I, the Lord of the Fifth Throne, am the source of all things!

He reached into his spatial ring and took out a transparent container filled with a clear liquid.

After opening it, he poured it directly onto his head.

Bang————

The moment the liquid touched Duanmu Lian, a thick white smoke exploded from his body.

Then, as the smoke slowly dissipated, Ryuu and Tokisaki Kurumi stared in disbelief.

A beautiful woman with long, flowing sky-blue hair, clear, sparkling blue eyes, and a voluptuous, alluring figure appeared before them.

"Now that there are no men here, take your clothes off!"

A calm, ethereal yet undeniably authoritative voice emanated from Duanmu Lian, who, now a woman, stared at Tokisaki Kurumi with a look that seemed to say, "Don't try to bargain with me anymore."

The gender of male or female is meaningless to Duanmu Lian, after all, there are other Duanmu Lians who use female bodies in the Eternal Abyss.

After all, some martial arts techniques and tools have gender restrictions in terms of cultivation or use.

If gaining power only requires becoming a woman, then Duanmu Lian has nothing to complain about.

He had practiced the Sunflower Manual, and even if he cut off two ounces of flesh, he could regenerate it afterward.

If one cannot grasp the principles of gain and loss, one cannot gain more.

As for what was used just now, it was just the Mother's Drowning Spring.

Despite its ability to turn any man it comes into contact with into a woman, Duanmu Lian considers it an absolute treasure.

The fact that it can turn a man into a woman, achieving a reversal of yin and yang, speaks volumes about its value.

This stuff has been very effective in helping Duanmu Lian achieve breakthroughs in Tai Chi and the principles of Yin and Yang.

Moreover, through martial arts, one comprehends the ever-changing nature of flesh and blood, and whether one is male or female is entirely up to oneself.

Forget about the Mother's Drowning Spring, he even has the Mother-Child River water that can make a man pregnant.

That thing contains the power of the laws of creation, birth, and life; it is incredibly precious.

"...I think Zhe Duanmu-kun and Itsuka Shido will definitely get along..."

Kurumi Tokisaki looked at the beautiful blue-haired, blue-eyed woman in front of her, and her lips twitched involuntarily.

After teasing Duanmu Lian for a bit, he stopped haggling.

The elven girl suppressed her embarrassment and slowly took off all her clothes, including her underwear.

Even though Duanmu Lian has become a woman, the blush on Tokisaki Kurumi's face just won't go away when she thinks that the other person is a man inside.

Duanmu Lian looked at the beautiful, fair-skinned body lying on the experimental table, her eyes remaining completely unmoved.

He connected his mental energy to the floating octopus tentacle monster he had just released and began his experiment.

【——ROOM·Slaughterhouse——】

The floating one-eyed octopus tentacle monster moved to the other side of the experimental table.

After extending its two tentacles, a transparent and semi-enclosed spherical space enveloped the entire laboratory.

This octopus-like creature is an engineered life form that has been fused with the "Op-Op Fruit," specifically designed to assist in various kinds of surgeries.

Inside the space, this thing is mass-produced and there are a very large number of them.

During the Eternal Abyss, when Yagokoro Eirin was teaching Duanmu Lian about medicine, she also mentioned that this thing was very useful.

Within this special space, a scalpel can cut into people or objects, cutting any object into several pieces and then reassembling them.

A life severed by a power user with a knife in the ROOM will not die or bleed; it will remain alive.

【ROOM Scan】

Within this space, Duanmu Lian saw through every part of Tokisaki Kurumi's body, inside and out.

After finding out the location of the spirit crystal, he immediately began to use the knife.

“Swish, swish, swish!!!”

Under the chilling gaze of Tokisaki Kurumi's three clones, the real Tokisaki Kurumi, lying on the experimental table, was dismembered into eight pieces.

Duanmu Lian calmly removed Tokisaki Kurumi's head and handed it to the stunned clone Kurumi beside her, saying in a flat tone:

"Hold your head tight."

The clone blankly took the head of the real Tokisaki Kurumi, and immediately realized that she was still alive.

Kurumi Tokisaki, whose head was being held in the arms of her clone, looked at Duanmu Lian, who was being skinned and dismembered, and had a lot to say.

But seeing how serious the other person was, she didn't want to disturb them, so she could only keep quiet.

At this moment, Duanmu Lian, in coordination with the engineered life form, directly extracted the glittering spirit crystal from Tokisaki Kurumi's body.

Originally, once the spirit crystal was fused with a person, the person would die if it were removed.

Fortunately, there was an engineered life form with the ability of the Op-Op Fruit assisting them, so there was no need to worry about the side effects.

.........

Three hours later.

Kurumi Tokisaki, who had undergone a painless surgery that dismembered her body, was pieced back together after Duanmu Lian examined her from head to toe and took blood samples.

However, the spirit crystal has already been removed.

For her safety, she will have to stay in the ROOM - Slaughterhouse space where the Op-Op Fruit's power is activated for the time being.

Now dressed, Kurumi Tokisaki sits on the lab table, examining her body with a look of utter disbelief.

There's no problem. Apart from losing my elven powers, everything is fine.

Moreover, there were no signs of cutting on her pearl-white skin.

"That's amazing..."

Sitting on the experimental table, Tokisaki Kurumi could only marvel at Duanmu Lian's abilities.

She turned her head to look at Duanmu Lian's back, who was focused on analyzing the spirit crystal on the other side.

Having lost her elven powers, her wine-red eyes now reveal an unreadable emotion.

In Tokisaki Kurumi's memory, Duanmu Lian is not a gentle person, but she is definitely the one who can give people the most sense of security.

This is the feeling the girl got from spending a short time together.

Although it was very cold-hearted, Tokisaki Kurumi could understand that it was a kind of 'don't get in my way' rejection, after all, she had rejected others in the same way before.

“Gugugugu~~~~”

Just as Tokisaki Kurumi was lost in thought, watching Duanmu Lian's back as she worked, a muffled sound came from her lower abdomen.

No longer an elf, she also felt a long-lost sense of hunger.

Kurumi Tokisaki quite misses this feeling, since she hasn't felt this way for several years.

In the past, when I ate as an elf, it was merely to savor the food, not to fill my stomach.

"Liu Zi, give her the food."

Duanmu Lian took out the hot food she had prepared in her spatial ring and placed it on the table next to her, instructing Liu Zi to give it to Tokisaki Kurumi.

Through his research on spirit crystals, and with the combined expertise of science and magic, he has begun to reverse-engineer the composition of spirit spells based on the spirit crystals.

After all, in the world of Date A Live, the so-called spirits are neither life forms that come out of thin air, nor aliens that descended from outer space.

Rather, it was created by the magician Westcott who gathered together the natural forces contained in the earth, sky, and ocean on the earth's surface—forces that would take the earth hundreds or even thousands of years to recover—to create magical life.

Every elf has an inseparable connection with the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

Kurumi Tokisaki's spirit crystal represents the third element on the Kabbalah Tree of Life—understanding.

Duanmu Lian possesses a vast amount of knowledge, especially regarding the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

Now, while studying the spirit crystals, he is also browsing through his memories of his past life, searching for magical knowledge related to the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

..........

Three days later, Duanmu Lian stopped her research.

He has finished analyzing the spirit crystal, and he needs to conduct experiments to verify what he obtained after the analysis.

Ryuu and Tokisaki Kurumi also came out together.

After the spirit crystal was removed and her life condition was stabilized, she returned to being a human.

Currently, she only has a few clones within her shadow that she can use.

After all, maintaining the shadow space or the clones both require spiritual energy.

Therefore, the size of the shadow space, as well as the number of its internal divisions, has also decreased.

"Ho ho ho!!"

"I see, thank you very much."

Duanmu Lian communicated harmoniously and amicably with the giant Lanlong in front of her, and after the exchange, she tossed a huge rainbow fruit to it as a reward.

Lanlong wanted to tell Duanmu Lian that he was a carnivore and didn't eat many vegetarian dishes.

But after seeing the enormous rainbow fruit and smelling its irresistible aroma, she quietly put it away.

Although they haven't known each other for very long, Lanlong has already let down his guard against Duanmu Lian quite a bit.

Duanmu Lian had only asked her where the earth's vein energy was most abundant.

She received the reward after answering.

As Duanmu Lian and the other two left, Lanlong transformed into a beautiful dragon-horned girl in a burst of light.

Click!

After taking a bite of the enormous rainbow fruit, her eyes lit up.

When juice accidentally dripped into the spring, it turned the entire spring into a fragrant juice spring.

Lanlong, whose mouth was full of juice, realized he was already full.

Seeing that the rainbow fruit was half eaten, he carefully hid it away.

Back in her nest, she felt a sense of anticipation, wondering what delicious treats Duanmu Lian would give her next time she came to ask for help.