Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1345: Return of the Ancestor

"How long does it take for the Ancestor’s Spirit to completely dissipate?" Seeing that the resurrection process was about to begin, I asked this crucial question.

"Uncertain," Taville replied calmly, "because no soul reactions have been detected so far. Even if the Ancestor’s Spirit still exists, it is in an unmeasurable state—there’s nothing I can infer about something that can’t be measured. However, in the most ideal situation, if the Ancestor’s Spirit is on the unmeasurable critical point, we have at most twenty-four hours."

Twenty-four hours... Within this short day, we have to try all possible resurrection methods. If unsuccessful, then even reviving the Ancestor’s body afterward would be meaningless: this is indeed an urgent matter.

Sandora and Taville had already explained all the problems they encountered and may encounter during the resurrection plan to me. I saw they were ready to start and couldn’t help asking, "So, is there anything I can help with?"

I thought there must be a reason why Sandora called me over so hurriedly, but Sandora thought for a moment: "No—I just wanted you to watch. Whether the first experiment succeeds or not, it’s a historic moment, and you should be a witness..."

I: "..."

"Of course, there’s one more thing. If you’re nearby, I’ll feel a bit more at ease."

Only then did I let out a sigh of relief.

Of course, the first experiment couldn’t involve all the Ancestors’ remains; only one of them would be used for resurrection, leaving a chance for another attempt if it failed. Naturally, if possible, everyone hopes to succeed on the first try. After all, knowing the many troubles that might arise in the resurrection process, I believe that if the first attempt fails, no number of subsequent tries will likely find another viable solution.

"Equipment team is ready, each team check the project segment they’re in charge of in sequence," Taville swiftly operated on the crystal panel beside the test bench, giving instructions to her peripheral assistants. Meanwhile, a large group of mass projections she controlled began activating a pile of equipment in the laboratory whose use I couldn’t discern, "We’re on a tight schedule, I demand seamless connection for each step."

Sandora pulled me back a few steps: now this is the experts’ domain, laymen shouldn’t interfere with the professionals’ work.

From this position, I could exactly see the whole laboratory setup. I could see that a large number of recording and analysis devices were already online, complex holographic displays flickering softly, appearing one after another above those devices, each showing the status of the equipment used for resurrection and the monitoring of the Ancestor’s remains. Above the platform where the Ancestor’s remains were placed, there was an image suspended in mid-air, a body scan image of the remains, along with tissue activity and soul monitoring: the latter was now a straight line, without any fluctuation.

Taville’s voice was calm to the point of being mechanical, the only human sound amidst the tense and bustling laboratory: "Material recombination equipment online, disaster incident response team on standby, body reconstruction ready... Laboratory mainframe, how are the energy systems?"

"Mainframe reporting... Energy system inspection complete, twelve sets of backup energy available, all redundant systems seamlessly switched successfully simulated, this laboratory can ensure energy supply or switch to backup systems for core equipment under any circumstances."

I felt Sandora squeeze my hand, then heard her gentle whisper through the spiritual connection: "Normal resurrection procedures always start by locating the target’s soul, then proceed with reconstructing the body. If necessary, the body can even be discarded and replaced with a new one. But this time, we can only proceed in the reverse order: reviving the body first, and whether this body has a soul will be up to fate..."

I squeezed Sandora’s hand as well, reassuring her: "I don’t understand these things too well, but I believe it will succeed."

At this point, Taville had completed all the preliminary work. She checked the operational status of the test platform one last time and then ordered the activation of the circular light tube above the room... fine, its technical name is the "Information Evolution Restart Device," this device will break the stasis state of the material by rebooting all information within its range—we still don’t know how this stasis state appeared, but Taville knows how it can be removed, and that’s enough.

I didn’t feel anything when the device was activated, just heard a deep humming resound through the laboratory, maybe I did feel something? It felt as if the time I experienced had a cut segment or lost a second? Anyway, it was just a moment, and after that, the resurrection process began, as if everyone in the laboratory had resumed from a still frame, instantly operating at high speed.

A vertical light curtain rose from beneath the test platform, slowly scanning the Ancestor’s remains from head to foot and then back. The monitoring image above the platform displayed the damage status of the tissues. The Ancestor’s body was intact without fatal injuries. His death was caused by the ultra-low temperature and massive radiation from a hibernation chamber failure, so most of the cells in the remains had "internal injuries." Those cells were unlike any creature on Earth, looking somewhat crystalline, with their genetic material as a bright line traversing the crystal: this was how normal cells were, while those killed by ultra-low temperature and massive radiation showed signs of rupture or deterioration. The death of eighty percent of the body’s cells at once caused the Ancestor to pass instantly, while the remains were preserved lifelike.

Taville began repairing the damaged biological tissues, at a microscopic level, reconstructing the body molecule by molecule, using entirely the original material of the body to complete the repair process to prevent any foreign material from causing instability. Meanwhile, a circular halo appeared above the platform, I felt some sort of energy field envelop the Ancestor’s remains.

"That’s to prevent the soul from dissipating," Sandora explained, "Though the Ancestor’s soul can’t be detected, this device will still be effective. If the Spiritual power of the Ancestor still exists, this device will re-code and bind the soul to the target body once the body is capable of ’operating’ the soul. You know, for the body, the soul is something like executable code. Software cannot exist without hardware, and the role of this halo is to disguise the body, preventing the soul from escaping its range."

"But it can’t stop the soul from weakening, can it?" I asked curiously.

Sandora nodded with some regret, "That’s right, you can use a fence to keep sheep in their pen, but you can’t stop them from slowly dying inside the pen..."

Sandora has already started using such vivid analogies.

The laboratory was permeated with a tense atmosphere. Repairing the Ancestor’s remains was actually the part with the lowest technical content. With Xyrin Technology, repairing anything at a material level was almost negligible in difficulty. The real challenge was making this body ’come to life’ again. Life is a wonderful thing; scientists on Earth have argued over the topic ’What is life?’ for many years, yet no conclusion has been reached. From the perspective of pure ’science,’ life is nothing more than a process of transforming organic matter. When stripped of emotion, life ultimately comes down to physics and chemistry, which can be viewed as a heap of large molecules in constant conversion—this concept, when extended, will expand the scope of life to include inorganic matter and spiritual beings, which are essentially more complex chemical or physical transformations.

If we only followed this standard, then making the Ancestor’s body start those series of physical and chemical reactions could be considered as the latter ’coming back to life.’ However, Sandora aims for more than just such simple results.

To resurrect the Ancestor, we need not only to start a series of ordered material changes in that body, not just to have it open its eyes under the stimulus of hormones and bioelectric currents—that would be no different from Frankenstein.

After the Ancestor’s remains were repaired, the project proceeded to the next phase, where Taville began trying to restore ’vitality’ to this body.

On various monitoring screens, I could see the body was already operating: it was breathing, body fluids began to flow, and the internal organs, which had been repaired just a minute before, were beating vigorously. To me, this body, which differed from a human body with somewhat peculiar internal structures, already seemed ’full of vitality.’ I even saw the fingers of the ’remains’ on the test bench twitch slightly from a few meters away.

However, he never opened his eyes, showing no response to any external stimuli applied by Taville, not even to direct spiritual stimuli, as if he were an empty machine, rumbling but lifeless.

"Which step went wrong?" Sandora took two steps forward and asked softly. Taville frowned, "The material-level repairs are complete, but the ancestor’s body refuses to ’come alive.’ I can’t detect any Life Force, nor are there any Spiritual Waves. Theoretically, that’s the case."

I looked at the ancestor in the Crystal Coffin. This body is breathing steadily, every cell is functioning, but it lacks Life Force—it’s not even the same as a vegetative state, as a vegetative state still has spiritual power, yet this body...

To put it bluntly, it is now a mass of silicon-sulfur compounds weighing several tens of kilograms, undergoing orderly chemical reactions, fundamentally no different from any reactant in a chemical tank.

It’s like a computer without an OS installed, with the hard drive humming, the processor emitting heat, the chassis is busy, but the screen remains pitch black, not even a cursor in sight.

Sandora placed her hand on the Crystal Coffin, her power cautiously spreading; I knew she was using the strong power of a Soul Taker to summon the ancestor’s soul. Moments later, Sandora’s expression changed slightly, seemingly with a hint of joy, but more of confusion: "I can feel something like a soul slowly awakening. The ancestor’s spirit seems to be with this body, preserved together in a state of stasis, but this soul cannot ’activate’ the flesh, it must be missing something..."

"It’s missing Life Power, the key element that distinguishes between organic beings and reactants in a chemical tank, and Dingdang calls it Life Power—although no one other than Dingdang has actually touched such power," I suddenly felt a clarity in my mind that I had never experienced before, of course, it might have something to do with my usual antics with Dingdang, "Taville, what do you think?"

"It shouldn’t be," Taville shook her head in confusion, "Under normal circumstances, after the body is repaired, it would naturally generate Life Force..." Her words were cut off by Sandora: "This isn’t a normal situation, the ancient materials composing the ancestor’s remains have been in stasis for billions of years, these materials may have undergone changes we don’t know about. Ah Jun, is Dingdang in your pocket?"

I reached into my pocket and realized as I touched it that the Little Thing was busy watching TV when I left, so I didn’t bring her along. She should be at home playing with Qianqian, or perhaps being played with by Qianqian.

"Call her over, I’m so muddleheaded, we definitely need her power for this project." Sandora said, patting her forehead. It wasn’t her fault for not thinking of it before; mainly, Dingdang had been a house pet for so long that few people remembered the Little Thing’s abilities...

"Oh, right away... wait a moment, Taville, try this first." I was about to return when I suddenly remembered I still had some "weird stuff" with me, so I quickly fumbled through my belongings. Sandora looked at me in confusion until I pulled out a flat metal box from my inner pocket. The metal box was as large as a cigarette case. Inside, after opening it, was three-quarters of green powder, emitting a faint fluorescence, its texture seeming to lie somewhere between illusion and reality, with a slightly enchanting luster.

"What’s this..." Sandora carefully took the metal box, used a finger to pick up some of the green fluorescent powder and tasted it—she would taste anything rare she came across, "It has a slight sweet taste, but it’s unlike any substance I’ve seen before. What is this?"

"When Dingdang flies around, doesn’t her wings occasionally shed some green Light Particles," I pointed to the small box of powder, "This is what fell off her, I call it Dingdang Residue..."

Sandora was dumbfounded at that moment, quietly gazing at the nearly filled box of green light powder, then looked up at me after a long pause: "Ah Jun, just how idle are you usually?"

Me: "...I was just curious at first, wanting to see what exactly was falling off Dingdang. Initially, those Light Powders couldn’t last long before disappearing, but later I discovered that using a Star Gold Stone container could preserve them for a long time, so I collected..."

I couldn’t continue explaining halfway through because this totally didn’t address the question of how idle I actually was—I was just idle!

However, I collected these Light Powders for another important reason: I accidentally discovered that soaking these particles that fell off Dingdang’s wings in water could cure coughs...

"Well, at least now they really have a use," Sandora handed the box of green powder to Taville with a peculiar expression, "Disperse this in the Crystal Container. Based on Dingdang’s power, they should be able to automatically activate the life form in decay."

I reminded from the side: "Use it sparingly, Dingdang’s output is limited; even if you put her in a centrifuge all day, you won’t get much."

Taville’s expression was peculiar, Sandora’s expression was peculiar, and I felt my expression must have been peculiar, too. But anyhow, the resurrection process could continue—after all, we only had twenty-four hours at most. If this attempt also failed, we would quickly have to find another way. However, whether it was intuition or something else at work, I felt this time, there should be no issues.

Sandora had sensed a faint response from the ancestor’s soul moments before, indicating that the ancestor’s "spirit" was intact, while Taville had already repaired the ancestor’s body beforehand. Both the "spirit" and "flesh" existed; they just lacked sufficient Life Power to "activate" them. I believe nothing with greater vitality can be found than what came from Dingdang, and these powders must work—for if they don’t, I’ll capture Dingdang myself; the Little Thing has been idle long enough.

A barely perceptible green fluorescence appeared in the Crystal Coffin as Taville blew a tiny amount of Life Dust into the container. She used very little and was very careful—not entirely because she was heeding my advice to "use sparingly," but mainly because she feared the excessively powerful Life Power might destroy the mortal body of the ancestor. Dingdang’s power is not something mortals can handle easily. If not diluted and directly contacted, even a tiny amount of Dingdang’s scattered contents would burn a mortal to ashes.

Taville tried her best to keep the amount within the tolerable range for a mortal body. Then, we anxiously awaited the result.

The little green powder began to dissipate slowly after leaving the specially made Star Gold Stone box, and the green glow in the Crystal Coffin dimmed at a speed visible to the naked eye. These powders were not solid substances but rather a product of energy and some "extraordinary concept" dissipated from Dingdang’s body. I’ve calculated that if not stored in a Star Gold Stone container, it would take about thirty minutes after leaving Dingdang’s body for them to evaporate completely—yet these powders in the Crystal Coffin were dissipating more quickly. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

This indicated they were working on the ancestor’s remains, hence accelerating their consumption.

"There’s a reaction!" Sandora, the first to notice, had continually observed the ancestor’s spirit and body’s "activation process," now felt the body transforming from a mass of silently reacting chemicals into a true life form, "The ancestor’s soul is awakening, I can feel it gradually taking shape from a blurred state..."

I also felt the body before me change. Even though I lacked Sandora’s Perception ability, it’s like the feeling you get looking at a chemical tank and looking at a person; when the mass of matter before you transforms from a lifeless reactant into a living entity, there’s a subtle change you perceive—

This must be what Dingdang frequently referred to as "Life Power," I thought.

The body in the Crystal Coffin twitched and then opened its eyes. (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendations and monthly votes—your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please go to m.qidian.com to read.)