Chapter 138: The Harvest

In the end, Feng Xue still underwent memory interference.

There was no other way. A thousand years of memories would have been enough to transform Feng Xue’s personality, perhaps even make him question whether he was truly human or a Digimon. Memory interference was therefore necessary.

Feng Xue had only just returned and was acting on sheer obsession. Once he had calmed down, the conflicting memories and perceptions would inevitably set his reason against itself.

However, at Feng Xue’s repeated insistence, the interference was ultimately kept to the bare minimum.

Most of the repetitive memories of daily life were merely blurred.

All the memories from the moment he met Ruki onward, however, remained intact within Feng Xue’s mind.

…

The Digital World truly deserved to be called a blessed plane. Putting aside the improvements to his temperament and martial skills, the evolution of his Gourmet Demon alone was enough to send Feng Xue into raptures!

By now, Feng Xue’s Gourmet Demon was no longer the four-winged chrysalis it had once been. After his return from the Digital World, the Gourmet Demon seemed to have inherited everything from Beelzemon. As time passed, and before the new term began, it finally burst free from its chrysalis and revealed its true form!

It was a four-winged feathered serpent, utterly black from head to tail. Its head was not flat like that of an ordinary snake, but resembled the partially enclosed, three-eyed helmets worn by Beelzemon and BeelStarmon. From three hornlike protrusions extended three savage, sharply pointed horns that jutted from the back of its skull.

Its entire body was covered in fierce scales lined with barbs. Merely passing over the ground, it left glaring scars in the earth. The four wings behind it were no longer blue as they had been before, but were composed of feathers in twelve different colors. Each feather gleamed with a metallic luster and appeared extraordinarily keen.

Arranged with deliberate precision, the feathers formed patterns resembling butterfly wings, lending the enormous feathered serpent an air of splendor amid its brutality.

The twelve-colored wings had in fact originated from the Plague Shot Feng Xue had wielded during his time as a Digimon. Each color carried a different curse: red caused bleeding, orange knockback, yellow weakness, green lethal poison, cyan suffocation, blue dehydration, violet energy loss, black excruciating pain, white blindness, gray equipment destruction, transparent restraint, and murky pollution.

At the same time, Feng Xue seemed to have awakened the true ability of his Gourmet Demon. Like Sani’s hair or Coco’s toxins, it was an innate power, a force resembling an aura. Although he had no test subjects and thus could not determine its precise properties, Feng Xue could clearly sense that this aura was capable of greatly weakening his enemies while considerably increasing the success rate of his illusions.

Beyond that, Feng Xue had finally acquired a supernatural sense of his own. It lay somewhere between taste and smell.

Perhaps it was because his Gourmet Demon took the form of a serpent. Feng Xue’s tongue had undergone a certain degree of alteration. With a single deep breath, he could obtain most of the information perceptible within the surrounding area. He could even distinguish a kind of information that seemed closely connected to his aura, though he had no idea how to describe it. His instincts, however, told him that this information would be of vital importance to his future growth.

Setting the Gourmet Demon aside, Feng Xue’s mastery of Quincy techniques had improved by leaps and bounds. Before crossing worlds, he had been capable of using only Spirit Arrows, but now he could wield a spirit bow without the slightest restraint. Moreover, it was not a photon-like bow such as the one used by Uryu Ishida, but a true bow with a physical form.

Unsurprisingly, this spirit bow was the very weapon Feng Xue had forged in the Digital World:

Spirit Bow: Feast.

Although his proficiency had increased tremendously, Feng Xue still found it difficult to use Blood Armor. As for the Complete Holy Form, that remained a distant prospect. There was nothing he could do about it. After all, the Tower of Babel had nothing resembling the omnipresent spirit particles of the world of Soul Reapers, while the spirit particles generated by Feng Xue’s AT Field were only enough for him to fully activate either a single burst of Offensive Blood Armor or Defensive Blood Armor.

Fortunately, the Quincies possessed an item known as the Silver Tube, which could compress their spirit particles into liquid form and store them. Through this method, the form of the ceremonial equipment he wanted gradually began to take shape in Feng Xue’s mind. However, having just spent a fortune to buy his freedom from the Digital World, Feng Xue would need some time before he could save enough money to make a single piece of ceremonial equipment.

The Central Academy for World Crossers had a very short vacation. Although there was only one holiday each year, it lasted less than half a month. Nor was this so-called vacation meant for students to spend recklessly. It was intended for them to review and consolidate the results of the past year. Someone like Feng Xue, who had undergone circuit implantation, would have missed most of the physical-training classes in the new academic year without those two weeks of leave.

Fortunately, Feng Xue’s body had an extraordinary capacity for recovery after being strengthened by Gourmet Cells and the Body-Forging Formula. With Little He’s excellent cooking as well, he finally made a complete recovery three days before the start of term.

Even “recovery” was not quite accurate. More precisely, he had fully assimilated the magical circuits and crest within his body. He could now claim to be a magus with more than a dozen generations of inheritance behind him—though casting even the most basic spell remained a serious problem.

The Central Academy for World Crossers was not burdened by excessive bureaucracy. The opening ceremony consisted merely of a statement sent through the students’ identification cards. All the students had to do was report to their respective classes on time.

Unlike the rather shabby arrangement of the Transcendent and Extraordinary ranks, where each had only a single class, the entire Transcendent District was suffused with an atmosphere of grandeur and solemn majesty. This impression did not come from the architecture, but from the fact that more than a thousand Transcendent-level students gathered there.

That was right—more than a thousand.

They were the elites selected from among the new generations of humanity, numbering in the hundreds of billions or even tens of trillions. Each one was a dragon among men, an existence that might emerge only once among hundreds of millions.

To put it in the language of One Piece, everyone here possessed the Conqueror’s Haki and the qualifications to become a king!

In a place where such beings gathered, the entire district was permeated by a keen, piercing presence, as if divine weapons had just been drawn from their sheaths.

“Yo!”

Just as Feng Xue was marveling at the grandeur of the Transcendent District, a familiar voice came from behind him.

“Xia Mi? How did you end up with Mu Qianrou? Don’t tell me you two…” Feng Xue gave Xia Mi a teasing smile and turned his gaze toward Mu Qianrou beside him.

“What nonsense are you talking about? Who would want to be with a womanly man like her? We merely happened to run into each other on the way.”

Although Xia Mi still looked as languid as ever after half a month apart, Feng Xue could sense, through his newly acquired gustatory perception, the hidden majesty beneath that disguise—a force like a dormant dragon waiting beneath the waters.

Feng Xue’s attention, however, was not focused on Xia Mi. It was quickly drawn toward Mu Qianrou instead—not because she was a woman, nor because she had become more beautiful, but because she was currently wearing a school uniform.

This was no ugly, overpriced cash grab like the uniforms worn in the Celestial Empire of his previous life, which were somehow sold at the price of designer brands. It was a “holy vestment” that only those who had earned the title of “Bancho” in the Digital World were qualified to wear.

Mu Qianrou had actually obtained such a thing in the Digital World?

One had to understand that throughout the entire history of the Digital World, there had been only five Banchos!