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Book 8: Chapter 167: Untalented (2)

Dyon smiled. He refrained from saying something sarcastic about how he thought they didn’t want to participate in his wars. He wasn’t the type of individual to stomp on the ideals of others, especially when those ideals were so noble and pure.

He had to admit, he was taking advantage of them. Their one weakness was their love for their research. Him giving them successive breakthroughs and helping them shatter walls that had stalled them for so long was akin to him luring children with candy.

But, Dyon knew that as a leader with the hopes and dreams of so many on his shoulders, he didn’t have the luxury of not being shameless.

“How will you make it better?”

“If what you’ve explained is accurate, the energy expenditure of the Mortal Network is excessive. What your world calls… ‘coding language’, I believe is what you said it was named, isn’t as efficient as an array-based approach. If you used formation theory as your ‘software’, the cost of upkeep would plummet to less than 10% of what it currently is, we can also make it faster as well.”

Dyon listened silently, nodding his head.

What Lei wanted to do was the approach Dyon and Clara wanted to take initially. The problem was that the husband-wife couple didn’t have the time to research the completely new field of formation theory it would take to construct such a Network. So, they relied on their mortal world knowledge, making use of Dyon’s former title as a coding genius of his mortal world instead.

The issue with that approach was that it was inefficient. As a result, Clara was at a disadvantage in her negotiations with the Sapientia. Since they had to spend so much capital to start and maintain the Network, Clara was only able to corner off 30% of the shares despite being its sole inventor.

However, Lei and her team of researchers had already spent countless millennia developing this branch of formation theory for the sake of their hive mind. If they implemented their findings, the Mortal Alliance would be able to sustain the maintenance and growth of the Mortal Network alone.

“I’m not sure how I feel about your goal of creating an artificial intelligence… If I’m being honest, I’d prefer you to focus on battle puppets. I believe your research would be excellent in this field.”

Lei’s eyes dim as a bitter smile spread across her lips. “That’s what the Sapientia said too… Though they didn’t say anything about this ‘artificial intelligence’ you speak of.”

“I don’t want to spread baseless fears to you. But, in the case that you do create something surpassing us living creatures, what reason would it have for us? Something that can learn, think and adapt on a plane higher than we do… is too dangerous.”

Dyon scoffed at fears some had toward AI on his home world, but in the martial world, the stakes and scale were much different. It was an especially scary thought when one realized that the formation theory Lei spent her whole life studying were the very same formations hidden within the body humans. This was no longer ‘coding’… It was reconstructing a living being.

Dyon knew better than anyone else. Formation theory, magic, and runic vein theory were all created by studying the body of living beings. Using it as a base to create a higher life form… Was dangerous.

Lei’s eyes widened. This thought… It had never crossed her mind. Humans, especially cultivators, were too full of themselves to ever think about this reality. They’d never believe that a mere researcher who artificially boosted her cultivation could ever create something that would threaten them… But could it be that she was creating something far worse than the wars she hated so much?

“This is Researcher Fara. He specializes in what he calls the study of living beings, specifically what he calls ‘life units’, what he believes is the smallest relevant aspect of a living being. He believes that this life unit contains all of the information one would need to completely reconstruct a person or beast.

“He theorizes that one can escape their lifespan by continuously reconstructing their body again and again from these ‘life units’ because the soul doesn’t seem to face the same limits as the body does. Theoretically, you could also take the life unit of another and enter a far better body than your own.”

Dyon looked toward Fara, a slight wrinkle in his brow.

Dyon could tell the problem Fara faced. He could reconstruct a body, but the only thing capable of breathing life into this body was a soul. But, this definitely wasn’t all…

“What is limiting your research?” Dyon’s gaze seemed to pierce through Fara, causing him to tremble.

“T-this… Me and my team see a disparity between the way life units react during a living being’s embryonic stages of life and afterward. We believe that the key to reconstructing bodies is by forcing mature life units to act like they once did at the very beginning of their lives.”

“Stem cells…” Dyon muttered.

In his world, stem cell research was one of the most promising fields in medicine. Though, there were many ethical debates surrounding the topic, but, still, this first truth was undoubtedly the reality.

But what made Dyon’s heart palpitate was that the very thing Fara was struggling with now… His mortal world had already accomplished. Changing a mature ‘life unit’, or what Dyon’s people called a cell, into an immature ‘life unit’, or stem or pluripotent cell, was something Dyon’s mortal world had accomplished hundreds of years ago.

[Author’s Note: I’ve alluded to it a lot before, but I think this is the most obvious example of it: Dyon’s world is far more advanced than our own (ie the storage wrist bands he entered Focus Academy with, his hover board, or Sarid’s hover board now I guess, etc etc). For those curious, we succeeded in turning adult cells into stem cells back in 2012].

However, they never attempted to reconstruct entire bodies due to the ethical blockades. But… It was a massive step forward in healing injuries.

“Tell me more about your research.”