Chapter 82: Spiritual Energy Potential

Chapter 82: Chapter 82: Spiritual Energy Potential

"Some kind of spirit-something Abnormality Weapon?"

When Master Chang got excited, he talked fast — really fast — and Xiang Yi had only caught fragments of what he said, so he asked him to repeat it.

"Do you honestly think an ordinary laser passing through that crystal would produce an effect like that? Your power has enormous potential!"

"Huh?"

Xiang Yi was still a little lost. Wasn’t this just a basic part of how his Spiritual Energy worked?

"You still don’t get it?" Master Chang’s tone carried a distinct note of frustration, like a teacher watching a gifted student waste their talent.

Though he caught himself — Xiang Yi had only awakened his Spiritual Energy a few days ago. Of course he didn’t have a proper understanding of Spiritual Power yet.

"Just come with me."

Master Chang grabbed Xiang Yi by the arm and dragged him eagerly into another building on the salvage yard grounds.

From the outside, the building looked completely unremarkable. But the moment Xiang Yi stepped inside, he realized it was practically a miniature factory.

Assembly line equipment packed the interior from wall to wall, leaving almost no wasted space.

Robots could be seen hauling loads of mechanical scrap in from the junk heaps outside, feeding it onto the conveyor belts to be scanned and sorted.

Anything flagged as valuable was pulled aside for individual processing; everything else got crushed into neat one-meter metal cubes and stacked away.

Xiang Yi barely had a chance to take it all in before Chang Ye pulled him to an isolated workroom tucked into the corner of the factory floor.

The soundproofing was solid — the moment the door shut, the clanging din of the machinery outside vanished completely.

Master Chang asked Xiang Yi for a small piece of Blood Crystal, then used one of the workroom’s machines to slice off a thin sliver. He moved to a second machine and ground the sliver down into a thin, blood-red lens.

He tidied up the cluttered workroom a bit, clearing a small open area in the middle of the floor.

Then he stepped out and hauled in a new piece of equipment, giving Xiang Yi a quick rundown as he set it up: "This is one of the fixed laser cutters the robots use on the assembly line outside. Normally it’s for splitting up large chunks of scrap metal."

As he spoke, he took the piece of pork — the one with Blood Crystal coating its surface — from Xiang Yi and set it on the cutting platform.

A thin beam of laser light flashed across the pork in an instant, slicing it cleanly in two and leaving a visible layer of char along the cut.

Master Chang powered the machine down, opened up the laser emitter housing, and used a specialized tool to swap out one of the internal lenses for the Blood Crystal one he’d just ground.

He ran a quick calibration, then powered it back on.

The cutting laser had turned a deep blood-red.

The beam width flickered slightly, a little uneven.

The output power and stability had both clearly taken a hit.

But the important part — the part that mattered most — was what happened to the pork sitting on the cutting platform. It was sliced clean through by that Blood-colored Laser.

The pork had not been converted into Blood Crystal.

Master Chang shut the machine off and held out the pork, now cut into four pieces, to Xiang Yi. "Get it now?"

Xiang Yi stared at the chunk in his hand — charred on the outside, cooked through on the inside — resisted the urge to take a bite, and tossed it to Shi Tie.

Shi Tie had gone without food for several days at this point. He swallowed the whole thing in one go, Blood Crystal Fragments and all.

"?"

Master Chang had been about to ask Xiang Yi what he was thinking, but Xiang Yi beat him to it: "So what you’re saying is — my Spiritual Energy doesn’t just modify equipment in a simple, mechanical way. It actually transfers the Abnormality’s abilities into the device itself?"

Master Chang felt his blood pressure drop back to normal. "Exactly. That’s why I said what you’ve modified should be called a Spiritual Ability Weapon — or more specifically, an Abnormality Weapon."

"Does the Mind Pulse Generator count as a Spiritual Ability Weapon?"

"It does. Anything that makes use of Spiritual Energy qualifies — whether it draws on a Spiritual Ability User’s own power or artificially generated Spiritual Energy, it all counts."

"But yours is different. What you’re doing isn’t a simple swap-out. You’re actually taking the Abnormality’s abilities away from it."

"That’s something nobody has ever done before. Even Spiritual Ability Weapons developed using Abnormality Materials only ever exploit those materials’ properties — they don’t strip the Abnormality of its power the way you do."

"This is a weapon class unique to your Spiritual Energy. An Abnormality Weapon."

"Is that so..."

Xiang Yi rested his fingers against his chin, turning it over in his mind.

He didn’t have a particularly concrete sense of what Spiritual Ability Weapons meant in practice.

After all, the only thing he’d ever come across that Master Chang would classify as a Spiritual Ability Weapon was the Continuous Psychic Pulse Generator — and in his own head, he’d always thought of it as just a tool.

The wide-area Psychic Pulse attack it produced was unstoppable against ordinary people, but it fell pretty flat against Abnormalities — about the only thing it could reliably suppress were weak ones like Blood Crystal Worms.

It had done absolutely nothing against Master Chang, for reasons Xiang Yi still couldn’t figure out.

But regardless, Spiritual Ability Weapons meant rarity, power, and value — that much was clear.

The one-of-a-kind "Abnormality Weapons" built on the foundation of his Spiritual Energy might not necessarily outperform other Spiritual Ability Weapons in raw power, but they would certainly surpass them in worth.

And they would carry special effects that no ordinary Spiritual Ability Weapon could replicate.

That was the true value of his Spiritual Energy.

No wonder Master Chang had gotten so worked up earlier.

Still, there was one thing Xiang Yi couldn’t wrap his head around: "If Abnormality Materials can’t actually transfer an Abnormality’s abilities, what’s the point of them?"

"Their inherent properties."

"Abnormality Materials outperform almost every conventional material of the same type. Your Blood Crystal, for instance, is a solid substitute for a lot of high-end or specialty lens and crystal-based materials."

"You didn’t actually think that getting your hands on Abnormality Materials meant you could automatically tap into their abilities, did you?"

"...That’s exactly what I thought."

His question had been answered, but Xiang Yi’s eyes were still shifting, his mind elsewhere.

He was already wondering whether there were other untapped possibilities hidden within his Spiritual Energy.

"I’m starting to think you’re genuinely something special..." Master Chang said, then shot Xiang Yi a suddenly eager look. "But that still doesn’t explain how you put together that Laser Rifle, does it?"

"I’ve never seen a model like that before. You couldn’t have designed and built it yourself — was it your Spiritual Energy that made it?"

"About that..."

Xiang Yi wanted to keep his cards close to his chest. He deflected diplomatically: "It’s... possible. But that particular ability burns through way too much Spiritual Power. It’s not something I can just demonstrate on the spot."

"Fair enough. We can revisit it whenever you’re ready."

Master Chang didn’t push. He’d already gotten more than enough surprises for one day.

"How long has it been since you awakened your Spiritual Energy?"

"About a week, give or take."

The intensity in Master Chang’s eyes grew even more pronounced.

Before their conversation about the specifics of Xiang Yi’s Spiritual Energy, he’d only been looking to make up for what had happened earlier that day.

But now, he felt like he was looking at something rare and precious.

Using Spiritual Energy to interface with and modify mechanical equipment — that on its own was a reasonable foundation for Xiang Yi’s Spiritual Power.

But simply swapping in Abnormality Materials could never qualify as a component of Spiritual Power. Any ordinary person with the right tools could do that. It wouldn’t deserve to be called Spiritual Power at all.

And reality bore that out.

Forging Spiritual Ability Weapons from Abnormality Materials. Stripping Abnormalities of their very abilities. That was the truly frightening part of Xiang Yi’s Spiritual Energy.

And this was only the tip of the iceberg. Every Spiritual Ability User developed new Spiritual Abilities as they grew stronger.

A talent like this... he absolutely could not let him slip away. He had to make sure Xiang Yi was guided down the right path.

Whatever dangers lay ahead. Whatever enemies stood in the way.

That was his duty as a soldier of the Human Federation.