Wang Mou moved — and his efficiency far exceeded expectations.
He stepped past Cheng Shi and Hu Wei, summoned his Truth power, and began tracing the arrays across the rubble. In monts, the group could feel the arrays dissolving and shattering — one after another, fast as lightning, almost too quick to follow.
The players were stunned not only by the sheer density of arrays in this place, but also by the doctor's masterful technique. Virtually every array-enthusiast in the group pressed in to observe his dismantling process up close. Wang Mou, for his part, didn't guard his thods. While working with effortless grace, he even found ti to answer queries from nearby scholars. Had the situation not been so urgent, it would have felt less like a raid and more like an academic conference for Truth followers conducted in the field.
Even the Folly followers in the group fell silent. Everyone could see that, at least in terms of Truth-array expertise, this slice was in no way inferior to his original.
But the more eagerly Wang Mou perford, the more suspicious Cheng Shi beca.
He didn't believe the doctor was simply opposing his original body. Unable to figure out what Wang Mou was really after, he could only watch and wait — eting unpredictability with composure.
This encounter raised Cheng Shi's danger assessnt of Wang Mou another notch. This Truth follower was bold. He seed absolutely certain that his origins were a secret neither he nor Cheng Shi could reveal publicly. And Cheng Shi had indeed been outmaneuvered — whether out of a desire to protect the Blind One or an inability to publicly discuss the slice-universe hypothesis, he couldn't explain Wang Mou's true origin to anyone here.
And so, a stalemate between scholar and con artist was born.
This experint was full of such stalemates. That massive tumor couldn't put Hong Lin down, but Hong Lin had no answer for a monster that could make her "gain weight" with every attack. The distant commotion grew quieter and quieter, approaching a stall.
Just then, Wang Mou cracked the final critical array. The illusion overlaying the ruins collapsed in sequence, revealing a passage leading underground. In an instant, the vast rows of enormous tanks in the subterranean laboratory appeared before everyone, virtually unobstructed — and faces lit up.
Everyone's except the doctor's and Cheng Shi's. Their brows tightened. Neither looked pleased.
And the mont the arrays fell, the distant battle went completely silent. Every tentacle in the experint site snapped taut simultaneously, orienting toward Hu Wei's group, and an ear-splitting shriek tore through the air!
"Hisss—hisss—"
"ROAAARR—"
The giant tumor erupted tentacles in every direction, once again batting away Hong Lin's advance. Then, like a deflating balloon, it plunged underground, tearing through the labyrinthine web of subterranean tentacles.
Its movent was violent enough that even from far away, everyone in the experint site could see a bulging trail snaking across the earth toward a specific destination.
Players with sharp senses imdiately realized sothing major was happening. Most who'd entered had designs on the experint, so upon seeing the abomination charging sowhere at full speed, they cautiously followed its trail.
anwhile, Hu Wei's group recognized their window was closing fast. Hearts hardening, voices bood:
"The mother-tree is heading back! No ti — move in now!"
"There are players inside those tanks! Crack a few open and take them — that'll keep us busy for a while!"
"This place holds the thod for 'god-making'! Don't hesitate!"
Under the crushing pressure of the mother-tree's impending return, the already loose-knit team dissolved on the spot, scattering like streaks of light into the underground lab.
Hu Wei's eyes narrowed. He didn't try to stop them. Instead, he grabbed Cheng Shi and Wang Mou, hurled his greatsword forward, and let its blazing trail carry the three of them deep into the facility's lowest level.
"Where might the divinity-assembly thod be hidden?"
Under this pressure, Hu Wei dropped all pretense. He'd co for exactly this. It wasn't the control center, but every aspect of the experintal theory should be reflected in the experint itself — so surely secrets lurked here too.
But Cheng Shi didn't share that view. The mont he'd seen the underground tanks, he knew all his previous assumptions were wrong.
This was absolutely not a replication of the Stars Dagger!
After all, the only reason the Stars Dagger experint had succeeded was that the monstrous genius Zangier had devised an impossibly imaginative solution. He'd used the faith-clashes between mortal lives as a buffer to deflect the divinity tug-of-war between pseudo-gods, buying himself breathing room in the violent faith-struggle and becoming the thief who sliced open the gods' pockets.
But now? Setting aside whether the aberrant mother-tree even qualified as a "pseudo-god," and never mind the blood-moon that still hadn't been located — even if both existed, how was 0221 handling the divinity tug-of-war between pseudo-gods?
The intensity of that tug-of-war didn't diminish just because the divine "mass" was smaller. Even with all of 0221's divinity-assembly knowledge, there was absolutely no way a mortal body could survive that maelstrom.
So this experint was wrong. Wrong in every way!
Cheng Shi frowned deeply, scanning everything around him. He watched the players inside the tanks, their bodies threaded with various tubes, machines intermittently extracting... sothing. He'd assud the extraction was flesh and blood, but the longer he looked, the more he noticed the oddity.
The machines only activated their extraction when a bump swelled on the subject's body — aning they weren't siphoning flesh and blood at all, but rather... the subjects' "children"?!
Were those bumps incubating Birth newborns?
All three n's pupils contracted violently in unison. They exchanged glances and realized they'd all been wrong about this experint.
Even Wang Mou, who'd been so confident in his understanding, was shaken by this sight.
In a rare display, his expression twisted with shock. He broke free of Hu Wei's grip and scrutinized the surroundings closely. Monts later, this well-read doctor's brow furrowed with grim heaviness:
"I was deceived.
This is absolutely not the Stars Dagger, and it isn't the Selius slice experint I'd assud. This is clearly the faith-stitching experint — the one the Life Extension Departnt banned and abolished!
He's making a god, yes. But not a 'self' that steals unattended divinity like Zangier did. He's making...
Sothing that truly resembles Birth!
My unfathomable original may actually be constructing a new Birth!"
"..."
"..."
Hearing this, Hu Wei and Cheng Shi exchanged confused looks, their expressions freezing before both furrowed their brows. The sa thought crossed their minds simultaneously:
'Great. He's a bad student too.'
'Uh...'
Cheng Shi's eye twitched. No ti for embarrassnt. He hastily asked: "What do you an? What is the faith-stitching experint, and what do you an by 'a new Birth'?"
Wang Mou walked several more steps deeper, surveyed the scene, and spoke gravely:
"In the era when the Tower of Logic was first founded, the Erudition Presidium simply didn't have the resources to sustain every major experint. So each departnt scrambled to find its own approach to Truth.
The Life Extension scholars, having awakened as Truth followers from the Life path, had already accumulated considerable research on various life forms. The Tower's very first 'god-making' project was their brainchild — except back then, the god they tried to create wasn't a pseudo-god. It was a real god!"
"?"
"Those scholars had already realized that faith was an essential ingredient for godhood. So they made a bold conjecture: if enough faith could be stitched together, could the accumulation produce a quantitative-to-qualitative shift, turning a composite being into a true deity?
Of course, we now know that finding the correct divinity-assembly thod is the true road to godhood. But the Tower didn't have that conclusion back then. So they put conjecture into practice and launched what can only be called a faith massacre — the stitching experint."
"Faith massacre?"
"Precisely. The faith-stitching experint didn't just stitch faith. Because faith depends on a vessel — unlike divinity, it ceases to exist once separated from its carrier. So the simplest, most effective thod of stitching faith was to...
Stitch the vessels of faith — that is, the flesh of the gods' followers!
rge the flesh of sa-faith believers into one, keep them alive, and test whether the resulting amalgamation could beco a new vessel for faith's qualitative transformation, thereby birthing a true deity.
That was the first 'question in pursuit of truth' ever posed by the Life Extension Departnt.
To answer it, Tower scholars ravaged virtually every Nature Alliance tribe within their borders — especially those worshipping Birth. These Birth followers were not only nurous but fertile. Corral them, and you'd have an endless supply of experintal material...
Just like what we see now. The people in these tanks probably aren't the true experintal material. In my judgnt, they're manufacturing machines for experintal material.
Though perhaps that term is a bit cold. Out of humanitarian warmth, we could instead call them...
The aberrant mother-tree's external wombs.
They weren't captured to serve as consumables. They're bearing the mother-tree's 'children'!"
"..."
'How very warm.'
'And how very hellish.'
'You an these players trapped here have all been birthing 'babies' for that mother-tree-thing?'
Hearing this, staring at the sprawling rows of tanks, Cheng Shi's eye twitched. He wasn't laughing anymore.
...
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