The Art of Blending All Phenomena could also mix and patch together diverse things to forge something entirely new.
For instance, blending a peach tree with a pear tree could yield a peach-pear tree. After some time, one might harvest pear-flavored peaches or peach-flavored pears from it.
It could even mix animals within the grotto-heaven to generate new species. However, this blending was purely random—it might produce something extraordinary, or it might turn out something utterly useless.
Furthermore, no first-generation hybrid could ever leave the grotto-heaven; doing so would cause it to instantly disintegrate and split apart. A second generation, on the other hand, could be brought out of the grotto-heaven world.
A peach-pear tree itself could not leave the grotto-heaven world, but once it bore fruit, a new peach-pear tree grown from those seeds could indeed be taken outside.
The same held true for any other blended creations.
Just as Yu Xian prepared to study the remaining six divine abilities, his phone rang.
He pulled out the handset and answered. On the other end, Yu Lie notified him that they could proceed to the next phase of the plan.
Yu Xian hung up.
Creating a grotto-heaven bubble, he stepped right through it, his body instantly expanding back to its normal size.
He fetched the red jade plaque and slotted it into his wristband. In an instant, an unimaginably vast wave of stray thoughts surged into his consciousness, as though countless people were chanting inside his brain.
"Bless our country with favorable weather and peace! Bless everyone with safety and health!" a middle-aged woman's voice prayed.
...
"Broad daylight, and they gathered us here just to mumble endlessly? Isn't this annoying?" a young man complained.
...
"Damn it, the officials wouldn't be trying to use us to refine pills, would they?" grumbled a dispirited groundhog.
...
"I hope Mommy comes back soon, and I hope Daddy's illness gets better quickly," a little girl whispered.
...
Even with Super Brain, Yu Xian was left with a splitting headache from the deluge of chaotic voices. He badly wanted to complain: *You call this conviction? These are purely stray thoughts!*
Yet the red jade plaque was already glowing crimson. Clearly, these stray thoughts truly were what every single citizen was thinking at this very moment; calling them conviction was just barely justifiable.
Once the red jade plaque was equipped, Yu Xian could already perceive countless golden lines crisscrossing the sky, each terminating at a stone stele.
These steles were in fact Dao foundations as well—super-sized Dao foundations.
Under the original Grotto-Heaven Plan, the state intended to tap geothermal energy to activate the steles, drawing upon a massive reserve of spatial energy from the very start to send all of Huaxia into the grotto-heaven world.
However, because no one knew just how formidable a Star rank was, Li Zhangzong had modified the design, incorporating the thoughts of the myriad people upon the original framework.
This would allow the grotto-heaven to evolve into a "pseudo-small world." Any entity not native to this small world would find it exceptionally difficult to pinpoint its location.
Even if someone found it and attempted to force their way in, they would face the brunt of the myriad people's thoughts, their mind instantly shattered by a billion conflicting impulses.
Of course, if even that proved futile, there would truly be no other options left.
With a flicker, Yu Xian materialized deep beneath a city. He immediately pressed his wristband-clad hand against the stone stele. In an instant, the thoughts of countless people poured into the stone, and the golden patterns across its surface rapidly broke out into clusters of tadpole-like script.
An unending torrent of stray thoughts surged through Yu Xian's body like a rushing river, draining entirely into the stele.
The moment the thoughts within him emptied into the stone, he felt another wave flood in, completely different from the last.
The stray thoughts of billions of citizens naturally could not be borne by Yu Xian and the other two alone.
Across countless military encampments, droves of soldiers wearing wristbands and carrying lower-grade blue jade plaques silently shouldered the burden of the people's thoughts.
They functioned as relay stations, temporarily bearing portions of a city's mental residue and replenishing Yu Xian and his peers whenever their current loads were depleted.
Thanks to Super Brain, Yu Xian possessed extraordinary mental resilience. After filling one stele to capacity, he teleported straight to the next, continuing to channel the thoughts of the myriad people.
Elsewhere, Xuanming and Zhu Yuan were in far worse shape.
With his mind inundated by chaotic noise, Xuanming repeatedly carved into the flesh of his thigh with a blade to keep his sanity intact, cauterizing the wounds with flame afterward to prevent excessive blood loss.
Relying on sheer, excruciating agony, he gritted his teeth and persevered in pumping the thoughts into his steles.
Zhu Yuan's situation was even more arduous. Although she could teleport, every jump had a distance limit; traveling from one city to another took her nearly ten minutes.
Her head pounded with endless stray thoughts, yet she still had to calculate spatial coordinates, causing tears of blood to stream down her face and crimson droplets to trickle steadily from her nostrils.
Ultimately, after charging five steles with the people's thoughts, she collapsed on the road to the next city.
With her down, the transfer rate plummeted. Unable to vent the stray thoughts they were holding, soldiers began to collapse in large numbers.
Across city after city nationwide, millions gathered within pre-arranged arrays, waiting quietly.
None of them knew what was happening, and that directionless, purposeless conviction was precisely what Li Zhangzong required.
If the thoughts had been purely anger or negativity, the uniformity would have drastically reduced their destructive power.
Fierce aggression was unnecessary; diversity was what mattered. The messier and more chaotic the thoughts, the greater their lethal potency.
Through the relentless efforts of Yu Xian and Xuanming, steles in more and more cities were activated, their golden lines weaving an enormous grid of light across the firmament.
The steles saturated with the thoughts of the myriad people radiated a golden brilliance, hungrily drawing in spatial energy as an invisible spatial barrier gradually descended from the heavens to envelop the land.
Jiangcheng.
A vampire clad head to toe in light-blocking garments stood watch, his face concealed behind a mask fitted with dark lenses over the eyes.
He gazed up at the sky, vaguely sensing that something was wrong.
Although the spatial barrier was inherently colorless and odorless, anyone with even a shred of spatial sensitivity could perceive the anomaly overhead.
After brief deliberation, he prudently used an extraordinary artifact to contact a duke serving under the Progenitor of the Blood Clan.
"What is it?" Duke Dos's voice came through an earring moments later.
The vampire hurriedly reported, "Lord Duke, Huaxia seems to be preparing something. The sky feels rather strange."
"Pay them no mind. Once the Progenitor completes his advancement, this world will belong to our Blood Clan. Hmph, what dragon clan, Elf race, Dwarf race, or Titan race? Every single one of them will grovel beneath our feet." Duke Dos paid no heed whatsoever to the vampire's report, his mind thoroughly consumed by delusions of the Blood Clan reigning supreme over Earth.
In the future, for every cup of Elf blood he drank, he would pour one out; for every cup of Titan blood he drank, he would pour out two!
Artificial blood?
Was that filth even fit for the Blood Clan to consume?
The vampire on the other end opened his mouth to press the matter, but Duke Dos had already severed the connection. The vampire looked up at the sky, his lips twitching slightly. He desperately wanted to say that something truly was very, very wrong.
Chapter 165