The Magus Era

Back in Pu Ban city, in the core, secret hall of the Magi Palace...

An enormously broad hall many miles squared in area was entirely built with black rock. The surface of the walls was rough, without any decorations. Not a single pillar could be seen in the empty hall, and the dome, which was hundreds of meters above the floor, was completely supported by the power of the magic formation set in the hall.

Countless fist-sized glowing pearls were inlaid in the ceiling, emitting snow-white lights, lighting up the entire hall.

Tens of different-sized stoves were standing in the hall with pots placed upon them. Green fires had been blazing in those stoves while liquid medicines boiled in those pots. The dense scent of herbal medicine had condensed into a visible white mist, accumulating on the floor with over three-inch depth.

A series of black stone tables were placed against a wall orderly. On those stone tables were the dead bodies of Ying Yunpeng and the other, hundreds of rebellious elders. All those dead bodies were stripped, and even their body hairs were shaved as well, exposing their nearly translucent bodies, which had been glowing with a faint cyan light that made their bodies look like colored glass.

Nearly a thousand Magi in long white robes were surrounding these stone tables, with sharp knives held in their hands. They carefully cut open the bodies of Ying Yunpeng and the other elders, dissected all meridians and muscles one after another. Some of those Magi took internal organs out of those dead bodies, placed in jade trays next to them, then ran a careful check of those internal organs, distinguishing the changes that had happened to these dead elders’ bodies.

Many other Magi in white robes had transparent crystal containers held in their hands. They put small pieces of body tissue taken out of those corpses into these containers and soaked in all kinds of reagents, to find out if these elders were affected by some special kinds of poison before they died.

Along with a creaking noise, the bones of one of Ying Yunpeng’s hands were taken out from his dead body. All skin, blood veins, and meridians of his left hand were peeled off, till only the faintly cyan-colored, almost transparent bones remained.

An elderly Magus carried the bone hand and quickly walked to a corner of the hall.

By slightly shaking his hand, this Magi split the bone hand of Ying Yunpeng into tens of pieces. Each of those Magi who had been waiting here picked up one piece of the bone and started all kinds of violent experiments.

Hacking with blades or heavy axes, burning with fire, freezing with ice, soaking in poisonous liquid, washing with strong acids, bashing with heavy hammers, striking with lightning bolts... Those Magi ran tests on those hand bones with hundreds of different methods, and only after that did the final results quickly sum up.

Emperor Shun, Si Wen Ming, and some other high-level leaders had been quietly standing by the front gate of the secret hall. Numerous autopsy reports gathered over one after another, being handed to Emperor Shun’s. Emperor Shun leafed through those reports in paper order. The more he read, the darker his face became, and the more serious his look turned.

Si Wen Ming and other ministers took over those reports one after another. While reading the data gained through experiments based on the dead bodies of those hundreds of rebel elders, the faces of all these ministers turned extremely dark as well.

A series of experiments proved that the bodies of Ying Yunpeng and the other rebel elders had all become extremely tough and sturdy before they died. Their body conditions had been improved by at least ten times, comparing with their actual cultivations and power levels.

If one was to take Ying Yunpeng as an example, he was only a peak-level Magus King. However, his body was already tough enough to compete with a newly promoted Divine Magus. Meanwhile, in terms of resistance to things like acids, poison, lightning, and fire, Ying Yunpeng’s body condition was even many times better than the body condition of an ordinary Divine Magus. Moreover, when facing all kinds of negative powers, such as the power of death, hatred and netherworld power, as well as all kinds of magic curses, Ying Yunpeng’s body would be over a hundred times stronger than the body of an ordinary Divine Magus.

In other words, any part of the bodies of Ying Yunpeng and the other rebel elders could be used as an evil-exorcising treasure. If Ying Yunpeng’s dead body were hung at a spot, the area hundred miles in radius around the spot would become a forbidden area for all kinds of ghosts, spirits and other creatures living on negative powers. If they ever dared to step a single toe into this area, their bodies would be immediately burned to ash by an immensely great power.

The bones of Ying Yunpeng and other rebelled elders had been through a strange change as well. Their marrow had turned into a sticky, ointment-like material, like chalcedony, and that ointment-like material contained a violent and pure positive power. Some Magi had run a test with a few thousand-year-old ghosts; one extremely fierce ghost was forced to swallow a drop of that ointment-like material taken out from Ying Yunpeng’s bone, and right in the very next moment, the ghost was burned into a puff of ash.

The body of that ghost was burned to complete ash, but the evil power contained in his body had condensed into a fist-sized crystal pearl. This pearl didn’t contain even a slight little bit of evil power. Instead, it was filled with pure positive power. This pearl could replace magic crystals and serve as an energy supply for Magi cultivation, or be used to control magic puppets or set up magic formations.

More astonishingly, the brains of Ying Yunpeng and other rebel elders had changed magically as well.

The complicated brain circuitries that were supposed to be existing in the brains of healthy human beings had disappeared in their brains. Instead, their brains had become smooth and crystalline, like pearls and jade. Their brains had all turned cyan, and at first glance, their brains looked like cyan-colored gemstones.

After cutting their brains open, some Magi found that their brains were filled with a strange ointment-like material that fully contained a pure and magical power, just like their marrows. The only difference was that the materials contained in their heads was stickier, and had a trace of aroma that sensed like ambergris. Additionally, every single drop of this ointment-like material contained in their brains was extremely dense. The consistency of this ointment-like material was more than hundred times greater than iron.

Apart from all the above, their muscles, meridians, blood veins and internal organs had all been through some weird kind of ‘crystallization.’ Their bodies somehow seemed to have been ‘refined’ through some magical method and had turned into half flesh and half gemstones from human bodies.

Such a body structure allowed them to have a greater defensive power. Furthermore, their strength, reaction speed, agility and capacity of each of their Magus Acupoints, along with the conversion rate of their powers in their meridians, had all been improved greatly.

“But of course, the most important discovery was this!” said a seemingly very old Magus, while he strolled over and tremblingly raising a piece of skull that came from Ying Yunpeng’s body. On that cyan-colored skull piece, large areas of patterns of lotuses were clearly visible.

“These patterns of lotuses!” The old Magus dropped his eyelids and said in a cold voice, “Emperor Shun, these patterns of lotuses reminded me of something that I read in an incomplete book of Magi Palace very long ago. Back then, I was only an apprentice of the Magi Palace.”

“Which incomplete book?” asked Si Wen Ming in a deep voice.

The old Magus looked at Si Wen Ming and responded in a similarly deep voice, “Those listed as forbidden books. Back then, I didn’t mean to violate the rule. I was sent to clear the forbidden hall up by an elder...I, saw it accidentally...The spirit-kind? Can it be them? Quite a few among the natural spirit-kind have patterns of lotuses after they attain certain achievements in their cultivations!”

Emperor Shun’s face instantly turned purple. He gnashed his teeth while numerous blood veins suddenly bulged out of his forehead one after another.

Si Wen Ming knitted his eyebrows. He said to Emperor Shun in a deep voice, “Since you have asked Netherworld Priest for help, Dong Gong and Xi Mu had both showed up, then...”

Emperor Shun clenched his fists, and his voice had become strangely hoarse:

“To our humankind, nothing from the Netherworld Priest can be seen as a threat. Back in ancient times, Dong Gong and Xi Mu once had a good relationship with our kind, so no trouble will be brought to us by their reappearances in our human world. :

“The ones I am worried about are the ones who signed the agreement on top of the Sky Pillar under the witnesses of the Five Heaven Gods!”

Si Wen Ming remained silent for a while, then said, “Let’s pay a visit to elder Feng San, see if she has any new discovery.”