315: Necessary Evil 2.0

"Short-sighted?" A short, cold laugh escaped from beneath Shen Mingyuan's faceplate, carrying clear mockery.

"In my view, you're the one who's truly short-sighted. You spout grand principles about the country, the future, and not falling behind... but if you peel it all back, isn't the core of everything you do just to satisfy your own desire for control and the vanity of being a so-called 'pioneer'? You founded Prometheus, provided intelligence, funding, and personnel—and then what?"

"How many living people became mere data points on your experimental reports? How many families were shattered because of your so-called 'necessary sacrifices'? What right do you have to use their blood, tears, and lives to decorate your monument of 'saving the nation and its people'?"

The light on Zhao Qifeng's compound-eye faceplate flickered rapidly. He took a sudden step forward, causing the alloy floor beneath his feet to dent slightly. His voice was high-pitched with agitation, yet carried a distorted sense of 'rationality':

"Yes! I admit, I created Prometheus! I provided everything! But if I didn't do it, what else could be done?"

"Perhaps we are bound here by so-called moral bottom lines, but what about elsewhere? Other countries, other organizations—they don't have our 'ridiculous' concerns!"

"They are conducting human experiments without any bottom line, frantically mining the potential of the evo factor! Don't talk to me about empty ideals of world peace; humanity can't even achieve peace amongst itself!"

He swung his arm violently, pointing toward the Void Realm as if surveying his domain:

"This is a brand-new racetrack! An invisible war concerning the survival and status of our race in the future!"

"If we hesitate because of so-called 'morality' and fail to follow suit, fail to conduct equally deep research—especially direct research at the human level—we will fall behind. It will be a massive lag, one we might never be able to close!"

"Don't naively tell me that relying on animal testing and simulations can catch up to the data and results others obtain directly from humans! Speed determines the advantage!"

His voice suddenly rose, filled with the weight of history and a paranoid sense of crisis:

"If you fall behind, you get beaten! Have you forgotten the taste of those words? It took centuries of humiliation, countless lives, and sacrifices for us to crawl out of the abyss!"

"Now, a new abyss, a new cliff is right before us! Are you telling me we should voluntarily withdraw from this fate-deciding race because of the word 'morality,' and then sit and wait to become fish on someone else's chopping block again?!"

He looked around at the four people before him, his chest heaving beneath his armor. His tone was resolute, carrying a tragic sense of self-sacrifice:

"Everything I have done is for this country, so that the vast majority of people on this land can continue to live in peace!"

"Yes, I sacrificed a few. I chose the dark path. But on the edge of the cliff of survival, there has never been a choice that satisfies both sides!"

"Either we fall together, or someone grabs the thorns—even with bloodied hands—to pull more people up! This world is destined to need darkness to support the light. If I don't step into this shadow, someone else will, and they might do it even worse, with even fewer limits!"

"I at least... I at least kept this 'necessary evil' controlled within a range I deem 'worth it,' for a grander, more important goal—so that more people can live with dignity in the future!"

Golden Bone's voice came through his semi-permanent mechanical exoskeleton, low and steady, yet carrying immense weight as it interrupted Zhao Qifeng's self-defense:

"Even so, you have no right to do this!"

He took a step forward, his body integrated with the exoskeleton like an immovable iron tower, his gaze piercing Zhao Qifeng like something physical.

"Your so-called 'controlled sacrifice' is nothing more than a cold calculation made from your own false 'God's-eye view'! By what right do you decide who is a 'worthy' price to be sacrificed?"

"They are flesh and blood just like you and me. They have families and friends, and the right and dignity to live a peaceful life on this land!"

"Their lives should not be cold lines of numbers on your experimental reports, and certainly not a 'necessary evil' used to ease your own moral burden!"

His words were powerful, striking the cold laboratory walls and the core of their ideological conflict:

"A path paved from the start with blood and errors, no matter where it leads, is destined to be ended by even more blood and errors! I will never allow you to continue down this path!"

"You are merely using the excuse of 'others are also doing evil' to gloss over and lower the injustice of your own actions! I believe that when facing challenges, there is more than just the choice of trampling over bottom lines."

"At least for now, we are far from the desperate straits that require the price of completely abandoning our humanity!"

The moment the words fell, Golden Bone raised his arm, and several fist-sized, smooth black metal spheres shot out from his hand. Like living things, they traced tricky arcs, closing in on Zhao Qifeng from different angles!

Zhao Qifeng's compound eyes flashed. He didn't take the hit directly; his body blurred as he dodged to the side and rear with agility far beyond an ordinary person's, sneering as he did so: "Insignificant tricks..."

However, just as those black metal spheres flew to within half a meter of him, seemingly about to miss or hit the wall, Golden Bone pressed an inconspicuous button on his exoskeleton's armguard with his thumb.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Countless long, sharp metal spikes, gleaming with the cold light of high-strength alloy, instantly popped out from the surface of the black spheres! They didn't extend randomly; controlled by some preset program, they were like blooming flowers of death, precisely covering the space Zhao Qifeng might use to dodge!

This sudden change caused Zhao Qifeng's dodging movement to abruptly stall. Several spikes grazed his armor, leaving a trail of sparks, and even more "thorn balls" slammed directly into his blocking arms and chest plate, the spikes grinding against the biological metal armor with a tooth-aching screech.

But it wasn't over yet!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The "thorn balls" that hit the armor or grazed past him internally detonated almost simultaneously!

The spheres themselves shattered, but those sharp spikes acted like shrapnel receiving a second acceleration, shooting into Zhao Qifeng's armor with even higher speed and concentrated kinetic energy!

Clang, clang, clang—Ching!

A dense series of impact sounds and a few slight piercing sounds rang out.

Most of the spikes were deflected or snapped by the solid defense of the "corroding abyss" armor, but several managed to embed themselves into the armor's joint connections or relatively thin gaps. Though they failed to cause serious damage, they acted like stubborn brambles, restricting the fluidity of his movements.

Zhao Qifeng looked down at the twisted spikes stuck in his elbow joint and side abdominal plate gaps. The light in his compound eyes flickered gloomily: "...Hmph, quite the dangerous little tricks."

He gave his body a sudden shake. The biological armor writhed slightly, squeezing out the shallowly embedded spikes, which hit the ground with crisp metallic clangs.

But his movements were noticeably more sluggish than before.

He looked up again at Golden Bone:

"Do you understand what it means to have 'merit for a thousand years, but sin in the present'? Back then, how many people saw the First Emperor, who unified the world and standardized the script and carriage gauges, as anything other than a tyrant?"

"Burning books and burying scholars, harsh laws and severe punishments! But looking back from later generations, his 'sins' laid the foundation for two thousand years of grand unification!"

"History will judge everything! In your eyes right now, I am an unpardonable sinner... but placed within the longer river of time, within the grand narrative of racial survival, what I have done might not be seen as anything other than 'necessary merit' by future generations! To leap across the cliff of evolution, someone must be the first to leave bloodied footprints!"