novelraw Chapter 978 686: Living Past 100 Is Longevity!
Chapter 978 686: Living Past 100 Is Longevity!
Dan Fenglai lived under the protection of the Blood Queen's wings for decades, and during these decades she never thought her great-grandmother would leave her one day.
But now, she heard such words from others.
A sudden sense of panic welled up in her heart for no reason.
If there is no great-grandmother, how... should I live?
"If great-grandmother can't enter the Outer City, I won't go either!" Dan Fenglai made up her mind, left the treehouse, and went to find the Blood Queen.
But she asked around and no one knew where her great-grandmother went.
"Are you not going to check on her?" Yan Yi looked at Dan Fenglai asking everywhere: "This girl is already over eighty years old this year, but she's naturally missing a screw in her head, can't find the queen here nor thinks to check back home."
"Check on her? Would she listen to me? You saw her attitude inside just now." Li Zheng asked, "Dan Fenglai is over eighty years old, you still call her a little girl... May I ask, how old are you this year?"
"One hundred and three." Yan Yi calmly mentioned a highly mismatched age.
"Um..." Li Zheng paused and asked, "I've been wanting to ask, how do you calculate age here?"
How can you easily have a longevity of eighty, a hundred, and yet appear young like in your twenties on Water Blue Star?
"Using the algorithm popularized by the Terminal, a year is one year old, with three hundred sixty-five days, every four years a leap year, a day twenty-four hours, an hour sixty minutes, can you figure it out?" Yan Yi looked at Li Zheng as if he were an idiot; is there a need to ask such a simple question?
Li Zheng was perplexed: "That seems correct... So your race's lifespan is very long?"
"Long?" Yan Yi's expression shifted, seemingly surprised at another strange question from Li Zheng: "Isn't a lifespan of ten thousand years quite normal?"
Ten thousand years...
Li Zheng was stunned: "Your Black Dragon Race really can live long..."
"Actually, ten thousand years is just the theoretical lifespan; most clan members can't live that long." Yan Yi said, "For example, Mo Li's parents, my uncle and his wife, only lived more than three thousand years before passing away."
"Adding the word 'only' to more than three thousand years makes it sound strange, doesn't it?" Li Zheng scratched his head in puzzlement.
Yan Yi looked at him for a while and asked, "You seem to be quite lacking in common understanding... Oh, I forgot, you are from a different race, your lifespan isn't the same as ours in the Black Dragon Race."
"Actually, the lifespan limit of every race is different." Mirel came to Li Zheng's side and said, "Our Enchanting Demon Race can only live for eight thousand years. If it wasn't for using special methods, strictly speaking, I'm far from adulthood now."
"Living long doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing." Yan Yi expressed with an enlightened facial expression, sighing: "Every day passes extremely slowly, life is nothing but boredom aside from boredom."
Li Zheng's eye twitched: "If you knew the lifespan limit of our race, you wouldn't say such things."
"Oh?" Yan Yi curiously asked, "You can live longer?"
"No, quite the opposite, our lifespan limit is far shorter than yours." Li Zheng explained, "This time entering the Matrix, players over fifty are considered old and weak, left outside, deaths at ninety are considered joyful; living to a hundred is quite remarkable. Living over a hundred, each extra day lived is an extra day's gain."
"Your lifespan is so short?" Yan Yi showed a look of envy: "You must live very happy lives then?"
Li Zheng's expression drooped: "Why do I feel like that doesn't sound like a compliment?"
Is dying early a type of happiness?
Crazy, isn't it?
Who would dislike having a long life?
"Don't misunderstand, I really envy you." Yan Yi hurriedly explained: "Short lifespan means you reach adulthood quickly. The quicker you reach adulthood, the earlier your Spiritual Realm is perfected. Don't be fooled by our Blood Patterned Black Dragon Race's long lifespan. Most clan members' Spiritual Realms are just rudimentary and extremely unstable."
"So that's how it is." Li Zheng paused in his nodding action, surprised: "You know about the Spiritual Realm?"
Outer City residents, due to spiritual power limits never being broken, must seek other methods, utilizing Magic Crystal Energy as a way to augment.
Li Zheng estimated that to probe others' Spiritual Realms, at least reaching the level of absorbing full Purple Magic Crystal would be required.
Which equates to spiritual power of three nodes.
"In our race, the Spiritual Realm was discovered by our ancestor during his research on determining the cause of our race's dormancy," Yan Yi explained, "During that research, our ancestor discovered the existence of a Spiritual Realm within a clan member's mind.
At that time, our ancestor only discovered the edge of the Spiritual Realm before exhausting himself, leaving no room for further exploration.
Thereafter, our ancestor spent a long time venturing to the Sin Domain to acquire Twisted Magic Crystals, enhancing the spiritual power to enable multiple explorations into the mysteries of the Spiritual Realm with different clan members."
"And the outcome?" Li Zheng inquired.
Yan Yi shook his head: "Our ancestor had insufficient spiritual power, only successfully entering someone's Spiritual Realm once, finding therein a land of incompleteness, still in the process of being perfected."
Li Zheng pondered for a moment, asking: "Could it be that the dormancy stage of the Black Dragon Race is due to accelerated completion of the Spiritual Realm, internal consumption so great that it can't maintain consciousness clarity?"
"No." Yan Yi said: "The successful time was entering a Spiritual Realm of someone who had already gone through dormancy; deducing from this, the dormancy stage should be when the Spiritual Realm is first being established."
"Hmm." Li Zheng thought it made sense, nodding: "That's roughly right. So the dormancy stage of the Black Dragon Race can't be solved by external forces, but can only find methods through other means... such as by altering the genes to eliminate dormancy?"
"It's not that simple?" Yan Yi looked at the little Ying in Li Zheng's arms, who after eating lots of fruit earlier, now dozed off, "If changing genes could eliminate dormancy, how do you explain little Ying's dormancy process this time?"
Mirel pondered, guessing, "Could it be that her body's genes are too overly powerful causing it?"
The stronger the gene, the longer the maturation period, the longer the lifespan.
Whether it's the Enchanting Demon Race, Blood Race, Blood Patterned Black Dragon Team, Suffering Race, or the not-yet-appeared Destruction Race, each is an extremely long-lived race.
This also means these races' members need very long time to grow.
Li Zheng lowered his brows, pondered for a moment, "These five races—aside from the Blood Patterned Black Dragon—all do not have restrictions on the dormancy stage… Moreover, little Ying originally awakened the Black Dragon Race genes, which should also be the main reason for the dormancy later on."
If one could recreate little Ying's birth process, then cultivate several similar individuals, having them follow different awakening routes, the answer could be obtained.
Additionally, Li Zheng thought of a possibility.
Perhaps among the myriad races in the Matrix are many compatible gene objects, some capable of alleviating the dormancy stage of the Blood Patterned Black Dragon Race, simply not discovered?
Or maybe finding not-so-powerful genes, utilizing their characteristic to quickly establish Spiritual Realms, could resolve this challenge?
Li Zheng had a headache thinking about this stuff, which only professionals understand, always causing him much distress.
Fortunately, this distress was brief, as all the Blood Race clans have begun to gather, allowing Li Zheng to start distributing the Teleportation Disc.
Dan Fenglai couldn't find the Blood Queen in the Black Dragon Race, finally thought to check back home, encountered midway, then followed back with them.
Li Zheng took out several agreements and said to the "girls" following the leaders back: "Everyone please sign this agreement first."
"What does this mean?"
The three leaders looked at the top line of text on the agreement: "Master-Servant Contract!"
Li Zheng assumed Dan Fenglai would be the first to object, but surprisingly it was Mo Li.
She pointed at the words, questioning: "You make us your wives but want us to be your slaves?"
"I didn't mean that..." Li Zheng started to explain.
"No need to explain!" Mo Li resolutely stated: "There needs to be extra payment!"