The Ultimate Evolution

After Sheyan said that, he flicked his wrist and took out from his bosom a strange-looking woodblock painting. The frame of the woodblock painting was made of walnut. It seemed brand-new, but the cloth stretched across its surface looked rather old.

The material of the “cloth” appeared to be somewhat strange. It looked a little like paper, and also like cloth, but not quite either one of them. If one were to touch it carefully, they would find that it possessed a smoothness akin to paper, but also a flexibility that a piece of paper would not have.

Nevertheless, if the “cloth” was put up against the light of the sun, one would be able to see that the internal structure of the cloth was astonishingly complicated — it was like a labyrinth of interconnected and interweaving tiny channels. It even gave off the illusion that it was breathing, as if it had a life of its own, inhaling air into the interior of the cloth and exhaling through the channels.

That’s right, this object was the powerful item Sheyan had previously obtained, the unique reward of the Golden Side Mission, the Ukiyo-e!

Sheyan had already studied the item carefully. According to some information he obtained through his current military rank, the special thing about the Ukiyo-e lay in that cloth on its surface. The material of this cloth….was human skin!

More precisely, it was the skin of a powerful mage! It was produced by engraving a large number of magic formations on the skin of the mage, then having the skin peeled off — all while the mage was still alive! Such a cruel method was required because the capillary blood vessels would transport oxygen and nutrients to the skin through the blood while a human was alive. The teleportation formation engraved under this condition would have its operational efficiency increased several folds, thanks to the flow of blood.

Of course, the making of an Ukiyo-e painting was absolutely not that simple. The aforementioned description was just the beginning; it still had to go through a series of tedious processes before it turned into the end product. But just from the refining process of the raw material, one could already tell that this object was definitely something very rare. It was indeed worthy of being a unique reward of a Golden Side Mission.

By now, the frozen and shattered T-1000 had begun to rapidly fuse and solidify. How Sheyan wished he could throw another liquid nitrogen bomb its way! However, before the fight, Sheyan had actually asked Dolittle if they could possibly throw the T-1000 directly into a large liquid nitrogen container to freeze it permanently, then slowly deal with the Terminator.

Dolittle did not completely rule out Sheyan’s idea, but he had put forward a prerequisite condition — before doing that, the energy reserve of the T-1000 must first be reduced to less than 15%.

Skynet would always try its best to avoid its top-notch technologies from falling into the hands of mankind. Therefore, according to the settings programmed into the T-1000 by Skynet, when the Terminator found itself in a desperate situation that it could not get out of, it would likely activate its self-destruct program. Needless to say, the power of the self-destruction was terrifying.

However, when the energy reserve of a T-1000 dropped below 15%, various flaws would appear in its subcellular protective shields. Thanks to Dolittle’s in-depth study of liquid alloy technology, he could take advantage of this to successfully prevent a T-1000 from self-destructing.

Dolittle also warned Sheyan that liquid nitrogen freezing should not be Sheyan’s main method of dealing with the T-1000 because of the extremely low temperature it induced. According to Dolittle’s study, once the energy reserve of a T-1000 fell below 15% and flaws appeared in the subcellular protective shields of its liquid metal, the liquid metal may be destroyed in the ultra-low temperature environment. All their effort would be wasted then!

Therefore, the liquid nitrogen bombs should be used conservatively. Sheyan’s ultimate goal at the moment was still to consume the energy of the T-1000 so that its energy reserve would fall below 15%.

But it was not easy to achieve this goal. First, the liquid nitrogen bombs could not be used frequently, as that may lead to the T-1000 self-destructing. Second, they could not be used after the T-1000’s energy reserve had fallen below 15%, for fear of damaging their future research material and making a waste of all their previous effort….

***

According to Dolittle’s research, the most energy-consuming activity for a liquid metal entity was to restructure the body after being completely destroyed, like the liquid nitrogen freezing that the T-1000 had undergone just now. Each time that happened, it would consume about 2% of its energy reserve.

Surely the task was not that difficult then. Just freeze it with liquid nitrogen over 40 times, and the goal would be achieved! But in truth, things were absolutely not that simple. The negative effect of liquid nitrogen bombs aside, the T-1000’s AI was also smarter than most humans!

A human may fall for the same trap once or twice, maybe even three times, but four times or even five times? That’s almost impossible, let alone forty times!

At this moment, Sheyan heaved a long sigh. He pulled back until he was about 100 meters away from the T-1000, then grasped the Ukiyo-e, closed his eyes, and began to channel his MP to paint the likeness of Melody on it.

The distance of 100 meters was chosen for a reason.

He could not retreat too far, or the T-1000 would lose sight of its primary target after it recovered, leading to it grouping up with its subordinates and foiling the delicate balance of the overall situation.

Nor could Sheyan retreat too close, causing his own casting process to be easily interrupted!

At this time, the T-1000 had completely recovered from the frozen state. A large number of sticky silver beads rolled on the ground, constantly colliding with each other, and then merging, finally forming groups of large silver pools!

The cloth on the surface of the Ukiyo-e was yellowish-white in colour, exuding an ancient feel of having seen the long passage of time, and it felt as if time itself was wandering on it. Sheyan concentrated his MP upon it, and a dot appeared on the surface of the cloth.

The dot was formed from Sheyan’s channelled MP.

The way the dot emerged was a bit strange. It was like how a spot on a piece of paper quickly dried, yellowed, burned and blackened when it was put above a candle flame.

The dot started to move and paint like an invisible brush. Although the strokes of the brush were very delicate, they were also quite fast. Each stroke was optimised to achieve the best result.

When Sheyan witnessed this spectacle, he could not help recalling an episode he saw on the Discovery Channel in the real world. It was about a master painter of the Gongbi style painting, which originated from the Tang Dynasty in Ancient China. The painting style was usually used to paint beautiful women with meticulous brushwork. The master painter had 71 different kinds of paint. He had to paint each stroke meticulously and would only finish one painting in five years.

(TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongbi )

The painting process of the Ukiyo-e at this time reminded Sheyan of the fast-motion video of the master painter at work — extremely fast, extremely delicate, extremely complicated strokes!

The image of a naive, beautiful, smiling girl quickly appeared on the Ukiyo-e painting. The aura of nature on the girl was so strong that it threatened to jump out of the painting. Those who laid eyes on her would feel as if they had been transported to the middle of a forest basking in the early morning sunshine. A stream ran to the side, and the flowers were in full bloom. However, although the outline of the girl had already formed on the painting, she had no eyes. That was inevitably a glaring shortcoming which made the likeness appear lacking in life.

Based on the description of the Ukiyo-e, all was ready except one crucial thing. Because Melody, whom Sheyan was summoning, was a friendly entity of considerable might and status, he had to wait for the target’s response. If the target did not assent to the summoning, the summoning would fail. However, in such cases, the failed summoning attempt would not count towards the limited number of use of the Ukiyo-e.

Sheyan was, of course, confident that Melody would answer his call. He had no doubt about it. However, Melody would obviously use this opportunity to mobilise all the Elven elders to try and activate the dimensional formation on their side in order to pinpoint the coordinates of Sheyan’s nightmare realm (although the dimensional channel the Ukiyo-e opened would connect to the Terminator world, it had to go through the Noah Realm C that Sheyan belonged to as a medium). Therefore, she would certainly be a little late.

When the T-1000 Terminator succeeded in restoring its humanoid form, the Ukiyo-e was already shining with a brilliant light. The yellowish painting cloth on it slowly dissolved into the air and turned into a yellowish-white light, which gathered on a nearby tree.

Then, a large number of complex, mysterious, and ancient runes quickly formed on the bark of the tree trunk and rapidly spread to the surroundings.

Soon, all the plants within a kilometer of the tree started to wilt at an astonishing speed. Even the soil in this area became barren and cracked. However, the previous tree continued to thrive. The runes on the bark started to glow with a faint green light, which reminded those who laid eyes on it of spring and life. Then, the runes peeled away from the bark of the tree. A small, delicate hand, carrying with it a holy and refreshing aura, reached out from the gap that the runes had left.

[ Melody Sunstrider, Twilight Elf, leader of the Sunstriders, wielder of the Ring of Air, and the Master of Dawn City, has responded to your summon. ]

[ Melody Sunstrider is about to descend to you. From this moment on, her presence will continuously consume your utility points at the cost of 1000 points per hour. ]

[ Because Melody Sunstrider is too powerful for this world, please choose one of the following limitations: (A) Creatures attacked by Melody Sunstrider will only drop mission-related items, or (B) Melody Sunstrider’s offensive power will be suppressed to a certain degree (defence and HP will remain unchanged). ]

Sheyan no doubt would not allow any mistakes in his quest of obtaining liquid metal. Besides, his main purpose for summoning Melody here was not for her offensive power anyway, but to buy them more time. Therefore, he decisively chose option (B).

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