It didn't take Bian long to complete a couple of theses and formulate a few of his own.
Of course, he didn't release them all at once, but rather he timed their release dates like he did with the translations back in the old academy days.
"Now what do I do with you?" Bian spoke to the calligraphic traditional ink brush as he spun it around.
Several pieces of paper already had words on them, and yet even without an inkwell, Bian's bronze geno core, the Altering Brush, remained loaded with ink.
He had written the words "stone, water, fire," and so on, yet nothing happened to the pieces of paper, even when he threw them or tried to send in Yin-Yang energy.
"Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. It's called the Altering Brush, but maybe it's not changing the paper into another substance."
Bian twirled the pen as he thought.
"Hmm, what if..."
Bian picked up another sheet of paper. If he wasn't in the Saints Hall, finding paper would be a task and a half, but he had no concerns about wastage here.
He wrote down the word "burning" on the paper.
Swoosh!
Immediately the brush left the page, the paper combusted.
Bian waved his hand to extinguish the fire and gathered the other pieces of paper to one spot.
Then he brought out one sheet and wrote the word "wet" on it.
Once again, the moment his pen left the sheet of paper, it became wet to the touch.
"Wow, this is amazing."
Bian brought out another and tried writing the word burning, this time in the ancient language of the alliance.
Sadly, the effect didn't change regardless of which language he wrote in.
He created a luminous, frozen, faded, and even a levitating sheet of paper.
That was when he noticed that the seemingly never-ending ink in his brush had depleted by a small margin.
Obviously, this ink was the charge for the Altering Brush and didn't seem to be tied to Bian's own energy levels.
After Bian looked at the prices of paper, he observed a very peculiar situation.
All pieces of altered paper were blank except the levitating sheet of paper. It still had the word levitating written on it.
He wondered why it was so and brought out more papers, writing the words "floating" and "hovering".
Just like he expected, both words remained on the paper, whereas when he wrote words like "wet" or "smooth," the words would fade into the paper when his brush left the surface.
He gathered the other papers and found out that the sheet with luminous also retained its wording.
"Ah, I get it now. Things like burning or being wet happen once, but for the paper to remain floating or luminous, it needs a continuous power source."
Bian closed his eyes, and with great focus, he could feel a subtle connection with the luminous and floating pieces of paper.
The amount of energy they consumed was so little that Bian wouldn't have noticed without deep focus.
Since it was his geno core, he severed the link between the brush and pieces of paper which were either glowing or floating.
Immediately, about four sheets of paper returned to the table, while the last piece stopped glowing, and thus they all returned to normal.
Bian saw the brush magically recovering the ink, and in a few seconds, it was fully loaded again.
He cleared his table and left the temporary lab, quite satisfied with his last geno core.
Heck, he was exuberant that all his geno cores were so useful.
Professor Bai Yishan was still in the sanctuaries, and having previously bid Professor Min goodbye, Bian took a spacecraft to the nearest station.
Once there, he could finally let the black beetle out of his pocket, and the beetle morphed into the Black Cruiser, his crystallised spaceship.
There was simply too much surveillance at the Saints Hall to bring it out there. Once Bian jumped into the cockpit, he piloted the Black Cruiser off the planet and into deep space.
"I really wish the Black Cruiser could hack into their database," he lamented with a sigh, then shook his head. "On the bright side, who else has a pocket-sized ship with more destructive power than an average warship?"
Bian travelled in the Black Cruiser for a while, eventually leaving the confines of the alliance and treading in disputed space.
These areas belonged neither to the alliance nor the Shura. It was like a border, but in the vastness of space, not all areas could be monitored at once.
The Black Cruiser was the smallest ship Bian had ever seen. It certainly wouldn't be easy for any mundane ship to spot it cruising through space.
"There's one."
The Black Cruiser had just manoeuvred around a large asteroid when Bian saw a Shura transportation ship.
He didn't waste any time, but rather immediately opened the hatch and put the Black Cruiser back into his pocket.
So this is how outer space feels to a demigod. It's quite bearable.
Although he felt more discomfort than when on a planet, it wasn't to an extreme degree.
As a demigod, he did have to worry about holding his breath, but he couldn't survive in the vacuum for prolonged periods.
He stood on the asteroid, and with a powerful lunge, he approached the ship like a shooting star.
By the time the Shura captain noticed something was off, it was already too late. Bian crashed into the midsection of the ship with a loud bang.
His rude entrance created imbalance, causing dozens of crates of Z-steel ore to be sucked out into space.
Bian smacked away a crate heading for his head and continued moving forward while masking his figure with the Dongxuan Sutra.
...
A few moments ago, the central command of the ship was serene as it operated seamlessly through the sea of stars.
Bang!
A mighty explosion resounded as an unknown object made impact with the ship.
"Seal the breach! We can't afford to lose the Z-steel ores! You over there, why are you fidgeting? Change the display to the section that was damaged immediately!"
A purple-horned Shura commanded the different golden-horned Shura operating different parts of the ship, and they immediately followed his command without delay.
Not only was he of royal blood, but he was also a mighty third-ranked Shura named Ral.
"Sir, there's someone in the ship!"
The panicked voice of the surveillance operator prompted Ral to move closer to the screen, yet he couldn't make out the details of the figure, except their humanoid silhouette.
"Why so panicked?!" Ral slapped the white-horned Shura in annoyance. He hated any display of weakness down to his bones.
"You can tell it's a human by its small stature. For him to have survived the vacuum of space, though, he's above the rank of evolvers."
In his heart, Ral knew the person must be a strong surpasser to not only briefly survive in space but also damage the ship to get in.
As for the person being a demigod? That was so unlikely that the thought just drifted past his mind for a moment.
Demigods didn't just grow on trees, and even fourth-ranked Shura need a lot of approval to change locations.
Plus, a demigod wouldn't bother attacking a cargo ship that was delivering Z-steel ores. It wasn't valuable enough to risk the treaty between the humans and the Shura.
Static echoed through the air as a gold-horned Shura spoke, "All units, prepare to intercept—"
"Don't bother. The opponent is a surpasser; you'll just be wasting their lives. I'll handle the intruder myself, while you guys report this incident."
I'd like to see how the humans explain this, Ral scoffed internally as he made his way to the intruder.