The golden torrent, divine and vast, seemed to contain boundless creative power as it instantly enveloped the brain suspended in mid-air.
Bai Yuekui's pupils suddenly shrank.
She knew Ian probably wouldn't do anything malicious, but her body still tensed up involuntarily.
However, under the horrified gazes of the crowd, the fragile brain was not destroyed. Instead, it began to absorb the golden light.
Countless golden neurons, finer than strands of hair, extended wildly from the base of the brain like vines.
They intertwined and sketched in the void, first constructing a complete set of neural pathways that emitted a faint glow.
Following that, pristine white bones grew from within the pathways.
Immediately after, bright red muscle fibers and blood vessels coiled around the bones.
Finally, skin covered it all. The entire process lacked even a hint of gore; rather, it was filled with a certain sacred and eerie beauty.
It was as if a supreme deity was using light as a brush and the void as a canvas to trace the miracle of life.
The moment a complete throat and vocal cords were constructed, a slightly magnetic young man's voice echoed in the silent cavern.
"Cough, cough... Holy shit! I can talk!"
The voice carried the relief of surviving a disaster, along with a trace of bewilderment.
"Am I growing a neck? It's so itchy. Can someone scratch it for me?"
In just a few minutes, a young male body enveloped in golden light floated in mid-air.
With a flash of light, a well-fitted blue T-shirt and jeans appeared out of thin air, clothing him.
As the golden light dissipated, he slowly landed on the ground.
He was a handsome young man with sharp eyebrows and bright eyes. His facial contours were seventy percent similar to Bai Yuekui's, yet more defined and three-dimensional.
He subconsciously moved his new limbs. When he saw his handsome face reflected on the smooth alloy wall nearby, his demeanor shifted.
He instantly lost his previous liveliness and became completely quiet.
He cleared his throat. The frivolous aura in his voice was swept away, replaced by a feigned, deep melancholy.
He slowly turned around, looking up at the cracked ceiling of the cavern at a forty-five-degree angle, as if pondering the mysteries of the universe and the true meaning of life.
"..."
Xia Dou opened her mouth wide, looking at the posing man in utter confusion. 'What is he looking at up there?'
Meanwhile, Bai Yuekui's pupils contracted violently.
Witnessing such a miracle, for the first time, she began to believe the absurd claims Ian had made earlier about the Imperium.
Perhaps those weren't Ian's excuses, but rather... facts she simply couldn't comprehend.
Rumble—!
Right at that moment, the seemingly dead Mana Giant in the center acted as if it were drawn by this external, supreme Life Source Essence.
It fell into an unprecedented frenzy!
Countless fleshy tubes twitched and expanded madly. The entire underground cavern shook violently, and massive boulders plummeted from the dome, making it seem as though the place would completely collapse at any second.
"Not good! It's losing control!" Bai Yuekui's expression changed drastically.
Just then, a slender figure in a black robe slowly walked out from the shadows of the entrance they had come through.
His pace was steady, completely ignoring the terrifying, earth-shattering scene around him, as if he were merely taking a stroll in his own backyard.
He walked up to the group and, under everyone's guarded gazes, slowly pulled back his hood.
It was a face strikingly similar to Marc's, yet paler and more gaunt, with an inhuman indifference in his eyes.
"Hello, Marc," he said.
His gaze locked directly onto Marc.
The moment he saw that face, Marc felt as if he had been struck by lightning. He clutched his head and fell to his knees in agony.
His head throbbed with a splitting pain, as if his soul were being torn in half.
An inseparable bloodline connection—a mournful cry originating from the very depths of his life—made him instantly realize the other party's identity.
"Long time no see, Bai Yuekui."
"The rest of you probably don't know me, so allow me to introduce myself."
The man scanned the room, his voice so calm it lacked even a single ripple.
"You may call me Lusheng."
"I am the life born from the left brain of this 'Mana Giant'. I am the 'Lord of Light and Shadow' that Charles speaks of."
His gaze returned to Marc, the corners of his mouth curling up into a smirk.
"Of course, I am also the Primarch of you, this 'clone'."
"I am the bridge of communication between the Mana Ecology and humanity."
A life born from the left brain of the Mana Giant?
A bridge of communication for the Mana Ecology?
These words plunged the rest of the group, who had no idea who Lusheng was, into absolute shock.
Lusheng's gaze finally bypassed everyone else and fixed intensely upon Ian.
Or rather, it was the Mana Ecology staring at Ian through his eyes.
In those eyes, there was no fear and no anger. There was only the most primal, maddening greed and desire—the kind that would erupt from someone who had starved for billions of years suddenly laying eyes on a mountain of food!
That was the hope to break free from its current predicament and achieve ultimate evolution!
Lusheng spoke again.
But this time, two completely overlapping voices emerged.
One belonged to him—cold and indifferent.
The other was ancient, grand, and heavy, as if echoing from the very core of the planet, carrying the weight of endless eras.
"Humans... and that... outsider."
The overlapping voices reverberated through the violently shaking cavern like the whispers of a god.
Lusheng's gaze swept over everyone present before finally settling on Bai Yuekui and Ian.
"Do you wish to know the truth of this world?"
"Do you wish to know why the Pola Beasts were born, and why humanity is marching toward the apocalypse?"
Without waiting for anyone to answer, that grand voice provided the answer with a hint of mockery.
"All of this is something you humans brought upon yourselves!"
Through Lusheng's mouth, the grand voice began to recount the long-buried "truth."
"A century ago, your ancestors committed an unforgivable sin in their pursuit of illusory immortality."
"They madly intercepted the planet's life source—what you call 'souls'—and vainly attempted to use mortal shells to eternally imprison this energy that was meant to circulate through nature."
"The planet's Source Essence cycle was broken. The ecology lost its balance, the earth began to wither, and all things were on the verge of fading away."
Lusheng's voice paused, his eyes turning ice-cold.
"The Pola Beasts are not monsters."
"They are the 'immune cells' born by this planet to recover the Source Essence you stole and lost control of. They exist to cleanse the virus known as 'humanity' and carry out self-repair."
These words exploded in the minds of Marc, Ran Bing, and Xia Dou like a world-shattering thunderclap.
Influenced by the mysterious fluctuations radiating from Lusheng and the Mana Giant, the group fell into deep self-doubt.
Could it be that the "monsters" they had fought so desperately against, sacrificing everything to resist...
...were actually the "justice" of this world, of this planet?
Then what did that make them—the humans who struggled to survive and rose up in rebellion?
Were they truly thieves who had stolen life energy?
Were they truly a virus destroying the ecological balance?
Marc's body stopped trembling. He slowly raised his head, his eyes filled with an unprecedented sense of chaos and collapse.
Was everything they had fought for wrong from the very beginning?