What exactly was the experiment Zhang Yanhang was referring to?
In fact, the purpose of this experiment was quite simple.
Previously, Zhang Yanhang hesitated to eat the meat of the Crimson Iron Worker Ants because he feared the refresh mechanism of monster corpses in the Ashen World. Therefore, the experiment he was now conducting was to verify how to prevent the monster corpses from being refreshed.
Limited by the crude experimental environment in the Crimson Iron Ant Nest, Zhang Yanhang had prepared only two basic experimental control groups this time.
The first method was for Zhang Yanhang to store the corpse of the Crimson Iron Worker Ant directly in his Waist Bag to see if the corpse would still undergo a refresh inside the Waist Bag, where the concept of time did not fundamentally exist.
The second method was for Zhang Yanhang to break off a segment of a Crimson Iron Worker Ant’s appendage and place it simply in the utility pouch on his waist belt to see if this appendage would be refreshed into a pile of ash after some time passed.
The principle behind the first method was easy to understand—it was simply using the characteristic of the Waist Bag that stops the passage of time to see if it could delay the refresh time of the Crimson Iron Worker Ant’s corpse. The principle behind the second method, although seemingly difficult to comprehend, would become simple once explained briefly.
Previously, when Zhang Yanhang had nothing better to do, he had observed the entire process of monster corpse refreshment. Whether it was bones, flesh, or even blood splattered on the ground, or the clothes and weapons on the monster, everything would turn to ashes and vanish during the refresh process.
It can be said that, once a monster enters the state of death, during the refresh, everything it possessed during its life would be directly refreshed by the Ashen World, leaving no trace of the monster at the site of death.
However, in the early stages of clearing Raccoon City, when he had not yet become the Heavenly Destiny Master and thus lacked an Energy Shield, Zhang Yanhang vividly remembered that the blood splattered on him from the Zombies he killed would not be refreshed even after several hours, and he had to manually use Alchemy to clean the blood stains.
Yet the corpses of monsters lying on the ground would be directly refreshed by the Ashen World in just over an hour.
Therefore, Zhang Yanhang found this point very contradictory.
Thus, he made a guess about this contradiction—perhaps, if an Awakener were to simply interfere with the monster corpse in some way, such as carrying it on one’s person, then the monster corpse would escape the refresh mechanism of the Ashen World, becoming a "free (decomposing)" corpse.
And Zhang Yanhang’s second experimental method was designed based on this idea. If merely carrying it on one’s person could allow the monster corpse to escape the refresh mechanism, then he might be able to develop quite a few uses for the monster corpses and benefit from them.
The most basic use would, of course, be to directly eat the monster’s body to stave off hunger. Next, he could also strip some materials suitable for Alchemy from the monster’s body to see if it was possible to develop some useful equipment, weapons, Alchemy Tools, and Alchemy Potions.
Even, Zhang Yanhang could try turning the monster’s corpse into an Alchemy Puppet, as Alchemy without Human Body Refinement would rather be the real oddity.
Of course, limited by his current Alchemy Level, Alchemy Puppets, a high-end type of creation, would likely result in his failing dozens of times in a row before possibly making one that could barely function. Yes, it would merely function, far from being capable of receiving commands and attacking enemies.
However, no matter what, as long as the monster’s corpse could escape the refresh restrict, Zhang Yanhang was sure he could extract the residual value from it. This was definitely achievable.
But, since he did not have any ready-made recipes or blueprints, if Zhang Yanhang wanted to study Alchemy Artifacts or Alchemy Potions, he would need to invent and create them himself. Therefore, creating useful items would inevitably waste a great deal of time.
Regarding this, Zhang Yanhang thought he might allocate some of his sleeping time to researching Alchemy, as his Physical Strength would slowly recover on its own as long as he was not engaging in strenuous activity, albeit much slower than sleeping.
Of course, Zhang Yanhang could also choose to search for existing recipes and blueprints. As to where exactly to look, naturally, it would be the Goblin Plain, as the Alchemy he was learning originated from there. Therefore, it was likely that the Goblin Priests there would possess numerous recipes and blueprints relevant to Alchemy.
While pondering about Alchemy, Zhang Yanhang picked up the corpse of the Crimson Iron Worker Ant from the ground, broke off an appendage, and put it into the utility pouch on his waist belt, and then stuffed the remaining body of the Crimson Iron Worker Ant directly into his Waist Bag.
He now had plenty of slots in his Waist Bag, and compressing them a bit, even a few thousand Crimson Iron Worker Ant’s corpses would not be an issue.
After all, the volume of a human over one meter tall was only about 0.06 cubic meters, and the volume of a Crimson Iron Ant, about the size of a dog, was even smaller.
In an extremely compressed state, fitting upwards of twenty bodies in a cubic meter of space should not be a problem. He had eight hundred slots in his Storage Box alone, and fitting a five-figure number of bodies would be comfortably within range.
After packing the Crimson Iron Worker Ant’s corpse into the Waist Bag, Zhang Yanhang prepared to start exploring the Crimson Iron Ant Nest again. He was ready for a long battle—since time was paused, it wouldn’t waste any real-world time, and it wouldn’t matter how many hours he spent inside, as it would be irrelevant to the real world. Newest update provided by novel~fire~net
This time, he planned to go in a different direction, walking some paths he had not taken before. As long as he covered the entire Crimson Iron Ant Nest, then it would naturally be considered fully explored by Zhang Yanhang.
Zhang Yanhang was also compelled to use this exhaustive method to explore the Crimson Iron Ant Nest, really having no choice. He had not expected it to be a solid Crimson Iron Ore Vein before coming here, nor had he expected this exploration to turn into such a massive project.
When exploring Raccoon City previously, because the area was quite open, Zhang Yanhang had finished exploring it in just one hour, not only finding a Slot Machine but also finding an Evaluation Settlement Treasure Box.
However, the Crimson Iron Ant Nest was completely different; he had spent two hours without getting past the Outer Zone, constantly circling within the Outer Zone, and most of the time, even though he was circling, he was taking entirely new branch paths, which always maintained a linked state.