All those involved soon arrived beside the little hut near the roots of the Sorin Great Tree. Two fully armed tree-folk still guarded the only door; as Gao Yang approached, the tree-folk immediately stepped aside, and the door of the wooden hut opened the next second. Beiyila walked out from within.

"I will make some attempts," Gao Yang said before Beiyila could speak. "I need you to assist at my side—you are the finest bioengineering expert."

Beiyila had a trace of doubt at first, but she soon noticed the figures behind Gao Yang—Yuri and Semler stood there, and so did Selina Gelfen, holding a lantern. The instant she saw these figures, and especially the instant she saw Selina Gelfen, Beiyila's doubt turned to thoughtful contemplation. She looked at Gao Yang: "Are you certain? Norris is only an ordinary man..."

"Which is why this is an attempt," Gao Yang nodded, striding toward the hut. "Rest assured, we have made tremendous progress in the relevant technical fields, and what I have brought is more than just them."

Beiyila was very curious what Gao Yang meant by "more than just them," but the latter had already taken the lead and stepped into the hut. She could only suppress her doubts, turn, and follow—and as she entered the hut behind Gao Yang, her peripheral vision suddenly caught something unusual: what seemed like a nearly transparent white spider flashed past her eyes, but when she focused her attention again, she could see nothing at all.

Even by drawing on the full sensory perception of the entire Sorin Great Tree, she could not detect that phantom-like spider—it really seemed to have been nothing but an illusion.

Gao Yang stepped into the wooden hut.

The venerable old man lay there quietly, and the fluorescent glow shed by the luminous plants on the roof draped softly over him.

Everyone who stepped into the hut instinctively softened their footsteps; even Rebecca, usually the most reckless of them all, stood quietly to one side.

Gao Yang walked to the soft couch woven of vines and tender leaves. He lowered his head and saw that a blanket covered Norris, his hands resting outside it, folded over his chest, lightly clasping a transparent glass tube. Soaking within the tube was a stalk of lush green wheat. A calm, contented smile still lingered on the old man's deeply wrinkled face; he slept more peacefully than ever before.

This body, its oil spent and its lamp burnt out, had finally found rest.

Suddenly, scenes from years past surfaced in Gao Yang's mind. He seemed to see once more that pioneering camp built on a patch of wasteland, the tents and huts raised from wooden planks and coarse burlap, the newly cleared fields, and the old man standing at the edge of those fields, offering him a humble smile.

He slowly bent down and placed his hand over Norris's.

"I am sorry, Norris," he said in a low voice. "What I am about to do was not done with your consent. This is a 'kindness' of my own making. I am going to apply to you a technique that has not yet been verified—one that can scarcely even be called a 'technique.'"

"I may disturb your sleep, so... allow me to apologize to you in advance, here and now.

"But I must do this.

"The wheat is almost ripe. You should see it with your own eyes."

Then Gao Ximan straightened his back. He withdrew his gaze and said in a low voice to the people waiting nearby, "Begin."

The technicians had opened the storage cases as soon as they entered the room, and now they drew out the many components within—a disassembled brainwave modulation device, artificial nerve cords gleaming silver, crystal arrays neatly aligned, and numerous things whose purpose Margarita could not even begin to guess.

They were an incomplete apparatus, a pile of parts built upon immersion-pod technology. Under ordinary circumstances, such a pile of parts would struggle to serve any function—but Gao Yang had brought experts.

Seven hundred years ago, when the technical foundation in the relevant fields was nearly nonexistent and conditions were utterly abysmal, the first generation of Eternal Sleepers had already succeeded, by sheer human effort, in preserving a shattered soul.

That soul had belonged to a legendary powerhouse.

Now they were attempting to preserve the soul of an ordinary man—which was, of course, far more difficult than it had been back then.

But the technology in their hands today was far beyond comparison with what had existed then.

The components were swiftly assembled. Beside Norris's bed, a silver-white base was set in place, and it was soon connected to the local wireless mana-net, achieving a stable power supply. Next the crystal arrays were calibrated and ready, and streams of artificial nerve cords extended from the base—Yuri handed them to Bei Yila, who stood on site.

Selina Gerfen, lantern in hand, appearing in the room in the form of a psychological projection, gave Bei Yila a slight nod. "You know what to do—you yourself took part in and completed the refinement of this technology back then.

"The positions of the neural nodes remain unchanged. The difference is that we no longer need destructive implantation—use your vines to secure them, make epidermal contact at the base of the skull, and finally activate those nerves."

Here Selina suddenly revealed a faint smile. She gazed into Bei Yila's eyes. "Our success rate is very high—because even now, you are still forcibly sustaining the vitality of most of this body's biological tissue."

Bei Yila raised her hands gently. Several flowered vines extending from the floor coiled around the artificial nerve cords and pressed them one by one into their target positions. At Selina's words, this former Holy Maiden, now fused with plants and with the earth itself, simply smiled softly.

"Every now and then, I still find myself hoping for a miracle," she murmured, as though speaking to herself.

At last Margarita understood what these people meant to do.

Rebecca, standing beside her, told her everything in a whisper.

His Imperial Majesty would attempt to preserve Norris's soul and transform it into a mind capable of surviving within the Empire's data network—not the profoundly flawed and dangerous arts of necromancy, but an entirely new magical technology.

Behind this technology lay a project known as "the Undying."

Margarita had no interest in the secrets behind the project—nor were they anything she ought to concern herself with.

She cared only about what was happening in this room.

The technicians busied themselves about the room. The fluorescent glow spilling down from directly above draped gently over the old man upon the bed. The pioneer hero, a figure stepped out of legend and myth, stood solemnly beside the bed. All of it was grave and reverent.

Margarita closed her eyes slightly.

Good things do not always happen in this world—and often, bad things may happen rather more.

But so long as the sun can still rise tomorrow, there is no harm in expecting a little more from the future.