Before leaving Evian City, Rocky made arrangements to purchase a large number of lab supplies, tools
and materials. After everything was readied, he set out for the Myriad Beasts Ground.
He arrived there two days later. It didn't take long for him to find the valley where he discovered the
crystal refining notebook. The house in the valley was in shambles and barely standing, but it was still
there.
For Rocky, this valley was the best place for him to cultivate. The Myriad Beasts Ground was a natural
field for experiment. The valley was wide and the soil was fertile. It was very suitable for breeding Dark
Heaven Insects and their larvae. In addition, there were all kinds of equipment for refining spiritual
crystal in the house.
It took Rocky a whole day to repair the house, enough for him to use it. He also built a wooden fence to
securely breed the Dark Heaven Insects and larvae, as well as the Fire Rock Turtle he had just
captured. In addition, he also moved the body of the ancient spiritual beast from the Magic Spiritual
Space to the north side of the valley, in order to let it absorb the spiritual power of the Myriad Beasts
Ground. Since the body of the ancient spiritual beast was not made of iron, it needed another way to
replenish spiritual power.
After Rocky transformed the valley into his own personal research base, he started to do genetic
experiments. He also began refining spiritual crystals. In his spare time, he tamed the Fire Rock Turtle,
and went out hunting with Robin and Ken to improve their strength. Of course, the most important thing
was to refine the Holy Spirit Panacea. For him, refining the Holy Spirit Panacea was the fastest way to
improve his strength.
In the first few days, Rocky went deep into the Myriad Beasts Ground daily to visit the remains of the
Butterfly Divine Clan. Additionally, he wanted to see if he could run into Cherry. Back when he was in
the Hell of Dragon Fang, the beautiful woman from the spiritual race had mentioned Cherry. She
seemed to know her well, so he figured that Cherry might also know that beautiful woman, too.
However, his trips proved futile. Despite going there on a daily basis, he ran into nobody, so he later
gave up and focused all his efforts on cultivating and researching back in the valley.
A month had passed before Rocky finally made a breakthrough in his experiments on genetic
modification of the four Dark Heaven Insect larvae. The gene of the larvae had successfully mutated!
With this new mutated gene, the larvae grew faster and stronger than all the other larvae.
"Next, I think I can do experiments on the last two larvae," Rocky said to himself happily. Because of
the successful gene mutation, Rocky developed a way to make the larvae mutate. As long as he
continued with the experiment, it wouldn't be long before he could successfully make the larvae break
past the original star level limit.
In addition to the success in the genetic modification experiment, Rocky had also succeeded in taming
the Fire Rock Turtle. While the Fire Rock Turtle might have been timid and gentle from the start, after
being tamed, it was very quiet, like a sheep.
What bothered Rocky the most was the refining of the spiritual crystal. When he had just arrived at the
valley, he tried to carry out the last stage of refining the first spiritual crystal, but failed. Since then, no
progress had been made. A month had gone by yet he still had not found a way to complete the last
stage of the refining of the spiritual crystal.
Therefore, Rocky had no choice but to start from square one. He figured he might've gone wrong
somewhere along the way, so he tried changing up the equipment and materials. In a word, he
exhausted all methods.
Another month passed.
As the gene experiments went smoothly, Rocky suddenly came up with a new idea. This time, he
experimented on the Fire Rock Turtle. The Fire Rock Turtle was even rarer than the Dark Heaven
Insect, and the ethereal crystal it produced was more valuable than the Dark Heaven Egg. However, he
was a bit cautious; he had only one Fire Rock Turtle, after all. Additionally, now he had only a little
magical saliva left, so he could not speed up the production of ethereal crystals. Because of this, he
tried to be strategic in his usage of such a rare resource. 'Efficiency is key, ' he mumbled to himself.
At last, Rocky thought of a new experiment: asexual reproduction. It excited him no end because, not
only could it serve as research related to genes, but also, it could increase the number of Fire Rock
Turtles!
Of course, asexual reproduction had to be done on females. In fact, Rocky had long wanted to try this
before, but all his Dark Heaven Insects he captured were male. Additionally, the Dark Heaven Insect
Queen itself could already reproduce asexually, so he really had no chance to carry out this
experiment.
Fortunately, the Fire Rock Turtle he caught happened to be female, and it could not reproduce
asexually. The Fire Rock Turtle looked like a spirit-manipulated beast hatched from an egg, but to
Rocky's pleasant surprise, he found that it had complete ovaries. Therefore, it could not get pregnant
until it had sex with a male, which provided more impetus for the asexual reproduction experiment.
However, if Rocky experimented using an ordinary male spirit-manipulated beast with the Fire Rock
Turtle, their progeny might not carry the same traits as its mother — namely, the ability to produce
ethereal crystals. Therefore, the only possible way was to carry out the experiment on the three
matured male Dark Heaven Insects and Fire Rock Turtle. As long as one succeeded, then all the other
problems would be solved.
Of course, it would take at least a few months before he knew whether the experiment was successful.
Another two months passed. By now, Rocky had been in the valley for a total of four months.
So far, three of the six larvae had survived the gene experiments, and the other three had died from
genetic diseases. It was a pity that the three larvae died, but the remaining three could be considered
the miraculous products of this era. They had all completed the breakthrough of the limit of star level! In
fact, these three had broken through from the three-star level to the four-star level. Although they had
only grown to the two-star level, they could already produce low-grade Dark Heaven Eggs. Because of
gene mutation, the low-grade Dark Heaven Eggs produced by them were one grade higher than the
low-grade Dark Heaven Egg produced by the normal Dark Heaven Insect of the three-star level.
What pleased Rocky the most, however, was that after months of continuous trial and error, he finally
made a breakthrough in the refining of the spiritual crystal. He had come up with a new refining
method. Although this refining method took a longer time than the previous refining method, he could
refine it in greater quantities with higher efficiency. Most importantly, this method was very simple. He
could refine the crystal in body of the spirit-manipulated beast directly. That was to say, the body of the
spirit-manipulated beast was like a furnace.
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