I will be stronger after the remake

"2040."

"It will take another ten years or so!"

Tang Ping instantly lost interest; by then, he would be an old man.

Feng hesitated, as if she wanted to say something but then stopped.

Tang Ping lay sprawled on the grass, watching the sky gradually lighten, when suddenly a question popped into his mind: "Is the moon in the Illusionary Realm the same as the moon in the real world?"

Chapter Fourteen: Questions

"Since our spiritual energy conversion efficiency increases dramatically when we see the moon, it proves that the moon in the Illusionary Realm is real, or at least meets the requirements for spiritual cultivation. So what about the moon in the real world? Does it have the same effect?" Tang Ping asked.

Feng Maimai frowned slightly, her eyes vacant, as if searching her mental knowledge base. After a while, she said with a hint of frustration, "I don't know, at least I haven't seen any relevant research reports."

"If there are no research reports, we can conduct our own experiments."

"How can we conduct the experiment? There is no natural spiritual energy in the world."

"You said that all spiritual energy in the mortal world exists in a vessel, so how about we absorb it directly from the Illusion-Breaking Stone?"

"I'm afraid it's difficult. Illusion-breaking stones with natural spiritual energy are extremely rare. The vast majority of Illusion-breaking stones have been used repeatedly and are filled with the spiritual power of spiritual energy users. We cannot absorb other people's spiritual power. Forcibly absorbing it will only cause the spiritual power to go berserk."

"Where is the seed of the Dao?"

Feng Maimai frowned again. This time, she found relevant information: "Psionicists cannot absorb Dao seeds of other attributes, otherwise not only will their spiritual power go berserk, but it may also lead to loss of control of their spiritual personality and mental disorder."

"Conversely, any Dao seed of the same attribute can be absorbed."

"Theoretically, that's true, but as a very rare resource, the fate of every single seed is recorded in an archive. It's practically impossible to get approval if you apply for it on the grounds of personal research."

Tang Ping got up from the grass and paced back and forth as he pondered. He felt as if he had stumbled upon some important clue, but he just couldn't grasp it. It kept slipping through his fingers, which made him a little anxious. He had no choice but to change his mind and think from another direction.

"Based on this, another question arises: has the country actually conducted any relevant research? For an individual, a Dao Seed is certainly very precious, but for a country, it's nothing. If the country has already conducted research, it means the research results are extremely complex and cannot be disclosed to the public. If the country hasn't conducted research, then it's even more serious..."

"Does it really matter whether it's the same moon or not?" Feng Maimai asked, puzzled.

“If it’s not the same moon, that’s fine. It would prove that the moon in the sky is the moon of the Illusionary Realm, a different form of the moon in the real world, and it’s in the same dimension as us. But if it is the same moon, it would prove that the Illusionary Realm is just a limited area and does not encompass the entire universe.”

Seeing that Feng Maimai still looked confused, Tang Ping picked up a leaf from the ground and explained, "Suppose this leaf represents the world we live in. Generally speaking, people would subconsciously think that the real world is the front of the leaf, while the illusory world is the back."

"Is it not?"

"There is another possibility."

Tang Ping carved out a round piece of leaf from the tree leaf, then flipped the piece over so that the original back was facing up, and then put it back in place.

"You see, we haven't actually come to the back of the leaf. It's just that a small part of the space we're in has been flipped. From a macro perspective, we're still on the front of the leaf."

Feng Maimai seemed to understand but not quite, and gave a silly yet adorable look: "And then what? What does that prove?"

"Assuming that the influence of the Illusionary Realm only includes Earth and does not affect other parts of the universe, when we travel to space in a spaceship, leave the influence of the Illusionary Realm, and then look at Earth from space, what do we see: Earth in the Illusionary Realm, Earth in the real world, or a superposition of the two?"

"This, this... I still don't quite understand."

Feng Maimai felt like her mind was a complete mess.

Seeing this, Tang Ping stopped explaining, because he realized that Feng Maimai might not be as smart as he had imagined, and he had been fooled by her eloquent answers.

Baize Linger cannot change a person's thought patterns; he merely endows them with the ability to "record information" and "retrieve information," making them appear smarter. The essence of "answering every question" is nothing more than a rote recitation.

"You're not underestimating me again, are you?" Feng Maimai's eyes sharpened.

Well, my intuition is as sharp as ever.

"No, I'm just correcting hasty judgments made about things based on limited exposure. I want to look at the world from a different perspective and build a more comprehensive and objective value system."

"You don't think I'm an idiot, do you?"

"How could that be? With your intelligence, do you think I could fool you?"

“That’s true,” Feng Maimai nodded, quite agreeing. “You’ve said so much, but it’s all just speculation. Perhaps the country has already done relevant research, but I haven’t seen it. I’ll check the intranet next to see if I can find any relevant papers.”

"Would it be too much trouble for you?"

"Wouldn't it be too hypocritical to say something like that after you've piqued someone's interest?"

"That's true, then I'll thank you in advance."

……

Over the next few days, Tang Ping practiced spirit-integration techniques during the day and absorbed spiritual energy by watching the moon at night.

Feng Maimai focused intently on researching various documents and materials, sometimes spending an entire day on it. For her, this process of seeking new knowledge to answer her questions could also serve as a way to develop Bai Ze's spiritual essence. The efficiency was no less than that of absorbing spiritual energy under a non-full moon, not to mention that it could also fill her knowledge base, so she did not feel bored.

However, even after Tang Ping was able to skillfully enter the state of spiritual integration, Feng Maimai still hadn't gained anything and had no choice but to ask her sister for help.

“I understand your situation. There’s no need to complicate things. Ultimately, all we need is a Dao Seed to verify the conclusion,” Feng Yingying said casually.

Tang Ping echoed, "From the perspective of problem-solving, that's true, but the Dao Seed is not something that is easy to obtain."

"It's not that easy, but it's not that difficult either. I'll apply to my superiors. Of course, there's no guarantee that it will be approved."

"Would this be too much trouble for you?"

"It's just submitting a report; it's not much trouble to give it a try."

Tang Ping didn't think things could be that simple, but since Feng Yingying had already said so, he couldn't just jump out and pour cold water on it. He could only try his luck, in case the leader in charge of the review happened to be having a baby and hadn't received any professional training, and approved it in a moment of joy.

"Now that you have mastered Spirit Resonance, the next step is to learn basic spiritual arts. When I did the divination earlier, I also divined your elemental affinity. The most suitable element for you is water, followed by wood. You might as well learn these two first, and then consider whether to learn the remaining three elements: fire, metal, and earth."

Tang Ping felt that Feng Yingying seemed to care more about her studies than she did, and couldn't help but wonder if she had unintentionally charmed Feng Yingying.

However, it's not appropriate to ask about this directly, as it would seem too narcissistic and would put both parties in an awkward position. They could only silently nod and accept the other party's kindness.

Chapter Fifteen: Spiritual Arts Cultivation

As Feng Yingying told her, Tang Ping was able to learn water-based spiritual arts almost instantly. In just one morning, she mastered all the basic water-based spiritual arts, such as walking on water, breathing underwater, and controlling water flow.

After that, learning wood-based spiritual arts became less efficient; it took three days, almost six times longer, to barely learn them.

The remaining three elements, fire, metal, and earth, were even more difficult. Tang Ping felt as if she had become a poor student. The teacher taught in a clear and organized manner, and each formula was written out in a clear and concise way. Others could understand it at a glance, but she just couldn't learn it.

If we follow the rule of equal multiples, it would take him eighteen days to learn one of the systems, and more than fifty days to learn all of them, not even taking into account the time for rest and holidays.

Of course, there are no perfectly consistent formulas in reality. It may take less time or more time. Moreover, according to the principle of mutual generation of the five elements, learning fire-based spiritual arts should be slightly easier than the remaining metal and earth elements.

Although Feng Maimai did not show any impatience, Tang Ping had some pride and was unwilling to let her waste time with him. So she proposed to give up the metal and earth elements and only learn the fire element. Moreover, she did not need all the fire element spells, but only the two that were harmful.

In fact, if it weren't for the fact that the water and wood elemental spells were too weak in terms of destructive power, and that none of the spiritual energy she possessed was offensive, Tang Ping would have even considered giving up fire elemental spells as well.

People should learn to play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses; there's no need to strive to be an all-rounder.

"There are also powerful destructive techniques among the water and wood elemental magics, but they all fall into the category of second- or third-tier magics. You need to pay points on the internal network to obtain the qualification to learn them," Feng Maimai reminded.

Tang Ping asked, "How can I earn points?"

"One is a fixed number of points issued monthly based on the position, and the other is extra points awarded for completing tasks or making meritorious contributions."

What are the specific methods?

"For example, sweeping away monsters near the base in the Illusionary Realm, eliminating powerful monsters that control a region, creating new spiritual techniques and submitting them, or publishing groundbreaking academic papers, such as the experiment you proposed earlier to 'verify whether the moons in the two worlds are the same,' would have a high chance of earning reward points, although not many."

The Psychic Administration allows all registered psychics to learn basic psychic arts. The materials are made available free of charge, and anyone who wants to learn can do so. However, the basic psychic arts are usually more focused on healing and support, and none of them have strong destructive power, in order to prevent them from being leaked.

Or rather, the Psionic Administration knows that it's difficult to keep things that are freely available from being leaked, so they simply filter out some of the more aggressive spiritual arts. It doesn't matter if the remaining spiritual arts are stolen and learned; it's considered a contribution to the development of spiritual arts.

In fact, the leakage situation is not serious.

Foreign official psionic organizations need no further explanation. No matter how weak they are, developing some basic psionic techniques is not a problem for them. They don't need to steal them. They can even directly use the guise of learning and exchange, and the Chinese side generally will not refuse.

As for lone wolf psionicists and small teams, they have no spirit of sharing. Rather, they believe that those in the same trade are enemies, and they would never share the spiritual arts they have worked so hard to acquire with others.

This means that even if someone secretly learns a certain spiritual technique, it remains confined to themselves and will not be revealed to others.

Therefore, most powerful psychics in this world who can make a name for themselves belong to large organizations. Lone wolf psychics can only rely on their own psychic abilities to survive, which is too limiting and makes it difficult for them to grow.

Using a game analogy, psionic power is like a special move, while psionic magic is like a regular move. While a special move is powerful, without the support of regular moves, it's easy for someone to exploit the cooldown of the special move and take you down with a burst of attacks.

Lone wolf psychics value their privacy more. Once their psychic intelligence is leaked, they will be targeted by their enemies. Due to their lack of psychic magic to maneuver and defend themselves, it is common for them to be killed by opponents of higher levels.

This can be seen from Han Lin.

The mighty Black Impermanence, respectfully known as Eighth Master by the world, a master of the underworld who hunts and steals souls, actually resorts to homemade bombs to attack others, which is truly darkly humorous.

"So you can get points for this? Looks like I'll have to take this seriously," Tang Ping said, showing a bit more enthusiasm. "By the way, since it's a paper, are there any formatting requirements?"

"Yes, but not many, because psionicists care more about practicality, and due to the limited number of people, there are already few academic papers on the subject. Formatting standards are a kind of nitpicking under the full competition for talent, but the psionic world is far from that level. As long as what you write has real substance and the content is not illogical, it will generally be approved."

"No way, we've been developing for over a decade. With our country's talent pool, haven't we already developed an environment of intense competition?"

"Although the country has dispatched a large number of scientific researchers to conduct research, if one is not a psychic, one cannot truly experience the flow of spiritual power and the use of psychic power. Relying solely on imagination is like scratching an itch through a boot, and it is difficult to produce groundbreaking results. Moreover, there is a fatal problem that the scientific community cannot solve—currently, there is no scientific instrument that can detect the soul and the spirit."

"An instrument for detecting the soul..."

Tang Ping couldn't imagine what an instrument capable of detecting souls would look like, since he had never even seen his own soul and didn't know what it looked like.

Was she naked or wearing clothes?

If you were to wear clothes, what kind of clothes would they be?

Why choose clothes like this?

In fact, if he hadn't seen the ghost soldiers summoned by Han Lin, he might still have remained skeptical about the existence of souls.

But these things were ultimately irrelevant to Tang Ping, or at least of very low priority. Taking advantage of his rare break, he decided to go to the base's library to look up literature and learn some writing skills, so that even if Feng Yingying's application was rejected, he could still prepare for the future.

Anyway, there are no electronic entertainment machines in the illusory world, so he's just idling around. Besides, it's good to know your own limitations; once he returns to the real world, he might not have the motivation to study anymore.

The base's library is small, and the books inside are quite unbalanced. Apart from novels for entertainment, there are only books related to Lingo, mostly myths and folk tales.

Tang Ping wasn't really interested in mythological stories. After all, he hadn't awakened a unique spiritual personality; he was just a fox spirit, nothing to pay attention to. In any story, he would be a minor character, at most able to play tricks on mortals, but would suffer a setback when encountering someone with even a little bit of power.

When he one day ascends to become a nine-tailed fox or a thousand-year-old fox demon, he can check relevant information. For example, he vaguely remembers that Daji in "Investiture of the Gods" was a thousand-year-old fox spirit, not a nine-tailed fox.

As he passed by the bookshelf, he suddenly remembered his mutated psionic abilities and decided to look up information about "Lord Ma".

Chapter Sixteen: Lord Ma

Most people's understanding of Lord Ma is limited to "Lord Ma's three eyes." For example, in period dramas, if two groups have a conflict, one group will say something like, "Today I'll show you that Lord Ma has three eyes!"

Or: "If I don't teach you a lesson, you won't know that Lord Horse has three eyes!"

As for who exactly Lord Ma is and what his backstory is, most people don't know.

When Tang Ping was a child, she thought that the Horse King was the Horse Face from the Ox-Head and Horse-Face legend. However, after she grew up and developed logical thinking skills, she realized that the Horse Face was just an ordinary ghost messenger and could not possibly have such great power, which is why she was able to distinguish between the two.

He had always thought that Lord Ma was a highly accomplished Taoist master, a righteous figure like Wang Lingguan or Lü Dongbin. But after checking the records, he discovered that this guy was actually a born bandit, a ruthless and unscrupulous character.

Lord Ma, whose original name was Ma Lingyao, was also known as Marshal Ma, Ma Lingguan, the Five Manifestations Emperor, and Huatian Tianwang. He was the protagonist of "Journey to the South" and appeared in "Journey to the West" as the Huaguang Emperor.

He was reincarnated three times in his tumultuous life. The first time he was reincarnated in the womb of the Goddess of Mount Ma'er. He was born with three eyes. To avenge his father, he caused a great disturbance in the Dragon Palace and killed the Dragon King of the East Sea. In the end, he was trapped and killed by the Emperor Ziwei with the Nine-Bend Pearl for stealing the Demon-Suppressing Golden Spear of the Emperor Ziwei.

He was reborn a second time into the family of Yanxuan Heavenly King, and was called Three-Eyed Lingyao. He studied under Miaole Heavenly Venerable, but then tricked him out of his golden knife and forged it into a golden brick to use as a magic weapon. He then caused trouble at the Qionghua Gathering in the Heavenly Palace, called himself Huaguang, and rebelled against the Heavenly Palace. Xuantian Shangdi subdued him with the Ren Chen water of the North. Fearing the Jade Emperor's wrath, he was forced to reincarnate.

He was mistakenly reborn into the belly of the man-eating demon Jizhi Tuo for the third time. Later, in order to save his mother, he went to hell, walked the Lingtai, passed Fengdu, entered the Ghost Cave, fought Nezha, stole the Immortal Peach, forcibly married Princess Iron Fan, and made a great disturbance in the Three Realms like Sun Wukong. In the end, he was recruited by the government.

After reading it, Tang Ping had only one thought:

The Dragon King of the East Sea is really pitiful!

Despite his illustrious status and high position, every protagonist seems to want to step on him and cause trouble in the Dragon Palace, all to highlight the protagonist's extraordinary abilities and powers.

Sun Wukong extorted money from Nezha, who then skinned and dismembered his son. In Ma Lingyao's story, the Dragon King himself was killed. It's practically a high-risk profession in mythology.

"If someone were to awaken the unique spiritual personality of the Dragon King of the East Sea, would they possess a spiritual power that makes them 'despised and trampled upon' by everyone?"

Tang Ping felt sorry for someone whose existence was unknown, but then she thought that no matter how unlucky he was, it was still better than this little fox spirit who didn't even have a name, so she decisively put him out of her mind.

"I only obtained the eye-related spiritual energy of Lord Ma, not the unique spiritual personality of Lord Ma, so just look at the introduction related to his eyes."

He put down "Journey to the South" and searched through other books, finally finding relevant content. There were two versions of the story about the Horse King's three eyes:

According to legend one, the third eye was bestowed upon him by the Jade Emperor, allowing him to see clearly. Moreover, this eye is the essence of fire, the star of fire, and the yang of fire, symbolizing the god of fire.

According to another legend, the third eye was bestowed upon Ma Lingyao by the Buddha before he was punished to be reincarnated in the mortal realm. It possesses the supernatural power of "moving the door with three eyes and seeing the three realms," which means seeing the truth, distinguishing evil from evil, and not being misled.

"From this perspective, the 'Three-Eyed Spirit' I obtained leans more towards the second type. I just don't know if it can continue to evolve."

The book "Psionic Common Sense" states that psionic energy becomes stronger as one's spiritual level advances, and sometimes even undergoes a qualitative change, evolving into more powerful effects.

Judging from the mythological setting, "Three-Eyed Spirit" clearly has room for improvement, such as the power of the god of fire.