Chapter 1192 — Risk Assessment

In the early morning, Virodai entered Gao Song's study, and with the diffusion of the hazy holy light the whole room grew brighter; Gao Yang raised his head from the pile of documents he was working through, saw the "Saintess Princess" attended by the holy light, and felt a bracing power passing through those tendrils of light into his own body. A faint smile touched his face. "Thank you. Most effective."

"It helps relax the mind and repair the subtle damage the body accumulates through continuous work," Virodai said with a gentle smile. "You have not rested properly for a long time again, Your Majesty."

"I will arrange rest for myself, though I am afraid it will not be possible for a while yet; for now I can only balance work and rest as best I can," Gao Yang shook his head, then steered the conversation to business. "Have you read the internal document sent from Fort Sorin?"

"Rebecca's submitted report?" Virodai nodded slightly. "Yes. I came only after reading it."

"A conjecture regarding the Ferna-Leilna sisters, a chilling new view..." Gao Yang set down the pen in his hand and looked at the leader of the Defiers standing before his desk; the newly risen sun spilled through the window across her face, seeming gradually to blend with the holy light diffusing around her. "I should like to hear your thoughts."

"Deeply shocking—and at the same time possessed of a certain evidence and credibility; and that for so many years we never once noticed the suspicious aspects of this matter, nor its latent clues, shocks me no less," Virodai said without hesitation. "As leader of the Defiers, perhaps I ought to reflect on whether something has gone wrong with our internal security system and our regular personnel review procedures, but given that the old Defier organization has already dissolved, that work may be set aside for the time being."

Gao Yang blinked. "Is that your sense of humor?"

"Does it surprise you? I do make jokes—especially when the atmosphere needs a little lightening."

"Well, a fine cold joke," Gao Yang waved a hand. "But what we need now is to understand what happened to those elven twins... Rebecca's conjecture is chilling, yet I must admit it is enough to put one on guard. The earliest intelligence on those twins came from you. Do you think... is what Rebecca says possible?"

Virodai thought briefly, then spoke slowly: "First, let me make one thing clear—back then, the matter of the Ferna-Leilna sisters was not ignored by the Defier leadership; on the contrary, we paid attention to it for a very long time.

"Someone was drawn into the 'other side' of the Boundary in that accident, may have come into contact with the edge of some god's Divine Realm, and very likely suffered corruption, and then one of those individuals even returned to our reality. The risk behind such a thing is plain. The Defiers of that year may have acted recklessly, may have harbored many bold and mad schemes, but where the 'security issues' of the gods were concerned, our caution far exceeded our mad persistence.

"After that accident, the Ferna sisters underwent very strict observation and testing, including tests touching on 'divinity.' We used the Eternal Slate, we used the divine-symbols of every sect that exists in the world, we used every method to confirm whether they showed symptoms of divine contamination, and we examined their mental state as well—even after they returned to the Defier project and to their posts in the laboratory, the follow-up observation of them continued for fully half a year."

Gao Yang had not heard these details from Virodai before, and could not help but feel some surprise; at the same time he had to admit that these were indeed quite rigorous precautions and a sufficiently cautious attitude—yet this only deepened his frown. "So after such rigorous examination, you found nothing... You confirmed that the Ferna sisters had not been contaminated by divinity that year? And that there was no problem with their mental state?"

"There was of course a bit of a problem with their mental state—they had clearly already split, had they not? I told you, many Defiers of that year had something a little off about their minds. But divine contamination, certainly not," Virodai said with full certainty. "Had there been the slightest trace of contamination, they would never have been permitted to return to their posts; the Defiers had a very thorough system of oversight in that regard."

Gao Cen said nothing for a time, only habitually tapping his fingers lightly on the arm of his chair; in the slow rhythm of that tapping, he broke the silence at last after a long while: "Honestly, you should have verified the procedure by which the Ferna sisters 'manufactured' an elven body using the conditions in the laboratory. Perhaps you would have found something wrong..."

"That was indeed an oversight in our work back then, but frankly, even had we verified it, I fear we would have found nothing," Virodai shook her head. "The main body of the Defier project in those years was humanity, especially in the bioengineering branch; even the 'Divine Abomination' project took the human template as its foundation. So our 'verification' would most likely have been based on the human template as well—back then, we had not yet clearly realized how elves differ from humans at the level of the soul; and as for the differences in the nervous system, though they had already been discovered, no one had ever conducted live experiments in that regard... That would have violated Silver Elf tradition, and would not have served the aims of the Defier project either.

"Judging from the technical records available at the time, it was feasible to duplicate a human body and operate it with an external soul, so we simply overlooked the problems lurking behind the Filna sisters."

Verodai paused there, looking into Gao Song's eyes: "After all, that was a world of a thousand years ago—perhaps the Gondor Empire's technology surpassed that of most nations today, but we were still bound by the limitations of our age. Certain fields were only discovered and developed after that time."

"...You're right. There's no use in being harsh on the ancients," Gao Yun said with a faint sigh, nodding helplessly—even though in the eyes of ordinary people he himself was an 'ancient.' "I believe the series of observations and tests you ran on the Filna sisters back then were sound; there truly should be no divine contamination in them... but their danger is real. I don't know what else, besides the gods, is trying to enter our reality from the Divine Kingdom's side, but whatever it is, it had best not cross that boundary..."