In the last few days before the New Year, Divine Capital witnessed an unprecedented consortium.

An Ancient Method research team!

This was a consortium that had never appeared before in Shenzhou. Spiritual sharing was never a quality espoused by Ancient Method Practitioners. "The law is not to be passed on to the uninitiated, the way is not to be easily conveyed" was their credo in this regard. Moreover, Ancient Method Practitioners simply did not have the means to communicate as Modern Cultivators did.

Science is a system. This system has a language of its own, a way of expression that is based on mathematics, and anyone who studies this system can fully understand it and even use this method to fully express their own thoughts and ideas.

This is even more remarkable than sayings like "It cannot be told, it cannot be told" and "The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way."

The way, may be spoken of, but it is not the constant way.

Without this system, what teachers teach may not necessarily be understood by students, and misunderstandings can arise. People from different Sects can have vastly different understandings of a single concept, to the extent that two people might not even be talking about the same thing. Many concepts don't even have a universally acknowledged and specific interpretation. This makes academic exchange utterly unfeasible.

However, Divine Capital Cultivators made it happen against all odds.

Though the Heart Demon Curse played a role in this, it still counts as a significant miracle, neither too big nor too small.

Jarvis broadcasted Modern concepts in the depths of the minds of all those Cursed, forcibly giving them a set of shared language. And the Heart Demon Network also helped them transmit each other's thoughts, creating a sense of "heart-to-heart" communication.

Unlike Modern Cultivators who rely on academic papers for communication, they depended on the Heart Demon Curse Network to transmit each other's thoughts.

As the Heart Demon Curse spread, a torrent of despair swirled among the upper echelons of Divine Capital. News that "Divine Capital is doomed" and that "Wang Qi can control everyone by force" drove the upper echelons of Divine Capital into a collective madness. My Virtual Library Empire (M V L E M P Y R) appreciates your readership at the source.

More and more taboos were broken. The last remnants of pride the Ancient Method Practitioners had were discarded into the gutter. Some Cultivators even began to comprehensively study what "Heterodox" paths offered. Dusty books from the book depositories, Library Pavilion, and Transmitting Technique Hall were carted off by the boxload to be shared among them.

On this matter, the Da Lian Imperial Family did not make any comments.

Chen Feng had countless new ideas every day, each more bizarre than the last. Through the Heart Demon Curse Network, he distributed these ideas among the Divine Capital Ancient Cultivators. Each idea was enough to support an independent experimental group. Under the tireless research of countless Golden Core, numerous Nascent Souls, and several Divinity Transformation stage Cultivators in Divine Capital, a sea of new data was fed back to Chen Feng every day. And what Chen Feng needed to do was to go through all this data, come up with new inspirations.

He didn't need to consider the success rate of individual experiments, nor safety, nor experimental funding. He only needed to present inspirations, harvest data, make conclusions on his own, and then present new inspirations. That was enough.

He really got a taste of the treatment Primordial Spirit Cultivators should enjoy in advance.

In disciplines that emphasize experimentation, this is also a common phenomenon. The project leader doesn't need to perform any experiments themselves. They just have to collect the results and summarize them.

But a research group of tens of thousands is rarely seen even in Shenzhou.

Spiritual Energy concealed the "Dao," but it provided life beings with an all-capable "technique." In this universe, developing technology is much easier than studying principles. Even though all these ten thousand were Ancient Method Practitioners, following Chen Feng's secret guidance, their actual efficiency wasn't poor.

Every day, many new Spells and Practition methods were developed. Jarvis sorted them simply, and then Chen Youjia summarized them, reprising them in the standardized language of Modern Cultivators.

Unlike Chen Feng and Wang Qi, she had learned both Immortal Dao and Mathematics since childhood and was in fact the most familiar with this area.

All these Spells were created for the same purpose.

To refine the Heart Demon Curse.

Although these spells either addressed the symptoms rather than the root cause or had strong side effects, for the first time the seemingly unbreakable power of the Heart Demon Curse indeed showed signs of shakiness.

On the other hand, Wang Qi was also tackling the problem of the Heart Demon Curse from another angle.

The essence of the Heart Demon Curse was both a special algorithm and a type of spiritual energy that used this algorithm as its intrinsic form. In fact, the method to eliminate the influence of this curse was not complex. One simply needed to take the reciprocal of this intrinsic form and deduce another type of spiritual power based on this "reciprocal." Once the two types of spiritual power came in contact with each other, they would automatically neutralize each other.

However, this approach was not suitable for the current situation. The reason was simple; the method was too complicated. Low-level cultivators might not be able to perform it, and Divine Capital had a lack of high-level cultivators. Moreover, the number of people infected with the Dao Heart Pure Yang Spell continued to rise daily. If one tried to save each person individually, there wouldn't be enough time.

To save a city full of mortals, there was only one way.

Make the "Anti-Heart Demon Spell" similarly capable of infection!

This idea was like using biological control to manage the invasion of an exotic species. However, the released controlling organisms might become another, even more dangerous type of exotic species. Therefore, utmost caution was necessary.

To prevent the "Anti-Heart Demon Spell" from becoming a new "Divinization Crisis," Wang Qi's concept was to have it rely on the Heart Demon Network, spreading along this nigh indomitable network. He planned to let the power of the Heart Demon Curse form a special cycle that would neither twist the souls of people nor the will of those who practice spells.

"In other words, what I need is a 'god,' a special divine spirit, a control program for the Heart Demon Network, whose only function is to limit its own power," he said.

A divine spirit is the control core of the Divine Tao System. Those who possess a divine body and personality, such as Divine Tao Cultivators, have both software and hardware, and this "hard drive" is set to read-only, so the software inside cannot be changed. Holy Light God and Circle of Reason represent the non-personality gods; they are merely "software," albeit more complex than the system software on a typical calculator. The Xia Gai Demon Worm is also broadly a "god," but it is specifically used to control the power of the five pestilences' overall spell, amplifying its combat characteristics.

What Wang Qi had to create was different. It could not be complex; it had to be simple and also stable without risk of failure. It was not to act on the entire network, but on every terminal within the network. It would suppress the network's influence on these terminals.

"This kind of program that can affect the Human Dao System is actually the last link in my 'Immortal Cultivation for Everyone' project," Wang Qi smacked his lips, "I vaguely remember mentioning this idea, either at the Dao Seed Award or somewhere else. If it weren't for the timing discrepancy, I might suspect that someone orchestrated this uncontrollable situation after hearing my lecture at the Dao Seed Award."

"How could that be possible?" Zhen Chan questioned, "Haven't you also said that some things are inevitably chaotic, unpredictable—who could have known things would turn out this way?"

"Within the accidental, there inevitably lies the inevitable," Wang Qi first countered, then shook his head and laughed, "That's true. Nobody would be that bored."

Wang Qi went back to feverishly writing code. After a while, he wrote down a few parameters and handed them across the desk to Chen Youjia, "Junior sister, help me check this out, see what spell is suitable for expressing these..."

Chen Youjia gave Wang Qi a cold glance, took the piece of paper, and started calculating without a word.

Wang Qi laughed awkwardly, not knowing what to say. After that night, an inexplicable awkwardness had surfaced between him and Chen Youjia.

However...

"It's best to maintain this situation for the time being; explaining would just be too much effort! And besides, in novels, saying goodbye with a bang or 'going back home to get married' are almost the same—they're both like ghosts doomed to die the next second! The only thing slightly better than a passerby character is probably leaving behind a posthumous child to inherit the main character's mantle or to simply star in the sequel—absolutely not!" Wang Qi convinced himself, "And what's more, I don't have a bed anymore, no place to continue even if I wanted to. Yep, that's definitely it!"

Now, even Zhen Chan had been conscripted by Wang Qi to process all kinds of ordinary data. Jarvis's performance had to be pushed to the limit. Wang Qi's room was filled with calculator parts, mostly used to augment computational power or simulate the effects of spells. The room had only a small desk left, with no space to even move around.

In such a state, the development of the Anti-Heart Demon Spell progressed incredibly quickly.

Yet, human capability was ultimately limited. By the end of December, Wang Qi's development unavoidably came to a halt.

That night, during a meeting among the three of them, Wang Qi lamented, "This time, we really need more time. I have constructed the basic framework of this system. But it is still too fragile, lacking in stability, far from perfection, with too much redundancy, and too many deficiencies."

Chen Feng asked, "What are your plans now?"

"We have to continue running it long-term to find any flaws and fix them," Wang Qi said helplessly, "But we're short just on time."

From nothing to something, Wang Qi had created a "divine spirit." If this were done ten thousand years ago, it would already be a miracle that shocked the world. But now, this small miracle was far from enough to save Divine Capital.

Chen Feng said, "Then, let me share some good news. I've made a breakthrough."

Wang Qi and Chen Youjia perked up, asking, "What is it?"

"Zhao Qingfeng," Chen Feng revealed, "That fellow, worthy of being a Banished Immortal not adept at Seeking Dao, has an almost instinctual comprehension of spells. After reading through the Immortal Dao Burning Book List these days, he suddenly had an inspiration and has come up with a spell that can refine the Heart Demon Curse Power safely and stably!"

(To be continued. If you like this work, welcome to recommend, monthly vote support in Qidian. Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile users please read at m.qidian.com.)