Deep in the gloomy underground city, a massive building had been converted by Anbaixiu into his weapons testing ground.
A four-winged drone, smaller than the palm of a hand, lifted off the ground and flew swiftly forward.
Scores of suspended ropes partitioned the path ahead. The drone had to weave through several tight turns before reaching the finish line, where it fired its loaded micro-crossbow bolts at three targets.
Though called crossbow bolts, they were essentially just longer flying needles.
Over this distance of some fifty-odd meters, it took the drone a full minute to complete the run.
While its speed left a little to be desired, the overall success rate was high. It had cleanly cleared every obstacle, and its final shots struck the targets dead-on.
Anbaixiu then deployed a miniature metal airplane built to a perfectly aerodynamic shape.
Needing no propellers, this tiny craft shot straight out, effortlessly dodging all obstacles at blistering speed and striking the targets just as cleanly.
"Not bad. Great results. You really do get what you pay for."
Excluding labor, the four-winged drone cost a mere five gold coins to make, but this miniature plane cost upwards of two hundred gold coins in raw materials alone, to say nothing of the far more intricate manufacturing process.
Not only did it house a more advanced Simulated Soul granted the ability to cast Fly, but it had also been fitted with two miniature jet thrusters.
They were scaled-down versions of the jet-propulsion pack Anbaixiu had worn when fleeing before.
Their burst power had been tuned down while extending their sustained thrust, with added directional controls.
The City of Alchemy had once attempted to develop this sort of technology—flying via jet propulsion was bound to be fast—but they had been unable to solve the problem of remote control.
This was an era where long-distance communication was practically impossible under normal circumstances. Linking two distant points required spatial teleportation, a mechanism far too bulky to shrink down onto a flying vessel.
Consequently, remote-controlled aircraft were deemed completely impossible.
The alchemists had toyed with the idea of building jet-propelled airships instead, but because aerodynamics was a fledgling field to them, their airships were torn apart by air resistance the moment the jets engaged. That project had ended in failure and had yet to see any breakthroughs.
Given another few decades, they might make progress, but for now, Anbaixiu was likely the only one still pursuing research in this direction.
As a reincarnator with a background in science and engineering, Anbaixiu possessed a decent grasp of aerodynamics, and he could easily copy the airframe designs from his past life.
As for the issue of remote control, with a Simulated Soul serving as the pilot, Anbaixiu did not need to bother with long-distance controls at all.
Thus, this jet-propelled craft stood as Anbaixiu's unique, patented invention. Even if the former guildmaster of the Alchemists' Council were here, he would have to acknowledge Anbaixiu's brilliance.
Yet despite that proprietary edge, the cost was simply too steep... Paying more than two hundred gold coins for a craft that could only shoot needles was hardly worth it; one might as well just raise a raven like a ranger.
By contrast, the five-gold four-winged drone could easily be improved. Increasing its payload capacity, for instance, would allow it to transport all manner of goods, while mounting a recording crystal meant it could run reconnaissance as long as it returned safely.
Still, the jet-propelled craft was far from useless. As long as it could be armed with deadlier weaponry, the agile, blazing-fast little plane would become a living nightmare for many an adventurer.
Setting both craft aside, Anbaixiu walked into another chamber.
This was a completely sealed room, insulated from all outside influence by a magical barrier. Inside, Anbaixiu had placed several three-horned sand lizards.
They were desert creatures renowned for their ferocious vitality, boasting extraordinary regenerative abilities and formidable poison resistance. A dose of venom capable of killing a hundred men might only give a three-horned sand lizard a mild stomachache for half a day.
For precisely that reason, these lizards made ideal test subjects for biological and chemical weapons.
And what Anbaixiu intended to test was not ordinary venom, but the corrosive dark mana unique to the undead.
It was common knowledge that skeletons could not farm. Uncontrolled dark mana corroded all living things, yielding crops that were either rotting or lethally poisonous. Unless a skeleton was sealed inside a specialized full-body hazard suit, farming was out of the question—and a suit like that cost more than a hundred human slaves.
That was why Anbaixiu had never once considered using skeletons to till the fields; not even a dog would touch whatever they grew.
Yet that very same fierce toxicity made dark mana ideally suited for chemical warfare.
However, dark mana's polluting effects functioned rather uniquely, behaving much like radiation.
Suppose the lowliest skeleton emitted this virulent radiation at all times. Its effective range was at most half a meter, and it required prolonged exposure to take effect, taking at least a dozen minutes of continuous exposure to produce noticeable side effects in a living creature.
Most living beings possessed plenty of surface barriers: humans wore clothes, and some even wore armor.
Under such conditions, dark mana's radiation proved fairly ineffective. If it encountered a paladin, the Holy Light would purify it entirely, rendering it completely useless.
But what if that radiation could bypass outer barriers and strike the internal organs directly?
Anbaixiu produced a small, translucent orb—a hermetically sealed membrane encasing a pocket of ordinary air. While seemingly ordinary, it was anything but, for Anbaixiu had used his artifact gold coin to transmute this pocket of air into a special kind of "corpse."
Once air became a corpse, a Simulated Soul could possess it.
However, air was exceedingly fragile. Left alone, this gas undead would dissipate on its own within a dozen seconds or so, which was why it had to be sealed tightly inside a container.
And once released, the dark mana unique to the undead would swiftly disperse into the surrounding atmosphere.
Anbaixiu tossed two translucent orbs through the barrier. The membranes were remarkably thin, and the moment they landed on the three-horned sand lizards, the creatures' spines instantly punctured them.
The colorless air undead spilled into the atmosphere at once, entering the lizards' bodies as they drew breath.
The dark mana began corroding directly from the lungs outward, sending the lizards into violent, agonizing convulsions. After holding out for roughly half an hour, all of the lizards perished. Their carcasses began to bloat, their bellies burst open, and foul, blackened blood splattered everywhere.
Even three-horned sand lizards, whose resistance far surpassed that of humans, could not withstand the inside-out erosion of dark mana. If it were living humans... Heh. They had better hope their Holy Light could reach straight into their viscera, or they were as good as dead.
Air undead—a potent weapon surpassing any conventional poison, engineered expressly against all living beings.
Its duration, however, was somewhat limited. Once an air undead dispersed, it signaled absolute death, and the dark mana initially gathered by the soul would swiftly decay.
Anbaixiu estimated that within an hour at most, the dark mana in the air would disperse naturally and return to normal. Under a blazing sun, that window would shrink to a mere ten minutes.
Therefore, the best approach would be using drones at night to drop these air undead into dense crowds of people, which was guaranteed to inflict catastrophic casualties.
"Not bad. If I sell this to Rose of Decay, she'll take as many as I can make."
The production cost of air undead was genuinely minuscule. The undead required no special abilities, and air cost nothing at all, meaning each fist-sized air undead cost only a few copper coins.
Anbaixiu could easily set up an undead assembly line dedicated to canning air, after which he would alter its properties and inject the Simulated Souls.
What a pity that altering its properties was something only Anbaixiu could do, which severely bottlenecked production efficiency.
"Teacher did say this legendary boon was originally possessed by a certain legendary alchemist. I'd love nothing more than to drag that fellow here and put him to work for me."
Anbaixiu muttered a complaint before setting down a checklist.
Alchemy was a complex field, and since this underground workshop mainly specialized in brewing pharmaceuticals, he would have to commission other alchemy workshops for custom metal components.
Anbaixiu intended to enlist Gustavo Fring's help. The man should be able to secure the lowest prices, allowing for mass production of the drones. As for mass-producing souls, Anbaixiu already had a few ideas brewing, though setting that up would take time.
Stuffing dozens of drones of various models into his personal space, Anbaixiu prepared to test them out on the surface.
Good wares needed to find their market; he planned to hawk them to the adventurers.
Once word of these drones spread and every adventurer learned that shouting "Praise the God of Alchemy!" earned them a twenty percent discount on such handy, inexpensive gear, the God of Alchemy's power would recover that much faster.
"Time to head up and see how Harvey's getting along."
Shifting into human form, Anbaixiu emerged onto the desert surface.
There lay the same dazzling, golden sea of dunes, and the same worthless sand that slipped through one's fingers—this wretched place remained as glittering on the outside and rotten on the inside as ever.
He arrived at Sweetdew City, the settlement nearest his underground workshop. The few distributors he had lined up belonged to merchant caravans based here.
Passing smoothly through the gates, Anbaixiu headed toward the commercial avenues.
Before long, he was met by bustling crowds. With the war having stabilized, Sweetdew City had begun to regain its former prosperity.
Pushing through the throng for a short stretch, Anbaixiu spotted a towering ice sculpture.
He felt a quiet surge of satisfaction. That lad Harvey was sharper than he looked—carving the God of Alchemy out of ice, pulling double duty as an advertisement and a faith-gathering tool, was he?
The boy was doing splendidly, grasping Anbaixiu's true intentions without being told. He would have to offer him some praise later.
Still, what trick had the boy used to keep the ice from melting?
Passersby merely cast passing glances without gathering in crowds, meaning the ice sculpture had clearly stood there for some time.
Which meant this sculpture had survived all these days without melting at all?
Chapter 277