Chapter 79: Self-Created Bubble Clone Technique
Nora and Yu Xian walked side by side on their way to school.
Without drawing attention to herself, Nora handed Yu Xian a small black box. "Here, for you."
As she quietly observed his reaction, Yu Xian accepted the box. He examined it briefly, then looked at Nora in confusion. "What is this?"
Nora was curious about why Yu Xian seemed to have some connection to her father. Seeing that he genuinely appeared not to recognize the box, she shook her head. "No idea. My dad suddenly took control of Roche today and gave me this box. He told me to pass it to you. Do you know my father?"
Yu Xian nodded. "I suppose you could say that."
Although he had never actually met Marcus, after last night, he could indeed be considered acquainted with the old man.
He studied the black box for a while and discovered it could be opened from one side. Inside it were two strange ports. It appeared to be an electronic device that required a specific type of cable to function.
What antique is this?
Yu Xian took out his phone, snapped a photo, and quickly searched for it online. The black box turned out to be a solid-state drive that had been obsolete for several centuries.
It really is an antique.
The solid-state drive contained the five blood arts Marcus had promised him the night before. However, before he could access its contents, Yu Xian first needed to buy a cable capable of reading data from such an ancient storage device.
Yu Xian slipped his phone back into his pocket, took Nora's hand, and headed toward the electronics district. "Come with me, I need to pick up a few things."
Nora had originally intended to ask where they were going, but the moment Yu Xian's hand closed around hers, her mind went blank. All she could hear was a chorus of honking geese echoing in her head. From then on, she could do nothing but follow obediently in his footsteps.
***
By 9:00 AM, Yu Xian was already at school, sitting in class. With his hands tucked inside his desk drawer, he stared at the files he had retrieved from the solid-state drive, his expression darkening.
He had underestimated just how shameless Marcus could be. At the same time, he could only blame himself for being too naive. He should have asked what blood arts were available first. Better yet, he should have been the one to choose them.
The five blood arts Marcus had sent him were Blood Shield, Blood Barrier, Blood Regeneration, Blood Ward, and Blood Healing.
Absolutely shameless. Every single one of them is a defensive blood art.
He had no use for Blood Shield or Blood Barrier. As a spatial ability user, he could avoid most attacks simply by teleporting away. Those two blood arts were practically useless to him.
And Blood Regeneration? Who exactly is Marcus looking down on?
Even if Yu Xian lost an arm, all he had to do was sleep it off, and it would grow back by the next day. He did not need a regeneration art whatsoever.
Fortunately, Marcus had not gone too far. Blood Ward and Blood Healing were at least somewhat useful. Blood Ward was designed to defend against mental attacks. It could block memory theft, hypnosis, and other similar abilities. Blood Healing, meanwhile, worked much like Zhang Shou's Healing Touch.
Both were mystic arts that dispelled negative statuses. With Blood Healing, Yu Xian would no longer have to worry about poisons, although most poisons had never been much of a threat to him in the first place. Thanks to his Super Stomach, he could even absorb poisons as food.
At the front of the classroom, the bald mathematics teacher was explaining a question that could appear on the college entrance examination. The students listened attentively, occasionally lowering their heads to take notes.
Yu Xian divided his attention between the lesson and practicing the blood arts. With his hands tucked inside his spatially expanded desk drawer, he worked on the simplest of the five blood arts, Blood Shield. It was little more than an introductory blood art. For most physically fragile vampires, however, it was also one of the most important.
Blood Shield created floating shields around the caster. The number depended on how much Blood Energy was used. At minimum, it could produce a single shield, while there was theoretically no upper limit. Protected by these shields, fragile vampires could attack freely without worrying about being killed instantly by physical attacks.
Yu Xian quietly recited an incantation while constructing the circuit in his mind. Blood arts seemed to fall somewhere between mystic art and magic. The moment he finished the incantation, a crimson shield appeared in front of his fingers.
Fortunately, he had expanded the space inside the desk drawer. Otherwise, the shield, which measured nearly a meter long and half a meter wide, would have burst straight through the desk.
That was easier than I expected.
Seeing that he had successfully cast Blood Shield, Yu Xian quietly breathed a sigh of relief. Light-and-shadow magic had thoroughly shaken his confidence. He had begun to worry that spatial arts might be the only kind of mystic art he was capable of learning. Fortunately, he could learn blood arts without any trouble. That gave him several more tools to work with.
Next, he began working on Blood Barrier. While Blood Shield was designed to block physical attacks, Blood Barrier protected against energy-based attacks. If an enemy attacked with swords, arrows, or other weapons, a Blood Mage would use Blood Shield. Against flames, lightning, frost, or similar attacks, Blood Barrier was the better choice. Of course, with enough Blood Energy, the safest option was to use both at once.
Yu Xian soon discovered that his talent for blood arts was every bit as extraordinary. It took him only half an hour to master all five blood arts. That was when something finally clicked in his mind. Perhaps I am not bad at mystic art. Perhaps I am simply highly specialized.
His Spatial Blood Energy possessed only two attributes: space and blood. That was why he could learn mystic arts tied to those two attributes so quickly. As for the others, his failure to learn them had nothing to do with poor aptitude. He simply lacked the necessary attributes altogether.
Even the finest cook can do nothing without ingredients. If I do not possess the right kind of energy, how can I possibly cast those mystic arts? Still... Can I modify Mirage Clone and turn it from light-and-shadow magic into spatial magic?
The idea struck Yu Xian almost immediately. Many mystic arts and magic had originated from people who consumed Forbidden Fruits, but countless others had been created later by building upon those existing foundations. Spatial Maze, for example, had been developed from Spatial Folding.
If others can create new mystic arts, why can I not do the same?
With a clear goal in mind, Yu Xian began studying the magic circuit of Mirage Clone. Drawing on his limited knowledge, he attempted to convert it from light-and-shadow magic into spatial magic. The basic principle was simple. It refracted light to create multiple illusory clones around the caster.
The medium for Mirage Clone is the moisture in the air. So, it isn’t purely light-and-shadow magic. There’s a trace of water magic mixed in as well. But I don’t possess either attribute. I have neither light magic nor water elemental energy. That means the only medium available to me is... space.
Yu Xian quickly worked through the logic, only to run into a major problem. Space itself did not carry light and shadow.
An idea immediately came to him. Wait. Space might not work, but what about a spatial bubble?
If he used a spatial bubble as the medium, he could probably reproduce an effect similar to Mirage Clone. So, he circulated his energy according to the spell’s original magic circuit, then used a spatial bubble as the spell’s carrier.
Pop!
The first attempt failed. Yu Xian adjusted the circuit and tried again. He had no idea what each segment did, so he resorted to the dumbest method he could think of, though it was also the one best suited to him. He removed the segments one at a time and tested the spell after each change.
Most of the time, removing a segment simply caused the spell to fail. Occasionally, however, the spell would affect the spatial bubble and make it burst.
It was not until sometime after three in the afternoon that he finally created a chubby clone. After he removed several segments from the circuit, the spell distorted the spatial bubble into a vaguely human shape, resembling a fat man twisted together out of balloons.
His expression even appeared on the surface of the bubble. Unfortunately, it had been stretched so badly that the face looked nothing like him.
Still, it was clearly a promising start. Yu Xian immediately continued adjusting the magic circuit, but no matter what he tried, he could not reproduce the same effect. After exhausting every possible variation, he had no choice but to return to the previous configuration.
"Looks like the magic circuit can’t be adjusted any further. In that case, can I modify the spatial bubble instead?"
Yu Xian stared at the pile of pudgy versions of himself crammed inside the desk drawer and thought for a long moment. If he could not change the circuit, then he would change the bubble.
He first tried altering the bubble’s shape. That did produce a slimmer clone, but its surface was far too smooth. It looked ridiculous, and anyone could tell at a glance that it was nothing more than a balloon man.
Next, he created a large number of tiny bubbles and used them like pixels before casting the spell again. This time, he produced a speckled clone horrifying enough to make anyone with trypophobia faint on the spot. Whenever it moved, its countless individual "pixels" looked like swarms of tiny insects writhing together. The sight was so revolting that even Yu Xian nearly threw up.
Still, he could see a glimmer of success. He continued shrinking the bubbles, this time reducing them to smaller than the eye of a needle. Under the influence of the magic circuit, countless microscopic bubbles gathered together and formed a human figure.
At last, it actually looked human. The problem was that the flaws were still obvious the moment Yu Xian enhanced his vision with Silver Blood. This time, however, he had already thought of the perfect solution.
Bubble Clone.
With a flicker of his thought, Yu Xian cast the spell again. During the casting process, he added a single red spider lily seed. Instantly, an identical clone appeared inside his desk drawer. Its aura and mannerisms matched his perfectly. Even with his vision enhanced by Silver Blood, Yu Xian could not spot a single flaw.
Yu Xian looked at the clone and smiled in satisfaction. Perfect!
At that moment, the bald teacher at the front of the classroom turned toward him and said with a smile, “Class, it seems Yu Xian has already mastered this one. Yu Xian, come up and solve it for us.”
Yu Xian looked up, eyes widening as he stared blankly at the complicated math problem on the board. It's far too difficult. I have no idea how to solve it.
In the seat in front of him, Nora quietly covered her mouth and snickered.