Chapter 822 - 821: The Warmth of Vitality

Chapter 822: Chapter 821: The Warmth of Vitality

A virtual gate suddenly appeared in the air, and when it opened, Yu Sheng led a few family members to the entrance of the "First Holy Hall" located on the Pasture Star.

This place used to be an important base for the Venerate Saints Monastery to create Artificial Saintesses and Brass Knights, as well as the defense command center of this planet and the "Church Sanctuary"—but now the Hidden Monastery has been uprooted, and the facilities they left behind have been taken over by the liberated Artificial Saintesses. After a period of refurbishment and transformation, this place is now used by Luna as the corps’ garrison and synthetic body production and maintenance center.

The triangular emblem symbolizing the "travel agency" gleamed on the main building’s outer wall of the Holy Hall, along with black flags with gold borders fluttering in the wind on both sides of the entrance—besides the triangular pattern serving as the base, an outline of a Crystal Giant Tree was sketched on it, exuding mystery and a touch of inexplicable majesty.

This is the "Valhalla Legion Battle Banner" designed jointly by Luna and her sisters.

Yu Sheng looked up at those flags for several seconds, touched his chin, and muttered, "...their artistic skills are indeed slightly better than mine."

Erin: "Wow, what a brazen face!"

Yu Sheng pretended not to hear and stepped towards the entrance of the Holy Hall—at this time, Luo had already come out from inside, with a particularly bright smile on the face of the Golden-haired Elf.

"Boss! The laboratory is still under observation and testing, and the test subjects’ physical conditions have been stable for over an hour. According to various readings, there should be no more fluctuations..."

Yu Sheng nodded, "Very good, take us directly to the laboratory, which way?"

"Please follow me, it’s beside the newly built testing field on the west side..."

Under Luo’s guidance, Yu Sheng and his group quickly passed through the main building of the Holy Hall and the rear courtyard area, followed the corridor to the newly built testing area on the west side, winding and turning, finally arriving at a high-security laboratory—on the silvery-white alloy gate, warning lights flashed indicating that random entry was prohibited, and there was a sign next to it, indicating "Contains living metal, Mechanical Soul highly active".

Yu Sheng’s gaze paused for two seconds on the sign next to it, then Luo opened the laboratory door.

Instinctively, the eyes of Yu Sheng and the others focused on the center of the room—a silver-gray inspection platform was placed there, and several maintenance pod-like devices could be seen around the platform. Several technicians were busy at the operation terminals around the platform. Even when Yu Sheng and Luo came in, they only hurriedly looked up to greet them and quickly turned their attention back to their work.

And on that inspection platform, a girl with fiery red hair was quietly lying there—several pipelines were connected to her body, and a small laboratory robot carrying scanning devices was slowly moving in mid-air, seemingly checking the girl’s physical condition.

Yu Sheng walked over and noticed that the red-haired girl was wearing a black dress robe with a nun-style—it was a dress robe with some Algerde style that Yu Sheng had given to Luna once. Obviously, Luna was very fond of it, having been redesigned and appropriately modified, this dress has now become the "standard attire" for the Valhalla Saintess unit.

As for the red-haired girl in front of him, Yu Sheng was not unfamiliar; he remembered her name was "Shilude," currently the captain of a Valhalla combat squad—when the Holy Realm Planet was just liberated, she once lost her body, and it was only after they took down the Pasture Star that she obtained a new synthetic body.

The appearance of this red-haired girl was Shilude’s form in the Soul Wilderness—and now, this form has arrived in the real world.

"...Wow," even Erin couldn’t help but exclaim softly, the Little Puppet widened her eyes as she looked at the Golden-haired Elf beside her, "How did you manage to do it... wasn’t it said that the C-type buckles’ souls have been completely transformed into semi-Mechanical Souls, unable to adapt to human bodies?"

"That’s right, they really can’t adapt," Luo sighed lightly upon hearing this, admitting frankly, "Her mind is firmly imprinted with the ’Artificial Saintess’ semi-living mechanical body, and because it uses knowledge and power derived from the Dark Angel, this imprinting is almost impossible to peel away using the ’technology’ I have at my disposal... so I had to find a different way."

Yu Sheng frowned, actually already guessing something at this point, and just then, the red-haired girl lying on the inspection platform slowly opened her eyes.

Monotonous mechanical synthesis sound came from a speaker in some corner of the room: "...Synthetic body inspection complete, reawakening complete. Begin recording active parameters. Living metal status... stable."

Shilude blinked, a hard-to-notice blue light passed through her pretty ruby-like eyes.

"Miss Luo? Is the inspection finished?"

She spoke while carefully sitting up, then noticed Luna and Yu Sheng standing nearby, and a lively cheerful expression appeared on her face.

"Ah, it’s the Corps Commander! And Boss!"

Yu Sheng was just about to inquire about her situation when he heard this and his face twitched: "...What an explosive way to address!"

"Everyone’s been calling it like that recently," Shilude scratched her hair, "because the legion commander is our leader, and you’re even higher than the commander... Everyone’s not very educated, so they privately discussed it and decided to call you boss. If you think it’s inappropriate, then maybe... Grand Leader?"

Yu Sheng already felt awkward listening to this, and hearing her last suggestion made him even more uncomfortable. After quickly thinking about it and finding he couldn’t come up with any other fitting title, he simply waved his hand: "Forget it, you guys can do as you please, I don’t care about that anyway."

Then he swiftly changed the subject: "How are you doing now? This body of yours..."

"Feels great," Shilude said as she cooperated with the technicians to detach the cables from her body, getting up from the inspection table, "I even feel better than before. There’s a sense of... finally making this shell truly feel like it’s my own body."

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow upon hearing this, and meanwhile, he noticed the original socket locations on Shilude’s neck and arms left from the removed cables quickly disappeared, covered by new skin within two seconds.

"...I think I understand what you meant by another pathway," Yu Sheng turned to Luo and said, "So, is this some kind of mimicry?"

"You might also consider it a ’posture switch’—combat mode and daily mode," Luo said while nodding to Shilude, "Try to switch modes."

"Okay."

Several gazes fell on the red-haired girl, whose face showed a slightly shy smile. The next moment, that smile vanished as the bionic appearance instantly disappeared.

Human skin full of life instantly covered with a metallic texture, soft skin transformed into armor strong enough to withstand gunfire, agile features melted and reshaped in an instant, transforming into a beautiful yet pale and cold living metal face. The striking long red hair also faded, transformed into black fiber bundles closely adhering to the head and back.

A genuine second-to-fight face switch.JPG.

Erin was startled on the spot, almost falling off Yu Sheng’s shoulder: "Whoa—"

Shilude apologized with a smile, accompanied by a slight rustling and writhing sound from the living metal, she instantly reverted to her human appearance.

"Just as you observed," Luo’s voice came from the side, "Essentially, this is a new living metal control technology... You know, the Black Dot Group has always been far ahead in this area, and Venerate Saints Monastery’s living metal technology was originally stolen from the Black Dot Group."

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to say something but didn’t manage to organize his thoughts on the spot, while the golden-haired elf in front of him already started smiling.

"I know it’s just a ’shell’, but what flesh body isn’t a shell?"

Luo said while pointing at Shilude.

"This shell is almost indistinguishable from a living human body, invisible to the naked eye, with a real temperature. I adjusted all parameters as much as possible, even allowing the living metal to temporarily simulate neural circuits to some extent. Thus, when they touch the world with this posture, they feel cold and heat, soft and hard, not just precise readings directly flowing into the mind body..."

"Just like still alive," Shilude laughed, opening her hands and slowly clenching them, "Hmm... saying it like this seems not quite right, but I don’t know how to describe it, anyway... it’s just great, something we once dared not imagine."

Luna hadn’t spoken since just now, seemingly thinking about something, and only at this moment did she suddenly step forward.

"What about the other knights? Can this technology be applied to them?"

"Don’t worry, since it’s a task assigned by the boss, I definitely won’t forget," Luo proudly puffed out his chest, "The Brass Knight in some sense is considered a low-end version of the Artificial Saintess. Though there’s a big difference in body structure, the mental transmission and proto-drive technology are the same set. And their seemingly hard ’brass armor’, the main component, is, in essence, also living metal...

"Specific implementation requires a period of adjustment, but now that the toughest part has been overcome, the subsequent adjustments shouldn’t take too much effort... Just find a way to crack the core control program of those living metals and write the new drive into the base layer."

Erin looked at Luna, then at Shilude who was moving her body. She seemed to think about it for a while, then muttered thoughtfully in a low voice: "Feels quite enough already."

"Yeah," the red-haired girl beside her laughed, with a bright warmth on her face, "I can go back to embrace my younger siblings... in a form they’re familiar with."