Jinling Temporary Laboratory.
The bright light illuminated every inch of the lower level, making it clearly visible. The electric-arc lighting surpassed anything in this era, while the metallic tang in the air made the laboratory's danger plain. If one had not thoroughly studied the safety regulations prepared by Lan Yi, then casually touching something or wandering into the wrong place would most likely result in the ever-present, each-at-its-post electrical currents sending one straight to the western heavens.
Yet that was not the most terrifying part.
The most obvious, the most frightening part—
was the enormous humanoid silhouettes that made anyone who entered the laboratory and looked up instinctively catch their breath. Most of their bodies were hidden in the darkness above, and under the flickering electric arcs they appeared ferociously dangerous, as if they would pounce the very next moment and smash tons of steel onto the offender!
They were not living creatures.
Nor were they dead things. Within their abdomens was Cang Hua, solidified by Lan Yi, serving as a rudimentary neural network.
They were Golden Men created by Immortal Lan Yi.
He collected the weapons of the realm, gathered them in Xianyang, melted them down to cast twelve bells and Golden Men, each weighing a thousand dan, and placed them within the palace.
The Spirit Cultivation Practitioners of River Civilization had one characteristic: whether creating things or transmitting teachings, they would sometimes instinctively seek names from old allusions. This could be considered a kind of unconscious commonality. Even when crossing through time and space into different worlds, they would still leave behind countless seeds of River Civilization.
These Twelve Golden Men were not combat-type Daoist soldiers.
In Lan Yi's view, their energy sources, transmission efficiency, tonnage, and autonomous systems were so poor that, let alone being placed on