Chapter 251: Personally
One had to admit that Doctor Wang, Rose, and Truman’s methods were ‘correct’. Only by conducting experiments on others could they protect themselves from the risks and dangers of the trials and errors of developing new things. Nothing ever appeared out of thin air. Even the Flash Step that Bai Yi used had only been achieved through countless trials of various methods to control the explosive force of special energy. He had injured himself at least a hundred times over the development process.
Special energy resided in every cell of the body and every part of the soul. Methods like circulating energy through certain meridians had no effect on the control of the special energy at all.
To control the explosive force of special energy, they needed to use a Computation Routine to arrange and organize the energy.
A Computation Routine is a method by which special energy was arranged and organized in order to effectively make use of its power and perform various kinds of skills. Computation Routine was what Bai Yi’s team named this method back on the Devil Isles after a bunch of them argued the name’s merits over the other candidates like ‘Spell Chant’, ‘Incantation’, etc. for over half a day.
Every Computation Routine had a certain calculation method that had been developed over a long period of trial and error, but all they had to do now was to follow the prescribed steps when using these Computation Routines.
The control of the body and the special energy inside the body were both awareness intensive activities. For example, if you asked a great painter to paint ten different masterpieces, he would find it extremely tiring no matter how good of a painter he was. However, if one could just photocopy the same ten paintings, it would be incredibly easy by comparison. Coincidentally, special energy also had this ‘memory effect’. As long as one could make use of this ‘memory effect’ of the special energy itself, one could ‘photocopy’ the process of using each skill and greatly reduce the strain on awareness.
Replicating was always easier than creating something new!
Even so, the Computation Routine was still extremely complex because it was a type of detailed energy use calculation. Hence, Bai Yi’s team gradually created ‘hand seals’. The saying went, the ten fingers were connected to the heart and were extensions of it. Thus, hand seals could direct the individual’s awareness to a certain extent and reduce the difficulty of the Computation Routines.
Ancient humans created and developed many things that many people thought useless, but they weren’t actually useless. Future generations have simply lost the essence of their ways and speak from a scientific perspective to say that the ancient people’s creations were all useless. What they didn’t know was that they simply didn’t have the ability to understand their ways.
A good Computation Routine could produce a great qualitative change in the power of a skill!
For example, both graphite and diamond are made of carbon. However, due to the difference in the arrangement of the carbon atoms, the former was almost worthless while the latter was greatly coveted.
A Computation Routine precisely arranged and organized the energy inside one’s body which resulted in a qualitative change. However, the arrangement of energy was extremely complex. It was much more complex than arranging a physical structure because the energy was always flowing and changing. Hence, it was extremely difficult to develop an effective way of using the Computation Routines. So far, Bai Yi’s team had only started to make a little headway that couldn’t even be considered to be at the entry level, and they hadn’t reached a level of qualitative change yet. This kind of groping around in the dark came with a huge element of risk, and any carelessness would result in…!
…
The Flash Step was a kind of footwork they created by chance while on the Devil Isles and it allowed a person to accelerate explosively in an instant. It was not suitable for long-distance travel, but in a short distance, one could almost avoid somebody’s line of sight such that normal people’s eyes couldn’t capture their movements. Using the Flash Step required a special Computation Routine that arranged the special energy inside the body to produce an explosive force.
Bai Yi stepped with a Flash Step and instantly disappeared from Rose’s eyes.
Rose didn’t have time to react, and the next thing she knew, Bai Yi stood right in front of her with Red Kiss pressed against the center of her brow. Rose stared at Bai Yi with a dumbfounded expression, while Bai Yi’s eyes just contained a cold indifference.
“Step aside!”
Rose’s eyes flashed. Her lips cracked open and she seemed to remember the experiences on the Devil Isles where danger was at around every corner and her life was constantly at risk. At that moment, her body’s natural instincts awakened. She had really been living too well over the past few years and had forgotten the time living on the Devil Isles. She was foolish enough to treat a battle like a child’s game, and a battle with Bai Yi at that. In the next moment, Rose’s right foot pushed down forcefully, and with a ‘CRACK!’, countless water geysers broke through the ground and destroyed their footing.
Bai Yi’s Red Kiss pressed forward, but the moment he pierced through Rose’s skin a small stream of blood flowed out from the wound and wrapped around his sword.
Rose’s life field could control water, but in truth, what she could control best was her own blood.
In that instant, Bai Yi felt an unimaginable resistance from that small stream of blood.
‘BOOM!’
The gushing water erupted around Rose, burst through the research facility itself, and formed a gigantic geyser shooting into the sky. A huge water dragon rose from the research facility and crashed down. At the same time, all the air in the research facility was pulled towards them and spun at a frenzied rate. As the two attacks continued to ravage the surrounding area, another loud ‘BOOM!’ sounded and the research facility exploded from the struggle between the hurricane and the water dragon.
‘Whoosh!’
Three spherical balls of air shot out from the chaotic water hurricane, and Bai Yi floated in the sky with Alodia and Ulisses.
At this time, Rose stood on the tail of the water dragon, and a stream of blood flowed from the wound between her brows into the water. The blood didn’t dissipate in the water but spun slowly. It circled around Rose in tiny streams and protected her. Rose lifted her head. All the water that had erupted rejoined the water dragon and enlarged it. It turned its head toward Bai Yi. However, Bai Yi only glanced at it before flying away with Alodia and Ulisses.
Rose’s expression turned dark for a moment before she collapsed the water dragon and returned the blood to her body. After that, Rose touched the wound between her brows. Bai Yi wasn’t an opponent that she could face alone. To take revenge for Amy, she wasn’t anywhere near enough. Rose jumped out of the research facility swiftly and ran toward a certain direction. In the lowest area of the research facility, water continued to gush out of a huge water pipe.
…
“Why didn’t you kill her?” Ulisses asked.
Bai Yi glanced at Ulisses and landed. After asking, Ulisses suddenly realized that he was too reckless with that question. Bai Yi’s goal wasn’t to kill Rose in the first place. He just wanted to leave the research facility and make arrangements for the little baby girl. Furthermore, Bai Yi cared more about how the people in his team were doing now, not fighting a life and death battle with once-familiar people.
“Ulisses, we have known each other for many years, right?” Bai Yi asked Ulisses.
“En, it’s already been more than eight years,” Ulisses nodded.
He was one of the evolved humans that had gone berserk in New Christchurch that Bai Yi saved. Afterward, Bai Yi wanted to construct a resting place in which to pass the Hypersomnia Stage and invited him to join the team. Ever since then, Ulisses stayed on Bai Yi’s team.
“Eight years, huh? Even after so long, I still didn’t know the true you.”
“Team Leader, I don’t know what you are talking about,” Ulisses denied.
“Talk. What motivated you to start this incident? What is your true identity?” Bai Yi asked and stared at Ulisses.
Ulisses froze to the spot and didn’t dare to move as if he were a toad being stared at by a snake. As Bai Yi’s teammate for eight years, Ulisses understood Bai Yi’s decisiveness and coldness deeply. He heard that Bai Yi wasn’t this way before. Previously, he was just a normal human and even a very kind person at that. What caused Bai Yi to change was a very deep and heavy past.
“I’ll talk!” Ulisses spoke two words.
“I’m a sergeant in the American army who was sent here after the activated cells broke out in New Zealand. My mission was just to collect resources and materials here, but after getting infected by activated cells the higher-ups ordered me to stay on the Devil Isles to observe and get close to people worth getting close to like you, Truman, and any other evolved human with prestige on the Devil Isles. My mission was to deliver anything useful out for my country to use and research.”
“After coming back to Tasmania, I received a new mission. The mission was to lure you so that you could see the dark side of the city and push you into conflict with your original friends,” Ulisses finished speaking and looked at Bai Yi.”
“Motive!”
“I don’t know. Did you think I would l know the true objective behind all this with my status? The only thing I know is that the higher-ups ordered me to do so,” Ulisses said and shrugged.
“Who else on the team?”
“Romain. He belongs to Germany and had a similar mission to me. We found out each other’s identity by chance one day, but we didn’t expose each other and agreed to not hinder each other’s movements. After all, it wouldn’t benefit either of us if we got exposed.”
Ulisses didn’t bother hiding all this. Since he was already exposed, he wouldn’t try to cover for his rival. Although their missions were quite similar, they weren’t on the same team.
“Hahahaha!”
Bai Yi started laughing. Seriously, he thought all along that it was strange that they rarely saw people from other countries when there were so many of them. Apparently, it wasn’t that they hadn’t gone to the Devil Isles, but they had infiltrated it long ago. More than likely, only the first batch of people had survived the Devil Isles since the people who were sent there later couldn’t do much. By then, the creatures of the Devil Isles had already become too powerful, so sending normal humans there was just the same as sending them to their deaths.
“How loyal!” Bai Yi commented and ceased his laughter.
“I also have my own reasons even though, in the beginning, the only condition for selection was absolute loyalty,” Ulisses replied after a period of silence.
“You can be loyal to your country to the very end then!” Bai Yi said lightly.
Ulisses was extremely shocked. He didn’t think that Bai Yi wouldn’t let him go even though he revealed everything. Ulisses circulated the energy in his body desperately and tried to run away, but an intense pain spread through his body and robbed him of all his strength.
Bai Yi wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Even if it was against a familiar teammate, he would turn his heart to ice and do what needed to be done personally!