===054 Manipulation===
As Su Hao approached the academy, the radar sensed a strange fluctuation of blood energy outside the academy, carefully hidden and at a certain distance from the academy’s range. It seemed unwilling to enter the academy’s range.
This strange fluctuation was different from the vibrant feeling of a normal person. It appeared somewhat ethereal and dispersed, as if the blood energy would dissipate with the wind in the next moment, yet it stubbornly gathered together.
This contradictory feeling piqued Su Hao’s interest.
Su Hao carefully observed through the radar and found that the blood energy intensity was not high, just the level of a high-level elite. It didn’t pose much of a threat to him.
So he calmly continued walking forward, ready to counteract at any moment.
When Su Hao was about 5 meters away, the other party moved.
Silently, the assailant circled behind Su Hao and launched an assault.
In the blink of an eye, the assailant was right behind Su Hao, swinging a hand blade towards his neck.
“You think you can knock me out!”
Su Hao immediately realized the other party’s intentions and instantly thought of the news he heard in town today. Perhaps the missing people in town are related to the person attacking him.
It seems that the other party has targeted the students who stayed at the academy.
Su Hao lowered his head and the attacker’s knife missed its mark.
He took a step back, behind the attacker, and jumped up, reaching out to grab the attacker’s neck and pressing him down to the ground.
“Bang!”
The attacker’s face was brutally pressed against the stone slab by Su Hao, blood splattering everywhere.
To Su Hao’s surprise, the attacker, despite receiving such a heavy blow, didn’t make a sound and vigorously struggled and resisted, trying to get up.
Su Hao frowned, feeling even more uneasy. It seemed as if the attacker couldn’t feel the pain in his nose. Even a normal forceful attack on the nose would make someone scream, let alone pressing it directly onto the ground.
Seeing the attacker still resisting without any rhyme or reason, Su Hao directly grabbed his neck, lifted him up, and slammed him back onto the ground.
“Plop!”
The amount of blood flowing from his face increased dramatically, creating a visual effect as if a chili oil seasoning packet had been dropped and shattered on the ground.
The attacker continued to struggle in silence.
Su Hao decided to break all of the attacker’s limbs, making sure he could no longer resist. Then, Su Hao turned the whole person over.
His face was smashed to the point of being unrecognizable, unable to see his specific features, but it was apparent that he looked like an ordinary middle-aged man.
Most peculiar were the man’s eyes, devoid of focus and vitality. With a smashed mouth slightly open, saliva and blood mixed together, flowing freely.
He’s insane! Completely unconscious!
He resembled a manipulated corpse.
“What is this? Could it be that some kind of savage beast has infiltrated the town, capturing humans to control them?”
Su Hao couldn’t figure out what was going on for a while. Just as he wanted to study the strange blood essence inside the middle-aged man, the eerie blood essence suddenly violently shook and then slowly dissipated.
Startled, Su Hao sensed the location where the blood essence dissipated and immediately lifted the middle-aged man’s shirt.
There was a peculiar pattern on the man’s stomach, which, like evaporating watermarks, quickly sublimated and disappeared.
“Runes?” Su Hao was momentarily stunned. After the runes disappeared, the middle-aged man’s body twitched once and then completely motionless.
Su Hao placed his finger on the pulse on the man’s neck; the pulse had ceased, he was dead.
“Controlling corpses with runes?” It was the first time Su Hao had encountered such a situation, leaving him confused.
Seeing that there was no one around, Su Hao quickly cleaned up the traces at the scene and left directly.
Within a maximum of two hours, someone would discover this corpse, and then they would alert the guard squad to handle it.
In any case, it had little to do with him going forward.”
And that mysterious rune, although it dissipates quickly, Su Hao has already recorded it and can reproduce it completely.
He plans to study it these few days when he has time.
……
Back in the dorm room, Su Hao first grabbed some paper and a pen and successfully drew the rune he saw according to Little Light’s instructions.
He waited for a moment, but there was no effect.
Su Hao thought for a moment, then brought a piece of wood and tried to imprint it on the wood, but still nothing happened.
“Do I need to draw it on a living creature with blood?” Su Hao thought, getting up and instantly the radar locked onto a small blood reaction, a big yellow rat in the corner.
In just a moment, Su Hao was holding the tail of the big yellow rat and returned to the dorm room. The small limbs of the big yellow rat struggled desperately, but after a while, it resignedly looked ahead.
Su Hao first turned over the belly of the big yellow rat and tied its limbs with a rope to keep them spread out. Subconsciously, he wanted to find a small knife to scrape off the hair on its belly.
Then he realized that having hair doesn’t affect the drawing process, so he self-mockingly chuckled. In the frightened gaze of the big yellow rat, he extended a finger and tapped it on the belly of the rat.
Then, he carefully controlled the blood and, following Little Light’s prompt, started to draw. This rune was much simpler than Su Hao’s “perception” rune, but it would still be difficult to draw on such a small big yellow rat.
After a while, the drawing was successful. Su Hao picked up his hand, released his control over the blood, and the blood instantly collapsed, followed by an explosion inside the big yellow rat.
“Boom!”
Blood and flesh splattered all over Su Hao.
Su Hao was speechless. He silently praised the big yellow rat, which selflessly gave its precious life for science. It deserved his respect.
Then he began to think about the reason for the failure.
The blood can be used to construct runes within a living organism, but once control is lost, it will directly erupt and disperse, making it impossible to achieve a long-lasting effect.
“Why can others do it?”
“Is it the materials, host, or is this rune incomplete?”
If we liken blood energy to electric current, then electric current needs to be bound by wires to follow the predetermined path. So does blood energy also need some sort of material similar to wires to stably bind it within a certain range in order to achieve the desired effect?
Su Hao recalled the watermark that quickly dissipated on the man’s belly, and the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. That watermark-like thing might be the material that can stabilize the blood energy.
He also recalled a book he had read, “The Mysterious Rune Master”.
It described a group of mysterious individuals in this world who hid in the shadows and secretly researched forbidden knowledge. This group of people were called rune masters, and they studied runes extracted from animal patterns.
The reason why runes were classified as forbidden knowledge was because the initial rune masters conducted numerous experiments on humans, which went against ethics.
Throughout history, rune masters, in order to study runes, had even caused several massacres, leading to public outrage. At some point, rune masters became synonymous with evil, blamed by everyone and even worse than fierce beasts.
“Perhaps I need to find these rune masters to know the secret of drawing runes.”
Su Hao never thought about starting from scratch to study runes. It wasn’t his style to disregard the knowledge accumulated by others and try to do it all on his own.
It’s like trying to innovate and research without fully understanding the knowledge of those who came before. In most cases, it would result in failure. Because doing so is usually not innovation but rather retracing the path of previous failures, wasting time.
Su Hao on the long task list in his diary, “Crack the special secrets of runes.”Underneath, a small branch was established to “search for rune mages and acquire rune knowledge”.
Su Hao looked at the dormitory with blood stains, took a long breath, and muttered to himself, “If conditions permit, we should set up a dedicated laboratory.”
Thinking about his empty pockets, he couldn’t help but feel a headache.
So the question is, how can he quickly make money without wasting time?
Su Hao immediately rejected the idea of preparing chemical products, even though it could generate significant profits. The preparation work required too much time, and the profit cycle was too long. He didn’t want to waste that time.
His ideal situation was to find a solution that could promote rune research while also making a lot of money.
“Didn’t Teacher Liu say that a complete beast pattern is very expensive in the market?”
With that in mind, Su Hao came up with a preliminary plan.
