Glan Natural Science Academy

Chapter 21

Apparently to keep the specimen active, Satro took some dry ice and sprinkled it next to the frog specimen. White, hazy mist appeared.

Under the dry ice’s influence, the flow of blood at the abdominal wound slowed.

“The dissection of animal specimens is done to study their physiological structure and biological habits, allowing us to understand the secrets of evolution engraved on their bodies by mother nature over centuries. This knowledge is then used to simulate these secrets with our own energy field, completing an evolution that completely transcends natural history and creating our own academic skill.”

Satro had extracted the frog’s organ out in an extremely clear method while he was explaining.

The bright red viscera were in sharp contrast with the white tray!

With his dark face, Satro suddenly looked at Ryger, who was observing intently, and smiled in astonishment. “I thought you would be very nervous. Many people feel that it’s too cruel when they witness an animal specimen’s dissection for the first time.”

“My father was an excellent hunter!”

“That’s good!”

Satro nodded and began explaining structures of frog specimen’s internal organs.

“This is the frog’s heart. Through blood vessels, it transports blood to all corners of the body. The heart is the source of life. Intelligent creatures everywhere have the most primitive totemic worship of the heart, including us humans.”

He paused for a moment. “The heart is also one of the most essential differences between wild beasts and proteuses! In proteuses, the heart will birth a type of energy crystalline which we call a crystal core. The scholars of the Balda Principality are currently testing the usage of crystal cores to replace the energy field of scholars, circumventing the need of medium partners for scholars. “

“Medium partners…”

As far as Ryger knew, almost every advanced scholar will have their own medium partner.

Mentor Kubo’s was Cayleigh while Peerless’ was that giant eagle called Shady. Senior sister Enid wanted to buy that frost elf fox to use as her medium partner. Satro’s… he actually had never seen Satro’s medium partner before.

“Oh yeah! Senior brother, what about your medium partner?”

In face of the curious Ryger’s sudden question, the currently-lecturing Satro stopped. Under Ryger’s watchful gaze, he slowly took out an inconspicuous snail out of his cuff.

“My medium partner is him, a mutated Grouper snail that I stumbled upon when I was exploring the Hengduan Mountains1. I named him Tintin.”

The snail was only the size of a baby’s fist. It looked dark and unremarkable.

The snail was roused by Satro and slowly extended its soft tentacles from its shell. His movement wastruly too slow. In the natural world, any animal can easily kill it, but Satro still chose it as his medium partner. Maybe there is something special that I haven’t noticed yet, thought Ryger.

“Senior brother, you’re really amazing!”

Faced with the compliment from his junior brother, Satro thought that Ryger had realised something. He shook his head helplessly.

“Your senior brother is dull and stupid. It was thanks to the favor of mentor that I was lucky enough to achieve some meagre achievements. Only through further hard work can I try to avoid embarrassing mentor while out. But you, junior brother… a medium partner is almost like the second life of a scholar; their capabilities will permanently affect the characteristics of a scholar’s energy field. You must choose carefully in the future.”

Against Satro’s serious warnings, Ryger answered affirmatively and nodded.

“By the way, what does Tintin eat?”

Ryger planned to buy some food that Tintin likes when he comes over the next day.

“Uh, Tintin feeds on energy crystals. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

Upon hearing that, Ryger blushed with shame. As his father was an excellent hunter, Ryger naturally knew the value of the crystal cores.

Back that summer, father had just returned from hunting. He excitedly took out a glittering stone and told Ryger that it was an energy crystal that could only be found inside proteuses. Even the lowest class was worth at least 1 gold coin!

At that time, Ryger naively believed that all energy crystals were from the bodies of proteuses. He only realized later on that compared to the amount of energy crystals obtained from crystal mines, the number of energy crystals obtained from proteuses wasn’t worth mentioning at all.

And so Ryger couldn’t help but ask, “senior brother, where do the underground energy crystals come from?”

“Hmm……”

Satro pondered for some time and frowned. “On this issue, scholars who study naturals and evolutionary secrets have divergent views. Scholars who study natural law believe that energy crystals were formed from nature’s energy which were subjected to high pressure and temperature because of the crust’s movements. While scholars who study evolutionary secrets believe that energy crystals were formed from the burial and accumulation of dead ancient proteuses. Both sides have their own arguments and there’s no clear answer currently.”

“Oh!”

Ryger nodded. He was also thinking about the formation of crystal mines and which side was closer to the truth.

“Junior brother, leave these things to the royal fellows to think through. Next, let’s dissect the kidneys. It is this inconspicuous little thing that produces urine and excretes toxins from the body. At the same time, it has endocrine roles and promotes formation of adrenaline, biological hormones and so on. Adrenaline is a high-intensity stimulant with a lot of side effects. It is said that scholars in the Balda Principality who study the body’s potential…”

Throughout the day, Ryger kept recording on his notebook notes and asking some weird questions.

Towards his junior brother with such strong curiosity, Satro felt the complex emotions of envy and longing.

Compared to junior brother’s liveliness, smartness and curiosity, what was he? He had already lost track of the number of times mentor had criticised him of his lack of feverish reverence towards and desire to conquer the True Law.

Satro tirelessly explained the basics of animal dissection and the special physiological structure of frogs. If it weren’t for the lack of time, the frog alone would suffice for Ryger to study a few days.

Ryger never thought that a little frog would have so many mysteries!

The frog’s tongue is strip-shaped and can usually reach ten to fifteen centimeters in length. The tip of the tongue is forked and there is mucus on it. It catches insects at super-visual speed. An ordinary person cannot detect it and would think that the frog ‘sucked’ the insect into its mouth.

The eyes of frogs have dynamic visual acuity and can hardly detect stationary objects; the special nervous system will obscure and ignore relatively stationary objects. But for objects in motion, the frog’s dynamic visual acuity possesses an unthinkable advantage compared to normal organisms. It is able to swiftly determine the target’s position, speed and direction and even make a closer level of discerning judgement for all of those.

In a minority of frogs, it is possible to find a rod-shaped brain eating amoeba, a very terrifying parasite. Once a person ingests a frog with this parasite, there’s a large probability for them to get infected. After a few months, the parasite would have consumed and devoured the brain of the host!

The ejection of reflexes in detached frog legs after some stimulation…

Especially at the end when Satro was explaining about the frog’s brain – gray matters of the cerebral cortex, pyramidal neurons, layers of polymorphous cells, internal granular cells and so on. Even now Ryger was still dizzy from all of those.

It wasn’t until the night that Ryger finally finished the first day of initiate class. Under the night, he walked towards his room.

He rubbed his forehead. Although his eyes were full of fatigue, in the depths of his eyes were unprecedented shock.

The door to a brand-new world that he had never heard of before was slowly opening in front of Ryger. This was a brand-new world that the Grand Canon of Light could never hope to match.

" "