Technological advancement begins with devouring.

Chapter 228 The Power of Creation, the Myriad Forms of the Dharma Body (3rd Update)

[0.91 units of 'Power of Creation' have been acquired.]

Total reserves of 'Power of Creation': 1.02 units.

Jiang Chen glanced at the numbers on the system panel and took a deep breath.

More than 100 million world lords, whose inner worlds were completely devoured by themselves, only provided 0.91 units of 'creation power'.

This is still a living world lord.

If it is the world within the Devouring World Ring, there is almost no 'Creation Power' and the primordial energy is also pitifully scarce.

Jiang Chen had already tried this before.

The only way to obtain the 'Power of Creation' is to devour and absorb real 'worlds' one by one, rather than 'pseudo-worlds' that are created and then have almost all of their origin depleted—that is, small worlds loaded onto equipment such as world rings.

These worlds, though capable of supporting life, are like 'rootless trees'; when the last remaining essence within them is exhausted, they will collapse.

Of course, if it's just for storing things, the consumption of the source is very small, and a world ring can be used for a long time.

However, if a race were to reproduce within the space of the World Ring, at most a few thousand or tens of thousands of years, the origin of this space would be exhausted, and then the entire space would collapse.

However, such problems do not occur in the inner world of a realm lord or the divine kingdom of an immortal god.

Only a world that can exist for a long time can possess enough primordial power and creative power to bring enormous benefits to Jiang Chen's inner world.

More than 100 million world lords provided only 0.91 units of creation power.

Of course, this is also related to the varying strengths of these realm lords.

Jiang Chen had noticed during the process of devouring and absorbing that the primordial power and creation power provided by the worlds of world lords of different strengths were different.

The stronger the realm lord and the larger the inner world of the realm lord, the more benefits Jiang Chen will receive after his inner world is devoured.

If calculated according to the normal 'Peak Realm Lord' standard, approximately one hundred million Peak Realm Lords' internal worlds could provide Jiang Chen with one unit of 'Creation Power'.

It is roughly equivalent to a divine kingdom of 100,000 immortal gods.

The 'creation power' contained in an immortal divine kingdom is roughly equivalent to the internal world of a thousand peak world lords.

Of course, the 'creation power' contained in the divine kingdoms of immortal gods also varies; this is just a rough estimate.

"All things considered, it's more cost-effective to devour the world of the world master, as it saves more time."

A thought flashed through Jiang Chen's mind.

The process of devouring the divine kingdoms of immortal gods takes longer and is more complicated.

Obtaining the coordinates of the divine kingdoms and transferring them together takes a considerable amount of time and effort.

Then, it takes a lot of time to absorb and transform the food before it can be devoured.

However, whether it's the World of the Realm Lord or the Immortal God Kingdom, Jiang Chen chooses to have it all.

With the 'Heart of the World' in hand, Jiang Chen didn't have high requirements for the level of the world he devoured.

As long as the 'quantity' is sufficient, through the transformation of the 'Heart of the World', Jiang Chen's inner world can grow continuously.

It took Jiang Chen less than a day to devour the inner world of over 100 million world lords.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that these realm lords have no power to resist.

They all fell into a coma, their life force weakened to the point where they could die at any moment. They couldn't even struggle instinctively and could only let Jiang Chen absorb and devour their inner world, which was naturally easy.

If it were a realm lord who was fully conscious and maintained peak strength, it wouldn't be so easy for Jiang Chen to devour the other party's inner world.

It's not that difficult, but it still takes some thought and effort.

The easiest way is to have the mechanical apostles lead their mechanical legions to capture large numbers of powerful alien races, control them until they have no power to resist, and then devour a large number of world lord worlds at once.

After absorbing the inner world of over one hundred million world lords, Jiang Chen ended [Divine Descent], allowing the consciousness of his clone to regain control of the body.

Looking down at the corpses scattered on the ground, Jiang Chen picked out several rather large Devouring Snakes.

Each of the various races of the demon race has its own unique characteristics, especially in terms of bloodlines.

This is a race that relies on the power of their innate bloodline.

Every royal or royal bloodline possesses exceptionally powerful bloodline talents.

Some of them, with different bloodline strengths, even have very obvious 'characteristics' in their appearance.

The Devouring Serpent Clan is one of the representatives of this type of demon race.

First, look at the size. Under the same strength, the larger the Devouring Snake, the higher its talent usually is.

The so-called 'devouring snake' has the most powerful racial talent: 'devouring'. It grows stronger by 'eating'.

The powerful Devouring Serpent can even devour materials of the level of precious treasures and supreme treasures to enhance itself.

Why does the Holy Serpent Venerable, a powerful cosmic overlord, only possess two supreme treasures?

It's because he consumed most of the treasures he acquired to enhance his strength.

Within the Devouring Serpent Clan, the standard for judging a genius is how strong their talent is in 'devouring'.

The stronger the 'Devour' talent, the wider the range of treasures that can be devoured, and the greater the increase in strength after devouring treasures.

Such geniuses who devour snakes often share a very obvious characteristic: they are enormous in size.

Even world lords, with bodies hundreds of thousands of meters long, are considered ordinary.

Only those with a body length exceeding 1,000 kilometers can be called 'geniuses'.

The true Devouring Serpent Realm Lord, possessing top-tier talent, can reach lengths of several thousand kilometers, making it larger than many cosmic behemoths.

Of course, given the same size and strength, the Devouring Serpent would definitely be no match for the Starry Sky Beast.

After all, the Devouring Serpent Clan is merely a 'royal bloodline' of the demon race, not even comparable to the royal bloodline, let alone being compared to the Starry Sky Beasts.

In terms of size alone, the Devouring Serpents are somewhat 'bloated', with each one larger than the last, some almost rivaling unique life forms in the universe. However, their strength is not necessarily anything special.

The corpses of the Devouring Serpent Realm Lords that Jiang Chen selected were half between two and three thousand kilometers long, and the other half between five hundred and one thousand kilometers long.

The former is a genius realm master of the Devouring Serpent clan.

The latter can only be considered mediocre, belonging to the cannon fodder of the realm lord's army.

There are five corpses of geniuses and cannon fodder devouring snakes, totaling ten.

Jiang Chen raised his hand, and streams of world power reached out, covering the ten corpses, while silently activating the abilities of his [Myriad Forms Dharma Body] feat.

[Myriad Forms Dharma Body]: Allows the user to acquire the target's abilities and memories through physical contact. Once acquired, the user can permanently remember the form and create corresponding clones, with no limit to the number of clones.

So-called 'physical contact' does not actually require physically touching the target.

The 'touch' of extraordinary power can achieve the same effect.

This process lasted for several days.

A few days later, Jiang Chen used [Divine Descent] again, while simultaneously activating [Myriad Manifestations Dharma Body].

The reason for casting [Divine Descent] first is to make the new clone appear in the Origin Land, rather than in the Giant Axe Universe.

A large number of cosmic crystals appeared around Jiang Chen, and then shattered.

Giant snakes of various shapes emerged from Jiang Chen's body, rapidly expanding in size to hundreds to thousands of kilometers in length.

After creating ten clones, Jiang Chen felt that the 'burden' on his consciousness had become even heavier.

However, the impact is not too great.

Jiang Chen can handle hundreds of clones at the realm lord level.

These serpent-devouring clones have only one mission: to infiltrate the demon race's territory and investigate places within it where numerous immortals and realm lords gather.

Jiang Chen had already prepared for how to infiltrate the demon realm.

When the three Elemental Lords invaded the territory of the Devouring Serpent Clan, they secretly left behind a Warp Arbitrator.

At this point, by remotely controlling and activating the [Warp Arbitrator], ten clones of the Devouring Serpent Clan can be summoned directly there.

A suction force appeared, and a spatial rift opened up in front of Jiang Chen.

The ten newly separated clones nodded to Jiang Chen's main body and then swam directly into the spatial rift.

Having redeemed the [Myriad Manifestations of Dharma Body] special skill for so long, Jiang Chen had naturally tried using it as well.

In Jiang Chen's view, the most powerful aspect of this ability is not the number or strength of the clones, but the ability to acquire the enemy's abilities and memories, thereby replacing the other party's 'identity' and then infiltrating the alien race's territory to reap benefits.

Even a weak alien race can be of great value.

It is extremely troublesome for a human clone to enter the territory of the demon race. Once discovered, it will attract an attack, and then powerful demon race members will arrive in a very short time.

However, a demon clone, especially one with a legitimate identity within the demon race, can move freely within the demon race's territory, going anywhere except for some confidential locations.

Jiang Chen had asked the founder of the giant axe to help test it. As long as one does not directly face an existence at the level of the Lord of the Universe or the strongest being in the universe, the clones created by the [Myriad Forms Dharma Body] will not be detected as abnormal at all.

Even a cosmic ruler would need to be at the level of a Chaos City Lord or a Dark Lord, and must be extremely skilled in the realm of the soul, to detect even the slightest abnormality.

This allows the clones created by the [Myriad Manifestations Body] to easily roam the territories of other races and obtain a great deal of important information.

This applies not only to the demon race, but also to other races.

Jiang Chen used his two clones, 'Uchiha Shisui' and 'Erso,' during his exploration of the cosmic secret realm to infiltrate the communities of dozens of world lords from different races using the [Myriad Manifestations Dharma Body].

It doesn't matter if one identity is exposed; just erase the recorded 'form' and replace it with a new one.

Unless it's a clone with a particularly important identity, discarding it wouldn't be a loss for Jiang Chen; at most, he'd only lose the energy spent creating the clone.

Of course, if there is an opportunity to replace some alien races with special identities and statuses and create corresponding clones, Jiang Chen will still use it cautiously.

For core geniuses of high status in various races, such status allows them access to important confidential information within their race, as well as access to other geniuses.

Don't forget, every one of Jiang Chen's clones can be a target for [Divine Descent].

For example, after acquiring the identity of a demon genius, one could use this identity to approach other demon geniuses, ambush and kill them, and then use [Divine Descent] to obtain their memories through [Myriad Manifestations] and create an identical clone.

If this trend continues, and it targets a particular ethnic group, it can quickly throw that group into chaos.

When a group of core geniuses get into trouble and focus on causing destruction, even a top-tier clan will suffer considerable losses.

Imagine if, within the Human Virtual Universe Company, all one hundred Realm Lords of the Primal Secret Realm were replaced by alien races, who, after stealing vast amounts of classified information, devoted themselves to causing destruction—how great a threat would that pose?

Although the systems for cultivating geniuses differ among different ethnic groups, their status and authority are roughly the same.

If the quotas of the hundreds of clones of the [Myriad Forms Dharma Body] are concentrated in one race, even if it is just a group of clones at the level of a World Lord, they can exert tremendous destructive power.

However, to avoid attracting too much hatred, Jiang Chen will only use the [Myriad Manifestations Dharma Body] to gather intelligence at this stage and will not do anything else.

Some ordinary clones with little value were simply discarded.

If one is lucky enough to replace a genius of extremely high status, such a clone certainly cannot be used as 'cannon fodder'. It should be used at a critical moment to exert greater value.

A group of Realm Lord-level avatars stealing information and secretly causing sabotage can inflict considerable losses on a top-tier race, even causing them great distress for a long time. However, it will not have a significant impact on the overall strength of a top-tier race, at least not in the short term.

Until we have the ability to change the course of the universe, it's best to keep a low profile.

However, Jiang Chen had a feeling that once he completed his advancement mission and entered the sixth rank, he might have enough power to have a huge impact on the balance between races.

The greatest strength of the mechanical army strategy lies not in the advanced technology Jiang Chen possesses, but in its low cost and powerful troop production capability.

In the universe, the average cost of cultivating a common immortal race is in the millions of mixed units of resources.

This money is not given directly to the geniuses, but is used to improve their cultivation speed, strength ceiling, and so on through various methods. However, the clan has indeed contributed so many resources.

The mechanical legion, with its lowest-cost 'immortal-level combat power,' requires only 100,000 mixed-element units.

A difference of several tens of times means that whether the mechanical legion trades lives with the enemy or not, it's a very profitable trade.

If Jiang Chen further improves his technology, enabling his mechanical legion to use its numerical advantage to threaten beings at the level of the Lord of the Universe and sweep away numerous races in the universe, it will no longer be impossible.

Of course, this is difficult, and Jiang Chen is not sure if he can do it after the system is upgraded to the sixth level.

However, Jiang Chen was certain that even if the sixth rank wasn't enough, then the seventh or eighth rank would do. As long as he kept improving his system level, he would eventually be able to achieve that.