The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 166 The First Attempt at Alchemy: Alchemical Outer Armor

Zhang Chang'an looked up and glanced at him.

Just one glance.

Vurban's words caught in his throat. It was as if a hand had gripped his consciousness, silencing his screams, curses, and pleas for mercy.

His mouth was open, and he was making hoarse sounds in his throat. His eyes could still move, but his body no longer belonged to him.

This was naturally due to the momentum of the battle; his current state of mind had long been completely suppressed by Zhang Chang'an. After all, what he had just experienced was far worse than being defeated in a direct confrontation, so it wasn't just a matter of mental shock and physical weakening.

Zhang Chang'an withdrew his gaze and adjusted the position of the basin and bowl. "I haven't done anything yet," he said, his tone as calm as if he were chatting with a neighbor. "But you, having the awareness to come looking for me, should also be prepared to be killed by me. People call me the Sage of the East, but no one says that a sage can't fight."

As he spoke, he picked up the knife from the bowl and gestured it up and down in front of Vurban.

The tip of the knife was less than a hand's width away from Vurban's neck, and Vurban could see his own reflection on the blade.

His face was swollen like a pig's head, and his eyes were as big as copper bells.

He wanted to shout, but he couldn't. Zhang Chang'an's glance just now seemed to have drained all his strength, leaving even his vocal cords unresponsive.

He could only watch as the knife swayed back and forth in front of him, each sway making his heart leap.

"Don't worry," Zhang Chang'an said, the knife tip resting on the side of Vurban's neck. "I'm not a cultist. I don't intend to do anything too big. Besides..."

He paused, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

"I have a kind heart. Everyone in Paris knows that. So, I won't let you see yourself in such a miserable state."

Before Vorban could even understand what those words meant, Zhang Chang'an suddenly reached out with his free hand, his thumb and forefinger pinching a spot on the side of his neck.

A tingling, numbing, and throbbing pain exploded from that point, shooting up the blood vessels and into the brain, and then...

It's black in front of you.

Vurban's head tilted to one side, his whole body went limp, and his bound body also fell to the side, eventually being pulled back by the rope and leaning against the corner of the wall.

Zhang Chang'an withdrew his hand, looking at the red mark he had left on Vurban's neck. Then he picked up the knife and made a light cut on the side of Vurban's neck, near his collarbone.

"Pfft—" Dark red blood quickly spurted out, flowing down his neck, into his collarbone, and then overflowing, dripping down his tilted body. Zhang Chang'an sprinkled the salt he had hidden in his palm onto it.

Salt was rubbed into the wound. Normally, this would be torture. But at this moment, the instant the salt grains touched the blood, the blood seemed to be tripped up by something, and its flow slowed down noticeably.

"We don't even know who researched this alchemy—human alchemy is just about throwing all sorts of heavy metals and stuff onto a person. They lack materials, they don't have heavy metals. It's like sprinkling salt on a person; isn't that just teaching them how to be human?"

Zhang Chang'an pondered for a moment, then pushed the earthenware basin under Vurban's neck to catch the dripping blood. He then closed his eyes and mentally summoned the family genealogy.

The pages of the family tree unfolded in the darkness. He found his inventory, and the next second, a huge suit of iron armor appeared on the ground in front of him.

The steam exoskeleton remained the same as before, consisting only of the upper body structure. It lacked a helmet, and the chest and back were frame-like skeletons, with only a few protective plates covering the heart and rib areas. A small, fist-sized copper furnace was embedded in its back.

Only the two arms have the most complete structure, from the shoulders to the fingers, they are completely covered by metal structures and armor plates, with intricate gears and linkages at the joints, and each finger can move independently.

This item was enhanced in the Kyoto instance and was sufficient for previous instances. However, it's not enough here.

The alchemists in Paris can turn a person into water with a single palm strike, blast rocks to pieces from dozens of steps away with a phlogiston gun, and melt metal weapons on the spot with a transmutation array.

If his outer armor were to encounter those people, let alone fight them, they could easily set up an alchemy array and apply alchemical spells, rendering the mechanical structure inside completely useless.

If he's lucky, he'll just get stuck and unable to move; if he's unlucky, his outer armor will melt into molten iron on the spot and stick to his body, or it will explode on the spot and roast him alive.

So it has to be changed. Alchemy.

After two consecutive days of intensive study, most people wouldn't even be able to finish reading the prologue, but Zhang Chang'an had already grasped the basics.

He didn't just study the basics; he also read through almost all the advanced chapters in "The Original Text of Alchemy" that involved human materials.

The fundamentals of alchemy came into play at this point, as the two systems were remarkably similar. Many alchemical principles, with a slight change in terminology, could be directly applied to the framework of alchemy. The reverse was also true.

So when he read those chapters on advanced alchemy, it was like reading a textbook on the same knowledge in another language. Although the symbols and many paths were different, the underlying logic was the same.

Therefore, after reading through it once, he gained an understanding of many of the alchemy techniques and selectively and quickly learned some of them.

This relates to the refining of human raw materials, or the extraction of secondary processing materials from human materials.

This sounds bloody and tragic, but the reason is incredibly real.

Alchemy may look like supernatural magic, but it is essentially a technique. So, since he is just barely a beginner, he needs materials to use it. In this prison, the most readily available source of high-quality materials is the human body.

Even if this hadn't happened today, if he couldn't use other people's blood, he could still use his own.

Now, we'll move on to the practical part.

Zhang Chang'an rummaged through the kitchen shelf for a while and found a long, thin fish-killing knife. The blade was narrow, the edge thin, and the point sharp; it could barely be used as a carving knife.

He rubbed the knife on the whetstone a few more times to test the edge, then squatted down next to the outer armor.

With the tip of his knife stained with Vulban's blood, Zhang Chang'an took a deep breath and began to carve strange patterns on the edge of his breastplate.

The kitchen was so quiet that only the occasional crackling of the charcoal fire could be heard.

Vurban slumped unconscious in the corner, blood still seeping from his neck, dripping into the ceramic basin. Zhang Chang'an squatted in front of the steel frame, the tip of his knife tracing the metal surface, making careful, deliberate strokes.

The bloodstains on the iron surface were dark red and slightly shiny.

The part he studied was called alchemical inscription. Simply put, it involves engraving specific patterns on the surface of an object to guide the material to solidify along a fixed path, thereby achieving a certain effect.

His outer armor is made of metal, which is the perfect material for this type of armor.

Zhang Chang'an slowly raised his hand and made a hand seal.

The energy within him flowed out from his fingertips, guided by the hand seals, and spread outwards along the engraved blood-red lines.

The inscriptions on the armor in front of him suddenly lit up, a dark red light burning from the starting point of the patterns all the way through, as if an invisible fuse had been lit.

The characters were crooked and looked somewhat like Western inscriptions and somewhat like Eastern talismans, flickering on the iron surface.

This is the treatment he did to the alchemy techniques he used, incorporating some talismanic elements.

Therefore, unlike other alchemy techniques, there was no need to incorporate any materials or use any special methods to activate it. With a simple hand seal, the outer armor began to change shape right in front of him.

The plates covering the arms on the outer armor originally had many gaps and slits for heat dissipation and lightness.

But at this moment, the iron sheets seemed to come alive, one on top of another, slowly and steadily filling all the gaps.

-

From shoulder to wrist, the previously discontinuous metal structure became a continuous piece, and the blood-red inscriptions on the surface gradually emerged on the newly filled armor plates, connecting with the original patterns.

Zhang Chang'an raised his hand to inspect it, tapping his fingers on the surface of the outer armor and listening to the changes in the sound. Then he changed his gesture, pressing his thumb against his middle finger and flipping it inward.

On the inner side of the wrist, a plate of armor suddenly flipped outward, revealing a section of iron-gray blade. It was as if the metal itself was extending outward from under the plate, growing out of thin air.

The sword blade that appeared out of nowhere gradually grew longer, wider, and brighter.

It finally stopped growing when it reached about a foot in length. Zhang Chang'an moved his fingers, and the blade trembled slightly with his movement, reflecting a cold white light in the glow of the charcoal fire.

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