Chapter Sixty-Two: The Emergence of New Power

Yhwach’s blood was, after all, still blood; its taste was no different from that of an ordinary person. Feng Xue had never tasted Acacia’s fish cuisine, nor had he developed any special soul-based sense of taste, so there was no way for him to savor some exquisite flavor from Yhwach’s soul fragment. Once the blood entered his body, it was rapidly broken down, and it certainly did not, like some legendary elixir, release a surge of power to transform him.

Yet Feng Xue could sense a peculiar thread of power quietly spreading through his body, repairing those few, almost imperceptible flaws left after his training in Ripple Breathing and Gourmet Cells. Having read the original story, he understood that this was the passive effect carried by Yhwach’s soul fragment: anyone who acquired it would have their deficiencies—be it illness, injury, or lifespan—completely mended.

But when the bearer of the fragment died, the soul fragment would return to Yhwach, carrying all of the person’s power and soul, thus strengthening him further. However, the fragment Feng Xue used had already been cleansed of Yhwach’s will by his predecessors, so this gift was now an unconditional boon.

As those minuscule flaws and hidden injuries were gradually repaired, Feng Xue sensed a faint, nearly undetectable power moving toward his soul. Slowly, it seeped into him, inscribing a holy mark in some imperceptible place. Yet perhaps because Feng Xue’s current strength was too meager, he could not even discern what characters this mark contained.

The next change, however, pulled Feng Xue out of his brief disappointment, for he found that this power, following the connection between his souls, shifted from his Fate Soul to his Heaven and Earth Souls. Bit by bit, it drew the two together, merging them tightly like glue into a flawless, perfect “circle.”

Feng Xue understood then: he had crossed the first threshold of the AT Field, entering the Nascent Soul stage. Now, all that remained was to gradually guide his Nascent Soul into his body and merge it with his Fate Soul, and he would pass the Soul Gate and achieve soul immortality.

But this was not a simple process. For now, Feng Xue still could not control this Nascent Soul. To be precise, he only knew that it was indeed roaming near him, but he had no idea exactly where it was or how far away. The only thing he could do was manipulate this elusive Nascent Soul to expand a field in which soul particles could exist.

The merging of Heaven and Earth Souls was an unexpected blessing. Feng Xue didn’t bother greeting the teaching assistant; he immediately teleported back to his dormitory and began to contemplate this soul-born transformation.

Three days flew by in the blink of an eye. During this brief time, Feng Xue managed to master only a technique called Spirit Particle Bundling—concentrating and compressing soul particles to construct matter with physical properties. The signature Quincy Spirit Bow was forged in this way.

But Feng Xue was still some way off from condensing solid matter; at present, he could only form a light bow like Uryū Ishida did in the early stages or liquefy soul particles and store them in specially made silver tubes. (And don’t think the light bow is cool—it just means your technique is unrefined. Look at other Quincies: which of those who focus on ranged weapons can’t condense their spirit bow into a solid form? Only Ishida kept using a light bow until the very end.)

However, Feng Xue lacked talent in the art of silver tubes. Though he could barely manage the Green Cup, as for the others—not to mention Saint Devourer, which required four tubes—he couldn’t even use Fivefold Bind, and in battle, the Green Cup was less useful than his AT Field!

So for Feng Xue, the silver tubes were only good for storing surplus soul particles as magazines for bursts of power in combat.

As for Flying Sickle Kick, Blood Armor, or even Vollständig?

Feng Xue thought, “Maybe give me a few more years to study those.”

Day after day went by. Eventually, there was news about the Makiri family’s Magic Crest he’d put a bounty on. It was brought to him by a senior close to breaking into the Epic rank, who wanted to exchange the crest for resources to reach Legend.

But for Feng Xue, any item or material from a Saint-rank source was enough to exchange for a wealth of Epic-level resources. Thus, under the academy’s mediation, Feng Xue traded a Philosopher’s Stone large enough for a hundred thousand people—in itself a feat, given the technical difficulties of purifying the stone of curses and resentment, and the relative ease of gathering material in alternate worlds—for the Magic Crest stripped from Zouken Makiri.

At this moment, Feng Xue lay upon a surgical table in the academy’s infirmary, quietly awaiting the operation’s start.

The transplantation of magic circuits did not actually require a Magic Crest, but to maximize the crest’s utility, one had to master the relevant branch of magecraft. Yet learning magecraft from books made it difficult for one’s circuits to synchronize quickly, so acquiring knowledge from the crest and using it to assimilate the circuits had become the simplest shortcut.

There were several crucial questions in transplanting magic circuits.

First was attribute. This was straightforward: whether you wanted to throw waterballs or fireballs depended on your attribute, and compatibility with your own concept or origin was vital. Feng Xue chose imaginary number attribute circuits, which matched his own conceptual nature, and also selected water attribute to mesh with the Makiri crest. In other words, Feng Xue opted for dual-attribute circuits—imaginary number and water. (Dual attributes are not rare: Kiritsugu had fire and earth, and Rin possessed all five—earth, water, fire, wind, and ether—though imaginary number attribute is rare.) He could have chosen circuits with all seven attributes, but found it impractical, as he lacked the spells to make use of them all.

Second was quantity. The number of circuits determined the maximum amount of magical energy a person could wield, but magical energy was drawn from one’s life force. Too many circuits shortened life; fifty was the optimal number for peak power without detriment (Rin and Sakura were geniuses of this tier). But for Feng Xue, this limitation didn’t apply: he’d acquired the Akimichi clan’s secret art for converting food calories to life energy and possessed the Gourmet Cell, which allowed him to store infinite energy. The life drain of magic circuits was irrelevant to him, so he could have as many as Illya’s terrifying number of circuits.

Third, and most crucial, was precision. The precision of magic circuits determined whether a mage could become a top-tier powerhouse. With high precision, even a small number of circuits allowed one to unleash magic of tremendous might—Aozaki Touko was renowned for this, possessing only a normal number of circuits but with a precision so exquisite it gave her near-magus-level combat power.

Yet precision and quantity were almost impossible to have simultaneously—not due to any innate law, but simply because high-precision circuits were prohibitively expensive. Even with Feng Xue’s immense wealth, he could only transplant one hundred circuits at the highest precision, nearly exhausting the entire first batch of profits from Unlimited Tsukuyomi.