289: Chapter 289 Crystal Core = Spirit Stone?

After Su Mingyuan gave the order to classify and catalog everything, the scientific research forces of the entire Forward Base completed their reorganization within eighteen hours.

The temporary laboratories expanded from seven or eight containers to two hundred and twenty-six, occupying an entire street in the eastern district of the base.

A dedicated encrypted fiber-optic cable was pulled in separately for the data channel of the Tianheng Supercomputer, opening the bandwidth to the maximum.

Over at the Deep Blue Group, Zhou Peide also received the news, and all the AI computing power resources of the Main World—Tianheng 1 through Tianheng 4, the three dedicated server clusters of the Deep Blue Group, and the quantum computing prototype of the National Defense Science and Technology Research Institute—were all allocated to this project.

Project Codename: Guixu.

Taken from the overseas immortal mountains in the "Liezi".

Su Mingyuan felt that this name was quite suitable.

Because they were dismantling the inheritance of a Cultivator.

The workload was even larger than everyone expected.

After checking item by item, the total number of items poured out from the Storage Pouch was 14,372.

Zhao Cheng led the Research Team to spend two days doing the first round of rough classification.

The classification standard was very simple: things they could understand and things they could not understand.

Things they could understand included—swords and weapons, metal Ores, porcelain bottles (suspected to be Medicinal Pills), scroll documents, and Jade Slips.

Things they could not understand included—some irregularly shaped artifacts, several bronze mirrors engraved with runes, some fabrics of unknown material, and that black token.

But among all categories, the most numerous thing was a single item.

Crystal stones.

The total number of crystal stones poured out from the Storage Pouch was 9,641.

Accounting for more than two-thirds of the total.

These crystal stones varied in size, with the smallest being about the size of a fingernail and the largest being the size of a fist, and their colors also varied—there were light cyan ones, milky white ones, light gold ones, and even a few deep purple ones.

Zhao Cheng's Research Team noticed a phenomenon on the first day.

The energy readings of these crystal stones varied drastically.

For the weakest batch, the reading of the energy spectrum analyzer was only a few hundred—about the same as a Tier 1 zombie crystal core.

For the strongest batch, the instrument directly overflowed, unable to read the specific numbers.

Zhao Cheng reported this discovery to Tao Zhe.

Tao Zhe looked at the data stream remotely in the base's main control room, asking Zhao Cheng to arrange them from low to high according to energy readings to see if any patterns could be found.

After the arrangement results came out, Tao Zhe remained silent for a long time.

The energy distribution of these crystal stones was not continuous.

They naturally divided into several obvious gradients—stepping up level by level like stairs.

First gradient: energy readings between 300-500, light white, largest in quantity, with over 6,000 pieces.

Second gradient: energy readings between 3300-5500, light cyan, with over 2,000 pieces.

Third gradient: energy readings between 30000-50000, light gold, with just over 1,000 pieces.

Fourth gradient: energy readings above 400000, instrument overflow, deep purple, with only 37 pieces.

Tao Zhe stared at this distribution for two minutes, and then brought up another set of data—the energy level table of crystal cores in the Zombie World.

Tier 1 crystal core: average energy reading of 420.

Tier 2 crystal core: average energy reading of 4100.

Tier 3 crystal core: average energy reading of 40000.

Tier 4 crystal core: average energy reading of 450000.

He placed the two sets of data side by side.

The numbers almost corresponded one-to-one.

Tao Zhe tapped his fingers on the table twice, and then dialed Su Mingyuan's channel.

"Group Leader Su, I might have discovered something very important."

Su Mingyuan was browsing through high-definition photos of a pile of Jade Slips in the adjacent container, and put down his tablet when he heard Tao Zhe's voice.

"Speak."

"Those crystal stones—I compared their energy readings with the zombie crystal cores." Tao Zhe's voice was very restrained, but his speaking speed was a little faster than usual, "The four gradients correspond respectively to the energy levels of Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 crystal cores. The deviation is within ten percent."

Su Mingyuan's movements stopped.

"Are you sure?"

"The data is right here," Tao Zhe said, "And it's not just the energy levels corresponding—I did another round of spectrum characteristic analysis. The energy flow pattern inside these crystal stones has a similarity of over ninety-two percent with the spiritual power flow pattern of the zombie crystal cores."

"They are essentially the same thing."

Su Mingyuan walked to Tao Zhe's main control room.

Two sets of data were arranged side by side on the screen—the crystal stones on the left and the crystal cores on the right.

The curves were almost overlapping.

"But they are not completely identical." Tao Zhe pointed at the subtle differences between the two sets of curves, "The energy of the crystal stones is 'cleaner'. There is more or less some Impurities energy inside the crystal cores—those are the biological information residues of the zombies themselves. The crystal stones do not have these Impurities. They are more like pure energy crystals."

Su Mingyuan looked at the screen and thought for a moment.

"Is it possible that these crystal stones are the Spirit Stones in the Cultivation system?"

Tao Zhe did not answer immediately.

He brought up a document—that was the content just preliminarily deciphered by the Deep Blue Group from the scrolls in the Storage Pouch.

Although the text of most scrolls had not yet been fully identified, the content of a few scrolls was relatively short, the deciphering difficulty was low, and they had been translated in advance.

One of the scrolls recorded Spirit Stones—a naturally formed high-purity spiritual power crystal, which was the most basic and universal Cultivate resource for Cultivators.

The description of Spirit Stones in the scroll—stones harboring spiritual essence, white and translucent, with radiance flowing inside.

The grades were divided into five tiers: inferior, Low Grade, Medium Grade, High Grade, and Top-Grade. The higher the grade, the purer and thicker the Spiritual Qi contained.

It completely matched the description of the crystal stones in front of them.

"If this deduction holds true—" Tao Zhe's voice had a calmness that suppressed excitement, "Then the crystal cores produced by our Zombie World are essentially the Spirit Stones mentioned in the Cultivation world."

He drew up a table on the screen.

"The first gradient corresponds to the Tier 1 crystal core—this is the lowest quality Spirit Stone in the Cultivation system, called 'inferior Spirit Stone' in ancient texts."

"The second gradient corresponds to Tier 2—Low-Grade Spirit Stone."

"The third gradient corresponds to Tier 3—Medium Grade Spirit Stone."

"The fourth gradient corresponds to Tier 4—High-Grade Spirit Stone."

Su Mingyuan looked at that table, his mind spinning rapidly.

"What about Tier 5?"

Tao Zhe shook his head. "No crystal stones corresponding to the energy level of Tier 5 crystal cores were found in the Storage Pouch. But calculated according to this progressive relationship, the Tier 5 crystal core should correspond to—Top-Grade Spirit Stone."

"Do we currently have Tier 5 crystal cores?"

"No. The Zombie World farm has only cultivated up to Tier 4 zombies at most, and has never produced Tier 5 crystal cores."

Su Mingyuan was silent for a few seconds.

"But we have more than 9,000 Spirit Stones."

"6,000 inferior Spirit Stones, 2,000 Low Grade ones, 1,000 Medium Grade ones, and 37 High Grade ones." Tao Zhe reported the numbers again, "Especially the High-Grade Spirit Stones—37 pieces. If one High-Grade Spirit Stone is equal to one Tier 4 crystal core, then the value of these 37 pieces is even greater than the monthly production of Tier 4 crystal cores from our entire Zombie World farm."

Su Mingyuan stood in front of the screen, looking at the correspondence table, and did not speak for a long time.

In the Storage Pouch of the Spirit-Taming Daoist, the most inconspicuous thing—more than 9,000 Spirit Stones—turned out to be the most easily quantified strategic resource.

And those scrolls, Jade Slips, Medicinal Pills, and weapons—

The value of those things had not been fully evaluated yet.

Su Mingyuan turned around and glanced at the container opposite the corridor.

Through the open door, he could see dozens of unfolded scrolls and rows of neatly arranged white Jade Slips piled on the table inside.

The people of the Deep Blue Group were photographing and inputting them word by word.

What was hidden inside those things still required time.

"Keep the matter of the Spirit Stones confidential for now," Su Mingyuan said, "Write the level correspondence relationship into a report and send it directly to Elder Qin. Continue to push forward with the rest."

He looked at his watch.

"How is the input progress of the scrolls and Jade Slips?"

"Thirty-seven percent," Tao Zhe said, "The difficulty of character identification is greater than expected—the characters on them have quite a bit of difference from modern Chinese characters, and many character shapes need to be manually confirmed one by one."

"Add people," Su Mingyuan said, "Transfer experts in ancient characters over. Give them as many people as they need."

"It's already being coordinated," Tao Zhe paused, "But there is a problem—among this batch of Jade Slips, there are a few pieces where what is engraved on them is not characters."

"What is it?"

"Circuit diagrams." Tao Zhe's voice lowered by a degree, "Circuit diagrams very similar to the structure of that Restriction. And some... that look like the Meridians operating routes for a certain kind of Cultivate."

Su Mingyuan's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Photograph them first. After the text part is mostly deciphered, we will analyze them together."

He walked toward the door and paused at the doorframe.

"More than 9,000 Spirit Stones." He looked back at Tao Zhe, his voice very soft, "The pocket money carried by a Cultivator is enough for us to use for a long time."

Tao Zhe did not reply.

He was thinking about another question—if the "pocket money" of a Cultivator was already this much, what kind of figure should the total amount of Spirit Stones be in the world of Cultivators?

What kind of existence was that place called the "Upper Realm" by the Spirit-Taming Daoist?