Chapter 159: Research

Manage the kingdom myself?

Hearing Irene’s proposal, Qin Le’s immediate reaction was that this fellow wanted to use him as a scapegoat.

The Dawn Sword symbolized absolute power, much like a nuclear weapon. It could guarantee his absolute authority, but it could not ensure the stable operation of a nation. A country was a vast, complex, and delicate machine; pure military force alone could not maintain its normal functioning.

Irene realized this. If she ascended the throne right now, relying on the foundation hastily built for her by the old man, she might be able to conquer the entire kingdom, but she wouldn't be able to achieve a thorough and complete transformation. At most, she could uproot the old foundations without being able to plant new saplings.

Moreover, his unfamiliar younger sister obviously wouldn't let her ascend the throne easily.

Qin Le fell into contemplation, neither agreeing nor refusing.

Being used as a scapegoat by her meant that the so-called management of the kingdom was just a title; without the Dawn Sword, everything was illusory. While that was true for the people of this world, it was by no means the case for a modern nation like Xuanlv.

Holding this title meant that Xuanlv could freely exploit various resources within the Dawn Kingdom and mobilize vast amounts of human and material resources.

"I manage the entire kingdom and mine this ore deposit for the kingdom's development—is there a problem?" (Shows off a double kick, a log.)

Risk and reward coexisted.

"This matter clearly exceeds my jurisdiction. You can go and discuss it with the General Staff later," Qin Le said.

"Then what is your jurisdiction?" Irene rolled her eyes.

This man was always inscrutable. Sometimes he was extremely aggressive, and other times he was as peaceful as a sheep. Ten hours out of the day, he holed up here for the better part of it, looking like he was settling down here for retirement.

His usual social circle was limited to that group of strange soldiers, the bespectacled madman, the green-haired elf, and herself. Had she not taken the initiative to come to this place, she might even have been excluded.

"Here. All the books here belong to my jurisdiction," Qin Le said with a proud expression. "Of course, there is also this computer, the Republic's only computer capable of playing games."

In the upper right corner of the room, nestled among neat rows of white-bound reports and archaic books, a computer shaped like a pillar stood quietly.

Its appearance was extremely similar to the arcade machines of his past life.

This was the Republic's newest computer, belonging to the world's most cutting-edge technology today—essentially the most rudimentary personal computer.

It had been developed as early as a year ago, but constrained by materials and mass production, it hadn't been popularized. Even the military wasn't equipped with it, possessing only a few experimental units, and this was one of them. It was a piece of black technology forcibly piled together through technical prowess; the remaining supporting hardware was not yet mature, making mass production unlikely within the next few years.

A group of pioneers in the computer field from the National Central Academy of Sciences had custom-developed this gaming console just for him. Not even his teacher would likely receive such treatment.

"Hehe, dear Mr. Qin Le, your joke makes me want to put on an overcoat." Irene leaned forward slightly, her amber eyes fixed intently on him, like a prowling leopard cat.

"Right now, I only want to know your opinion."

"I have no opinion." Qin Le shook his head, looking like someone who shouldn't be asked and couldn't make the call.

Faced with this dead salted fish of a man, Irene felt anger welling up from nowhere. "Do you love passing the buck this much? Can't you just help me out?"

This fellow clearly had no intention of helping her. If she went to negotiate with those people, heaven knew how many concessions she would have to cough up. Most importantly, it would consume time and energy. By comparison, securing a promise from the salted fish before her was much more effective.

Xuanlv handled things with extreme prudence and thoroughness, and their negotiations dragged on, but once an agreement was reached, their execution speed was terrifyingly swift.

"We're talking feelings now, are we?" Qin Le stood up from the sofa, grabbed Irene's slender hand, and pulled her up.

"Huh?" Irene was dazed, her mind instantly going blank as she allowed herself to be pulled along.

Qin Le dragged Irene over to the computer and flipped the side switch, illuminating the Republic's most advanced display screen.

Visible pixels, extremely crude colors.

[The King of Fighters '97]

"Come on, beat me and I'll help you." Qin Le pulled out the joystick he had commissioned the Central Academy of Sciences to custom-build.

To have a group of national-treasure-level scientists build a video game—looking across the entire world, he was the only one. Of course, those old men had also been full of enthusiasm. In their words, this was a paradigm-shifting revolution, and playing games on a computer was simply a scientist's romance.

"If I win, I get to draw on your face."

Dark lines covered Irene's face, and she gnashed her teeth, wishing she could strangle this bastard.

Before long, the crisp sound of buttons and crude impact sound effects echoed through the room. After playing a few rounds, Irene quickly immersed herself in it, momentarily forgetting her purpose.

Facts proved that the learning ability of transcendents was indeed far superior to that of normal people, though it was limited to pure memory. At least for now, only one person had shown astonishing comprehension skills, while the rest mostly possessed photographic memory and sharp minds.

As time passed, more and more graffiti accumulated on Irene's cold and stunning features: circles, triangles, a turtle drawn on her forehead, and even the Chinese character for "zheng" (straight/positive) drawn across her cheek.

This strong and domineering princess was completely manipulated and could only rage helplessly in place.

Her transcendent reaction speed was indeed incomparable to that of ordinary people, but this was a video game; no matter how fast she reacted, the machine couldn't keep up.

[KO!]

Looking at the two strange symbols on the screen, the graffiti-covered princess stood up abruptly, glaring fiercely at the man sitting beside her!

"Heh, too weak."

Qin Le wore a smug expression, looking as though invincibility was terribly lonely.

"You!" Irene stomped her feet in anger, cracking a floor tile into a dozen pieces.

The massive commotion caused the surrounding shadows to surge, and dark figures slowly materialized—two-meter-tall, bull-like giants.

Qin Le waved his hand, and the vanguard soldiers stepped back, vanishing into the shadows.

Irene paid no mind to these suddenly appearing individuals. She glared viciously at Qin Le and said, "I'll remember this debt. Just you wait!"

She added another entry to her mental ledger, which was basically filled almost entirely with Qin Le's "debts."

With steam practically billowing from her head, she stormed out of the study with a foul expression.

Just as she stepped out of the threshold, a voice came from behind.

"Dear Princess, you still owe me another debt."

"Get lost! I'm not paying!"

Bang!

The door slammed shut violently.

"Women really are petty." Qin Le put down the permanent marker and returned to his leather executive chair.

A tall figure stepped out from the shadows, and Fishhead spoke, "Commander, you should have agreed. This holds immense benefits for the Republic. Getting on good terms with this second princess is a guaranteed win-win."

"While she belongs to the feudal class, she has no substantive conflict of interest with us. You care far too much about formal correctness."

"That's why I had her go talk to the General Staff," Qin Le said. "Compared to mine, those guys' hearts are truly pitch-black. By the way, how is the recall of the retired vanguard soldiers going?"

"Except for those who died of illness, basically all of them have been recalled. 128 confirmed dead, 372 still alive," Fishhead replied.

"..." Qin Le fell silent for a long time. "Tell the Academy to speed things up."

"Yes."

Fishhead took two steps back and vanished into the shadow.

A faint sound came from the air.

"Move aside, move aside, why are you all crammed in here? Can't you do stealth training somewhere else?"

...

Meanwhile, at the Academy.

Researchers wearing lab coats and hazmat suits bustled about, carrying out their research.

The newly recruited monster hunters looked bewildered as they cooperated with the experiments, and a few cried out in terror.

Outside, ten helicopters slowly descended, and soldiers unloaded a large volume of collected data, various large-scale instruments, and a series of corpses.

"Over here, over here, move quickly!"

"Where is the radiation data? The energy wavelengths and magnetic field changes collected from high-tier transcendents."

"Transport all corpses into the autopsy room. The charred bodies can wait; bring in the bodies swallowed by the sand first. This is crucial; we must figure out how the target killed tens of thousands of people in an instant."

Corpses wrapped in white protective suits were carried down—some charred, some slashed by cold weapons, and many more swallowed by sand. These were the tens of thousands of ordinary people Datimont had killed with a wave of his hand earlier; they hadn't vanished, merely being buried beneath the sand.

"This sand is undergoing some kind of oxidation-like change."

"Seal them in vacuum canisters, just keep a few jars as experimental specimens."

The scene was intensely busy as everyone raced against time to transport various items brought back from the battlefield into the New World Academy.

Red lights flashed above the doors of laboratories, and researchers who had long been prepared plunged into heated research.

...

In a spacious laboratory, harsh lights illuminated every square inch, and three autopsy tables stood in the center.

Each table held a corpse. The bodies were bizarre, retaining only a vaguely human shape. Their surfaces were covered in thick sand, which adhered tightly to their flesh as if glued on.

Only vague contours of faces were visible, with all seven facial orifices completely blocked.

A group of people wearing surgical protective gear and face masks surrounded the three tables, conducting research. The vast majority of these people were bald mutants, alongside an elf and a winged fairy.

Among the crowd of bald mutants, a young and beautiful girl like Emuya stood out exceptionally. Even if she weren't here, standing anywhere else would attract countless gazes.

After all, her looks were right there—a face that even other girls would beg for a chance with, her only flaw being that she was a tiny bit flat-chested.

Emuya took off her gloves, scraped a bit of sand from the surface of a corpse, her eyes shimmering as she observed it for a long time.

Finally, she delivered her verdict: "This sand was formed by some kind of spell condensation, not true sand."

"Ms. Emuya, did the spell-formed sand appear out of thin air, and why did the oxidation reaction occur?"

Someone immediately raised these two sharp and highly unusual questions.

"Spells are a distortion of objective spirituality. When power reaches a certain level, it is indeed possible to create objects out of thin air, but this clearly isn't that. To put it simply, these spells twist certain things similar to sand—like soil and rock—into sand," Emuya replied.

"And this spell is imbued with a strange corrosive force, along with a trace of faint spiritual pollution."

Recording the data, the chief autopsy expert walked to the front.

The expert felt somewhat speechless internally. He had originally thought he'd be performing surgery on some VIP, only to end up in this bizarre world performing surgery on a corpse.

He was, after all, rated as one of the top surgeons in the Republic, yet here he was doing an autopsy.

Complaints aside, the surgeon actually harbored no dissatisfaction; the grandmasters surrounding him all ranked higher than him in status.

They were either leaders in various fields, recipients of Republic medals, national medical treasures, or pillars of the Republic. Compared to them, he really wasn't much.

The sharp scalpel sliced through the thick layer of sand and the flesh hidden beneath it.

Subcutaneous fat, blood.

Slicing the torso completely open, pulling it apart with forceps and fixing it in place, the internal organs came into full view.

Everything looked normal.

"Lungs and respiratory tract are abnormally swollen."

Li Zhiyuan narrowed his eyes, a hypothesis already forming in his mind. "Cut it open."

The surgeon made a small incision in the respiratory tract, and tiny grains of sand poured out from inside.

"This..."

Even though he had mentally prepared himself beforehand, the surgeon was still startled.

If his guess was correct, the swollen respiratory tract and lungs were likely packed with sand. How had this sand gotten inside?

As the three corpses were fully dissected, the scientists verified their hypothesis.

When they first saw the corpses, they had suspected that the cause of death was likely sand entering the body and blocking the respiratory system, leading to asphyxiation.

Through dissection, the facts proved their conjecture.

That attack capable of instantly killing tens of thousands of people wasn't actually as terrifying or mystical as imagined. Put simply, it involved controlling sand to forcefully burrow into human bodies, causing death.

Many things seemed terrifying, but once their principles were figured out, they weren't so frightening after all. It was much like science; without understanding mathematics, physics, and chemistry, every corner held miracles.

Li Zhiyuan stroked his chin and said, "It seems the power evaluation for high-tier transcendents can be lowered slightly. I told you long ago not to make such a fuss."

"Killing tens of thousands of people in an instant sounds terrifying, but upon closer scrutiny, we can actually do it too—and cleaner and prettier than he did. In ancient dense military formations, assuming each person is separated by sixty centimeters, tens of thousands of people would span no more than eight hundred meters. A high-yield double-kick has a kill radius of eight hundred meters and an effective killing range against humans of at least one thousand meters."

When they first received the news, the base's higher-ups had been terrified.

Killing tens of thousands of people in an instant—was the power of high-tier transcendents truly this terrifying? If they launched a sneak attack on the base, wouldn't everyone be wiped out?

"We were indeed making a bit too much of a fuss, but high-tier powerhouses still pose a massive threat to us. We must have countermeasures against them."

"That's why I said we must keep Olina here."

"Rather than relying on others, we should rely on technology. Through various experiments, the thermal radiation emitted by high-tier transcendents is hundreds of times that of ordinary people; we can completely rely on infrared tracking."

"Moving at supersonic speeds while presenting such a small target makes the missile hit rate almost zero."

"Use air-to-air tracking missiles, build a sixty-four-barrel anti-aircraft gun, load them all with fighter-jet-killing air-to-air missiles, and build a dozen of them. Fire six or seven hundred guided tracking missiles in an instant—I refuse to believe they can withstand that."

"Exactly. Science is our most powerful weapon, entirely a match for transcendence. Besides, not every transcendent can break the sound barrier. Take Datimont alone; ordinary anti-air missiles could easily hit him."

Before they knew it, the bald mutants were arguing again. Li Zhiyuan shook his head helplessly, choosing not to enter the fray.

Both sides had valid points, but he wanted all of it.

Also, air-to-air missile thermal guidance seemed like a decent idea.