Chapter 244-2: Memory Transplantation, Super Beast Armament (2) |
Bloodbreath City.
Super Beast Legion garrison.
Countless massive war behemoths hovered in the sky, their bodies covered in heavy black scales, each scale five meters in diameter, glinting with a cold luster in the sunlight.
Near the war behemoths was a group of agile, winged monsters.
Below, super beasts of various forms covered the entire garrison.
At this moment, in the dim environment at the very top of the high tower, one of the Eight Kings of the Etherbreath race, the Blood King, lay quietly on a stone couch carved from blood crystal.
The dark red crystal pulsed brighter and dimmer with the Blood King’s faint breathing.
The aged king wore only a layer of blood-colored gauze as thin as a cicada’s wing. The skin exposed outside was an unhealthy gray-white, covered in spiderweb-like cracked black traces.
The blood that had once flowed like lava now only retained a faint glow at the heart.
Around the stone couch stood twelve flesh-and-blood light pillars. The flickering dark red flames cast the Blood King’s sunken face in an even more sinister light.
Below the stone couch, a small pool of dark red liquid gathered from all directions slowly seeped into the Blood King’s body, barely prolonging the life of this aged, dying king.
At this time, several figures stood around the blood crystal stone couch.
They looked down at the Blood King, whose eyes were half closed and expression vacant, their faces unable to hide their sorrow.
After carefully checking the Blood King’s condition, the leading figure said in a low voice.
“The Blood King’s time is running out. Our world is now suffering destruction by invaders. The cross-border war will be set aside for now. Begin removing the Blood King’s memory sac and prepare to replace it with a new body.”
With that, the leader raised his head and looked toward a figure on the left front.
“Blood Worm, go to the Blood Slave Dungeon and select the purest body. Only when the Blood King returns can we quickly organize the power to resist the invaders.”
The one called Blood Worm nodded solemnly, then turned and left.
Following Blood Worm’s line of sight out of the high tower, he soon appeared in the Blood Slave Dungeon.
As the door opened, a pungent stench of blood rushed at him.
But Blood Worm was not affected at all. His face remained unchanged as he walked straight toward the blood pool.
This place was called the Blood Slave Blood Pool.
It was the site used by their Blood Pool – Super Beast Legion to select new bodies.
Those imprisoned here were alien warriors carefully selected in the wars of invading other worlds.
They shared a common trait. Their bodies were relatively pure and could serve as new bodies for the high-ranking members of the race to replace and use.
So-called body replacement was a pinnacle technology of the Etherbreath race.
It referred to removing the memory sac from the original body and replacing it into a new body, completing an alternative possession through memory overwrite.
Before this technology was born, the Etherbreath race had taken many detours.
In the early days, the Etherbreath race followed the path of gene editing technology.
At that time, the Etherbreath hoped that through gene editing they could eliminate disease, enhance physical fitness, and allow their warriors to have strong adaptability to fight in different environments.
But as the technology developed, it gradually headed toward the brink of losing control.
With the rapid development of the technology, the potential of gene editing far exceeded expectations.
Different laboratories, families, and even individuals within the Etherbreath race began self-modification.
This led to severe morphological differentiation within the race.
Some racial members grew gills or wings, some grew tentacles, and some even integrated animal and plant genes.
Behind the vigorous development of gene technology, a potential crisis had already been planted.
It was still manageable within the same generation, but by the next generation the significant morphological differences made conflicts apparent.
In addition, some extremely modified individuals could no longer reproduce with other racial members, creating reproductive isolation and a trend toward a complete split in the gene pool.
During this period, multiple subspecies evolved within the Etherbreath race, with physiological differences so great that they could not coexist.
On the societal level, identity recognition and war crises had already emerged.
There was even an ideological confrontation between the pure-blood faction and the evolution faction.
Among them, the pure-blood faction believed that gene editing technology had planted the seed of internal chaos in the Etherbreath race and advocated maintaining racial purity.
The evolution faction were radical gene modifiers who believed the old forms should be eliminated, and that gene editing technology was the foundation for the Etherbreath to become strong and should not be abandoned.
At the time, the pure-blood faction still occupied the mainstream. From legislative restrictions to military suppression, it ultimately evolved into a gene war.
This period was also called the era of dark turmoil, when the Etherbreath race approached the brink of near destruction.
In the long war, it was the evolution faction, whose strength was greater, that finally won.
But the problem still remained.
Gene modification technology continued to upgrade, leading to the evolution faction being divided once more into multiple subspecies factions.
In the foreseeable future, similar problems would still bring about a cataclysmic war.
Thus, scholars of the evolution faction began to ponder a question. How could the Etherbreath retain the powerful strength brought by genetic evolution while not heading toward destruction because of it.
The Lunar Eclipse race had encountered similar problems.
To solve this, the Lunar Eclipse race chose to abandon and seal the technology, continuing to use Starnet as the core of development.
But the Etherbreath race took a completely different path.
The Etherbreath leadership believed that the core of the contradiction was not the difference in life forms, but the difference in cognition in the next generation.
This was the ultimate issue of racial survival.
When the physical forms of the Etherbreath could not be unified, what should be used to determine what counted as the Etherbreath race.
If appearance, abilities, and even modes of reproduction were different, what then was the basis of group identity.
The answer ultimately turned toward ideology. Scholars of the Etherbreath believed that only memory and thought were the foundation of continuing civilization.
Then, how to make the new generation identify with this shared memory became the next problem.
Following this question, the scholars of the Etherbreath race thought of an issue that nearly all races consider.
That was immortality.
If the older generation always existed, then no matter how the new generation’s currents of thought changed, they would unite under the guidance of their elders.
Through repeated exploration, memory sac technology was born.
The so-called memory sac did not only store memory. It also retained a neural docking system and reproductive organs.
This was the only core that would not be destroyed during gene modification.
With the memory sac, the Etherbreath could strip away differences in form, use assembly line produced bionic bodies, and eliminate genetic divergence.
After this technology appeared, the standard for judging one’s kin became the memory sac.
Everything else was merely a tool to be used, including the body.
This technology also granted the Etherbreath the possibility of near immortality.
Apoptosis of cells and physical senescence were no longer problems. One only needed to replace a body to extend life.
As this technology developed to the present day, the choice of bodies was no longer limited to bionic shells. Aliens with pure bodies also became targets for the Etherbreath to use as replacements.
After completing the replacement, Etherbreath warriors could even master part of the aliens’ abilities.
This time Blood Worm had come precisely to choose a new body for the Blood King, so that the Blood King’s life could continue.
When he approached the blood pool, a warrior on duty immediately stood and ran over.
After docking hair tendrils with the guard, Blood Worm learned which body in the blood pool was the finest.
Before long, he stopped before a youth with a vacant expression.
He reached out to grab the youth’s black hair and lifted him up. Hair that was like tendrils lengthened and coiled around every part of the youth.
“What a pure body.”
With only a brief sensing, Blood Worm’s face showed delight.
Although he could not analyze the precise condition of this alien youth’s body, the purity of the blood alone surpassed any race he knew.
He promptly yanked the youth by the hair and turned back.
During this time the youth’s face remained vacant, as if his soul had been lost, showing no reaction.
When Blood Worm returned to the high tower, the memory sac transplant surgery began.
Handing the youth to the war priest Blood Tu, Blood Tu dragged the youth through a dim corridor and finally stopped in a chamber interwoven with flesh and blood.
The walls here were formed by a writhing vascular network, with pulsing red light flickering in rhythm.
The operating table was not metal but a living tissue. The pale, fleshy platform extended nerve bundles that waited like tentacles to connect.
The air was filled with a sweet, bloody smell, like rotten honey.
Blood Tu placed the youth on the operating table, and the fleshy platform began to squirm. The nerve bundles coiled around the youth’s limbs, fixing him in a spread-eagle shape.
On the youth’s right lay the Blood King’s aged face in a supine position.
Under Blood Tu’s control, three helical bone drills descended from the ceiling, their tips shimmering with high-frequency oscillating blood light.
The first bit pierced the youth’s back neck. The skin split at once, revealing the white cervical vertebrae.
The second precisely screwed into the third vertebra, opening a tiny hatch. This was the area where the memory sac was stored.
The third released tendrils that stabbed toward the Blood King, wrapping the Blood King’s memory sac like a spiderweb and gently peeling it free.
The surgical process was extremely complex and lasted five hours.
When the operation ended, the Blood King’s body had already gone limp and his life force was completely exhausted.
The blood light on the ceiling faded. Blood Tu looked toward the Blood King and said in a deep voice.
“Throne, awaken.”
At this moment the Blood King’s memory sac had already been placed in the youth’s opened spinal cavity.
With Blood Tu’s call, the nerve bundles extending from the surface of the memory sac spread through the youth’s body like ravenous roots, instantly branching and taking hold.
The youth’s body convulsed violently and his eyes snapped open.
His pupils dilated to the limit, and dark red cracks identical to Blood Worm’s appeared on the irises.
The blood vessels under his skin bulged, yet they were not blue but gradually took on the blood-colored lines of the memory sac’s surface.
Suddenly, dozens of umbilical cord-like conduits extended from beneath the operating table, pierced the youth’s abdomen, and began synchronizing the replacement of bodily fluids.
The old dark red blood was drawn out and replaced with sealed Etherbreath blood.
This type of fluid was like the nutrient solution used by players.
At this moment the transformed youth was like a game pod, or a mech.
The memory sac was the subject. Etherbreath blood was the nutrient source of the subject.