Veronica/Ophelia's answer was so quick and direct that Gawain didn't react for the first two or three seconds before he realized that he had found the key clue to Amber's life so easily — An insider standing right in front of his eyes.
"Why did you suddenly mention Shadow Fortress?" Veronica noticed the changes in the expressions of the three people in front of her, and asked with a little curiosity, "Where did you hear this name?"
Gao Wen didn't answer the other party immediately, but asked a question immediately: "Let's not talk about this—since you know the Shadow Fortress, have you ever heard of a Royal Shadow Guard named Sally Randolph?"
Theoretically, the "Saint Princess" was not born before the time when Surrey Randolph was active, but Gawain knew that under Veronica's youthful appearance was the soul of an ancient rebel, the rebel She has been active in the world through soul parasitism, and has changed many bodies. Perhaps one of her bodies was active in the Ansu Kingdom decades ago, and even the mission performed by Sally Randolph back then was similar to She is related.
But Veronica shook her head: "I have no impression of this name."
Her expression did not seem to be lying, but it was also difficult for Gao Wen to see her real thoughts from the usual indifferent expression of this ancient disobedient, so he could only tentatively believe what she said was true.
"Sally Randolph was a Royal Shadow Guard decades ago," Gawain thought for a while, and decided not to mention Amber's identity, but started from the secret mission many years ago, "We found According to some information from the past, the royal shadow guard was ordered to search for an ancient Gondor ruin called the Shadow Fortress—now, it seems that this fortress was really part of the rebellious plan?"
Amber next to him followed Gao Wen's words: "Can you tell us about the situation of this fort in detail? What is it for research? Why do you say it was abandoned?"
Veronica took a deep look at Amber, which made the latter feel guilty subconsciously, and then said: "It's a wrong route—the route of escape and evasion. The Shadow Project is trying to completely change the nature of human life, through Transform into some kind of shadow creature, hide in the shadow world to avoid the magic tide in the real world, and even avoid the power of the gods, the Shadow Fortress is the main research base of this project."
"Change the nature of human life? Transform into shadow creatures and hide in the shadow world?" Gawain frowned. This answer faintly fits some speculations he had after reading Surrey Randolph's diary. The essence of the rebellious plan is actually " Human Continuation Plan", so the Shadow Fortress must have been established to allow humans to avoid disasters, but is the Shadow Realm really a world that can escape the demon tide
Veronica nodded lightly: "The shadow world has existed since ancient times, and the shadow dwellers are a group that is older than humans, elves, and all known intelligent creatures on the mainland. Therefore, after launching the rebellious plan, we soon I noticed them naturally. All kinds of evidence show that various changes in the real world will produce corresponding changes in the shadow world according to certain mapping rules. Therefore, after the magic tide occurs in the real world, things in the shadow world will also change accordingly. And in the process, the shadow dwellers have never been affected...
"They have certain characteristics similar to elemental creatures, which allow them to avoid the influence of the magic tide, and quickly adapt to the new environment after a huge change in the magic environment, and re-stabilize their own form.
"On the other hand, the shadow force is the most mysterious and widely distributed force among all the elements and quasi-elemental realms known so far. The shadow realm covers 100% of our real world, unlike other elemental realms With huge limitations, from the perspective of 'development potential', the Shadowlands is a more worthy choice of shelter than other elemental realms.
"Combining these factors, the rebels launched the 'Shadow Project' in the early stages of the plan, and built a subspace fortress in the space gap close to the Shadow Realm. Due to the needs of the research environment, this fortress has no physical Instead, it is connected to the material world through some specific space-time anchor points."
As promised all along, Veronica was very frank when it came to the rebellious plan. She revealed the brief information about the Shadow Fortress without any concealment, allowing Gawain to have a general understanding of the ins and outs of the fortress .
"What is the specific method?" Pittman, who was still silent on the side, said suddenly, "How did you transform humans into shadow creatures?"
"The initial method was simple and crude. In a way similar to 'element erosion', we directly introduced the shadow power into the human body in batches, and gradually changed the material structure of the human body in the process. In this way, we created some Mutants with powerful shadow power, but the state of mutants is extremely unstable. Human souls cannot completely control those external shadow powers, and their bodies can hardly withstand huge mutations. The volunteers who initially underwent transformation soon became confused. The difference between the material world and the shadow world, and gradually lost the self-knowledge of human beings... "
Veronica shook her head as she spoke.
"Afterwards, we accumulated experience and realized that it is not enough to simply introduce external forces and change the physical body. We also need to transform the soul level and cultivate the adaptability of the experimental body to the shadow force from the embryonic stage. Therefore, we started the 'artificial people' plan."
Gao Wen clearly felt that when Veronica mentioned the words "artificial human project", Amber's breathing paused for a beat.
But he didn't interrupt Veronica's narration, but listened to the other party continue to say—
"With the help of the biochemical technology experience accumulated in the 'Sinister' project, the Shadow project team has created a batch of synthetic embryos. The somatic cells of these embryos are derived from the first batch of failed mutants, but they have been deeply modified and stabilized. At the same time, we The same number of shadow dwellers were also captured. After combining and recoding their souls with human souls, we created a synthetic soul that can maintain humanity and control the power of the shadows at the same time. After injecting it into the embryo, it formed an 'artificial human '."
At this moment, Gao Wen finally couldn't help but said: "The soul of the artificial man is a shadow dweller?!"
"It's a mix of humans and shadow dwellers," Veronica corrected. "Although it sounds unbelievable, the shadow dwellers have a soul structure similar to humans—in fact, they are almost a kind of 'spirit'." Creatures, except for those shadow clouds driven by them and those runecloths of unknown origin, their remaining structure is only the soul—and in the ancient Gondor period, the empire mastered very advanced soul extraction and transformation technology."
Having said that, the ancient disobedient pointed to himself and smiled lightly: "You should be able to imagine that I am also a user of this technology."
There is no doubt that "Ophelia Norton", who has survived for more than a thousand years relying on the parasitic form of the soul, has also undergone transformation at the soul level.
However, at this moment, Gao Wen didn't have the extra thought to pay attention to these technical details, he just subconsciously glanced at Amber.
She wasn't half-elf at all.
She is a "hybrid" of humans and shadow dwellers, a hybrid of soul level.
Amber also turned her head to look at Gao Wen. After a short thought and silence, she turned to Veronica: "How many of these 'embryos' were produced in total?"
"One hundred and twenty-six survived in the end," Veronica said. "This is the report I received back then."
"Then why was this project abandoned?" Gao Wen asked immediately, "Is there a hidden danger?"
What he is most concerned about now is the reason for the abandonment of this project, because it is directly related to whether there are any hidden dangers in those "artificial human embryos"—although Amber has grown up healthily for decades, who can guarantee that she will survive in the future? One day in the future it won't go wrong
Veronica's gaze swept between Gawain and Amber, and after a few seconds of recalling, she said softly: "If the artificial man survives, there is no hidden danger in itself, but there is a problem with this project itself.
"After the experiment process entered the stage of embryonic cultivation, the entire Shadow Fortress and even the subspace rift where the experimental group was located entered an unstable state. Extra energy flows from unknown sources appeared in the energy circuit of the fortress, and mysterious and There was a brief reverberation, and the projections of the shadow dwellers wandered in the building. In the later stage, some rooms even disappeared out of thin air, and some strange phenomena appeared in some corridors with additional branches.
"At the same time when the fortress was abnormal, the core personnel of the project also began to be plagued by frequent hallucinations and auditory hallucinations. Many people reported that they heard the embryos still in the culture warehouse talking, and heard the embryos using a hoarse noise. Talking to each other, but all the monitoring equipment did not find any evidence of this, and when the project progressed to the point where the embryos gradually grew into larvae, these weird situations intensified—the phenomenon of auditory and visual hallucinations began to spread to the central area. As the rooms outside spread, it became more and more difficult for researchers to distinguish the boundaries of reality, and the entire Shadow Fortress began to show a state of 'reality splitting'.
"We tried a variety of extraordinary countermeasures, all of which failed in the end. The risk assessment department judged that the experiments in the Shadow Fortress may have moved the 'field boundaries' other than the Shadow Realm and the real world. In order to prevent the project from breaking through the security The barrier attracted the attention of the gods, so I had to order the termination of the entire 'Shadow Project', and the Shadow Fortress was also abandoned."
This is the end of Shadowkeep.
Pittman looked into Veronica's eyes and asked slowly: "What about after that? Are those embryos just left in the fortress?"
"The embryos had grown into larvae, but they were in an inactive state. I ordered them destroyed—before they opened their eyes," Veronica said. "The project is out of control, and nothing can be left. Let those experiments It is better for bodies to disappear before they gain their own will than for them to be born and die."
Amber took a deep breath and asked in a low voice, "Have they all been destroyed?"
"It was all destroyed, at least that's what the report I received said so."
"But there is actually one left." Amber stared at Veronica and said word by word.
Veronica raised her eyebrows slightly, but didn't speak, just responded to Amber's gaze.
Amber pointed to herself, her tone was very calm: "I am Android No. 36."
"Ah," Veronica said softly, but she wasn't surprised, "Is that so..."
Gawain looked at her: "What do you mean? Did you already..."
"No, I didn't recognize her before," Veronica shook her head, "but after you ask so many questions, how difficult is the truth to guess?"
While talking, she looked at Amber seriously for a long time, with a little sigh: "It turns out...you are like this when you grow up."
Amber couldn't help but took a step forward: "Don't you have anything else to say?"
"For a thousand years, few things have surprised me, but what happened today finally surprised me... I know this is not what you want to hear, but this is my truest thought now," Wei Ronika responded calmly to Amber's gaze, but she couldn't see much surprise and emotion in her calm expression, "I don't know how you survived, maybe this is related to the illusion that enveloped the entire Shadow Fortress at that time. phenomenon, but your survival is a surprise to me - I'm glad to see you standing here in such good health."
"Oh? Isn't it a pity that I was not destroyed back then?" Amber stared at Veronica, "Isn't this a hidden danger for you?"
Veronica's answer was very calm and indifferent: "You have grown up safely and are no longer a hidden danger."
Gao Wen's eyes moved between Amber and Veronica, he thought that Amber's reaction would be fierce, but after a few seconds of silence, the other party just shook his head: "Then let's treat it like this .”
Her figure gradually disappeared into the air, and a gradually receding voice floated softly: "I'll go out first to blow some air."