Chapter 70: You Are My Son

She floated silently in the viscous purple liquid, eyes tightly closed.

The silver patterns beneath her skin had already crawled up her neck, about to spread to her face.

"Xue'er!"

Zhang Jun's heart clenched, and he gripped his sword, ready to rush over.

A voice suddenly sounded from behind, calm without a ripple:

"You came? Perfect, saves me the trouble of looking for you."

Zhang Jun's muscles tensed instantly, he whirled around, and the Heaven-Human Sword instinctively crossed before his chest.

Lin Zhen.

He stood before the control panel beneath the cross-shaped device, wearing a spotless white lab coat.

His face was still the gentle "Uncle Lin" from memory.

But his eyes glowed with an eerie, creepy purple light.

"Lin Zhen."

Zhang Jun squeezed the name out from between his teeth, his voice cold enough to shatter ice.

Lin Zhen's lips curled into a strange arc: "Finally willing to call me by name? Good, shows you're starting to accept reality."

"Reality is that you've gone fucking crazy!" Zhang Jun locked his gaze onto Lin Xue's cultivation tank, his mind racing for an opening, "Let her go! Your bullshit plan is over!"

Lin Zhen shook his head, his fingers casually pressing a few keys on the control panel.

The cross-shaped device slowly rotated, lifting Lin Xue's cultivation tank to its highest point, away from the ground.

"Done? No, quite the opposite." Lin Zhen's voice was terrifyingly calm, "The Purification Plan has only now entered its final stage. The Ice Soul Power has fully awakened; all that's missing is your Primordial Bloodline."

"You're dreaming!" Zhang Jun roared, "I'd rather die than let you succeed!"

Lin Zhen suddenly burst into loud laughter, his laughter bouncing off the empty space, sounding especially twisted and grating.

"Die? You think you have the right to choose? Too naive."

He raised a hand and pointed to the tear in Zhang Jun's battle uniform at his chest, where the ice crystal mark flickered faintly.

"Lin Xue's Ice Soul Power has already taken root in your body through this mark. Likewise, your Primordial Bloodline has left its imprint in her body. Your fusion has been underway from the start—you just didn't know it."

Zhang Jun lowered his head; the ice crystal mark on his chest flashed in sync with the purple light of the Heaven-Human Sword, sending waves of strange pain.

"Bullshit! It's just what she left when she saved me!"

"Saved you?" Lin Zhen's laughter dripped with undisguised mockery, "That was a scene I meticulously arranged. Every crisis, every moment you thought was a life-or-death turning point, was meant to strengthen the resonance between your bloodlines. From the moment you took your first mission, everything has been within my calculations."

Zhang Jun's grip on his sword began to tremble.

Not from fear, but from shaking with rage.

Every time they fought side by side, every time they entrusted their backs to each other, every time they crawled back from the gates of hell…

In the end, they were just a line of data in someone else's experiment?

"What the hell do you want?" Zhang Jun's voice hoarse, "Why the fuck are you doing this?"

Lin Zhen's smile faded, his expression turning unusually stern, his purple-glowing eyes fixed on Zhang Jun:

"To save this world."

"Save?" Zhang Jun almost laughed in anger, "Using your Purification Plan to kill everyone—call that salvation?"

"Not destruction, but remolding." Lin Zhen stepped down from the control panel, approaching Zhang Jun step by step, "This world is too sick. Humans are selfish, short-sighted, greedy, marching toward self-destruction. I will establish a new order, an absolutely rational world, no longer driven by pointless desires and emotions."

"Who the hell gave you the right to decide how everyone should live?" Zhang Jun roared, his voice echoing in the space.

Lin Zhen lightly shook his head: "Not me. It's a higher-dimensional existence. Twenty years ago, I found that energy gate in Li Mountain Dragon Spring Cave and made contact with 'them.' 'They' showed me humanity's hopeless future—endless war, ultimate annihilation. The Purification Plan is the only way out."

Zhang Jun's head buzzed as he suddenly understood: "So you're not really Lin Zhen at all! You're just a puppet controlled by that damn 'them'!"

Lin Zhen's expression twitched for a moment, then steadied: "I am Lin Zhen, and yet I am not. My body belongs to him, but my consciousness has merged with 'them.' We have become a higher form of existence."

"Shove your mother's fart!" Zhang Jun spat, "You're just possessed!"

Lin Zhen seemed too tired to argue, he turned and pointed to the cross-shaped device behind him: "Look at this. You know why you and Lin Xue were chosen?"

On the control panel, two complex DNA helix structures projected, intertwining.

Many segments showed astonishingly similar color and structure.

"The Primordial Bloodline comes from that dimension. It's the gene sample I brought back from the energy gate years ago. The Ice Soul Power is the purest energy crystal on this planet. Only when these two forces fuse can they generate enough energy to open all dimensional gates, letting 'their' consciousness descend and blanket every human mind."

Zhang Jun's eyes widened, a chill surging from his soles to the crown of his head: "You shoved alien genes… into me?"

"Not just into you." Lin Zhen's voice dropped, taking on a godlike, eerie tone, "You yourself are the perfect vessel for the Primordial Bloodline. I, I created you with my own hands."

Those words hit like a bomb, exploding in Zhang Jun's mind.

"You… what did you say?"

"You are not Zhang Tian Gang's son." Lin Zhen enunciated each word, cruelly tearing open the truth, "You were made from the Primordial Gene I brought back, mixed with Zhang Tian Gang's DNA, and cultured in a lab. Strictly speaking, you are my creation, my… son."

Zhang Jun felt the world spin, his vision darkening.

Fragments of his blurry memories before age five surged forth—cold cultivation tanks, the swaying hem of a white lab coat, the smell of disinfectant…

"Impossible! This can't be!"

"Why did Old Wang Jun treat you so well? Because he's one of the project's participants, responsible for your early training and data monitoring." Lin Zhen continued, each word like a needle piercing Zhang Jun's heart, "Why is your birthday September 27th? Because that's the day you were 'activated' from the cultivation tank. Why have you always had a barcode on the back of your neck? It's the batch number for the seventh-generation test subject of the Primordial Project."

Zhang Jun's hand moved unbidden to the back of his neck.

The barcode that had accompanied him since childhood.

Identical to the dragon pattern on the Heaven-Human Sword.

"You're lying! You're deceiving me!" he shouted, his voice trembling without him even realizing it.

"By now, I have no need to lie to you." Lin Zhen's tone flat, "Your Primordial Bloodline inside you is the purest and strongest, because you were born for this. Lin Xue's Ice Soul Power is the same. You two are my masterpiece."

A strong wave of nausea rose in Zhang Jun's throat, his stomach churning.

He isn't human?

Is he some kind of monster made from alien genes and human DNA?

Is he the test subject of Lin Zhen, this madman?