Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

If he wanted to use the soul fragments to create a new soul, Yan Xun needed to identify a soul core first.

Like living beings, a soul must have a core. The more powerful the creatures were, the more significant roles the soul cores played. A soul core was related to various abilities of a creature, as well as to the innate attributes.

The first thought of Yan Xun was to create a brave and fearless soul.

He was self-confident that he was good at fighting. However, if he was alone in a war of gods like the one he had witnessed before, he would hardly be able to fight against so many enemies. Even if he had helpers, so would his enemies. What's more, in a war of gods, it had to be the kings versus kings and the soldiers versus the soldiers. Once he and his helpers were blocked by the gods of the opposite side, the battle at the level of Oracles and believers would become a one-sided slaughter.

The main cannon fodder of a war of gods was of course Oracles. However, Yan Xun had no Oracles; Morani and the others had a few Oracles. The only one who had many Oracles was Manissy, the Goddess of Wealth. However, as people all knew, the Oracles and the believers under the Goddess of Wealth were not good at fighting.

Therefore, Yan Xun naturally focused his research on the creation of powerful Oracles.

What's more, when doing scientific research, of course, he should first solve the most difficult and key problem. As long as the most difficult problem was solved, others would naturally be solved as well. When he had talked with a group of players, some researchers had said something about that. When they had set up projects and had persuaded their superiors to invest money, they had repeatedly emphasized the most important and key difficulties with some sentences like "break through this, we can reach the advanced international level," or, "this difficulty is a stubborn disease that troubles blah-blah industry in our country. It seriously affects the self-sufficiency rate." Yan Xun still could recite a few of the sentences.

Yan Xun himself didn't know anything about scientific research. However, although he had no actual experience, he had at least seen others do it. Since the great researchers had all said so, this must be the best way!

With such an idea in his mind, Yan Xun started his research.

To make the soul brave, he naturally needed to pick out the soul fragments which contained more courage and aggression and then put them together.

Identifying the attributes of soul fragments was a very difficult technical task, so even the Great Divine Powers may find it a little difficult. Because the soul fragments themselves were already fragile, a little more strength might make them break. At this point, the Great Divine Powers were less suitable than the Weak Divine Powers because their existences were powerful forces. A "look" already contained relatively strong power for the soul fragments.

However, this was not a problem for Yan Xun. He had the wonderful ability of soul sensing, so he could wrap the soul fragments gently within his own field of sensing force. Therefore, he could protect them while studying them carefully.

"It's a good piece of fragment. It contains the firm belief that a warrior fought to protect his lover until he died!

"Wait a minute, this guy's lover… Why is the name of his lover so strange?

"I'll find out where the rest of the fragments are…

"Got it, his lover was… Holy crap! The man's lover was a horse!

"Damn pervert! Get away! I don't want to use such a perverted soul as the soul core of my Oracle!"

Yan Xun wiped away the cold sweat that actually didn't exist. He simply gave up the soul fragment that he had just thought highly of.

He searched again and found another good soul fragment.

This piece belonged to a person who had resented those people who had persecuted her. When she was dying, her resentment had been stronger than the fear of death. She hated that she couldn't kill more of them.

It took Yan Xun some time to find other pieces of the person's soul, but it turned out she had been a prostitute. The woman had been forced to be a prostitute. She had endured it and prepared poison quietly, and finally, she had poisoned the man in charge. Then she had committed suicide by poisoning herself.

There was no doubt that since she was dead, things would definitely get worse and worse. It was hard to say how many people would get involved, but at least the procuress behind her couldn't escape.

It was nice revenge, but unfortunately, the woman was a half-elf. None of the gods of the Natural God System she had believed in had a priesthood of Revenge. Otherwise, she would be welcomed in that God's Kingdom.

Because her sin was not bad enough to overwhelm her goodness, her soul escaped the degeneration impulsion resulting from sin. She did not fall into hell, nor into the abyss.

Yan Xun inspected the life of this soul with satisfaction. He nodded repeatedly.

Next, he began to create the core of a new soul. He would use this piece as the most important part of the core.

He picked out the pieces that tended to be brave and fierce one by one from the soul fragments. First, he found a less important piece and tried to pick it up with some Divine Power.

Broken.

Yan Xun was stunned for a moment. He looked at his tentacles and then looked at those spirits that had turned into countless light spots. They existed in the smallest and the most basic form. They flowed with the ubiquitous world stream slowly heading to the original place and also the destination of all souls.

"Too much strength? I've got a lot of control already!"

He thought about it and found another piece that had little value. He tried reducing his strength again and slightly touched the soul fragment with his Divine Power.

Broken again.

"What's the matter?! Why are soul fragments so fragile? Are the souls in this world so fragile? No way!"

Yan Xun knew he must have made a mistake somewhere, but he did not continue trying. He opened the box and watched the girls with artificial souls in the box repeating their monotonous and peaceful daily actions. The field of sensing force had been fully unfolded, and he was carefully observing the structure of their souls.

According to the introduction of the Nightwatcher's technology, the soul fragments needed to be deeply processed with Divine Power. He needed to erase those deep impressions of the previous life and pick the strong feelings out and throw them away. Then the fragments could be restored to a purer state in order to be used to reorganize a new soul.

If he used them to reorganize a new soul directly before he did the above steps, the conflicting ideas and memories in each soul would strongly reject each other. Then the new soul would possibly break down. Even if it was lucky and did not break down, the soul would not slowly bridge the differences. It wouldn't be able to condense them into a complete entity through time. Instead, it would keep the state of all the intricate ideas rejecting each other. As a result, it would become a mad soul whose ideas and attitudes would change without reason at any time.

Such a madman couldn't be a believer or a fighter; he would even be unqualified as a suicide bomber. The reason was that nobody could be sure whether he would suddenly change his mind or not. Maybe he would regard the god who created him as an enemy.

Yan Xun studied them carefully for a long time, but he still failed to get the gist.

In the Nightwatcher's statement, it didn't seem very complicated. However, why was it so difficult to do this by himself?

He meditated for a long time, but he still could not figure out where the problem was.

In desperation, he had to find Javier and asked him to contact the Nightwatcher, the damn pervert who seemed tall and powerful but in fact was a pedo.

Obviously, the Nightwatcher had been waiting for Yan Xun to contact him. He arrived as soon as he got the news. Yan Xun exchanged a few words of greetings with him and then asked about the difficulties he had encountered. The Nightwatcher gave him an unexpected answer.

"There's no other way, just practice slowly?" Yan Xun asked, opening his eyes wide with surprise.

"Yes, just practice slowly. It's a technical job, all depending on the feeling of your hands," the Nightwatcher said. "A little more is too much, and a little less is too little. I can't teach you the subtlety of it."

"That's too tough!"

"There's no other way, but you are good at fighting and grow fast. You can get the experience very quickly. And if you can find the right direction from the beginning, you'll surely be able to do it in 20 or 30 years as long as you concentrate on practicing!!" The Nightwatcher said in a positive tone of encouragement. "You got this!"

You got this!?F*ck you!

Yan Xun held back his swearing and reluctantly accepted this fact.

It's just like the story of the oil seller that I learned of in high school. The oil seller concentrated on pouring oil for 30 years, and he could naturally pour the oil through the hole in the center of the coin without wetting the coin at all. Well, I admit that many of the world's best skills are practiced like this, but I'm not going to become a microscopic carving craftsman, so do I need to practice like this?

After seeing off the Nightwatcher, Yan Xun looked at the soul fragments that were waiting for him to process them or for him to practice. He felt so bad.

He tried picking up a piece of worthless soul fragment, controlled his power as much as possible and wiped it slightly.

Broken.

He shook his head, picked up another piece and rubbed it gently.

Broken.

After nearly 20 pieces were broken, he finally reduced his strength to a point where he could wipe the soul fragments slightly without breaking them.

Yan Xun was so overjoyed that he couldn't help but laugh and scream for a long time before he came back to work.

Then, he found that he shouldn't have been happy just now.

The soul fragment was indeed unbroken, but the things he should have erased were not gone. Most of them were still there.

One more time? Looking at this lucky piece which survived in his hands, Yan Xun chose to give up without any confidence and sealed it up as a souvenir.

Anyway, when the soul was broken, the "whole life" of this creature was completely over. It didn't matter how the fragments were because the fragments were not able to constitute a perceptual system.

If they were so complete, they wouldn't be called fragments.

Yan Xun continued to practice, and pieces of soul fragments were transformed into spirits one after another under his Divine Power. Sometimes, some of them were not completely broken, but they were still far from the target.

After months of being so busy, he finally couldn't stand it. Yan Xun threw the mountain of soul fragments down to the ground and swore.

Without looking back, he jumped up and said, "I'm tired! I need to relax!"