Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 678 Hypothesis Failed, Special Spiritual Grafting Method Discovered!

Locke summoned a full moon that reflected the collective consciousness of the dune people and amplified and concentrated it onto one person through magic. Locke looked at the dune person on the rock and found that... he had not changed at all.

Locke managed to inject a potion of holy spring nectar diluted a thousand times with moonlight into the dune man's body, thus preventing his death.

Locke said, “I miscalculated. My hypothesis of evolutionary collective consciousness resonance was immediately disproven. I was able to capture the telepathic echoes of these dune people and indeed capture those survival-based needs, and project those thoughts onto this dune person, but I failed.”

“There has been absolutely no change. This proves that my previous hypothesis was wrong.”

Locke disagreed, proposing a hypothesis that was itself an immediate self-refutation.

Even if he had successfully accelerated the evolution of the Dune people by using Full Moon Growth, he still needed to determine whether another group of Dune people without the Stone Spirit faith would also undergo a similar evolution.

Locke pondered, "My idea just now was indeed a bit outrageous. To think that I could evolve just because I wanted to? Upon closer examination, it really is utter nonsense."

"Okay. I may have been misled by the ritualistic things of these Dune people. Their rituals are just a product of their own lack of understanding and path dependence."

Locke walked around the rock and frowned. There were many small ferns growing around the rock, and these ferns all had horizontal, fleshy roots.

Locke picked one of the plants, held it to his nose and smelled it, while frowning.

As a potion master nearing the second ring, he instantly realized that this ordinary plant contained several components that played a crucial role in the physical changes of mortals.

"I may have guessed wrong before."

Locke pondered, “A collective consciousness resonance may exist, but it does not act on the Dune people’s own bodies, but on these plants.”

"Animals and plants are two sides of the same coin in nature, and the two are closely related. Perhaps it is not the biological will of collective consciousness that drives an organism to evolve."

"This is baseless speculation."

"The scope is too broad. What if plants themselves have some kind of mechanism that can accept the will of animals in the environment and undergo some kind of change to help the animals survive?"

Locke proposed his second hypothesis: "The Dune people's rudimentary telepathic abilities amplified this effect."

“Ordinary organisms may lack the ability to communicate or the ability to produce lasting and intense emotions, so that plants can produce corresponding changes in a relatively short period of time.”

"In botany, there are many instances of magical plants interacting with animals, co-evolving through sound and natural magical structural components. However, the plants in the Dune Plane are merely ordinary plants, and more importantly, there seems to be some mechanism that accelerates their evolution."

I'm personally very interested in this.

However, it's also possible that it's just wishful thinking. If it's simply about the effects of plants on the human body, then it's meaningless.

This is because it is a common relationship between plants and animals.

Early potion science and modern herbalism are dedicated to the study of extracting special components from magical plants to achieve specific effects.

The key lies in the mechanism that could potentially accelerate evolution, rather than in what changes occurred among the Dune people.

It's also very easy to disprove.

Locke immediately used Full Moon Growth to shine on a fern in the corner of the rock, while simultaneously reflecting the collective consciousness of the Dune people gathered during the ritual onto the fern.

Locke also used a first-circle spell, Rapid Growth, to accelerate growth.

As a result, the fern experienced a period of flourishing followed by decline, scattering spores before finally withering away rapidly.

"Nothing has changed. That idea is also wrong."

Locke frowned.

He went into the natural caves inhabited by the dune people and indeed saw some simple stone tools used for crushing fern leaves.

"That dune man is heavily contaminated with magic; ordinary herbal mixtures cannot prolong his life."

"Therefore, it cannot be simply regarded as a simple application of some kind of herbal medicine. That's nonsense."

“But if it were that easy to discover, this phenomenon would have been commonplace by now.” Locke squatted down, examined the types of fern leaves that the mortals of the dunes had crushed, and used archaeological magic to recreate their original forms.

"They are all simple, common ferns."

"It's impossible for it to have such a miraculous effect. Unless these ferns evolved specifically for the Dune people."

"Therefore, it has a special effect on the blood essence of the Dune people, and can help the blood essence of the Dune people to produce corresponding changes. But I have tried the kind of demand echo formed by the Dune people through telepathy and rituals, and even when I reflected it onto these ferns, it did not produce any corresponding changes."

Locke fell into deep thought.

Either I could find a way to get the Dune People to eat these plants and repeat the effect, or I could figure out, through thinking, the mechanism by which the Dune People caused these ferns to undergo specific evolution and accelerated the evolution process.

"Could it be that there wasn't enough time, which is why it failed? No, I've already used accelerated growth."

"I have shortened the growth cycle of these plants. These are just ordinary plants. I can easily make them bloom and wither dozens of times in one second. Several cycles have already occurred just now."

Locke pondered, "Could it be that this line of thinking is also wrong?"

Putting everything else aside, the Dune People's bizarre vitality alone is highly abnormal.

Either the Dune people are tougher and more talented than the wizards thought, or there must be some undiscovered mechanism at play.

"Could it be that it's not a collective consciousness, but some kind of spiritual fusion?"

Locke blinked and immediately denied it. "No, grafting cultivation methods do involve grafting magical plants with magical creatures. Such magical plants, having absorbed the animal's spirit, would actually become violent."

Locke looked at the stone worshipped as a god. "Think about it from the opposite perspective. If there's some mechanism that can influence plants and accelerate their evolution, and then plants accelerate the evolution of organisms, why haven't the wizards discovered it for so long? It's very likely that wizarding societies lack this kind of thing, or rather, wizarding societies don't lack it, but the wizards themselves lack it." "That's religious belief."

Locke's eyes lit up. "I've been thinking about this all along, but I've been thinking about the wrong thing. If I think about it carefully, only special plants will appear around the stone, and these dune people will benefit from consuming these plants, so they will believe that the stone is a gift to them."

So what happened?

Locke used the wizard's vision—spiritual vision—and saw that the stone had a very special spirituality; although it was an inanimate object, it possessed the spirituality of a large number of living people.

Because of the Dune people's worship, these spirits remained in the stones for a long time, while some of them drifted out and landed on the surrounding ferns.

“Therefore, spirituality is likely the key,” Locke pondered. “When an animal’s spirituality is directly integrated with a plant, it will cause the plant to become stronger and more violent in a short period of time, and then die quickly. Less than one in ten grafting methods can succeed.”

"But it's not that there are no successful grafting methods!"

"If, through the transformation of faith, a special spirituality is generated over the years, which has removed the animalistic nature, or even a special spirituality that can be described as a special product, then when combined with plants, it seems that a special change will be born."

Locke realized this and immediately reached out, using the power of Myster to grasp the stone and extract a portion of its special spiritual energy. Instead of channeling this precious spiritual energy into the surrounding ordinary ferns, Locke channeled it into a common sea fern he had taken from his astral ring.

Locke used the Full Moon Growth technique, leveraging the connecting properties of this massive magical blueprint to link the spirituality of the sea gold sand with that special spirituality. The two merged together like water and milk.

Immediately afterward, to Locke's anxious gaze, the fern leaves of the sea ginseng plant began to tremble abnormally, teetering on the brink of madness, but this abnormality quickly disappeared.

The entire Lygodium japonicum plant underwent a peculiar change, with its leaves developing serrated edges.

Locke was overjoyed. "I guessed right. This method of fusing with special spiritual energy can allow plants to undergo a certain degree of special evolution."

"Therefore, it is not a resonance of collective consciousness, but rather that these special spiritualities have passively merged with the spirituality of the plants around the stone over a long period of time, and these plants have undergone corresponding changes."

Locke's expression shifted slightly. "Since these spiritualities are originally based on various desires, the special transformation through the stone washes away the human spirituality, turning it into a special state of spirituality."

"Therefore, after these plants passively absorbed some special spiritual energy, they produced a way to help the Dune people evolve and possibly help them get out of their current predicament."

Locke pondered, "Of course, to achieve this special rapid evolution mechanism, the following conditions are required, and it is quite a coincidence that all of them are met."

"First, this is a people who like to worship certain inanimate objects."

"Secondly, this people like to make wishes on inanimate objects and hope to achieve some kind of evolution."

"Third, this race possesses a kind of telepathic ability, which can create a collective consciousness resonance and strengthen their spiritual remnants. No matter how much an ordinary creature worships a dead object, it is very likely that it will not be able to retain its spirituality within it."

"In the endless void, there must be many races that meet this requirement. But it is not that common. Just a high level of telepathic racial talent has blocked many civilizations."

“Secondly, this civilization must also have a fondness for the worship of inanimate objects,” Locke pondered. “These inanimate objects can be transformed into special divine forms.”

Locke's expression was strange. "The racial talent of telepathy is relatively easy to fulfill in the wizarding world. But wizards in the wizarding world have no access to religion."

"At least there is no access to normal religions. Let alone this kind of primitive religion. Moreover, I suspect that only the worship of stone objects, or even only the worship of stones, can produce this kind of special spirituality."

"The rules of the wizarding world seem to be different; worshipping inanimate objects cannot bring about any special changes."

"And in the various colonized worlds, there is a lack of races with such a high level of innate telepathic ability..."

Locke realized that this special case was likely related to the rules of the world.

That is, the rules of the world must allow people to worship a certain inanimate object, and the inanimate object has the power to transform and house the spirituality of people.

This rule does not exist in the wizarding world.

Therefore, this means that wizards in the wizarding world, at least within the wizarding world, will not be able to discover the mechanism by which this special spirituality can merge with magical plants and accelerate evolution.

And when wizards from the Wizarding World travel to various colonized planes, they indeed find it very difficult to discover such subtle things.

Such minute things are especially rare in the various colonized planes.

Races with such strong telepathic abilities rarely remain stuck in primitive worship.

However, the Dune people were a special case, experiencing a severe regression in civilization.

Locke said in a low voice, "It is indeed quite difficult to notice. If I hadn't been lucky, I wouldn't have noticed this detail. This is only because I am a potion master, which makes me so sensitive to how many minutes a mortal can live. If it were any other wizard, how would they care about a difference of a few minutes in a mortal's lifespan?"

Even so, all my previous assumptions were wrong.

"But this mechanism can indeed allow plants to evolve rapidly to some extent. These dune people's wish is to evolve so they can survive, but what if I gather all three conditions and find a race whose wish is simply to make the magical plants evolve?"

"Is it possible to make the magical plants evolve in a purer way?"

“But then I’ll need a race with high psychic abilities to worship an inanimate object for me and help me collect this special spirituality.” Locke looked at the group of dune people. “These dune people can do it, but there are too few of them. I need much more. Their population is currently less than one-tenth of what it used to be. Even if they all came to help me, it wouldn’t satisfy my needs.”

“No wonder wizards need to conquer and colonize the world. I need more races like the Dune people to collect enough special spiritual energy for my experiments on grafting magical plants.”

The ability to generate this special spirituality is something that not every race can do.

It requires a race like the Dune People, who are naturally gifted with high spiritual and emotional intelligence.

Locke glanced at the group of dune people. "In that case, I'll find a way to take them away later. For now, let's clean up the pollution around them and keep things as they are."

"Anyway, if they have the opportunity to leave the Dune Plane, these people shouldn't have any attachment to the land."

(End of this chapter)