Chapter 1191 — Rebecca's Clue

Bard started in surprise—he plainly had not expected Rebecca's "secret project" to have progressed to the point of waking an individual. Then he found himself staring eye to eye with Berna in the vessel, and very quickly he noticed that her expression was blank, her eyes carrying a trace of confusion and bewilderment. After staring blankly at the world outside the vessel for nearly half a minute, the frail elf slowly raised one hand, as though trying to greet the people outside—but even this was utterly stiff and sluggish of response.

Bard raised a hand in reply to Berna, then looked at Rebecca: "She seems... not quite lucid... Can she hear us?"

"She can, but her thinking isn't efficient enough yet, so she can't necessarily keep up with the pace of normal conversation," Rebecca nodded. "Her current state is more like half-dreaming—her soul can't adapt well to the newborn shell, the regeneration of her personality has hit a bottleneck, and..."

Bard frowned: "And?"

"And her body cannot leave the vessel for now. Once she leaves, her mind will rapidly wither and decline, and her nervous system will soon fall into disorder and self-destruction. In short, the external environment is fatal to her."

"You said just now that 'the earlier stages all went smoothly'—so now you've hit a stage that isn't smooth?" Understanding dawned on Bard, and then something else seemed to strike him—he recalled the reason Rebecca had brought him here in the first place. "Wait—is it only Berna who's like this?"

"You're sharp, Mr. Bard," Rebecca said with a slight nod. "Yes, only Berna—the reason being the elves' peculiar neural structure and the 'format' of their souls. Their nervous systems are too complex and keen, possessing many special structures for sensing mana and spiritual power, and their souls are not as 'stable' as those of humans and other races. Their souls more readily form connections with realms beyond the material world, which means that once their souls have left the body, or attempt to enter an unfamiliar body, they immediately trigger a very severe rejection reaction..."

She paused there before continuing: "Both problems are severe, and the internal mechanisms are extremely complex. Neither the classical druidic spells of antiquity nor the flesh-and-blood biotechnology I now employ—'improved and strengthened' by the All Things Perish Society—can perfectly resolve them."

At last Bard understood what Rebecca had meant by "clue." His mind went to the materials the Theocratic Council had released internally, to the portion concerning the sisters Ferna and Lerna, and his eyes slowly widened: "So... back then Ferna or Lerna could never have used druidic techniques to reshape her sister's flesh, still less have controlled two bodies with one soul—unless what they used was not any technique known to mortals!"

Rebecca nodded slightly and spoke slowly: "The sisters Ferna and Lerna were Defiers from the ancient age, and according to intelligence from the Theocratic Council, these two Defier sisters suffered a terrible accident a thousand years ago... They were drawn into the realm of the divine kingdom. No one knows what they endured there, nor how one of them survived it. People know only that afterward one of the sisters returned alive to the real world, and that not long after, the one who returned, out of some 'obsession,' used the druidic techniques of the day to replicate her sister's body and controlled two bodies with a single soul, maintaining the illusion that both sisters still walked the world...

"It must be said, it is a sorrowful and moving story. The sacrifices the Defiers once made deserve the admiration of us all—yet we never noticed the anomaly behind it... Small wonder, for even in the Gondor era, replicating a human body was an extremely cutting-edge and taboo-laden undertaking. And even though the Defiers routinely did taboo things, their principal members and research directions at the time were all confined to the human race—the elves had never replicated themselves, nor undertaken any research in that direction. They are not a renegade species, nor do they much care for others doing renegade things to them, which led to..."

Rebecca did not finish. Bard took up the latter half of the sentence himself: "Which led to no one ever discovering this fact: elves cannot be replicated by biotechnology, nor can souls be parasitically housed in them—the 'sisters' Ferna deceived everyone."

"Exactly."

"Then the key question is—why did they do it? And how did they manage it?" Bard was already thinking rapidly, his brow furrowing deeper. "The Defiers at the time all believed that the one who returned alive had replicated her sister's body and used one soul to control two bodies, pretending her sister still lived. But the fact is, that's technically impossible—unless what 'they' used was not a known technique... And the Defier organization at the time already represented the technical pinnacle of all mortal nations, and the biotechnology you use now is that same pinnacle. If even you can't do it..."

He shook his head, curled his fingers and tapped his temple lightly, forcing his somewhat agitated thoughts to calm: "Lerna or Ferna used a technique no one knows of to create a body. Was the purpose of 'their' doing so really just to pretend her sister was still alive? I suddenly find myself doubting that greatly... If 'they' used knowledge beyond mortals, if 'they' suffered some kind of contamination when drawn into the divine kingdom, then this business turns horrifying."

"What's more horrifying is that this happened a thousand years ago," Rebecca suddenly put in beside him. "For a full thousand years afterward, they were Defiers, great druids inheriting the knowledge of antiquity, High Priestesses of the Church of Myriad Hells, framers and executors of many plans. Their words and deeds were indeed very strange—but even so strange, for a very long time we still regarded them as 'mortals' at least like ourselves... That is what's most horrifying."

Bard's expression turned grim on the spot.