novelraw Chapter 1067 - 768: Yan Jinjin, Both Male and Female
Chapter 1067 - 768: Yan Jinjin, Both Male and Female
"Master."
Yan Jinjin suddenly spoke up: "Did you not want a cultivation technique? Your loyal servant can help you."
"Help me?" Li Zheng asked, "Didn’t you say you don’t understand demon cultivation techniques? How can you help?"
"Wanting to cultivate doesn’t necessarily require a demon cultivation technique." Yan Jinjin rolled his eyes and said, "Your loyal servant has five hundred years of cultivation experience and has modified techniques before. Since Master says there’s a power within you, perhaps I can modify a technique to make use of it?"
"He’s right, even if he hands over the technique, we don’t have the relevant experience to modify it." Zhan Zhouzhou pondered, "He’s different, like someone who’s never been exposed to technological modification, they would be clueless with racing parts in front of them. But with Ye Kai, even if he’s never modified a car, he can draw upon his past modification experience."
"Oh..."
Li Zheng nodded thoughtfully, "I understand, you want me to provide the parts so you can conveniently modify the car, right?"
Modifying the technique inevitably involves experimentation, and experimentation requires a body; otherwise, there’s no firsthand information, and Yan Jinjin wouldn’t know if the modification succeeds.
"Heh heh." Yan Jinjin chuckled sycophantically, "Master is wise, not much escapes your discerning eye."
"Hmm..." Li Zheng pondered carefully, then said to Yan Jinjin, "I can agree to your request, but cloning a body takes a long time. I doubt you have the patience to wait. So, I will find a temporary body for you to reside in, and in the future, you can change it out, okay?"
"This..." Yan Jinjin hesitated, "Master may not know, the method of possession is taboo and can’t be used frequently, lest it harms others and oneself."
"Ha." Li Zheng sneered, "What crap about the method of possession, it’s just occupying someone else’s nest and swallowing their spiritual realm."
This kind of thing, Li Zheng had discovered the first time he entered Mirel’s mind. If he had, while Mirel was unguarded, directly strangled her with his powerful spiritual power and then stuffed his spiritual body into Mirel’s spiritual realm, he could have seized her body.
However, doing so is not without limitations.
First, ensure that when entering the other person’s spiritual realm, they don’t resist or are powerless to resist.
Second, preserve the integrity of the other person’s spiritual realm, without any damage.
Otherwise, even if you take over the body, because it’s not the original host, the spiritual body won’t have a foundation and there’s no hope for further development in life.
Li Zheng suspected his spiritual power couldn’t grow by itself, possibly related to not having a spiritual realm.
"No!" Yan Jinjin unexpectedly said seriously, "The method of possession harms the natural order and will be abandoned by Heaven and Earth. If used frequently, it’s intolerable to Heaven and Earth; it causes stumbling, choking when drinking water, indigestion, sleeplessness, cultivation diverges, leads to madness, and brings calamity."
"So wicked?" Li Zheng glanced at Yan Jinjin, "Then why did you initially attempt to possess me?"
"Master also knows your loyal servant is left with only a Nascent Soul, if it weren’t for that, your loyal servant wouldn’t want to use the method of possession." Yan Jinjin smiled bitterly; when desperate, who would want to become a forsaken lone star loathed by Heaven and Earth?
"Then what if I find you bodies of the living dead?" Li Zheng said, "All consciousness scattered or deprived, you temporarily borrow their bodies to modify the technique. Once your cloned body is ready, you return it and leave behind cultivation as compensation to resolve the cause and effect?"
"This..." Yan Jinjin was uncertain, "Is it feasible?"
Having cultivated for five hundred years, he had never heard of anyone doing this.
"Feasible or not, do you even have a choice?" Li Zheng looked deeply at him and said, "In any case, you don’t seem to have the authority over what comes next, do you?"
Yan Jinjin thought about it and agreed.
His life was in their hands; better behavior might lead to a more comfortable existence, far better than living with constant beatings.
He gritted his teeth and nodded firmly, "At Master’s discretion!"
"Good, then it’s settled!" Li Zheng immediately decided and told Zhan Zhouzhou, "You go to the research institute and convey to the professor that I will visit later."
There are many blocks with patients of Soul Loss, and you can find them in the Three-Seven-Five Block. Li Zheng planned to spend some money to find an unclaimed ’experimental sample’ for Yan Jinjin.
If the doctors make progress later, he can cure them, gifting them a cultivation as a trade.
Deciding to act, Li Zheng took Yan Jinjin into the Dark Realm and went with Mirel to find the place specializing in Soul Loss patients in the Three-Seven-Five Block.
During previous training, Li Zheng had inquired and knew where to find it, though somewhat far.
After over half an hour, they found the medical research institute, spanning almost half the Three-Seven-Five Block like the Gravity Research Institute.
The person in charge here was a race with a dog’s head and human body, refined and courteous, wearing thin-framed glasses that occasionally flashed white light, indicating they served more purposes than just correcting vision.
Upon hearing Li Zheng wanted to purchase a Soul Loss experimental sample, the dog-headed person didn’t refuse and took him to the "hospital wing" to pick the one who looked most human.
The institute had searched for the person’s relatives to no avail, so there were few formalities involved; payment led to acquisition.
For this, Li Zheng spent only three hundred Red Crystal Coins to buy a living corpse.
At the moment of payment, Li Zheng suddenly found the act quite bizarre.
A living person was dealt with like goods, transacted with one hand of money for goods like this?
It made him feel like he was a buyer interfacing with traffickers, inevitably causing discomfort.
On the road back, Mirel noticed Li Zheng’s unease and asked him what was wrong.
He shared his thoughts with Mirel.
Mirel reassured him: "Think of it as hiring him for assistance; after all, it won’t harm him, and he can be healed and freed; what employer offers such generous treatment?"
With food, shelter, and healing covered, it might even come with the skills for Immortal Cultivation.
Li Zheng imagined for a moment, that if there were such a job on Earth, he would fight tooth and nail to apply for it.
After a bit of mental gymnastics, deluding himself, Li Zheng felt much better.
With the experimental sample he bought, Li Zheng returned to his rented place and released Yan Jinjin.
Yan Jinjin looked at the alien body with wings on its back with some disdain: "It’s actually from the Demon Race..."
"Stop complaining. This is the closest thing to a human I could find," Li Zheng felt displeased and scolded: "It’s not like you’re living here permanently; just make do!"
"Yes, yes, your majesty is right!" Yan Jinjin dared not retort and obediently drilled into the center of the experimental sample’s forehead.
After a moment, the eyelids of the experimental sample twitched, slowly opened, revealing a pair of eerie, jet-black pupils.
"Master..." Yan Jinjin spoke, his voice clear. Suddenly, he was startled: "It seems this body is female!?"
"Maybe male?" Li Zheng looked at the flat chest, unsure. He had bought it assuming it looked most human without confirming the gender.
Yan Jinjin tried moving an arm and effortlessly lifted it.
"Hmm? The vitality of this body is strong! It’s indeed the flesh of a demon race!"
Though it had been lying immobile for a long time, the body showed no stiffness, with blood coursing rapidly inside, like rivers and streams.
Then he got out of the coffin-like container and turned around to check his current gender.
After triple-checking, Yan Jinjin found pessimistically that he indeed seemed to have female characteristics.
But the silver lining was that he also possessed male characteristics...
Yan Jinjin felt tearless despair: "This demon race is actually hermaphroditic!"
"Huh?"
Hearing this, Li Zheng was taken aback.
He and Mirel exchanged glances, neither expected things to turn out this way.
Mirel softened, "How about getting him another body?"
Li Zheng, unwilling to make another trip, replied, "It’s already bought. Getting another would only add to his fate."
He consoled Yan Jinjin, "Just make do. It’s only a vessel for you after all."
Seeing that Li Zheng had no intention of finding him another body, and worried that changing again might add to his fate, Yan Jinjin resigned himself to it.
Li Zheng scratched his cheek and curiously asked, "But how do hermaphroditic species reproduce? Self-sufficient?"
Thinking about it seemed unlikely.
Close kin breeding has so many problems; self-sufficiency would be even worse?
Mirel suggested, "Why not let Yan Jinjin try?"
Yan Jinjin was horrified: "Master, no!"
Himself with himself...?
The mere thought of that image sent chills down Yan Jinjin’s spine.
"Never mind, he can’t take a joke, so stop teasing him." Li Zheng said to Yan Jinjin, "Now that you have a physical body, I hope you can quickly produce some results to prove your usefulness."
Yan Jinjin stopped and knelt down, bowing: "I will do my utmost!"
"Okay. We’re going out later, so stay here and don’t wander off. We’ll find a place for you to stay by tonight." Li Zheng warned Yan Jinjin a bit, and then took Mirel out to the research facility.
On the way, he slapped his forehead, suddenly remembering that he had been too focused on gathering data after returning yesterday, and had forgotten some matters.
Li Zheng: "Mirel, when you’re looking for a house, see where we can register for outer city resident status and get me two of them."
Mirel: "Are you planning to send Kuro and Ise off?"
"Yeah." Li Zheng nodded: "I promised them before that they could leave whenever they wanted, but at that time we couldn’t register resident status, so it got delayed. It stayed delayed until it was forgotten. Now that I’ve remembered, I might as well settle it and clear it off my mind."
"Isn’t that wrong?" Mirel recalled, "I remember you saying you wanted them to help you manage the machinery from those two production lines? Why let them go now?"
"That was then, this is now." Li Zheng was silent for a few seconds and then said: "At that time I thought mechanical bodies would play a significant role in the future. But after visiting the Sin Domain, I realized their role is quite limited."
Just Kuro and Ise’s tiny frames could be easily crushed by a single foot of the twisted creatures in the Gluttony Sin Domain.
Moreover, the key to resisting twisted creatures is spiritual power and will. For Kuro and Ise, transformed into data, they may not be affected by the Sin Domain, but when actually facing a twisted storm, they can’t help at all...
The "Li Zheng" who once tricked the Kron Race had completely turned the Kron Race into a useless race.
Kuro said initially that the machines played a role on the battlefield, killing many twisted creatures, probably referring to the White Level and Red Level ones, not the current main Purple Level and quasi-Purple Level.
So keeping the two from the Kron Race around is simply restricting their freedom. It’s better to set them free.
Fortunately, with the fourth district as a base now, Kuro and the others can live there without worrying about encountering danger.