novelraw Chapter 620: Secondary Modification of the Nest and Void Refinement Completion
Chapter 620: Secondary Modification of the Nest and Void Refinement Completion
Chapter 620: Secondary Modification of the Nest and Void Refinement Completion
Several months later.
The constant-temperature purification system in the laboratory was running at full load, yet it still could not drain away the endless heat constantly emanating from inside. Countless discarded design drafts were scattered across the floor. The rune formations on the walls had been operating continuously for too long and were faintly hot, emitting a low buzzing hum.
Jie Ming and Viola stood before the experimental platform. Both of their eyes were bloodshot like rabbits, and their faces carried an unhealthy grayish pallor.
Finally, Jie Ming completed the final surgical step.
He withdrew his fingers from the surface of the Nest. His entire body felt drained as he collapsed heavily onto the chair behind him, which creaked under the strain.
Viola beside him was even more dramatic. She simply lay down on the floor, limbs spread out like a dried salted fish.
“Finally… it’s done…” Her voice drifted up from the floor, weak and listless.
Jie Ming leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling, too exhausted even to speak.
It had to be said that when two capable and extremely picky wizards worked together, the inspiration they generated was endless. Viola’s initial revised plan had already been quite good. If they had strictly followed it, the Nest’s modification would have been completed in five or six days at most.
But the problem was… neither of them was the type of person who “followed the plan strictly.”
On the third day of the surgery, Jie Ming suddenly thought of a better arrangement for the information nodes.
After Viola saw it, she felt it could be made even more aggressive. So the plan was changed, the surgery was paused, and adjustments were made.
Two weeks later, Viola proposed a new energy circuit structure that could increase information conversion efficiency by ten percent.
Jie Ming studied it for three days and added two more optimizations on top of that.
So the plan was changed again.
This cycle repeated, happening a full integer number of times.
Every overhaul meant the previous days of surgery had been wasted, and every restart made their faces a little greener.
In the end, Jie Ming could no longer remember which version this was.
He only knew that if it happened one more time, he might directly throw the Nest—and Viola along with it—into the furnace.
After resting for a while and forcibly adapting to the terrifying fatigue with the Body Forging Art, Jie Ming struggled up from the chair.
He walked to the experimental platform. His eyes brightened, and a pale golden light shone from between his brows.
The All-Purpose Eye and Fate Subsystem activated together. His spiritual power transformed into countless fine threads that probed into every corner of the Nest.
The scan lasted a full quarter of an hour. His brows went from tightly furrowed to relaxed, from relaxed to calm, and finally turned into a long sigh.
“Looks like there are no problems… There shouldn’t be any issues on your side either.” His voice carried the uncertainty of someone who had survived a disaster.
Viola climbed up from the floor, patted the dust off her body, and walked to the other side of the experimental platform.
She took out the small lens and inspected it carefully once more before nodding. Her tone was rare in its seriousness. “Very good. It fully matches the design.”
The two exchanged a glance and simultaneously let out a long breath.
If this thing really had any more problems, the two of them would probably strangle each other before the modification surgery even began.
“Test it?” Jie Ming asked.
“Test it,” Viola nodded.
Jie Ming picked up the gelatinous creature on the platform, which had already shrunk to the size of a basketball, pushed open the laboratory door, and flew straight out.
Viola followed closely behind.
The two sped across the gray-red sky of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, passing over volcanic craters and black giant settlements, before finally landing at the edge of a vast desert.
This area had once been part of a plane from the parallel world. After fusion, it had become an uninhabited zone within the Infernal Sulfur Plane.
Yellow sand filled the sky and not a blade of grass grew—perfect for testing.
Jie Ming casually tossed the Nest downward.
The basketball-sized gel landed on the sand and remained still for a few seconds, as if adapting to the new environment.
Then it received Jie Ming’s command and began frantically devouring the surrounding matter.
Sand grains, gravel, free elemental energy in the air…
Everything that could be used was sucked into its body.
A faint blue light appeared on its surface—the sign that the information conversion nodes were operating at full capacity.
After throwing the Nest down, Jie Ming and Viola no longer paid attention to it. Instead, they rose back into the air.
Jie Ming kept the All-Purpose Eye fully active, recording every change in the Nest.
After countless rounds of revisions, the Nest had been modified beyond recognition.
All its flashy offensive capabilities had been completely removed!
Time manipulation, energy barrages, acid sprays—none of them remained.
The consensus Jie Ming and Viola had reached was simple: the Nest did not need attack capabilities.
For breaking through defenses, there was Jie Ming’s Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light and the black giant legion. Therefore, after shedding its original nesting role, the Nest’s new positioning was cannon fodder, a shield, and an “immortal cockroach” on the battlefield.
It did not need to kill enemies. It only needed to stay alive… or rather, to keep “coming back.”
So they had poured all resources into two directions: immortality and information conversion capability.
The current Nest would convert all surrounding energy and matter into information, then reassemble that information into its own structure, thereby achieving self-proliferation.
The process sounded complicated, but in essence it was identical to how information lifeforms resurrected: convert oneself into information, transmit to a node, and re-materialize.
The only difference was that the Nest did not need external nodes—it was its own node.
More importantly, as it proliferated, the information processing nodes inside the Nest would also increase.
This meant its computational power would grow along with its size, and its information processing capability would rise accordingly. The improvement in information processing would in turn accelerate its devouring and conversion speed.
This created a positive feedback loop: the bigger it became, the faster it grew; the faster it grew, the bigger it became.
Once its computational power reached a certain level, even external attacks could be absorbed and converted into its own body.
Energy attacks would be analyzed, restructured, and absorbed by the information nodes. Physical attacks would be buffered, enveloped, and devoured by its gel-like body.
In other words, unless the Nest was completely destroyed from the very beginning, it would become increasingly difficult to kill.
Of course, this growth was not unlimited.
Limited by biological individuality and technology, the growth rate of information nodes could not keep up with the growth of its volume.
Once the Nest’s size reached a certain critical point, it could only absorb surrounding matter and energy to maintain its current size and could no longer expand further.
But Jie Ming had thought of another solution: he had installed a formation array in the Nest’s core zone that connected to the Fate Subsystem.
Once the Nest grew large enough and its intelligence improved, it could actively draw on the computational power of the Fate Subsystem to amplify its own information processing capability.
When the two were combined, although the normal maximum size had not changed much, the Nest’s maximum size in combat state far exceeded initial expectations.
According to the design model created by Jie Ming and Viola, the Nest in combat state could even devour energy and matter equivalent to an entire medium-sized plane.
And if the Nest truly managed to devour an entire medium-sized plane, its computational power and size would reach a terrifying level.
At that point, this thing’s combat ability would even be able to confront ordinary seventh-rank wizards head-on.
In the desert, the Nest was expanding at a visible speed.
From basketball size to water tank size, from water tank size to house size, from house size to small hill size.
Yellow sand was devoured madly. Free elemental energy in the air was drained dry. The area around the Nest even formed a vacuum zone.
The blue light on its surface grew brighter and brighter, like a blue sun that had fallen to the ground.
Jie Ming made a rough estimate. From the moment it was thrown down until now, only one minute had passed.
The Nest’s size had already exceeded one kilometer, and its growth speed was still accelerating.
Its aura was also rising steadily and rapidly, from initially insignificant to first-rank, second-rank, third-rank.
“That’s about enough.” Jie Ming raised his hand. A strand of spiritual power probed into the Nest’s core and issued the command to stop.
The Nest’s devouring actions came to an abrupt halt.
The blue light on its surface slowly dimmed. Its expansion speed dropped sharply and finally stopped at around one and a half kilometers in diameter.
It lay quietly in the desert like a blue lake.
Jie Ming landed on the Nest’s surface, squatted down, and pressed his palm against the gel-like skin.
His spiritual power probed inside, checking its internal condition.
“Information nodes operating normally, energy circuits stable, Fate Subsystem connection smooth. Combat power assessment… should be at the level of a third-rank wizard, and still slowly increasing.”
“Not bad.” Jie Ming stood up and patted his hands as if dusting them off.
Viola landed beside him, performed her own check, and nodded in satisfaction. “Better than expected.”
Jie Ming raised his hand. The portal to the grotto-heaven within his body opened. A powerful suction pulled the Nest up from the desert and stored it deep inside the grotto-heaven.
There was enough space and resources there for it to continue growing. By the next time it was needed, it should have grown to an even higher level.
The two flew back to the laboratory in silence the entire way.
After all, both of them were simply too exhausted.
Several months of continuous work, repeated plan overhauls, and countless meticulous operations had pushed even two wizards to their mental and physical limits.
Jie Ming pushed open the laboratory door and walked straight toward the two lounge chairs in the corner.
Viola had moved them in several months ago, saying they were “just in case.”
Looking at them now, this was probably the most far-sighted decision she had made during this visit.
The two collapsed into the chairs and simultaneously let out long breaths.
“Next time you have this kind of job,” Viola’s voice drifted over from the side, weak and listless, “find someone else.”
Jie Ming closed his eyes, the corners of his mouth curving upward slightly. “Didn’t you just say it was ‘better than expected’?”
“That was praising the Nest, not you.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, you still haven’t given me my payment.”
“Didn’t I already give you the Entropy Brain?”
“That was the old price. Do you think one is enough to cover all my hard work during this time?”
Jie Ming was silent for a moment. He reached into his spatial equipment, took out a thumb-sized Entropy Brain, and tossed it in Viola’s direction.
“I don’t have many left either. Use it sparingly.”
Viola caught the Entropy Brain, held it up to examine it, and the corners of her mouth curved into a satisfied smile. She said nothing more.
The laboratory fell quiet. Only the low buzzing of the rune formations on the walls continued.
After resting for a long time, Jie Ming finally recovered his strength. He looked up at Viola beside him. “My work here is done. Where do you plan to go have fun next?”
Viola tilted her head and thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Do you have any recommendations?”
Jie Ming stared at the ceiling with wide eyes. After a long while, he shook his head.
“There really isn’t anything fun here. How about…” He paused. “I let a black giant priest show you around? The Infernal Sulfur Plane is much larger than before now. Some places have pretty nice scenery.”
Viola rolled her eyes. “You already said that once before. Forget it. Who wants to look at scenery?”
She stood up and patted the dust off her body. “Never mind. I’ll find my own fun. You can keep busy with your own things.”
“Alright. See you later.”
Viola waved her hand and pushed the door open as she left.
Her footsteps gradually faded into the distance, and the laboratory became quiet once more.
Several decades later.
The door of the secluded chamber opened. Jie Ming walked out, his body covered in a thin layer of dust.
He stood at the doorway, facing the gray-red sky light of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, and exhaled a long breath of turbid air.
Behind him, the thousand-meter-tall dark golden dharma body was slowly dissipating as it was withdrawn back into his body.
Feeling the connection with the dharma body, Jie Ming nodded in satisfaction.
At the current stage, he could be considered to have reached the great completion of the Void Refinement Realm.
The dharma body had solidified to the point of nearly becoming material. Even without using spiritual power, it could already affect the outside world.
This was one of the benefits of the Void Refinement Realm.
As long as resources were sufficient, the cultivation speed could be shockingly fast.
The Incense Divine Power provided by ten billion believers, the spiritual qi converted from the energy of a seventh-rank large elemental pool, and the various rare materials purchased from the magic network… Relying on these things, Jie Ming had used only a few decades to forcefully push himself from early Void Refinement all the way to great completion.
Even so, his speed was still nothing outstanding.
According to the records in the Great Dao Book Pavilion, in the cultivation world there was a pill called the “Body Condensation Pill.” After swallowing it, one could complete the entire Void Refinement Realm cultivation within a single day.
But completing in decades what others took centuries or even over a thousand years to achieve, he was already very satisfied.
Next, only the final step remained: fusing the true body with the dharma body and allowing the dharma body to become the true body.
At that time, his current physical body would completely disappear, replaced by the thousand-meter-tall dark golden dharma body.
Of course, he could still manifest his normal human appearance for daily life, but his “essence” would have already changed.
Once this step was completed, the Void Refinement Realm would be considered fully accomplished, and he could break through to Dao Integration at any time.
During these decades, he had done nothing but cultivate relentlessly. This was because the state of the Void Refinement Realm was simply too dangerous.
Although it had been improved by countless generations of cultivators and no longer reduced combat power during cultivation, the special state of “dispersed essence, qi, and spirit” still existed.
Distracting thoughts easily arose, heart demons easily invaded, and the state of mind easily went astray.
For this reason, Jie Ming had chosen the safest method: to charge straight through to completion in one go.
Once he reached the completion stage, the transformation of the cultivator’s life form would essentially be finished. The dharma body and true body would merge into one, and the three treasures of essence, qi, and spirit would return to unity once more. That dangerous state would automatically be lifted.
Only then could he truly feel at ease.