My Arms Can Turn into Blades-Chapter 214 - 172: The True Function (Part 2)

"...Understood."

Chen Lusi sighed, then weighed the sniper rifle in his hand, thinking for a moment before kneeling on one knee, setting it up, and resting it on his shoulder.

But soon, he thought of something and turned back to ask, "By the way, does this thing have strong recoil?"

Wu You explained, "Didn’t you try it before? Theoretically, what it shoots is spirit, which essentially has no recoil."

Chen Lusi recalled, then nodded, with his shoulder against the gunstock, left hand supporting the gun, right hand gripping the handle, and placing his finger on the trigger.

Then.

He turned his head to glance at the handle, confirmed the position where the spirit enters the guide hole, and then looked into the scope.

Behind Chen Lusi.

Li Zheng, Wu You, and Zhou Jian all looked at Chen Lusi with curiosity and excitement.

Among them, Zhou Jian glanced at Chen Lusi’s gun-holding posture, seemingly wanting to speak... but seeing his serious side profile, after thinking, decided to hold back the words.

And Chen Lusi didn’t pay attention to the gazes of the three behind him, took a deep breath, and slightly exerted force with the hand gripping the handle.

The surrounding spirits began to gather towards his hand.

The whole process was very quick.

Chen Lusi had quite a bit of experience with molding spirit balls after doing it for so long; now he could make a large spirit ball in a second. Although the scenario was somewhat different since he needed to guide the spirit into the sniper rifle, it didn’t take much time.

Li Zheng and the others also noticed the spirit gathering around, immediately widening their eyes, ready to witness a miracle.

Chen Lusi packed the amount of an ordinary spirit ball into the sniper rifle, felt it was about right, and forcefully pulled the trigger.

Pop—

A very strange, akin to something splattering sound was heard.

Immediately after.

Spirit energy exploded near the muzzle, a burst of spirit fireworks suddenly blooming.

Very splendid.

But like fireworks, it was short-lived.

And besides the splendid spirit fireworks, no bullet was fired out at all.

Wu You and Li Zheng were momentarily confused, somewhat surprised and puzzled, looking at Chen Lusi, asking, "Did it fail?"

"..."

Chen Lusi was silent for a moment, then turned around, frowning, "Yeah, there’s a problem. I can feel the spirit went through a conversion process, what is this process?"

"Compression device."

Wu You quickly reacted upon hearing this, explaining, "Its main function is to compress the spirit extracted from the stone, then trigger it to shoot out. This is a standard ’artificial antique’ with currently three branches.

After all, if it wasn’t compressed, and couldn’t shoot out the spirit to cause damage, there’s no point in making it into a firearm."

Chen Lusi became even more curious hearing this, "So how does the compression device grant spirit its offensive nature? How does it maintain its shape after detachment?"

"..."

Hearing this, Wu You was silent for a moment, "I don’t know either, or rather, none of the empowerers knows."

"What?" Chen Lusi was taken aback.

"Just now I said the compression device is a standard ’artificial antique,’ which isn’t entirely accurate. Strictly speaking, it should be called a ’standard black box artificial antique,’ with three compression device branches, whether domestic, the church branch, or the Sumer branch.

They’re actually heirlooms. Us modern people simply know how to use them. When you ask me how the compression device grants spirit offensive nature or maintains its shape after detachment, I can only tell you the former relies primarily on the compression device, and the latter relies on the stone’s special properties.

But for the specific principle, it’s like asking why some empowerers can use detached techniques, and some can’t, I don’t know how to answer."

"...Then I think I know where the problem is."

Chen Lusi was silent for a while, then asked, "You said spirits maintain shape after detachment due to the stone’s special properties, then can I understand it as those spirits extracted from stones naturally have detachment characteristics?"

"You could say that." Wu You nodded.

Chen Lusi said softly, "The spirit I just poured in was absorbed from the outside, and I didn’t condense a stone inside me."

Wu You was momentarily stunned.

Indeed.

Originally, ’tip’ weapons, stones, and compression devices are complementary, indispensable existences.

Stones serve as the energy source, needing to grant spirits the detachment characteristic, while the compression device compresses spirits with detachment characteristics and shoots them out.

But now Chen Lusi absorbed the spirit from outside... it’s equivalent to missing a step.

And this problem... seems unsolvable.

After all, no one knows what special features the stones in empowerers capable of releasing detached techniques have.

Wu You was silent for a long time, then asked, "So did it fail?"

Li Zheng and Zhou Jian also looked at Chen Lusi, a bit disappointed.

"I’ll try again."

Chen Lusi thought, lifted the sniper rifle slightly from his shoulder, absorbed the surrounding spirits again, injected them into the gun, and pulled the trigger.

Pop—

Exactly the same.

The spirit exploded near the muzzle, turning into splendid spirit fireworks.

Because the spirits Chen Lusi injected didn’t have the elusive ’detachment feature,’ the gun’s internal compression device, when triggered, could only release fireworks.

And in some sense, it was indeed quite like using a firewood stick.

Chen Lusi, unwilling to give up, tried once more, but still, there was no change.

Li Zheng and Wu You sighed, probably understanding.

Misjudged...

"..."

Chen Lusi also gave up, three tries all ended the same; it seemed unlikely success would come from further attempts.

So he slowly stood up from the ground, then said, "Seems like I disappointed you."

"Not at all."

Li Zheng shook his head. Although he was a bit disappointed, he soon dismissed the unnecessary thoughts, "We came with a try-and-see mentality. Succeeding would be great, but we’re okay with failure, no need for you to carry any psychological burden.