Chapter 105 — Nicholegg's New Identity
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
A scourge of the gods—forbidden, in violation of the rules, a betrayal of the divine will; born of divine power, yet something that never should have come into being at all. Some held that it was the negative element released by a god in pain at the moment that god lost its original heart and sank into corruption; others held that it was envoys sent to the mortal realm by the gods to punish sinners, after mortals laid sacrilegious hands on divine authority and thus provoked the wrath of the pantheon. But whichever account one followed, the word was bound up with the gods.
In the age of the Gonde Empire, faith in the gods was as flourishing as it is today. Those researchers could not possibly have used a word with such special connotations as "godfiend" to refer to the fruits of their research without good reason.
A single emergency order a thousand years ago had emptied the research facility in the Dark Mountains—and yet that order had left all locally excavated samples behind, forbidden to be taken away. So what connection was there between the "human experiments" the sphere had witnessed and the "local samples" mentioned in the emergency order?
Were the latter the raw material for the former? The energy source? Or the source of the technology?
Of course, none of this was what concerned Gao Yang most. What concerned him most was this: the samples those imperial researchers had left behind a thousand years ago—were they still in that ruin in the Dark Mountains now?
A thousand years had passed. Had those samples weathered away? Decayed? Broken down? Or had they scarcely changed at all—or worse, were they still imperceptibly influencing this region?
"You seem a little tense?" Though the metal sphere was not human, in the long course of observing humans it had learned how to analyze human emotions. "What's there to worry about? That was a research project from a thousand years ago. By now the people are all dead and the facility abandoned—what influence could it possibly have?"
"I'm worried about those samples they didn't take with them," Gao Qi said, brow furrowed. "Do you know where they put them?"
The sphere swayed left and right: "Even less idea about that. Though I was classified as a 'local sample' back then, those mage-scholars clearly weren't fools—they wouldn't have mixed me up with their real samples, so I never had any contact with the facility's true core. What—you want to dig those things out?"
Gao Yang curled his lip: "At the very least, finding them would tell us what they are."
The mountain ruins were enormous—so enormous as to be almost inconceivable. Gao Yang had already led a team inside to explore once, but he suspected that the area he had seen on that expedition was probably less than a fifth of the entire ruins. In other words, in the remaining four-fifths and more of the ruins, anything at all could be hidden!
"If you want to explore, you'd best be cautious," the metal sphere said, seeing through Gao Song's intentions, and kindly warning him. "Given the scale and danger level of that facility, it's all but impossible for a force assembled from a camp like yours to explore the whole thing."
"I know," Gao Yan nodded. "I'll act within my means. Never mind that—let's talk about you first."
The metal sphere paused: "Me? What's there to say about me?"
"Don't you know how conspicuous your whole look is in this world?" Gao Yang said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "There's simply no creature like you in this world. If you just go running out there, how would you introduce yourself to people?"
The metal sphere: "Saint Nicholegg, Egglord."
Gao Yang: "..."
"All right, I'm joking," Nicholegg slowly sank a little, until it was almost touching the ground. "Most people in this age are fools. Someone smart enough to hold a conversation, like you—genuinely rare. So go on, then—what's your plan for me?"