Chapter 52: Magic Network

"What should I call a group of people who make discovering supernatural forces their goal? They almost sound like wizards or something!"

Lu Zhiyu decided that he would name this civilization system. Yes, he considered this a civilization system because once the usage of mind power and deified cells was spread, it could form a culture that wouldn't be inferior to the scientific and technological system.

He wanted to call it the Magician civilization, but that sounded too exclusionary and mysterious. In the end, he decided to use the name Wizard civilization.

The first step would be opening up a path to the zero-dimensional space throughout the entire Maria's World. But instead of letting it be freely open, he would adopt an indirect method.

He prepared to construct a passage from the one-dimensional space and use it as a requirement to access the Source Form from the zero-dimensional space. When the strength of a person's mind met the requirement, he or she would be able to connect to the one-dimensional passage, through which one could absorb the Source Form in the zero-dimensional space to strengthen their mind power.

"Let's call it the Magic Network. Sixty percent of the Source Form a person draws from the zero-dimensional space using the Magic Network would come to me. The person will only receive forty percent of that. This can also be a means for me to harvest Source Form!"

Lu Zhiyu's Source Form in the hourglass had grown significantly. After a thousand years of collecting Source Form, the measure had increased from 129 units to 1363 units. At the beginning, the first two hundred years only yielded less than a hundred units' worth of Source Form. The growth rate had become faster and faster. Now, every year would yield about eight or nine units worth of Source Form.

Admittedly, a normal organism contained very little Source Form. Lu Zhiyu had gathered several hundred scales of Source Form from the insect queens. The amount of Source Form a normal life contained was minuscule compared to an insect queen.

Following his own thoughts, Lu Zhiyu used the Scroll of the World to revise some of the rules in the one-dimensional space from there, covering the entire Maria's World with the one-dimensional passages. And because it was an overlapping of a lower dimensional world, unless one could detect the dimensions, neither humans nor supernatural creatures could sense the changes!

Lu Zhiyu could feel the secret passages of the network appear one after another, expanding across Maria's World. He could also feel his Source Form slowly being drained by this process, like water flowing out. It was shocking.

He knew that it would take a lot of Source Form to create a network that covered the entire world, but he did not expect this. Creating Maria's World had only used about 1000 units of Source Form, but the consumption now was even more than that.

Of course, he had used material energy from the outer universe when creating Maria's World. Lu Zhiyu's own Source Form was mostly used to change the rules and convert the material energy into a world. Now, he was using his own Source Form to create paths that would bear and extract the Source Form to build a supernatural network.

However, this network was only for transporting energy. To take the Source Form from the providing zero-dimensional space, it required the organism to have a conscious mind. There was no other way to extract Source Form.

Thus, Lu Zhiyu was only setting up a framework so far. Afterwards, the other supernatural creatures must connect to the Magic Network to extract the Source Form and allow Lu Zhiyu to get some "toll fees."

As the network spread bit by bit, he found that the Source Form he had collected had been reduced to less than 1000 units. More than 1000 years of hard work had been reduced to nothing in an instant.

Because the network didn't cover his castle, he decided that he would go check on the world itself. Before going down himself, he used the Scroll of the World to check what had been happening and what had changed in Maria's World.

On the elfin continent, the overpopulation of elves placed a strain on the Forest of Life. The realm of the elves became divided due to this problem. Two Elders, originally members of the council, took a seed of the Tree of Life. Together with those who were willing to follow them, they left the Forest of Life. They began exploring Yala and looking for a new place to settle down and call home.

On Alen, the humans and orcs were still locked in never-ending conflicts. There had been several wars. However, this fighting increased the exchange of culture, and both human and orcs civilization was growing stronger. The vast continent was home to many different styles of life and cultures. Many different groups and countries formed in both human and orc civilizations as well.

There were multiple large human kingdoms, like the Batko Empire in the desert, the Mara Kingdom in the forests, the Tuten Dynasty to the east, the Lumen Kingdom that came to power through sea trade, and the most powerful Crete Empire in the heart of the land. There were also smaller kingdoms and duchies between these large kingdoms. These smaller nations made alliances with the larger kingdoms and formed a pyramid of power.

Among these nations, the Crete Empire was not the most powerful but had the strongest military. It occupied the plain in the center of the continent where human civilization began. Thus, it was considered to be the purest bloodline, and its ruling dynasty was referred to as the Iron Dynasty.

Since Ahenaten's Golden Dynasty, there were multiple wars that divided the empire he created. These empires were broken up and united over and over again. The Crete Empire was the fourth to unite all the small kingdoms. Before that, there was also the Silver Dynasty, called the Pyroris Empire, and the Copper Dynasty, called the Tylen Empire.

The Crete Empire started about a hundred years ago, when the middle plain was fractured into dozens of nations. Elliot I of the Crete Empire had defeated the Nossos Kingdom, the Fatu Kingdom, the Nia Kingdom, the Caslot Federation, and various other nations to unite the plains.

For over thirty years, the trading fleets on the sea were affected by the "Children of the Sea." Because of this, no ship was willing to venture into the deep sea. At times, a single safe passage could cause internal conflicts in a small kingdom.

Lu Zhiyu wanted to check out the sea when he was distracted by movements in the valley. He refocused the Scroll of the World, curious. Many workers were working in a valley, digging for something. The entire mountain seemed to have been upended.

Finally, one of the slaves dug too deeply and the ground beneath him collapsed. He fell in immediately. People looked down and saw a circular point. The slave happened to have fallen right on top and was killed.

A man dressed as a noble walked over. A few guards pushed aside the bystanders. The man lay on the ground, looking down. He immediately recognized the designs on the rocks inside.

"This is it! I recognize this style of architecture! This is the Golden Dynasty's marking. And that sigil of the sun is from the legends. Apparently it's the mark of God's blessing to them! We found it! After such a long time, we finally found it!" The man was so excited that he was practically shaking.