Otto's Rare Display of Tenderness, as the Mad Butcher Relaxed His Shoulders to Teach a Child to Read!

"This was the truly revolutionary part." Lei Xiang's voice carried a trace of coldness. "Look at those experimental chambers. Every data panel was marked with different [Honkai Energy Concentration Gradients] and [Physiological Response Curves of test subjects]. What Otto was doing was not simply fighting Honkai—he was [reverse-engineering the Rules of Honkai]."

"Reverse-engineering the Rules of Honkai?" A'Dai froze slightly. "What did that mean?"

"It meant—" Chang Gongwei's voice held a gravity it had never possessed before, "he wanted to turn Honkai from an unknown disaster into a discipline that could be researched, predicted, and even countered. Look at the data streaming across the screen—the tissue samples, charts, and simulation models. Every frame represented countless failures and trials. And all of this was merely the tip of the iceberg of the [Honkai Studies System] Otto had laid out."

The image blurred again, and lines of text emerged:

[To accelerate Honkai research, Otto emptied Schicksal's reserves while dispatching elite fleets across the globe to search for "relics" left behind by the Previous Civilization.]

The scene showed a massive warship cleaving through giant waves. On its deck stood rows of soldiers equipped with unprecedentedly sophisticated handheld detectors. At the head of the group, someone held an ancient parchment map and a compass-like device as he spoke quietly with the adjutant beside him. "The Archbishop said that there is an [Origin Template] left behind by the Previous Civilization beneath the East Sea. That thing may help us decipher the underlying Rules of Honkai."

"The Previous Civilization?!" Zhou Weiqing sprang up from his chair. "Th-this meant that before Otto's civilization, there had been an even more ancient civilization?"

"So that was it." Huo Yuhao spoke deeply. "I had suspected it for a long time. A disaster on the scale of Honkai could