Super Gene Ⅱ: Evolution

Chapter 123: Stepping on the Immortal Court

“The Greed for Life and Fear of Death Elixir” requires one to hold one’s breath, not just momentarily, but continuously. Throughout the entire practice session, from start to finish, breath must be held. If even a single breath is taken, all prior efforts are forfeited.

Lin Shen glanced briefly at the Base Mutation part. To complete a full session of practice, it required at least twelve hours. Who could hold their breath for twelve hours in one go? And this is just for Base Mutation Level, later on, the duration required would be even longer.

Ordinary people can hold their breath for at most a few minutes at a time, and extraordinary individuals with unique talents are said to manage a few dozen minutes, though that’s only hearsay and not witnessed. Beyond that, you don’t even hear about such things.

After undergoing Base Mutation, one’s ability to hold their breath will increase. It’s not too difficult for a typical Mutator to hold their breath for twenty minutes or so. Some with special innate talents might manage a few hours or potentially even longer.

Such Mutators could barely meet the breath-holding requirement of “The Greed for Life and Fear of Death Elixir,” but even if they met the criteria, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’d choose to practice it.

Because, as stated in the Immortality Scripture, upon completing the first stage, one would acquire an innate skill—Feign Death.

Practice holding your breath for a minimum of twelve hours every day, and after the arduous journey to Ascension Level, you’re rewarded with the innate skill of Feign Death. Only someone out of their mind would practice such an Evolution Skill.

As far as Lin Shen knew, among the Five Fundamental Evolution Skills, practicing Heavenly Heart Skill to Ascension Level would at least grant an innate skill called “Mind’s Eye” which could enhance one’s perceptual abilities, strengthening awareness, reaction time, and so forth.

The other four basic Evolution Skills were more or less the same. Although the innate skills granted upon completion weren’t extraordinarily powerful, they were all practical.

Feign Death, other than the ability to play dead, is of little use. Do general Mutators need to play dead? Definitely not, if you pretend to be dead in front of a Base Variant Creature, it would happily make a meal out of your corpse.

The average person really has no use for the Feign Death innate skill. Only a few quite unique individuals might find it useful.

This is still assuming one is capable of cultivating it, but Lin Shen didn’t have the talent for holding his breath. He certainly couldn’t hold it for twelve hours straight.

“But it might be worth a try. Although I can’t hold my breath for twelve hours, I do have Evolution Theory. Who knows, I might just adapt to it after enduring?” Lin Shen’s interest was instead piqued.

Ordinary people would definitely shy away from such an Evolution Skill. Perhaps some might say that this Evolution Skill is very special and could be of great use in the future, but when it comes down to making a choice, they would definitely not select it.

Lin Shen didn’t think too much about it; he just found the Evolution Skill quite interesting. Moreover, if he truly could master the skill of holding his breath, he wouldn’t have to fear falling into the water anymore.

If he were to fall into the water again, he would just need to hold his breath. He could walk out even from the bottom of the water.

While searching for mutant creatures, Lin Shen memorized “The Greed for Life and Fear of Death Elixir.” Once he had committed it to memory, he burned the paper that contained the Immortality Scripture.

If the creator of this Evolution Skill had enemies throughout the universe, Lin Shen did not want anyone to know he possessed it.

This planet was indeed quite large. After several thousand humans and thirty thousand members of the Ultra-Burn Tribe were randomly teleported here, the chances of a chance encounter were slim.

Lin Shen wandered for a long time and encountered only a few Alloy Level members of the Ultra-Burn Tribe. He didn’t meet any other human Mutators again.

However, after killing a few Mutant Poisonous Insects, his mutation rate had increased somewhat, nearly reaching fifty percent.

The Immortality Scripture had been memorized and reduced to ashes. It was unlikely that anyone in the world would know he had it anymore.

Lin Shen didn’t dare to slack off and took out “Stepping on the Celestial Court” to look at.

Stepping on the Celestial Court was even more bizarre. It featured only images of a human figure, with no text, no meridian charts or the like—just purely some movements.

After studying it carefully for a while, Lin Shen realized that the movements depicted running or walking, leaping or soaring—essentially, all motions involved in movement.

“No text, no circulation routines for inner energy. How is one supposed to practice this? Just follow the movements depicted, how is that different from doing calisthenics? Such movements can lead to an Evolution Skill? Stop joking, if that was the case, students in the past did calisthenics and none evolved from it,” Lin Shen felt these two Evolution Skills were more absurd than the other.

He couldn’t even practice the regular Evolution Skills, let alone these outlandish ones—it seemed even less likely he’d be able to master them.

“Well, I might as well give it a try.” Lin Shen jumped off the back of Big Red Bull and started with the first movement depicted to see how it went.

The attempt was not very smooth. The movements appeared simple—just running, jumping, soaring, leaping—but they were not as easy as he had imagined.

Some movements were quite challenging for Lin Shen given his physical flexibility.

A single movement was a bit difficult but doable, however, when linking the movement to the next one, Lin Shen felt as if his waist was going to snap and his feet twisted into knots. He had only practiced a few movements but had already fallen several times.

“This is actually quite fun!” Lin Shen was increasingly intrigued; he enjoyed these interesting challenges.

After practicing for a while, he realized that the movements were not just difficult—they were beyond ordinary standards, some even more so than yoga.

What made it even harder was that all these movements needed to be completed during rapid running, jumping, and spinning—verging on the extreme.

“Is this really an Evolution Skill? What kind of effects can be achieved after mastering it?” Lin Shen grew even more interested.

Since he couldn’t master other Evolution Skills, and Evolution Theory didn’t require practice but rather external stimuli to activate automatically, Lin Shen didn’t have much else to practice. He might as well practice “Stepping on the Celestial Court.” It was better than doing nothing and could at least provide some physical training.

He also tried the Immortality Scripture, but indeed could not hold his breath for that long, so there were no effects as of yet.

Unless someday Lin Shen adopted a do-or-die attitude, refusing to breathe even at the risk of death to let Evolution Theory run automatically, strengthening and mutating his body to gain the ability to hold his breath for long durations, the Immortality Scripture would remain unattainable.

While Lin Shen was engrossed in his fun, Mo Shengqi and others had been wandering around the grassy slopes for a long time and unexpectedly came across a structure.

They were all puzzled—how could there be man-made structures in this place? They didn’t dare approach and just observed from a distance.

The building looked like it was cast from metal in one piece, without a single seam visible across the surface. From a distance, it just looked like a dark iron tower.

The tower must have been several hundred meters tall, with not a single window along its entire height, except for a tightly closed gate at the very bottom.

The gate had a plack above it, engraved with three characters: “Realm King Tower.”

Mo Shengqi and the others observed for quite some time and discovered numerous characters carved on the wall beside the gate. Upon closer examination, the content of those characters pertained to the “Realm King Tower.”