Chapter 322: Gene Hypothesis

The thought of turning Hayden into a black page only flashed briefly through Saul’s mind—he wasn’t planning to go through with it, at least not for now.

Ever since the diary became a locator, Saul’s connection to it had grown tighter. He could vaguely sense that the diary placed a ceiling on some of his abilities.

Take the black pages, for example—with his current strength, he could only manage one more page.

Unless he destroyed one of the previous four, once he hit full capacity, he’d be unable to absorb any more consciousnesses.

Saul was getting along well with the four consciousnesses he already had. He wasn’t planning to turn any of them into mere experience points.

So the selection for the fifth page had to be made with caution.

It would either have to be someone like a captured enemy—someone discardable—or a consciousness with a vast store of knowledge.

The preliminary tests from the soul infusion experiment confirmed for Saul that the physical vessel hadn’t lost its rejection response toward foreign souls.

That meant the body must possess some sort of mechanism to differentiate between soul types—like an immune system, rejecting anything it is “allergic” to with violent force.

If he could find this system, shut it down or destroy it—could he then successfully fuse soul and flesh?

“But my case isn’t the same. Saul’s original body clearly hadn’t been tampered with… So then, what if I made the foreign soul invisible to the ‘immune system’?”

Saul knew that most of what he was thinking now was built on conjecture. The first thing he needed to prove was whether such an “immune system” even existed in the human body.

“Every experiment needs a title… Let’s call this one—Desensitization Experiment.”

And so, Saul flipped to the first inner page of his notebook and wrote down the words: Desensitization.

In the days that followed, Hayden accompanied Saul through several agonizing rounds of experiments.

On the final day, with Hayden’s consent, Saul even performed a live dissection on her.

He used the Heart’s Guard potion’s ability to preserve life, temporarily maintaining the vitality of Hayden’s vessel. Then, avoiding critical organs as much as possible, he dissected the exceptionally beautiful vessel into over ten different parts.

Each part became a sample, into which he injected a soul shard preserved within his own body. For the next hour, he observed and recorded the rejection reactions of each sample.

As for Hayden—she was unconscious the entire time.

But the first large-scale experiment did not yield any ideal results.

Every part of Hayden’s body rejected the foreign soul with equal intensity.

Though Saul had mentally prepared for failure—this was, after all, a problem that had stumped true wizards and even Second Rank wizards for decades—facing the complete lack of breakthrough still left him a little dejected.

Still, he quickly pulled himself together. Before the samples lost too much vitality, he “reassembled” Hayden’s body. Then, using the Black Obsidian Amber with its potent regenerative abilities, he restored her body to its original state, avoiding the look of a porcelain doll broken and glued back together.

Once he’d sent her off for treatment, Saul returned to his lab bench to record the entire process.

“Blood, hair, organs, bones… All ten-plus parts yielded nothing.” Saul twirled his quill, frowning. “Did I fail to identify the special organ? Or was there a flaw in the experiment?”

Both were possible. Saul began methodically reflecting on the lessons of this experiment, trying to ensure the next run would be more refined.

“All samples reacted the same—likely means I didn’t extract the common factor from these materials. I need to think smaller… cells, maybe…”

Just as he lifted his pen to write, Saul froze mid-motion, his eyes widening slightly.

“…Or genes?”

He stood still in a daze for a few seconds, then suddenly smacked his forehead.

“Extracting genes, decoding genes, editing genes… This is way above my level!”

But then he immediately shook his head, as if trying to shake water out of his ears.

“Resurrection itself is already beyond the textbook. Besides, there’s no guarantee that a soul’s recognition markers exist in the genes anyway.”

“Big guesses, careful verification. One experiment isn’t enough to draw conclusions.” Saul glanced back slowly toward the neat rows of corpses lined up at the storeroom.

“I do still have some samples… though they’ve lost a lot of vitality, which could compromise the accuracy. Still—might as well give it a try.”

Behind the shelves, the corpse horde began trembling collectively.

…

A month later, a modestly luxurious single-passenger carriage rolled through the streets of a bustling small town.

This town was the closest populated settlement to Gorsa Wizard Tower.

It functioned as a forward base, just shy of the tower’s absolute domain. Every year, countless people stopped here hoping to interact with the tower or participate in its apprentice selections.

The town had grown increasingly prosperous, with many locals even having relatives connected to wizards.

Winter was approaching, and the northern wind was as sharp and biting as the fallen leaves scattered across the ground.

The carriage moved steadily, neither rushed nor slow. Saul occasionally cracked open the window to look outside.

The town’s original name had long since been forgotten. Now, because of its unique location, people simply called it Outpost Town.

Saul’s reason for coming this time was to find a foothold outside the wizard tower. This was quite common—many Third Rank apprentices, and even powerful Second Rank ones, maintained bases outside the tower.

Were he not such a loner, Saul’s power and status would have long warranted an external base of his own.

His mental realm’s magic formation wasn’t suitable for the second storeroom—it would disturb the corpse horde. But the other places were less ideal.

The dormitories, though spacious, weren’t optimal. Saul himself could float between floors with soul projection, but if others were wandering around at night, he wouldn’t even notice it in his mental realm state.

In the future, Saul would need to find a way to leave part of his attention outside the mental realm. But that was a long-term goal, requiring extensive training.

“The mental realm formation needs compression too. If I really want to turn it into a battlefield, enemies aren’t going to wait for me to draw it. Pre-drawing leaves me vulnerable.”

Saul looked down at his gray-white hands.

“Maybe I could affix the formation to a piece of gear? Hm. I should add formation compression to my to-do list.”

Staring at his inhumanly modified hands, Saul fell into a brief daze.

At that moment, the mushroom-headed coachman gradually brought the carriage to a halt.

“Sir, we’ve arrived.”

Saul looked out through the window. They’d stopped in front of a four-story building.

Even in a bustling city, this brick-and-wood hybrid structure would be considered tall and grand.

A massive sign hung from the second floor all the way down to the first, bearing the Common Language words: “Traveler’s Refuge.”

Saul had been planning to visit a sort of housing agency. The mushroom coachman, clearly familiar with the place, led him here.

“Looks like a combined hotel and boarding house.”

Saul closed the carriage window. He snapped his fingers lightly, and the sickly gray of his skin instantly shifted to a paler, healthier shade—something more in line with what ordinary people expected a wizard to look like.

As soon as Saul stepped out of the carriage, two people approached immediately.

One led the mushroom coachman to the designated parking spot. The other, wearing a cautious and respectful smile, bowed and approached Saul.

“Good day, Wizard Sir. How may I assist you?”

(End of chapter)

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