The bombshell that Master Brixton had dropped was such an enormous shock that it rippled through the entire state!

Even the Lifers who hadn't been paying to the design duel quickly heard about the explosive news.

"The Supreme Sage, dead?"

"Why did they hide this from us?! What have the upper ranks been doing all this time?!"

"What will happen to us?! How are we supposed to be able to move forward without the guidance of the Supreme Sage?"

Virtually every citizen in the LRA grew up under the calm and reassuring stewardship of this legendary figure. He was no different from a god to many people, whether they were lowly mech technicians or respected researchers.

Entire generations had lived and died under the constant presence of the Supreme Sage. People were so used to looking up at this mythical biotech visionary that their heads were permanently pointed upwards!

Yet no matter how brilliant the Supreme Sage turned out to be, he was still a human, not a god!

An authentic god would have been able to transcend the limitations of his mortal coil, but the Supreme Sage had not reached that level.

Even if he had touched upon some of the mysteries of spirituality throughout his long lifetime of studying remarkable lifeforms, how much could he have accomplished by himself?

It was highly plausible that the Supreme Sage could die from an accident. Experiments were fraught with uncertainty. Cutting-edge research often required researchers to take a lot of risks! Those who adopted an overly-cautious approach might be good at verifying results and refining existing applications, but they were never good at innovation!

From what Ves had heard about the Supreme Sage, the ancient man was definitely an innovator!

Ves briefly wondered what kind of experiment caused the Supreme Sage to suffer a personal accident. Ordinarily, someone like him would maintain a suitable distance from a dangerous experiment. The pinnacle labs he utilized would surely be stuffed with protective measures.

The only realistic way for the Supreme Sage to be affected by his own experiment was… if he was the test subject himself!

Ves widened his eyes.

Even as Master Werther Cline and Master Leehay Brixton hurled competing narratives at each other, Ves was already fantasizing about what kind of experiment could take such an esteemed and successful researcher down.

He instantly recalled the case of the NuMan. The giant humanoid biomech that Prescott Museum put on exhibit symbolized the failure of an unknown mech designer to escape the end of his life.

In his first meeting with Master Cline, Ves learned that biotech experts were capable of performing many horrible and taboo experiments. They constantly had to resist the temptation brought by their knowledge.

Usually, biomech designers and other professionals were able to maintain their composure. The punishment for failure or getting caught was too great. Any rational scientist wouldn't want to ruin their lives by performing an unnecessary experiment.

"What if it becomes necessary?"

That was a good question.

When researchers reached the end of their lifespan and weren't able to procure any means of extending their lives, what then?

The ordinary punishment of imprisonment or execution no longer held sway over their hearts! Since they were already about to die in a few years, why should they value what little they had left?

From a rational perspective, performing a crazy experiment that would most likely fail but had a tiny chance of giving them a new lease of life made a lot of sense!

Any punishments or accidents the researchers suffered was no worse than dying in their deathbeds shortly afterwards! Instead, by letting all of their restraints go, they might be the first ones to come up with a brand-new treatment to effectively prolong a human's life!

Ves could see this happening to many researchers who possessed the necessary expertise to conduct such experiments. From what he had observed about this society, the LRA's emphasis on science and rationality conflicted with its attempts to impose morality and ethics onto its researchers!

While Ves had no doubt that the institutions of the LRA succeeded in swaying the majority of biotech researchers onto the right path, the problem was there were too many scientists in the state!

Even if only 0.1 percent of all of those researchers turned out to be bad apples, that still represented many thousands highly-competent experts who could create all kinds of biological horrors if they stopped holding back!

The smarter the scientists, the greater the scope of their experiments!

Who was the best, smartest, most successful, most experienced and most resourceful scientist in the LRA?

The Supreme Sage!

With his wealth of knowledge, his grand vision and his control over the pinnacle labs, he could conduct far grander experiments than the NuMan Project!

Perhaps the Supreme Sage secretly collected all of the research data on illegal life extension and consciousness transfer projects that intermittently took place in his state.

After all, even if all of those experiments ended in disaster, the data and results they produced were still of great value to other biotech experts!

Human civilization didn't abide by the concept of tainted research. Even if some crazy doctor performed heinous and cruel experiments on his own patients, data was data.

It didn't matter if thousands of patients were killed or mutilated under the twisted machinations of the doctor. As long as the research data was sound and corrected for any incorrect methodologies and biases, millions of other doctors would have no qualms at all in utilizing these valuable gains for their own ends!

If the Supreme Sage was a pure scientist like Ves suspected him to be, then this old but brilliant man would definitely feel tempted to use the wealth of tainted data to form his own grand experiment!

No matter how much of a role model he was to the entire LRA, if his body exhibited problems and if every other method of extending his life had been exhausted, then Ves did not believe the Supreme Sage could remain a saint!

One of the patterns he witnessed through his travels was that older people had a tendency to lose their empathy. When they reached high positions, their attachments to family and friends faded because they outlived them all. After several centuries of hurling through life alone, even a respectable figure like the Supreme Sage might not care about the greater good anymore!

Ves sighed. Even the greatest figures of humanity were fallible in the end. Gods didn't exist, and humans could never be gods as long as they were slaves to their baser desires.

After realizing these underlying dynamics, Ves believed he figured out how the LRA worked. He no longer believed that the biotech-oriented state was so sincere about pursuing its noble mission.

The stated aim of propelling biotech sciences forward and convincing the rest of humanity to switch to an organic tech base was nothing but a smokescreen as far as he was concerned!

Starting right from the top, a cabal of selfish scientists merely formented a thriving research environment in order to further the progression of 'alternate' life extension studies!

The conspiratorial part of his imagination even came up with the notion that the higher-ups secretly tolerated experiments in this forbidden field. The LRA's regime might look very strict, but researchers actually possessed a lot of leeway as they climbed up the ranks!

There were many ways an administration could subtly encourage old researchers to take the plunge and perform a taboo experiment. Even if these attempts inevitably ended up in failure, the institutions that recovered all of the data that remained behind would slowly be able to build up a considerable body of knowledge!

It was as if the Supreme Sage performed a thousand horrendously illegal and immoral experiments himself, but miraculously kept his name and reputation squeaky clean!

As long as the rate of incidences remained controlled, then no one would even know that the Supreme Sage and his cronies were the ultimate beneficiaries of illegal research!

"What a brilliant scheme!" Ves sighed in utter admiration. "This is how a true master acts!"

If Ves compared himself to the long-time ruler of the LRA, he had no choice but to admit his inferiority.

He always performed all of his experiments in person and by himself. This left him open to getting caught by the Big Two or exposing himself to runaway reactions.

This was an awful approach!

Unfortunately, Ves had no choice but to act in person to perform his risky experiments. The Larkinson Clan was nothing like a proper state such as the LRA. Ves didn't have thousands of scarily-competent spiritual adepts and spiritual engineers under his command.

Perhaps that might change in the future, but for now, Ves could only look up at the Supreme Sage's methods and admire the LRA's grand design.

Of course, Ves was not just a bystander at the moment. He was in fact caught up in the middle of an oncoming storm!

"What do you mean we can't pass through?!" Venerable Jannzi's force of will flared up and pressed against the bio-suited guards blocking the entrance. "Our patriarch has already concluded the design duel. Since an internal political dispute is developing, we have no business being here. Let us leave right away!"

"Our apologies, Venerable, but our orders are strict. We are not allowed to let anyone pass through this exit without explicit instructions from our superiors."

"Then call your superiors!"

"We have tried, but we have only been met with silence. Until we receive word, we cannot make any exceptions!"

The stupid guards rigidly adhered to his current orders without taking the developing situation into account!

The LRA was a hierarchical state where the lower ranks were expected to unquestionably obey the instructions of their superiors. Bending the rules sounded alien to them and breaking them entirely was strictly unacceptable!

While that led to a well-regulated state in times of peace, Ves had seen how such a rigid structure could easily become hindrance in times of chaos!

Considering the escalating political fight happening not too far away behind him, Ves was growing more and more concerned.

He wanted to be gone before anything happened!

Yet because the guard officers were indisposed or distracted by the unfolding arguments, Ves remained stuck in place.

What was worse was that his guards were stuck on the other side!

Nitaa and his new honor guard were all armed to the teeth, but that didn't matter if they were too far away to come to his aid!

"Oh hell. Screw this all. Jannzi, let's suit up and bunker down!"

"Got it." She replied.

Even if she detested his leadership and wanted to put someone else in charge of the Larkinson Clan, this was not the time to argue with Ves.

Having been with him for a long time, Venerable Jannzi had gone through enough crises to develop her sense of caution.

Both Ves and Jannzi approached the backside of Vincent's hover chair. Ves opened up a hidden panel and inputted a brief code that caused a hatch to slide open.

The pair of trueblood Larkinsons then proceeded to pull out dense metal coffer-like objects. After they verified their identities, the metal objects expanded on their own and enveloped the forms of the two humans!

In no time, Ves suited himself up in his Unending Regalia. He finally felt safe now that he was covered head to toe with Unending alloy.

Out of a sense of caution, Ves did not choose to extend a cape from his back this time. That would only cause his form to become more eye-catching, thereby turning himself into an attractive target to anyone with an itchy trigger finger!

While Venerable Jannzi didn't enjoy the same degree of luxurious protection, her high-quality protective suit was certainly one of the better infantry gear that the Larkinson Clan had recently procured.

The only reason why Jannzi didn't wear anything heavier was because they required special training and wouldn't fit inside Vincent's hover chair.

"Hey, what about me?! Where's my fancy suit?" The chair-bound Larkinson complained.

Ves sneered behind his faceplate. "You're already wearing a suit."

The hover chair possessed a special function that caused the occupant's form to be covered by something akin to a hazard suit when activated. Vincent was already covered by it when he noticed the actions of his fellow Larkinsons.

The only problem was that this hazard suit looked woefully inadequate!

"This isn't fair! I'm an expert candidate! I should be wearing something more solid. At least give me a codpiece!"