as techniques. I’m not referring to the established techniques that he can learn, but technique as just a word. Idk
A/N: Kinda reminds me of Ben 10