Yang Ming strolled around this underground "palace" twice with his hands behind his back, opened a bottle of Bryant’s cherished wine, and watched a holographic entertainment program for a while.
He had already considered this place his own estate.
"Boss," Lyu couldn’t help but remind him, "you might want to come and see this—I’ve opened Bryant’s memory archive."
"Is there anything good?"
Lyu didn’t know how to describe it, so he simply said, "A lot of Empire secrets."
Yang Ming eagerly returned to the interrogation room.
Lyu opened several projection screens, synchronously playing Bryant’s past.
He was born in a petri dish, living from a young age in a lab filled with white coats. Initially, there were dozens or even hundreds of children around him, but gradually, the people around him became fewer.
Loneliness was the constant tag accompanying Bryant;
Various kinds of drugs filled his life.
Yang Ming glanced through briefly to get a rough understanding of Bryant’s past, which was nothing more than a new version of a laboratory tragedy.
Yang Ming had always disliked the so-called "tragic villain complex"; everyone living in this world had their own hardships. Was there any need to understand how twisted the enemy’s experiences were—
Ultimately, it’s all about whose fist is bigger.
However, the information contained within Bryant’s memory gave Yang Ming complete insight into the group of supermodified people and he obtained precious "Empire evidence of crime."
What surprised Yang Ming the most was the Empire’s original intent for conducting these human experiments.
It was overheard by Bryant when two old professors were conversing beside an operating table.
"Is what we’re doing really meaningful?"
"Nowadays, the Empire has reached a bottleneck in all fields. The glory brought by the great Levi his majesty has long been exhausted; gene and human species evolution is the last direction we can break through."
"To enter the fourth-level civilization, more than just a genetic breakthrough is required."
"This is the cornerstone. Though it sounds somewhat against modern human social ethics, to adapt to the high-dimensional world, humanity must take a big step forward from the basic species, the simplest being mechanical ascension."
"Yes, this goes against existing ethical views, which might be why I feel uncomfortable."
"Don’t complain, entering a fourth-level civilization is ’1,’ everything else is ’0’; we are doing the work that leads this group towards a higher civilization."
The Empire conducted so many human development experiments to adapt to the lifestyle of a fourth-level civilization?
Yang Ming’s expression turned a bit strange.
He continued to search for information of interest in Bryant’s memory.
The experiment that gave birth to Bryant was called the "Mirror Face Experiment," with the Empire simultaneously carrying out dozens of human development projects. Secret biological laboratories like Kigrov were scattered throughout the Empire’s territory.
Bryant was the sole outcome of that phase of the experiment; endowed with powerful spiritual power, he became a valuable asset.
One experiment after another revolved around Bryant.
Bryant once laughed at himself, saying that his blood production mechanism worked desperately, yet barely met the amount needed for experimentation.
Bryant’s real age was forty-six, but his body remained in a state of a man in his twenties.
Bryant did not have a reproductive system; his excretory system resembled that of a female, yet he was not a woman, nor was he a man, but a true asexual.
Some scientists attempted to transplant a reproductive system into Bryant, hoping to perpetuate Bryant’s genes naturally, but for various reasons, it was not implemented. Additionally, Bryant’s cells underwent dozens of cloning experiments, with a clone mortality rate reaching ninety percent; the remaining clones did not acquire strong spiritual powers.
Notably, Bryant personally killed clones that had grown to ten years old, laying their bodies in the pond of the estate where the laboratory was located.
—This aligned with the scenes Yang Ming saw in the Spiritual Imprint.
Yang Ming felt inexplicably nauseated as he watched.
Having freed himself from laboratory research, Bryant, relying on his outstanding emotional intelligence and pervasive mental control, became an excellent supermodified warrior.
Approximately a dozen years ago, he began his collection hobby.
The number of Bryant’s collections was terrifying, totaling over 30,000 people.
In other words, Bryant personally destroyed the spirits of over 30,000 innocents, turning them into vegetables, then played dress-up games with them daily.
Naturally, the Empire’s regulatory department wasn’t made up of idle hands; they had been closely monitoring Bryant, occasionally punishing him.
Yet Bryant’s value led the Empire’s higher-ups to extend the greatest tolerance towards him.
Yang Ming found relevant records in Bryant’s memory: it depicted how Bryant, empowered by the Poisoned Stinger Ship, contended against an entire fleet, magnified his spiritual power dozens of times, causing biological entities within the fleet to experience spiritual chaos and shock in a very short time, directly paralyzing the fleet’s command system.
Of course, Bryant’s spiritual powers were ineffective against mechanical bodies.
A year ago, the regulatory department adjusted its approach, gradually abandoning supervision of Bryant and assigning him to the current supermodified team, allowing Catherine, wearing a golden mask, to become Bryant’s superior.
Catherine formed an all-around suppression over Bryant.
In Bryant’s memory, Yang Ming could intuitively perceive...
Catherine was comparable to Bryant’s mother!
She became friends with Bryant, continuously guiding him out of his past shadows, attempting to remove Bryant’s poisonous stingers and fangs, aiming to turn him into a warrior loyal to the Empire.
Naturally, the eventual outcome was that Bryant grew utterly impatient, activating one of his puppet disassemblers, nearly converting Catherine into a supermodified puppet as well.