Chapter 677 - 72: Biological Neuroscience

Chapter 677: Chapter 72: Biological Neuroscience

Reading memories didn’t require touching things like the "soul" or "consciousness." It only required tracing the neural pathways, which had been strengthened countless times, and re-running the electrical signals.

Murphy’s Mana was his means of treading that path.

Crimson light seeped from the tips of the dragon’s claws into Saladin’s cranial cavity, slipping through the sutures of his skull, burrowing into the dura mater, passing through the arachnoid mater, and reaching the thin, blood-vessel-covered pia mater.

Then, the light dispersed, transforming into countless Energy tendrils as fine as hairs and nearly invisible. Each one found a neuron, attached itself to its cell membrane, and released electrical signals in its place.

Saladin’s perception changed.

The sensation of being filled with warm water vanished, replaced by a dreamlike state.

He was still conscious. He knew clearly who he was, that he was lying on the ground, and that a giant dragon’s claw was clamped around his head.

But at the same time, images began to flash uncontrollably through his mind—

An azure sky.

Ephialtes ripped through the clouds, and countless black dots poured from the tear, like a swarm of ants flying from their nest.

He stood on the ground, bearing the wings of the Sun Eagle, wings scorched with blood that not even the fires of the Sun could burn away.

Someone was shouting his name from behind, but the sound was carried away by the wind. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he didn’t turn back. Because a person stood before him—no, not a person. A Wizard.

A White Robe billowed in the wind, its hem unstained by dust. The gaze fixed on him was like that of a scientist looking at a specimen on a lab bench.

The scene shifted.

He was bound to a stone table, his limbs secured with iron clamps, unable to move.

A glaring lamp hung overhead, its light as white as snow, so bright he couldn’t open his eyes.

Someone paced around him, the hem of a white robe flickering in his peripheral vision, speaking in a rapid tongue he could understand but not fully comprehend. They would occasionally pause to argue for a moment before resuming their pacing.

He felt something slice open the skin of his abdomen. It was cold and very painful, but with his willpower, it was nothing.

He could feel the blade’s path as it moved within his body, cutting a line from above his navel all the way to the bottom edge of his sternum before stopping.

Then someone thrust something into his abdominal cavity and began rummaging around inside him.

The scene shifted again.

The battlefield.

The battlefield again.

Orestes stood before him. The man’s back was as broad as a wall, his silver-white hair scattering in the wind, and in his hand, he gripped a spear wreathed in golden flames.

He heard Orestes laughing. It was a loud, unrestrained laugh, like that of a beast caged for too long and finally set free.

Then Orestes turned and glanced at him. There was no fear in his golden eyes, no anger, only a serene, almost gentle quality.

"Saladin, if I don’t make it back, watch over this land for me."

Then he turned and walked toward Ephialtes.

His pace was neither fast nor slow, each step firm and steady. His silver-white hair streamed behind him like a banner.

Saladin’s eyes began to sting.

Murphy did not stop.

The images continued to pour out like a bursting dam, extracted frame by frame from Saladin’s neural network. They flowed along the crimson tendrils, surging ceaselessly into Murphy’s consciousness.

Every image carried the emotions Saladin had felt at the time—fear, anger, sorrow, and indignation.

But Murphy wasn’t sifting through things unrelated to the war.

He wasn’t here to pry into the entire life of an Elder who had lived for three thousand years.

He was searching for coordinates, for locations, for information about the whereabouts of Saladin’s comrades buried deep within his memory.

Even if that information was three thousand years old, even if those locations might have become traps or empty tombs, as long as he had a reference point, he could roughly deduce the geographical distribution of the main strongholds on the Kronos plane. He could then find other Elders like Saladin, who held even more of the Bright World’s rules.

However, in the process, Murphy also discovered something that confirmed one of his earlier suspicions—

Even with Divine Blood, these people who walked the Path of fleshly transformation were still too weak.

That woman had already reached the peak of a Level 2 Life Form on this Path in their world, but to a Wizard, she was still too weak—her Attack Power ceiling was only 17 degrees.

If Murphy hadn’t just arrived on the Kronos plane and needed time to adapt to its Laws, he could have taken her down back in the village.

Even Saladin—who had been at the peak of a Level 3 Life Form three thousand years ago, only to weaken after three millennia of slumber to a state inferior to even a Level 3 Life Form—had an Attack Power of merely 20 degrees.

This was hardly surprising.

Different systems and Paths naturally had different levels of power and different ceilings.

The only reason Saladin thought he could defeat Murphy was because he was using the ceiling of the Wizard’s Path from three thousand years ago as his standard—in his memory, the strongest Elemental Wizards were only 18 degrees.

Had he been facing the Wizard’s Path, even one that had progressed for three thousand years, Saladin, with his 20-degree strength, might have been able to put up a fight.

Unfortunately for Saladin, Murphy practiced Cultivation.

Saladin’s sharp teeth ground together with a GNAASH, his golden, slitted pupils webbed with blood.

He wanted to resist, to force the images back, to lock his memories away, but his neural network had been completely taken over by Murphy’s Mana. Every neuron was firing at the frequency Murphy desired; every synapse was transmitting signals in the sequence Murphy willed.

In Murphy’s grasp, Saladin had no room to refuse.

[Analyzing memory data stream]

[Filtering keywords: Coordinates, Location, Comrades, Burial, Slumber]

[Synthesizing and integrating...]

[Valid information extracted: 17 suspected stronghold coordinates]

[Establishing geographical model of the Kronos plane...]

’Found them.’

The digits of Murphy’s dragon claw lifted from the crown of Saladin’s head, one by one.

As the tips of his claws withdrew from between the scales, they drew out several hair-thin strands of crimson light, which hovered in the air for a moment before dissipating.

Saladin gasped for air, like a fish pulled onto dry land.

His skull still ached faintly, not the dull throb of a heavy blow, but the exhaustion of an overtaxed brain—after all, nearly an entire lifetime of memories had just been played back in an instant.

His golden, slitted pupils had dimmed, like two oil lamps about to burn out, but the faint flames within them still flickered. "We... will not lose... We didn’t lose... three thousand years ago... and we won’t lose... three thousand years from now..."

Murphy simply said flatly,

"The war hasn’t reached the point of tallying wins and losses."

A flicker of confusion crossed Saladin’s slitted pupils. "What do you mean?"

Murphy didn’t answer.

He simply raised his other dragon claw. Its five digits spread, and crimson light poured from their tips, flowing like molten lava to cover Saladin’s limbs, which were scattered across the ground.

Wherever the light touched, broken bones reconnected, torn muscles reattached, and shattered scales flew back piece by piece to their original places.

In a short while, Saladin’s draconic body was whole again.

But Murphy didn’t stop.

The light continued to envelop Saladin’s body. His draconic form began to shrink, his body reverting from its giant dragon shape back to human form.

Saladin once again became the gaunt, corpse-like Elder who had climbed out of the earth.

Murphy’s dragon claws reached out, one to his left and one to his right, seizing Saladin and Mira.

With a flap of his wings, a fierce wind swirled up from beneath them, whipping the gravel and dust on the ground into a small vortex. His body rose from the valley and flew toward the distant Eira Village.