Soul Trigger

Chapter 607 The Ghost Nun

Ji Li put away the spiritual essence and checked its contents.

It was a letter of recommendation sent by Pulitzer to a man named "Mr. Berentock".

As for who to recommend, it was of course himself—

He was working hard to apply to the mathematics department of a certain university, and all these papers were written in his attempt to contact "Mr. Berentock".

As for why so much text is needed—since handwritten notes aren't emails—the poster on the wall answers that question:

It was a half-length poster cut from somewhere, featuring a smiling elderly man wearing spectacled glasses, with his name written in the lower right corner:

Richard Berentock, a mathematician and professor at Sword Dome University, was the very person Pulitzer was writing to.

There were also some of this person's works on the bookshelf. He seemed to admire this person quite a bit. The letters were full of various fan-like expressions, explanatory content listing his own trophies, and finally, his hope to get a recommendation letter to enter the mathematics department of Sword Sky University.

The content was mostly correct, but because Pulitzer's expression skills were too weak, he always rambled on and on, which forced him to keep rewriting it. He also seemed to insist on sending it out on paper to express his sincerity and respect for the other party.

"These papers contain a very strong residual spiritual energy... Is this due to the rules of the shattered white ring?"

Generally speaking, items possessing spiritual qualities are sufficient to be considered natural spiritual tools, but this is usually difficult to achieve.

However, the spiritual energy emanating from these papers was almost at the level of natural spiritual artifacts, which surprised Ji Li.

It is important to understand that only by developing a strong emotional attachment to an object over many years can such a thing be created.

Pulitzer, at his age, was not an awakened being and could absolutely not have done such a thing:

"It seems you're quite fixated on this professor and pursuing advanced mathematics studies at university."

In addition to these papers, a spiritual reaction also came from the other side:
It was a glass cabinet on the wall, containing many trophies, one of which was gold and very beautiful.

Ji Li took it out, but its weight greatly diminished his interest:

"Gold-plated, it's meaningless."

That was an Olympiad trophy; the entire glass case was filled with Olympiad trophies. This unfortunate kid certainly seemed to have a talent for mathematics.

These trophies also seem to be objects on which he projected his emotions, and they also emit spiritual energy fluctuations, though not as intensely as the letters.

The weaker spiritual energy fluctuations came from the whiteboard hanging above the glass cabinet, which blocked some of the cabinet doors.

There were formula explanations written there, but without complete answers, the kind that someone like Ji Li, a common soldier, couldn't understand.

But Ji Li had the Ascension Agreement calculate the result, and then picked up a marker and filled it in:

"My mathematical talent is also quite good."

Looking at the answer, Ji Li shoved the marker holder in and prepared to check his desk.

But suddenly, he sensed that the spiritual energy fluctuations emanating from the whiteboard had become stronger.

Philin's voice came from beside my ear: [Spiritual resonance.]

Ji Li knew what this was:
A special phenomenon in the psychology of the soul, where two individuals with spiritual qualities experience emotional resonance, which triggers unique spiritual responses.

For example, when he and Rabbit Girl act together, they often trigger spiritual resonance, which can temporarily enhance their compatibility and combat capabilities.

Even after multiple resonances, he was able to use the spiritual essence that Rabbit Girl stored in the Zhanmadao by utilizing this phenomenon of soul psychology.

Resonance is not limited to people; it can be between people and things, or between things, and even, theoretically, can be triggered between people and evil beings, or between people and dead apostles.

So this is an answer he wrote, and then resonated with the spiritual essence that Pulitzer left in these precious things?

No, it wasn't that I resonated with them, but rather...

Ji Li raised his hand, and a round-framed pair of glasses jumped from the Dragon Ring into his palm. These were the glasses Pulitzer had worn before his death, which he had taken while cleaning up the battlefield.

This is it.

The moment the glasses appeared, the intensity of the spiritual resonance increased dramatically.

Spiritual energy continuously flowed from those objects into the glasses in Ji Li's hand.

Ultimately, as resonance reaches a certain threshold, all psychological phenomena related to the soul disappear.

Under the invisible fluctuations, the glasses in Ji Li's hand seemed to change, and he keenly sensed that a certain connection had formed between them and him.

At the same time, the Ascension Protocol began to show dense streams of data, seemingly updating something.

Once the torrent of data subsided, the familiar analytics panel appeared on Ji Li's retina:
-
Resting Objects (Personality Relics): The Focus of an Arithmetic Genius

Soul quality: Defective

characteristic:
1. Genius mind: When wearing glasses, he possesses mathematical abilities no more than those of Richard Berentock.

2. Desperate Calculation: Smash your glasses, sacrificing some vision to gain the ability to see danger, but the shattered glasses have no function.

3. Arithmetic Power: Solving a math problem beyond one's own level can restore the broken glasses and restore their function.

Cost: Unknown.

Materialization condition: Cannot be materialized.

Fusion condition: Understanding the cost.
-
It actually became a mortis?!

Ji Li's pupils constricted slightly.

"Filin, what's going on?"

[It's likely that the shattered white ring altered the spiritual ecology of White Island, allowing the remaining spiritual matter of the same origin to resonate with each other, thus coalescing into a resting substance.]

Felin hadn't set foot on White Island for a long time, and although her understanding of these changes was limited, her deductions were highly credible.

"Were you like this back on White Island?"

No, if that were the case, I'm afraid I wouldn't be in my current state, but rather a camera, or a resting place.

As Ji Li listened to Fei Lin's idea, he put on his glasses.

Looking at the mathematical formula on the whiteboard again, I subconsciously picked up a pen and went over to complete the process in the middle of that lonely answer:
Kind of interesting.

He paused writing, pondering:
“There are very few traces of malevolent activity on White Island, which means that in the spiritual ecology of White Island, the storks have replaced the malevolent niche.”

While not all malevolent entities were entirely absent, the vast majority of instances of human spiritual corruption ultimately did not result in malevolent entities, but rather in the transformation into resting objects.

“And Pulitzer, a dead man, whose life was filled with a great deal of emotion and obsession, could create ‘semi-spiritual objects’ with a spiritual quality. These objects could become resting places under certain conditions, but no territory was created…”

The primordial object in your hand is too weak; it doesn't yet possess the ability to expand its territory. Whether a primordial object can expand its territory is also related to its own rules.

"Did it not attack me because of its rules, or because I have already taken control of it?"

Ji Li could feel a connection between this thing and herself.

[You've already taken control. And the rules governing this Resting Object don't seem to be as offensive as my Time Realm Fragment.]

However, the use of benzoin often comes at a cost; you can try to find out what that cost is.

Following Felin's advice, Ji Li put on his glasses and studied it carefully. After more than half an hour, he found the price for using this thing:

After wearing this device, the user will involuntarily want to solve math problems, but this can be controlled by their own will.

Ji Li suddenly went to solve the problem just now, and that's why.

Furthermore, Ji Li found himself inexplicably becoming more and more interested in the posters on the wall, and began to genuinely feel that the person depicted on the wall was an object worthy of reverence. However, because his spiritual level far surpassed that of this object of remembrance, this feeling was quickly and violently shattered, thus revealing the true price this thing held:
The longer one wears the mask, the more fervent one's pursuit of mathematics becomes, and one unconsciously develops a sense of reverence for "Professor Richard Berentock," genuinely recognizing and following him.

Furthermore, the longer one wears it, the stronger one's mathematical abilities will become, but it should not exceed the mathematical level of "Professor Richard Berentock," as this seems to be the obsession of Pulitzer, the original owner of the cryptex.

By the same token, the ability of [Exhaustion Calculation] should also become stronger.

Ji Li took off his glasses:
Besides the self-consistent logical ability of the restoration glasses, this pair of glasses, although not of a high spiritual quality, possesses two other abilities, which is rare among normal personality relics.

In other words, in the spiritual ecology of White Island, besides the replacement of the niches of malevolent entities by storable entities, the storable entities themselves may also be more powerful than ordinary malevolent entities...

Something is strange.

This information completely contradicted the intelligence the madwoman had given them before they arrived.

Either the information her ninjas obtained was not the true situation on White Island, which means that the ninjas operating inside White Island were being closely monitored.

But is it really necessary to go to such great lengths to completely conceal the unique ecology of White Island?

has no meaning?
The Ascension Protocol began to automatically generate numerous logical frameworks along with his thoughts, deducing the questions in his mind, which he ordered to stop.

Having just arrived on White Island, these questions are destined to remain unanswered. Discovering suspicious points that keep him alert is enough.

His soul trigger snapped, severing the psychological link between himself and the glasses, attempting to make them ownerless.

He wanted to know what would happen if these glasses lost their owner and became like the previous "hourglass"-shaped fragments of time.

The moment the connection was completely severed, his hand suddenly felt heavy; the glasses had transformed into a heavy trophy!

The trophy had a bizarre shape, as if various trophies of different shapes were haphazardly fused together, densely packed and unsettling.

At the same time, dense and drawn-out murmurs quickly passed by Ji Li's ears.

The language was so dense that it was impossible to understand what was being said.

He had the Ascension Protocol assist his ears in collecting the information, and once he put the trophy down, his whispers became barely audible.

But you can still hear it, like the buzzing of a mosquito.

When I picked it up again, the sound was much louder.

Moreover, an impulse surged within him; he wanted to calculate everything he saw in his field of vision.

Their shape, chamfer, weight, volume, and contact area.

Moreover, a force was affecting his vision, blurring his eyesight, but the geometric shapes of the objects became very clear.

He even found himself having learned several mathematical formulas out of thin air, as if he had put on glasses.

But as long as he doesn't use spiritual energy to fight back, his vision begins to shift over time, making it impossible for him to see anything other than geometry, mathematics, and formulas that appear out of nowhere.

During this process, when Felin asked him how he perceived things, a strange, volatile competitive feeling welled up inside Ji Li:
I am the best, my grades are very good, and I want to be number one.

The spiritual energy surged, and he instantly severed those interferences:
"Wouldn't it be better to buy a calculator?"

Ji Li gripped the trophy tightly, triggered the soul trigger, and infused it with spiritual energy to reconnect with it.

The moment the connection with the soul psychology was completed, the trophy in my hand quickly transformed back into glasses, and those strange phenomena completely disappeared.

“Pulitzer’s competitive spirit was an extreme manifestation of his confidence in his own scientific abilities.”

His extreme emotions stemmed from his poor interpersonal relationships, frequent teasing and marginalization at school, and being looked down upon by his younger sister whom he grew up with.

In addition, both the decline in eyesight and the fervor for mathematics are related to the effects of glasses.

Ji Li roughly figured out the mechanism of the pacifier in his hand:

If controlled, it becomes docile glasses, but if left uncontrolled, it takes the shape of a trophy, seducing the competitive spirit within people and blinding them, leaving them only able to see the world of mathematics.

Considering the thoughts I had about Felin earlier, if multiple people were present, this thing could very well tempt several human spirits to kill each other out of competitiveness.

Are you struggling to solve problems until your head is bleeding?
While exchanging experimental results with Felin, Ji Li said with a hint of sarcasm:
"Pulitzer, you've got quite a grudge too."

He folded up the temples of his glasses, about to put them back into his dragon ring, when suddenly something occurred to him:

Neither Father Kelton, nor the nun killed by the priest, nor the corpse of their accomplice appeared to contain any traces of personality.

Is it possible that, under the ecological rules of White Island, awakened individuals do not leave behind personal relics after death, but instead exhibit a situation similar to Pulitzer's?

Ji Li's gaze swept over the objects in the room that had previously been filled with spiritual energy, before returning to the glasses in his hand:

After a person dies, their spiritual essence returns and attaches itself to these objects that have been imbued with their emotions and obsessions.

For example, Pulitzer's letters, trophies, unfinished exam questions, but more prominently, as the main element, is the pair of glasses that represent him.

Based on this reasoning, the priest's belongings should also be used to make a burial object.

It may not be of much use to him, but it can verify his conjecture.

If we can actually find the benzoin extracted by the priest, and study it in depth, we can also conduct a control group experiment with the rules of eyeglasses.

So Ji Li took out a cross from the Dragon Ring, which was originally hanging around Father Kelton's neck.

While cleaning up the battlefield, Ji Li didn't sense anything different about the fragments of time that still lingered in the underground church.

But the moment he took it out, he felt it surrounded by spiritual energy, and without him even having to do anything else, it was rapidly transforming into a sustenance object:
"really."

However, things didn't seem to develop as Ji Li had anticipated.

The cross spewed out a large plume of black gas, which filled the entire room in just a few breaths.

The black mist continued to contract and condense, gradually transforming into a figure—

A black lace nun's veil, high boots and stockings, long, glossy black fingernails, and a somewhat familiar young girl's face.

It was Clementine, the nun who was sacrificed and killed by Father Kelton.

Ji Li looked puzzled:
Evil?

No, you've overturned all the conclusions I just came up with?
However, the Ascension Protocol promptly displayed the data: —
Resting Object (Personality Relic): The Ghost Nun

Soul Quality: Complete

characteristic:
1. The Bound One: Summoning the resentful demon nun - Clementine Caro. The Bound One possesses independent thought and consciousness.

2. The Curse of Immortality: Clementine will not truly die unless the mortis is destroyed.

3. Food of Pain: The Nun's abilities can grow through eating, but she only consumes "despair".

Cost: Unknown.

Materialization condition: Cannot be materialized.

Fusion condition: Understanding the cost.
-
It's still a burial object... but the rule for burial objects is that they must take the form of a human.

In other words, this cross did not actually belong to Father Kelton, but to Clementine.
Just as Ji Li was pondering, Clementine opened her dark eyes.

Then his entire mouth tore open, his teeth grew out of place like sharp blades, and his face stretched out several meters wide as if glued together by liquid, biting down on Ji Li's face.

P.S.: It's almost the end of the month, everyone please vote!

(End of this chapter)