The white-haired youth looked at his friend and calmly said, "I didn’t say anyone died. I only mentioned that five million humans’ worth of ’souls’ have disappeared here, and every month, tens of thousands more vanish."
"Over in Yanjiang’s Land of Curse, not tens of thousands perish every month, yet that Subspace overlapped evil place still exists, doesn’t it?"
Upon hearing Ian’s words, everyone let out a sigh of relief. Anfa pressed her hand against her chest and looked around somewhat helplessly, "Ian, don’t scare us like that next time... It seems this Crimson Court actually has a Natural Spiritual Energy Field? It converts Natural Origin Quality into Spirit Substance, continuously supplying the local Subspace Labyrinth... No wonder it can be sustained for so long."
Ian’s eyes glittered with a silvery-blue light. He continued observing the situation in the entire Crimson Court and said lightly, "This Spirit Energy Field is artificial, likely created by the civilization of the previous era to conduct Voidrealm experiments requiring large amounts of ’Spirit Substance’. If nothing unexpected has happened, there should be a Virtual Deity Research Institute here."
"Secondly, I never said all the souls that dissipate in this place are merely the unwise and mindless Spirit Substance converted by the Spirit Energy Field... You can also sense something’s off, that cold and terrifying feeling, right? This proves there are indeed quite a number of intelligent souls dissipating in this space-time and being absorbed by Subspace, distorting the surrounding Domain of Void!"
"Still, people died, didn’t they? Tens of thousands of corpses aren’t few, are they?"
Sio tried to revive her brain into operation, which wasn’t hard for a True Dragon... So the True Dragon Miss quickly raised her head in shock to look at Ian, "Wait a minute... Yeah, just intelligent souls, not necessarily needing bodies..."
"Indeed, Sio, you finally understand. You do have a talent in the area of the souls of Voidrealm."
With these words, Ian felt somewhat gratified. Sio is indeed not dull; her mind works very quickly when needed.
He looked up towards the ceiling, also in the direction of the Second Layer Twilight Sanctuary. "Your confusion, I actually thought about from the start—I also find it strange. Clearly, I’ve observed tens of thousands of souls have died in recent times, and the magnitude of the distortion of the entire Voidrealm needs millions of intelligent souls, so where are the bodies and sacrifice sites?"
"As long as we can explain the realities, then the most incredible answer is the answer..."
"Everyone, those intelligent souls never had bodies from the beginning."
Lowering his head, Ian exchanged glances with Yisen Gard.
He only said one word, making the golden-haired youth realize.
"Do you remember?" Ian pointed up, his expression calm. "Those Exobeasts with extraordinary abilities, possessing martial techniques... Although I killed them quickly, without a doubt, they indeed possess skills that do not belong to their intelligence."
"This is obviously the ability granted through Mechanical Modification by the former era’s civilization... With a brain and core chip modified, they can download knowledge into those bodies, using accelerated Exobeast bodies to resist humans Sublimators who have undergone arduous training—regardless of the outcome, ordinary humans indeed find it hard to confront biological weapon-like Exobeasts."
Speaking so, Ian raised a finger and said seriously, "Suppose there’s such a system from a previous era’s civilization... It did not download the information using Exobeast bodies as carriers, but inscribed it using pure Spirit Substance as material."
"What it engraved were not martial techniques but some memories and thought algorithms, some human cognitive patterns... and some painful recollections..."
"So, what would happen to these Spirit Substance?"
Not to mention Yisen Gard and Sio, two relevant personnel who directly comprehend it. Even Anfa, who is not very sensitive in this regard but also has a crisis of eroded self-existence due to Spark memories, immediately understood Ian’s meaning.
The elf girl with green long hair gasped softly, "This is Artificial Soul... Mass production of numerous intelligent, painfully-remembering, high-quality sacrificial souls?!"
The more she spoke, the more frightened Anfa became, looking in shock towards the center of the Crimson Court: "The reason for such a large distortion of the Voidrealm originating here is because instruments from the former era’s civilization have continually been using the Spirit Energy Field that can produce mass Spirit Substance to artificially create souls with plentiful painful memories, thereby maintaining the Subspace Labyrinth’s existence?!"
Regarding Anfa’s speculation, Ian shook his head slightly, "To be precise, I don’t believe that counts as a soul, but rather a kind of ’Voidrealm Machine God’, a soul program. It’s just incredibly weak, having only the strength of an ordinary human soul."
"But other than that, I believe you’re correct."
"Regardless of the actions by the former era’s civilization or later by the controllers of the Exotic Species Research Institute, he had a genius-level concept—using the method of creating Voidrealm Machine Gods, leveraging Echoes, memory downloads, and a whole Spirit Substance conversion field, to mass-produce souls to distort Voidrealm, thus creating Subspace Labyrinth to store and conceal certain things."
"Of course, he may also be conducting some experiments, but overall, he utilized everything he could."