I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Chapter 226 A God-Making Project That Violates Ethics

Kyoto, Alliance Academy of Sciences, the eighteenth underground laboratory codenamed "Abyss".

This is the most heavily guarded place in the entire Earth Human Alliance. Even a Core Formation stage cultivator cannot forcibly break through the outer Heaven-Locking Earth Formation, which is powered by ten top-grade spirit-gathering arrays, without special authorization from the Supreme Council.

The air inside the laboratory was filled with a pungent smell of disinfectant and a faint odor of blood.

Under the stark white of the operating lights, a hundred enormous, transparent cylindrical nutrient tanks were placed. Inside each tank, a naked death row inmate, whose hair had been forcibly shaved, was submerged.

These death row inmates were thugs who had committed heinous crimes in the wilderness and had been stripped of their citizenship. But now, they had become the most valuable "experimental consumables" in the Academy of Sciences.

Wang Mingyuan, dressed in a heavy white hazmat suit, stood in front of the central control console, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the data flashing on the screen. He hadn't slept for three days and three nights, but fueled by an almost obsessive research fervor, he felt no fatigue whatsoever.

"Professor Wang, the vital signs of the 24th batch of 100 experimental subjects have stabilized."

A young researcher, also dressed in a hazmat suit, reported to his superior with a slightly trembling voice, holding a tactical tablet: "The pseudo-spiritual root has been successfully implanted into their spinal cord center through minimally invasive surgery. The rejection inhibitor has been injected."

"very good."

Wang Mingyuan nodded, a cruel anticipation flashing in his eyes. "Activate the high-pressure spiritual energy inversion and conduct a practical power test!"

"yes!"

As the researcher pressed the red start button, the spirit-gathering arrays on the walls of the laboratory suddenly emitted an extremely piercing buzzing sound.

A massive amount of violent spiritual energy, like a flood bursting its banks, poured wildly into the bodies of the hundred death row inmates through the metal pipes connected to the nutrient tanks!

"ah!!!"

The death row inmates, who had been under anesthesia and unconscious, were instantly awakened by the excruciating pain that tore at their very souls. They struggled and convulsed wildly in the green nutrient solution, emitting horrifying screams.

For mortals without spiritual roots, spiritual energy is no less than strong acid poured directly into their bodies!

But then, a miracle occurred.

Suddenly, eerie dark red lights shone from the spines of the death row inmates. The "artificial pseudo-spiritual root," a mixture of demonic beast marrow fluid and miniature arrays, acted like an extremely violent water pump, forcibly intercepting and compressing the rampant spiritual energy surging through the inmates' meridians, ultimately transforming it into strands of extremely complex yet undeniably real spiritual power!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Inside the nutrient tanks, the originally emaciated death row inmates, stimulated by the pseudo-spiritual energy, experienced a frenzied expansion of their muscles, as if inflated, with bluish-black blood vessels bulging on their skin like earthworms. Their eyes turned bloodshot, and they lost all human reason, leaving only a bloodthirsty instinct like that of wild beasts.

"Beep! Subject No. 1's peak spiritual power has broken through to the first level of the Qi Refining stage! However, his meridians cannot withstand the pressure and are beginning to rupture..."

"Beep! Subject #7's pseudo-spiritual root is overloaded, and his spine is carbonizing..."

"Beep! Subject 14's heart has ruptured..."

On the control panel screen, the green curve representing the test subject's vital signs began to turn into glaring red straight lines at a despairing speed.

In less than ten minutes.

"Pfft!"

With a muffled explosion, the death row inmate in nutrient pod number 1 exploded into a blurry cloud of blood mist, like a bursting balloon of flesh and blood! The blood stained the nutrient solution and even splattered onto the transparent pod walls, a horrifying sight.

Immediately following was a chain reaction of explosions.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

One hundred nutrient tanks exploded one after another over the next half hour. Limbs and severed bodies floated in the green liquid, and the entire laboratory resembled a blood pool from the eighteenth level of hell!

"professor……"

The young researcher stared at the blood-soaked ground, his face deathly pale. "They're all...all dead. The 24th batch, 100 test subjects, not a single one survived. The longest-surviving subject, number 72, only lasted forty minutes."

He removed the helmet from his hazmat suit, ran to a nearby trash can, and began to vomit violently. This unethical killing was cruelly testing the moral limits of these scientists.

But Wang Mingyuan did not vomit.

He didn't even frown. He stared intently at the dense data on the screen, his face, pale and sickly from lack of sunlight, showing no pity, only a frantic, dead-end mentality.

"Why? Why can't I take it?!"

Wang Mingyuan slammed his fist on the metal control panel, his finger bones shattering and blood flowing out. "The conversion rate of the pseudo-spiritual root has reached the theoretical optimal solution, and spiritual energy has been successfully converted into spiritual power! Why is the mortal body still collapsing?!"

"professor……"

An elderly researcher with gray hair sighed and stepped forward, saying, "The mortal body is not that of a demon beast. Demon beasts can withstand violent spiritual energy because they possess naturally strong bones and flesh. Humans, on the other hand, lack this kind of 'physical resistance' in their genes."

"It's like you've forcibly installed the nuclear-powered engine of a fighter jet onto a wooden cart. The moment the engine starts, the immense power will instantly tear the cart to pieces."

The old researcher pointed to the shattered nutrient pods. "Although our pseudo-spiritual roots can enable them to generate spiritual power, in actual combat, as long as they use spiritual power to cast spells, even the simplest fireball spell, their fragile meridians and bodies will collapse instantly because they cannot withstand this energy."

"If the problem of physical load-bearing capacity cannot be solved, this 'god-making project' will forever only produce a bunch of flesh-and-blood fireworks that will self-destruct within half an hour."

The laboratory fell into a deathly silence.

Flesh and blood fireworks.

This word is an extremely precise, yet cruel, summary of everything they have done over the past three years.

If sustained combat is not possible, then these pseudo-spiritual root warriors have no strategic value in the face of the beast tides in the wilderness.

Wang Mingyuan slumped into a chair, clutching his hair, which had been neatly combed and now looked disheveled.

Are mortals destined to be nothing more than ants in this world?

Just when everyone was in despair and even preparing to draft an application to abandon the project.

"drop!"

The heavy alloy door of the laboratory suddenly opened.

A young officer in a crisp military uniform, with the rank of major general on his shoulder, walked in expressionlessly, carrying a heavy black metal briefcase.

He was the personal adjutant of the top decision-maker.

"Professor Wang, the commander asked me to bring you something."

The young officer ignored the blood and gore on the ground, walked straight to Wang Mingyuan, and placed the black briefcase heavily on the control panel.

"The commander said that since the mortal body can't withstand the violent engine, then we should replace it with a... steel frame."

The officer entered an extremely complex code.

"Click".

The combination lock box slowly popped open.

Under the cold white light, inside the box lay an extremely old, even yellowed, paper drawing, and a mysterious metal part emitting a ghostly blue array light.

Wang Mingyuan was stunned for a moment, then grabbed the blueprint.

When he saw the dense mechanical structure on the blueprints and the familiar words "Old-era single-soldier mech", his pupils dilated instantly and his breathing became rapid, like a bellows!

"This is... the most top-secret scrapped [Xingtian] exoskeleton armor project of the Chinese military before the Great Cataclysm?!"

Wang Mingyuan's hand holding the blueprints trembled violently.

In the old days, these individual exoskeletons were deemed "fancy toys" by the military due to limitations in battery life and the physical limitations of materials, and were eventually sealed away in the archives.

but now……

Wang Mingyuan's gaze suddenly fell on the metal part shimmering with array light inside the box. That was the Alliance's most advanced "Psionic Conduction Bearing"!

An extremely crazy idea, capable of overturning the common sense of the cultivation world, was like a lightning bolt, splitting all the fog in Wang Mingyuan's mind!

"I understand... I understand!"

Wang Mingyuan burst into laughter like a madman. He whirled around, grabbed the old researcher's shoulder tightly, and his eyes turned bloodshot with extreme excitement.

"Since mortal meridians cannot withstand the impact of spiritual energy, then we will build the energy output channels outside the body!"

Wang Mingyuan pointed at the blueprints, his voice hoarse and fanatical as he roared, "The pseudo-spiritual root is only responsible for converting spiritual energy into a power source within the body! Then, we'll use spiritual energy conduction wires to directly connect the spine to this exoskeleton armor!"

"Let the indestructible alloy armor withstand the impact of battle, replacing the fragile flesh of mortals! Let the arrays engraved on the armor unleash spells, replacing the dantian of cultivators!"

"This isn't cultivation...this is cyber cultivation!!!"

The researchers in the entire laboratory were stunned when they heard Wang Mingyuan's extremely crazy idea.

A crude fusion of mechanics and cultivation!

Using pseudo-spiritual roots as the engine and an exoskeleton as the body!

"Clean the lab immediately! Take all those failed projects out and burn them!"

Wang Mingyuan abruptly ripped off his blood-stained hazmat suit, like a demonic commander ascending to a divine altar, and issued his final command.

"Go to the death row camp and bring me another hundred ordinary people!"

"I want to see the first runic exoskeleton capable of casting spells within ten days!"