The morning sun struggled to pierce the smog of industry that hung over the capital.
In the courtyard of a requisitioned prince's mansion, now the headquarters of Ernst's operations, the air smelled of sulfur, ginseng, and the ozone tang of high-voltage electronics.
Ernst stood on a balcony overlooking the training ground.
He wore his silver-grey suit, now modified with subtle silk embroidery to blend in with local customs, though the cut remained distinctly severe and Western.
Below him, one hundred children, aged six to ten, stood in perfect rows.
They were orphans of the war, scavenged from the ruin of the countryside.
They were thin but wiry, stripped to the waist, their small bodies glistening with sweat and the residue of a black medicinal paste they were required to apply three times a day.
"Group Alpha," Ernst commanded, his voice amplified by a hidden speaker system.
"Assume the 'Tortoise Breathing' stance. Hold for ten minutes. Regulate your heart rate to forty beats per minute."
The children moved in unison. It was eerie.
There was no fidgeting, no complaining, no childish whispers.
They dropped into a low crouch, their breathing slowing instantly, their eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance.
Beside Ernst stood Zhao Guohua.
The Captain had changed over the last six months.
His skin had a faint metallic sheen, a side effect of the tonic Ernst had developed for him.
He looked younger, yet more dangerous.
"They are progressing too fast," Zhao murmured, watching a six-year-old girl hold a stance that would make a Shaolin monk tremble with effort.
"It defies logic, Doctor. Muscle fibers cannot rebuild this quickly. Bones cannot calcify at this rate without breaking."
"Standard logic applies to standard biology," Ernst replied, marking a chart on his clipboard without looking up.
"We are not rewriting the laws of physics, Captain. We are merely... optimizing the fuel injection."
It had begun six months ago with a list.
When Ernst had handed the requisition form to Zhao, the Captain had thought it was a joke.
"Wooden swords? Peach wood struck by lightning? Cinnabar from the graves of monks?" Zhao had read the list, his brow furrowing.
"Dr. Ernst, the Party is trying to eradicate feudal superstition. You are asking me to become a grave robber."
"I am asking you to be a scientist," Ernst had replied coolly.
"Just because you do not understand the mechanism does not mean it is magic. A radio looks like sorcery to a caveman. Qi is just bio-electricity we haven't built a meter for yet."
The government had acquiesced. They had no choice.
The blueprints Ernst provided in exchange, designs for efficient blast furnaces, formulas for synthetic rubber, geological surveys of oil fields, were worth more than gold.
They pushed China's industrial timeline forward by thirty years overnight.
So, the deal was struck.
Now, every Friday afternoon, the "Consultation Hour" took place in the main hall of the mansion.
It was a bizarre bazaar of the occult and the scientific.
Ernst sat on a high-backed chair, looking like an emperor holding court.
Azazel sat in the shadows behind him, peeling an orange, his yellow eyes scanning the room for threats, or snacks.
A line of desperate researchers, military engineers, and agricultural experts stretched out the door.
A researcher from the Southwest Bureau stepped forward.
He held a sealed clay jar wrapped in yellow talismans that seemed to vibrate slightly.
"Dr. Ernst," the man stammered, sweat beading on his upper lip.
"This was recovered from a Miao village deep in the Yunnan forests. It is a 'Gu' King. A centipede that has devoured ten thousand other poisonous insects. The villagers say it grants invulnerability to poison."
Azazel leaned forward, sniffing the air.
"Spicy," the demon whispered.
"Smells like death and chili peppers."
Ernst adjusted his glasses. His enhanced vision zoomed in on the jar.
He could see the heat signature inside, small, intense, and radiating a biological energy that wasn't quite radiation, but close.
"Interesting," Ernst said.
"The toxin is likely a complex protein chain that forces the immune system into hyper-drive. If synthesized, it could be a universal antivenom. Or a biological weapon."
He looked at the researcher.
"Accepted. You have fifteen minutes of questioning. What is your bottleneck?"
The researcher beamed, nearly dropping the jar.
"Thank you! We are having trouble with the alloy composition for the barrel of the new Type-56 assault rifle. The heat warping after rapid fire is catastrophic."
"Add 2% chromium and reduce the carbon content during the tempering process," Ernst interrupted before the man could finish.
"And cool it in oil, not water. Next."
The line moved efficiently.
Ernst collected a veritable museum of the esoteric.
A compass that pointed to spirit energy instead of magnetic north (useful for calibrating the portal back to Skull Island).
A sword made of ancient coin currency (excellent conductivity for Chi).
A manual on "Bone Shrinking" (useful for structural compression algorithms).
Then came a Taoist priest, looking ragged and weary, escorted by two nervous soldiers.
He placed a wooden box on the table.
Inside lay a withered, black hand.
"The claw of a thousand-year-old Vampire," the priest whispered, crossing himself, a strange gesture for a Taoist, born of fear.
"It is indestructible. Fire cannot burn it. Steel cannot cut it."
Ernst picked up the hand. It was cold, heavy as lead.
He squeezed it. His own nanite-enhanced strength against the dead flesh.
The hand didn't give.
"Cellular crystallization," Ernst analyzed, his mind racing.
"The cells have effectively turned into biological diamond. If I can replicate this structure in a living host..."
He looked at the priest. "Thirty minutes. What do you need?"
"My temple," the priest said.
"The roof is collapsing. We need structural engineering advice. The timber rots too fast in the humid air."
Ernst smiled. "Use the Flying Buttress design from the Gothic era, but reinforce the timber with the lacquer formula I will write down for you. It will last a thousand years."
That night, the laboratory deep within the mansion was silent.
The hundred children were asleep in the dormitory.
Ernst stood over a microscope, analyzing a blood sample from "Subject 001", the six-year-old girl he had observed earlier.
The blood cells were glowing. Faintly, but undeniably. A soft, golden luminescence pulsed from the nucleus of the cells.
Zhao Guohua entered the lab, his footsteps heavy. He had been given access, a sign of Ernst's trust, or perhaps Ernst's arrogance.
"The government is pleased," Zhao said, standing by the door.
"The 'Super Soldier' regiment based on your training methods is operational. They can run 50 kilometers with full gear. They can punch through brick walls. They call it the 'Dragon Squad'."
"I am happy to hear it," Ernst said, not looking up.
"But," Zhao stepped closer, his voice dropping.
"They are not like your orphans. Your children... they are different. The soldiers train for twelve hours a day. Your children train for four. Yet the children are stronger. Why?"
Ernst finally looked up. The blue light of the microscope reflected in his glasses.
"Because the soldiers are building a house on sand," Ernst said cryptically.
"The children are building on rock."
"Explain."
Ernst walked over to an anatomical dummy marked with meridians.
"Traditional Martial Arts speaks of Qi. The government scientists call it 'bio-electricity.' They are both right, and both wrong."
Ernst tapped the Dan Tian point on the dummy's stomach.
"The human body is a terrible conductor. It resists the flow of energy. When your soldiers drink the medicinal soups I prescribed, the soups made from the Tiger Bone and the Ginseng, their bodies absorb maybe 5% of the active compounds. The rest is waste."
He walked over to a large, strange machine in the corner.
It looked like a radio transmitter hooked up to a glowing blue crystal shard, a remnant of a Tesseract battery.
"This," Ernst patted the machine, "is a Bio-Resonance Emitter. Every night, while the children sleep, I flood the dormitory with a specific sound frequency."
Zhao's eyes went wide.
"This frequency vibrates their cellular membranes," Ernst continued.
"It opens the gates. When they drink the medicine, they absorb 100% of it. Every drop of potential goes into the marrow, into the fascia, into the neurons."
Ernst looked at Zhao.
"The government has the recipe for the soup, Captain. But they don't have the stove to cook it on."
Zhao was silent for a long time. He struggled with the implication. Ernst was holding back the core technology.
He was giving China the shell, but keeping the pearl.
But then, he looked at Ernst's face, calm, unbothered, almost divine in his detachment.
"Why?" Zhao asked.
"Why keep it secret?"
"Because," Ernst walked back to his desk, picking up a picture of the fetus in the incubator back on Skull Island, though Zhao couldn't see what it was.
"Power without control is suicide. The government wants soldiers."
Ernst didn't tell Zhao the whole truth.
The resonance wasn't just for efficiency. It was an adaptation experiment.
Ernst was trying to solve the problem of his son.
The boy, born premature, had no immune system, no Chi.
He was a hollow cup. If Ernst poured the Phalanx energy or the Tesseract energy into him, the cup would break.
He needed to reinforce the cup.
The orphans were the prototype. Ernst was mapping how Qi cultivation could reinforce the genetic structure.
He found that by combining the Gu poison's immune-boosting proteins (diluted a thousand times), the Jiangshi fungal crystallization (to harden the bone), and the Taoist breathing techniques, he could create a "Golden Elixir" within the body.
Not a literal pill, but a biological node.
A second heart, made of energy, is located in the lower abdomen.
"Red Queen," Ernst whispered to his sub-routine avatar via his neural link.
"Status of the simulation."
"Subject 001 shows formation of a pseudo-core," the Red Queen reported in his mind.
"Her bio-energy density is 300% above human baseline. She is effectively a low-level mutant, artificially induced."
"Can the process be reversed?"
"Yes. The core can be harvested."
Ernst froze.
Harvested.
He looked at the sleeping children on the monitors. He had saved them from starvation.
He had given them strength. He had given them a future.
But to save his son, he might need to drain them. Not kill them... but strip them of the power he had given them.
Ernst clenched his fist. The metal of the desk groaned.
"No," Ernst decided.
He turned to the chemical synthesizer.
"We will synthesize the core externally. I will use the data from the children to fix his soul. A battery of life force."
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