Chapter 197 — The Inverted Conversion Array

Although the territory had already begun building brick-and-tile houses on a large scale, all the old tents had been struck and replaced, and great numbers of wooden-board houses were being torn down and rebuilt batch by batch, Pi Yun's dwelling was still the very first wooden hut he had occupied. This had nothing to do with the little old man's habit of frugality (in fact, he possessed no such trait at all), nor was it that Gao You was singling out this old rogue for punishment; it was because a great many druidic spells were bound up with organic environments. Their spell laboratories required large quantities of wooden substrate to serve as mana-conducting material, and wooden buildings were also far easier for them to reshape and catalyze by magic. And so this wooden hut had been in use right up to the present day, and by the look of it, Pi Yun was quite contentedly planning to keep on using it.

In truth, though the hut was still the same hut, several months of Pi Yun's magical remodeling had transformed it beyond all recognition. The planks that had been felled and had long since lost their vitality had undergone a kind of "animation" through prolonged soaking in druidic magic; vines and leaves sprouted from the cracks between the boards, making the hut tighter and sturdier while greatly beautifying its exterior. Inside, thanks to the workings of nature magic, the place was cool in summer and warm in winter, and Gao Yang was convinced it must be a thoroughly comfortable abode.

Otherwise that old rogue—who spent his days peddling ointments, cadging meals and drink wherever he could, and never kicking his gambling habit—would long since have come knocking for a new house... Pi Yun was hardly the sort to resign himself to poverty; if he were, he would never have gone off to become some antiquities appraiser just because druidism didn't pay.

Stepping into this hut that had been made new (and was made new again every day), Gao Yang's first glimpse was of the old druid bent over his work beside the test bench. The latter had clearly noticed the lord's arrival but did not so much as raise his head: "Just a moment, my lord, I'm almost finished here—a spell experiment can't be interrupted. This equipment is a bit old, and I have to watch it closely before I can..."

Amber, standing nearby, called him out without a flicker of hesitation: "Drop the act. None of those vessels of yours have even started reacting yet. This whole 'devoted scholar, answerable only to truth, no time for his lord' upright routine doesn't suit you."

Gao Yang had been halfway to being moved by Pi Yun's rigorous and earnest work ethic when he heard Amber expose the truth, and he at once eyed the old druid up and down with suspicion. The latter straightened up from the bench and glared, bristling, at the half-elf: "I'm just trying to swindle a little research funding—is that so much to ask? Whose side are you on, anyway?"

Amber rolled her eyes: "Obviously the side that pays my wages."

"Ahem, ahem," Gao Yang hurriedly coughed twice to cut off the conversation before it could veer off course, "I've come to see the results of your experiments. Seems you've cracked the most critical step in mass-producing the potions?"

At that, Pi Yun set down the worn-out alchemical prop he'd been using to cadge funding, drew himself up smugly, and led Gao Yang over to the alchemy platform on the other side of the laboratory: "Come take a look at this first!"

Gao Yang walked over, curious. On the platform stood a connected array of flasks, retorts, condensers, distillation kettles, and the like—all common tools of alchemists preparing reagents. Though their assembly was rather intricate, there was nothing especially unusual about them compared with the brews Pi Yun had mixed before. What was truly unusual were the complex magic patterns engraved on the surface of two of the vessels, and a strange rune array in the center of the platform.

Gao Yang was certain that no ordinary alchemy platform or alchemical vessel bore any such structures.

"What are these?" Gao Yang asked curiously.

"This is what we call a 'druidic divine-spell array'—designed to take the place of a spellcaster's participation," Pi Yun said, blinking, with considerable pride.

"A druidic divine-spell array?!"

"Yes," Pi Yun nodded. "As you know, the greatest obstacle we faced in mass-producing druidic potions was that the final 'enchanting' step required a spellcaster's participation: only druidic magic can catalyze these reagents."

Here Pi Yun paused, then went on: "Druidic magic was born out of the ancient divine arts of nature and is entirely different from today's conventional magical systems. There is no complete 'spell model—rune array' conversion system for it—which is to say, many druidic spells simply cannot be converted into magic arrays. That's why we can't do what we did with the magic web or the thermal ray gun: rely on arrays engraved on external objects to replace the spellcaster... And that has constrained the mass production of alchemical potions, because druids are few in number and each one's total mana is limited."

Gao Yang stared in astonishment at this little old man who ordinarily carried on so disreputably: "So you've succeeded in converting druidic magic into arrays?"

"Strictly speaking, they are the ancient druidic divine-spell arrays—the 'divine-spell arrays' from back when the Senming sect was still the Church of the Nature God, when druidic magic still functioned as a divine art," Pi Yun said in a low, solemn voice. "To that end I pored over a great many ancient texts. The books cost me one hundred and twenty-seven gold coins, plus the errand fees for having them fetched—altogether that comes to..."

"That tone's a bit too solemn for talking about money. I'll reimburse you later," Gao Yang cut him off. "But I recall that druidic divine arts have all lost their power—could those ancient divine-spell arrays still actually work?"

"Used directly, of course not. But take a look at these runes... don't they seem a little familiar?"

At that reminder, Gao Yang finally noticed that the magic patterns on the vessels' surfaces and the symbols on the platform did indeed look faintly familiar—especially that way of blending elemental runes with divine symbols, which struck a powerful chord of recognition...

A few seconds later it hit him: in the mountain ruins, in the Shadow Realm—that great hybrid array used to control and bind the flesh of a god! That magic array had been drawn by mingling elemental runes with divine symbols!

A look of astonishment came over Gao Yang's face: "This is technology dug out of the ruins?"

"Exactly," Pi Yun nodded. "At the time, you had rubbings made of all the various arrays found in the mountain ruins, but as for the divine-spell portions, Madam Hedy could make neither head nor tail of them, so she came to me for help. Though druidic divine arts are long lost, as an ancient profession that places extreme importance on inheritance, we have always preserved and passed down those divine symbols as pure academic material. Madam Hedy brought me in to help identify what the symbols meant, and in the course of that, I discovered a bold experiment of the Gondor Empire..."

"A bold experiment?" Gao Yang's brows rose. From Pi Yun's tone, he sensed this was likely no simple secret.

Of course, it was also possible this was just the old man's newest trick for cadging funding—and if so, so much the easier to deal with: one good thrashing would do it. After all, he was a seven-hundred-year-old coffin spirit plus a seven-million-year-old satellite spirit; there was no one on this land he could beat who would land him in trouble for disrespecting the elderly...

And if someone insisted on calling it child abuse when he thrashed an old man, then he'd just have to accept it.