Chapter 2311 A Cursed Manufacturing Process
The next step was to soak the arrow tips in diluted Black Hex Raven Tears, but it was not as simple as Lin Mu first thought.
"How do I… Contain its curse?" Lin Mu was stumped as he watched the pot and the ground around it crumbling as if it were chalk. No force or impact had been applied to the pot or the ground, it was simply the power of the diluted tears that was causing them to break down on their own. It was instantaneous fragmentation that could occur naturally when the right conditions were met.
Of course, these conditions were rare and something like this would not happen normally. But with the curse being applied, the rare conditions were met and both the pot and the ground around it crumbled. This also meant that the diluted tears inside it were spilled around, affecting the arrays.
~BZZAT~
~CRACK~
~SHUA~
"Even the arrays are experiencing a Qi disorientation." Lin Mu almost couldn't believe his eyes.
A lot of his arrays had gotten this bad effect before, but it only happened when the arrays were not systematic and the flow of Qi became erratic. This was one of the common problems that arose when someone was making a new array for the first time. But the arrays that Lin Mu had set up in the room were well practiced and common arrays that he had made thousands of times before. As such, there was no reason for them to experience a Qi disorientation and yet it had now happened right in front of his eyes.
"Shit, I need to contain it." Lin Mu directly used Meld and contained the entire area that was being affected by the diluted tears.
~SHUA~
The area was cut off and directly sent into the ring.
~phew~
"That could have gone really bad." Lin Mu couldn't even imagine what would happen if the curse spread to the rest of the arrays of the base. 'It is still fine if it happened to the reinforcing arrays I had set up here, if it somehow caused Qi orientation to the Offensive or defensive arrays of the base, the entire place might just blow up.' It was a rather anxiety inducing situation but it also gave him an insight into the power of the Black Hex Raven Tears.
"Its diluted form is more than enough to cause an array to collapsed, so it should work against the Chimera Plant too." Lin Mu had better hope now.
This attempt also taught him that using any normal containers was useless. 'A viable option would be a specially sealed container that has curse resistive properties.' Lin Mu thought. "But, I can also just do this." He said before using meld to raise another part of the ground.
~SHUA~
After raising it, Lin Mu easily created a depression in it that could easily hold some water. "Just a little bit…" Lin Mu then summoned a minuscule amount of Black Hex Raven Tears from the ring and then dropped it into floating container isolated by space. "There we go." ~Drip~
Ripples spread across the water, but nothing special seemed to happen. "Sure enough, the earth collapsed again." Lin Mu sensed. "If not for Meld holding the space together, the container I made would have fallen apart." He muttered.
It might look like the earthen container was solid, but it had already turned into fine grains. But since Meld could hold space itself, it was forced to stay in the same form. It was the same as compressing sand to hold a shape.
~Ripple~
Lin Mu dropped the two arrow tips into the diluted tears and let it do its thing.
'Hopefully the arrow tips themselves don't break down…' Lin Mu prayed in his heart. His analysis had told him that the arrow tips should just break due to how much tougher they were compared to simple earth, but there was no telling what kind of random and rare effects the tears could pull. Lin Mu waited an entire six hours before he was sure that nothing bad was going to happen. "This should be good enough." He said before immediately storing the entire container along with the arrow tips into the ring. "Half the work is done." Now all Lin Mu needed to do was to make the arrow shafts and attach them to the arrow tips. But this was also not simple and Lin Mu had a hard time picking out the materials.
'The curse is sure to spread to the shafts too, so I'll need something that can endure that too.' Lin Mu pondered on it. In his ring, there were tons of materials ranging from wooden to metal to crystalline that Lin Mu could potentially use. But since Lin Mu didn't know how they would hold up against the curse, all he could do was to test them out directly.
"I'll just make a bunch of them and use whatever can withstand the curse…" He decided.
Next, he took out over fifty different materials, of which half were various kinds of woods and the other half were minerals.
He then spent the next couple of days turning these into arrow shafts. This part was easy for most of the woods, but hard for the minerals. In case of the metals, he could at least melt them down and cast them into the shape of a shaft, but he couldn't do that for crystalline minerals like gemstones and more.
For the latter, he ended up having to use meld to cut out the right shape, which also took a bit of an effort as the crystals could collapse due to their structure changing rapidly from meld.
And once he was done, Lin Mu began testing them.
"Here goes nothing…" Lin Mu took a breath and held a wooden arrow shaft with one hand and the 'cursed' arrow tip with meld. He then brought them together until the arrow tip was perfectly slotted into the cut he had made.