Ninety: Three Days to Success (3000)

Is there any way to solve it? Xiu Nan withdrew his hand and asked.

"No..." Floating Ice shook his head. "All we can do is wait for it to sprout on its own, until it completely breaks through the soil. White Saint said that is when he will make his move. Even then, the success rate is only fifty percent..."

"If it succeeds, I can keep living. If it fails, all my nourishment will be drained away, and I will become a vessel..."

Xiu Nan listened in silence from the side, and with only a little imagination he could understand. The feeling of not knowing when one might suddenly die would drive anyone to madness.

The two of them talked for more than an hour afterward, like old confidants reunited after a long separation. Floating Ice had never spoken so freely, pouring out every word in his heart as he did today, and at this moment he felt indescribably relieved.

Omega could actually have been a confidant for Floating Ice as well, but as a teacher Omega stood too high above him, and there was an innate gulf between them. In contrast, Xiu Nan, this junior apprentice, could let him complain without restraint and speak until his heart was empty.

"I am truly grateful that you have been willing to listen to my rambling nonsense all this time. I hope my negativity will not affect your mood, Tang," Floating Ice said with a smile. His cheeks, soaked red by the hot spring, looked like two halves of an apple.

"Don't worry. I have been quite optimistic since I was a child," Xiu Nan said as he stood and shook his head. "If Senior Brother ever has troubles he cannot vent, you can come find me. I am always ready to listen..."

Ten minutes later, the two parted ways, and Xiu Nan returned to his room. He lay down on the gray-white stone bed and gently touched one of the rune buttons on its surface.

In an instant, the hard stone slab below him became soft as a sponge, swaying from side to side with his movements.

Where it should have sunk in, it did, fitting the human body with uncanny precision. Xiu Nan pressed it with his hand and immediately felt it was like thick glue beneath him. A push from his palm made it sink, and when he lifted his hand away, the stone quickly returned to its original form.

"It seems the Milo Daren school is not merely a school that worships the study of special beast-runes. Their rune masters are also researching how to combine runes with daily life, integrating them into household objects..."

Along the way, Xiu Nan had seen sandworm carts made into rune vehicles, seen rune condiment boxes shaped like loaves of bread, seen stone lamps that could glow, and seen stone beds as soft as sponges.

They all sounded like low-level products, but in fact none of them were simple. Runes and circuits were usually engraved onto objects or materials of special composition, materials that needed excellent conductivity and energy retention.

Yet the stone bed beneath Xiu Nan was nothing more than an ordinary slab of rock. It was only through the special effect of runes, turning decay into marvel, that it could produce such an extraordinary phenomenon.

The rune masters of the Milo Daren school all had their own eccentric ideas and research. They themselves had been drawn here by the school’s inclusiveness and relaxed atmosphere. Milo Daren provided the raw materials and a relatively stable research environment, and in combination with a group of peculiar geniuses...

Naturally, a series of strange sparks would fly.

"These next forty days, I will study here properly," Xiu Nan murmured to himself. He had never imagined that so many years after graduating from university, he would still need to study with all his strength. And yet he welcomed it gladly.

For the next more than two days, Xiu Nan stayed shut in his room, devoting himself to understanding the Thornflower Rune in one continuous stretch. When a person pours all their energy into one thing, their focus is at its greatest, and their learning speed is at its fastest.

He cut off outside disturbances and spoke with no one.

Finally, at noon on the fourth day after arriving at the Milo Daren school, Xiu Nan had initially condensed the Thornflower Rune!

He stood at the very center of the room, his right ring finger lightly tracing through the air, sketching repeatedly in the empty space.

At the same time, a thornflower was gradually taking shape in his mind—roots, stem, leaves, thorns, blossom...

With a slight flick of his finger, the bud that had been on the verge of blooming suddenly burst open, erupting into colors of the most exquisite beauty.

His whole body jolted, and he froze in place. In his opened pupils, there seemed faintly to be a bronze thornflower.

One second later, Xiu Nan returned to normal.

He turned his head to look around, only to feel that he had never been so clear-minded in his life. It was as if the gray mist that had wrapped around him since birth had been utterly blown away, and he could now see the real world.

His gaze swept over the various furnishings in the room, and Xiu Nan vaguely felt that in an instant he could estimate most of their rough dimensions, specific structures, and even a hazy method of manufacture. It was simply astonishing.

He casually picked up a book from the desk and flipped through it rapidly, pages rustling and snapping as they fell.

Ten lines at a glance, even half a page at a glance!

Xiu Nan only felt as though one character after another were cheering and leaping into his brain, eager to be swallowed by him and become part of the sea of knowledge.

A book of a little over a hundred pages, after only two quick passes, he had learned it all and could recite every word by heart.

This was already extremely impressive, but it still could not compare with quantum-wave Xiu Nan. Even with multiple boosts, he was still far from the level of reading a book in one second. Other people could even obtain the knowledge in a book without looking at it, and compared with them, Xiu Nan still lagged far behind.

He closed the book and did a quick calculation.

His learning speed was about one and a half times what it had been before.

What did that mean? Before, Xiu Nan could make one day count as thirty days; now he could make one day count as forty-five! Add to that the five percent bonus from the apprentice ring, and each of his days was now comparable to forty-seven days for an ordinary person.

Forty-seven multiplied by forty—roughly five years!

Amazing. Xiu Nan and the Thornflower Rune were simply a match made in heaven! Or rather, a disciplined life and the Thornflower Rune were the most perfectly matched things under heaven!

He was still only in the one-flower state, while the thornflower in Xiu Nan’s mind had nine blossoms. Assuming each bloom increased learning speed by half a time, then fully opening all nine would mean a total increase of four and a half times. That would make one day of Xiu Nan's disciplined life equivalent to half a year for an ordinary person!

Suppressing the excitement in his heart, Xiu Nan put the Thornflower Rune away again. He had already completed Omega's test, but for the moment he was not in a hurry to verify it.

When Omega began the assessment tomorrow, things would naturally fall into place; there was no need to create complications now.

Xiu Nan stroked his chin and suddenly realized that Omega's assessment was actually quite difficult for ordinary geniuses. Even he had spent nearly three days, equivalent to ninety days. Yet the deadline Omega had given was thirty-five days. Anyone who could be selected under such conditions would be an absolute learning genius.

Knock, knock, knock...

"Tang, are you in there?"

Floating Ice's clear voice suddenly came from outside.

"Yes, Senior Brother." Xiu Nan walked over and opened the door.

Floating Ice took one look at Xiu Nan, whose hair was a little disheveled, and said, "I thought you'd died in there..."

"Actually, you don't need to work yourself so hard. Just remember the points I told you about, and thirty-five days is absolutely enough to finish. Don't wear your body out from studying... After all, you're the only normal person in our branch..."

With one hand against the doorframe, Floating Ice spoke in a faint, lingering tone.

"..." Xiu Nan inexplicably felt a chill along his back.

"Ah, Senior Brother, actually I already..."

"No need to explain. Anyway, we'll just take it step by step slowly. Go take a bath first, have lunch, and then come find me in Laboratory B-3 in the core area."

As soon as Floating Ice finished speaking, he shut the door.

Xiu Nan stood there in a daze for a second, but then a new thought came to him. Since the Thornflower Rune had already been successfully condensed, he might as well take the chance to get in touch with his senior brother and ask about mutated runes. Everyone Xiu Nan had met these past few days had said that Senior Brother Floating Ice was a genius in the study of mutated runes, having already produced many valuable results in succession.

He was the person in the Milo Daren school who had gone farthest along the path of rune mutation—a master of rune mutation!

After washing up, Xiu Nan put on his apprentice ring, draped his black cloak over himself, and slowly walked out.

Following the gray-white corridor, he came to the end of the passage and lightly pressed a black rune.

With a swish, the wall before him suddenly split open.

Inside was a rectangular sealed chamber.

Xiu Nan stepped inside, and the wall closed automatically. He faintly sensed himself rising upward, the rune elevator carrying him along. Such elevators were not like those of later ages, where one dug a vertical shaft and moved straight up and down.

The rune elevator was built from runes, forming a rectangular enclosed space within solid rock walls. A person stood inside, and the sealed chamber could move freely through the stone.

It could appear at any place marked with a fixed-point rune, transporting the user to their destination.

About a minute later, Xiu Nan felt the rune elevator give a slight jolt, and the stone wall in front of him opened with a swish.

He appeared in a cellar, dim at a glance. There was a faint smell of rot here, mixed with a trace of blood.

Xiu Nan stepped inside, and the rock wall behind him closed.

The moment his foot landed, the black lamp shades at the top of the cellar seemed to receive the signal and instantly lit up.

Xiu Nan looked around, his pupils shrinking slightly.

The place was filled with metal stands of all sizes. On the black metal racks sat row upon row of glass jars. Each jar, filled with viscous liquid, had a label on its surface recording the specimen's information, time, and organs.

Such as the one before Xiu Nan's eyes.

Styx Jellyfish, half specimen, second-ring, noon on May 12, 1133 of the Lensa calendar, low value.

Besides jellyfish, with one glance he could also see all sorts of other things. For example, a white brain like tofu, two eyeballs still attached to nerves, an entire strip of peeled blood-red skin, a shapeshifting magic-suction worm...

There was even an entire extracted circulatory system, taken from a creature called the Flying Ghost Ape.

Crack—the cellar door above suddenly opened. A slender figure nimbly jumped down.

"Tang, what do you think of my collection?"

Xiu Nan glanced at the eerie cellar and said, "Very impressive. Just what a rune master should be like."