Sword Flash shook himself from the aftereffects of that gaze and said, "I didn't expect that the mana seed would make the Ethera tree cast its gaze upon us. It seems I have to be careful with the other mana seeds that I found."
Then he said to everyone else, "Everything is fine. There is no need to worry because if there is a need to worry, there is nothing that we can do about it. Since there is no use worrying, let's go back to living our lives."
With that said, he left with the other two patriarchs. Everyone else dispersed solemnly.
The atmosphere was solemn. No one had the mood to chat after that eyeball had made them feel like ants.
As he went to his floating island, Arthur thought to himself with a heavy mood, "I knew that the Ethera tree was conscious and powerful, but I'm still in shock and awe of its power. That was just an eye ball of it and made us feel so small. Maybe to the Ethera tree, we are ants living on its body."
Then he asked himself, "I thought plants can't have eyes. Is the Ethera tree a plant or an animal?"
After thinking about this question for a while, he shrugged and said, "I won't be surprised if it is both. After all, the Ethera tree is the source of every living thing in the world of Ethera. So it should be a combination of plant, animal, and elemental being."
"I shouldn't be surprised by something like that after seeing Lady Evergreen. After all, is someone like her with a plant body, a plant or an animal?"
He didn't ask if Lady Evergreen is a human because he already knows that she is not a human. He himself is no longer a human. He and other cultivators stopped being humans after they advanced to the fourth mortal coil.
To be fair, the transformation from being a human into a superior creature didn't start at the fourth mortal coil, and the change wasn't instant. The transformation began slowly when they transcended the first mortal coil.
So, after shedding some of his weaknesses and the shackles that bound him as a human, he thought that he shouldn't limit his mind to categorizing living beings as plants or animals. That felt too archaic and mortal-like to him.
No matter how interesting the topic of whether the Ethera tree was a plant, an animal, or an elemental being, he quickly put it aside once he got home because he had something more interesting to do. This interesting thing had to do with the reward he just received for his contribution to the war effort.
He rushed into his cultivation room. Then he took out a large crystal ball from his space ring and examined it closely.
The large crystal ball is the reward he got. It is a fragile ball containing an elegant structure made completely out of divine sense.
The crystal ball is similar to memory crystals, which are used to transmit information. But this crystal ball is a consumable that will break apart after being used once.
Within the crystal ball is the AI logic model. Its structure is a spherical object made of thin lines of divine sense arranged as switches. The switches were made to resemble synapses, and the thin lines of divine sense were made to resemble neurons.
Even though he doesn't know how to build an AI logic model, he could tell that this one was more complicated than what he used to build the formation breaker. This is something that he easily confirmed by bringing out the logic core of the formation breaker and comparing its structure to that of the new AI logic model.
He can't build a logic model. The one he used to build the formation breaker was bought from the sect. He had bought the one commonly used in the golems in the performance test. So it was Sword Flash that built them, too.
He couldn't learn how the previous logic model worked because its mode of operation was locked within the logic core. All he needed to do was install the logic model within the formation breaker, so he didn't need to learn how it worked.
But he can learn how the new rank 5 logic model works by digesting the knowledge within it. However, doing this will consume the crystal ball, which will make it unable to be used to upgrade the logic core of the formation breaker.
This put him in a pickle. He can either learn how the AI logic model works or use it to upgrade the formation breaker. If he upgrades the formation breaker, all will be fine and well. But he will remain ignorant about how one of the most important structures in the formation breaker works.
If he decides to learn how the logic model works, he will have to master it to a level that will make him capable of building a logic model that is better than the current one that the formation breaker is using.
If he overestimates his capabilities and chooses to learn the logic model but fails at it, he would have wasted a good opportunity to upgrade the formation breaker. Despite this risk, he still chose to consume the rank 5 logic model to learn it.
He said to himself, "If I can learn it, great. If I can't, I'll find a way to buy it from Sword Flash in the future. Either way, wasting the reward is not the end of the world, but learning to create my own logic model is a big deal."
He has confidence in his learning capabilities. But the main reason why he chose to learn how logic models work is that he felt that he could afford to take the risk.
He was ready to lose, so he felt at peace making the gamble that he would be able to learn how logic models work. This was why he didn't hesitate to plunge his divine sense into the crystal ball after making his decision.