The darkness receded like a tide.
Feng Qi's consciousness awakened.
He opened his eyes under the crushing weight of extreme negative emotions and realized he was soaked in sweat.
Every time he returned from death, the wave of negative emotions would hit violently, and it always took a while before he could calm down.
But this time, the mental growth gained from the Heart Refinement Challenge kicked in, helping him quickly suppress the surging emotions and regain control.
He looked around—everything was familiar.
He was inside a room of the Crimson Research Institute. On the table in front of the sofa sat a bottle of pre-prepared mental soothing agent.
He picked up the bottle and downed it in one gulp, then walked over to the desk.
As usual, it was time to record the intelligence and gains from this timeline.
This helped him organize everything clearly and prevented memory errors later.
After all, the accumulated intel spanned multiple timelines. Mistakes in recollection could easily lead to serious problems in future explorations.
He picked up a pen and opened the notebook.
First, he reread the earlier entries twice in full detail. Then he began writing down the intel collected from this sacrifice timeline.
First was power growth.
Just as he was about to start, Feng Qi shook his head helplessly and skipped that part entirely.
In this dream journey to the future, he had obtained over 1,200 talent abilities. Writing all that down would be a complete waste of time.
After thinking for a moment, he began with the next section:
Intel Acquisition One: Human World – Central Region
1. It's confirmed that the human civilization in the Central Region hasn't been destroyed. They chose to coexist with the Elf King under a cooperative growth system based on Elf Seeds.
2. The Elf Seed growth system carries serious bodily risks. It drastically shortens human lifespans. If a host's physical strength fails to keep pace with the Elf Seed's growth, the host's body will undergo elfication.
3. The Elf King is friendly toward humanity and can be considered an ally (tentative).
4. The Elf King's offspring, An Mu, is hostile to humanity and must be eliminated.
5. The Elf King possesses a Miracle item: the Life Furnace.
Life Furnace Function: It can devour other lifeforms and absorb their life sequences. Then, by combining different sequences, it can create entirely new species.
Note: According to the Elf King, the Life Furnace has no upper limit to its potential in creating life. Its results are only influenced by the quality of the life sequences and how well they fit together. It is the source of all Elf Seed variations. (In theory, as long as one has enough high-quality life sequences and perfectly structured combinations—and ignores the failure rate—it is possible to create a god!)
6. ...
...
After finishing the intel on the Central Region, Feng Qi went over it twice more.
Honestly, a part of him still wanted to explore the idea of mass-producing talent abilities through cooperation with the Elf King.
Whether that was truly feasible remained uncertain.
The Narrator said it probably wouldn't work—but Feng Qi still wanted to try.
After all, it was nearly a cost-free shortcut to mass-producing talent abilities.
If it did work, his growth rate would skyrocket like a rocket launch.
As for what the Elf King might think—Feng Qi wasn't too concerned.
The Elf King's view on offspring was totally different from humans'. Judging by human values just didn't apply.
Humans cherished offspring partly because the process of childbirth was so taxing—ten months of pregnancy, enormous pain, and usually only one child.
But the Elf King's reproduction worked on a completely different level. It could spawn tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—at once.
That was a whole different concept altogether.
In nature, there are species like crabs that can lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at once—and might even eat their own young if food is scarce.
Environment, worldview, and values all showed that the Elf King didn't hold its "offspring" in the same regard as humans did.
Besides, most Elf Seeds didn't even have consciousness. They weren't true offspring at all.
They were just mass-produced tools.
Only a rare few like An Mu, who were carefully crafted and born with a budding consciousness, could be considered true offspring.
But creating an An Mu wasn't something that could be done in batches.
Even making one An Mu had taken the Elf King decades.
Feng Qi didn't dwell on this issue too long.
He continued to record the other intelligence gained from this timeline.
Intel Acquisition Two: Fate City
Details: Learned of the existence of Fate City. In future timelines, it can be used to trade for more information. It also offers weapons, gear, and various tools essential to human development.
Prerequisite: He needs to make a trip to the Central Region to obtain a Tortoiseshell Jade.
Intel Acquisition Three: Demon Blade Squad Members
Detailed Plan: In future timelines, Xiao You, Po Jia, and Taihang can be brought back to Star City for focused training...
As he wrote down the information about the Demon Blade Squad, Feng Qi stopped and fell into thought.
In fact, before returning to reality, he had already made up his mind to bring Xiao You and the others back to Star City.
Whether from an emotional standpoint or based on their talent potential, bringing them back was absolutely necessary.
Especially Xiao You.
After enduring the long journey of the God Ascension Challenge together, he and Xiao You had formed a deep bond.
And Xiao You's talent was extremely powerful.
The inherited memories within her held massive knowledge about the weaving of magical arts. Just the fact that she could craft spatial tools made her immensely valuable to humanity.
Not to mention her knowledge of energy weapons, energy gear, and energy devices, among other things.
If she could be brought back to Star City, she'd definitely accelerate the development of the human race.
But now, a problem stood in his way.
Unless it was resolved, there was no way to bring Xiao You and the others back to Star City in the real timeline.
The domain field where Xiao You was located was very far from Star City.
If he wanted to retrieve her in the real timeline, it would take a long time just to travel.
Unless he used spatial technology to perform a long-distance teleportation.
The problem was, in the real timeline, Star City's spatial technology hadn't even gotten off the ground yet. Even the Breaking Dawn Academy, which was supposed to train spatial talent, hadn't been founded.
Only the Crimson Research Institute held fragments of spatial technology data, but none of it had been tested in practice.
Trying to use spatial tech in the real timeline still needed a long wait.
Asking Old Mist for help was also impossible. At this point in time, Old Mist's power hadn't yet reached the level where he could tear space.
Ironically, in this sacrifice timeline, Feng Qi's power had grown so much that he could already perform short-range spatial jumps.
He had fully mastered how to use spatial techniques.
But the problem was—even if he knew how to tear space, his real timeline self still couldn't use the technique.
It was just like cultivation. Even if he knew how to do it, his real self couldn't strengthen through cultivation.
His unique body in the real timeline only allowed him to grow through ability plundering.
Unless he extracted a talent ability that allowed long-distance spatial teleportation, there was no way he could ever master a spatial-type ability.
After thinking for a while, Feng Qi could only shake his head helplessly.
For now, he couldn't think of any solution to this problem.
He continued writing down the other intelligence collected in this sacrifice line.
Intel Acquisition Four: Spirit Ores, Spiritual Plants, and Treasure Coordinates
Detailed Info: Notes on important resources discovered during the journey through the God Ascension Challenge.
Falling Star Ore:
Resource Traits: …
Coordinates: …
Soul-Devouring Flower:
Resource Traits: …
Coordinates: …
...
Intel Acquisition Five: Demon Blade
Detailed Info: This timeline, where he cooperated with the Demon Blade to grow stronger, proved that the Demon Blade could be trusted and could serve as an ally.
Intel Acquisition Six: Blood Soul Clan
Detailed Info: He gained a clearer understanding of the Blood Soul Clan's strength and personally witnessed them annihilate the Thunder Clan.
Note: Lei Ting can be considered a potential ally for the Star City alliance (but there are risks. Unlike Xiao You or Po Jia, Lei Ting's proud nature means he likely wouldn't willingly cooperate with humans while his clan is still around. Memory sharing will be required to convince him. So it's better to recruit him during a sacrifice line.)
Intel Acquisition Seven: Negative Emotions
Detailed Info: This sacrifice timeline offered deeper insight into negative emotions. It's an extremely "evil"-type energy, but under special conditions, it can be used (however, using negative emotion energy comes with high risk—without the Nightmare Bell, the main persona is very likely to be devoured by the negative persona.)
Intel Acquisition Eight: Jian Ji
Detailed Info: Jian Ji, the main target of this timeline, was sealed in the future and will be eliminated by the me in the main timeline. (Needs to investigate the status of Winterfell City in the real timeline to confirm whether Jian Ji has also died there.)
Kill Reward: Talent ability: True Understanding of the Demon Sword (Can weaponize negative emotions against enemies.)
...
The talent True Understanding of the Demon Sword being ranked on the sixth track of the talent path showed just how huge its potential was—it was an extremely high-tier ability.
And to Feng Qi, it was even more valuable.
True Understanding of the Demon Sword allowed the use of negative emotional power, and his own negative emotions were as vast as an ocean.
The two combined—this was practically a divine technique.
But the problem was, this talent only let him use negative emotions, not control them.
These were completely different concepts.
Just like Jian Ji in the future, who had been completely corroded by negative emotions.
He too could use negative emotional power, attaching it to sword aura to attack.
But by that point, Jian Ji had already lost all rationality, becoming a puppet of negative emotion—or rather, the negative consciousness had overtaken his original persona, turning him into an entirely new negative lifeform.
Feng Qi really did want to use the power of True Understanding of the Demon Sword.
He was just afraid that doing so would trigger the sealed negative emotions and cause his main persona to be devoured.
Right now, those negative emotions were like a wild beast locked in a cage.
It had no consciousness, but once activated, it could unleash something terrifying.
So despite True Understanding of the Demon Sword being useful for controlling sword momentum, when it came to using negative emotions, he didn't dare touch it at all.
Intel Acquisition Eight: Construction of a Pseudo Sacred Spirit Consciousness Vault
According to the information provided by Wei Wei, it might be possible to build a knowledge archive similar to the Sacred Spirit Consciousness Vault within the sea of consciousness.
Intel Acquisition Nine: Hell Without End
From what Zhang Daowen shared, there were three powerful factions within Hell Without End.
They were: Ku Yuan, Scorched Earth, and Disorder.
Any warrior capable of walking out of Hell Without End had without a doubt reached the level of a super powerhouse.
Note: Humanity will face the threat of Scorched Earth warriors in the future.
Intel Acquisition Ten: Mist Clan
At the end of this sacrifice line, he saw future intel about the Mist Clan in the Human Historical Database.
In the future, the Mist Clan is still allied with humanity, and Old Mist has always been providing resources to the human race.
At this point, Old Mist had already taken control of the area near the Wastelands and was preparing to move toward becoming a royal ruler.
Zhang Daowen had once said that the final fallback plan for Dawn City was to go to the Mist Clan and survive under their protection.
History had proven once again—Old Mist was definitely trustworthy.
But living under Old Mist's protection clearly wasn't what Zhang Daowen wanted, and it wasn't what Feng Qi wanted either.
To live under someone else's roof, even with the Mist Clan's shelter, meant that humanity would be a nation in name only.
And to be protected, you had to follow their rules.
There were many potential rules hidden beneath that surface.
For example, humanity wouldn't be allowed to expand their population on a large scale—they might even have to shrink it. After all, if the Mist Clan was providing resources for humans, a booming human population would only increase the burden on their supplies.
These restrictions would gradually drive humanity into decline.
His relationship with Old Mist was one thing, but a racial alliance was something else entirely. He could tell the difference—and Old Mist clearly could too.
Racial interests always outweighed personal emotions. That was how both he and Old Mist thought.
...
(Omitted a large amount of intel)
Intel Acquisition Nineteen: Silver Moon Clan
Detailed Info: From the ancient murals on Silver Serpent Island, he learned that the Silver Moon Clan was a descendant of the ancient force known as the Silver Serpent Empire.
1. Consider forming an alliance with the Silver Moon Clan. Use their engineering expertise to develop Star City and later help build humanity's new city—Dawn City.
2. On Silver Serpent Island, an ancient ultimate weapon was sealed. Only those with Silver Moon Clan blood could activate and control it. This ultimate weapon could be used as leverage to exchange benefits with the Silver Moon Clan. (This option will not be pursued for now. There's no guarantee that the Silver Moon Clan will remain friendly once they obtain the weapon. The imbalance in power could bring catastrophic consequences to humanity.)
...
The more intel he gathered, the more Feng Qi realized how valuable the Silver Moon Clan truly was.
Engineering technology was a treasure of the Silver Serpent Empire.
Although the Silver Moon Clan hadn't fully inherited the war engineering tech of the empire, they still retained many vital techniques.
If they could help humanity develop, the benefits would be enormous.
This had already been proven in previous sacrifice lines.
For example, the energy pipeline network in Star City.
After so many timelines, the urban energy network designed by Yin Ling and the other Silver Moon engineers was still being used. Every year, it saved Star City a massive amount of resources in energy transmission.
Over a longer span of time, their energy transport designs had created vast wealth for the human race.
Even back then, Feng Qi had thought about drawing the Silver Moon Clan into an alliance.
The only problem was that humanity was too weak at the time. He couldn't imagine how they would keep the Silver Moon Clan in check after his death.
The human bloodline's potential meant that their growth would always lag behind that of the Silver Moon Clan.
Over time, the balance in the alliance would falter—and eventually, the Silver Moon Clan might wipe humanity out altogether.
So the idea of an alliance had remained shelved.
But during this God Ascension Challenge, he learned that the Silver Moon Clan came from the Silver Serpent Empire—and that they had inherited even more engineering knowledge.
In his eyes, their value skyrocketed.
At the same time, humanity's overall strength had also improved dramatically.
With Zhang Daowen, the God of War, anchoring the human race, and the Mist Clan—an ally with unlimited potential—supporting from outside, there was no longer any need to fear the Silver Moon Clan.
He planned to initiate cooperation with the Silver Moon Clan in the next sacrifice line and see what impact they could have on humanity's future development.
As this thought settled in his mind, another idea suddenly surfaced.
Didn't the Silver Moon Clan possess spatial technology?
If he could ally with them, could he use their help to bring Xiao You to Star City ahead of schedule?