The specially made giant prison carts carried the Spirit Beasts, while specialized Spirit Masters continuously used their powers to keep the creatures from going berserk.
After expending enormous effort, a total of fifteen Spirit Beasts—nine thousand-year beasts and six ten-thousand-year beasts—were finally transported into the Spirit Hall. Even the weakest among them had reached the threshold of high-level Spirit Beasts. Among them was even a live-captured thousand-year-level Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear.
Just restraining this single thousand-year Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear required the full attention of one spiritual-type Spirit Saint and two control-type Spirit Saints. None of the other ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts received such treatment. Otherwise, with the strength of this hunting team, they could have captured even more beasts.
Seeing the convoy, Chen Ming's eyes practically shone with excitement. He rushed straight toward the cart holding the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear and stared intensely at the creature with burning curiosity.
Based on the information in the books, this Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear had developed extremely well. Its cultivation age was estimated to be between five and six thousand years.
Its aura was pure, its attributes refined. Within its species, it was undoubtedly considered an outstanding young specimen.
Watching Chen Ming's excited expression, Lion Douluo and Glowing Feather Douluo jumped down from the carts.
"So? We did pretty well this time, didn't we?" Lion Douluo proudly patted his chest.
"I was the one who found this Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear." Glowing Feather Douluo smiled smugly, unable to hide the pride in his voice.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear was a genuine super Spirit Beast, known as the "Earth Tearer." It belonged to the same tier as the Azure Bull Python and Titan Giant Ape currently living in the Star Dou Forest. Once it reached ten thousand years, it could rival a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast.
Even throughout the entire Star Dou Great Forest, Dark Gold Terror Claw Bears were exceedingly rare. This five-thousand-year specimen was already capable of defeating many Spirit Saint-level Spirit Masters.
Capturing this thing alive had truly been an incredible stroke of luck.
"Thank you, Martial Uncles. This is absolutely perfect research material."
"There's more. Let me introduce the others," Lion Douluo said as he patted Chen Ming on the shoulder and led him aside.
"This one: a twenty-thousand-year Flame Lion. It's a subspecies related to my Infernal Lion Martial Soul. An excellent high-level Spirit Beast."
"This one: a fifteen-thousand-year Dragon Wolf. A hybrid between a dragon-type Spirit Beast and a wolf-type Spirit Beast. Another excellent high-level Spirit Beast."
"And this one: a seventeen-thousand-year Lightfeather Bird. Its original quality wasn't especially high, but it possesses a trace of phoenix bloodline, putting it close to top-tier."
"Add the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear, and now you've got dragon subspecies, phoenix subspecies, lion-tiger Spirit Beasts—all the categories you asked for. We even added a Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear whose quality rivals true dragons. This should be enough for your research, right?"
Although there were still three more ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts, those three weren't especially rare. They lacked powerful bloodlines, and their cultivation was only slightly above ten thousand years, making them insignificant compared to the others.
"Martial Uncles, this is more than enough." Chen Ming looked thrilled. "I'll start by researching the thousand-year Spirit Beasts, then move on to the major specimens. With these Spirit Beasts as research subjects, I'm sure I'll discover something huge."
"Good. I'll find people to help restrain them and maintain their condition," Glowing Feather Douluo said, deeply trusting Chen Ming's research capabilities. He immediately went off to recruit additional control-type Spirit Masters from Spirit Hall to secure the beasts properly.
After asking Qian Daoliu for several capable and trustworthy healing-type Spirit Masters to assist him, Chen Ming began his "dark experiments" inside an underground laboratory.
A sedated thousand-year boar-type Spirit Beast was dissected by Chen Ming on the operating table, while all kinds of bodily data were continuously collected.
With the assistance of healing-type Spirit Masters, Chen Ming even sliced and studied portions of the beast's internal organs and meridians, and drew several liters of blood as research material.
Thanks to the "all-purpose" support of healing-type Spirit Masters, combined with the naturally tenacious vitality of Spirit Beasts, the boar ultimately survived the procedure with little more than weakness before climbing down from the operating table.
With this successful example, Chen Ming gradually became bolder in his experiments.
Over the course of roughly a month, six thousand-year Spirit Beasts died at Chen Ming's hands. Through gathering information from these beasts, he also obtained a great deal of valuable data.
Afterward, Chen Ming turned his attention toward ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts.
Because he had previously used the Land Dragon Golden Melon, Chen Ming already possessed significant knowledge regarding external cores. In his eyes, Spirit Beasts' Spirit Cores were essentially a form of internal core. As such, he already had some hypotheses about the nature of Spirit Cores.
By using special methods to stimulate a Spirit Beast's vitality and bloodline power into rapid activation, Chen Ming managed to temporarily enhance a Spirit Beast's condition by burning its very origin essence.
After two failures that cost him two precious ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts, Chen Ming finally succeeded with the third ordinary ten-thousand-year beast. He observed the embryonic form of a Spirit Core and recorded the process by which the embryonic Spirit Core transformed into a Spirit Bone upon the beast's death.
Although Chen Ming's methods were far too crude and violent—causing the resulting ten-thousand-year Spirit Bone to break apart during formation and become impossible to absorb—he nevertheless obtained crucial research data from the experiment.
The more tyrannical and dominant a Spirit Beast's bloodline was, the easier it became for it to condense a Spirit Core before reaching one hundred thousand years. The more complete and obvious the Spirit Core, the greater the enhancement it granted the Spirit Beast.
Chen Ming did not know if a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast was guaranteed to condense a Spirit Core, or if Spirit Beasts that failed to condense one simply didn't live to a hundred thousand years under normal circumstances.
However, Chen Ming had already developed some theories on how to artificially imitate Spirit Cores.
Yet his idea was not about how humans might condense Spirit Cores themselves.
Instead, it was an extremely evil method: artificially implanting specially made Spirit Cores into Spirit Beasts in order to deliberately stimulate the formation of Spirit Bones.
Theoretically speaking, as long as suitable materials could be found, Chen Ming would be able to create highly specialized artificial Spirit-Core implants.
These foreign objects would not significantly increase a Spirit Beast's combat power. However, because they possessed some of the characteristics of a Spirit Core, once implanted into a Spirit Beast's dantian, they could rapidly absorb and assimilate the beast's bloodline power.
Then, upon killing the Spirit Beast, the existence of the artificial Spirit-Core implant would make it highly likely for a Spirit Bone to form.
If the artificial Spirit-Core implant were modified further, it might even guarantee that the Spirit Bone produced after death would form in a predetermined body part.
Chen Ming still had not deciphered the true essence of Spirit Bones themselves.
But he had already discovered a method for artificially creating them.
In essence, this technique was likely very similar to the "secret-method Spirit Bones" developed ten thousand years later—except Chen Ming's method was far more efficient.
...
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