Chapter 75 The Young Man’s Question

Wang Jixuan set up a temporary small secret room using a cloth curtain.

He didn’t rashly use his signature Soul-Capturing Talisman; he simply made a hand seal and silently recited a spell.

A sliver of light seeped into this space.

Meng Caiyuan’s soul, which was already on the verge of leaving his body, slowly sat up and passed through the barrier of the nutrient tank.

The boy paused for a moment, looked down at his body lying in the cabin, and then calmly looked at Wang Jixuan, who was wearing a helmet.

The boy’s voice appeared in Wang Jixuan’s heart.

The two communicated in silence.

“Who are you?” The boy’s voice was somewhat timid.

“Codename Black Storm, military psychic,” Wang Jixuan introduced himself via voice transmission. “My ability is to occasionally communicate with the souls of people who are about to die.”

“Yes, Mr. Storm,” the boy asked, “what can I do for you?”

Wang Jixuan stared at the soul: “You can communicate with blade beasts?”

The boy seemed to be thinking.

His emotions were surprisingly calm, so calm that there wasn’t the slightest ripple, like a… polite machine.

“It’s not really communication; it’s more like giving them simple instructions.”

The boy said softly:

“If what the professors and researchers say is true, this is a kind of interference signal that has interfered with the communication system of the Blade Beasts. Lower-level Blade Beasts will recognize me as a General-level Blade Beast life form.”

“Similarly, this requires the use of some instruments. Due to my own condition, the spiritual energy fluctuations I can release are very weak.”

“They usually jokingly refer to that kind of device as an amplifier.”

Wang Jixuan became more curious about the boy and asked as calmly as possible, “Weren’t you asleep the whole time? How do you know all this?”

“Only my body is unconscious.”

The boy said calmly:

“You are the first psionicist who can communicate with me in this state. Before, I could only observe them in this state.”

“This is probably related to your own abilities.”

“Going back to your question, my exact answer is—I can give commands to a small number of Blade Beasts and send them information unilaterally, but I cannot understand them.”

Wang Jixuan nodded slowly: “Are there many individuals like you among the thirteen institutes?”

“In a sense, it is both very few and a lot.”

The boy quickly explained:

“The research directions within the 13th Institute must be extremely chaotic, as they are divided into thousands of research groups.”

“Based on the information I have obtained from observing them over a long period of time, I believe that I am an individual born out of chance, and therefore very rare.”

“But I am not a normal human individual.”

“I originated from an S-class psionicist known as the ‘Beast Whisperer,’ whose stem cells were used as cloning materials to cultivate me. My ideal lifespan is only thirty-seven to forty-two years old.”

“Of the clones in my batch, 3,400 initially survived. After the psionic infusion experiment, 320 remained. After more than ten years of cultivation and various experiments, 12 are still alive. However, the psionic abilities they awaken vary, and three of them are slightly similar to the Beast Speakers.”

“So in a sense, there can be many individuals like me—as long as they increase the sample size.”

Wang Jixuan leaned back slightly, frowning as he stared at the boy: “What about your… emotions? Why can’t I sense any change in your emotions?”

“Part of my brain tissue was removed.”

The boy spoke calmly.

Perhaps because he was in a spirit state, his gaze was very gentle.

“Mr. Storm, if you need, I can fake some emotions. — In fact, I do have emotions, just very faint ones.”

“For example, when I’m with researcher Qin Qin, I will show my gentle and timid side.”

“She was actually a pitiful person. In her early student years, she was raped by her supervisor in the laboratory while trying to complete her thesis. I was about eight years old at the time, and I was not far from her. Later, her supervisor treated her like a pet and swapped her with some old people’s pets.”

“Often, these unsavory things happen in laboratories that require cleanliness.”

“Therefore, I can understand why researcher Qin Qin kept stimulating and playing with my male sexual characteristics when she was studying my sample. She did this to gain the pleasure of completely controlling an individual and to fill the wounds in her heart.”

“But I think that the kind of soul-based communication we have now is the most essential and sincere communication… I don’t need to add those emotions.”

Wang Jixuan crossed his arms, took two steps back, and carefully examined the boy’s physical condition.

Master Wang asked, “Then can you sense the location of the Blade Beast?”

“It requires instruments to detect occasionally, and each time they have to operate for a long time, similar to a kind of biological radar.”

The boy said calmly:

“I only have a small portion of the abilities of a beast speaker, and the current ability to observe various places.”

“What you’ve done is astral projection, which is proof that your soul is quite powerful.”

Wang Jixuan explained simply.

This is also why he let Ling Tong leave first.

Although Ling Tong is physically strong and her mechanical arm is incredibly lethal, her soul itself is not very strong in terms of defense.

“Have you finished asking your questions?” the boy asked.

“Hmm,” Wang Jixuan nodded gently.

A faint hint of trepidation flickered in the boy’s eyes: “May I ask you a few questions? About four… You are the first human being I’ve ever had such a sincere and direct conversation with.”

“Yes,” Wang Jixuan said, “I can see the state of your soul. You have indeed not done anything evil, and you have even helped the military a few times to mislead the Blade Beasts.”

“That’s good.”

The boy regained his composure:

“The first question is… Is it true that having parental love brings happiness?”

Wang Jixuan was taken aback.

A hint of longing lingered in the boy’s eyes.

Wang Jixuan wasn’t sure whether the boy wanted a positive or negative answer, and he didn’t want to lie to this pure soul, which was almost as blank as a sheet of paper.

Wang Jixuan gave a bitter laugh: “I can’t answer this question. All I remember is a blurry fenced yard. I feel ashamed of my parents and my teacher who used gold and silver jewelry that would have made them rich for life to take me away from them.”

The boy quickly said, “I sympathize with your experience. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had been abducted.”

Wang Jixuan: ……

Forget it, why bother arguing with a child?

He said, “It’s nothing. You know quite a lot about human society.”

“I would secretly look at the books they were reading, listen to their conversations, and then try my best to imagine what the world outside the nutrient tank was like.”

The boy smiled, then asked:

“Have you ever experienced love? Love is wonderful, isn’t it? That’s a question.”

Wang Jixuan pondered for a few moments, and several images flashed through his mind.

When he was slacking off during his training and lying under a tree enjoying the mountain breeze, his junior sister leaned down and called out “Senior Brother”;

While he was racking his brains trying to solve the problem, his slightly tipsy senior sister reclined on a bamboo chair, gazing at him with a tender look in her eyes.

There was also a beautiful girl with a disability but a strong will; when she pressed her forehead against his back, a slight tremor ran through his heart…

“It should be wonderful,” Wang Jixuan said with a smile. “I haven’t experienced it yet, but I should experience it in the future to enrich my life experience.”

A glimmer of light appeared in the boy’s eyes: “This is an additional question—is love supposed to be like what Researcher Qin Qin often does to me? Or should love outweigh lust, and mutual comfort outweigh the release of desire?”

“I really can’t explain this.”

Wang Jixuan smiled wryly:

“I am not a philosopher.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Storm, I was too presumptuous… but I can sense from the change in your tone that you may have begun to savor the beauty of love.”

Wang Jixuan shrugged: “Then you are indeed being presumptuous. I’m not in a relationship yet.”

The boy chuckled almost inaudibly and then asked his third question.

“Mr. Black Storm, can you tell me clearly whether what I did before harmed other human individuals? Because I was following their orders to make my life a little more comfortable.”

The boy’s eyes held a hint of helplessness:

“If the information I have amplified and sent out a total of six times in the past has harmed human individuals, it would convince me that I am a selfish clone.”

Wang Jixuan asked, “Was the last message you sent an order for the Blade Beasts to retreat?”

“Yes.”

The boy said softly:

“Researcher Qin Qin gave me the order to have the Blade Beasts focus their attacks on the main battlefield located in the desert.”

“This was decided after Researcher Qin Qin and Uncle Feng discussed it.”

“Researcher Qin Qin used her body to get Uncle Feng’s help, hoping that Uncle Feng would step in at a critical moment and make her, the new Minister of Biology, the hero who saved the fortress, but Uncle Feng did not want to take such a risk.”

“Uncle Feng said that the D5 war zone is close to getting out of control. This is the last struggle of that old devil before his self-collapse. Ling Tong is one of the potential successors, so it is best to take this opportunity to get rid of him.”

“I judge that if I issue such an order to the Blade Beast horde, it may put humanity at a disadvantage and cause a large number of human casualties. This is completely different from the previous times when I participated in and cooperated with the military to lure the Blade Beast horde into traps.”

“So I sent them a message to leave… Uncle Feng and Researcher Qin Qin couldn’t actually tell what message I sent.”

“Great job.”

Wang Jixuan laughed:

“I don’t know about the others, but the command you recently issued was excellent. It caused some chaos among the Blade Beasts, preventing them from fighting to the death and keeping our defenses intact.”

“You played a very important role.”

“That’s good.”

The boy smiled with relief, then sighed and looked down at himself in the nutrient tank.

He asked, “The last question is… can you kill me?”

“Why?” Wang Jixuan asked, “Isn’t it better to live?”

“I once saw a sentence on a page that the wind had blown open, a sentence that I wholeheartedly agreed with. It was like this.”

The boy’s voice slowed down:

“Humans are creatures shaped by the past, and their consciousness originates from the accumulation of their own memories.”

“My memory is not enough to support my belief that tomorrow will be any better, but I had no choice between life and death before.”

“So, Mr. Storm… can you just kill me quickly and directly?”

Wang Jixuan asked, “Why don’t you try to look forward? You are still young. The pain of death… is very painful. It’s an endless silence… Please ask a different question. I can’t answer this one.”

“That sir.”

The boy’s soul widened his eyes, and he asked cautiously, his voice trembling slightly:

Can someone like me be called human?

…

The glass door to the laboratory was opened.

Wang Jixuan stepped out with a smile and walked to Qin Qin, who was being held aside.

The three cyborg mechs who were chatting all looked over at the same time, and Zheng Shiduo and several psionicists also looked over curiously.

Master Wang looked down at Qin Qin, then suddenly kicked the wall next to her, creating a noticeable dent.

“You vixen! I haven’t killed you yet because I still need to interrogate you!”

Master Wang muttered a curse under his breath, then turned and walked towards Ling Tong.

Ling Tong asked, “How did it go?”

“I’ve finished asking,” Wang Jixuan briefly told Ling Tong a few things via telepathy.

Qin Qin and Uncle Feng plotted to murder Ling Tong;

The boy’s specific abilities;

And the existence of S-class psionicists 【Beast Speakers】.

Wang Jixuan said, “After the investigation is completed, can I see the report? You don’t need to show me the specific report. If what I said completely matches Qin Qin’s testimony, just give me a thumbs up.”

Ling Tong asked curiously, “Why?”

“I want to save this boy; his pure soul is especially precious to me.”

Master Wang clicked his tongue:

“Although the purity of a soul cannot be faked, and it is different from the eyes, one learns from one’s mistakes… Saving him is just a piece of cake for me, let you investigate.”

“Understood.”

Ling Tong let out a soft sigh, pondered for a moment, and said softly:

“We still have some work to do. Let Brother Shenhai take you back to rest.”

“Okay, I just need to take a break.”

Wang Jixuan waved his hand, strode away, his steps incredibly relaxed.

The half-human mech Deep Sea, who ran up behind, took the initiative to put his arm around the cool helmeted man and start to get along with him.

The words Wang Jixuan had left behind in the boy’s soul seemed to echo in the corridor.

In the nutrient tank in the corner of the laboratory.

A tear rolled down the corner of the unconscious boy’s eye, and his lips pursed slightly.

…

“Of course you are human. I don’t understand cloning, but without a doubt, your soul is complete, your personality is sound, and you are a complete human being.”

“I recently realized something that I can share with you. It’s very simple, but it’s something I’ve personally experienced. It is…”

“It’s so great to be alive.”