Jie Ming closed his eyes again, his consciousness sinking into his spiritual sea.
In the center of the vast consciousness space, the Great Dao Book Pavilion of white jade stood quietly.
This time, he did not seek out new techniques.
With a thought, jade slips recording demonic secret arts flew out from the depths of the bookshelves, spreading out before him. The Blood Sacrifice Method, the Soul-Searching and Soul-Refining Sutra, the Bloodline Devouring Record, the Life Source Plunder Art...
One after another, heretical texts were rapidly flipped through.
Jie Ming did not rush to find answers. Instead, he dismantled the core mechanisms of each technique bit by bit, then cross-referenced them.
"The essence of sacrifice is actually the transfer of some more fundamental substance..."
"Bloodline sharing..."
"Soul mapping..."
Pieces of information rapidly combined in his spiritual sea, forming countless interwoven beams of light.
Time passed quietly.
After an unknown duration, all deductions suddenly halted.
Jie Ming's gaze fell on an inconspicuous annotation at the end of a certain technique.
It wasn't even part of the main text, just a cultivation insight left by an unknown cultivator.
But his eyes gradually lit up.
"...I see."
He muttered to himself.
"The problem lies here."
He pulled up the data structure of the Blood Sacrifice Method again and fed the experimental data into the deduction model.
In the next moment, all previously inexplicable points became perfectly logical.
The reason for the exaggerated increase in aptitude could be summed up in just three words: identical multiples.
More precisely, identical multiple births.
Under the judgment of the heavenly laws of the cultivation world, identical multiple births—especially individuals with nearly identical bloodline, soul, and origin—are not treated as two independent lives.
Heaven and earth consider them to be the same person.
After all, their life origins overlap, their soul trajectories overlap, and even their destinies are almost exactly the same.
Therefore, several of the most important steps in the normal Blood Sacrifice Method would all fail for them.
Jie Ming waved his hand, expanding the complete structure of the Blood Sacrifice Method.
Countless dark red runes connected to form an enormous, complex array.
His gaze landed on several critical points.
"Here... and here... and here."
He tapped lightly, and large sections of runes dimmed.
All of these were "subsystems" within the Blood Sacrifice Method used for "purification" and "refinement."
Under normal circumstances, any sacrifice carries its own life imprint, soul impurities, and residual destiny.
To ensure the receiver is not contaminated by foreign bloodlines or destabilized by soul conflicts, the Blood Sacrifice Method must continuously filter and sieve.
The "resources" that actually remain to improve aptitude are only a tiny fraction.
The vast majority of power is automatically erased by the laws as impurities.
But if the sacrifice and the beneficiary are originally the same person, then this entire purification mechanism loses its meaning.
During the process, it would not activate at all.
Thinking this, Jie Ming couldn't help but laugh: "No wonder the effect was so exaggerated."
He finally understood why just sacrificing one ordinary clone body had allowed another clone's spiritual aptitude to leap from "mediocre" to "superior."
Because... that wasn't a filtered improvement; it was a complete superposition.
If it were a normal blood sacrifice, at most, based on the bloodline connection, about one percent of the effect would be retained. The remaining ninety-nine percent would be directly removed by heavenly laws during purification.
But sacrificing identical multiples was one plus one equals two.
The aptitudes of both sides were not wasted at all, effectively doubling them.
His breathing quickened slightly.
Two civilizations, two systems, until this moment, perfectly interlocked.
The cultivation system provided the underlying technology for aptitudes to stack.
And the Wizard Civilization... possessed the alchemical technology to infinitely replicate identical lifeforms.
Individually, neither ability was earth-shattering.
The Blood Sacrifice Method was merely a demonic art, and life refinement was just a normal branch of high-level alchemy.
But when combined... a closed loop capable of breaking the entire cultivation system's cognition was born.
Jie Ming slowly opened his eyes, a hint of excitement flickering deep in his pupils.
"It seems my thinking was not wrong."
The next moment, his consciousness withdrew from the Great Dao Book Pavilion, and the lab came back into view.
Inside the culture tanks, the remaining eight clone bodies floated quietly in pale green nutrient fluid, their chests slowly rising and falling in slumber.
And the experimental subject whose aptitude had been raised to "superior" had also been sent back into a culture tank.
Without any pause, Jie Ming slowly opened his True Illusion Void-Breaking Eye, silver starlight flowing from the depths of his pupils.
At the same time, the scanning formation beside him activated, and beams of analysis light pierced through the culture tank, penetrating every inch of the clone's flesh and blood.
Bones, bloodlines, soul, meridians, destiny, spiritual circuits...
Countless layers of underlying information emerged, and Jie Ming recorded them completely.
The scan continued for a long time. Just as the analysis of the soul level was about to end, Jie Ming raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Oh?"
He adjusted the analysis magnification again and rescaned.
A few minutes later, he slowly lowered his hand, a look of regret on his face.
"Nothing?"
Staring at the scan results, he felt somewhat disappointed.
Because he had not found any karma on this clone body.
Jie Ming even carefully examined himself, confirming that there was no karma on his own body either.
The Blood Sacrifice Method was a standard demonic art. Regardless of the caster's intent, once the ritual was performed, it inevitably incurred heavenly karma. This karma would attach deep within the soul; the higher the cultivation, the more obvious the effect.
At worst, mental demons would arise; at worst, one would die during tribulation.
But now... there was nothing.
"What a pity..." Jie Ming shook his head gently. "It seems karma is part of the operation of the heavenly laws of the cultivation world, not a regular conceptual material."
Thus, to obtain karma, it could only be done relying on the heavenly rules of the cultivation world.
"But thinking about it, it makes sense. If there really was such a thing as karma, the Wizard Civilization would be the first to suffer."
Considering the experiments wizards usually did, if placed in the cultivation world, they would probably all be entangled with karma and constantly plagued by heavenly tribulations.
Then, he looked at a pitch-black banner placed beside the lab.
The black banner was a bit over two meters tall, its pole ink-black, the banner surface densely covered with dark red runes, countless small array patterns interconnecting, emitting a faint sinister aura.
This was the artifact he had refined in advance, specifically for collecting karma.
His original plan was that if the blood sacrifice generated karma, he would first seal it all in the black banner.
That way, he could both improve aptitude and harvest a new conceptual material, killing two birds with one stone.
"Too bad, I spent extra time for nothing. It seems completely wasted preparation."
Jie Ming waved his hand casually, and the black banner transformed into a stream of light, flying back into his Inner World.
"Forget it. No karma saves me trouble."
Jie Ming shook his head with a smile, then sat back down at the experiment table.
The Five Elements Rainbow Mirror slowly unfolded, and streams of experimental data were imported into it, quickly and automatically processed by the mirror.
Jie Ming browsed the results while beginning to formulate the next phase of the plan.
Confirming that clone bodies could complete the blood sacrifice was only the first step.
Next, a large number of experiments were needed.
First, a gradient experiment.
Sacrifice two, four, eight, sixteen... to see if the aptitude increase shows diminishing returns as the number of sacrifices increases.
Second, a compatibility experiment.
If stacking continues dozens of times, can the soul remain stable? Will the bloodline structure become deformed due to excessive enhancement?
Finally, the most critical one: the limit test.
If hundreds or even thousands of clone bodies are all sacrificed to the same target, what level will the final aptitude reach? And will it exceed the bearing limits of the body and soul, causing negative effects?
Jie Ming tapped lightly on the experiment table, his expression especially serious.
Every one of these questions had to be verified in advance.
He had no intention of gambling with his own main body.
As a qualified researcher, any risk must be resolved at the experimental stage.
With that thought, his gaze returned to the array outlined in the Blood Sacrifice Method.
Jie Ming had not forgotten his goal.
Improving his own spiritual aptitude was only part of the plan; the other part was naturally making money.
So, besides improving aptitude, he also needed to analyze the Blood Sacrifice Method as much as possible, extracting the underlying technology that actually made it work from this demonic skill.
Then, reconstruct it using the Wizard Civilization's soul studies and alchemical systems...
If successful, it would be equivalent to "creating" an entirely new aptitude enhancement technique.
"With such good effects, the returns might far exceed expectations..." Jie Ming's eyes gleamed.