Chapter 41: All Speak

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The results of those experiments were… unexpected. Well, not that he really knew what to expect.

If there was one thing he predicted, it was how his Chi diffused when it left his body. As it turned out, as soon as it entered the box, the drop of liquid Chi evaporated despite there being no air in the container.

This verified one of Edward's theories, saying that Chi did not come from the air as generally thought on Earth, but was instead another energy, probably present everywhere in the cosmos. He wasn't sure how Chi was created in the first place, but he was even more certain there was Chi in outer space too.

Apart from that, the expensive tech he bought turned out to actually be useful, he couldn't be sure when he bought them they would be able to detect Chi, but they were what he thought had the most chance of detecting it.

What he found out, was that Chi was really an energy. However, it went against the laws of science as he knew them, as it's properties were not something should have. It wasn't just a pure concentration of power, it was something more special.

That didn't mean much, and here was the problem, he actually didn't get much from those experiments. He could say it was an energy, one present in the cosmos, and that was about it.

Well, he was trying to analyse vital energy, he didn't expect to find everything he wanted right away. He would need more time.

However, although he didn't find much on Chi itself, he found something interesting about what it did. When it interacted with most materials, Chi simply ignored it. Like the container it was in, the Chi didn't go through the walls or into them, it was simply contained within, and was in a state of constant movement, although those were barely perceptible.

But, when he introduced living matter to Chi, it would rush to it like a metal attracted by a magnet. And what was even more interesting, was that when it entered the piece of living matter, which was a piece of bark here, his Chi did not strengthen the piece of bark, but instead started destroying it.

And when it did, the bark defended itself. A hint of Chi tried to fight against Edward's Chi, but it was quickly crushed. Actually, this happened so quick Edward himself hadn't seen it, but thanks to the equipment he later did.

When he saw those results, Edward's strengthened mind showed it's effects as he immediately correlated this to what happened to him when he absorbed the core of the demon back in the past.

Back then, the core had started corroding his body, and back then he thought it was simply because the black miasma was more potent once in his body, but now it seemed it was simply because it was another being's Chi that had entered his body.

He also remembered that when he was absorbing the demon's core, before Thor purified it with his lightning, he was feeling a deep feeling of disgust toward it, but he didn't get to experience it for long because he had other things to worry about.

Edward looked back into the container, and saw that after destroying the piece of bark, there was still a lot of Chi left in the container. His Chi was very strong after all.

Edward decided to prickle his finger with a needle, and dropped a drop of blood in the container. Falling from the top of the container, the drop started absorbing the nearby Chi at an incredible speed, and before it even hit the ground it had already absorbed a good part of the Chi in the container.

Edward's blood was already a few shades deeper than normal blood, and as it absorbed more and more Chi, it got even darker.

This time, Edward didn't even need his equipment as he saw his blood turn darker and darker, until a shade of gold started appearing. By the time it stopped changing colours, the blood had become dark gold.

Examining the drop of dark gold blood, it was, as he expected, much stronger, in the sense it held much more energy. Moreover, he tried putting it in different environments, to see how it would react, and noted that compared to normal human blood, this one was much more resistant to changes.

Unfortunately, this all took a lot of time, and although he had a lot of ideas of what to do with this drop of golden blood, it was already late, and Peter had to return home.

Once alone in his lab though, Edward tried something. He used his Spiritual Energy to single out a drop of his blood in his body, as well as a drop of liquid Chi, and fused the two together.

The fusion went astonishingly well, and Edward got a drop of golden blood. It was even slightly clearer than the drop he had been experimenting on all day.

However, as he placed it back in his blood stream, something went wrong. The golden drop of blood started being diluted, losing some of it's color as it travelled around his body. But when it passed by his liver, it lost even more color, and in seconds it disappear.

The problem was, it hadn't strengthened any part of his body, not even the blood it was in. It had simply diluted, becoming another normal drop of blood.

Actually, before it passed by the liver, the normal blood around the drop of golden blood had started darkening, becoming stronger, but when it passed by the liver, it turned back into normal blood. It seemed his body, and his liver particularly, was taking his golden blood as a toxin.

This annoyed Edward quite a bit as creating one drop of golden blood was already hard enough, as it took one drop of liquid Chi to create.

As a reminder, Edward only had 10 drops of liquid Chi when he brokethrough to the Unity Realm, and even though he now had more than a hundred drops, it still took quite some time to form a drop.

Thinking of how he could circumvent this problem with his liver, one would be to transform many drops in golden blood at once, but he doubted that would really work.

Another was to simply wait for his Chi to continue strengthening his body, and by the time his liver became strong enough, it would probably accept the strong blood, but that wasn't a certainty.

Something important to understand about Edward's Chi is that quantity does not determine power, but only the speed at which it transformed his body.

As for the limit of how much his body would be strengthened by his Chi, it only had to do with the quality of his Chi. Now, if he still had his old dark murky Chi, Edward doubted he could refine his body well enough to handle golden blood, even if it's a dark gold.

But he had already thought about it for long enough, and he had other things to do.

As he came back home, which was his and Diana's… it was a bit weird, it was the first time he shared an apartment with someone, but it didn't feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, as he arrived he was surprised to find out Diana wasn't here yet. It was already 7 in the evening so she should be home.

Edward didn't really bother though, he himself only came back now while he didn't have a job. Well, he did have one, but he worked for himself so…

He was thinking a little too much tonight.

His plans for tonight were to study his magic, he was close to mastering his first ever spell, which was quite the milestone, but seeing she still wasn't home he decided to surprise her and cook tonight.

But as he looked in the fridge, he realized there wasn't much. He looked at the different drawers too, but it wasn't much better.

He was now in a dilemma. Maybe Diana had returned, but she had simply left to shop for groceries. Then, if he too went to shop for groceries they would have too much and would waste.

But if she simply had something else that came up, and she returned later on, and he didn't go for groceries, they wouldn't have anything to eat.

Edward thought about asking the girl below, Donna Troy, who was under Diana's, and by extension, his guard, but he felt through his Chi Sense she wasn't home either.

This could mean she and Diana were doing something together, but they could also be shopping together. After thinking about it for a while, he decided to send her a text, asking if she was out shopping.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you resolve a problem.

Satisfied of his solution, Edward crashed into the nearby couch, and took the book he was currently studying. The spell he was working on wasn't an offensive or defensive spell, and couldn't be used in a battle situation. However, it definitely was a very useful spell.

It was the Allspeak, a very useful spell that allowed the one whom it was used on to be understood by nearly all beings in the universe, and understand their language as well. It did not work for written language, but anything spoken could be understood.

He got the idea from Thor and the Asgardians, as well as Merlin, who had showed him how useful this spell was. Although Edward didn't intend on visiting the Universe and it's wonders for now, being capable of speaking and understanding everyone on Earth was quite the ability.

It was quite the advanced spell, but Edward's strong foundation allowed him to understand how to use the language very quickly. Actually, if he only focused on the spell itself, Edward could probably have learned it already.

But as he was in the process of learning it, Edward had an idea. What if… he strengthened it?

Modifying an already created spell was not really a taboo, but very few would dare do so as most spells had been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and there was a reason they were not replaced.

However, Edward was ambitious, and he wasn't afraid to say his knowledge of the basics of magic were stronger than many Masters of Mysticism. After all, he had been learning Mystical Arts for several months now, which granted, wasn't a lot compared to most Sorcerers, but the way he studied them was different.

Not only had he been focusing on learning basics and nothing else in those few months, he had been learning them using the Astral Form, which was an enhanced form of learning few mastered. Additionally, he was also quite talented himself, and ever since his Spirit Awakening, he found learning to have become much easier.

After all, a stronger spirit meant an easier time learning, and this had been even more exaggerated ever since he broke into the Unity realm.

Anyway, the changes he wanted to make to the spell of Allspeak were not too drastic. A problem he found with the Allspeak was that the user wouldn't know how others understood them, they would simply talk in their favourite language and be understood in a certain way by others.

Edward found this problematic as he could already see problems arise from this, and he wanted to change that. There was also the problem of not understanding writings, which Edward found to be a huge problem.

But as said earlier, there was a reason for this. The way to resolve this problem would be to simply stuff the different languages into someone's head, but that was impossible, no one could house all the languages of the universe in their mind, their brain would explode.

Edward was no exception to this, but that's why he decided to add another tweak. He didn't need all the languages in the Universe, he only needed a select few. All the languages on Earth, as well as the universal language, X'zelzi'ohr, and the Kree and Skrull languages, as well as Xandarian…