The moment Heisenberg finished speaking, the scholar Bach grew visibly flustered.
"Your Eminence, I merely wish to remind you of one thing. You are aware that we currently have only forty-one of our people left, are you not? Even counting yourself and the traitor Ka-El on Earth, we number only forty-three! I am certainly not questioning your orders, it is just..."
Bach drew a deep breath. It took him a long moment before he finally recalled the word he was searching for. After a brief hesitation, he continued, his tone slightly awkward.
"It is just that, among us, Commander Fiona is the only female! If we do not use genetic cultivation to restart the Life Cradle program, we absolutely cannot rely on her alone—through continuous mating and birthing—to meet the basic requirements for rebuilding Krypton! I... I truly dislike speaking this word. I have never attempted to study the relevant knowledge. I am simply quite certain that if we wish to rebuild Krypton, relying on Commander Fiona alone is utterly impossible!"
"Cough, cough!"
No sooner had Bach finished than Heisenberg shook his head in embarrassment.
"Quiet, Scholar."
He spoke softly, and his voice succeeded in silencing Bach. Watching the scholars before him emerge from their panic, Heisenberg shook his head once more and explained in a measured tone.
"Your return has given me forty-one more kin, but that does not mean we are reduced to only forty-one kin! Across the boundless cosmos, there are still many, many more of our people currently making their way toward me. So, we have never been the only ones, and we are constantly growing stronger!"
As his words fell, Heisenberg patted Bach on the shoulder and gave him a gentle nod.
"Rest easy, Scholar. The kin who arrive later will meet the standards required for Krypton's reconstruction. And if, by chance, they fail to reach the baseline for natural population growth, I will reactivate the Genesis Project. After all, rebuilding Krypton is our singular goal, is it not?"
"Yes, Your Eminence!"
Bach lowered his head crisply, then led the scholars beside him to a command console not far away, where he retrieved a triangular prismatic object—a symbol of status.
"Your Eminence, you have evolved from the former Chief Elder into the Heir of Rao. You are the new miracle wrought by the Sun God Rao himself. Your past identity shall scatter and drift away like the winter snows that blanketed Krypton for ten thousand years. But the radiance of your future shall shine eternally upon us, just as the Sun God Rao once did. Therefore, you require a new sigil of identity. When you one day restart the program of natural procreation, this sigil shall represent your future house, and the direction of the entire future of Krypton! Please inscribe your mark, so that the design you choose may fly forever upon the eternal banner of Krypton!"
"Very well."
Heisenberg gently accepted the blank sigil that Bach extended toward him. At the same time, particles gathered beside him, coalescing into a razor-sharp carving knife.
Eyeing the blade floating beside his hand, Heisenberg shook his head at the Divine Kingdom's central intelligence.
"I have no need for this."
As he spoke, his eyes suddenly blazed with incandescent heat vision. Amidst the dazzling flash of light, a radiant sun burst into being upon the triangular prismatic sigil in Heisenberg's hand! That sun, at its central circle, spread outward in all directions with sharp, piercing lines that represented rays of light.
Upon closer inspection—wasn't this the emblem of Orochi from King of Fighters?!
After etching this design onto his identity sigil, Heisenberg simply pressed the freshly carved mark gently against his chest. In the next instant, his previously orderly armor began to shift and transform, the surface abruptly bearing this new emblem. Within the newly formed grooves of his armor, molten magma churned and flowed turbulently. Gazing upon the sun that now adorned Heisenberg's chest, the four denizens of the Divine Kingdom dropped to one knee with a resounding thud.
"We greet Your Eminence!"
"Rise."
Heisenberg raised his right hand slightly, and the four figures on the ground immediately stood. At the same time, Heisenberg manipulated the force field, gently removing the helmets of the three scholars.
Finding their head coverings inexplicably gone, the three scholars froze for a moment. Before they could figure out why, warm sunlight, radiating outward from Heisenberg's chest, washed over them!
Their transformation was nothing like the frenzied ordeal the warriors had endured. Heisenberg had no intention of making scholars suffer the hardships meant for soldiers. Under his deliberate control, the scholars basked as if soaking in a perfectly heated hot spring, comfortably receiving the solar radiation's remodeling of their bodies.
This process lasted over twenty minutes, and even that was only because Heisenberg gradually accelerated their adaptation rate. It turned out that the genes of scholars were far less adaptable to environmental changes than those of warriors.
But scholars were scholars, and warriors were warriors. Now, having gained new abilities, these scholars did not go soaring and swooping about like the soldiers had. Instead, Bach gently raised his right hand, then extended it toward the open porthole. In the void of space, dozens of meters away, specks of dust were immediately drawn toward his outstretched hand.
Watching the sphere of sand and dust that continuously condensed and rotated in his palm, Bach murmured to himself with deep appreciation.
"A miracle of life indeed. I could never have imagined that after leaving Krypton's red sun and coming under the irradiation of Earth's yellow sun, we Kryptonians would undergo such a transformation! Within our bodies, there are now... more than one circulatory system. Through our active choice, we are fully capable of relying on these new systems to command the four fundamental elements—earth, fire, water, and wind. And our body surfaces now replace our skin with the four fundamental forces! By mastering the bio-force field, even a casual wave of our hands holds the power to shape one miracle after another! Flight is merely the most basic function. Once the development of the bio-force field reaches its zenith, we will be fully capable of shattering the shackles of the Twelfth-Level Intelligence Lifeform, and striding toward the far shore of supreme civilization!"
Having said this, Bach looked at Heisenberg with a face full of elation and knelt down reverently.
"I understand now, Your Eminence. It was precisely because I had never witnessed the vastness of my own potential that my shallowness led me to misunderstand the true meaning of your words. If we can achieve a breakthrough with our force fields, we can rely entirely on those fields to reshape the environment—even to shape life from nothing! Possessing the power to reshape life itself, why should we still fix our gaze upon outdated Genesis technology, or the even more outdated method of natural copulation?!"
"I..."
Heisenberg nearly choked to death on Bach's words. He barely managed to maintain his dignity, then shook his head helplessly.
"Honestly, I really was just hoping you'd all copulate naturally..."
"Please do not jest, Your Eminence. I have already admitted my error."
"Heh. Alright, alright. I truly look forward to the day you come into contact with natural copulation..."
"That will absolutely never happen!"
"Who knows?"
Heisenberg shook his head one last time, then stepped past the three scholars and approached the porthole. Through the gradually closing window, Heisenberg gazed down at Earth and spoke softly.
"Now—we go home."
As his words fell, he clenched his right fist, and the immeasurably majestic Bifrost descended at once. As a strategic weapon of the Norse pantheon, the Bifrost was capable of instantly transporting hundreds of thousands of troops and their accompanying warships. Carrying a single Kryptonian vessel with it now—was that not a trivial matter?!
In mere moments, Heisenberg had brought the Divine Kingdom vessel to a halt directly above his original Kryptonian ship in Metropolis. Before the citizens of Metropolis could even feel terror at the sight of the enormous spacecraft, they watched as that colossal ship dissolved into ubiquitous particles and merged into Heisenberg's original vessel!
Moments later, the newborn ship awakened from its slumber. Immeasurable energy gathered around its exterior, forming an energy barrier dozens of times stronger than before. Simultaneously, the ship's dome quietly slid open, leaving an entry passage for Heisenberg and the scholars floating in the air.
Staring at the passage before them, the scholars did not enter immediately. Instead, they hovered in the air and scanned their surroundings.
"Your Eminence, are those indigenous earth natives the slaves you have chosen?"
"Do not phrase it that way. They are free folk. After all, these Americans all hover at the edge of Third-Level Intelligence—a stage where the pursuit of so-called freedom far outweighs the value of life and the essence of survival."
Heisenberg replied with a smile.
Hearing Heisenberg's explanation, Bach nodded in sudden understanding.
"Third-Level Intelligence, ah. A mental stage where one's direction is seized by desire yet remains unknown to oneself; where one's path is lost to greed yet remains uncontrolled; where one's course is manipulated by indulgence yet remains unloved."
A pitying smile appeared on Bach's face as he gently shook his head.
"Rest assured, Your Eminence. I know precisely how to deal with such a benighted intelligent race."
"Naturally. Then allow me to brief you on the work at hand."
"Yes, Your Eminence!"
Upon hearing that Heisenberg was about to assign work, Bach voiced his assent while tilting his head elegantly to listen.
Whereupon Heisenberg told him everything related to Darkseid. After hearing the explanation, Bach furrowed his brow slightly and shook his head.
"Your Eminence, it seems the path to rebuilding Krypton is destined to be anything but smooth. Just as your emergence has brought us dawn and sunlight, your emergence has likewise drawn the dread and hatred of Apokolips. I believe, therefore, that what I most urgently need to do at present is to establish a direct communication method that acts upon our very bloodlines, while simultaneously continuing the development and excavation of anti-matter energy in greater depth. As you said, there are still many of our kin throughout the universe. I am most eager to see more of us standing before this so-called Darkseid and his minions who claim dominion over the darkness of all realms!"
"Hold on. The research on anti-matter can be put aside for now. Beings like myself and Darkseid are not lives that deep-level anti-matter can annihilate. Focus your efforts first on establishing contact with our kin. Additionally, the blueprint for the Earth base has long been planned out. Regarding the initial phase of construction, proceed based on that blueprint and modify as necessary."
"Yes, Your Eminence!"
Bach nodded in understanding. But after nodding, he hesitated and then asked Heisenberg quietly.
"But, Your Eminence—is it truly necessary for us to share the authority of our Divine Kingdom with these so-called heroes of Earth? As so-called free folk, even if your benevolence permits their existence, they should not be qualified to walk at your side."
"Remember this, Bach. They will never be qualified to stand at my side—but the miracles among them can. Every race has its own miracles, and the heroes I have recruited—they are the miracles of Earth!"
At this, Heisenberg's lips curled slightly, and a wild, untamed grin spread across his face.
"Compared to Earth, my concern has always been fixed solely on Darkseid. Whenever I converse with him, he always boasts of the tens of thousands of worlds he has destroyed, treating it as some kind of achievement. To that, I have only one thing to say. Before this, the universe he walked through did not have me in it. And that—that is his greatest achievement to date!"
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