Chapter 292 - Law of Poison

There were hundreds of thousands of poisonous entities here.

Even if Lu Tianzi only spent ten minutes observing each entity to understand it better, it would still take him hundreds of years before he could cover every single one of these entities!

And that was even without having to come up with the resulting antidote or poison!

Who the hell would have that much time to spare?

Lu Tianzi took a deep breath and calmed himself down, before starting to think things through once more.

Purely out of time constraint, looking at these entities one by one was definitely out of the question.

Since that was the case, he would just have to observe them altogether!

But first, time for a reset!

Lu Tianzi swept his Origin Force across the chamber, annihilating every single one of these entities that had been materialised earlier.

Their lifeless bodies fell to the ground, stacking over each other.

But the amazing thing was that when any of it came into contact with Nanlan Qianxue who was meditating in a corner, they would instantly dissipate into thin air, as though they never existed.

At the same time, Nanlan Qianxue did not seem to even notice the touch of these remains.

That's all the better as well.

This way, at least Lu Tianzi would not have to worry about affecting Nanlan Qianxue's meditation with what he was about to do next.

Lu Tianzi walked over to the centre of the room, standing right beside the talon statue before turning to face one of the four walls.

Here goes!

He split his perception into countless strands, each sinking into an engraving on the wall to activate it.

While he was not able do so for every single engraving at once, it was only a matter of time.

Lu Tianzi swept his perception steadily across the wall, activating every single one of them in one fell swoop.

Beasts and plants materialised one after another without stop, emerging from the wall from left to right like an unstoppable wave.

And Lu Tianzi did not stop after reaching the end of the wall either.

Once he was done with this wall, he immediately moved on to the next, and then the next.

Before long, he had swept his perception across all four walls. With that, hundreds of thousands of entities appeared in the chamber all at once!

By right, there should never have been sufficient space in the chamber to contain every single one of these entities.

But almost as though realising what Lu Tianzi was doing and specifically catering to his needs, the materialised entities no longer grew in size after appearing. The walls were still completely packed right now, but there was at least sufficient space for all of them to roam around the walls freely.

Lu Tianzi closed his eyes.

Due to the sheer number of entities involved, it was impossible to follow all of them with his eyes. Even using the Limitless Mirror Eye would not change anything here.

The only way for him to do so would be to follow them with his perception.

Lu Tianzi stood there in silence, his perception stretching out to cover every single entity that was roaming around the walls.

With that, he was able to recognise whenever one of them collapsed. When that happened, Lu Tianzi would immediately sink his perception into its corresponding engraving, causing another of it to materialise as its replacement.

But doing this was far from enough to get him where he wanted.

After all, he needed to do far more than just observing which entity would collapse after coming into contact with the others.

On top of that, he also had to find out all the different symptoms of their afflictions – whether they would get lethargic, whether they would show signs of aggression, whether they would bleed or wither… and the list only went on and on.

Different poisons worked differently, and there were far too many ways in which a poison could manifest.

In fact, there was even the possibility that only a mixture of poisons would be able to work on certain entities.

This was usually due to a particular entity being relatively more resistant to poison, and would be affected by the poisons from other entities only if it were to come into contact with them in a particular order.

This was a concept tied closely to the very fundamentals of poison, similar to how poison masters were capable of concocting extremely potent poisons simply by mixing milder ingredients together in the correct sequence.

Everything included, there were simply too many factors to consider, too many even for the current Lu Tianzi to pay attention to all at once.

But at the same time, only by understanding the full picture would he be able to come up with a corresponding solution.

Without all these relevant information, not only would he be unable to get to the answer he needed, it might even lead him towards an incorrect answer, rendering all of his efforts meaningless!

That being the case, Lu Tianzi refused to stop.

He continued standing there, taking in every bit of information that came his way.

Whatever he could absorb, he absorbed.

Whatever he could not, he would make a mental note to come back to it later. After all, he could do a reset anytime he wanted.

Time passed quickly, but Lu Tianzi remained unmoving.

Even after a day had passed, Lu Tianzi was still standing in the same position, his eyes closed in concentration.

On the other hand, Nanlan Qianxue let out a deep breath and opened her eyes.

Martial artists might be relatively resistant to hunger after reaching the Essence Condensation realm, but that did not mean they could skip food altogether.

Right now, Nanlan Qianxue was taking a short break from her meditation to take a medicinal pill specially designed to stave off hunger.

She could not help but take a glance at Lu Tianzi while doing so, but it only caused her to frown.

Lu Tianzi was indeed still standing in the same position.

However, there was now an illusory vortex floating in the air right behind him.

It was like a vertical whirlpool that, despite the relatively slow speed of rotation, seemed to be pulling in the very fabrics of reality into a point of absolute nothingness.

Nanlan Qianxue was not unfamiliar with this sight.

When Lu Tianzi first broke through to the Origin Core realm, she had seen it shimmer into existence behind Lu Tianzi when he was testing out his newfound strength.

Thus, she knew immediately that this was Lu Tianzi's Origin Totem.

But that was also what caused her to feel perplexed.

To the best of her understanding, Origin Core realm martial artists generally summoned their Origin Totems in combat, and only when they needed a boost to their strength.

So why would Lu Tianzi summon his Origin Totem right now?

Nanlan Qianxue was right, but only to a certain extent.

What she did not know was that the Origin Totem was not only capable of boosting a martial artist's combat prowess. It was actually capable of boosting a martial artist's overall capabilities, and this included the mental aspect as well.

This time, Lu Tianzi might not be trying to execute a combat technique with all his might, but he was still pushing his perception and mental prowess to the absolute limit.

This had created a huge burden on his psyche, something that Nanlan Qianxue had no way of realising.

Because of that, Lu Tianzi had subconsciously summoned his Origin Totem in order to ease this intensive burden on his psyche.

Of course, this was not without its demerits.

The energy expenditure required to keep an Origin Totem summoned was extremely high, leading to a much faster rate of exhaustion.

If not for that, there would be nothing stopping martial artists from keeping their Origin Totems summoned at all times, making sure that they were perpetually in top condition.

Right now, Lu Tianzi was currently expending his Essence energy at a terrifying speed, but he did not think much of it.

Firstly, his foundation was solid to the point of perfection, which meant that his pool of Essence energy was far greater than that of his peers. This gave him a bit more leeway in terms of his Essence energy expenditure.

Secondly, he was no longer drawn into a virtual world this time, so he still had access to all of his possessions, which also included the large number of energy recovery pills in his spatial ring. As long as he could save time here, Lu Tianzi would not mind even if he had to expend a large number of these pills in the process.

And thirdly, he simply had no other choice.

Even by doing this, Lu Tianzi was still unsure of whether he would be able to clear the test.

Without doing this, who knew how long it would take for him to clear the test, if ever?

If that was the case, he might as well just give up right now!

Nanlan Qianxue naturally did not know all these, but she could tell that Lu Tianzi was calm and composed right now, which meant that he probably had things under control.

Therefore, she simply shrugged and returned to her meditation after a few moments.

While they were both deeply focused on their own matters, time continued to pass.

Another day passed…

Three days…

Then a week.

By now, Lu Tianzi had already popped several dozen energy recovery pills just to sustain himself. This was a significant material loss, but his harvest was just as great.

Disregarding the test itself, his knowledge on poisons had grown tremendously during this time.

After mentally absorbing the various properties of these hundreds of thousands of types of poisons, Lu Tianzi had managed to create a baseline, or a theoretical framework, on how poisons worked as a whole.

All poisons shared certain similarities, which Lu Tianzi defined as the fundamental attributes.

Different types of poison might behave differently, but this was also because they possessed certain secondary attributes that were the cause of these different behaviours.

Sieving out the fundamental attributes from the secondary attributes, Lu Tianzi would then be able to capture the points that made each entity unique.

By extrapolating this theoretical framework and applying it to the various entities, Lu Tianzi was able to simplify the problem, and thus hasten his rate of understanding of these entities. As long as he was able to identify these secondary attributes in each entity, he would be able to come up with a counterstrategy against it.

Just like that, the puzzle before him started unravelling at breakneck speed.

Without him even realising it, the illusory vortex behind him had started to take on a tinge of green.

The forms that Origin Totems took on were not something that the martial artists could control, but they would almost always be influenced by the cultivation techniques and personalities of the martial artists.

In Lu Tianzi's case, it was due to the Heaven Devouring Divine Art and his comprehensions into the Law of Water and Law of Origin that resulted in his Origin Totem taking on the form of a vortex.

And now, the reason the vortex was starting to turn green was because Lu Tianzi had finally managed to comprehend a whole new world law on top of that – the Law of Poison.

Lu Tianzi had already been close to comprehending the Law of Poison after all that he had learnt on Wondertrap Mountain, and his experience in the ancient tomb only served to speed things up a little.

Earlier, he had basked in poison mists, allowing him to feel for himself the true sensation of lethal poison.

And now, he was exposed to hundreds of thousands of different poisonous entities, and not just in the form of words. Instead, he was allowed to experience these poisonous entities in their entirety, bringing him far greater benefit than simply reading about them.

With that, Lu Tianzi finally managed to cross that final hurdle, taking one solid step forward in terms of comprehending his third world law!