Chapter 322

Using evil eyes to make controllable artificial soldiers.

After returning to A Ru Cun, Luo De immediately told Nadixa and the Great Merciful Tree King about this.

But he didn't inform Kantisi about this for the time being.

Including Ying and the fastest Paimon, Luo De also didn't say anything.

Mainly because this matter is truly explosive.

If Kantisi found out, she would definitely go to any lengths to first seize those evil eyes, in order to interrupt the process of infusing elemental energy into the body.

But if she did that, it would truly be unjustifiable.

What Luo De now wants.

It is a perfect excuse and image to replace the Red King.

Once Kantisi seizes the evil eyes distributed by Duo Tuo Lei, this becomes a handle, making the appearance of the Red King possess considerable indefensible unreasonableness.

No matter how you say it.

Nominally, these things are all bestowed by the Red King.

It is also something firmly believed by the desert people who have received the 'reward'.

"We still need to think of a win-win solution."

After leaving Ying and Paimon in A Ru Cun, Luo De returned once more to the Home of Vitality, sitting alone there to continue browsing the medical records left by Duo Tuo Lei.

He read while chatting with Nadixa and them: "Have you found anything over there?"

"No."

Nadixa was the first to answer.

Her voice sounded a bit depressed.

"Zan Di Ke remains unmoving in Xu Mi Cheng, and many people who associate with him I have recorded, but I have not found any trace of the Foolish People."

Nadixa said with a headache: "If Xu Mi truly had an evil eye factory, then the Foolish People would definitely have large-scale movement traces; in the rainforest area, they could not escape the Void's surveillance, so if your guess is true, that Foolish People's factory could only be in the desert."

She finished speaking.

The Great Merciful Tree King then continued: "I sent several teams to the area north of Da Ma Shan, carrying Void Terminals to investigate, but that place has too many ancient ruins, and moreover, if Duo Tuo Lei wanted to produce evil eyes, the Red King's ruins with natural protections would certainly be more suitable; only a day has passed, and many teams haven't yet reached the site, so we probably need to spend more time."

This time, the Great Merciful Tree King lacked her usual playfulness, her words filled with much gravity.

Not just her.

Nadixa is the same.

Even though the three of them are now scattered across three desert regions, each separated by at least hundreds of kilometers, Luo De can imagine what their faces look like.

After hearing what they both said.

Luo De closed the book in his hand: "The records here also don't specify where the experiment site is located, but there is a more detailed experimental report."

It must be said.

Duo Tuo Lei's research in this area far surpasses the level of the vast majority of scholars at the Academy, including the sages.

Luo De later found that experimental report from a gap in the wall.

The text gives extremely detailed instructions on how to use the new-style evil eye to create soldiers.

Moreover, this plan is not currently activated.

Five years ago

Whenever he thought of that time, Luo De couldn't help but frown.

After the Kelipusi·Laigengfende incident in Mondstadt, under Snezhnaya's pressure and with the cooperation of insiders in the Knights of Favonius, the children and young people there were widely recruited by Snezhnaya.

Jean had once told Luo De many secret rumors of the Knights of Favonius that were not publicly disclosed.

Among them was the matter of Dottore taking children away to conduct human experiments.

There is a record of this in the Knights of Favonius.

Even the Darknight Hero, Diluc, has a copy of this record, and he even once clashed with the Doctor, killing a subordinate who specialized in abducting children for the Doctor.

And after the Stormterror incident.

In the name of the Anemo Archon, Jean, acting as interim Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius, announced the termination of many projects previously jointly developed with Snezhnaya.

This child-transportation plan was among them.

"That Archon residue potion is the original version of the soldier's evil eye."

This is a data result Luo De obtained from the experimental records.

That so-called experiment to cure the magic scale disease.

In fact, it is the prototype of the soldier program developed by the Doctor.

This program exists not only in Sumeru, but also in Mondstadt, Snezhnaya, Fontaine, and Inazuma; apart from Liyue, which is shielded by the Geo Archon's divine might, and Natlan, ruled by the Pyro Archon, no laboratories have been established.

Other nations also have similar human-experiment bases under various pretexts.

In other words.

Ke Lai was an early test subject in this program.

And she fortunately became a successful experiment among those test subjects, exhibiting extremely high adaptability to the Archon residue.

Of course.

Ke Lai was not completely successful.

Because her personal will was too strong, she was not controlled by the Archon's resentment; indeed, she could even suppress it, retaining her humanity, and even in the most dangerous moments she could restrain herself to avoid killing as much as possible.

The true success.

It is the missionary whom Luo De beat to death.

That person's will had completely submitted to the Archon's resentment, and from it he drew the power to transform himself into a monster.

This is the successful soldier that Dottore speaks of.

The only difference.

That is, the missionaries originally needed to use potions to stimulate the Archon resentment within their bodies, becoming monsters that are neither human nor ghost.

The soldier people use evil eyes filled with Archon resentment, using this special thing to inject the elemental energy rich in Archon resentment from the evil eye into the user's body, making them controllable soldier people in a state similar to magic scale disease.

The soldier people plan has an extremely broad design scope.

I suspect that not only A Ru Cun, Xu Mi Cheng and Hope City, but also tribes and mercenary groups deeper in the desert may have already popularized this new evil eye.

Luo De stroked his chin, muttering: "It seems necessary to conduct another population census in the desert."

Population census?

As soon as this word came out, Nadixa and the Great Merciful Tree King exclaimed in unison.

Luo De first did this when Hope City was being built.

Later, A Ru Cun and the Sumeru side also conducted a population census, recording all resident and transient populations in the void, and also issued the Sumeru version of ID cards.

This brought a huge workload.

Even after so long, Nadixa and the Great Merciful Tree King still have fresh memories.

This is work that even the gods would find headache-inducing.

And this is still aimed at densely populated towns and villages.

According to Luo De.

Now we need to conduct a population census on the scattered tribes and mercenary groups in the desert.

This is not just a problem of large workload; there is also the huge workload problem brought by investigating the scattered population.

Finding people is not an easy task.

Especially those to be found are the desert tribes and mercenary groups without fixed dwellings, who may change homes at any time.

Although this is very necessary.

But we don't have enough manpower now.

The Great Merciful Tree King is conducting an analysis from a realistic perspective.

Sumeru is currently using people everywhere.

A Ru Cun is under construction; Xu Mi Cheng needs to monitor Duotolei's god‑making plan, and also monitor Zandike while suppressing scholars who have been bewitched by him and collaborate with him; as for Hope City, needless to say, its construction never stops, so it can't spare much manpower.

If at this point we devote precious manpower to finding people for the population census, either the project will be delayed, or various monitoring items may encounter uncontrollable problems.

This is indeed a serious real‑world problem.

However, Luo De did not waste too much time thinking, and quickly proposed a solution: "Promote the Void Terminal, build the Void Network, and establish a brand‑new monitoring system in the desert region."

Impossible!

Nadixa was the first to come out and oppose: "Too hasty, too rushed; there's simply no time."

Although Luo De gave the excuse of worrying about disrupting the plan, he temporarily did not inform Kantisi about the soldier people plan.

But everyone knows.

This matter cannot be kept hidden forever.

Once the elemental energy concentration in the patient's body reaches the level needed for mutation, they can no longer worry about whether it's the Red King or not; we must first rescue those selected for the soldier people plan.

Now the time is urgent.

Building a small Void Network is still feasible.

Wanting to build the kind of Void Network Luo De said could cover the whole desert is almost impossible to achieve, and its difficulty is several times higher than the desert population census Luo De just mentioned.

After all, that population census plan is just troublesome, with a large workload, but it does not involve high‑difficulty technical problems.

This plan to build the Void Network.

This plan to build the Void Network requires spending a large amount of Mora and time to set up an Academy branch that can accommodate the Void, and also requires fixed locations and routes that have been well planned, so that these places can be connected to form the Void Network.

This not only requires a lot of manpower and money, but also requires assigning either Nadixa or the Great Merciful Tree King to do this specifically; otherwise others cannot establish the network's key nodes.

Be realistic.

What you said.

It would be more practical to send people directly to look for the evil eye factory.

The Great Merciful Tree King said helplessly.

Luo De is fine in every way.

It's just this train of thought; sometimes it's overly unconventional, often able to speak in a matter‑of‑fact tone about things that are actually impossible to do.

For this matter, Luo De needs to clear his own name.

I also know this is very difficult, but right now this is the best means of control.

Luo De clenched his fists and pondered: "We ourselves lack the strength to monitor the desert; establishing new Void nodes won't draw too many objections. I know this is troublesome, so I think we should let the Great Merciful Tree King go alone to the desert to build Void nodes—just the nodes, no supporting facilities—we only need the Void Network to operate."

Oh?

You mean, let me just set up nodes in the desert?

After the Great Merciful Tree King finished asking, he then muttered to himself: "That can be done, but nodes built this way are very fragile, signal transmission is also poor, and they likely won't achieve the monitoring effect you mentioned."

No need for it to be too good; just need to be able to monitor the desert.

Luo De tapped his palm with his fist, saying while tapping: "Even if the network signal is a bit worse, as long as we can receive it, we can roughly see where the abnormality is."

Still that saying.

If there really is an evil eye factory in the desert, the Foolish People's army will naturally often bring people back and forth between that factory and other areas.

Then, as long as we find the Foolish People's army's location in the temporarily established Void Network, we can continuously monitor their movements, thereby quickly locating the evil eye factory's hiding place.

Wait until this matter is finished.

With the Void Network's navigation, sending people to do a population survey will be much easier; after this side's matters are settled, we can also use these temporarily established Void nodes to quickly perfect them into a complete Void Terminal.

Luo De laid out his ideas in full detail.

It's very simple.

In theory, it also works.

"Nobody else can do this."

"Temporary Void Nodes are definitely unsafe; not only are there all kinds of natural disasters and odd harms in the desert, but if the people of Duotulei discover this, they will definitely go sabotage it."

"Therefore, the constructed nodes must be guarded by god-level power there, ensuring that aside from Duotulei, no one can destroy these Void Nodes."

Luo De finished speaking; he seemed to have thought of Nadixa's worry and spoke up early: "I've discussed this with Ying, and she agreed to help."

What Nadixa worries about is.

The situation where Sumeru and Duotulei have turned hostile has already formed; Luo De wanting to kill him is one reason, and Duotulei having already been infiltrating and sabotaging Sumeru before that is another reason.

Both publicly and privately.

They cannot possibly shake hands and make peace; they can only continue this open-and-covert struggle until one side falls.

Given this situation,

If the Great Merciful Tree King goes alone to the desert to build Void Nodes, it will be dangerous.

If that Duotulei, in a desperate move, were to strike at her, given the Great Merciful Tree King's current feeble strength, she truly would have no way to resist.

No way.

This is also one of Sumeru's major problems nowadays.

The former Great Merciful Tree King still had combat ability; even without the Red King, she alone could maintain Sumeru's peace.

But that was her before.

After her resurrection, she lost most of her abilities, and her control over the World Tree is far inferior to before.

This caused her combat power to greatly diminish; she was already inferior to gods known for martial prowess like Zhonglei Dianying, and now she is utterly feeble.

Nadixa is the same.

Before, there was the Dendro Archon's retinue, the Lannaluo, who could help them.

But after the Blight of Darkness erupted, the Lannaluo also lost most of their power; even the strongest Lannaluo now does not reach god-level strength.

In contrast, Duotulei,

This guy's strength is recognized as god-level, and he firmly holds the second seat among the Executors of the Foolish Masses through pure martial might; even just a slice of him has power that the Great Merciful Tree King and Nadixa cannot match.

Without a bodyguard, letting the Great Merciful Tree King go alone to set up Void Nodes in the desert is indeed very dangerous.

"Alright, then let's do as you said."

"It's just that Hope City here needs you to help manage things for a while."

The Great Merciful Tree King took on this thankless task, and Nadixa had no objection.

Thus the plan was set: Luo De would bring the desert folk who had taken Evil Eyes to Hope City for his own surveillance, while the Great Merciful Tree King would go to the desert to establish Void Nodes.

"Hopefully this will go smoothly."

After discussing these matters, the three of them muttered in unison:

(End of chapter)