Chapter status: Unedited
Zhen Jin had his left foot on volcanic rock and his right foot in the desert.
In less than half a day, they once more arrived at the boundary between the desert and the lava terrain.
Tan sand spread as far as the eye could see. The scorching sun warped the distance with heat haze.
Zhen Jin, Zi Di, and Cang Xu were hungry and thirsty.
Without food, all of them had rumbling stomachs.
The volcanic eruption made them sweat all over.
This was very dangerous——sweat consumed their precious internal moisture.
They had no choice but to replenish their water as soon as possible.
Of course, this would consume the little water they still had.
No one spoke and silence was maintained.
Zhen Jin stepped over the boundary with Bai Ya on his back.
Zhen Jin’s burden was the biggest as he carried a youth on his back.
During the journey, Cang Xu had advised Zhen Jin: if he would not treat Bai Ya as food, he should abandon him.
Zhen Jin rejected it without hesitation and warned Cang Xu to never speak of it again!
The young knight’s resolute attitude made Cang Xu dumbstruck.
Zi Di expressed many times that she wanted to share the burden with Zhen Jin and carry Bai Ya.
Cang Xu also had no choice but to express the same feeling.
But Zhen Jin refused their offers.
Zi Di was only a fifteen-year-old girl and Cang Xu was a white bearded old man.
Their bodies were also in terrible shape.
It would be difficult to deal with if one of them became paralyzed with exhaustion.
“I already said that I would do all I can to save everyone and would never abandon a single man. This is my promise and also my responsibility.” Zhen Jin said to Zi Di and Cang Xu.
“My Lord, your noble character is like a bright star in the darkness of the night sky! Cang Xu lamented internally, “You are a paragon among the templar knights.”
Zhen Jin bitterly laughed and shook his head.
Only he knew his own intentions best.
He had wavered and even almost became depraved when the evil idea of treating Bai Ya as food had crossed his mind.
For this reason, he had felt ashamed and doubted himself.
As a result, saving Bai Ya was more akin to validating himself.
This was proving to himself: he was qualified to be a templar knight!
Zhen Jin was actually in a difficult situation at the moment.
He felt a faint weakness in his knees and legs.
“So is the magic core actually absorbing bloodlines?”
Although Zhen Jin had lost his memory, he knew the concept of bloodlines were not limited to blood.
Bloodlines not only determined cultivation aptitude, it passed on the information and forms of life.
To cite a specific example: drinking dragon’s blood would not turn someone into a large dragon. A dragon’s bloodline contained dragon blood, dragon scales, a dragon human body, a dragon crystal, dragon magic, battle arts, and more.
“Now that I control the magic core, am I able to control every bloodline in the world?”
Zhen Jin could not help but feel a rush of excitement.
He understood what that meant!
Controlling the magic core to absorb and convert extrinsic bloodlines would bring about infinite power, influence, riches, and resources.
The more outstanding a lifeform’s bloodline of was, the faster and more efficient their cultivation would be. One could grow faster and become stronger in a shorter amount of time.
After gaining great power, followers would naturally come. Even without followers, a person with formidable strength could topple the old social order.
Violence grants influence and influence makes resources easier to acquire.
Having abundant resources would lead to even greater cultivation, like a tiger growing wings. And so the strong become stronger while the weak become weaker.
After a long time, the strong would become the ruling social class and the weak would become the exploited lower class.
This was the history of all races and also what was happening now.
And the unshakeable cornerstone of the nobility’s power in human society were their bloodlines.
Bloodlines were very, very important.
A person’s bloodline affected their entire life!
To lack a sufficient bloodline was to be an ordinary person, like those exploration team members who had been slaughtered. Cang Xu becoming a noble’s steward was already a very high achievement. He was a very rare care in human society.
Huang Zao and Lan Zao had a bloodline, as a result they could rely on ordinary battle qi cultivation methods to reach the bronze level. Unless they got lucky, that was the pinnacle of their lives. Not only was it very difficult for them to improve, their battle qi cultivation and level of life would decline as they age.
Zi Di was an iron level magician and she had candidly said that she had also exhausted her personal cultivation potential. Why is that? It is because she did not have a noble bloodline!
Zhen Jin belonged to the Bai Zhen Clan, a clan that once was southern nobility with a high-quality bloodline. The source of his bloodline was the legend level Needle Queen Bee. As a result, Bai Zhen Clan members could theoretically reach legend level cultivation.
Historically, experts emerged from the Bai Zhen Clan one after another, with silver levels, gold levels, and even saint levels!
Only legend level strength did not appear.
The legend level was the Bai Zhen Clan’s bloodline theoretical limit.
In this world, the Bai Zhen bloodline was still very outstanding.
Emperor Shen Ming had the Saint bloodline, Duke Quan Fa had the Pursuing Knowledge bloodline, Duchess Ai Mei had the Chimera bloodline, Duke Heng Le had the Joyful bloodline, and the An Hui Clan had the Dark Devil bloodline, etc.
These bloodlines surpassed the upper limits of the legend rank, their cultivation efficiency was also greater than the Bai Zhen’s bloodline and the end result was also greater. The benefit of the Bai Zhen bloodline was accuracy, but these bloodlines provided more and stronger benefits.
“If I seized the Saint bloodline, could I hope to become a second Emperor Shen Ming?”
“No, in theory, can’t I control more than a trifling Saint bloodline? The Pursuing Knowledge bloodline, the Chimera bloodline, and more, I can have all of them. Because my heart has this magic crystal!”
“As long, as long as I kill enough targets, I can seize their bloodlines……”
Thinking of this, Zhen Jin’s heart suddenly trembled.
A chillness instantly attacked his body and made him completely horrified.
“What am I doing?!”
“To think I would go so far to want to sacrifice other people, important nobles, and even Saint clan members!”
“If I am even somewhat inattentive, I will consign the entire Bai Zhen Clan to eternal damnation.
“No, I should not think this way.”
“This is a crime! In order to satisfy my own selfish desires, I would go and sacrifice innocents. That is too vicious! That is too wicked!”
“I am Zhen Jin.”
“I am a templar knight.”
“I will not do this.”
“I vow that I will not put my hands on the innocent. I will not satisfy my selfishness and walk the path of evil and depravity!”
Zhen Jin secretly warned himself.
At the same time, he became vigilant towards his magic core.
“It is too wonderful and too mysterious.
“It had helped me in the fight for my life, but it also enticing me towards wickedness and brutality at all times.
“However, it may not in fact be capable of absorbing many bloodlines. These are all my conjectures. I can absorb a silver level lifeform’s bloodline, but I have never tried to absorb a gold level one. Can it even absorb saint level or legend level bloodlines?”
“Still……”
“Will there be any damage in using the magic core to absorb and convert other bloodlines?”
“Are there any repercussions every time I transform?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any repercussions, but are there any hidden dangers I cannot perceive?”
“Will these hidden dangers build up, eventually causing me to explode?”
“Is there a chance I will completely become a magic beast and be incapable of becoming a human again?
Zhen Jin wiped his eyes.
To suddenly have such a strange and powerful foreign item appear within them, as long as a person had normal rationality, they would be vigilant and suspicious.
They would do all they could to understand and control it, at the same time they would seek to avoid possible dangers.
But now Zhen Jin could only fumble with the magic core, its alien nature was something he did not understand one bit.
“Why can the magic crystal in my heart be activated?”
Zhen Jin always remembered that this island's unique environment prohibited the usage of low-level magic and battle qi.
“Even my prayers seem disconnected from the world.
“Why can the magic core be activated?”
“The magic core is fascinating and very mysterious, I cannot classify it as battle qi, magic, or as a divine spell.”
“Don’t tell me it can circumvent the prohibition magic and is unaffected by it?”
“Or is it because the island master’s original goal is to make this magic crystal. Was the entire environment meticulously made to maximize the creation of magic crystals?
Zhen Jin’s thinking diverged as he thought of more things.
But everything was bewildering.
He had no answers.
“Currently the only thing I know is that following the first usage of the magic core, my control over the magic core is also getting deeper at a rapid rate.
The first time was when Zhen Jin transformed to deal with the silver level sword spider.
The second time was when Zhen Jin confronted the Electric Flying Squirrel, it was also the first time he felt the magic crystal.
The third time was just this morning. Zhen Jin took the first step in controlling the magic crystal and killed the scorpion leader.
“In the future, will my control over the magic core deepen?”
“The most crucial point is actually the oldest problem.”
“How did this thing get here?!”
After thinking for a good while, Zhen Jin believed that the most probable answer was related to the island master.
According to Cang Xu and Zi Di’s discussion and conjecture: the island master was a strong being, he (she or they) remodeled this island and fabricated many monsters in an attempt to stabilize the chaotic magic power in the monsters and achieve equilibrium.
The goat’s magic power was one such unfinished product that illustrated the island master’s path.
The prohibition magic environment and the teleportation induced constant fighting between monsters with the true goal of provoking lifeforms to breakthrough and produce a magic crystal.
“So, it is extremely possible that this magic crystal was produced inside my body after I killed the bear and because of Zi Di’s treatment.”
“Thinking back, I also had a lot of fire-poison in me. This magic crystal seems to be the result of my bitter fights with the fire poison bees and the monkey tail brown bear.”
“Did the island master encourage monster infighting as a plan to use life and death battles to stimulate the creation of magic crystals?”
“Maybe he (she or they) did not succeed because they lacked the most crucial element——a human?”
“Did I fix this flaw by chance?”
Notes
Bloodlines are still confusing as all hell in this book. The author seems to indicate that bloodlines fundamentally function as DNA and/or RNA. This means that humans in this world have the ability to modify their genetic code via interspecies breeding I think… You know I still have no idea how humans even got magic beast bloodlines into the noble clans. Races like elves, dwarves, and demons seem to be sentient and human sized, thus making it possible to have intercourse with. But things like the Queen Bee and dragons are in a conundrum. It is an established fact within the book that bloodline transfusions don’t really work and end poorly 95% of the time. How then would they even get into humans in the first place? Did someone go around eating dragons until their DNA mixed or spend tons of time getting high on bee poison? The limit of the human body is said to be the silver level, then why are all ordinary humans shit out of luck? What exactly was induced in Zhen Jin’s body to produce such an extraordinary thing?