After the conversation with Yin Ling ended and the alliance between the human race and the Silver Moon Clan was confirmed, Feng Qi returned to the Crimson Research Institute, bringing back Lin Ran, who was still full of doubt and confusion.
Next, Wei Wei would assist Lin Ran in recovering that segment of sealed memory.
The process wasn't too complicated—the time-consuming part was producing the memory liquid.
Unlike the version injected into Yin Ling, the memory fragment for Lin Ran needed to be more detailed.
For example, his ability to traverse space-time—something Lin Ran from the previous sacrifice line had already understood—wasn't included in the version given to Yin Ling. Her memory content had been clipped and carefully reviewed multiple times by Wei Wei to ensure no secrets were leaked.
But for Lin Ran, that wasn't a concern.
So it had to be remade from scratch, and that would take time.
During the process, as Lin Ran bombarded him with confused questions, Feng Qi could only tell him that he'd understand later.
After all, no amount of explanation could match a single injection.
Once Wei Wei led Lin Ran away, Feng Qi convened the highest-level internal meeting of the Crimson Research Institute.
Forging an alliance with the Silver Moon Clan wasn't a trivial matter. There were still many preparations to be made.
According to Yin Ling, the Silver Moon Clan Leader also wished to receive a memory liquid, to directly understand the future she had seen. This clearly reflected a degree of skepticism toward Yin Ling's account—and a desire for firsthand verification.
Feng Qi didn't refuse.
The technology to produce memory liquid had evolved across countless timelines and was now highly advanced. Mass production posed no problem at all.
The core agenda of this highest-level meeting was to discuss how the alliance would proceed.
Before the alliance could officially begin, several other matters had to be addressed—each one vital.
This Crimson Institute meeting focused on three major issues related to the alliance.
First: how to receive the Silver Moon Clan.
The Silver Moon Clan wasn't a small group. Their population was around one million. Bringing in such a massive number would clearly paralyze the normal functioning of Star City, and the city currently didn't have the resources to support them.
So, the first topic was how to accommodate the Silver Moon Clan.
This alliance wasn't one-sided charity. They had to help the Silver Moon Clan establish a stable resource acquisition path, ensuring the clan could sustain itself.
Feng Qi had already considered this back when he first sought to win them over.
At the meeting, he proposed a city-building plan to help the Silver Moon Clan construct a settlement east of Star City.
Based on this proposal, the Crimson Institute leadership each voiced their opinions and discussed implementation details.
But one meeting was clearly not enough to finalize the plan.
Once the general direction was established, Feng Qi moved on to the second topic:
How to manage relations between humans and the Silver Moon Clan.
Interracial interactions weren't child's play. Just saying "we're allies" wouldn't magically ensure harmony and progress exactly as envisioned.
Conflicts were inevitable.
Different worldviews, ideologies, interests—even problem-solving methods—would all become sources of friction.
Especially with the Silver Moon Clan directly interfacing with Star City, residents from both sides would have ample contact. Any minor dispute could escalate into a major diplomatic incident—potentially tearing the alliance apart.
Feng Qi had already discussed this with Yin Ling.
During the meeting, he proposed drafting a codified Alliance Law.
The purpose of this law was to establish mutually recognized rules to handle inter-clan disputes.
Without clear legal boundaries, any action could be subjectively judged, leading to arbitrary outcomes.
For example: if a human killed a Silver Moon member.
Without clear legal standards, determining guilt and punishment would become a matter of opinion. In the trial, factors like relationships, bias, and political stance could affect the outcome—easily breeding resentment from the Silver Moon side and stoking racial hostility.
But if a law acknowledged by both sides existed, any offender—regardless of race—could be sentenced according to the same standard.
This was absolutely necessary.
Vague concepts were the easiest to spark conflicts, which could eventually escalate into racial divisions.
The Silver Moon Clan was different from the Mist Clan.
The Mist Clan had minimal contact with humanity in the future timelines, and their territory was separated by vast mountains. Their only intersection was through a spatial teleportation array.
Distance created harmony.
With no real conflict of interest, the alliance with the Mist Clan had almost no chance of failure.
But the Silver Moon Clan's new settlement would be very close to Star City.
Feng Qi chose this path mainly because the Silver Moon Clan would be a key force in helping humanity improve its engineering technology, so close contact between the two races was inevitable.
Placing them near Star City would save a lot of trouble.
And behind this frequent interaction, a sound set of rules was needed to handle conflicts that might arise between members of the two races.
Clear rules couldn't prevent conflict, but they could provide a fair resolution afterward—one that both sides would recognize.
But to write a clan alliance code, participation from only the human side clearly wouldn't cut it.
At the meeting, Feng Qi merely proposed the concept.
The actual writing would begin after the Silver Moon Clan arrived.
Before that, Star City needed to prepare a reception city for the Silver Moon Clan and complete basic city construction.
The third discussion topic at the meeting involved Yin Ling and Lin Ran.
Yin Ling had already accepted the marriage alliance proposal.
This was a big deal for both the human race and the Silver Moon Clan.
After the marriage, it would serve as a strong buffer for relations between the two races. Diplomatically, it had to be heavily promoted.
The same applied to the Silver Moon Clan.
So, throwing a grand, once-in-a-century wedding for Lin Ran was absolutely necessary.
This kind of publicity would far outweigh the resources spent, tightly uniting the two races.
On this matter, Feng Qi didn't plan to handle it himself. At the meeting, he assigned the task to the Crimson think tank. The actual execution would begin once the Silver Moon Clan arrived.
This meeting lasted the entire day, with Feng Qi and the Crimson upper echelon discussing three main things:
First, how to settle the Silver Moon Clan.
Second, drafting the alliance legal code.
Third, hosting a once-in-a-century wedding for Lin Ran and Yin Ling, witnessed by members of both races.
All three topics were tied to the alliance.
A verbal agreement was just the start—executing the alliance was a lot more complicated.
And aside from these three, there were plenty of other issues needing fine-tuning.
Even the method of exchanging benefits had to be planned in detail.
Clearly, one meeting wouldn't be enough to sort everything out.
After the whole-day meeting ended, Feng Qi decided that the top priority was to settle the Silver Moon Clan first.
This would require holding a few top-level Star City meetings to finalize the detailed settlement plans.
After all, the Crimson Research Institute was just one of Star City's highest authorities. Building a city would require collaboration with other institutions.
For example, laying down the preliminary energy pipeline system would need the Energy Research Institute's cooperation.
Once the Crimson high-level meeting ended, Feng Qi went to the door of Wei Wei's private lab.
The red light on the door was on—Do Not Disturb mode.
Clearly, the procedure to restore Lin Ran's memory was still ongoing.
Compared to Yin Ling, restoring Lin Ran's memory was more complicated, and the immersion would be deeper, since this was his own memory.
A longer process was understandable.
Since the procedure wasn't done yet, Feng Qi didn't go in to interrupt. He turned around and left, heading for the Crimson Research Institute's private training room.
This room had been prepared specifically for him.
In previous sacrifice timelines, he had trained here countless times, sweating blood to improve his strength.
The strength from the real timeline didn't carry over from the sacrifice lines. Each new start meant rebuilding from scratch.
At this moment, the training room's center already had the tools he had requested earlier.
Standing in front of the tools, Feng Qi closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink into his sea of awareness.
In an instant, a vast, starry space appeared before his eyes. Above him swirled a galaxy, and below was a surging golden ocean.
Feng Qi's gaze lifted to the top of the talent track.
On the fourth talent track, besides the Evolution Token, there was now a red orb.
This orb was the Miracle Fortification Gem.
Feng Qi wasn't sure exactly when it had merged with his body—according to the Narrator, it happened just before his consciousness returned, during the void period after being killed by Little Black.
At that time, the gem had already been swallowed.
But it had never triggered a reaction with his body.
After returning, it simply appeared on the talent track.
It seemed that miracle items that came into contact with his body would automatically integrate during the consciousness return phase.
That was also how the Miracle Bracelet ended up on the talent track.
But the Evolution Token had been absorbed in a different way.
As for why—Feng Qi had no clue. The Narrator couldn't give a clear answer either.
He didn't dwell on it too much.
As long as it came back, it was a good thing.
Based on the effect of the ability plundering, it was clear that all the Fortification Gems from the other timelines had already been stripped away, and now he was the only one left with a single Fortification Gem.
As for how to use this Fortification Gem, Feng Qi hadn't made up his mind yet.
Once fused, the Fortification Gem couldn't be extracted—it was clearly not something he could hand over for use by other members of the human race.
And as for whether miracles could be shared like talent abilities, the previous sacrifice timelines had already proven that to be a dead end.
Miracles seemed to belong solely to his real-timeline self and couldn't be borrowed in any form across sacrifice timelines.
But according to Wei Wei's theory, it might be due to the lack of a strong enough faith connection. If a "guide" existed within the mental sea, maybe the situation would change.
Whether that theory would work in practice was still unknown.
Feng Qi didn't think too deeply about it. At this point, he opened his eyes.
He reached out and picked up an alloy combat blade from the tool bench. His consciousness tugged within the sea of awareness, and the Fortification Gem was drawn out by the pull of his mind, materializing in the center of his right palm as a glowing red gem.
Pressing the gem against the hilt of the alloy blade, he watched as it slowly fused in. The gem's color changed from red to black, radiating a dazzling glow.
Feng Qi could clearly sense that the blade's durability had significantly improved.
A blade that would usually warp with a light grip was now able to withstand his strength.
With a casual swing of his arm, the blade's aura ignited like a blaze in his heart. A black blade arc shot forward, instantly splitting a specialized wooden post in two. The blade energy didn't stop, slamming into the specially reinforced alloy wall and tearing through it, leaving a two-meter gash.
Seeing this, Feng Qi couldn't help but nod.
As expected of a miracle item.
The alloy combat blade in his hand wasn't high-grade—among human warriors, it wouldn't even be considered a good weapon. But once embedded with the Fortification Gem, it had become a divine weapon.
And that strike just now had been casual—yet it had already shown incredible sharpness and destructive force.
According to Xiao You's description, the Fortification Gem's power had virtually no upper limit, though it was influenced by the material it was embedded into. It could push the properties of that material to the extreme.
So, the better the weapon's material, the better the enhancement from the gem.
Curious, Feng Qi pried the gem off the blade and picked up a firearm from the tool bench, embedding the gem into that instead.
The next test left him stunned—the bullets fired from the gun had destructive power on par with, or even beyond, the energy weapons crafted by Xiao You.
Each bullet's power had increased by more than a hundredfold.
The results made Feng Qi realize just how terrifying the Fortification Gem really was.
After the gun test, his gaze swept across the workbench, finally landing on a tablet computer.
A thought popped into his head. He picked up the tablet and pressed the gem to its back.
The gem fused into the backplate.
The next test result truly surprised him. The tablet's processing capacity dramatically increased—its computation speed too.
Using a professional app to test it, he found that the overall performance of the tablet had increased by 43 times.
He had thought the Fortification Gem was only usable on weapons or equipment, boosting things like attack power and durability. But this—this opened a whole new door.
Baffled, he proceeded to test the gem on other tools from the bench.
The results were the same across the board. As long as the item could be fused with the gem, its performance shot up drastically.
After analyzing the materials of each tool, Feng Qi confirmed what Xiao You had speculated back then: the effect of the Fortification Gem was influenced by the quality of the material it was embedded into.
The better the material, the stronger the gem's enhancement effect.
No wonder Jian Ji had chosen to set up in Winterfell City—it was likely because he needed a wide variety of ores and spirit minerals to enhance the power of his Burning Heaven Sword, amplifying the effects of the Fortification Gem.
What a shame that the Fortification Gem couldn't be used on living beings.
Jian Ji had only managed to fuse with it by using the Burning Heaven Sword as a medium.
If he could embed it directly into himself, Feng Qi felt certain his combat power would explode to a whole new level.
As he was thinking about how to make more effective use of the Fortification Gem, the Narrator's voice suddenly echoed in his mind:
[Just had a crazy idea—remember the metal used to bind Tian Shu? That metal had a magic-sealing effect. It was a key tool for suppressing Tian Shu's violent urges. Now imagine crafting bullets from that magic-sealing metal and then embedding the Fortification Gem into the firearm. Wouldn't every bullet you fire be like a seal talisman? Like a miracle-level seal—just one shot could make the target unable to use their abilities anymore.]
The Narrator's wild imagination stunned Feng Qi for a moment.
Replicating the effect of a seal talisman might not be realistic, but the concept itself… it really could work.