Chapter 668: Fusion Technology and Drastic Change

The shadowless lamp above the operating table went out.

Eric opened his eyes to a silver-white ceiling. The dense runes slowly dimmed in the afterglow of the lights.

He lay there for a few seconds, then sat up and looked down at his own hands. They felt no different from before the procedure.

He clenched his fists, released them, and moved his wrists and shoulders, confirming there was no unusual sensation.

He even felt a bit hungry.

“It seems… there’s no change at all.” He touched his chest. That was the core node of the fifth-round seal. The skin was smooth, without any bulges or scars.

Jie Ming stood beside the workbench, putting away the surgical instruments.

“You already had four Strange sealed inside your body,” Jie Ming’s steady voice came from the direction of the workbench. “Flesh, soul, vitality, and mind—the four you are most familiar with. You’ve already used the first two very proficiently when treating patients. Flesh Distortion allows you to perceive and repair physical injuries, while Soul Resonance lets you touch and mend cracks in the soul. You use the vitality and mind Strange less often, but you’ve mastered the basic operations.”

Eric nodded.

Flesh Distortion and Soul Resonance were his signature abilities as the chief physician of Noren Clinic.

Without these two Strange, he could never have established himself before the Association’s physicians group.

“The fifth Strange now sealed inside you,” Jie Ming put down the instrument in his hand and turned to look at him, “is specifically for coordinating those four.”

He walked over to the operating table, took a palm-sized mirror from the rack, and handed it to Eric.

Eric took the mirror and finally noticed what was different about himself.

His eyes appeared deeper. The color of his pupils had shifted from light gray to dark gray, and the whites of his eyes carried a faint, nearly invisible dark golden sheen.

“Its name isn’t important,” Jie Ming said. “What matters is its trait: Coordination. It is not the strongest, not even the second strongest. Without it, the four Strange in your body can still operate individually. But they will conflict with one another, like four musicians with their own ideas playing together without a conductor. The rhythm will become chaotic, the tones will deviate, and over time, your soul will be torn apart by their discord.”

“With it, those four Strange can work together as a team. However, it’s not exactly a conductor. It’s more like… a harmonizer. You need to keep that in mind.”

Jie Ming took the mirror back from Eric’s hand, returned it to the rack, then leaned against the operating table with his arms crossed, calmly watching him. “Your Strange sealing is now complete. Each has its own role. From now on, it mainly depends on your own development and utilization of these abilities. You must learn to understand, fuse, and recreate the Strange powers within your body. Treat the powers of these five Strange as pigments and paint with them yourself. Do not let them scribble randomly on the canvas.”

Eric jumped down from the operating table. His knees bent slightly upon landing as he felt his body’s weight and balance. Everything was normal—actually, even better than normal.

He felt as if he had just woken from a good sleep: energetic, light-bodied, and every joint moved freely.

“Teacher,” he looked up at Jie Ming, “ordinary spirit mediums wouldn’t seal five Strange inside themselves, right? That would be suicide.”

Jie Ming glanced at him.

The look was calm, but Eric felt immense pressure from that gaze.

Jie Ming did not speak, simply letting out a soft snort.

The snort was exceptionally clear in the quiet underground laboratory, like a glass bead falling onto a metal surface. The lingering sound carried undisguised, even deliberate mockery.

Realizing he had asked a stupid question, Eric obediently closed his mouth.

He climbed back onto the operating table, sat cross-legged, placed his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and began using his consciousness to sense the presence of the five Strange within his body.

They were like five stars of different colors, floating deep in his soul and emitting energy fluctuations of varying frequencies.

Eric took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

He understood his teacher’s thinking.

After all, for several years now, Jie Ming had gradually instilled this idea into him.

Through increasingly advanced Strange theory classes and research topics that approached the essence, he also understood what he was doing.

The technology for perfect fusion between humans and the Strange was far more difficult than Jie Ming had initially expected.

It was not because the Strange were too difficult to control, but because human souls were too fragile.

No matter how well controlled, after colliding with human souls, the Strange would inevitably assimilate them over time.

Of course, complete isolation could avoid this problem.

But if human souls and the Strange were completely isolated, then there would be no point at all.

Therefore, to complete this technology, one had to first change the souls of ordinary people.

After studying all the materials left by the professor, Jie Ming reached a conclusion: the professor’s direction was correct, but the path was wrong. The professor had been trying to improve the “compatibility” between Strange and humans by modifying sealing structures, adjusting energy frequencies, and optimizing fusion processes. But that path had limits, and the professor had already reached its end.

Thus, Jie Ming chose an entirely different route.

He decided to combine the Strange fusion theory he had discovered with the technical-level sealing methods.

First, allow the Strange to adapt to one another, forming a stable, self-consistent, self-regulating system. Then, integrate this system as a whole into the human soul.

Eric was the first “experimental subject” of this idea.

Jie Ming had carefully selected three Strange related to essence, energy, and spirit from over ten thousand samples, plus two more related to mind and coordination.

To ensure the success rate of the experiment, Jie Ming deliberately chose the lowest-tier Hazard Grade Strange—extremely weak even among Hazard Grade ones.

With essence, energy, and spirit as the foundation, mind as the commander, and coordination as the “adhesive,” the resulting compatibility between the Strange and human soul would become extremely high!

From the final results, Jie Ming’s idea had worked well. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The reason Eric could become the doctor he was now was not only due to his talent and diligence, but more so because of the five Strange within his body. Especially Flesh Distortion and Soul Resonance. Through day-after-day use, they had fused with him to a depth far exceeding that of ordinary spirit mediums.

“Teacher.” Eric opened his eyes, his expression serious. “I roughly understand. Once I can completely control these five Strange, skillfully use their abilities, and make them cooperate and fuse with one another… at that point, my own life form will also transform.” He paused, his voice lowering slightly. “I will become the first human to perfectly fuse with the Strange.”

Jie Ming shook his head.

“In theory, yes. But you know the distance between theory and practice yourself.”

“Moreover… even if you succeed, it only represents your individual case. If we truly want to achieve perfect fusion between humans and the Strange, there are still several more steps to take.”

After thinking for a moment, Jie Ming added, “However, once you truly complete the transformation of your life form, using you as the foundation to extract Strange power and fuse it with other humans should make things much simpler.”

“Without considering the strength of the power obtained after fusion or limitations on sample quantity, the Strange power extracted from you should be the most suitable material for advancing the human-Strange fusion project.”

Eric fell silent. In this solemn academic atmosphere, he suddenly thought of a question that had nothing to do with the serious discussion.

His mouth moved before his brain could stop it:

“Teacher, by the way… ever since I gained control of that Flesh Distortion Strange, my appearance hasn’t changed much. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I feel like I look no different from five years ago. Will I also end up like you, with my appearance never changing?”

He looked at Jie Ming’s face. It was exactly the same as ten years ago, with no traces left by time.

Jie Ming glanced at him. The mockery in that gaze was deeper than the soft snort earlier.

“This is a sign that your control over the Flesh Distortion Strange is insufficient and your related knowledge is inadequate,” Jie Ming’s tone remained unhurried. “Otherwise, you could freely manipulate your own flesh and blood to change into any form at will. Not just appearance—height, body type, skin color, hair color, even se…”

He did not finish the sentence.

Jie Ming’s expression suddenly changed.

His pupils contracted sharply for an instant, then expanded violently. Dark golden light exploded deep within them.

Without any conscious thought, his body leaped upward and smashed through the ceiling of the underground laboratory.

The silver-white metal plates tore like paper above his head. Fragments of concrete and brick flew to both sides along his ascent path. He turned into a streak of flowing light, bursting from underground into the first-floor bookstore, then smashing through the bookstore’s roof and shooting into the gray sky.

Eric was stunned for a split second, then subconsciously followed.

His body reacted faster than his mind.

The Flesh Distortion Strange within him operated at full power in that instant, raising the strength of his muscles and bones to their limit in a fraction of a second. His legs bent slightly before he kicked off the ground like an arrow leaving the bowstring, shooting upward along the channel Jie Ming had created.

Gravel and dust struck his face, but his skin automatically hardened, blocking all impacts.

His hands reached forward during the ascent, grabbed the edge of the hole in the bookstore roof, and with a flip, he landed steadily on the ridge.

Jie Ming hovered in the air about fifty meters above the bookstore, his robes fluttering loudly in the wind.

His head was tilted upward, his gaze fixed straight at the sky.

Eric followed his gaze, and his own expression turned grim.

Because the sky had changed.

The sky above Mist Capital had never been blue.

For decades, except for the day Jie Ming had punched a hole through it, it had always been grayish-white whether sunny or cloudy. Eric and the residents of Mist Capital had long grown accustomed to that grayness, just as they were accustomed to breathing and heartbeats.

But now, the gray was gone.

In its place was an extremely bizarre, unnatural dark purple.

This dark purple was evenly distributed, clearly not something formed naturally. It looked as if someone had covered the entire sky with a massive purple canvas. Fine black patterns were mixed within the purple, slowly writhing. At first glance, they resembled the veins of some enormous creature.

“This is…” Eric’s voice sounded hoarse.

He stared at the dark purple sky, feeling as if he were looking at something that should not exist in this world.

Jie Ming remained hovering in the air without descending.

His gaze shifted from the sky down to the ordinary people walking on the streets.

The bakery owner’s wife was wiping the counter at her doorway, moving as slowly and leisurely as usual.

Two children chased each other in the alley, their laughter clear and joyful.

A man in a gray coat walked along the cobblestone path, carrying a cloth bag and holding an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

Except for a portion of people who had been drawn by the sound of Jie Ming smashing through the rooms earlier, the vast majority of residents appeared completely normal. No one showed any reaction to the change in the sky’s color.

This meant they could not see the bizarre change in the sky.

In other words, only high-perception individuals such as spirit mediums or wizards could detect it.

“Teacher.” Eric heard his own voice squeeze out from his throat, sounding nothing like himself. “What is this?”

Jie Ming did not answer.

He hovered in the air, his eyes slightly narrowed, as if sensing something.