*Squeak* *squeak* A small rat in its last moments of life screams in panic, but despite several rats running towards him, none of these rats come to his aid. In fact, as soon as the first one approaches close enough, it bites him while beginning to devour the still-living rat.
And this is just the first because a few moments later, even more rats arrive, which also begin to bite and tear its body apart, providing a sight that could shock someone with a weak heart or unaccustomed to seeing blood and death.
And in itself, this was not a unique occurrence. In fact, it was something that was happening continuously inside a large cage that housed hundreds of rats as if it were a utopian city created for the development of rodents.
"The more I research... the more I cultivate... the more it seems that all Paths are interconnected." Chen Wei is the only person in this dark room of a new research laboratory that he made after his old one had to be abandoned because it was now under investigation by the clan. And even when the investigation is over, he won't feel safe to return to conducting his experiments there.
"This kind of thing will be impossible in immortal cultivation." Just as the Dao marks will be of great help and usefulness to him for achieving better effects in both his experiments and cultivation because they have the effect of amplifying the strength and efficacy of the Path to which they belong if used by the Gu Master.
But nothing in this world is perfect, so they have the side effect of strongly conflicting with each other if they do not belong to the same Path, even if the difference is minimal, like the Ice and Snow Path which, in Chen Wei's eyes, should be considered the same thing, but from what he read in the novel and from his own musings, they would still conflict with each other.
But even this negative effect has something beneficial since due to the conflicts of the Dao Marks, the attacks directed at any immortal who does not belong to his Path will also be weakened, as well as decreasing in efficiency and effect.
"A very interesting thing is that for now, all this concept of Path and Attainment is more of an comprehensive concept that can be applied to the real world like mathematics." He says this because a Path is not an absolute thing besides, strongly the concept of something being or not a Path is just the interpretation of people since we have in history several examples of Paths that were widely used despite only being officially created eras later.
A great example of this is the water Path which according to the novel only officially became a Path in this era in which Chen Wei is living, but according to history and legends as well as concrete facts, the Mermen cultivate this Path since Ren Zu still walked this world.
But even so, the humans of this world consider the creator of the Water Path as being the Human named Shui Ni of which Chen Wei only knows the name because the novel does not go into details about this cultivator and as he has no connection with the immortal world he still doesn't know if she was already born or if she has already died and how long ago if that's the case.
"And now I am in theory using three paths of which three do not exist and one of them never even appeared in the novel." Chen Wei has a deep look as he looks at the chaotic and killing situation that falls upon the rat cage he himself created and nurtured to the point of being home to hundreds of rats.
Firstly, I am using my specialty to increase their desire for blood as well as making them heal when they drink the blood of other rats and also strengthen themselves after drinking blood, besides apparently they are increasingly resembling more a mixture between rats and bloody creatures.
Secondly, it would be the Emotion Path which was a great inspiration and even though I don't show much talent for this path with some questions and tips that he asked Wang Mei he managed to modify the psychological and mental of these rodents to make them enter into a frenzy of uncontrolled blood thirst of course the effect is only so great because of the simple and easily manipulable mind of this animal and the same would be impossible to do with a human at the level he is now.
And finally, this concept comes entirely from earth and was not even presented in the novel. It is what the people of this world would call a modified version of the Poison Path that sacrifices lethality for infectivity and has already been promptly named by Chen Wei as Disease Path.
However, for now, he does not have the talent or time or resources to develop this into a real path, in fact, until now he has not even created a Gu of this path he has only made use of the Rabies disease that some of these rats presented to increase their lethality besides possibly planning to create chemical weapons in the future.
Imagine how good the idea would be for him to create a disease that is equivalent to the Black Plague, release it into the Gu world, and wait for the damage to be done to the point where everyone will be doing everything and willing to give everything for a cure for the disease, and after that, it's just profit,you can imagine this kind of transaction where the other party has no choice but to accept his price are Chen Wei's favorites.
Of course, all this thought is more like an imagination or simply a situation that he can see with the potential of the Disease Path but that he probably will never do because he does not have the necessary means or when he has the necessary means he will already have even better means in Blood Path so this money-making opportunity would be useless.
"I wonder to what extent everything can become a path...maybe even the technology of my world." These thoughts of Chen Wei have been going through his mind for a long time, especially for paths that at first glance would seem weak or harmless like Food Path which actually is one of the most useful and strong among all paths to the point of even being able to revolutionize Gu cultivation being the second path with the most potential in this aspect only losing to Pill Path.
So maybe he can use the technology of his world like AI, robots, automations, factories, internet among other various technologies that allow the existence of the modern world that even a fool can see the extreme potential of this even more in the Gu world where he can prevent the secret of these technologies from leakingbhiding them in his immortal aperture when he becomes an immortal.
These thoughts would be much weaker in his mind if he didn't have confirmation based on the novel that Thieving Heaven managed to bring the technology of his world to this one to the point of even creating a Mecha Armor now tell me what do you think a Rank 9 AI gu could maybe it could even surpass the capacity of the Rank 9 Wisdom gu.
But even with all this potential, he still isn't taking steps on this path, in fact, there are several paths similar to this in potential that he thought about over the years but didn't cultivate for a reason of having a weak base strength at the beginning of cultivation or he doesn't have a practical way of cultivating them.
Of course, someone could say the same for Blood Path and question why he simply doesn't cultivate the Water Path and the answer is simple because despite the Blood Path not existing yet and he having to deal with the problems of being a pioneer to two things that he doesn't lacks in this path is his own talent and cultivation resources.
In fact, the cultivation resources are so available that even with the explosive increase in people cultivating the Blood Path, the price of blood has almost not increased, in fact, now that there are gu that can more efficiently store blood the price of blood has even decreased a little for a time.
And Chen Wei doesn't expect this fact to change very soon since even in the era of Fang Yuan where the Blood Path was repressed and persecuted it was still famous for being the path with the lowest refining and feeding costs with a demonic gu master of the blood path only needing to kill a few hundred mortals to already have all the necessary resources for his cultivation.
And Che Wei is now putting to the test this great immense advantage that he is sure will become famous in the future when he becomes an immortal and people start to know the Blood Path for its impressive demonic capabilities.
And how he is putting it to the test you may be wondering well that is actually quite easy to guess since Chen Wei is standing in front of a cage full of rats that are killing each other because of his manipulations and anyone who knows him knows that he is not a sadist who takes pleasure in seeing death or that he would waste his time creating these rats just to kill them later for fun.
In fact, he has created these rats for a long time for several reasons but this result today is simply as a result of a recent inspiration that he had after helping Wang Mei refine a gu that has characteristics of the Emotion Path besides his research on Transformation Path having given some results.
"The final moment has arrived so now it's just waiting for me to be lucky..." Chen Wei murmurs these words after noticing that only one rat remains alive of all the hundreds of original rats that were killing each other in this breeding ground.
It is a large albino rat big enough to make someone from the earth who sees him startle before wondering how he got to such a large size especially seeing its body that is covered from head to toe in bite scars and claw marks.
While he is in the middle of a pool of blood drinking everything he can as fast as possible without ever losing his alertness which is definitely a habit he created after going through the bloodbath Chen Wei made but he doesn't even need to finish drinking all the blood puddle because the blood around him quickly enters his body of its own accord.
But it doesn't stop there because the blood of all the dead rats begins to gather around him and forcibly enter his body healing all his wounds until the scars disappear besides strengthening his body to a point that not even a normal rat should reach in its life.
The rat is desperate as if it were facing the gates of death besides the pain it feels with all this blood modifying its body being something desolating even for the rat that had the strength to be the survivor of this rodent bloodbath.
But as a light at the end of the tunnel for the poor rat, it feels a human blood entering its body that instead of causing pain to it gives it a sensation of refreshment and familiarity mainly when it begins to feel a certain blood connection with a human that it had already noticed observing it for a long time but now every time it looks at this human only one thing comes to the rat's mind - Family - this human is his family.
But the rat's torment was not over because quickly it feels as if its body is being reconstructed rapidly the rat, of course, has no notion of this but this is the effect of the Transformation Path gus that Chen Wei is using in this refining which are Rat head Gu, Rat Limbs Gu, Rat Claws Gu, Rat Fangs Gu etc....
Finally, at the end of the process, Chen Wei has a smile on his face as he looks at an albino rat that has scarlet eyes as red as blood and is much larger than before now reaching the size of a medium-sized dog the rat is standing while looking around curious probably because of its new sense of smell, vision, and hearing much better than before.
It looks at Chen Wei but not for a moment thinks about attacking him because for the rat's senses Chen Wei is his family blood of his blood.
"Hahahaha....I did it...ahh I really want to rest..." This process really spent a lot of mental energy of his but Chen Wei doesn't complain much as he extends his hand to stroke the rat's head which lets him stroke it while behaving like a pet, already Chen Wei has a proud smile on his face as he looks at the fact that is the result of more than weeks of hard work of his.