Chapter 858 – Knowledge Mildew

Inside the mirror space of the Witch’s home, Mo Lan closely monitored the Light-Gathering Society’s expansion through the Management Card — Light-Gathering Society, paying special attention to the magic aptitude test results of new members.

To control costs, the aptitude detection function built into the invitation letters was extremely basic, testing only initial Heart Light.

Yet this single data point alone was enough to leave her stunned.

In the three months since Xinhen and the others had left the valley, over five hundred invitation letters had been distributed.

The detection data revealed that every single White Crystal Person who used an invitation letter possessed an initial Heart Light exceeding 10 Mana, without exception!

Most individuals’ readings clustered between 15 and 20 Mana.

While this was nothing compared to Xinhen and the others, the fact that every single individual possessed it was utterly extraordinary.

This meant the White Crystal People were a magical race in which every member possessed spellcaster potential!

There were plenty of magical races in the universe, but ones like the White Crystal People—both a magical race and possessing an extraordinarily rapid reproductive capacity—were exceedingly rare.

White Crystal People had no gender distinction. Every individual, when in a state of abundant emotion, could use a white crystal tree to condense a “life fruit,” which could be nurtured into offspring simply by irrigating it with Light Liquid.

This unique method of reproduction meant that when resources were sufficient, their reproductive speed in a certain sense even surpassed that of humans.

This was also why, during the early days of emotional energy commercialization, when Light Liquid production surged, the White Crystal People’s population had undergone explosive growth.

A magical race with extraordinary reproductive capacity—the potential this species harbored was far greater than Mo Lan had initially imagined.

More and more White Crystal People joined the Light-Gathering Society, and in order to raise their privilege level within the Society, they actively purchased Light-Gathering Society Invitation Letters to recruit others.

The Society’s membership grew at an exponential rate, and Mo Lan harvested ever-increasing amounts of both permanent Heart Light and disposable Heart Light, all of which could be converted into permanent Mana and disposable Mana for her use.

Mo Lan herself hadn’t been idle either. She had recently been studying ancient dragon-level dragon-tongue magic, particularly green Dragon magic.

Once the Light-Gathering Society had expanded to a sufficient scale—once enough White Crystal People had learned the Light spell and could supplement light for the white crystal trees, and the magical energy system had truly demonstrated its ability to replace emotional energy and sustain the majority of White Crystal People—she quietly slipped out of the mirror space and cast an ancient dragon-level green Dragon dragon-tongue magic spell upon White Crystal Star: Knowledge Mildew.

As the lengthy incantation concluded, invisible waves of magical energy radiated outward from her position, precisely blanketing the entire White Crystal Star.

In the next instant, every knowledge medium that recorded the techniques for emotional energy collection, extraction, and application—whether crystal-slab codices, crystal chips, or the related memories and knowledge structures within researchers’ minds—was silently overrun by invisible cognitive mycelia, rapidly decaying.

Inside research facilities, engineers who had been calibrating large-scale emotional collectors suddenly found the familiar control panels utterly alien. The schematics that had once been crystal clear in their minds fragmented into pieces riddled with contradictions and paradoxes.

In the emotional exchanges, operators could no longer comprehend the underlying logic behind the exchange rate calculations between emotional energy and Light Liquid. Trading systems malfunctioned repeatedly, plunging the entire energy trading network into chaos.

In the central urban districts where the Radiant Nobles resided, emotional energy experts whose knowledge had been passed down for generations clutched their heads and let out agonized screams. Everything they had spent their lives learning was disintegrating into incomprehensible, mutually contradictory fragments.

The emotional energy technology that had sustained the old order of White Crystal civilization became, in a breathtakingly short span of time, something utterly untouchable.

In this knowledge crisis that swept across all of White Crystal Star, only the Dustlight Folk—who had always been excluded from knowledge behind the nobles’ barriers—were miraculously unaffected, precisely because they had known nothing of emotional energy technology to begin with.

At the same time, Light-Gathering Society members across the world were astonished to discover that the situation had undergone an earth-shattering transformation.

The Radiant Nobles, who had once despised magic with a burning passion and issued harsh edicts to hunt down Society members, had done a complete about-face.

The magic prohibition was quietly rescinded. The bounty warrants were urgently recalled. In their place, noble envoys appeared with attitudes of humility—even panic—frantically buying up Light-Gathering Society Invitation Letters wherever they could find them.

Knowledge Mildew had acted like a merciless chasm, severing the old ruling class completely from the emotional energy technology upon which their survival depended. What had once been the wellspring of their power became an untouchable curse—any attempt to access the related knowledge would trigger violent cognitive dissonance and psychic agony.

Chain reactions followed in swift succession.

The white crystal tree farms exclusive to the Radiant Nobles, which had relied on precision emotional energy light-supplementing equipment to operate, ground to a halt one after another as their technical personnel suffered collective “cognitive collapse” and could no longer maintain the machinery.

The premium Light Liquid that had symbolized the nobles’ lavish lifestyle was cut off entirely.

Meanwhile, the Dustlight Folk—who had once struggled on the brink of survival—had already embarked on a different path thanks to their early adoption of the Light-Gathering Society.

They could either use Heart Light to purchase the Light Liquid they needed for daily life directly from the Society’s marketplace, or they had already learned the Light spell and could supplement light for the white crystal trees through their own power, accelerating the condensation of Light Liquid.

In an instant, the very foundation of society’s survival underwent a fundamental upheaval.

The Radiant Nobles, who had once lorded over all, were plunged into unprecedented panic and deprivation after losing the support of emotional energy.

And the Dustlight Folk, once regarded as slaves to emotion, now possessed stable survival security through their mastery of magical energy.

Social standing was completely overturned by the collapse and reconstruction of the energy system. The crown of power slipped from the heads of the old nobility—who had relied on their monopoly of emotional technology—and fell into the hands of Light-Gathering Society members who had mastered magical knowledge.

The tides of transformation swept across every corner of the planet.

Before long, no one spoke any longer of the “emotional energy” that had brought both prosperity and destruction.

Magic became the undisputed mainstream of White Crystal society. Power naturally transferred into the hands of spellcasters.

But even the most powerful spellcaster could not monopolize magical knowledge.

The Light-Gathering Society had long since spread among all White Crystal People, and magical knowledge was available for anyone with aptitude to learn.

Even those with low initial Heart Light could choose to cultivate psychic power instead. Though it was somewhat harder to learn, the results were every bit as effective as casting directly with Heart Light.

And even those with both low initial Heart Light and low initial psychic power could accumulate Heart Light over time, exchange it for Gem Coins to purchase Magic Cards, and sustain themselves while also acquiring a degree of spellcasting ability.

The magical heritage and Magic Cards within the Light-Gathering Society, with their absolute advantages, replaced the emotional collectors of old, becoming an inseparable part of every White Crystal Person’s life from birth onward.