The Secrets of the Void

That little girl I jokingly called a Hun Yuan Body Lifeform was indeed an extremely rare case. She still retained part of a human body structure, but the Energy System inside her had been designed according to the Shilin Apostles. At the same time, she possessed some of the gods' power. She could hardly be classified as any race at all—perhaps the Highest Life Goddess could consider carving out a separate class among primates and calling it Xi Yan.

According to the usual logic of the Shilin Apostles, anyone bearing the Empire's mark was the Empire's property. Since the girl named Xi Yan had integrated psionic energy into her body, she should naturally have obeyed the Empire's orders. But that clearly failed to consider her rights as a free individual. If it had been Sandora, she might have matter-of-factly assigned Xi Yan an Imperial Army serial number and ordered her to report for duty. After giving it some thought, though, I decided it was better to let the girl choose how she wanted to live.

Xi Yan was clearly a little surprised by my decision. Even when we said goodbye, she was still scrutinizing Older Sister and me suspiciously from head to toe. And regrettably, even at the very end, I still failed to get that unlucky child to stop calling me "Uncle."

Meeting that girl had been a minor interlude, but it gave me something more to think about: was this really an isolated case?

After returning to the reception room, I planted the Pandora sisters in their chairs, then told Sandora about the little girl named Xi Yan. She obviously did not care much about an unfamiliar person with psionic energy, but she was deeply concerned about Imperial relics. She also voiced exactly what I had been thinking: