Chapter 566: Mental Traits
This ability named ‘Let’s Be Friends,’ as Zhi Peng’s secret, he didn’t want to disclose it to outsiders. However, for some reason, he blurted it out to Su Hao during their conversation.
He always felt that Mr. Jia Wei, wearing a crystal armor, had a special charm that made people instinctively trust him.
Zhi Peng thought that it might be one of Mr. Jia Wei’s peculiar abilities!
After listening to Zhi Peng’s description of ‘Let’s Be Friends,’ Su Hao had a preliminary understanding of his ability.
It was more potent and inexhaustible than he had imagined.
Like the rumors, chatting for more than two hours in person would trigger Zhi Peng’s ability. Whoever Zhi Peng considered a friend couldn’t find a way to break free. The triggering condition was not limited to just chatting for two hours; it could happen in less time as long as they listened to Zhi Peng’s stories and were moved by them to a certain extent, thus becoming his friend.
If one knew about the ability, they could take precautions. Otherwise, they could easily fall into the trap and become his friend.
What can friends do? There’s a lot they can do. Sometimes, the term ‘friends’ doesn’t just mean companions. Under Zhi Peng’s ability, friendship is severely distorted. His friends could even go to the extent of blocking a knife for him. The key point is that after blocking the knife, they would consider it natural: blocking a knife is what a friend should do.
Su Hao asked, “Do your friends know that they are under the influence of your ability?”
Zhi Peng felt awkward about Su Hao’s question and shook his head, saying, “On this matter, I am not certain. I can’t understand their mental state. Outwardly, they seem no different from ordinary people, except that they consider me a friend, and the significance of friendship is placed above anything else in their hearts, right?”
Everyone values different things deep within themselves, but the priority of those values always differs. For instance, some may value freedom more than life, some may value love more than freedom, some may value money more than love…
But for those affected by Zhi Peng’s ability, after an inexplicable exchange, the most valuable thing to them is replaced by ‘friendship,’ becoming the foremost priority. They may even sacrifice their lives for it.
Su Hao asked again, “Is there a limit to the number of people affected by this ability?”
Zhi Peng shook his head and said, “I’m not sure. But so far, there hasn’t been a feeling of reaching a limit. I can sense vaguely that there may not be a limit because there is no inherent connection between those affected by my ability and me. They are just ordinary friends, as if…”
He frowned, searching for a metaphor but couldn’t come up with one. Perhaps this was why he hadn’t studied language well before!
Seeing him struggling, Su Hao couldn’t help but assist, “It’s like your ability is an axe for chopping wood. Once it’s chopped, it’s chopped. No one dictates how many logs this axe can split.”
Zhi Peng’s eyes widened in surprise, “Yes, exactly that feeling!”
Su Hao continued, “If that’s the case, then there shouldn’t be a limit logically. Have you ever thought about making everyone in the world your friend?”
Zhi Peng was astonished, “That…that’s not realistic.”
Su Hao smiled, “In fact, you don’t need to turn everyone into your friend. Just a small group would suffice. You don’t need many. In the first stage, we estimate about ten thousand people.”
Zhi Peng’s mouth fell open, “Ten thousand… talking to one person for two hours, that’s twenty thousand hours…”
Su Hao chuckled, “Who said you have to talk to each person one by one? Who told you that each person must talk for two hours? There are plenty of persuasive copywriting pieces that could earn you a batch of friends in just ten minutes.
Don’t you guys want to clear out all the royal family members through Illumination? With just your few numbers, it’s not possible. You’ll need to spend more time building relationships with people who have unique talents, forming a genuinely large and organized group to act systematically.
Ten thousand people are just the number required for the first phase. To completely eradicate and replace the royal family in Hengxuan district, you’ll need at least a hundred thousand capable individuals to assist you.
By the way, are you thinking of just killing off the royal family members and ending it there?”
Zhi Peng felt embarrassed, “Originally, that was the plan, like an assassin, randomly targeting royal residences for slaughter until all the royal members were gone. But Mr. Jia Wei, besides this, what else should I manage?”
Su Hao shook his head vigorously, “You have too many things to handle, and I can’t explain it to you in a short time. There’s no need to rush about clearing the royal family. It’s not something that can be done in a year or two. Your first step is to make more friends.”
At this point, Su Hao smiled and said, “As for how to make more friends, I need to understand more about your abilities before helping you design a ‘making friends’ plan. For the next period of time, you will need to cooperate with me on some simple experiments!”
With things developing to this point, Zhi Peng had no room to refuse. He simply nodded, “What experiments do you want me to do, Mr. Jia Wei, just tell me.”
Su Hao casually asked, “By the way, you have two eccentric origin mage friends, right. Would they be willing to cooperate with our experiments?”
Zhi Peng confidently replied, “Of course they would.”
Su Hao smiled, “Excellent.”
Under Su Hao’s request, Zhi Peng temporarily stopped the random selection of lucky royal palaces for slaughter activities, and along with his friends, they were instantly transported to an island and began various experiments with two researchers.
The mage of quality was assigned to a subordinate named Jia Yashan for the experiment, the mage of illusion was assigned to a subordinate named Jia Feng Cheng, and the mage of ability followed Jia Wei for the experiment.
Of course, it can’t simply be called an experiment. It is euphemistically described as: helping you design a reasonable way to use your abilities.
Indeed, with the help of Su Hao and the others, Zhi Peng and the others gained a great improvement in their source abilities.
The brainstorming of Su Hao and the others opened everyone’s eyes wide, with exclamations of, “Wow, you can use it like this. This structure is amazing! This equation is powerful, it really works! ‘Eyes flashing gold stars’ can knock someone’s head? How did I not think of that. And ‘tears of joy’ can make someone cry and laugh at the same time?…”
Zhi Peng’s abilities underwent a qualitative leap, as he was packaged by Su Hao into a knowledgeable scholar, with great changes in both content and appearance. Especially in appearance, after being modified by Su Hao, he looked like a wise sage who is convincing.
He even gave him a philosophical sounding name – Wulai!
Meaning ‘no place to go, only the return journey remains’.
Zhi Peng was about to embark on his journey, opening his missionary career: “Friends, would you like to hear my story?”
It is foreseeable that a master storyteller is about to emerge.
Various miscellaneous tests and experiments took nearly half a year.
After half a year, Su Hao handed a thick planning document to Zhi Peng and sent them off, officially starting their journey of ‘missionary’ and ‘making friends’.
During this half year, Su Hao’s main work was to collect information from all over the world. He visited the royal palace in Yixuan City several times without being noticed, gaining rich harvests. He even found the history of humans using sources from scratch, accompanied by detailed event records, with the farthest data traceable to over ten thousand years ago.
After a brief review, he found that the actual situation was similar to his speculation. Long before, there were very few mysterious disasters in this world, mostly natural disasters and source beast disasters. It was only after humans developed civilization that mysterious disasters gradually increased.
Controlling and utilizing the source took a very long time for humans. At first, only a few individuals occasionally awakened within human populations. As human knowledge increased and thoughts became more complex, the number of awakened origin mages increased.
It was obvious that this was related to human mental strength.
The only point of confusion now was why some source beasts with weak mental strength could instinctively master the way of using the source and exhibit even stronger abilities than humans.
“Perhaps, it is related to mental strength, but only to a certain trait within the mental strength. This trait is not only present in human mental strength, but also in the weak mental strengths of other creatures, and even on certain special inanimate objects…”
Having realized this, Su Hao immediately assigned tasks regarding mental traits to Yashan and Feng Cheng.
If they could analyze the impact methods of converting mental strength into the source, forming a systematic theory, then Su Hao would be able to freely achieve various functions using the source, including ‘ability series,’ ‘quality series,’ and ‘illusion series.’
Now, several months had passed, and Su Hao wondered about the progress of research on Yashan’s side.
One day, while Su Hao was pondering over a pile of data, Yashan sent a message: “Boss Wei, I seem to have found a corresponding frequency band closely related to the mental traits you asked me to research and its relationship with the source.”
