Chapter 789: A Path Never Conceived
"Besides, that's not a real human brain. It's just the brains of a six-tier spirit ape..." Ying Huo said with a righteous expression.
"Monkey brain..."
"And eaten raw..."
"If it truly made one stronger, it wouldn't be out of the question. But merely shaving off a year or two of arduous cultivation isn't worth the effort."
"..."
If social impact wasn't a concern, some people secretly harbored thoughts about the "watermelon" in Yi Xi Si's hand, but they were too embarrassed to voice them in front of others.
"Its true form must be a giant, planet-sized creature." At that moment, Ye De Xian, from the Bloodline Houses, suddenly projected a video for the others.
A thin, angel-winged membrane enveloped the entire planet, casting everything beneath a shimmering white canopy of soft light.
Innumerable thick tentacles stretched forth from the earth and the oceans, pushing through the flesh-covered ground as they climbed ever upwards, reaching a sky now completely devoid of clouds.
On the flesh-covered surface, all other organic matter had been decomposed and assimilated, leaving only writhing tentacles and patches of bare rock that occasionally bubbled.
"How did you get these?"
"My special ability. Confidential." Ye De Xian offered no further explanation, instead gazing at this star-devouring, moon-swallowing spectacle with a slightly mesmerized gaze.
It was a record of Yi Xi Si's true form having just descended to the Dao Chen Realm, single-handedly digesting an entire mortal world.
"Back then, he, too, seemed to have used a similar method to 'digest' Earth?" Ji Er Ke Fu recalled the scene from over a hundred years ago, when he watched from the Moon as Earth was engulfed by darkness.
It was precisely this brutal memory that ignited the deepest fear within that generation of the Federation's very bones, spurring their resolve to escape at all costs, and ultimately guiding them down a path never before conceived: that of interstellar nomads.
"From the seventh-stage to the eighth-stage, one must devour and refine planets to obtain sufficient mass-energy..."
"The Dao Chen Realm has so many lesser realms; devouring just one would be sufficient."
"..."
"Wait until after surviving the third Reincarnation Tribulation before considering such matters." Ji Er Ke Fu promptly punctured their fantasies.
Decades ago, when Bai Mo expounded on the Dao, he had briefly mentioned the general path from a seventh-stage True Immortal to an eighth-stage Dongxuan Star Lord. Only after surviving the third Reincarnation Tribulation and stepping into the late seventh-stage would one possess the capability to begin planning to swallow planets, like a snake swallowing an elephant.
After all, an earthworm thinner than a finger, attempting to swallow an elephant like a great python, would only be a source of ridicule.
"Alright, dismissed."
"Wait, Old Ye, what's wrong with you?" As he prepared to leave, Yun Jie's avatar noticed that Ye De Xian, who had just projected the scene of Yi Xi Si devouring the planet, was still gazing at the behemoth enveloping the entire world in the image with a mesmerized look.
"Could he have been mentally polluted?"
Given the casual level of Yi Xi Si's illusion just now, if it could affect a group of seventh-stage cultivators, it wasn't impossible for the current Ye Family head to be afflicted.
"No, I just find it incredibly alluring."
"???"
"Wake up, that's just a beautiful girl avatar!" Yun Jie still felt that Ye De Xian must have been mentally polluted.
"I wasn't talking about that little girl." Ye De Xian retorted with the air of someone uniquely enlightened.
"So..."
"Could it be that..."
"You're actually..."
"That... thing..."
"Getting hot and bothered?"
"How alluring, how intoxicating that kind of power is."
"I admit, that layer of white canopy enveloping the entire world is quite beautiful, but the tentacles beneath still leave me utterly repulsed."
"It might sound a little perverse, but I'm now filled with interest for it. I want to engage in an intimate bloodline exchange with it." The head of the Ye Family, a seemingly clear-eyed and handsome young man, continued to stare fixedly at the image with a certain lustful gaze.
"..."
"Are your Bloodline Houses all so utterly without taboo?"
"That is the bloodline of a powerful being; if it could be merged with my own being, I would surely become stronger."
"Is that your reason for being so perverse?"
All along, the Bloodline Houses' reputation in superhuman circles had been rather poor, as their ethical and moral boundaries were generally abyssal.
From the relatively mundane practice of inbreeding to ensure bloodline purity, to the more aesthetically challenging unions with heterogeneous races, and even to the crazier direct genetic sequence editing plans, everything continually redefined the limits of normalcy for the Empire's citizens.
Especially sixty years ago, after the Four Holy Beasts joined the Empire with a large number of their subordinates, some among the Bloodline Houses who were obsessed with alien races took their obsessions to even greater extremes.
Of course, as long as they didn't just play around and then abandon them, the Four Holy Beasts were rather pleased with it, seeing it as an excellent way to integrate into human society.
Marital ties have always been proof of two groups establishing long-term relationships, and as latecomers, the Heaven Saint Domain likewise sought to find more allies.
So, even though the Bloodline Houses' motives were less than pure, they chose to turn a blind eye; it was a simple matter of mutual benefit.
"Let's not dwell on this. What progress has been made on the New Human Gene Project you're responsible for?" Seeing the conversation veering into unsavory depths, Ji Er Ke Fu, as the Empire's Prime Minister, proactively steered the conversation.
After its reorganization, the Divine Terra Empire, apart from gaining an emperor in name only, saw little change to its other structures. Especially after the several Electors cobbled together an Imperial Council beneath the Emperor, the former Speaker of the Federation Council, Ji Er Ke Fu, simply became the Prime Minister of the Imperial Council.
However, if it weren't for the fear that the crown Bai Mo had bestowed upon them was booby-trapped, a six-tier individual like Wei Ni Si wouldn't have ascended to emperorship. Thus, she dutifully embraced her role as a mascot.
"Preparatory work has been completed; now we're just waiting for the council to release the final inscription plan." Hearing Ji Er Ke Fu mention serious business, Ye De Xian also put away his rather unsettling smile, answering with strict formality.
The New Human Gene Project, spearheaded by the Empire, was a grand concept designed to enhance humanity's collective learning capacity.
Its primary objective was, through directed genetic engineering, to attempt to engrave essential basic knowledge for human life onto newly synthesized genetic material, allowing this knowledge to become a true human instinct, an innate bloodline memory.
For example, simple arithmetic.
By engraving fundamental concepts into the bloodline memory in advance, the acquisition of knowledge could begin from a more advanced starting point.
Eliminating the need to waste so much time learning the most basic content..
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