Inside the laboratory, An Li was operating a precision engraving machine, carving intricate and mysterious patterns onto a piece of alloy.
Su Xiaocheng and the others had already been in Rain Curtain City for half a month.
Their daily routine consisted of studying and deriving magic formula theories with An Li during the day, researching the bronze statue, and replenishing their magic power at night.
After so many days, Su Xiaocheng could feel that the purification power inside her Purification Seed had been replenished quite a bit.
It had already reached eighty percent of a normal A-rank magical girl’s magic capacity.
Of course, it still couldn’t compare to Lu Shiyuan’s bottomless magic reserves.
During this period, An Li had also attempted to construct formulas for everyone’s attributes, but with little success.
Progress on magic formula theory had been very slow.
Refinement was the result of An Li’s year-long accumulation of research.
Since she herself did not possess magic power, her initial research subjects could only be relatively simple attributes like this one.
Now that the theory’s feasibility had been proven and she had everyone’s assistance, she still couldn’t produce any new usable formulas in a short amount of time.
On the other hand, research on the bronze statue had made some progress.
An Li believed that the bronze statue’s magic-nullifying ability actually depended on the special patterns on its armor.
These patterns, which looked extremely ancient and mysterious, shared a similar underlying principle with magic formula theory.
The two were essentially the same thing, merely expressed in different forms.
“If I had obtained the bronze statue earlier, my magic formula theory wouldn’t have only taken shape now.”
An Li had sighed like this more than once.
Today was the first time she attempted to actively engrave the patterns she believed represented magic nullification onto an alloy plate.
After a long while, An Li let out a breath of relief and stopped the machine. She removed the finished alloy piece.
“Come on, try attacking it.”
An Li handed the alloy to Su Xiaocheng.
Su Xiaocheng controlled her magic output and fired a magic beam of moderate strength.
The beam passed straight through the alloy without any resistance.
The patterns on it had no effect whatsoever.
“It didn’t work?” An Li frowned.
The material of this alloy had been specially smelted to match the bronze statue’s armor after she analyzed it.
Because the bronze statue was so large, there might have been some deviation in the materials during analysis.
Even if the effect wasn’t as good as the original, it shouldn’t have been completely useless.
“Could it need magic power to activate?” Su Xiaocheng offered her opinion.
Magic nullification was ultimately a type of magic attribute.
Without magic power to support it, it was normal that it wouldn’t show any effect.
An Li made another alloy plate.
Su Xiaowei tried infusing it with magic power from the side.
With the support of magic, the patterns on the alloy plate emitted a faint glow.
Su Xiaocheng launched another attack.
This time, when the magic beam touched the alloy plate, it created ripples.
The beam was successfully blocked.
“It seems to work?”
Su Xiaocheng said after her attack failed to penetrate.
“It succeeded?”
An Li turned nervously toward Su Xiaowei.
“Um… not really.”
Su Xiaowei shattered their expectations.
From her perception, the magic power she consumed was about the same as when she normally resisted an attack.
The magic-nullifying patterns did save some magic power, but that saved portion was consumed while flowing through the patterns.
In the end, it wasn’t as convenient as simply raising a shield.
Moreover, she felt that the effect these patterns produced didn’t seem to be magic nullification at all, but rather a different attribute.
Listening to Su Xiaowei’s guess, An Li fell into deep thought.
That didn’t make sense.
The patterns shouldn’t be wrong. Could it be a material problem?
“Forget it. Instead of me trying to optimize the materials, it’s better to just use the real thing.”
An Li felt this problem wasn’t worth spending too much effort on.
Her gaze shifted toward the bronze statue.
Although the bronze statue only possessed the most basic level of intelligence, when she saw An Li’s expression, she seemed to understand what fear meant.
“Someone come help me knock off a piece of her armor — the one on the side without any patterns.”
After looking the statue up and down for a long time, An Li chose a section she liked.
She hadn’t done this before because she was worried about damaging the bronze statue as a whole.
But now that research had hit a wall, An Li no longer cared about such things.
“Do we really have to break it off?”
Su Xiaocheng hesitated.
If she accidentally ruined it, she wouldn’t be able to afford the compensation.
Li Yanyan didn’t care about any of that. Since An Li was the one who said to break it, she simply walked forward.
Under the bronze statue’s despairing gaze, she grabbed the corner An Li had pointed at and gave it a hard yank.
Crack.
A piece of the ancient bronze armor was directly broken off.
Li Yanyan tossed the fragment to An Li, then left the scene without taking any credit.
She was joking.
What if it really got damaged?
Who would take responsibility?
This thing was at least an antique no matter how you looked at it.
Two hours later, An Li stared at the composition analysis on the screen and couldn’t help but curse out loud.
“Absolute Spirit Sand! Damn it, no wonder it can nullify magic power.”
Although Su Xiaocheng and the others didn’t know what Absolute Spirit Sand was, the name alone sounded incredibly powerful.
“Goddamn it, I thought the patterns represented magic nullification. Turns out they represent Aggregation.”
“What does Aggregation do?” Su Xiaocheng asked in a timely manner, providing full emotional support.
“The effect of Aggregation is roughly to turn scattered individuals into a unified whole. Used here, its purpose should be to integrate the effects of the Absolute Spirit Sand distributed throughout the armor. No matter which part a magic attack lands on, it can still exert the full power of all the Absolute Spirit Sand.”
“Absolute Spirit Sand itself has excellent magic-isolating properties, but its physical characteristics are poor, and its yield is very low. It can only be found in certain special environments.”
An Li felt quite helpless after learning the truth.
Replicating Aggregation wasn’t difficult, but the scarcity of Absolute Spirit Sand meant that large-scale application of magic-nullification technology was nearly impossible.
“Since things have come to this, let’s leave it at that for now. The Security Council’s warehouse still seems to have a small stock left. I’ll go see if I can apply for it. I’ll also release a purchase notice and see if I can get some Absolute Spirit Sand or information about it first.”
An Li looked helplessly at the enormous bronze statue.
“Or… once we figure out how this thing moves, we might as well just take her apart. Something this big should contain quite a lot of Absolute Spirit Sand.”
The bronze statue remained silent.
Who had she provoked?
She had been peacefully sleeping while guarding the ruins.
It was one thing for intruders to barge in and dig up the ruins she was protecting, but now she was being studied by a group of people.
And now they were even talking about dismantling her?
People these days really had no sense of decency. She never expected that humans in later generations would be this unreasonable.
“Let’s rest for today. Time to eat!”
An Li checked the time and announced the end of the lesson.
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