Chapter 800: Am I the Hope of the Entire Village?

The Peach Boat was a small void flyer built around the Boat Peach as its core.

After Trajan paid the magic stones, a Second Circle wizard staff member walked over, recited an incantation, and the mountain-sized Peach Boat automatically shrank, hovering in midair and transforming into a small model in his hand.

This star ring wizard held the small model in his right hand, while his left hand held an account book that floated automatically in midair. He used a magical quill to record the usage information for the Peach Boat.

This Second Circle wizard seemed to know Trajan. "Lord Trajan, I did not expect you to come personally for such a simple task."

Wizard Trajan smiled. "Yuli, I am bringing my junior and my student along to carry out a void task. This is their first time entering the void."

Wizard Yuli paused.

"First time, is it. Having someone experienced along is certainly safer."

"The void environment is unlike any environment in the wizard world."

Wizard Yuli gave Locke a friendly nod. "Hello, I am Wizard Yuli."

"One of the people in charge here."

"I will now put the Peach Boat into the void orbital track. Please follow me."

Locke gave him a nod.

The three followed him to the very center of the Ghost Gate, at the peak of a mountain there.

"This is..."

Locke noticed that with each step he climbed along the mountain path, the mountain peak seemed to automatically grow taller, and at its summit stood a peach tree radiating a golden crown of light.

This mountain peak was automatically growing taller.

This mountain peak was lifting us.

Very quickly, they arrived at the summit.

If one looked up at the summit from below, it would appear to be no more than a small hillock. But those standing on the mountain could see it rising upward without limit, as though it would pierce through the sky of the wizard world.

Witch Valerie Quinn looked at this scene with amazement. "Teacher, this is truly extraordinary. Why do people at the summit and people at the base see the same mountain as different heights?"

Wizard Trajan glanced at her, showing no inclination to answer.

And Wizard Yuli, as a star ring wizard, appeared to have no great desire to speak with a First Circle wizard either.

Locke looked at her briefly.

"This entire mountain has virtual roots beneath it."

Witch Valerie Quinn looked down at the mountain's body in astonishment.

What appeared to be an ordinary mountain was, one knew not how many of the great minds of earth-magic wizards, breeders, and botanical wizards had poured into creating.

Valerie Quinn's expression grew even more puzzled. She may have heard of virtual roots, as the greatest distinction between a Second Circle magical plant and a First Circle magical plant. But she had absolutely no understanding of what virtual roots were, or what Root Fields were, and so naturally she could not understand what Locke meant.

Valerie Quinn said, "Thank you, junior uncle."

Wizard Trajan's eyes showed a trace of surprise.

"Junior, your eyesight is not bad. You could see at a glance the true nature of this Infinite Mountain."

"That is right. The entire interior of this Infinite Mountain is made of virtual roots. Standing on this mountain, one is lifted by those virtual roots. I do not fully understand the specific principles, as it is not purely botanical. It is the masterwork of Golden Crown Mountain's earth-magic wizards."

Locke gave a slight nod. Earth-magic wizards gathering mountain ranges, adjusting rivers, and creating sacred grounds were things life school earth-magic wizards could do without difficulty.

Wizard Yuli said, "Very well, the three of you are now at the summit of the Infinite Mountain. At this point, we have already broken through the height limit of the Second Sky and penetrated through the various stratified layers of the wizard world's sky, arriving at the exterior of the wizard world's crystal wall system."

Witch Valerie Quinn was again mildly astonished.

At this moment she was standing at this height.

Yet she had not taken that many steps upward.

Wizard Yuli placed the Peach Boat, which had looked like a small model in his right hand, on the ground. The Peach Boat touched the surface and automatically returned to its original size, becoming a large vessel.

Wizard Yuli looked at Locke, knowing this was Locke's first time at the Infinite Mountain, and so gave him a historical explanation. "This Infinite Mountain was constructed by one of Golden Crown Mountain's founding wizards in the past. It was originally intended so that, if things went badly in the face of the pure-blood faction's wizard knight corps' assault, there would always be a means of escaping the wizard world."

"Once the pure-blood age ended and multiple eras passed, bringing us into the modern age of magic, this Infinite Mountain lost its original purpose, but accidentally became the most flourishing void flyer launch site for leaving wizard territories in the Cloud Marsh Wetlands."

"This place has signed agreements with almost every wizard university across the entire Cloud Marsh Wetlands, allowing their students and wizard mentors to enter Little Peach Mountain's Ghost Gate and ascend this Infinite Mountain summit as well."

Locke gave a slight nod. He could see that at this summit, aside from themselves, there were many other wizards present, and many of them were not Golden Crown Mountain wizards at all.

Yet the wizards who came here almost never looked at anyone else, all focused on whatever they were doing.

Locke looked down at the Infinite Mountain beneath his feet. Through his tiger's eye, the interior of this Infinite Mountain was like countless different types of virtual roots twisted together in a spiraling interweave.

'Virtual roots can achieve this degree of application.'

Locke felt a sense of wonder. Botanical studies was truly vast and profound. He had only glimpsed the very tip of the iceberg.

After exchanging a few words with Wizard Trajan, Wizard Yuli departed.

Wizard Trajan then said to Witch Valerie Quinn, "Drink the Soul Stabilizing Potion."

Witch Valerie Quinn immediately nodded, took a bottle of potion from her astral ring, and drank it down. In an instant, a thin film-like state appeared across her body's surface.

The Soul Stabilizing Robe.

Under the effect of the Soul Stabilizing Potion, the spirituality would form a special stabilized spirituality layer on the soul's surface, which was called the Soul Stabilizing Robe.

Wizard Trajan took out two First Circle Soul Stabilizing Potions, took one and handed the other to Locke. "Junior, this is your first time entering the void. You may not know about this."

"Any life form entering the void must drink this potion beforehand, otherwise there is a life-threatening risk."

Locke saw the potion Trajan was handing him and immediately said, "Senior Trajan, have you forgotten I am also an alchemist?"

Wizard Trajan was suddenly reminded.

"That is right. Golden Crown Mountain does not have many alchemists. I had actually forgotten that you are also an alchemist. It seems I was overcautious. Of course you already know about the Soul Stabilizing Potion."

Locke took out two Second Circle Soul Stabilizing Potions.

"These are two bottles of Soul Stabilizing Potion I refined recently. If senior trusts my craftsmanship, you can help me test their effect."

Wizard Trajan blinked. He looked at Locke with some disbelief but said nothing, directly taking the potion from Locke's hand. He opened the white birch wood cork, held it to his nose, and gave it a sniff, then observed the flow of planar force within the potion.

Drawing on a sun ring wizard's formidable eyesight and focusing his full concentration, he did indeed catch a brief fleeting glimpse of the special Spiritual Resonance within the potion.

The reason the Scarlet Bloodstone had not been banned by the White Wizard Association was precisely that its Spiritual Resonance was also a necessary ingredient for refining the Soul Stabilizing Potion.

Otherwise, given its dark history, the White Wizard Association would long ago have banned it.

The White Wizard Association was a product of the Enlightenment Era, while the Scarlet Bloodstone dated back to the autocratic monarchs' era, having been a tool used by the wizard autocratic monarchs, the Grand Sovereigns, to enslave common wizard-born people.

Wizard Trajan drank it down directly. At the same time, Locke also opened his tiger's eye to observe the effect of this Second Circle Soul Stabilizing Potion on him.

Unlike drinking an ordinary First Circle potion, streams of planar force converged toward him. These special planar forces condensed upon him as a standing, and so a stabilized spirituality membrane appeared on the surface of his soul and body.

Both were Soul Stabilizing Potions, but the First Circle Soul Stabilizing Potion, after being consumed, produced a soul stabilizing membrane that was like clothing for the soul, and so it was only a Soul Stabilizing Robe. The Second Circle Soul Stabilizing Potion, after being consumed, formed a special membrane on the surface of the wizard's soul.

One was a temporary effect produced by drinking the potion. The other was a special ability produced by the potion granting a special standing after being consumed.

In other words, once the Second Circle potion was consumed by Trajan, it did not rely on the mutual reactions of natural magical force structural components to produce a specific special effect.

Instead it changed a portion of Trajan's surface spirituality expression through the manner of granting a standing, thus giving the user a special extraordinary ability.

Standing was the summation of past spirituality, present spirituality, and how future spirituality would develop.

Once Second Circle alchemy reached this stage, it was equivalent to Second Circle alchemy reaching the level of the hidden true form of things, capable of using alchemical methods to grant a thing a special standing, thereby obtaining the corresponding ability.

Locke observed the effect of the Second Circle Soul Stabilizing Potion. In essence, that bottle of his Second Circle Soul Stabilizing Potion had already made a certain degree of modification to Trajan's soul.

Though only the outermost, less important portion.

But this demonstrated that for a Second Circle wizard, the important core that previously could not be modified, the soul, had now become something that could be adjusted and fine-tuned.

Wizard Trajan said, "The price of a Second Circle potion is approximately two million to three million magic stones per bottle. I never dared to buy one."

"Even the Soul Stabilizing Potion, being the cheapest of the Second Circle potions, still costs around one million magic stones per bottle."

"Most of the time when I explore the void, I use First Circle Soul Stabilizing Potions. I never expected that from my junior I would get a Second Circle Soul Stabilizing Potion."

Locke nodded.

The price of Second Circle potions was indeed very expensive.

This was primarily because of several factors. On one hand, the production cost of a Second Circle potion was itself quite high. Just refining the Soul Stabilizing Potion once required approximately five hundred thousand in costs.

The second factor was that Second Circle alchemists were already relatively few in number.

For a wizard to become a Second Circle alchemist, the talent, time, and resources required were difficult to imagine.

The third factor was that refining a Second Circle potion was a very exhausting affair.

Setting aside the energy consumed, the key point was that it consumed one's perceptive sensitivity to Spiritual Resonance.

'Perceptive sensitivity to Spiritual Resonance is a very special thing. It is neither energy, nor information, nor mental effort, but a quality that comes from deep within the soul that is difficult to describe clearly.'

Alchemists studied Spiritual Resonance studies to perceive the hidden true form of things and understand the intrinsic properties of all things, thus opening the second peak of alchemy.

But comprehending a Spiritual Resonance and performing ritual actions to refine potions both consumed one's sensitivity to Spiritual Resonance.

At present, Locke could refine at most two Second Circle potions per month. Any more than that would exhaust that special sensitivity entirely, and even knowing which ritual actions had been derived, he would be unable to accurately execute those actions due to having lost his concrete perceptive sensitivity to the Spiritual Resonance.

That is, executing ritual actions in accordance with the Spiritual Resonance's trajectory, thereby refining a Second Circle potion.

An ordinary Second Circle alchemist presumably would not be as limited as he was, as exaggerated as one month being able to produce only five or six Second Circle potions. But he was different.

He had taken the unorthodox path, getting on the train first and buying the ticket later, and so his soul's perceptive sensitivity to Spiritual Resonances was probably at the lowest tier among wizards capable of refining Second Circle potions.

But the problem was not serious, because Locke had discovered that not only did studying Spiritual Resonance studies increase the accumulation of Spiritual Resonance perceptive sensitivity, successfully refining a Second Circle potion itself also increased that perceptive sensitivity.

And so his approach of getting on the train first and buying the ticket later would allow him to increase his Spiritual Resonance sensitivity as quickly as possible.

Locke drank the Soul Stabilizing Potion in his own hand. In the next instant, he too sensed planar force converging toward his soul, forming a special Soul Stabilizing Membrane on the surface of his soul.

'Using a Second Circle potion, to put it simply, can grant me a special ability.'

A thought kept leaping up irrepressibly in Locke's mind.

'My teacher once said her understanding of the power system at the star ring stage was that it was a kind of hierarchy.'

'If Second Circle potions can grant a thing a special standing, changing the spiritual expression of the recipient, and granting the user a special ability...'

'Does that not mean that using alchemy, I could create a hierarchy and thereby complete an entire power system?'

'Most of my ecological community consists of plants, which have no consciousness to speak of and simply cannot be said to learn a power system. But if alchemy could be used to complete a hierarchy, would that not be equivalent to completing a power system capable of reducing energy dissipation?'

Locke froze for a moment.

Wizard Trajan looked at Locke and patted him on the shoulder.

"Very well, junior. I did not expect that you would actually be a Second Circle alchemist."

"From now on, when senior needs a Soul Stabilizing Potion, along with a whole crowd of friends of mine, can we not just ask you? We pay you the cost price, is that not fine?"

"Second Circle wizards in combat easily suffer soul wear. I estimate the soul stabilizing membrane on my soul will be worn away in just a few years."

Locke immediately felt his head grow heavier and quickly explained that he could currently only refine a small number of potions per year, and that he was not yet a Second Circle alchemist.

Otherwise things would become very awkward.

If senior came to ask for his help in the future and he refused, people might think he was being disloyal.

Wizard Trajan fell into quiet thought.

"I see. I do not have any expert-level alchemist friends. I do know a few First Circle alchemists, and assumed it was like being a First Circle alchemist, able to casually produce a bottle of potion on the spot. I had no idea it consumed something as peculiar as a special perceptive sensitivity to Spiritual Resonance. That is quite interesting."

"Junior, in our entire teacher lineage, I am afraid you are the only one who could become a Second Circle alchemist."

"Under normal circumstances, very few Second Circle alchemists come from an academic lineage and wizard academy that places absolutely no resources into alchemy."

"By that measure, you are a doubly disadvantaged alchemist. Impressive."

"And if we factor in that you are not even from the alchemy faculty, then you would be a triply disadvantaged alchemist."

Wizard Trajan burst into loud laughter, then started up the Peach Boat.

"Very well. Once you are more formidable, whenever I have a potion I need refined, I can ask you to help brew it."

Locke raised an eyebrow. Why did he have the feeling that he had somehow become the hope of the entire village?