Ashen God
Chapter 50 Alchemy Rules

Chapter 50: Chapter 50 Alchemy Rules

[Life Value: 309/309 (Constitution × 15, the current body has officially been digitized, Life Value Recovery Speed, 3 points per hour.)]

[Energy Value: 170/170 (Intelligence × 10, the current body has officially been digitized, Energy Value Recovery Speed, 9 points per hour.)]

"Because my Constitution Attribute hasn’t reached 50 points yet, the increase in my Life Value Limit has been going quite smoothly."

Even as he looked at his Life Value, Zhang Yanhang’s thoughts drifted to a strange place, because he suddenly remembered something: since artifact descriptions often stated requirements like 25 or 50 points in certain attributes, could there be something like a ’threshold’ involved?

"If that’s really the case, things would get a lot more troublesome." Indeed, while he had just verified one hypothesis, Zhang Yanhang had proposed another. Unlike the previous one, this time, he hoped his guess would not hold true. Otherwise, it would probably impose significant limitations on his strength growth.

After sorting out the artifacts that came from the Treasure box, Zhang Yanhang continued with the equipment. In terms of equipment, all of them were from the Police Zombie’s Treasure box—a total of 54 pieces of Equipment. Yes, there were so many, which meant Zhang Yanhang had quite a few duplicates, such as belts, of which he had found several.

Previously, when opening the Police Zombie’s Treasure box, Zhang Yanhang would usually choose the Safety Combat Training Manual as an Artifact, but now he had learned all the Skills from it, so the spot initially occupied by the manual was selected for Equipment.

Among the fifty-four pieces of equipment Zhang Yanhang had obtained this time, eighteen were Waist Bags, and the remaining thirty-six pieces were the Raccoon City Police Department Special Tactical Rescue Team’s standard police Equipment with Set attributes.

He temporarily put the thirty-six Set parts aside and picked up four Waist Bags. Yes, you may have guessed it—Zhang Yanhang was about to perform Fusion on the Waist Bags again. Otherwise, hanging nineteen Waist Bags on himself would turn him into a genuine ’Waist Bag Man.’

Zhang Yanhang had previously fused four Waist Bags to create one Waist Bag +2. Now, he prepared to fuse another Waist Bag +2 and merge it with the original one to see if he could create a Waist Bag +3.

After a slight waste of time, a brand-new Waist Bag +2 appeared before Zhang Yanhang. However, before fusing it with the original Waist Bag +2, he needed to remove everything from it. As a result, the bed, which had just been somewhat tidied, was once again cluttered with a bunch of stuff.

"This must be what they call a ’happy problem’..." Zhang Yanhang murmured to himself as he initiated Alchemy again to fuse the two Waist Bag +2s.

As the Alchemy Array activated, both Waist Bags quickly melted into two pools of liquid, gradually intertwining. If the previous fusion was as eager as a virile man meeting a passionate woman—spontaneously merging—this time, it was more like a strong man facing a gold digger, requiring a display of Great Strength and a One-shot Soul effort to succeed.

Watching the two pools of liquid, whose fusion speed within the Alchemy Array had slowed compared to before, Zhang Yanhang felt that something was off, "Is it just my imagination? Why does it feel much slower than the last time? Could it possibly be reaching its limit already? That can’t be right, can it?"

The ’limit’ Zhang Yanhang was referring to was also from one of the Alchemy Rules—that although items of the exact same type have a high success rate when fused, there comes a point where a limit is reached, and further fusion becomes impossible. At this point, forcing a fusion would almost certainly result in failure.

However, if one insisted on fusing further, it wasn’t impossible—but breaking through this limit would require increasing the number of items fused. The principle is to overcome the limit through sheer quantity.

For example, if you were to merge one cup of water with another, you would need a larger cup to hold it.

But if you keep fusing until you have water measured in cubic meters, there won’t be any container in your house to hold this volume. If you continue to fuse, not only will the water flood your home, but it will also evaporate and be lost, resulting in a pyrrhic situation.

In Alchemy terms, this would mean not only wasting the Energy Value and Materials invested but also ending up with trash.

So, at this point, you’ve reached a limit. However, if you could channel a river to sweep away your entire house, you wouldn’t have to worry about holding the container anymore.

When applying this to the use of Alchemy, if the Waist Bags can’t be fused any longer, Zhang Yanhang won’t be able to use the same number of Waist Bags for the next fusion step. Instead, he would have to increase the quantity, perhaps using Waist Bags in the hundreds, to force the limit to be breached.

But the cost-effectiveness of this method is extremely low. After all, it’s like allowing your entire house to be swept away while you can’t absorb the river entirely. You can only divert a part of it to strengthen yourself. So, normally, Alchemists wouldn’t do such a foolish thing. Of course, Zhang Yanhang felt the same way.

Thus, if he did encounter a limit with fusing the Waist Bags, he would have to give up on further fusion.

However, since he hadn’t reached the absolute limit yet, Zhang Yanhang ultimately succeeded in fusing the two Waist Bag +2s. After the fusion, he clicked to open the Property List of the Waist Bag to take a look.

[Raccoon City Police Department Special Tactical Rescue Team Standard Police Waist Bag (Unnamed) +3]

[Quality: Blue]

[Type: Equipment]

[Origin: Main World, Qin Island City, Xingfuli District, Room 505, Zhang Yanhang.]

[Durability: 65/65]

[Defensive Power: 37]

[Special Attribute: Storage.]

[Storage: You can store any 16 items with a total volume not exceeding 1 cubic meter in the inner space of the Waist Bag.]

[Usage requirements: None.]

[Score: 35 (Blue item scores range from 31 to 70.)]

[Description: The Raccoon City Police Department Special Tactical Rescue Team’s Standard Police Waist Bag has only sixteen storage spaces with a volume of one cubic meter each. Therefore, it cannot store single items exceeding sixteen cubic meters in total volume, and it also cannot store life forms in the traditional sense.]