Based on the dialogue between the three lowa officers, I’ve at least gleaned two pieces of information: The Slave Races taken to the Divine Country are being used for so kind of "extraction" experint, though I’m not sure what exactly is being extracted; anyway, it’s definitely inhumane. Secondly, Barrian has acquired so sort of power, likely having cracked an important technological secret from the Old Empire Era. I just hope it’s not the activation key for Big Sister’s Royal Fleet back in the day. I pondered over these two issues for about ten minutes and, not having any leads, decided to set them aside for now, figuring I’d soon crack at least one of them myself: What exactly is being done to those slaves.
After about an hour of regular navigation, the starship arrived at the "Divine Country," the capital star of the lowa people, located a dozen light-years away from Anu Lili’s hotown. The natives from the Slave Donor Planet probably have no idea that the gods they worship are just a bunch of alien creatures from a star only a dozen light-years away—and a group of rather juvenile ones at that.
During that hour of travel, Lilina tirelessly tried to flaunt her charms as a sexy, mature Elf Girl to —of course, she spent most of her ti analyzing the childish antics of the lowa people, mocking them heavily. As a genuine and experienced scamr, Lilina utterly despised the behaviors of the lowa people. According to her, these self-entertaining, pseudo-religious individuals, who have no idea what being a "god" truly ans, were like monkeys in costus performing an opera. I thought this assessnt was a bit over the top, but when comparing the lowa people to the Star Domain Gods, perhaps this analogy wasn’t far off...
"Boss, look, that’s the Divine Country!" Lilina monitored the outside scenery through the little spy robot that had fully taken control of the spaceship’s system. Her data terminal projected an image of a highly advanced civilized planet. A large portion of its surface was covered in signs of artificial modification: layers of alloy, energy shields, various giant structures, occupying almost half of the planetary surface while only a small portion showed natural scenery. It seed the lowa people had completely transford their Mother Star with various artificial ecological devices maintaining the planet’s biosphere, having no sentintal attachnt to the natural environnt. This ntality is rare among civilizations, but considering the foundation of lowa civilization was wiped out during the Old Empire Era, and they essentially developed from a space civilization perspective, their lack of attachnt to the natural environnt can be sowhat explained.
"Put that thing away," I casually turned off Lilina’s data terminal, "I reckon soone will be coming soon."
"Oh, right, Boss, if anything unexpected happens, you have to protect this delicate, charming, and fragile Elf Girl..."
"...Do you have the nerve to say that? Weren’t you the one planning to release a virus on the lowa Mother Star just now?"
Lilina pouted: "Tch, as a cute, self-walking humanoid, a little darkness doesn’t affect the cuteness."
Our regular banter rolled on like this, and it seems it’s not going to change...
Just then, footsteps approached outside the cabin door. Lilina and I quickly sat up straight, pretending to be country bumpkins entering the city, and almost simultaneously, the cabin door slid open silently. Two expressionless lowa Soldiers appeared at the doorway, neither of whom were any of the previous three. The two soldiers surveyed the room and beckoned us over like they were calling to animals: "Co over, co over, we’re taking you to broaden your horizons."
Lilina winked at and communicated through our spiritual connection, "Look, the show is over. I guess previously infiltrating personnel sent in were executed shortly after leaving the spaceship. Hmm, I sll bloodlust."
Lilina and I continued chatting through spiritual connection while nonchalantly following the two lowa soldiers. They led us off the spaceship through a series of twists and turns and quickly transferred us onto an atmospheric shuttle. Originally, I planned to release two more probes during this process but decided against it: Ultra-sensitive monitoring equipnt is nearby, and even a minuscule Ghost Energy Wave anomaly might be detected. The security level on this Mother Star is as strict as Sandora said. But I still took a mont to look around: This was located in a weak gravity zone above the atmosphere, a geostationary transit docking platform where small and dium-sized starships temporarily docked to exchange goods and personnel with the platform. Before being urged to enter the atmospheric shuttle, I confird the distribution and architecture of several connecting skybridges on the platform, realizing this was just a small and functionally limited port. It’s certain that such a port doesn’t belong in the regular military sequence, and combined with the information from Tulazo, it’s certain the "natives" brought back from the Slave Donor Planet arrived via channels separate from the regular military and the soldiers seen here should belong to Barrian’s personal guard rather than ordinary regular troops—Barrian doesn’t trust his regular army, and I don’t know what he does trust.
The shuttle quickly plunged into the atmosphere, heading steadily toward the North Pole, in the direction of Barrian’s palace. During this process, Lilina and I were thrown in the rear cabin, with no more lowa people showing up to display god’s rcy and kindness. I silently watched the scenery through the cabin window, surveying this luxurious, grand yet cold and lifeless planet. Golden ornants and imnse opulent structures covered the ground, artificial atmospheric control towers replacing all vegetation on this planet, turning it into a splendid and majestic Divine Throne. The lowa people swept it clean of all life forms except themselves—could this indicate they believe themselves incomparably noble and thus unable to coexist with any inferior beings on the sa planet?
"Boss, if you unleash your full power, you could directly destroy this Mother Star, right?" Lilina continued fiddling with sothing beside , a green glow constantly shining from her hand while she chatted with , "At least going to take out Barrian is no problem for us now."
"Indeed," I felt a rush of adrenaline but restrained myself from actually doing anything rash, "But Barrian is most likely not on this planet, as Tulazo said, that guy’s cunning and caution exceed expectations. Besides, even destroying this Mother Star wouldn’t have much effect. The lowa people might be thrown into chaos montarily, but they’d quickly regroup and cause greater destruction—a fully operational empire wouldn’t collapse just because its capital is destroyed, the gas lied. Even if this place gets wrecked, their governance machine surely has backup systems to take over swiftly... Oh, by the way, what are you doing?"
I noticed Lilina had already conjured two human-sized green Light Cocoons in front, which were pulsating rhythmically as she infused them with Divine Power, like two beating hearts. Although I didn’t understand what Life Power was, it truly seed suffused within these things... a sense of life. This girl spent all this ti making those, and I couldn’t fathom what her grand plan was.
"Decoy Number One and Decoy Number Two." Lilina snapped her fingers, and the two Light Cocoons burst open, from which erged two... people, Anuza and Anu Lili.
With appearances identical to the originals, even their expressions mirrored them perfectly. In just these few short minutes, Lilina had cloned the Anuza siblings! I was genuinely surprised, "You plan to let them take our places?"
"Yeah, then Boss and I will sneak invisibly behind them," said Lilina as she pinched and prodded her two new creations’ bodies, as if assessing their texture, "The lowa people should soon start their ’project.’ I don’t know what they’ll do, but if they decide to kill imdiately, we might expose ourselves rather than having these puppets while we watch from the sidelines."
Lilina made a lot of sense. This girl who appears utterly scattered and whimsical actually possesses ticulous forethought, even more mature than myself—her life experiences spanning several lifetis aren’t just for show.
"Hey Boss, wanna have a feel?" Halfway through my admiration, Lilina pushed Anu Lili’s clone puppet towards and suddenly lifted its front clothing—revealing void underneath, "A rare opportunity; you do find Anu Lili quite pretty, right? Go ahead, have a feel. I assure it’s 100% identical to the original, even the texture. I won’t tell Sandora or the rest... If there’s enough ti, I could stand guard, and you could even..."
I quickly retracted all my previous sentints, squeezing Lilina’s cheeks hard and pulling them wide apart...
At this mont, the shuttle arrived at the station.
I ended the antics with Lilina, and the two of us promptly entered the highest stealth state, watching two lowa soldiers lead those two expressionless clone puppets outside. It seed that at this stage, the lowa no longer cared whether the slaves they brought were normal: probably this ant that the latter really didn’t have much ti left to live. Lilina and I hurriedly followed behind, discovering that we had arrived at the interior of a base. This seed to be a place similar to a research departnt because, along the way, most of the soldiers we saw were guards, while the personnel walking inside the base were almost all researchers wearing white clothes—the lowa people had inherited the uniform style of the Old Empire’s Xyrin Technicians.
Lilina was holding a small black block in her hand, manipulating it while catching up with the escorting group. I curiously glanced at her: "What’s that thing?"
"A controller," Lilina replied without turning her head, "Just made a puppet, haven’t had ti to install the system yet, so I have to use a controller to manage it for now. Luckily, I practiced my speed when connecting to interstellar before with Bubbles; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to handle this without enough APM... Hey boss, wanna play? Anuza can unleash Black Dragon Wave with a down-forward punch, and Anu Lili can perform Phoenix Sky Dominator Slash with a back-down-forward-back punch..."
: "..." I think the main reason you’re so busy is that you installed too many useless functions on the puppet!
The escorting group probably never imagined that two bizarre and dangerous stalkers were following them. Right in front of us, they handed over "Anuza" and "Anu Lili" to a few people who looked like researchers. We followed closely, watching the two clone puppets being taken into a spacious laboratory, and under Lilina’s control, they cooperated throughout with a bewildered and curious attitude (um, Lilina’s APM is quite high... but can’t she use a more sophisticated thod?).
The laboratory had many chairs lined up together, surrounded by a large number of identical and functionally unclear crystal blocks. These crystal blocks gave a very bad feeling—as if seeing a murder weapon full of death, a sense of dread entangled with the breath of death approached. Several scholarly-looking researchers had "Anuza" and "Anu Lili" sit on two already activated chairs. Facing the confused voices from the puppets under Lilina’s control, one of them smiled: "Children, rest assured, these are God’s blessings for you; it may hurt a little at first, but soon you will be with the power of God and gain divine power and happiness—activate the system, start extraction!"
The lab began to echo with the low humming of equipnt, with the pitch rising due to energy enhancent. The crystal blocks surrounding the chairs lit up one after another, gradually floating into the air, and symtrically enclosing the space where the two puppets were situated. Then, I saw specialized crystallized data cables for high-speed data transfer appear at the back of the chairs—I recognized these at a glance because they were undoubtedly original Empire technology. And as these devices were activated, the two puppets on the chairs also began to tremble violently. This was not due to Lilina’s control, but rather a reflex reaction of their physical structures under intense energy stimulation. Even though they were just empty shells, their physical structures were complete, thus having the neurological reflexes of normal humans.
However, aside from that, the on-site researchers did not obtain anything they wanted. After a series of equipnt alarms, both sets of chairs stopped simultaneously, the crystal blocks dimd and slowly returned to their original positions. The few lowa researchers who had been smiling all along now lost their smiles and began to look at each other dejectedly and angrily.
"Hiss—I told you, the rebellious consciousness of these insincere natives is too strong, the failure rate of extraction is almost fifty percent! Those guys don’t understand science at all; they don’t know how slow the growth of these Spirit Grid Crystals is—fortunately, nothing was burned this ti."
"Stop worrying about your crystals! There’s an anomaly record here!"
One of the researchers exclaid, looking at the information display device in front of him. It showed a jumble of incomprehensible figures and data, but I could only recognize that the two humanoid figures in the middle represented "Anuza" and "Anu Lili" sitting on the chairs. All the researchers gathered around, making bewildered sounds: "Soul extraction volu is zero? The extraction process stalled in the first second of activation? Could it be a problem with the equipnt?"
"Hard to say, these Spirit Grid Crystals already failed last ti they were used, there could be unknown faults we haven’t discovered," the researcher who issued the warning earlier said, frowning and shaking his head, "Looks like these crystals can’t be used anymore... Hmm, definitely a problem with the crystals, there’s no possibility of a person without a soul, right."
A researcher walked to the chair where "Anu Lili" was seated, inspecting the dim crystal blocks. Of course, he couldn’t detect any faults, so he soon showed exceptional irritation and finally kicked the puppet: "Damn it! These worthless beings! Absolutely useless, complete waste of two sets of crystals!"
A researcher whose uniform was slightly different, perhaps symbolizing the head of the lab, imdiately gestured to stop the irate guy: "Alright, don’t break it; the software might not work but the hardware can still be used, Team Two could still use these materials."
"Indeed," the researcher who had assaulted the "human" grumbled as he stepped back, surveying the two "experintal samples" slumping in their chairs, "seems like their consciousness has been completely obliterated, hopefully the brains haven’t burnt out. I’ll call for soone, it appears we’ll need sothing to transport them. Today’s really unlucky, let’s hope the next batch sent over are processed natives, and not this kind of inferior material masquerading. The gap for the new units is pretty large."
This researcher connected with outside communication, summoning a batch of soldiers to use two carts to move the two "ntally burned" test subjects to another area. Lilina and I quickly followed. With the previous extraction failure as cover, Lilina no longer needed to focus on controlling those two puppets, and she seed quite pleased. I also had ti to discuss the situation just now with her: "It seems they’re extracting the souls of this slave race; I didn’t expect them to actually do that."
"I didn’t expect them to be able to do that," Lilina had a different view, "Soul extraction is high technology, probably learned from the Old Empire. But they clearly didn’t learn it well, the success rate is too low, and the tolerance is also low. No wonder they brainwashed Anu Lili’s entire race like that; it’s easier to extract and encode the soul of a fool."
Regarding souls, I don’t know much, but I do know one thing: Except for a few powerful races (such as the Gods and the Xyrin Apostles), once the soul of most creatures is controlled by another intelligent entity and can be externally interfered with by devices, that soul is forever, completely, irreversibly enslaved. It will be as open as a database whose passwords have been cracked, free for anyone to use. Undoubtedly, the lowa people are doing this—they could not possibly leave an iota of freedom to the souls extracted. But what do they plan to do with these souls?
A soul is a set of data with computational rules and can serve as "software" after proper adjustnt, but other than these inherent complex computational rules, the soul itself doesn’t possess much power, let alone the souls of these native inhabitants. What exactly do they intend to do?
With such questions, Lilina and I followed these lowa soldiers to another area of the experintal base. (To be continued. If you like this work, feel free to co to Qidian (qidian) to vote for recomndations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
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