Chapter 244: Chapter 242: Immortality Experiment
"Was it a success?"
"It was a success."
The voices of the Fishman Researchers echoed through the school.
Mo Ling listened to their exchange, his head swimming.
’What on earth does that mean?’
It wasn’t just the Researchers; the other Fishmen also nodded along as they listened to the strange terminology and "operational" methods.
It was like a classroom where the teacher had just announced open discussion. All the other students had jumped into a heated debate, while Mo Ling alone was left standing there, completely dazed.
’What is the method for immortality?’
Mo Ling felt like he understood, and yet he didn’t.
Soon, the "classmates" in their heated discussion reached a conclusion.
"General, we request permission to conduct a test."
"Agreed. Be careful."
"Understood."
The Fishmen parted, clearing a space for the Researcher who had volunteered for the test.
He and his assistant moved away from the group, standing in a clearing surrounded by numerous hovering components.
The components continuously skimmed the Researcher’s armor, tapping it here and there like dragonflies on water. With each touch, a pulse of runes would spread across the armor’s surface like a ripple.
This process continued for a long time. Finally, the Researcher raised a hand, and his assistant stepped back.
"Begin."
At the Researcher’s command, his body began to swell and stretch just like the members of the Chali Race. Before long, he had turned into a tree.
The tree looked much like the Undying Wood the Chali Race transformed into, only it wasn’t as tall and appeared somewhat malnourished.
Mo Ling watched the Undying Wood form so quickly, feeling a little surprised.
’They’re starting the test just like that?’
He hadn’t expected the Fishman Race to start experiments so soon after supposedly grasping the secret to immortality.
What was most astonishing was that they were testing it on themselves, rather than on some other creature first.
’Aren’t they afraid of losing their bodies and ending up like the Chali Race?’
Meanwhile, the transparent eels in the sky had not yet fully dispersed. These beings had completely lost all semblance of intelligent life, just as the Chali had said: only instinct remained.
’Beings without bodies can only act on instinct. Aren’t the Fishman Race afraid?’
Soon, Mo Ling, who had been focused on the Fishman’s Undying Wood, noticed something was wrong.
’Where’s the soul?’
He waited a long time. The Undying Wood eventually stopped growing and entered a completely inert state, but no "soul" like those of the Chali appeared from the tree.
It seemed that was it.
’Did the experiment fail?’
Mo Ling felt that there was no way the Fishman Race could have mastered the technology of immortality so quickly, nor could they have perfectly replicated the Chali Race’s method.
Logically, a "treasure" that the Chali Race would protect to the death shouldn’t be so simple to obtain.
This was a mystery that touched upon the very essence of life and death.
Although the principles the Chali described were easy to understand, the technical details and key points couldn’t possibly be mastered so easily. It would surely require constant experimentation to determine the exact conditions that triggered immortality.
’As I thought, it couldn’t be that simple.’
At that moment, Mo Ling was like a failing student who refuses to believe his classmates can solve a difficult problem. And just like that student, he was about to eat his words.
After the Fishman’s body swelled and transformed, the armor he had been wearing gradually detached. It rose into the air with the other components and began to circle the tree.
Once the tree stopped growing, the components of the armor slowly reassembled into a humanoid figure beside it. Inside the suit of armor, however, there was nothing.
The runes glowed faintly. Before Mo Ling’s astonished eyes, the pilotless suit of armor raised a hand and placed it on the tree’s bark.
Then, the runes on the armor suddenly began to flow, spiraling up the arm like a tornado.
As the runes swirled upward, the back of the gauntlet should have been left bare. But where the palm met the bark, strange and mystical glowing runes materialized from thin air, rapidly crawling from the edge of the hand onto the armor.
From a distance, it looked as if the armor was drawing a stream of runes out of the tree.
Once the stream of runes was on the armor, it lowered its hand. The components of the suit began to shift and rearrange rapidly. Parts interlocked and overlapped, and the armor’s entire appearance transformed.
The transformation didn’t take long. When it was over, the armor stood still for a moment, its joints twitching erratically. Static crackled over the Fishmen’s shared communication channel.
The static sounded like a machine attempting to simulate Fishman speech. It would occasionally spit out a familiar word or two, but most of it was meaningless electronic noise.
The school of Fishmen fell silent, listening intently to the muffled sounds.
The voice was like the Chali reciting "Free and Easy Wandering" earlier—the consciousness behind it seemed utterly chaotic. It was constantly trying to convey something, but the words were nonsensical, the syntax jumbled, and the voice incredibly faint.
"Tree... immortality... eternal death..."
"Found one or more multiply defined symbols..."
"Module import... object failure..."
"Invalid key or index used on a map or sequence..."
...
’What is all this?’
Mo Ling could understand the first few words, but the vocabulary that followed just made his head spin.
It wasn’t just Mo Ling; upon hearing these strange words, the other Fishmen also began to whisper among themselves.
After a while, the sounds didn’t become any clearer. Instead, they began to repeat, echoing endlessly among the school. The suit of armor in the clearing shuddered and twitched, as if malfunctioning.
The Fishmen broke into a flurry of discussion, apparently just as confused about what was happening:
"It ran without any problems the first time, didn’t it?"
"Yeah, there were no errors before."
"Then what’s happening now? Why so many issues? Did he perform an improper operation?"
"No, I checked the logs. Standard procedure."
"Could the Chali Race have tampered with it? Hid something we don’t know about?"
"Even less likely. If they’d hidden something, we would’ve gotten a risk alert long ago. There’s no way a problem would only crop up now."
The Fishmen chattered away, debating every possibility. The sound of their arguments soon drowned out the static from the armor.
But every possibility was dismissed, one after another.
...
"What do we do now?"
The Fishmen looked at each other in dismay, staring helplessly at the malfunctioning suit of armor. Then, as one, they turned to look at Jeff.
Facing their collective gaze, Jeff remained as calm and unperturbed as ever. He hadn’t joined the discussion, merely watching silently from the sidelines as everything unfolded.
The pressure was now on him.
Jeff’s gaze remained fixed on the suit of armor.
After a long moment, he finally spoke.
"A reboot should fix it."
