142: Chapter 142 The Wild Fantasy of Artificial Spiritual Roots

The dry, buzzing sound of an old cooling fan came from deep within the console.

The waterfall of green data on the dust-covered crystal screen came to an abrupt halt. The smell of machine oil and formalin permeating the air seemed to freeze at this moment.

"Master, the underlying logs have been exported. Some sectors are physically damaged, so only fragments could be retrieved."

The mechanical spider lay on the operation panel, the faint blue light points on its eight articulated limbs rhythmically pulsing as it projected the compiled footage directly into the Void Realm in front of Gu Shen.

Gu Shen stood with his hands behind his back, his dark golden face bathed in the glowing green holographic light, coldly watching this final testament left behind by the Wasteland civilization.

There was no sound, only silent three-dimensional images and jumping text.

The first image was of a huge cylindrical pool, the water churning with a heart-stopping, faint blue glow—the same source as the mutated wood marrow Gu Shen had extracted on the 4th Floor Above Ground, yet far more violent and intense; it was pure, high-energy radioactive waste liquid.

At the edge of the frame stood a group of humans in heavy protective suits. They were pushing a naked, thin youth into the faint blue pool.

Text annotations appeared beside it:

[New Calendar Year 1, surface temperature 5,000 degrees, vitrified. We have lost the sun.]

[Isotope infiltration experiment, 114th attempt. Volunteer: Chief Engineer Li Wenxing. Objective: Forcefully implant high-energy particles into the human spinal cord, rewriting the underlying logic of carbon-based life.]

Gu Shen's gaze tightened.

In the footage, the moment the youth fell into the faint blue pool, his skin and flesh were scorched as if by an invisible raging fire, peeling away and dissolving in large patches. He opened his mouth in the water, twisting in agony, but those faint blue high-energy liquids were boring deep into his bone marrow through his festering pores.

[Record: Strong rejection reaction. High temperature led to organ failure. But... the third pair of chromosome telomeres successfully captured the radioactive energy! The cells achieved a short-magnitude energy internal circulation!]

[He died. But he proved that this path is viable.]

The scene cut.

This time, it was no longer an experiment on a living person, but perspective views of deformed human bodies held up by precision machinery.

[We have no retreat. Since we cannot resist the radiation, we shall become the radiation itself.]

[Project Codename: Ascension Project.]

[Theoretical basis: Strip the extremophile bacteria capable of absorbing radiation from mutated plants, extract their antibody genes, and use nanomachines as a bridge to suture them into human DNA. As long as the bone marrow can continuously fission high-energy particles, the human body will become a perpetual, miniature reactor.]

[We have named this new gene chain, which is forcefully implanted and capable of absorbing and utilizing destructive energy, the 'Key of God'.]

Gu Shen watched the artificial gene chain in the projection, flickering with blue electric arcs and coiled deep within the human spine.

He took half a step forward, his breath pausing imperceptibly at this moment.

"Key of God..."

A cold, sharp arc pulled at the corner of Gu Shen's mouth as he whispered: "What Key of God. What you are creating is clearly a 'Spiritual Root'."

In the Great Yu Cultivation World, if a Mortal lacks a Spiritual Root, they can never draw Qi into their body for their entire life. A Spiritual Root is the only pass to steal Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.

Yet the pioneers of this Wasteland, in a desperate situation where Spiritual Qi was severed and nuclear contamination was everywhere, did not pray for the grace of the Heavenly Dao. Instead, they sliced open their own flesh and blood, using the most brutal, bloody physical means to shove nuclear radiation and mechanical gears into their bone marrow, forcefully welding an "artificial Spiritual Root" onto themselves!

Since they had no Spiritual Qi, they devoured nuclear energy; since they had no Spiritual Root, they used steel and mutated bacterial colonies to create one!

Gu Shen's eyes reflected the painful, twisted afterimages of those test subjects, yet a sense of unspeakable resonance and chill surged in his heart.

The Laws of the two worlds collided with a boom at this moment.

"Cultivators of Great Yu conform to the Heavenly Dao, plundering vegetation, Essence Spirits, and rare treasures of Heaven and Earth to seek Foundation Establishment and longevity; the Mortals of this Wasteland resist the apocalypse, dismembering Mutant Matriarchs and extracting toxic nuclear water, attempting to achieve Ascension with their Physical Body."

"Different paths, same destination."

Gu Shen reached out, his fingertips passing through the blue-glowing artificial spine in the holographic projection.

"But you failed."

As Gu Shen's words fell, the projected image turned into extreme chaos.

[Warning! Key of God energy overflow! Gene chain collapse!]

[Test subjects 092 to 417 have undergone malignant mutation! Their brains could not withstand the scorching of nuclear energy; their sanity evaporated, leaving only the instinct to feed and kill!]

[Isolation doors breached... Medical Zone fallen... The Thirteenth Floor main control brain is attempting to cut off power...]

The screen came to an abrupt halt amidst a screen full of blood-red "ERROR".

Those pustule-covered monsters wandering in the biochemical purgatory of the third level, and that Mutant Matriarch that had almost driven Gu Shen into a desperate situation, were all defective products left behind by this arrogant "God-making" campaign.

"A Mortal body, vainly attempting to forcefully bear the mighty power of the Dao, will naturally be backlashed by the power into a mindless lump of flesh."

Gu Shen withdrew his hand, held it behind his back, and watched this dusty tragedy with cold eyes.

But he did not mock the arrogance of these Wasteland Mortals.

On the contrary, this incomplete Ascension Project file was like a sharp scalpel, ruthlessly dissecting the inherent cognition of a "Great Yu Cultivator" deep within Gu Shen's heart.

"Is the Foundation Establishment of the Cultivation World any more brilliant than this?"

Gu Shen's thoughts were like cold blades, stripping away the surface layer by layer.

When Great Yu Cultivators undergo Foundation Establishment, they must seek rare treasures of Heaven and Earth, swallow the treasures into their Dantian, and use their Laws as soil to forge a Dao foundation.

"If the rare treasures of Heaven and Earth are fragments of the Origin of this world... if I swallow them into my body and make them my own, on the surface, it looks like I have plundered Heaven and Earth."

Deep in Gu Shen's eyes, a bone-chilling coldness welled up.

"But think about it the other way. If I use the things of Heaven and Earth to establish my foundation, aren't my magic power, my path of the Dao, and my life, aging, sickness, and death all completely bound to the Laws of this world?"

"Once I swallow the bait of Heaven and Earth, I become a fish in the net of the Heavenly Dao."

"When the decline of Heaven arrives and Spiritual Qi dries up, high-level Cultivators set up the White Bone Forest blood array to harvest low-level Loose Cultivators, just like farmers harvesting crops in the field. Because the Spiritual Qi we Cultivate and the Dao foundation we build belong to this world, to those high and mighty herders!"

This feeling of suffocation, being tightly bound by invisible shackles, caused the dark golden bones in Gu Shen's body to emit a dull clang.

He did not Cultivate the ancient methods; he knew well the dangers of "defying the principles of Heaven and Earth."

"These lunatics of the Wasteland failed because they lacked the protection of the 'Divine Sense' of the Cultivation World, unable to suppress the nuclear energy backlash on their brains; while the Cultivators of the Cultivation World failed because they were too obedient to the Heavenly Dao, handing over their lives to the 'rare treasures of Heaven and Earth'."

Gu Shen watched the green light on the screen gradually fade, and the ambition in his heart grew wildly like poison ivy breaking through the soil.

"Since the rare treasures of the Heavenly Dao are a trap, and the nuclear energy of the Wasteland easily causes mutation."

"Then why can't I, Gu Shen, jump out of the chessboard?"

"I have the nuclear energy and the mutated Origin of a Wasteland world as materials, and I have the Formation and Divine Sense of the Great Yu Cultivation World as a bridge. The resources of two worlds converge in my hands..."

Gu Shen clenched his fists tightly.

"I do not want the rare treasures of Heaven and Earth that others have chewed over in this Cultivation World!"

"I will use the miniature fusion thunder pool on the Thirteenth Floor of the Wasteland, combined with the Formation Dao of the Cultivation World, to personally forge a 'Dual-World Dao Foundation' that exists outside the Three Realms and is not within the Five Elements!"

Click.

Just as Gu Shen's Dao Heart underwent a heaven-shaking transformation.

The data screen that had stopped scrolling suddenly erupted into blinding crimson without warning.

This red light was no longer an illusory projection, but a tangible, blinding light source that illuminated the entire 4th Floor Above Ground hall as if it were a sea of blood.

"Zzz... Zzz..."

Deep within the console, a tooth-aching sound of electrical friction came from the speaker.

"Master! Disconnect! Disconnect the connection quickly!"

The eight legs of the mechanical spider scraped frantically on the panel, the blue light on its detector probe forcibly pushed to red. "Thirteenth Floor! That thing sensed my action of retrieving the core files, and it is tracing back along the physical line!"

"It is locking the overload protection valve of this machine; it wants to detonate the spare energy storage capacitors here and take us down with it!"

The metal casing under the console turned crimson at a visible speed, the high temperature causing the dust in the air to instantly combust.

Gu Shen's thoughts instantly pulled away from the deduction of the Dao, his eyes cold and hard as iron.

There was not a shred of panic.

"Withdraw."

He grabbed the mechanical spider and pulled it back into his arms.

Black light swirled under his feet, and his entire figure turned into an afterimage, retreating violently toward the outside of the hall.

Just as Gu Shen retreated ten zhang.

Boom!

The central console that carried the top-secret files of the "Ascension Project", under the remote control of the unknown existence on the Thirteenth Floor, exploded.

An orange-red fireball swallowed most of the ruins.

Gu Shen stood at the edge of the fire, feeling the scorching heat wave rushing toward him, his gaze piercing through the thick smoke, coldly looking at the central console.

"The thunder pool on the Thirteenth Floor, I have claimed it. Even the Heavenly Dao cannot keep it; I said so!"