Chapter 240 — The Truth
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
Camille, meanwhile, passed through the chamber and drifted onward: "I do not know the whole of the plan, but I learned that divine power is the only thing that might withstand the magic tide and that the only way for humanity to survive it is to change our very form of life. After decades of research, the pioneers had found a way to extract energy from the flesh of the gods, and my team took it a step further: we would inject the divine genetic factors into human cells, thereby transforming human nature at the level of basic biological structure.
"Through this method, humanity might carry that 'divine power' within itself. Even the faintest trace of it would bring hope against the magic tide. In the laboratories 'outside,' I cultivated the first generation of test subjects. I named them 'Godspawn'..."
"So that's how it was..." Gao Yang muttered under his breath.
Camille did not catch it: "What?"
"No, it's not important," Gao Yang said, looking at this ancient mana spirit. "And then? Did the Godspawn succeed?"
"In the end, yes. We produced a stable genetic factor. It could safely bind with human cells and be passed down through the generations. Humans carrying the factor would not die of malignant mutation as the first-generation 'Godspawn' did; instead, when the magic tide arrived, they could undergo beneficial rapid mutation—mutating and adapting to the new environment of the magic tide before the body perished... in theory."
Camille led Gao Yang and the others to the next chamber. There they saw rows of neatly arranged culture vessels, all perfectly preserved, and in the translucent biomass solution, human specimens from different periods were steeped. The earliest specimens were enormous corpses swollen all over, distorted crystals creeping across their surfaces; but the further along, the more stable the specimens became, until in the final vessel there was almost a healthy human being.
"You said 'in theory'?" Gao Yang looked at Camille floating before them, a conjecture quietly forming in his mind. "You never tested it?"
"We could not," Camille halted. "All data concerning the magic tide could only be simulated. We used the Deep Blue Well to simulate it, but what the true magic tide is like... perhaps only the gods know. And we were defying the gods."
With that, this ancient mana spirit led them onward, and Gao Yang noticed they were heading toward the upper levels: this facility had a third tier.
"Once the final Godspawn was complete, the facility's mission came to an end. The personnel withdrew, and the records and samples were sent back to the imperial capital. But not everyone withdrew," Camille's voice echoed through the empty corridors, hollow as a ghost's. "We were not certain the Godspawn could truly withstand the magic tide, nor whether new catastrophes might yet come to destroy humanity. So a group of people were chosen as 'seeds.' The seeds were sealed in the deepest part of this facility, sealed within a separate space isolated from the present world. If the 'outside world' was truly destroyed, then at least we would have left humanity one last thread of hope."
"The ones we saw in the great hall..." Heddy murmured to herself, then raised her voice. "You intended to rebuild human society from a few hundred people?"
"No, we were more than a few hundred," Camille seemed to smile, though all his expressions were tangled in the disordered, hazy arcane sparks. He stopped before a great door at the end of the corridor. "Behind this door lies the Stasis Hall. There were originally sixty thousand people within."
"Sixty thousand?!" Heddy's eyes went wide, but an instant later she grasped the crucial word in Camille's sentence. "You said... originally?"
"Yes. Originally."
Camille opened the great door. As the heavy, ancient isolation door slowly swung open, the scene within the Stasis Hall was revealed to them all.
Everyone was struck dumb with astonishment.