From the end of the world

Chapter 696 The Seed of the White Tiger
Shui Shi Xuanwu then told me what he knew.

According to Ying Lingyun's account to Shui Shi Xuanwu, the White Tiger Seed suddenly appeared within his soul one day. Such a thing isn't unusual for successors of the Yin-Yang lineage; Shui Shi Xuanwu himself became the Xuanwu successor in the same way. At the time, Ying Lingyun was already a high-ranking official in the Humanity Department. The White Tiger Seed transformed him from an ordinary person with no magical talent into a genius cultivating metal-elemental magic, which ironically brought him a lot of trouble.

The White Tiger Seed symbolizes gold and slaughter, capable of transforming its host into a peerless genius warrior. However, combat talent offers no benefit in resurrecting the Silver Moon. What Ying Lingyun desires is not the talent for charging into battle, but rather the talent of a researcher capable of developing a method to resurrect the Silver Moon.

At that time, he had only recently replicated Lu Chan's "possibility clone" through "the moon in the water," and was full of ambition. He wanted to form a research team with some "selves who became researchers" that he had summoned to overcome all the key technical difficulties he encountered. He even wanted to integrate "experience and talent from different research fields" and forcibly transform himself into a scientist with epoch-making scientific wisdom—this was the Ying Lingyun I later met.

As mentioned before, forcibly integrating the experiences and talents of multiple "possible clones" will lead to a mental breakdown. Generally speaking, let alone creating some brilliant mad scientist, just surviving mentally and becoming a severely mentally ill patient who drools all day looking for cockroaches is already a blessing. Therefore, Lu Chan himself has never dared to do that. Ying Lingyun's ability to maintain the integration of his self-awareness demonstrates the depth of his obsession and its unimaginable spiritual directionality.

However, with the White Tiger Seed present, Ying Lingyun's "genius idea" was destined to fail. No matter how many talents he integrated into himself, they would all be reset by the White Tiger Seed to be talents related to metal and killing. Moreover, since the "Possibility Clone" spell, once cast, does not distinguish between the original body and the clone in terms of definition—if one had to say, the original body is the "consciousness network of the 'Possibility Clone'"—the White Tiger Seed also affected the other "Possibility Clones" responsible for research.

Even Ying Lingyun's inherent leadership qualities, which he possessed from the beginning, may have been altered by the appearance of the White Tiger Seed, making it impossible for him to manage his power in the shadows as he did in the past.

It is easy to imagine that Ying Lingyun must have been in a very difficult situation during that period.

Having built his reputation on technology and political maneuvering, he had somehow lost both his technical talent and political acumen. Moreover, the White Tiger Seed only granted him talent, not sufficient ready-made magical power; he would have to cultivate it slowly if he wanted greater magical strength. Even I wasn't this powerful from the start; it took me over four years to become the person I was when I first met Ma Zao. Ying Lingyun was initially only exceptionally powerful by the standards of a weak mortal.

In order to maintain his position within the Humanitarian Affairs Department, he insisted on presenting himself as perfectly normal to the outside world. Even if he originally possessed a talent for acting, he likely had by then lost it. It's like a character in a novel forced to impersonate an elite figure due to unforeseen circumstances—a tightrope walk of adventure that seems almost too good to be true.

However, Ying Lingyun had already overcome all the perilous adventures compared to this. He had once been able to defeat the near-divine Silver Moon with his mortal body, so this predicament was naturally no challenge for him. It was during this period that he met the Water Master Xuanwu.

Ying Lingyun had known from the Zhu family long ago that the "Shui Shi" was the successor of Xuanwu, and he also deduced that he was experiencing the same situation as Zhu Yi, the ancestor of the Zhu family. In order to resolve his problem, he managed to find Shui Shi Xuanwu through the intelligence networks of the Humanitarian Affairs Bureau and secular governments.

"After my failed assassination attempt on Xuanming, I spread the false news of my death, which largely enabled me to live in anonymity. Apart from a very few people, including Zhu Ba, no one knew I was still alive. So when Ying Lingyun found me, I was really startled," said the current naval commander Xuanwu. "Looking back now, the problem probably lies in my initial visit to the Zhu family to tell them I was still alive. Ying Lingyun had been secretly monitoring Zhu Chang'an's movements, and my visit may have been discovered by his covert surveillance."

"And then you cooperated with him? Didn't you ever think about killing him and taking his White Tiger Seed?" I asked.

“How could I possibly kill him? The method I have mastered for devouring other power seeds must proceed step by step according to the five elements’ mutual restraint relationship. I am water, so I must first devour fire, then metal and wood, and finally earth,” said the Water Master Xuanwu. “Therefore, before killing you, I cannot kill Ying Lingyun, otherwise the White Tiger Seed will automatically fly to Shan Liangyi’s side.”

"Moreover, the relationship between the successors of the Yin and Yang is not only one of mutual restraint, but also mutual support. Mutual support also affects our fates in our interactions. Although it is not as significant as mutual restraint, as long as I am with the successor of the White Tiger, I will receive assistance from the other party in the dark. Facts have also proved that both Zhu Yi and Ying Lingyun have been kind to me."

I said knowingly, "Because Ying Lingyun later cut and pasted the White Tiger Seed and gave it to you... so you made a promise to him and did things for him, and that's why you appeared in Moonshadow Mountain City and transferred the Silver Moon to him?"

Shui Shi Xuanwu nodded and explained the rest. While Ying Lingyun was carrying the White Tiger Seed, he shouldn't have been able to develop the Dog and Reality Shaping Powers through studying the White Tiger Seed and the Divine Seal fragments. Shui Shi Xuanwu couldn't explain exactly how he broke the deadlock back then. However, I do have a suspicion about this.

Among all the "possible clones" summoned by Ying Lingyun, there is one "out-of-place individual" that cannot be integrated into the consciousness network nor affected by it—that is Dr. Silver Mask. During the period when Ying Lingyun temporarily loses his research abilities, Dr. Silver Mask will likely retain his full research capabilities. This clone will suffice.

Of course, Dr. Silver Mask seems to have ulterior motives towards Ying Lingyun. Although he serves the Humanitarian Division's ideals, he may not be truly loyal to Ying Lingyun. The "Twelve Gods Project" is a research project that is more beneficial to the Humanitarian Division's ideals, and it's possible that Ying Lingyun has secretly packaged his own needs into this project, using Dr. Silver Mask to provide him with wisdom.

Looking at it this way, even from the perspective of someone unaware of the truth, the "Twelve Gods Project" does indeed seem suspicious. Ying Lingyun clearly wanted to allocate his time and energy primarily to reviving Silver Moon, yet he proposed such a time-consuming and laborious research project. And considering that the project's failure didn't affect Ying Lingyun's position in the Humanitarian Department, it's obviously not something Ying Lingyun proposed to consolidate his power… It's unexpected that there was such a hidden reason behind it.

After severing his ties with the White Tiger Seed, Ying Lingyun was able to use the "possibility clone" replicated by "Moon in the Water" to restore all his talents, and even transform himself into the "mad scientist" who was sometimes insane and sometimes lucid in the future.

On the other hand, because Ying Lingyun used a different method to transfer the power seeds, the Naval Xuanwu was able to skip the Vermilion Bird Seed and directly obtain the White Tiger Seed. However, since Xuanwu does not counter the White Tiger, the Naval Xuanwu could not quickly digest its gains and could only initially bind the two seeds together. When fighting me, it could only unleash the power of the water element.

Because the Naval Xuanwu has not yet fully become the master of the White Tiger Seed, a strong karmic connection remains between the White Tiger Seed and Ying Lingyun. After all, even though he has severed ties with the White Tiger Seed, Ying Lingyun was originally chosen by the White Tiger Seed as the successor of Yin and Yang in this era, and no matter how many times the connection is severed, he will be chosen again. This is perhaps the biggest reason why Ying Lingyun insisted on pasting the White Tiger Seed to the Naval Xuanwu instead of discarding it.

After the death of the naval Xuanwu, the White Tiger Seed flew back into Ying Lingyun's soul, along with the Xuanwu Seed that had been initially bound to it, and flew to Ying Lingyun's side.

The power seed that he had finally managed to get rid of actually flew back, and even came with a "buy one get one free" offer—others probably can't imagine how frantic Ying Lingyun was at that moment, and he had two choices in front of him.

He could either resurrect the naval commander Xuanwu and repeat his previous actions, or he could cut and paste both power seeds onto his former secret ally, Meng Zhang, the lord of Taoyuan Township.

He ultimately chose the former. Although the Water Master Xuanwu was at the Great Completion level, and the difficulty of resurrecting him should theoretically be no less than that of the Great Demon Yinyue, this situation was special.

The Power Seed is a "third gate creation" capable of appropriating all the essence of the Yin-Yang successor and ultimately being devoured by the Yin-Yang body itself. It records everything about the Yin-Yang successor and can represent the current Yin-Yang successor to a large extent. As a resurrection medium, although it is unknown whether it is stronger or weaker than the Manifestation Silver Moon, it can still make the resurrection of a Great Completion level person possible.

Ying Lingyun also used the White Tiger Seed, which had once entered the soul of the Navy Genbu, as a resurrection medium, reviving the Navy Genbu in a form that "simultaneously possesses both the Genbu Seed and the White Tiger Seed." This approach significantly increased the synchronization rate between the Navy Genbu and the White Tiger Seed after his resurrection.

Metal generates water, and the digestion of the White Tiger seed enabled the Water Master Xuanwu to leap from a candidate for Great Impermanence to the position of Great Impermanence.

However, at that time, Ying Lingyun had to reserve most of the resources for reviving Yin Yue, and the water master Xuanwu was very weak at the beginning of his revival. He was even unable to wake up for a period of time, so he was unable to participate in the battle of the Humanity Division's main stronghold.

(End of this chapter)