Chapter 534: Spiritual Leader
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 534: Spiritual Leader
Witch Academy.
Several days had passed, and my villa had undergone a "compliant expansion" based on the suggestions of many witch sisters. Rather than a villa, the witches staying here seemed to have treated it like a laboratory and remodeled it accordingly.
They had even added Spatial Expansion Runes to the main areas to enlarge the interior, though the primary focus was the excavation and reinforcement of the underground laboratories.
As the Great Knowledge Seeds continued to spread, more and more witches learned of my situation, and the number of visitors surged.
Furthermore, because I took a hands-off approach to the various research projects, many witches had already used the opportunity to complete some truly marvelous developments.
To my surprise, the project team with the largest number of researchers was the one studying the Knowledge Shadow.
By utilizing the Knowledge Shadow of the Tree of Great Knowledge, they had derived an alternative form of Personal Reality Augmentation Technology and had already established a related game development group. Their intentions were pure: they wanted to use the Tree of Knowledge as a platform to develop interesting games, believing it would be a waste of the spell-sharing capability otherwise.
Well... they did symbolically send me an application for approval for this project, and I... naturally, approved it without a second thought!
Who could refuse playing a cool game like that?
However, I had been spending my time lately attempting to refine the "Fool's Dream Meditation Method."
Because testing the capabilities of this meditation method required subjects, the villa was now filled with the figures of Fool's Dream creatures. This behavior had directly led to a decrease in the number of Fool's Dream creatures in the Witch Cat Cafes across the academy.
After all, for the time being, the number of Fool's Dream creatures was fixed. I didn't know how to increase their population, nor did I know their lifespan or what would happen if they died—though the Resurrection Spell should, in theory, be able to bring them back.
I had asked some of the witch sisters about the inability to increase their numbers, but most of their answers were vague. A few offered constructive suggestions, such as capturing dream creatures and transforming them into Fool's Dream creatures.
But that wasn't quite realistic. Although Fool's Dream creatures were also dream creatures, they had once been carriers of [Transcendent Knowledge]—a group of dream creatures that had gathered together for the purpose of becoming living beings.
I didn't want to risk trying to transform other dream creatures into Fool's Dream creatures just yet.
Naturally, I had also consulted Dean Mei about this. After all, she was the one who had handled the Fool's Dream creatures before, and as the Dean, she possessed vast knowledge. She had many insights regarding the population growth of the Fool's Dream.
For instance, the Dean pointed out that life within the Void World follows a cycle: the world's Ley Lines drive the circulation of soul essence, completing the natural decay and rebirth of life. This process recycles the information carried by life memories to enrich the world's foundation.
That is the complete life cycle of a being in the Void World.
But what about dream creatures?
They aren't "life" in the traditional sense, so they don't exist as soul essence, let alone souls. They are twisted creations of the dreamscape. In the undiscovered Primitive Dream Realm, the birth and death of a dream creature might last only as long as a single dream.
Some don't even have the possibility of developing individual consciousness.
It was only due to an accident that a group of dream creatures became carriers of [Transcendent Knowledge], giving them the possibility of independent existence. This continued until they met Dean Mei, who used incubation and rebirth to help them achieve independent consciousness through reality shells. Then, following their instincts and combining them with the half-baked potion-making techniques the Dean had taught them, they completed the concoction of the Fool's Dream Drink.
Finally, driven by the momentum of the World Script, they forcibly severed their natural enemy—the Nightmare—from their rationality. Combined with the perfected Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art, they eventually became the Fool's Dream creatures they are today.
If any single link in this series had gone wrong, the current Fool's Dream would not exist. How should I put it? Heaven helps those who help themselves; the Fool's Dream creatures' own efforts played a vital role.
Thus, it was a miracle that was nearly impossible to replicate.
Returning to the original problem of increasing the number of Fool's Dream creatures, a new concept was required.
That is, using a clear Racial Concept as an anchor to allow dream creatures to form spontaneously.
So, did "Fool's Dream" currently count as a Racial Concept?
No. It was merely a subjective definition used to distinguish a specific, observed group of dream creatures from others. It wasn't an objective, functionally significant Racial Concept.
The Dean could only provide so much useful information. Beyond that, even she didn't know much more.
Creating and bestowing a Racial Concept meant creating an entirely new species. This was the ultimate goal the Dean and I had agreed upon: to create a brand-new life form and obtain its two corresponding Primal Spells—"Primal Life Summoning Technique" and "Primal Life Transformation Technique."
If the Dean already knew the answer, she wouldn't have tossed this difficult problem to me.
So, that issue was shelved for the time being.
For now, I returned to the refinement of the "Fool's Dream Meditation Method."
Although this project had hit a major snag—one that even stumped the witches researching it with me, leaving them somewhat gloomy these past few days—it was, at least to me, a difficulty that could potentially be solved.
I just hadn't found the key to the problem yet. This issue wasn't on the same level as "how to make the Fool's Dream creatures into living beings." I didn't think finding a "key" would solve that larger problem directly.
However, there was no doubt that finding and solving the key issue for the Fool's Dream Meditation Method would allow the project to move forward.
"Hey, Xiao Han, have you seen the news lately? It's pretty explosive."
Just as I was in the lounge area, trying to clear my mind to organize some new thoughts, a witch sister sat down beside me.
"Hmm? What news?" I asked curiously.
"It's about those players. They pulled something big recently. It wasn't in the city district, but they detonated an explosive on the outskirts. It completely destroyed a small factory and disrupted the operations of several surrounding ones. Plus, they killed several freshmen who were returning to school. The students who went to rescue them only managed to survive because of their Immortality."
"What? They're that brazen?" My hand, which was about to pick up a piece of cake, froze mid-air. I was surprised. People actually died?
"Of course. But that's not the main point. By the way, do you want to go see Dean Mei? Because of this incident, there might be new progress in the research for the Qi Observation Art. I heard the witches conducting the field study have already left the school to verify the data. The Qi Observation Art will record this event and get new data feedback."
"Uh... I won't go for now. I'm currently stuck on a project I just took over..."
"Is it hard for you to accept those deaths?" Seeing that my tone was a bit off, she asked gently.
"It's fine... After all, they were strangers. I haven't reached the point where I'm overflowing with sympathy for everyone," I explained quickly. However, I was indeed affected. This was a fatal incident, yet the witches didn't think it was a big deal; they even saw it as an opportunity to gather real-world data for the Qi Observation Art.
Perhaps there really is a gap between the Transcendent and the non-Transcendent that exceeds common understanding. But I felt I should adapt; wasting too much of my own emotional energy on such things was clearly not the right choice.
In the end, I politely declined her offer. I also realized she was a member of the Qi Observation Art research group.
Ever since Dean Bev Alanna learned about my Qi Observation Art—especially after she informed Dean Mei Lind—the Dean had personally come to see me. She expressed her willingness to take over the research and share the results of the project.
However, that project wasn't being conducted at my villa, but rather in Dean Mei's office.
After expressing a slight sense of regret, the witch sister left. After all, this was just data observation for a major event, not a significant breakthrough in technology or skill.
Ultimately, I promised to visit via Knowledge Shadow. When the time came, someone would just need to provide a Knowledge Shadow for my subjective consciousness to descend into.
Although I couldn't control someone else's Tree of Knowledge or interfere with their abilities once the initial Great Knowledge Seed grew into a tree, I could still use the developed capabilities of the Tree of Great Knowledge and the other person's active cooperation to achieve consciousness projection through their Knowledge Shadow.
It amounted to the same thing.
For now, my mind was still on the progress of the Fool's Dream Meditation Method.
Earlier, I had overheard something a witch sister said. Although I had technically opened up the research permissions for the Tree of Great Knowledge...
...and any witch researching it could publish papers with their own independent signature—even leaving me out entirely—I had still become the "Spiritual Leader" of the Tree of Great Knowledge Great Spellbook research group and its derived projects.
This was because they believed I could constantly open up new fields and overcome the difficulties encountered along the way. This sense of joy was something they hadn't experienced in their previous research groups.
In the past, those lucky enough to join a Great Spellbook research group would often spend a year or two with no results, miserably performing data verification and rune analysis on [Transcendent Knowledge].
But here, even though the Great Spellbook was incomplete and the [Transcendent Knowledge] hadn't been fully researched, the method of starting with a result and then deriving things from it was novel.
Usually, this kind of thing only happened during testing after a Great Spellbook was perfected. But they rarely got a part in such tests; based on the nearly complete interpretation of the [Transcendent Knowledge] in the early stages, one could generally tell the upper and lower limits of that knowledge.
This kind of development—where the outcome was unknown but the sense of participation was high—was a first for them.
Furthermore, the owner of this Great Spellbook was a "Navigator." Nearly all the research topics and projects currently laid out for this Great Spellbook had been pioneered by that one person. This sense of spiritual security, of having someone leading the way, gave them powerful motivation.
Moreover, that person allowed them to develop freely and express their individual ideas. He even agreed when a witch wanted to use a derived technique to develop a game. This created a very different impression for many witches.
While some witches with rigid research attitudes were repulsed by this, the general environment and the fun-seeking nature of witches meant they would soon accept it. Of course, those who didn't accept it wouldn't be forced; respecting the wishes of every witch was equally important.
Regardless, I couldn't afford to offend any of these academic big shots.
But because of this, now that I had hit a bottleneck and was showing signs of fatigue, some of the witches in the research groups at the villa were starting to feel worried.
So, I really wasn't a good leader; I had unknowingly been put on a pedestal by a group of witches.
But I wasn't an omniscient god. It was perfectly normal to run into difficulties...
Besides, it wasn't like I had no clues at all.
The current problem was that the Fool's Dream creatures wanted to use the Fool's Dream Meditation Method to enter my Dream Sea, but the process always failed.
One could say I had taken too big a step. If I had followed the plan step-by-step, I should have used the meditation method to observe and interfere with the Fool's Dream creatures, eventually reaching the level of communication.
However, because of the revelation from the Fool's Dream Drink, I had suddenly jumped to the step of letting the Fool's Dream creatures enter my Dream Sea.
But every time a Fool's Dream creature tried to enter my Dream Sea, they would dissipate just like Yu Yun had back then. No exceptions!
And this dissipation was very stressful for the Fool's Dream creatures. It was like having a nightmare where their entire body was being torn apart; it was incredibly taxing on their mental power, energy, and cognition.
After continuous cooperation from the Fool's Dream creatures and my own summaries, I stopped these meaningless tests. In my opinion, the breakthrough for this problem definitely lay within the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art.
There were many factors leading to this conclusion, but every piece of evidence was built upon those repeated tests with the Fool's Dream creatures.
As the testing for the integration of the Tree of Great Knowledge with the academy network proceeded steadily, my Tree of Great Knowledge began to gradually index the contents of the library's books.
This meant I didn't have to go to the library or log into the mobile library on the academy network every time I needed to look something up.
The wealth of knowledge expanded my horizons, but the library didn't contain information regarding the Dream Sea. That was fine, though; I could draw conclusions by analogy through my own deductions.
The Dream Sea isn't just a dream, just as the Sea of Consciousness isn't reality—but it exists based on reality.
When I enter the Sea of Consciousness, I use my consciousness as a carrier. From this, I derived the concept of a "Carrier."
So, what is the carrier for entering the Dream Sea? The soul?
After all, whenever dreams are mentioned, I can't help but think of the soul. These two concepts are almost inseparable.
And based on my own personal experience... I first enter the Sea of Consciousness, and then enter the Dream Sea. That process of "flipping" is the interaction between consciousness and the soul.
So... a crazy idea now sat before me. If a Fool's Dream creature wanted to enter my Dream Sea, it needed a... carrier.
The soul is a carrier, but carriers aren't limited to souls. "Soul" and "carrier" are not synonymous. This realization was the breakthrough.
Perhaps... using the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art to derive a "Mimicry Soul" was a way.
This wasn't just a wild fantasy. To prove this hypothesis and my crazy plan, I only needed to understand exactly what role the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art had played when it was first used on the Fool's Dream creatures.
I knew it was just a guess, but as long as this guess hadn't been clearly proven false, it could serve as a guiding principle for gradual experimentation. I would continue until I found evidence to disprove it, and then use that as a basis to propose a more accurate hypothesis until I reached my goal.
Yes, the goal was to reach my objective, not to chase absolute truth.
You can only get things done with a clear goal. Absolute truth is merely a tool to point the way toward that goal; as long as it's useful, it's enough.
This was a process of continuous refinement—a process of humans bestowing meaning upon things.
Thinking of this, a slight smile unconsciously touched the corners of my mouth. it was the look of someone with a goal in sight, a persistence that would see it through.
At that moment, the slightly bitter chocolate mousse in my mouth began to melt, revealing its unique, mellow fragrance.