The month that followed their dramatic flight from Suotuo City was a cocoon of focused, transformative labor. The shabby grounds and simmering tensions of Shrek Academy dissolved into a distant, hazy memory, replaced by the opulent tranquility and boundless resources of the Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect.
It was a new world, a new beginning, and the trio seized it with a single-minded, relentless hunger for power.
The first few days were a blur of intense, solitary work. Ning Rongrong and Zhu Zhuqing, given free rein of the sect's elite training facilities, established a new, brutal regimen. They spent their days in the state-of-the-art simulation fields, sparring against the sect's most experienced Spirit Grandmaster guards.
Their coordination, already impressive, was honed to a razor's edge, their movements becoming a seamless, unspoken language of attack and support.
Zhang Tian, however, vanished. He became a ghost, a recluse haunting the newly designated alchemy laboratory that Ning Fengzhi had gifted him.
The chamber became his entire world. It was a symphony of the gentle bubbling of strange liquids in glass beakers, the sharp, pungent aroma of a thousand different herbs, and the low, constant, spirit-powered hum of the central forge.
For the first week, he did nothing but read. He sat amidst towering stacks of ancient scrolls and jade slips, his mind a voracious black hole, absorbing the accumulated knowledge of two disparate, brilliant traditions.
He unrolled the ancient, leather-bound scrolls of the Breaking Clan, their pages filled with elegant, precise script. Beside them, he mentally projected the pages of the Tang Sect's alchemy and poison records, stolen directly from the mind of the imposter.
The contrast was stark, and it fascinated him.
'The Tang Sect's knowledge is brutally effective,' he mused, his fingers tracing a diagram of a fast-acting neurotoxin. 'It's the work of assassins and pragmatists. Every formula is a weapon, every herb a component in a killing machine. It's direct, lethal, and lacks any real subtlety.'
He then turned his attention to a Breaking Clan text detailing the synergistic properties of sun-attribute and moon-attribute herbs. 'But this… this is on another level entirely. This is science. They don't just provide recipes; they explain the why. The fundamental principles of elemental interaction, the catalytic properties of different spirit beast bloods, the precise temperature curves needed to maximize potency…'
The Breaking Clan's legacy was a key. It didn't just give him a list of poisons; it gave him the language of alchemy itself. It allowed him not just to copy, but to create.
His initial experiments were methodical, a slow and careful verification of the principles he was learning. He started with a simple, classic Tang Sect recipe: the 'One Day Paralysis' powder. It was a straightforward concoction, effective but with a distinct, acrid smell that would alert any experienced Spirit Master.
Following the Tang Sect's instructions, he ground the herbs, mixed the powders, and produced a small vial of the greyish, foul-smelling substance.
'Effective, but crude,' he thought. He then consulted a Breaking Clan scroll on scent-masking agents. He took a fresh batch of ingredients and, following a different process, added a single, crushed leaf of the 'Silent Ghost Flower', a herb the Tang Sect records didn't even mention.
The resulting powder was identical in color and texture, but it had no smell at all. None. He had taken a functional, crude weapon and turned it into a perfect tool of silent assassination.
But theory and small-scale synthesis were not enough. He needed to test the true efficacy of his creations, their dosage requirements, their long-term effects. He needed human subjects.
He sent a formal, written request to Ning Fengzhi via a sect disciple. The request was simple, direct, and chillingly pragmatic: "I require three healthy, male subjects for a series of non-lethal toxicity and pharmacology trials. Subjects with a history of violence and a low probability of being missed are preferred."
Two days later, the heavy, soundproofed doors to his laboratory swung open. A team of grim-faced sect guards, their armor clanking on the stone floor, dragged three bound and gagged men into the chamber. They were rough-looking, their faces hardened by a life of crime, their eyes wide with a primal, animalistic terror.
"These are bandits from the Black Wind Gang," the captain of the guard reported, his voice a low rumble. "Caught them raiding a merchant convoy on the road to Heaven Dou City last week. They're murderers and rapists, every last one of them. The magistrate was going to execute them next month. Sect Master Ning thought they might be of more… use to you first."
"They will suffice," Zhang Tian said, his voice a calm, clinical monotone. He looked at the three terrified men not with malice or cruelty, but with the detached, emotionless curiosity of a scientist observing a new species of insect.
The guards deposited the criminals into three heavily reinforced cages that had been installed at the far end of the lab. As the door clanged shut, one of the bandits, a large man with a brutal, scarred face, began to struggle, his muffled shouts a series of furious, desperate noises.
Zhang Tian walked over to the cage, his face impassive. "There is no point in struggling," he said, his voice soft, almost gentle. "You are not going to be tortured. You are not going to be killed. You are simply going to help me with my research. In exchange, you will be well-fed and kept comfortable. It is a far better fate than the executioner's axe that awaits you."
The man just glared at him, his eyes filled with a mixture of hatred and fear.
Zhang Tian's first test was a simple one. He mixed a mild sedative he had created into a bowl of rice porridge and gave it to the first bandit. The man, starved and defiant, wolfed it down.
For the next six hours, Zhang Tian sat before the cage, a quill scratching methodically in his leather-bound notebook. He documented everything.
'Subject A. Time 14:02 - Ingested 5mg of 'Peaceful Dream' powder mixed with food. Time 14:15 - Subject reports feeling of slight lethargy. Pupil dilation minimal. Time 14:30 - Subject is asleep. Heart rate has slowed by 15%. Respiration is deep and even. Time 20:05 - Subject is awake. Reports feeling well-rested, with no memory of the intervening hours. Conclusion: Effective as a short-term, non-lethal incapacitating agent. No discernible side effects.'
It was a cold, ruthless, and highly effective process.
While his mornings were dedicated to the delicate, precise art of alchemy, his afternoons were a symphony of fire and steel. He moved to the other side of his laboratory, to the massive, spirit-powered forge. The crates of rare metals were his new toys.
He spent days analyzing their properties, melting down small samples, testing their malleability, their conductivity, their resistance to heat and pressure. He laid out the mental blueprints for the Tang Sect's most legendary hidden weapons, the ones Tang San dreamed of one day creating.
'The Buddha's Fury Tang Lotus,' he thought, examining the impossibly complex design in his mind's eye. 'A masterpiece of mechanical engineering, no doubt. But its reliance on Deep Sea Sunken Silver and a dozen other astronomically rare materials makes it impractical. And the assembly… a single mistake, a single misaligned gear, and the whole thing becomes a useless, expensive paperweight.'
His own design philosophy was different. It was born from the world of mass production and brutal efficiency.
But his most secret, most ambitious project took place only in the dead of night, when the laboratory was sealed, its walls shielded by a low-level energy barrier he had learned to create.
He had the sect deliver a series of heavy, lead-lined boxes. Inside them, nestled in soft padding, were the strange, faintly glowing radioactive ores he had specifically requested, materials the sect had cataloged as "cursed" and "unusable."
He built a small, reinforced containment chamber in the center of the lab. His body, sheathed in a constant, invisible layer of pure spirit power, was completely immune to the harmful, invisible particles that pulsed from the rocks.
'The principles are the same,' he thought one night, as he used a set of remote manipulators to place two small, specially shaped pieces of a particularly volatile ore into the chamber. 'Unstable isotopes. Neutron bombardment. A chain reaction.'
He took a deep breath. This was dangerous. A miscalculation could result in a catastrophic, uncontrolled explosion. He focused a sliver of his own spirit power, shaping it into a single, needle-like point. He used it as a trigger, a microscopic catalyst to initiate the reaction.
He felt it. A surge of power, so immense, so fundamental, it was unlike anything he had ever experienced. A tiny, brilliant point of light, no larger than a pinprick, flared to life within the chamber. It was a miniature sun, a contained star, and the wave of heat and energy it released, even in that tiny, controlled burst, made the very air in the lab hum.
'Incredible,' a voice whispered in his spiritual sea. Ah Yin had been watching, her own consciousness reeling from the sheer, primal power he had just unleashed. 'What is this, Zhang Tian? This is not the power of spirits. This is something else. Something… terrifying.'
'It is the power to end worlds, Ah Yin,' he projected back, a shiver of cold, terrifying excitement running down his own spine. 'A power we will hopefully never have to use. But a power it is good to have.'
His final area of research was a return to his roots as an engineer. He laid the four strange, low-grade spirit tools on his workbench. With a set of fine, delicate tools and the microscopic vision granted by his 'Detailed' level Purple Demon Eye, he began to dissect them.
He saw it then. The secret that had eluded this world's craftsmen for centuries.
'It's a circuit board,' he breathed, holding the tiny, teardrop-shaped core of the self-heating pendant under a magnifying lens. 'The power source and the programming are one and the same.'
He could see the intricate array of microscopic lines and symbols, carved directly into the surface of the attribute-infused metal. It was a complex, beautiful schematic, etched not with a tool, but with pure, focused spirit power. This array drew the innate elemental energy from the metal itself and channeled it, giving the tool its function.
He spent the next week practicing. He took a simple piece of iron and, using a fine-tipped forging needle infused with his own spirit power, he tried to replicate the simple heating array. His first attempts were a disaster. The lines were too thick, the energy flow chaotic. He created a dozen useless, slightly warm rocks.
But he was a relentless perfectionist. He refined his technique, learning to control the output of his spirit power with microscopic precision. On the thirteenth try, he succeeded. He held a simple iron cup in his hand, and it began to grow warm, a steady, gentle heat radiating from it. He had created his first spirit tool.
His old firearms, the ones that had so terrified the Shrek students, now seemed like clumsy, primitive toys. He began to sketch new designs, his mind a feverish storm of mechanical engineering and deadly intent.
He designed a 'Railgun Gauntlet,' a sleek, black metal bracer. It used a series of spirit-power-infused magnetic coils, controlled by an engraved circuit array, to launch a small, needle-like projectile at hypersonic speeds. It was silent, recoilless, and its penetrating power would be absurd.
He also conceived of the 'Resonance Blade,' a short sword whose hilt contained a high-frequency vibration mechanism, powered and controlled by a spirit tool core. When activated, the blade would vibrate at a frequency that could destabilize molecular bonds, allowing it to slice through steel armor as if it were soft butter.
He was no longer just a Spirit Master. He was becoming a true Spirit Engineer.
Two weeks into his self-imposed exile in the laboratory, a summons arrived. A sect disciple, his face flushed with excitement, bowed deeply at the door. "Young Master Tian, the Sect Master requests your presence in the main hall. And that of the Young Miss and her friend. It's… it's urgent."
When they arrived, the grand hall was filled with a palpable, electric energy. Ning Fengzhi stood in the center, flanked by a nervous-looking Bone Douluo.
And he was… radiating. A vibrant, powerful aura pulsed from him, so potent it made the very air shimmer. Floating beside him was his Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Pagoda. And it was no longer seven stories high.
At its apex, a new, eighth tier, crafted from a brilliant, shimmering light that seemed to contain all the colors of the rainbow, had formed.
"Daddy!" Ning Rongrong gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and pure, unadulterated joy.
Ning Fengzhi turned to them, and his face was that of a man reborn. The faint lines of weariness around his eyes were gone, replaced by a youthful, vibrant energy. His eyes shone with a power that was almost overwhelming.
"The pills, Zhang Tian," he said, his voice thick with an emotion that was close to tears. "The Breaking Clan concocted them exactly as you described. The moment I started taking them, I could feel it. A warmth, a healing energy, slowly mending the defect in my spirit. This morning… the bottleneck I have been trapped at for over twenty years… it didn't just break. It disintegrated."
He had broken through to Level 80.
The celebration was immediate and heartfelt. Bone Douluo Gu Rong was laughing, a dry, rattling sound of pure joy. "I knew it! I knew you could do it, Fengzhi!"
A few hours later, intense sword energy shimmered in the hall, and Sword Douluo Chen Xin stepped through, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.
It was decided that the two Titled Douluos would accompany Ning Fengzhi into a secluded cultivation chamber to help him absorb his new ring, a process that would take weeks.
With the sect's leadership occupied, the rest of the month settled into a new, intense routine for the trio. Zhang Tian returned to his laboratory, his mind now free to focus on his own, personal projects. Ning Rongrong and Zhu Zhuqing, now the undisputed top young talents in the sect, took their training to a new, brutal level.
Another two weeks passed, marking one full month since their arrival.
Late one night, in the quiet solitude of his lab, amidst the bubbling of strange, colorful liquids, Zhang Tian held up a single, finished product. It was a pill, the size of a longan fruit. It was a translucent, water-blue color, and it shimmered with a gentle, pure light, as if it held a piece of the clear, midday sky within it.
'Mystic Water Pill,' he thought, a deep, profound sense of satisfaction washing over him. He had done it. By combining the foundational principles of the Breaking Clan with the more esoteric, and "strange" aspects of the Tang Sect's alchemy, he had recreated a mystical pill from the future that would be developed more than ten thousand years later in this world.
'It can permanently enhance a person's innate talent by one full level,' he recalled its properties. 'And for anyone under Level 30, it provides a direct, clean boost to their next spirit rank.'
His movements now practiced and efficient, he created two more. He then moved on to his next project, creating a small batch of simpler, but still incredibly valuable, Spirit Ascension Pills, each one capable of providing a single, clean level-up with no side effects.
Finally, he focused on attribute enhancement. Using the blood of a thousand-year-old Ice Silkworm and a Deep Sea Whale from the sect's vast inventory, he created a series of pills that radiated a chilling, potent aura, specifically designed to nourish and strengthen water and ice-attribute spirits.
He looked at the small, precious collection of pills on his workbench. The gifts were ready. The tools that would elevate his friends, and himself, to a level of power that the world was not yet ready for, were complete. It was time.
~~
A/N: Check out my other novels like "Harem Master: Seduction System" and the "Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist" and I hope you like this story and those stories as well.
Check out more chapters on my P.atreon. The P.atreon will have 20+ Chapters ahead for this story. I hope you like it.
The link of p.atreon is: bit.ly/evildragon