Regardless of whether Hao Ren was talking nonsense, after explaining the origins of the brain, Muru and Zorm both said the brain could be used. But they had to test them before they could be activated: After all, they were remains from 200,000 years ago. It would be a lot of trouble if they connected the consciousness to the brain without careful consideration.
After having breakfast, Hao Ren decided to test the activity of the brain, but because the central hall did not have the necessary equipment and suitable environment, he sent the brain to the laboratory of the space station and connected Zorm’s consciousness to the mainframe in the laboratory. Muru was also there to observe the brain. Now he was squatting in the lab, leaning in an awkward position and said, “It’s a little… cramped here.”
Hao Ren looked up at the roof, shrugged and said, “You know, this place is seven meters high, which is very wide for me. I wonder what the Goddess of Creation was thinking. Why make you so tall?”
Muru was squatting on the ground, but looking serious. “The body given by the mother is the proudest thing I have. I don’t think it’s any inconvenience.”
But then he whispered, “But mother said she hadn’t seen many natural evolution creatures when she created us. So the scale might be a bit of a problem…”
This was a large laboratory. There are many vast spaces in the Crapple Research Station. Hao Ren chose to test here not just because that this space was big enough for Muru, but also because the largest ‘lifeblood culturing tank’ in the space station was placed here. The roughly oval room was divided into two floors. The upper level was a large annular platform with a good location for good view and the main control facilities of the laboratory. Looking down from the annular platform, you could see the lower level of the lab: half the area was occupied by a huge, swimming pool-like container. The container was mounted on the laboratory floor with a capacity of several thousand cubic meters. Inside the container, the scarlet lifeblood was flowing slowly, like the Nanomachine Swarm seen in the Grey River, going on day and night without stopping.
Muru was crouching on the lower level of the lab, where he was leaning against the lifeblood culturing tank, and his head was revealed from the rim of the upper-level annular platform. Thanks to this platform, now that Hao Ren could finally enjoy the view in parallel with this giant.
Hao Ren ordered the mainframe to activate several major devices. He then put Lil Pea in the sink next to the operator’s seat and said seriously, “Don’t go out, just watch, and you have to call dad when you want to go out, got it?”
“Oh, got it!” said the little mermaid while flapping her tail.
“Stop playing with the console, you don’t understand it anyway. Come and keep an eye on Lil Pea,” Hao Ren said while dragging Lily away from the console, “and stop her from making any trouble.”
“I didn’t know that you have already cultured so many lifeblood.” Muru’s voice thundered from the rim of the platform. He watched in amazement at the lifeblood culturing tank, and he knew that this culturing tank was not the only one in the space station. “You guys seem to have a better way of culturing than Holletta,” he said.
Hao Ren came to the edge of the platform, leaning over the railing, looking down at the container filled with scarlet liquid and said, “At first we just had a little bit, the dosage of a few test tubes, but after giving it enough nutrients and electric stimulation, it began to proliferate exponentially. The lifeblood is an incredible thing. It’s made up of something like a cell, but not exactly a cell. Those particles can almost devour all matters and then transform them… that reminded me of the Nanomachine Swarm. To be honest, if you don’t know that this is the origin of life, you might associate it with disaster. The nature of it is too dangerous.”
“Anything out of control is dangerous, not just the lifeblood,” Muru said while putting his hand a few meters above the culturing tank. He gently moved his fingers, and the scarlet liquid seemed to feel it and rippled. “So the first thing the mother thought of when she learned that the guardians had fallen into a frenzy was to stop them… What is capable of creating things must have the power to destroy them, and it is much easier to destroy than to create.”
Hao Ren looked at the center of the roof of the laboratory: The laboratory, like the rest of the Crapple Research Station, was built from a large number of crystals and magical devices. In the center of the dome, there was a large cluster of beautiful crystals hanging down like crystal lamps. The crystal cluster was the ‘mainframe’ of this laboratory.
Now there were a lot of mysterious runes emerging on these crystal clusters. These runes then converged into the emoticon of Zorm’s status: (⊙_⊙)
“You haven’t got used to sending your consciousness around the station, right,” Hao Ren smiled at the crystal cluster and said, “get ready, now let’s get to the next step.”
The brain that had just been removed from the container was floating in the air on a weightless platform on the rim of the annular platform. It looked a little more energetic than when it was just sent to the space station, but there was no obvious change. The brain was releasing faint red light regularly in the air and twinkling, which seemed to echo each other.
Hao Ren activated the connection program.
A series of mysterious runes was lit beneath the weightless platform. Several long and thin needle-like objects, made of crystals, were detached from the platform and touched lightly on the surface of the brain. Several light streams connected the brain with a few crystal prisms surrounding it. Then, they heard a light sound of wind chimes in the air. It was the unique operating sound of the magical equipment produced by Xi Ling Celestials.
“The connection has already established,” Hao Ren said and glanced at the device’s parameters, “for security reasons, I left a firewall between the brain and you, so you can only browse the contents of the brain in the read-only mode. Now you try to connect and see.”
“Oh.” Zorm then began to test his consciousness into the brain, and the ringing of the wind chimes was getting a little more hurried. A large amount of complex data and runes were floating like water on the surfaces of the crystal prism around the annular platform. It was a mess at first, but it quickly calmed down.
“What’s the situation?” Hao Ren asked nervously.
“Just a few fragments of memory, even if combined, it shouldn’t work.” Zorm sounded disappointed. “It’d been dead for too long. Nothing can be read.”
Hao Ren opened his mouth but did not know what to say. After pondering for a while, Vivian sighed and said, “Okay…”
The brain was taken from the Y’zaks’s home. Y’lisabet found them and once used them as the temporary energy source of Helcrown. It was the remains of a Firstborn who strayed into a different world. Hao Ren also hoped to extract the memory of the Firstborn who died 200000 years ago. But now it seemed that it was impossible.
Although the data terminal had tested the physiological activity of the brain and confirmed that the ancient biological tissues were still alive’, there was no doubt that the memory and consciousness were irretrievable.
Hao Ren put the disappointment aside, paid attention to the matter at the moment and suggested, “It should not be possible to transfer all your souls to the brain. Now we only have the brain, but no matching organs. Without a neural network to combine the left and right brain into one whole, they would not be able to perform all their functions. So my plan is to use the brain as something like a ‘relaying station’. Your soul still remains in the mainframe of the Crapple Research Station, and then you’ll be connected to the brain through the device, just to relay your mental signals. As for how to amplify these signals to the entire planet… I set up a lot of antenna arrays on the surface of the Tannagost, which were originally used to clean up the Vengeful Spirits. Now that the Vengeful Spirits are almost cleared up, I can make a little alteration to these antennas and let them relay your mental signals, which should have the similar effects as the tentacles.”
Lily nodded and said, “Well, all the other Firstborns are still using wired but you’ll use WiFi from now on!”
“Keep an eye on the kid,” Hao Ren said, “but you are right. As long as you can broadcast your mental signals to the whole planet, you can begin to reshape the biosphere.”
Zorm thought about it and said, “Although I don’t understand what WiFi is, I can try it.”
“Before that, let’s test the effect of controlling the lifeblood through the brain first,” Hao Ren said while lifting the inhibition of the lifeblood culturing tank. This set of inhibition devices prevented the lifeblood from being hyperactive. “You inject your will into the brain and then create some primordial cells in the lifeblood. The device will record the entire process.”
The safety grille around the lifeblood culture tank was rising quietly, meanwhile, several crystal prisms of the inhibition devices turned from bright to dull. After these devices had changed their state, a large amount of red liquid in the culture tank quickly became active.
They were moving more and more violently and began to surge out of the culture tank as if they wanted to get rid of the control. However, they were all blocked by the light curtains from the safety grille.
These things were dangerous when they were out of control.
Zorm immediately began to try to control the lifeblood according to Hao Ren’s instructions. The moment when its mental signal intervened in the lifeblood…
In the sink next to the console, Lil Pea suddenly opened her eyes and looked at the direction of the culture tank as if she sensed something.
All the lifeblood in the culture tank quieted down all at once as if they were dead.