Chapter 182: Avatar and Integration
"You... what else do you want to do?" After a series of blows, she began to imagine the worst, her body instinctively recoiling away from Bai Mo.
"I'm considering what dish to make."
"?!" Cui Mengdie, though aware before the mission that her target had a peculiar personality and had prepared herself for all sorts of torment after being captured, had never once imagined that he would eat people!!!
"Just finish me quickly," she pleaded, her voice on the verge of tears.
Ordinarily, at the base, she had undergone training in anti-interrogation techniques, but now, having fallen into the hands of a cannibalistic pervert who defied all common sense, she was utterly helpless.
"Does a chef listen to the fish's opinion?" Bai Mo sealed her mouth with his psychokinetic power, leaving her able to emit only muffled whimpers.
Time passed, second by silent second. Cui Mengdie had never felt time stretch out so interminably; every single moment was an agony to endure.
"As expected, the senior who trained me back then was right: death isn't so terrifying; what's terrifying is the process of waiting for death." This sentence replayed constantly in her mind.
After a long while, Bai Mo finally seemed to recall something. He retrieved a surgical knife from behind him and walked towards the experiment subject before him.
"Having a Life Field is troublesome. Even the most nascent one prevents an avatar from passing through." He held the surgical knife, untied some of the ropes, pulled back her clothes, and made an incision on her back.
"He's actually going to turn me into sashimi... this lunatic!" She could feel the incision was shallow, but the cut itself was not small. The other party clearly didn't intend to kill her immediately, and the intense pain plunged her into utter despair.
But she waited for a while and no second blade descended. Instead, something warm seemed to continuously flow into the wound, causing a tingling itchiness in the surrounding area.
"Legend says that ancient flaying involved making an opening on the head and then pouring mercury inside..." The more she thought about it, the itchier the area around her wound felt. If her hands hadn't been bound and out of reach, she would have certainly scratched it already.
"This is the first time an avatar has controlled a living experiment subject with a Life Field. Previously, all the subjects with Life Fields they sent me were dead, which prevented quite a few experiments from being carried out."
After Bai Mo sent his avatar into Cui Mengdie's body, he untied all the ropes and began to try controlling the entire body's movements.
"You did this to me..." She had just uttered four words when she realized even the muscles around her throat had lost control. She had the thought to speak, but not a single sound could escape.
"Alas, controlling an Ability User with a Life Field means every action is met with pressure from the original body." These words came from Cui Mengdie's mouth.
"What exactly have you done to me?" It was still Cui Mengdie's voice speaking.
"You can feel it too." The scene devolved into her talking to herself.
"You're controlling me?"
"Mm."
As the control continued, Bai Mo could feel the avatar's presence being steadily eroded, its energy depleting even faster than during the major battles of the past few days.
"This avatar holds roughly thirty percent of my power, and by my estimation, it can only control the subject for about a day. And this is just controlling an Ability User who has merely entered the Life Field Stage; it's quite inefficient compared to controlling inanimate objects."
Nevertheless, remote-controlling a person was clearly more entertaining than remote-controlling a car. Despite the astonishing energy drain, Bai Mo was having a blast.
He controlled Cui Mengdie's body, making her dance and do somersaults in the laboratory, just like a child playing with a robot toy.
"Clatter!" Just as she completed a backflip, an information exchange device fell out.
"HY00021, acknowledge and reply!" He tapped the screen, seeing several consecutive messages of this kind.
"Dream received, arrived at target area. Butterfly." Bai Mo replied, following the special input format he'd observed from the Skynet, so as not to arouse suspicion.
A day later, just as the avatar's energy was about to run out, he sent in another new avatar, allowing the two to merge.
This time, to his surprise, he found that the resistance he encountered during control had noticeably decreased!
"Could it be that through constant attrition against the Life Field, through continuous wearing down or integration, I can eventually achieve a state of lossless control?" Bai Mo entertained this hypothesis.
"How does it feel, this little dark room, where you have no sight or hearing, and can't even control a single finger of your own body?" The words continued to come from Cui Mengdie's mouth.
"I surrender, I agree to your terms." She spoke with utmost helplessness. "I will continue to live as a normal person and absolutely will not disclose any related information. In exchange, how much power can you give me?"
"The moment you move your mouth or put pen to paper, I can take over your body, so don't even think about any tricks. As for power, your basic attack and defense are already close to an Unmelting Realm Ability User, but the development of specific abilities is none of my concern. After you leave, I need to borrow your body to do a few small things first."
Because Bai Mo had many other things to do and wasn't willing to expend his mental energy on tediously controlling her every movement, and moreover, operating under an alias was often much more convenient for illicit activities, he made this agreement with her.
"If I don't control her constantly, the energy consumption will be much lower; the avatar's duration can be extended roughly tenfold. At this rate, I estimate that in about three months, her Life Field will be completely transformed, and she will be officially refined into my physical avatar."
"One, two... a total of twelve, done." After sending Cui Mengdie back, Bai Mo dispatched another Spirit Energy avatar, ambushing and eliminating over a dozen people he had tracked down through the Skynet who had been plotting against him. For a time, whispers of fear spread everywhere.
"You just kill when you feel like it, just like that Butcher of Justice. You truly have no regard for reason," Liu Zhen, also a member of the Seven-Person Council, called him after receiving the news.
"I know there are people from both your sides in this. But why bother with such a rotten trick to force me to pick a side?" Bai Mo shot back. "Logically, Ye Zi and her ilk should understand that for all our painstaking cultivation, often, in the end, isn't it precisely so we can act as unreasonably and wantonly as we please?"
Liu Zhen was instantly rendered speechless.
"Take care of yourself then. Though we're partners, those below us are our own people, so we can only remain neutral. As for the Ability Users from Ye Zi's faction, they'll likely be more direct. It's quite possible they'll charge in and demand blood for blood. Compared to their brains, those barbarians prefer to think with their fists." His words held no fondness whatsoever for the Ability Users of Ye Zi's faction.
"Do you remember what I said to you when we first met?" Bai Mo asked, smiling.
"Which line?" Liu Zhen sensed the malice in his tone.
"We've already lost sixty million people. Another few hundred thousand falling wouldn't even count as small change."
"You alone can deal with tens of thousands of Ability Users?" Hearing this sentence again a year later, he could tell that Bai Mo was serious this time.
"Given enough time, I could halve the population of the entire Huaxia Federation right now. Do you think I can handle them?"
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