Chapter 135 The Original Intent Behind Studying the Mutations of the City of Silver

Seeing these words, Odis could not help but twitch his lips: ‘This was clearly the treasure of the Tudor Empire, so how did it become your treasure, Roselle?’

He then guessed that this must have been a map drawn after Roselle switched to the neighboring Pathway and became a Knowledge Emperor.

Prior to that, the Savant Pathway didn’t have abilities like Prophecy, whereas the Mystery Pryer Pathway’s Sequence 3 Clairvoyant, as well as the Sequences above it, had such abilities.

Perhaps because they were both transmigrators, that’s why Roselle’s Prophecy was relatively accurate.

First, Odis really was a transmigrator; second, he actually knew Bernadette, though their current relationship was just so-so, falling under the category of good business partners.

As for whether he would ever use that treasure…

‘Heh, who in their right mind would turn down free money? Besides, there seems to be some Sealed Artifacts there!’

Odis wondered to himself whether there might be any Sealed Artifacts that have Traveling/Teleportation there. He felt there originally should have been, considering the Abraham family was the most powerful noble house of the Tudor Empire and ought to have accumulated Sealed Artifacts in that regard.

Still, he held out no extravagant hope that Roselle would have left him anything good. He knew that the Savant Pathway’s Sequence 7 was called Appraiser, whose ability was to assess the powers and negative effects of Sealed Artifacts.

With further advancement, an Appraiser’s abilities would also strengthen, allowing them to appraise higher-grade Sealed Artifacts.

When Roselle visited that treasure trove for the second time, he had presumably taken away every Sealed Artifact whose negative effects were not too severe.

As for the gold and silver, Odis was eager to dig it up, but a major problem stood in his way: he was currently under surveillance by people from the Church of Steam, meaning that treasure would only end up benefiting the Church…

He ultimately decided to put the parchment away and wait for an opportunity to excavate it later.

Next, he temporarily exited the Knowledge Moor and returned to his home in the real world. He found two pieces of parchment of suitable size, prepared some concoctions used for aging paper, and brought them all back into the Knowledge Moor.

After that came the task of mimicking Roselle’s handwriting and tone to compose the martial arts manuals…

Odis had never spoken to Roselle face-to-face. His impression of this senior transmigrator was derived almost entirely from the other’s diary entries.

Fortunately, none of the people investigating the Lelouch case had ever seen Emperor Roselle either, so the likelihood of being exposed was slim.

These two martial arts manuals relied primarily on illustrations and text, explaining Bajiquan and Taichi in a style distinct from the Outline of Combat.

In some of the margins, Odis even scribbled smug, punch-worthy remarks in Chinese characters, such as ‘Your bro (me) really is just this versatile’…

Since no one else could read them anyway, he simply jotted down a few casual lines before applying the concoction to age the parchment. Soon enough, he had two slightly yellowed manuals.

However, these two manuals had not come from Roselle’s hands, and if divination were performed with Beyonder powers, this fact would be immediately exposed.

Still, that posed no problem for Odis. Walking over to the display shelf on one side of the room, he picked up the Briber Beyonder characteristic seized from the 3N Party.

Then, using the power of the Knowledge Moor to suppress the intense negative effects of the Beyonder characteristic, he activated the Sequence’s Connect ability, establishing a Connection between the parchment and the metal box.

This way, whenever ordinary divination was used to verify the origin of these two pieces of parchment, it would automatically Connect to the metal box, thereby muddying the results.

That should be enough to evade most investigations. After all, not everyone possessed a divination divine artifact like the space above the gray fog.

As for the Beyonder characteristic itself, it could actually be used directly. While it might seem harmless just sitting there (below Sequence 5), actually employing it would inevitably bring severe negative effects.

It could very well react with the Beyonder characteristics inside one’s body, causing a Beyonder to lose control on the spot.

However, with the high-level suppression of the Knowledge Moor, Odis could completely avoid being influenced by the Beyonder characteristic.

Having finished all this, he looked over the martial arts manuals he had written one more time, folded them, placed them inside the box, and shut it again.

A satisfied smile crossed his face: ‘This should be enough to get by.’

Even if the Mandated Punishers still had suspicions, his alibi would allow him to bite down and deny everything.

Unless, of course, the Mandated Punishers used Beyonder methods to interrogate that viscount, or interrogate Odis himself.

That was precisely why Odis had chosen a noble to provide his alibi. Many nobles in Loen believed in the Lord of Storms, and interrogating them with Beyonder powers would have terrible repercussions.

And naturally, the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery would never allow Odis, with his special status, to fall into the hands of another Beyonder organization, so they would definitely prevent any Beyonder interrogation by the Mandated Punishers.

Next, Odis began his research project for the week: studying the flora, fauna, and soil of the Forsaken Land of the Gods.

This research should have begun long ago, but it had been delayed again and again by various other urgent projects.

Last week, Odis had already sent all the flora and fauna traded from Little Sun into the Knowledge Moor, and now he moved them onto his desk.

They included a strange fish, brain-burrowing, blood-sucking bugs, a plant with tentacles, and Black Faced Grass.

After being killed, that strange fish had become unbearably foul and stinking, and Odis treated it with herbs so that the stench wouldn’t spread everywhere.

As for those brain-burrowing, blood-sucking bugs, their vitality was remarkably tenacious. They could survive on water alone.

Odis had even tested different specimens with sugar water and saltwater. They accepted both without hesitation, and the one that drank the sugar water had actually grown chubbier.

The tentacled plant had already begun growing new tentacles. When Odis gave it soil and a bit of fertilizer, the creature actually began to grow wildly.

He soon discovered the key: before being sent into the Knowledge Moor, the place where it had been kept had sunlight, which was why it had grown so quickly. It seemed that even after thousands of years, it still retained many of the characteristics of a plant.

As for the tentacles trimmed from the plant’s body, they quickly begun to rot and wither. After drying them out, Odis made them into specimens to supply his current research.

Finally, he turned his gaze to that stalk of Black Faced Grass…

By now, it had completely withered, looking like a dead stalk of wheat, though its color was dark green rather than yellow.

The moment these still-living plants and animals were placed into the Knowledge Moor, all of their biological activities ceased. Yet, those that had not died prior to entering still retained sufficient vitality.

It could be understood as their time being frozen at that very instant.

Additionally, there were a bucket of silt and a bucket of ordinary soil traded along with the rest, which would be left for the final phase of research.

Once Odis had everything properly prepared, he began dissecting the strange fish.

Of course, he wasn’t conducting these studies out of some desire to become a biologist; he was trying to find ways to increase agricultural and pastoral yields.

Theoretically speaking, with the Church of the Earth Mother in existence, food shouldn’t be scarce in this world. The reality, however, was that in Backlund, and in every major metropolis across the globe, hordes of vagrants starved to death every single day.

According to Odis’ observations, aside from certain man-made factors, crop yields in this world were actually quite low, and the development of animal husbandry was still far from reaching the level of factory farming.

Odis had also wondered why the Church of the Earth Mother didn’t solve these problems. A single Angel of that Pathway should easily be able to guarantee high yields for hundreds of kilometers around.

It wouldn’t even be an issue to take crops from seed germination to full maturity in a single day.

Later, Odis roughly figured it out: the essence of a Beyonder characteristic was distortion and disorder. Forcing growth on a massive scale would inevitably cause the crops to mutate!

Most critically, it would very likely cause the people living on that land to mutate along with them.

What if the residents of that land grew alongside the plants? If it were a child growing around 30 centimeters taller in a year, aside from a bit of surprise, having a nice meal to celebrate would be the end of it.

But what if adults grew too? Growing dozens of centimeters every year would turn that region into a kingdom of Giants in less than a decade!

The Northern Continent was relatively safe, mostly growing wheat, but many places in the Southern Continent grew corn, so by growing between one or two meters a year, they would fulfill the quota for a kingdom of Giant in just two years.

Thus, Odis had no choice but to attempt a second path… that being genetic modification.

However, a new problem lay before him; he had no such ability…

Odis did know that the first mate of the Admiral of Stars had quite the talent for this, but the man’s talent seemed a bit excessive. That fellow seemed to have an eternal vendetta against cows, wanting wheat to grow on cattle and trying to get dairy cows to produce beer.

As for his other research; like making fish taste like beef, or turning the blood inside fish into beer, none of it seemed normal in Odis’s eyes.

Strangely enough, he had previously made discreet inquiries, and even in the Feynapotter Kingdom, Odis had never heard of the Church of the Earth Mother introducing any high-yield, disease-resistant seeds, or livestock and poultry offspring that put on meat rapidly with high survival rates.

Only after much pondering did he finally realize that they simply lacked the concept entirely.

Supposedly, the priests of the Church of the Earth Mother really did pray for bountiful harvests, and with great effect.

Odis had also heard they possessed the ability to mutate flora and fauna, yet the notion of optimizing seeds simply never crossed their minds.

This involved concepts known only to transmigrators like himself: genetic mutation and genetic self-correction.

For instance, across an entire wheat field given the exact same watering and fertilizer, the wheat generally grew to average heights with modest ears. Then, out of nowhere, a single stalk would shoot up tall and sturdy, bearing massive heads of grain.

That was likely a genetic mutation. Instead of settling for the easy life of an ordinary stalk of wheat, that particular seed chose to go into fierce competition, sparking envy and resentment among the rest.

Yet farmers loved such overachievers, and the following year, they would invariably sow the seeds harvested from that standout plant back into the soil.

Only then would they discover that not every seed shared its predecessor’s drive to compete. At most, only two or three stalks would grow as tall and massive. The vast majority of the wheat still preferred a quiet, stable existence.

That was probably the gene’s capacity for self-correction. Odis figured the people of this world had likely attempted selective breeding as well, though the results must have been far from ideal.

He had once looked into this field of knowledge. To stabilize a seed’s genes, one couldn’t just select the best specimens; it also required controlled seedling cultivation and artificial pollination to truly secure superior seeds.

After pondering the matter for a while, Odis decided to combine the supernatural with science to facilitate an artificial breeding process.

The fundamental theory was to use Beyonder powers to induce mutations in the seeds, stabilize their genes through a blend of science and Extraordinary methods, and ultimately produce high-yield crop seeds.

To achieve that goal, the flora and fauna in the Forsaken Land of the Gods that had mutated due to Beyonder influences made for exceptionally valuable research subjects…