Chapter 436: Discussion of the Yunze Cup Committee
Three days later.
Inside the public potion room of the Plutarch Family at the White Dragon Tower, Locke mixed the potion liquids from two cauldrons together. When the two dark potion liquids were combined, the phenomenon described in the magic book—where the potion liquid immediately becomes clear—did not occur. Instead, a whirlpool began to form.
With a 'bang,' the liquid in the cauldron splashed everywhere. Every drop of the liquid was highly corrosive, eating away at the four walls of the room until pits appeared. Many precision instruments, which were protected by magic applied by the Protection School, immediately deployed magical barriers to shield themselves.
Locke himself deployed his Eternal Defense Field [Life Force Field], blocking all the corrosive liquid in front of him.
Locke raised an eyebrow. "Failed again. Refining the Main Brain Control Potion is even more difficult than I imagined. I must have mishandled the heat somewhere, causing a problem with the medicinal properties. During the fusion reaction of the natural magic structure components, it led to a corrosive change."
Locke applied the technique of compressing the Eternal Defense Field, covering his finger with a layer of pale green Life Force Field crystal wall system. He then pinched the black corrosive liquid and observed it for a moment. "This liquid wouldn't be bad if used as an offensive weapon."
"This corrosive liquid I accidentally concocted actually has a certain level of corrosiveness even against the magical barriers of the Protection School."
"The discovery of many potions originally stemmed from refinement failures. Continuing to research this might be a good research group topic, but unfortunately, I don't have the extra energy lately."
Locke took out some Time Crystal potion bottles specially made by an Alchemist and filled them with the black liquid. He filled three bottles in total and casually placed them into his synthesis cube to perform a synthesis, seeing if anything special could be created.
After finishing all this, Locke thought for a moment and took out a set of Main Brain Control Potion materials he had purchased from his astral ring. He had only been able to buy the core materials from the market after Alicia notified him, costing him a total of thirty-one thousand magic stones.
Since his Augustine series potions and magic plants in the Southeast Corner Region contributed sixty thousand magic stones to him every month, he had already saved up three hundred thousand magic stones during his six months in the Six Towers Land.
This was mainly because he basically had no expenses here.
He held a large amount of project funds, which covered his usual food, clothing, housing, transportation, and material costs.
Alicia also frequently sent him some potion refining materials. Therefore, aside from the service fees for the fairies' family bank and the earlier separate purchase of one set of Main Brain Control Potion materials, he had no additional expenses.
Naturally, he was able to save money.
Increasing income and reducing expenditure—increasing income is important, but reducing expenditure is also a major part of saving money.
At this moment, Locke waved his left hand, and a wisp of Primal Fire immediately fell into his palm. He placed the Primal Fire beneath a cauldron and began to skillfully process various materials. Ice element magic fire purified residual spirituality, wood element magic fire extracted natural magic structure components, and lightning element magic fire extracted components that were difficult to extract...
A wisp of Primal Fire underwent multiple transformations within a very short period.
Finally, two hours later, Locke mixed the liquids from the two cauldrons. The liquid in the cauldron shimmered with a translucent spirituality, becoming semi-transparent as crystal bubbles rose from it.
Locke finally used the Primal Fire to harmonize the potion's internal medicinal properties and poured it into a Time Crystal potion bottle.
The potion quickly stabilized, and within the liquid, an illusory spiritual brain flickered in and out of sight.
This indicated that it was indeed a successful bottle of Main Brain Control Potion.
Locke swallowed the bottle of potion in one gulp. Instantly, his original psionic pool expanded rapidly, its scale increasing swiftly to support a much larger Distributed Psionic Network.
The Virtual Psionic Organ behind Locke's head became more complex. Dozens of Virtual Psionic Tentacles continuously spread into the surroundings, while simultaneously linking him more closely with his various magic plants. The degree of tightness had more than doubled compared to before.
An illusory Forest Spirituality spread out from behind Locke.
One person is a forest!
"The Main Brain Control Potion is indeed very important to me; it has great benefits for improving my strength. Unfortunately, without using Primal Fire, I cannot complete the refinement of the Main Brain Control Potion. And the test of the Feathered Serpent Ancient Pavilion must be based on the premise that I do not use Primal Fire."
Locke said, "But this doesn't stop me from succeeding in refining the Main Brain Control Potion first, and then using that successful experience to feed back into my potion refining level."
"With Alicia's help and improvement, I believe I can soon complete the second round of testing for the Feathered Serpent Ancient Pavilion."
After taking the Main Brain Control Potion, Locke's psionic pool expanded again. His psionic pool was now roughly equivalent to the spirituality of a Liquefaction Stage wizard. It was conceivable that if he continued to take the Main Brain Control Potion regularly over the long term, he could certainly push the total amount of spirituality in his psionic pool to a level equivalent to a First Ring Crystallization Wizard.
Unfortunately, besides the Dragon Might obtained from Plant Mimicry: Green Dragon, he had not learned any other Mind School magic and could not manifest the power of this spirituality.
If this spirituality was used only to directly strike others, its power would be limited, and its practicality in combat at the same level would be very low.
"After six months of stabilization and my daily maintenance, my Forest Sanctuary has once again reached a level where I can transplant One-Ring Magic Plants and expand the total biomass," Locke said. "I can go to White Dragon Street to purchase some necessary materials, and the research group also needs to buy a new batch of materials."
...
The beautiful Cloud Marsh was as picturesque as a painting, with green waters and lush mountains. The beauty of the environment was truly refreshing.
At this time, the Yunze Cup Tournament Committee of Bonifacius University had finally reached a result after three days of reviewing twenty project applications from various Wizard Lands.
Wizard Trikes listed the results in a table and showed it to the various wizards. "Everyone, if there are no objections, we will announce the results according to this table. The project applications from the various Wizard Lands that were eliminated were also good, but this year's Yunze Cup is exceptionally competitive, with outstanding geniuses emerging one after another, so we had to reluctantly reject them."
The wizards in the office all observed the table and nodded, believing that the evaluation standards for this competition were very objective. It wasn't just the wizard mentors from Bonifacius University acting as judges; they had also invited four other top wizard organizations from the Cloud Marsh to serve as judges together.
Therefore, the results of this competition were not entirely controlled by the wizards in this office.
They were only responsible for maintaining the operation of the entire competition and managing the expenditure of the tournament funds. The specific judges consisted of specially invited Breeders from five universities, including Bonifacius University, and the results were a comprehensive evaluation even involving those Second Ring Breeders.
A wizard looked at the rankings on the table and frowned, saying, "First place is the [Ancient Tree of Life] project led by [Wizard Edgar David] from the Sun Shadow Peninsula. Tracing the origin of such a mythical existence, especially since he himself has successfully traced the origin of the [War Ancient Tree] project, makes his first-place ranking perfectly normal."
"If he truly succeeds in tracing the origin of the [Ancient Tree of Life] during the Yunze Cup, even if it's just successfully tracing a portion of the Ancient Tree of Life Treants and winning first place in the finals, it could even increase the prestige of our Yunze Cup competition itself."
"Second place is Witch Diana from our Cloud Marsh. The [Luna Laurel Tree] project she proposed is also good. She herself has a large number of related Treant projects, especially in the Moon-type Treant Family."
"Witch Diana undoubtedly has amazing insight, proposing a unique viewpoint at the First Ring Crystallization Stage. She suggested that under the phenomenon of Two Moons in the Same Sky, modern products must be better than those of the predecessors. Therefore, she intends to compete for supremacy with Wizard Edgar in the Treant field, using the Two Moons in the Same Sky Treants to compete against ancient Treants like the Ancient Tree of Life."
"As for third place, it's Wizard Yennefer from the Spiral Basin. The [Mushroom King] project he created is also good. The Mushroom King project proposes the viewpoint of 'Is both one and many,' suggesting that a single Mushroom King is equivalent to a mushroom garden."
"The top three are well-deserved, like a battle of the gods, bringing our Yunze Cup to a height that previous sessions could not reach. But this time, a project from the Six Towers Land actually passed, and it's even ranked sixth?"
"The seventh-ranked wizard is even a First Ring Liquefaction Wizard who came out of a Second Ring Wizard's laboratory, also possessing extraordinary talent."
"Eighth, ninth, and tenth place are all the most outstanding Breeder teams that fought their way out of various Wizard Lands. How can the project application submitted by the wizards from the Six Towers Land be ranked sixth? How can they be in sixth place?"
Not only the wizard who raised the objection, but the other wizards in the office were also completely bewildered.
Wizard Trikes looked helpless and said to the wizard, "Wizard Nara, I find it just as baffling as you do. But there's no way around it; this was a collective decision made by the senior wizard mentors from the five wizard universities. Unless you can point out an actual fundamental flaw or some obvious error, this result cannot be changed."
"Besides, if you had seen their project application, you would feel that although their formatting is messy and the application is written without much order, the other parts are perfect, whether it's the pre-experimental data or the project content."
Wizard Nara pulled up the project application submitted by the Six Towers Land and, after reading it, questioned, "This project application is simply laughable. Isn't this goal too big? A magic plant targeting the Eternal Defense Field? Even in our Cloud Marsh laboratories, we might not necessarily be able to make it. Does the Six Towers Land have the conditions to produce it?"
Wizard Trikes said, "If it weren't for the Second Ring Wizard teachers considering that their team has no past high-quality articles or high-quality projects to back them up, no academic titles, and no solid faculty positions, and thus suspecting that this project proposal was just an exaggeration to improve their score, they wouldn't be in sixth place right now; they'd be in first."
"But putting that aside, you have to admit that this project application is very well written. At the very least, it even allows us to see some hope of completion."
Wizard Trikes said, "The Cloud Marsh competition is fair. We cannot let their origin affect the judgment results, which is why their ranking was merely lowered to sixth place."
"But they were still allowed to pass."
"Even so, it caused a debate among the Second Ring Wizards. Some Second Ring Wizard teachers even believe that this project application should be ranked at least second or third."
"In short, this project application is indeed very controversial. If it didn't come from a place like the Six Towers Land, its ranking would be at least in the top three."
Wizard Nara opened his mouth. He hadn't expected that such a project application from the Six Towers Land would actually cause a debate among the Second Ring Wizards of the Cloud Marsh.
Wizard Nara said, "Fine. Whether it's a mule or a horse, we'll know once we take it out for a walk. Let them pass the first round of the main competition. The second round requires producing actual works, not just a 'perfect' plan on paper."
"No matter how good the plan is, if they can't produce the actual object, it's meaningless."
As soon as Wizard Nara said this, many wizards in the office nodded in agreement.
Similar to Wizard Nara's prejudice, many wizards had always looked down on research groups from the Six Towers Land and remained skeptical about whether they could produce the finished product outlined in their project plan.
"Hmm... the equipment in the Six Towers Land is indeed a bit crude. I hope this team can overcome this difficulty and bring us an amazing achievement." Wizard Trikes frowned. Unlike before, his attitude had undergone a subtle change after reading that project application.
Essentially, he was a designer who deeply loved magic plant weapons.
He liked to see good works appear before him.
He didn't have the talent to create excellent magic plant works, so he pinned his hopes on those talented contestants.
Although Wizard Trikes also had some doubts about whether the Six Towers Land could actually realize this project application, at this moment, deep in his heart, what appeared was not skepticism, but a hope that this project application could truly be completed.
At least complete a part of it.
Once this magic plant that can link everyone's Eternal Defense Fields is completed, even if only a part of it is finished, it will surely be stunning.
Wizard Trikes pressed the magical seal onto the project application submitted by Locke's team. It read—'Passed, 500,000 magic stone fund subsidy.'