Ethan admitted it frankly.
"That's right. Although I possess that world, communicating with your side isn't as simple as making a phone call. I used my authority to briefly pull the Prime Minister's consciousness into that realm, allowing him to possess a creature."
"He saw the information board I left for him, which is why you were sent to find me today."
Ethan's expression turned sharp as he began to explain the core strategic value of this mechanic.
"This is the true trump card I've prepared for the Federation."
"When we campaign in other worlds, our biggest concern is always casualties. Every soldier is someone's child, an elite trained by the nation with immense resources. But through this consciousness possession mechanism, the soldiers' physical bodies remain safe in secure bases on Earth, housed in stasis pods."
"Their consciousness will transcend dimensions and descend upon the entities within the Minecraft World."
Ethan paused, gauging Zhang's reaction. "If they fall in battle..."
"For the soldier's physical body, it will only manifest as a mental shock. They'll wake up with a severe migraine and extreme lethargy, similar to the exhaustion of staying awake for three days straight. After a period of rest, they can return to the front, fully recovered."
"A zero-casualty war?!"
Zhang's eyes widened, his breathing heavy. As a general who had led men into the meat grinder of conflict, he understood the staggering weight of those words. If death was no longer permanent, the Federation Army's tactical options would expand exponentially.
Suicide squads?
Human-wave breakthroughs?
These would no longer be tragic sacrifices of the desperate, but standard, repeatable tactics.
Zhang could no longer sit still. The decisive nature ingrained in his bones made him itch to see it for himself. "Since it's so miraculous, can I experience it now? I want to feel it—the sensation of leaving my body to control another."
Ethan was slightly surprised but nodded. "No problem. But Uncle Marcus, the first time can be disorienting. Be mentally prepared for the vertigo."
With a flick of Ethan's wrist, he tapped the air.
Buzz.
A strange ripple distorted the atmosphere, and a peculiar creature dropped onto the reinforced metal floor out of thin air.
It was a humanoid figure, nearly two meters tall, draped in a simple brown robe. Its arms were folded strangely within its sleeves across its chest. Most striking was its face: a massive, prominent nose and a thick, singular unibrow that gave it a look that was both comical and profoundly vacant.
The creature looked around at the high-tech metal walls of the interrogation room, letting out a classic, nasal hum.
"Hrrr? Huh."
It was a standard Minecraft Villager.
Zhang watched the blocky, amusingly styled creature, his lip twitching. "This... this is the vessel?"
"This is just a basic Villager. They're the safest for initial testing," Ethan said, suppressing a grin as he gestured toward a chair. "Uncle Marcus, please sit and relax. Think of it as entering a lucid dream."
Zhang sat, adjusted his breathing, and closed his eyes. Having survived hails of bullets in his youth, his psychological fortitude was immense. Within seconds, he reached a state of total calm.
"Initiating connection," Ethan murmured.
He pointed a finger at Zhang, then at the wandering Villager. Instantly, a faint white glow erupted from Zhang's brow, streaking across the room like a tether of light before merging into the Villager's form.
The Villager, which had been aimlessly bumping its oversized nose against the wall, suddenly stiffened.
A second later, it slowly turned around.
The dull, vacant eyes of the NPC were gone. In their place was a gaze that was sharp, profound, and heavy with the authority of a man used to commanding armies.
It was the gaze of General Marcus Zhang.
The Villager lowered its head, staring at its brown robes, then looked up at its own physical body slumped in the chair. The sight of oneself sitting there, unmoving, was an indescribable sensation—absurd and chilling all at once.
"This... is possession?"
A deep voice emerged from the Villager's mouth. The timbre had changed, layered with a strange, synthesized electronic hum, but the tone was unmistakably Zhang's.
He tentatively took a step.
There was no clumsiness, no lag. Instead, he felt incredibly light. It was as if he had shed his fifty-year-old body, burdened by old injuries and the weight of age, and returned to his eighteen-year-old self—a recruit brimming with boundless energy.
He walked around the room twice, even testing a few jumps. Though the blocky body made the movements look somewhat rigid, the fluid sensation of total control was a revelation.
"Good! Good! Good!" the Villager-Zhang barked. "If our men can fight like this, even our disabled veterans could reclaim their glory on a foreign battlefield."
However, when he instinctively tried to mimic the motion of aiming a rifle, he hit a wall.
Zhang snapped his arms up, his movements precise and sharp, forming the posture for cradling a standard-issue service rifle. Then, he froze.
He stared blankly at his limbs.
Though his arms moved freely and felt powerful, there were no fingers at the ends of them. No thumbs, no palms—nothing. They were just two bare, brown, rectangular blocks of flesh, looking like two loaves of bread fused to his forearms.
"This..."
Zhang's blocky unibrow furrowed. He tried to make a fist; it was impossible. He tried to wiggle his fingers, but there was no fine motor feedback at the extremities.
"Ethan, what is this?" Zhang waved his bare, blocky hands, his voice laced with confusion. "The strength is there, but these hands are solid blocks."
"Without fingers, how can my soldiers pull a trigger? How do they pull the pin on a grenade? They can't even grip a sidearm—it would just slide right off."
This was a catastrophic flaw. Without manual dexterity, even a soldier equipped with a Gatling gun couldn't press the firing stud. They couldn't even tear open a field dressing.
Watching General Zhang comically gesticulate with his "bread-loaf" hands, Ethan resisted the urge to laugh. This was a tactical hurdle that needed addressing.
"Uncle Marcus, this is a limitation of that world's fundamental physics. In that realm, most entities don't possess the fine modeling required for fingers."
He sighed. "To rewrite the creature's biological structure to grow fingers... my current System authority isn't high enough."