The directors of the Grand Natural Academy had always been secretly appointed by the royal family. They were mysterious, powerful, and rarely appeared in public.
Besides them were the many vice presidents and honorary presidents, whose allotted positions varied in number.
Being a vice president was practically one of the most important qualifications for entering the Royal Academician Committee of the Grand Duchy. Once they reached this level, they almost never concerned themselves with the academy's specific development. Having entered the core of the duchy's power, they used the honorary position of academy president as a stepping stone to influence an even broader sphere.
Below them were the directors of education for each year. There were three years, with one director and one deputy director for each.
Reilo's mentor, Gubo, was precisely the director of education for this year's first-year students.
The spacious conference hall was solemn beneath the hint of grandeur emanating from its heavy metal doors. Six figures of varying forms sat facing one another around a huge round table. They were the six current directors of education.
"It has been seven years since the academy last ranked first in the graduation assessments of the six academies. Last year's results were especially disgraceful. Not only did we fall behind the Xilan Duchy, we were even surpassed by the Balda Duchy. Two directors of education left the academy in shame. If this continues, what qualifications will the academy have to stand alongside the Xilan Natural Academy?"
The speaker was a middle-aged female scholar. She lowered her head and flipped through a black leather notebook, her tone indifferent and stiff. She seemed even more rigid and stubborn than Gubo, and was also one of the academy's radical members who advocated vigorously supporting experimental research in Alien Spirit Communication.
The atmosphere in the meeting room was oppressive.
Puffing on his tobacco pipe, with a black crow perched on his shoulder, Liuyan quietly glanced at the silent Gubo.
Seeing everyone's gazes fall on Gubo, yet finding that Gubo had no intention of speaking, Liuyan gave a helpless smile and could only respond himself.
"Then what do you suggest?"
The crow on Liuyan's shoulder turned one of its red eyes toward her.
The female scholar sneered. Even though Gubo was avoiding the matter, she continued to press him relentlessly.
"Clinging to tradition will only get us eliminated by the times! In recent years, as scholars from the surrounding duchies have wantonly exploited the natural specimens of Demon Eagle Forest, their numbers have visibly declined. The artificial cultivation programs have also successively ended in failure. If this continues, the academy will be committing slow suicide! Alien Spirit Communication is the academy's future. I suggest once again that the academy must greatly increase its research investment and reduce the proportion of funding allocated to research into Evolution's Profound Meaning!"
After a pause, the female scholar's voice came to a halt.
"Moreover!"
The female scholar's gaze settled on Gubo, her expression aggressive.
"Gubo, the disciple I accepted has already gained the recognition of the academy's reviewing mentors and has officially been granted the title of spirit communicator. Although the results of the first Elite Rank have not yet been officially published, he is already far ahead of the other students. Heh heh heh, on the one hand, you rely on Alien Spirit Communication to seek achievements for yourself, while on the other, you constantly obstruct its development. Don't you find such a contradiction shameful?"
Unlike his usual furious outbursts, Gubo was unusually calm at that moment.
Adjusting the black-rimmed glasses perched on his high nose, Gubo looked at the female scholar and said in a low voice, "I took a look at that disciple of yours. He is indeed impressive and worthy of being called a spirit communicator."
Several people turned their gazes toward the female scholar.
The female scholar wore a proud expression and did not avoid their many gazes in the slightest. She replied, "As far as I know, Master Gubo also cultivated a disciple among this year's new students. Heehee, why haven't we seen that disciple's Elite Rank points? Could it be that you want to maintain an air of mystery?"
The disciple she was referring to was naturally Reilo.
Gubo retorted without haste or anger, "You should first cultivate a disciple capable of standing alongside Wushuang before evaluating mine!"
"You!"
The female scholar flew into a rage from humiliation. "If not for Wushuang Galie, what makes you think the people above would value you and let you confront me?"
"Hmph."
Gubo swept his gaze across everyone and said methodically, "I still reserve judgment on Alien Spirit Communication. I follow the principles laid down by our predecessors and Pioneers: no biological evolution can violate Natural Law or Evolution's Profound Meaning. Using deformed, pathological Cancer Cells as the source of evolution to replace normal cells will inevitably incur other costs. It is merely that the time has been too short for them to manifest!"
This concerned the academy's future direction of development. The other scholars present who had not spoken dared not make a hasty decision.
Just as Gubo had said, Alien Spirit Communication was a formal academic school formed more than a decade ago after years of painstaking research by the female scholar. When it first emerged, it had caused a tremendous sensation within the academy.
This academic field had practically shattered certain principles of Antonio's Evolution's Profound Meaning. At the time, many members of the academy's radical faction had even believed that this female mentor might become humanity's fourth Pioneer in the future!
However, as conservative scholars led by Gubo did their utmost to oppose it, pointing out that the academic practice of using Cancer Cells' latent properties to replace the body's normal cells must contain terrifying risks, people gradually regained their composure and began approaching the matter rationally.
Was Alien Spirit Communication a great discovery that broke through the truth and laws of Evolution's Profound Meaning, or did it still exist within its framework, with only the price being delayed?
After all, according to the Law of Conservation of Energy, accomplishing certain goals would inevitably require paying other costs!
The formidable properties displayed by Alien Spirit Communication had not merely violated the survival-of-the-fittest principle of Evolution's Profound Meaning. They had even overturned the fundamental law of Conservation of Energy!
If Alien Spirit Communication was not the discovery of an entirely new truth and law, then according to the law of Conservation of Energy, achieving its goals would inevitably require paying another price. Given the extraordinary abilities displayed by this academic field, the price required to explain them would likely be unimaginable...
When the laws of the human Pioneers clashed with the principles of this obscure female scholar, there was no doubt that the vast majority of scholars were more willing to believe the Pioneers, whose theories had been verified through hundreds of millions of experiments.
Thus, over the following decade or more, Alien Spirit Communication was limited to exchanges among a tiny number of scholars within the academy. It received no funding from the academy, and the Royal Academician Committee had only one inconspicuous laboratory dedicated to it.
As time slowly passed,
the price everyone had desperately awaited still did not appear. At the same time, the female scholar's strength grew day by day, and quite a few people began to waver. Had they really been wrong?
Accompanying this was the challenge faced by scholars researching Evolution's Profound Meaning: the problem of specimen collection!
The crucial step for scholars researching Evolution's Profound Meaning was collecting natural specimens and improving their own understanding.
However, as the number of human scholars grew and the demand for specimens soared, the number of natural specimens available for exploitation had already declined dramatically compared with a thousand years ago. Collecting specimens took increasingly longer, making study even more difficult.
Thus, people began seeking various solutions.
Yet whether it was public museums, artificial breeding, or other programs, they all ultimately ended in failure. Scholars had no choice but to explore increasingly remote and uninhabited regions.
Even Gubo's unfinished Ancestral Cloning Academic was one of the many academic research projects intended to save scholars of Evolution's Profound Meaning from their predicament. By using the mottled bloodlines of low-level Magical Beasts, it extracted the genes of certain ancient Magical Beasts to restore precious biological specimens that had already gone extinct.
The female scholar also calmed down and inadvertently glanced at her fingers.
The fingerprints on her fingers were visibly writhing slowly. Even some of the bodily tissues beneath her skin seemed to have come "alive" against her will, occasionally squirming before quickly being restrained by the Energy Magnetic Field and temporarily returning to stillness.
Such a horrifying condition for others had long since become something the female scholar was accustomed to after more than a decade.
More than a decade ago, when she had just published her research on Alien Spirit Communication, her field had been rejected because it violated the principles of two Pioneers. Disheartened and at rock bottom, she had faced the countless doubts alone, glaring coldly at everyone.
Yet as the days passed,
those who had once questioned her had become insignificant in terms of academic strength before her. Her heart had consequently grown stronger than ever. She no longer retreated. Even when challenging the principles of two Pioneers alone and facing the doubts of countless scholars, she no longer backed down!
"Truth can never be extinguished by force. The Law of Order between the celestial bodies of the universe cannot be changed even by the God of Light, the Creator!"
At the round-table meeting, the female scholar murmured the words of the late Pioneer White Niven, her gaze utterly resolute!
"Even Gauss Adolf and Antonio, the two Pioneers, merely discovered the laws of truth at their respective stages. They do not represent the laws of truth! Once I discovered the entirely new law of truth known as Alien Spirit Communication, they became another Church in my eyes—an old power standing in the way of the great new era!"
Apart from Gubo, even Liuyan was slightly moved upon hearing these words.