Chapter 44 Memory Bracelet

Morning sunlight poured through the gaps in the curtains into the room. Lin Xiao rubbed his sore, weary eyes and raised the glowing wooden bracelet in his hand up to the light.

This was the result of a miraculous transformation after a whole night of carving half a block of five-thousand-year-old Holy Spirit Wood.

Originally as pitch-black as the abyss, the Holy Spirit Wood had transformed into a warm, ivory-white hue all over after being crafted into an extraordinary artifact.

Faint, delicate wood grains were visible on the surface of the bracelet, resembling flowing wisps of clouds.

Under the illumination of the morning light, starlight seemed to twinkle within the wood—that was spiritual energy circulating.

Lin Xiao gently rotated the bracelet. A circle of intricate runic characters was engraved on the inner side—the command glyphs he had carved stroke by stroke.

"It's finally done..." Lin Xiao let out a long sigh of relief and placed the bracelet into a prepared wooden box, the bottom of which was meticulously lined with velvet.

Ever since he returned from Lu Mingyuan's house last night, he had buried himself in his room, not expecting that it would take over twelve hours of continuous work to finish the creation.

Lu Mingyuan's piece of Holy Spirit Wood was already a Tier 4 extraordinary material.

The difficulty was entirely different from the Tier 2 extraordinary material he had worked with yesterday at Yang Shubai's place.

If the difficulty of the previous crafting was 10, this time it was 100.

The consequence of this steep surge in difficulty was that even though he held this Tier 4 extraordinary material, he had failed to produce a Tier 5 artifact.

This "Memory Bracelet" was a Tier 4 extraordinary artifact.

In fact, even completing this Tier 4 extraordinary artifact had been a perilous ordeal fraught with danger.

Several unexpected incidents had almost caused Lin Xiao's hand to slip.

Fortunately, he had taken the correct countermeasures in time, preventing this precious material from turning into scrap.

"It seems I still need to study and practice more; I was a bit too arrogant before," Lin Xiao sighed with emotion.

Lin Xiao gently closed the wooden box, completely unaware of what an astonishing feat he had just accomplished.

If Yang Shubai were to witness the scene before him, she would probably be even more shocked than she was yesterday!

In the field of extraordinary artifact crafting, there was an ironclad rule: once extraordinary materials reached Tier 4 or higher, attempting to craft an artifact of the same tier using advanced materials required the assistance of a catalyst of equivalent value.

Tier 4 transcendents already possessed formidable capabilities, making it a crucial watershed among transcendents.

Naturally, the gods could not allow extraordinary artifacts possessing partial capabilities of a Tier 4 transcendent to be mass-produced casually.

Tier 4 extraordinary artifacts already fell within the domain controlled by the laws of the Heavenly Dao.

Therefore, without the assistance of a rare catalyst, Tier 4 materials had to be compromised and used to craft Tier 3 artifacts instead, achieving a success rate of about 60% as a downgraded usage.

However, if one wished to craft a Tier 4 artifact, a catalyst was indispensable.

Yet, even with the aid of a precious catalyst, the success rate of crafting a Tier 4 artifact using Tier 4 materials would not exceed 20%.

And yet, Lin Xiao had successfully crafted a Tier 4 Memory Bracelet using nothing more than a piece of Tier 4 Holy Spirit Wood, without utilizing any catalysts whatsoever!

If Yang Shubai were to learn of this, her worldview would probably be shattered once again.

What Lin Xiao did not know either was that those "perilous moments" during last night's crafting process were considered irredeemable dead ends in the eyes of ordinary craftsmen—precisely why catalysts were mandatory.

When the spiritual energy of the Holy Spirit Wood suddenly rampaged, the rune trajectories he instinctively traced with his fingertips;

When the memory nodes were on the verge of collapsing, the impromptu adjustments he made to the embedded structure...

Every single impromptu contingency was a textbook-level stroke of genius.

"I must have made some mistakes somewhere last night. Looks like I need to find time to ask Yang Shubai for guidance..." Lin Xiao muttered to himself while massaging his aching shoulders.

He could simply share the memory of last night's crafting process when asking Yang Shubai for advice.

She should be able to offer quite a few suggestions, right?

Lin Xiao gently stroked the wooden box containing the bracelet, still quite satisfied with his "masterpiece."

The core function of this "Memory Bracelet" was, naturally, storing and reading memories.

Carried by the five-thousand-year-old Holy Spirit Wood, the bracelet could record a complete set of memory scenes lasting up to a maximum of 10 hours.

This was already quite astonishing. For Huang Lingzhao, it meant that if she only preserved critical, important memories, the bracelet alone would suffice, and she would no longer need to rely on scattered notes.

However, Lin Xiao knew that merely storing and reading memories was far from enough.

For this kind of "memory hard drive," the speed of information storage was even more crucial!

Normally, the time consumed for memory storage and retrieval was at a 1:1 ratio with real-time.

Yet for Huang Lingzhao, every single second was infinitely precious. If the transmission speed issue could not be resolved, then the 10-hour memory duration would be completely useless!

During the crafting of the bracelet last night, this was precisely what consumed the most of his mental energy.

Fortunately, in the end, he boosted the memory reading speed to an astonishing 100:1 ratio.

This meant that even with a full 10 hours of memories stored, Huang Lingzhao only needed 6 minutes a day for storage, plus another 6 minutes for retrieval.

In addition to this, the bracelet featured an automatic activation function.

Every day past midnight, as long as Huang Lingzhao was in a conscious state, the bracelet would emit a gentle vibration and blue light, reminding its memory-deprived master to use it.

This thoughtful design solved the most critical problem—if Huang Lingzhao even forgot the fact that "memory retrieval is needed" and still had to flip through paper notebooks to find out, then the convenience of the bracelet would be greatly diminished.

At that moment, bird chirps drifted in from outside the window. Lin Xiao glanced at his [Time] wristwatch—there were still 20 minutes left until the time he had agreed upon with Huang Lingzhao yesterday.

He walked toward the shop's front door, preparing to unlock it.

Thinking of the girl who "reborns" every single day, and the pleasantly surprised expression she might wear, Lin Xiao felt all the fatigue of pulling an all-nighter transform into eager anticipation.

He had deliberately rushed to finish the bracelet before this morning so that "her" today could see this gift at the very first moment—at least letting today's Huang Lingzhao know that her wish had been fulfilled.

The instant Lin Xiao pushed open the shop door, a morning breeze laden with the scent of dew brushed against his face.

To his surprise, the figure in the goose-yellow dress was already standing quietly outside the door, the hem of her skirt still damp with morning dew, holding a notebook tightly and reading it intently.

Wasn't it not time yet?

How much earlier had she arrived?

"Good morning, Miss Huang," Lin Xiao greeted with a smile.

The girl took a slightly nervous half-step back, her eyes carrying the wariness of encountering a complete stranger: "You are... Mr. Lin Xiao?"

Lin Xiao nodded: "Yes, I am."

"I'm sorry. I haven't seen you before and didn't know what you looked like. I only knew from my notebook that I had an appointment to meet you yesterday."

Lin Xiao noticed the notebook gripped tightly in her hand.

She wouldn't need that anymore very soon...

He smiled and said, "I have good news. The next time we meet, you won't have to worry about not recognizing me."