Chapter 768: They're Not Experimental Material — They're the Mother-Tree's External Wombs |
Wang Mou moved — and his efficiency far exceeded expectations.
He stepped past Cheng Shi and Hu Wei, summoned his Truth power, and began tracing the arrays across the rubble. In moments, the group could feel the arrays dissolving and shattering — one after another, fast as lightning, almost too quick to follow.
The players were stunned not only by the sheer density of arrays in this place, but also by the doctor's masterful technique. Virtually every array-enthusiast in the group pressed in to observe his dismantling process up close. Wang Mou, for his part, didn't guard his methods. While working with effortless grace, he even found time to answer queries from nearby scholars. Had the situation not been so urgent, it would have felt less like a raid and more like an academic conference for Truth followers conducted in the field.
Even the Folly followers in the group fell silent. Everyone could see that, at least in terms of Truth-array expertise, this slice was in no way inferior to his original.
But the more eagerly Wang Mou performed, the more suspicious Cheng Shi became.
He didn't believe the doctor was simply opposing his original body. Unable to figure out what Wang Mou was really after, he could only watch and wait — meeting unpredictability with composure.
This encounter raised Cheng Shi's danger assessment of Wang Mou another notch. This Truth follower was bold. He seemed absolutely certain that his origins were a secret neither he nor Cheng Shi could reveal publicly. And Cheng Shi had indeed been outmaneuvered — whether out of a desire to protect the Blind One or an inability to publicly discuss the slice-universe hypothesis, he couldn't explain Wang Mou's true origin to anyone here.
And so, a stalemate between scholar and con artist was born.
This experiment was full of such stalemates. That massive tumor couldn't put Hong Lin down, but Hong Lin had no answer for a monster that could make her "gain weight" with every attack. The distant commotion grew quieter and quieter, approaching a stall.
Everyone's except the doctor's and Cheng Shi's. Their brows tightened. Neither looked pleased.
And the moment the arrays fell, the distant battle went completely silent. Every tentacle in the experiment site snapped taut simultaneously, orienting toward Hu Wei's group, and an ear-splitting shriek tore through the air!
"Hisss—hisss—"
"ROAAARR—"
The giant tumor erupted tentacles in every direction, once again batting away Hong Lin's advance. Then, like a deflating balloon, it plunged underground, tearing through the labyrinthine web of subterranean tentacles.
Its movement was violent enough that even from far away, everyone in the experiment site could see a bulging trail snaking across the earth toward a specific destination.
Players with sharp senses immediately realized something major was happening. Most who'd entered had designs on the experiment, so upon seeing the abomination charging somewhere at full speed, they cautiously followed its trail.
Meanwhile, Hu Wei's group recognized their window was closing fast. Hearts hardening, voices boomed:
"The mother-tree is heading back! No time — move in now!"
"There are players inside those tanks! Crack a few open and take them — that'll keep us busy for a while!"
"This place holds the method for 'god-making'! Don't hesitate!"
Under the crushing pressure of the mother-tree's impending return, the already loose-knit team dissolved on the spot, scattering like streaks of light into the underground lab.
Hu Wei's eyes narrowed. He didn't try to stop them. Instead, he grabbed Cheng Shi and Wang Mou, hurled his greatsword forward, and let its blazing trail carry the three of them deep into the facility's lowest level.
"Where might the divinity-assembly method be hidden?"
Under this pressure, Hu Wei dropped all pretense. He'd come for exactly this. It wasn't the control center, but every aspect of the experimental theory should be reflected in the experiment itself — so surely secrets lurked here too.
But Cheng Shi didn't share that view. The moment he'd seen the underground tanks, he knew all his previous assumptions were wrong.
This was absolutely not a replication of the Stars Dagger!
After all, the only reason the Stars Dagger experiment had succeeded was that the monstrous genius Zangier had devised an impossibly imaginative solution. He'd used the faith-clashes between mortal lives as a buffer to deflect the divinity tug-of-war between pseudo-gods, buying himself breathing room in the violent faith-struggle and becoming the thief who sliced open the gods' pockets.
But now? Setting aside whether the aberrant mother-tree even qualified as a "pseudo-god," and never mind the blood-moon that still hadn't been located — even if both existed, how was 0221 handling the divinity tug-of-war between pseudo-gods?
The intensity of that tug-of-war didn't diminish just because the divine "mass" was smaller. Even with all of 0221's divinity-assembly knowledge, there was absolutely no way a mortal body could survive that maelstrom.
So this experiment was wrong. Wrong in every way!
Cheng Shi frowned deeply, scanning everything around him. He watched the players inside the tanks, their bodies threaded with various tubes, machines intermittently extracting... something. He'd assumed the extraction was flesh and blood, but the longer he looked, the more he noticed the oddity.
The machines only activated their extraction when a bump swelled on the subject's body — meaning they weren't siphoning flesh and blood at all, but rather... the subjects' "children"?!
Were those bumps incubating Birth newborns?
All three men's pupils contracted violently in unison. They exchanged glances and realized they'd all been wrong about this experiment.
Even Wang Mou, who'd been so confident in his understanding, was shaken by this sight.
In a rare display, his expression twisted with shock. He broke free of Hu Wei's grip and scrutinized the surroundings closely. Moments later, this well-read doctor's brow furrowed with grim heaviness:
"I was deceived.
This is absolutely not the Stars Dagger, and it isn't the Selius slice experiment I'd assumed. This is clearly the faith-stitching experiment — the one the Life Extension Department banned and abolished!
He's making a god, yes. But not a 'self' that steals unattended divinity like Zangier did. He's making...
Something that truly resembles Birth!
My unfathomable original may actually be constructing a new Birth!"
"..."
"..."
Hearing this, Hu Wei and Cheng Shi exchanged confused looks, their expressions freezing before both furrowed their brows. The same thought crossed their minds simultaneously:
'Great. He's a bad student too.'
'Uh...'
Cheng Shi's eye twitched. No time for embarrassment. He hastily asked: "What do you mean? What is the faith-stitching experiment, and what do you mean by 'a new Birth'?"
Wang Mou walked several more steps deeper, surveyed the scene, and spoke gravely:
"In the era when the Tower of Logic was first founded, the Erudition Presidium simply didn't have the resources to sustain every major experiment. So each department scrambled to find its own approach to Truth.
The Life Extension scholars, having awakened as Truth followers from the Life path, had already accumulated considerable research on various life forms. The Tower's very first 'god-making' project was their brainchild — except back then, the god they tried to create wasn't a pseudo-god. It was a real god!"
"?"
"Those scholars had already realized that faith was an essential ingredient for godhood. So they made a bold conjecture: if enough faith could be stitched together, could the accumulation produce a quantitative-to-qualitative shift, turning a composite being into a true deity?
Of course, we now know that finding the correct divinity-assembly method is the true road to godhood. But the Tower didn't have that conclusion back then. So they put conjecture into practice and launched what can only be called a faith massacre — the stitching experiment."
"Faith massacre?"
"Precisely. The faith-stitching experiment didn't just stitch faith. Because faith depends on a vessel — unlike divinity, it ceases to exist once separated from its carrier. So the simplest, most effective method of stitching faith was to...
Stitch the vessels of faith — that is, the flesh of the gods' followers!
Merge the flesh of same-faith believers into one, keep them alive, and test whether the resulting amalgamation could become a new vessel for faith's qualitative transformation, thereby birthing a true deity.
That was the first 'question in pursuit of truth' ever posed by the Life Extension Department.
To answer it, Tower scholars ravaged virtually every Nature Alliance tribe within their borders — especially those worshipping Birth. These Birth followers were not only numerous but fertile. Corral them, and you'd have an endless supply of experimental material...
Just like what we see now. The people in these tanks probably aren't the true experimental material. In my judgment, they're manufacturing machines for experimental material.
Though perhaps that term is a bit cold. Out of humanitarian warmth, we could instead call them...
The aberrant mother-tree's external wombs.
They weren't captured to serve as consumables. They're bearing the mother-tree's 'children'!"
"..."
'How very warm.'
'And how very hellish.'
'You mean these players trapped here have all been birthing 'babies' for that mother-tree-thing?'
Hearing this, staring at the sprawling rows of tanks, Cheng Shi's eye twitched. He wasn't laughing anymore.
...
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