Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Shells!

Li Yao was immediately covered in cold sweat. He recalled what Professor Mo Xuan had said to him in the Spiriters’ Realm.

For mankind in the future, the soul will be their everything. As for the so-called body, no matter whether it is a body of flesh and blood that focuses on the absorption of spiritual energy, or the body of a demon that focuses on genetic modification, or a battle puppet that is made of the toughest metals, they will only be ‘shells’, something that you can replace and abandon randomly!

“Don’t you think that vegetative people are the most perfect natural objects for possession?” Long Yangjun stared at the corner of the room. The ‘vegetative person’ who had jumped out of the medical cabin did not run too far away although they fled from them, hiding in a corner further away. While shuddering in fear, it craned its neck to peep at them, in every way that befitted an animal that acted based on natural instincts.

“For a human being whose head is clear and whose soul is intact, even if he is just a strengthless ordinary person, his soul will still be deeply entangled with his mind, and it is not going to be easy to possess him,” Long Yangjun said. “Even the Cultivators in the Core Formation Stage or the Nascent Soul Stage have to go through a lot of trouble if they want to possess a healthy ordinary person. The odds of their failure can be glaring, too. It is even possible that they will be swallowed by their target instead. These are the mysteries and dangers of the soul.

“However, if the target is weak and sick, or if his soul is incomplete due to strong stimulations before, the difficulty of possession will be greatly lowered. It’s just like the trial that Qi Zhongdao attended a few days ago. That was the sole reason the leader of the sect at the peak of the Core Formation Stage tried to possess a retard.

“If the target is a vegetative person, the majority of his soul will already be gone, and his head will essentially be vacant. It is an even better target of possession than retards.

“Through the filtering of the astronomical medical charges, the patients who are qualified to be admitted to this place were all high-level Cultivators before they fell into comas with powerful bloodlines. Some of them had long grown a ‘second brain’, or rather, the golden core, at the end of their coccyx. It is not hard to imagine how tough their bodies must be.

“Also, it’s been quite a few years since the vegetative persons were brought here for treatment. Professor Mo Xuan and Lei Yuqin totally could’ve modified their brains in secret to turn them into ‘containers’ that are more suitable to be possessed. Or rather, to quote Professor Mo Xuan, they are the best battle shells!

“So…”

Long Yangjun eyed the surroundings. “The patients in the ward up above have not been touched because they are admin-type and research-type Cultivators whose bodies are not strong enough to be modified into ‘battle shells’. But the bodies of the battle-type Cultivators who should’ve lived in this ward are all gone. The ‘lifeless’ gardeners that we saw on the outside must’ve been them.”

“Exactly.” Li Yao tapped on a few crystal processors that were not destroyed yet. Then he mumbled, “They were all the most passionate warriors. Many of them were even war heroes in the Uranian Ring War. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have broken their limits time and time again and gotten themselves mentally deranged until they became vegetative after brain collapse.

“Although they fell into comas, they have been receiving special treatment in this place for years. Through the stimulation of bioelectricity and the nutrition liquids of spiritual energy, their bodily functions are kept at a very powerful level. They are indeed the perfect ‘battle shells’!

“However, there is one problem. The so-called ‘possession’ is a one-to-one relationship, which means that a new soul is required to make their body function again. Judging from the capabilities that those people revealed just now, their souls were equally powerful. Even if they were ghosts, they were definitely super spectral Cultivators of a high level. Is it possible that Lei Yuqin and Professor Mo Xuan could hire so many ghost experts without raising the suspicion of the authorities?”

“That I don’t know.” Long Yangjun furrowed her brow. “Compared to that problem, I feel that we’d better focus on another problem that is more imminent. By my estimation, of the tens of thousands of vegetative people that have been treated in Deep Blue Super Brain Hospital for a long time, at least two to three thousand are battle-type Cultivators. Right now, most of them are gone. We only fought and killed dozens of them at best just now.

“Then, after a subtraction of a few dozen, where did the remaining two thousand or so ‘battle shells’ go?”

Li Yao and Long Yangjun looked at each other, stung by each other’s eyes that were as cold as ice.

Long Yangjun smiled bitterly and continued. “It appears that your professor is definitely not a commander without soldiers. It is quite possible that he has an army of ghosts made of two to three thousand high-level, battle-type Cultivators under his control.”

Biting his lips hard, Li Yao did not say anything but went to the debris of the mainframe crystal processor, which had been blown into a hive by them just now. He carefully examined the wires and cables that were sparkling. He even grabbed the broken cables with both hands and extended his telepathic thoughts deeper underground along the crystal cables.

“There’s something down there. There’s still a super crystal processor that is even more powerful and consumes more spiritual energy. I can sense extremely intense spiritual waves!” Li Yao immediately started running. “Follow me. This is a ward that is normally open to the family of the patients. It must’ve been reconstructed to what we are seeing right now only recently. The real secrets of Lei Yuqin and Professor Mo Xuan must be hidden in the deeper parts!”

The two of them wasted no time penetrating downward.

They passed quite a few large wards on their way, but all the medical cabins inside were empty, with no sign of being broken by violence.

It seemed that the ‘battle shells’ were still in order and under high control when they were ‘woken up’. Then, they were transferred to somewhere unknown.

Li Yao and Long Yangjun did not run into much resistance on their way. Even several secret tunnels and hidden doors were discovered by them without much trouble. The door of a secret elevator was even wide open, as if it had just been used a moment ago. Messy paper, broken jade chips, and damaged crystal processors were on the floor everywhere. It was utter chaos.

Such a chaotic and dirty environment was both a relief and a worry for the two of them. They felt relieved that they were on the right path and would probably enter the real nest soon, but they were also worried that Professor Mo Xuan had probably already left the place, with two to three thousand dreadful ghost warriors.

It was the reason the place was so weakly defended.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

The two of them reached the most central area of Deep Blue Super Brain Hospital through the vertical elevator.

Naturally, a lot of defense rune arrays had been established in the shaft, but none of them were worth mentioning under the collective bombardment of two Cultivators at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage.

At the bottom of the shaft was a gate of super alloys that had been built from more than a hundred thick rebars. Complicated defense rune arrays had been carved on it, too, with electric arcs dancing among them in spluttering noises and fatal blue colors. However, it only took Li Yao five more minutes to breach.

Five minutes later, the torn and twisted rebars collapsed to the ground, and all the defense rune arrays turned lackluster. A devastating gap was pulled open by the two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators with brute force.

Behind the gate was a laboratory soaked in blue brightness.

The laboratory was empty, but quite a few artificial bodies that had lost their souls were lying on the ground awry, like metal skeletons whose magic had been removed.

Some of the artificial bodies were even sitting in front of the crystal processors and the control panels, with their heads connected to the large crystal processors through crystal wires. The light beams in front of them were still displaying spots and streaks, but their metal heads were all leaning to one side. It was clear that the souls hiding inside the artificial bodies had either been obliterated or escaped in a certain way.

Li Yao had never seen such a weird laboratory before. Although he was wearing a thick crystal suit and mustard-seed combat suit, he felt that chilly air was invading his flesh, bones, and internal organs like invisible tentacles. The darkness chilled him to the bones.

Surrounded by many artificial bodies, in the main area of the laboratory, there were transparent glass boards hanging in midair. Every glass board was carved with a certain object that resembled a huge walnut.

They had all left in a hurry. The patterns on the glass boards were still wriggling, changing, and glowing.

Li Yao observed for a long time before he finally figured out what the ‘enormous walnuts’ were.

They were… the tomography of human brains.

Inside each transparent glass board was the tomography of part of the active zones in the human brain. When hundreds of transparent glass boards were placed together, it was almost like one human brain had been precisely dissected into hundreds of pieces. Or maybe, the brain had actually been cut into thousands of parts, and only the most representative ones among them were picked out for studies.

“This is a cerebral laboratory.” Taking a deep breath, Li Yao walked over to one of the crystal processors that the enemy did not have time to turn off. Then, he was more or less relieved. “They are not the real slices of human brains but models that the experimenters made after scanning the braining with a special mystic ray layer by layer. The scanning was at least on the molecular level…”

“Monster Li, come on and look at this!” Long Yangjun shouted.

When Li Yao went over, he discovered that inside a few transparent cubes, more than a hundred pairs of mechanical arms driven by spiritual energy were vibrating quickly and spurting soft materials of unknown qualities from the hollow syringes at their sharp ends that were even thinner than hairs. The materials interweaved and piled up into certain objects that were full of ravines and looked like a walnut core.

They were brains, which were three times larger than the brains of normal people.

The ‘brains’ in some of the transparent tubes had just started to be painted, and the brain vessels and nerves took shape in the most precise framework.

But the ‘brains’ in some of the transparent tubes were almost done. Greasy colors were reflected on their faces, giving the feeling that they were ‘alive’.

“This—this is some sort of 3D printing magical equipment.” Li Yao tapped on the crystal processors nearby and retrieved the print logs. “It boasts an extremely high precision and can reach the molecular level easily.”

“Therefore…” Long Yangjun was silent for a moment. She glanced at the brain tomography that were floating in midair again and observed, “Are they replicating brains in this place?”

“No, they are even crazier.” Browsing through the print logs, Li Yao could not help but feel shocked after he read the experiment parameters on them. “They have been studying how to combine the advantageous areas in the brains of the experts to create a powerful ‘virtual brain’ that is even more magnificent than the top human experts!”