Monsters Die When Killed

Chapter 376: Desolate Ancient Legacy

"But coincidentally, many Spirit Beasts are born with the ability of Soul Communication—so why can’t we humans learn from them?"

With those words, the Life Saint walked over to cultivation tank number 17 in group eight.

Suspended here was a young boy with a pale cyan Spirit Pearl on his forehead. The Spirit Pearl pulsed with a gentle Spiritual Light, and his eyes were tightly closed, not yet awake.

The silver-haired, middle-aged man gazed at the Spirit Pearl on the boy’s forehead and sighed softly. "Just a minor bloodline modification is all it takes to give someone the innate ability of Soul Communication, a Spiritual Power that allows for the silent and rapid exchange of vast amounts of information without words. If we were to implant a built-in chip, they could even link directly with all kinds of electronic devices."

"For learning and communication alike, it’s far superior to language. If the entire population had this ability, we could even build a massive psychic network."

Immediately after, his figure flickered, and the Life Saint appeared before cultivation tank number 4 in group three.

One could see that the humanoid silhouette floating here not only had a pale cyan Spirit Pearl on its forehead but also bore silvery Spirit Patterns all over its skin, as if they were natural.

Cang Lunzhe stared at this figure, his gaze holding a faint trace of fanaticism. "But this isn’t enough. Humanity’s capacity for learning, with the exception of a few geniuses, is far too slow for the vast majority of people."

"With the constant expansion of the modern body of knowledge and the resurgence of the Extraordinary Era, there is more and more for the younger generations to learn. It’s even likely that the pace of learning can’t keep up with the pace of new discoveries."

"Humanity’s most golden years are all spent poring over textbooks, studying things that our predecessors had already mastered and thoroughly researched."

"It’s a vicious cycle, one that drags down the speed of human progress. To help humanity take a true step forward—to become a new, stronger species in the truest sense—what we need isn’t just universal Cultivation. We need to accelerate the speed of learning and the speed of knowledge dissemination!"

The Artifice Sage listened quietly to his friend’s monologue.

Unlike him, who had chosen to merge with machines, the Life Saint had chosen another path.

The middle-aged man with long, silver hair reached out, pressing his hand against the transparent cultivation tank. Inside, the silver-haired boy, whose eyes were slowly opening, also raised his head to meet the gaze of ’himself.’

Through the information passed down in his bloodline, the boy understood what ’he’ was thinking.

So, he too smiled faintly, reached out, and pressed his hand to the inside of the tank, his palm meeting the Life Saint’s through a thin layer of tempered glass.

One large and one small, the two palms met as if crossing the barrier of time.

"I want to make humanity a Race that can also directly inherit ’knowledge’ through its bloodline. And if we want people to quickly accept the rationality of this change, then the power of the Dragon King’s Remains and the Immortal Gods must be revealed to the public in the fastest, most dramatic way possible."

From inside and outside the cultivation tank, the words were spoken in unison. The Life Saint’s tone was unshakeably firm.

’Divine Beast Bloodline: born with knowledge.’

The Spiritual Energy hidden deep within their bloodline contains a concentration of all the knowledge and information an ordinary Demon Beast needs to achieve Spirit Awakening, begin Cultivation, form a Soul, and ultimately, reach its Extraordinary adult form.

In the past, this was a unique advantage possessed only by Divine Beasts and those with a Mimic Dao inheritance. The Juvenile Form of a Divine Beast can even inherit the bloodline improvements made by its parents, optimizing with each generation and becoming stronger than the last. This is a rate of progress far faster than natural selection.

Pure-blooded humans, however, have their innate Spiritual Energy concentrated in the brain and Soul. This makes it extremely difficult to have any surplus Spiritual Energy to create such a bloodline inheritance. Forcibly doing so would only lead to the collapse of one’s own Spiritual Energy, resulting in all sorts of bizarre genetic diseases—or even diseases of the Soul.

To change this, one could only rely on the slow process of evolution through natural selection, or... artificial, accelerated modification.

The latter is precisely the New Human Modification Project that the Life Saint is now directing.

’If human wisdom cannot even be used to modify humanity itself—if our self-evolution can only rely on the random process of natural selection—then it means that the wisdom humanity is so proud of is nothing special after all.’

It is precisely because the Life Saint takes more pride in his identity as a human than anyone else that he absolutely cannot tolerate the notion that human wisdom is so limited.

"In the end, human beings are nothing more than precision carbon-based biological machines with natural factory settings. We are natural Creations with innate settings and Attributes like selfishness, the drive to survive, a preference for temperate climates, and an omnivorous diet."

"And I am a biological engineer. The knowledge I have acquired throughout my life is all for the purpose of changing these obsolete factory settings."

The American Federation is currently conducting research into biomechanical augmentation. After the existence of the Soul was proven, it became a second organ of thought. Humans now basically don’t need to worry about the tedious question of whether a mechanized version of themselves is still ’them.’ As long as the Soul remains unchanged, a person is still who they originally were.

The European Union is also undertaking a similar ’Mythic Human Project.’ They have created a specialized Soul-imprinting machine, a prototype for a rapid learning device.

In reality, none of these technologies are unique to any single region. The American Federation is also researching purely biological human modification, and the Artifice Sage’s own expertise in biomechanical augmentation has already been applied to his own body.