Ian stood quietly in front of the laboratory window, looking at the deep darkness in the starry sky, and all the files about "Sage Clan" appeared in his mind involuntarily.
In the huge Milky Way Galaxy political landscape, Sage Clan is definitely an extremely alternative and troublesome existence. They maintain extremely bad diplomatic relations with almost all mainstream forces in Milky Way Galaxy.
The fundamental reason lies in the almost pathological racial concept of the Sage Clan. Their social composition is extremely homogeneous, consisting entirely of Caucasian humans. The only visual difference is that there are a large number of individuals with red, blue or purple hair in their ethnic group.
If you have to find a comparison object, their civilization structure is simply an interstellar enhanced version of the "ideal Aryan race" that Hitler dreamed of in the history of the earth.
The core source of the Sage Clan's extreme racism and xenophobia comes from their crazy hatred of "supernatural forces".
In their cultural logic, magic, chakra, Divine Power or any extraordinary power that cannot be explained by existing physical formulas are despicable and unstable Parasite bugs, and are cancers that hinder mankind from moving towards "Truth".
They refuse to come into contact with all supernatural things and devote all their life's energy and enthusiasm to the development of pure technology.
In fact, Ian originally proposed the famous scientific hypothesis about "Pure Materialist World", which was largely inspired by the in-depth dissection and research of the Sage Clan cultural samples.
Because of this extremely xenophobic ideology, no race is willing to establish diplomatic or trade relations with them, and these arrogant bigots not only don't care about it, but are proud of it.
However, this isolation policy was extremely fragile when facing the real plane Cataclysm. During the "Shadowfall" war launched by Guznader that spread throughout the galaxy, Sage Clan suffered an unprecedented devastating blow due to its serious lack of means to deal with Death Resistance's spiritual magic.
Their proud purely technological defense line collapsed like a hot knife cutting through butter in front of the undead army, and the entire civilization was almost completely wiped out from the physical level in an instant.
"So, how are they doing now?" Ian turned his head and looked at Olivia beside him.
"After Shadowfall, the remnants of the Sage Clan are scattered in every corner of the star sector, struggling in the cracks of the undead army," Olivia tapped his slender fingers on the holographic console and called up a series of encrypted data. "But recently, we have discovered that there is a mysterious internal faction that is rapidly reorganizing these scattered sands."
Olivia projected a dynamic holographic screen on the desktop, and his expression became increasingly grim. "At first, this small-scale gathering was not enough to attract our attention.
But the turning point happened a week ago, when one of our reconnaissance ships encountered their border patrol at the border and discovered to their horror: In just a few months, their technical level has ushered in an explosive leap."
Ian frowned slightly, although he did not interrupt, but there was a trace of doubt in his eyes. According to the evolutionary logic of technological civilization, breakthroughs of this magnitude usually require decades or even hundreds of years of technological accumulation.
"This is indeed extremely suspicious, but it is not enough for me to alarm you personally," Olivia continued. "After all, it is not uncommon for technology to explode during wartime. Perhaps they have excavated the remains of an ancient civilization and successfully cracked the underlying code."
In the current war environment, as all major races are frantically mining new planets and expanding their territories, countless dust-covered ancient laboratories and ancient tombs have appeared one after another. The two apprentices of Ian, who are named "archaeologists" but are actually "professional mountain movers", have been very busy recently.
"I sent spies there based on the principle of caution," Olivia's tone became more solemn. "The result was shocking - those paranoid people were secretly studying the direct application of 'Cosmic Energy' on the level of biological evolution."
"They want to use Cosmic Energy to force evolution?" There was a hint of surprise in Ian's voice.
In the definition of the Arcane Empire, Cosmic Energy is an extremely powerful and primitive form of energy originating from the expansion process of planets, stars, Nebula and even the entire universe.
Its effectiveness is not inferior to that of magic or chakra, and it even has greater potential in rewriting matter. However, Empire's research in this field is currently only in its infancy, barely reaching the threshold of Fifth Tier.
"For a race that regards 'extraordinary' as a heresy, this kind of self-slapping behavior is too abnormal," Ian commented coldly. "To reverse the underlying cultural inertia of an entire race in such a short period of time, unless there is some extremely powerful external will that intervenes and forcibly dominates all this."
"The spies did not perform their mission perfectly," Olivia changed the holographic image with a solemn expression. "They were discovered. Before desperately escaping, they only sent back this piece of key information. This is an experimental planet listed as the highest restricted area by the Sage Clan - Green Acid Star."
"Your mission is to sneak in secretly and see how far their experiment has gone," Olivia looked directly into Ian's eyes, "And then go to their home planet to dig out the truth behind it."
Ian nodded and accepted the task. For the sake of safety, Olivia specially handed over the "Time Clone Floating City" that could still last for two days to his command to guard against high-level opponents that might be lurking in the shadows.
After a period of Void shuttle, Ian arrived at the Green Acid Star orbit at Sweetness Galaxy, which is 30,000 light-years away from the earth.
"Master, warning," Morgana's figure suddenly appeared, his purple face full of seriousness, "The technology level of the induction matrix deployed around this planet has reached the astonishing Ninth Tier level."
Ian's pupils shrank suddenly. Before the Shadowfall war, Sage Clan's peak technical reserve was only Eighth Tier. This abnormal leap-forward progress almost confirmed his conjecture about "external interference".
In order not to trigger the strict alarm system, Ian did not let the huge Floating City directly press on it, but once again used his magical "Transfiguration)".
In Void, he deconstructed his body into billions of imperceptible dust particles, skillfully riding on the coattails of Cosmic Rays, and Silencio infiltrating into the atmosphere of Green Acid Star.
When Ian regrouped on the ground and activated the stealth spell, the sight in front of him made him fall into a long silence.
Everywhere he looked, there were ruins. This planet once had a highly developed human civilization, and its architectural style was very similar to the Earth in the 21st century in Ian's memory. He bent down and picked up a broken electronic device.
"Is this a smartphone?" Ian raised his eyebrows. Morgana completed the data hijacking in a few seconds, and the holographic screen showed the life trajectory of the original owner of the phone - a woman of Middle Eastern descent who loved traveling.
Through a quick scan of geographical and historical data, Ian discovered that the planet named Green Acid Star has an extremely unique landform: it has a super giant continent that accounts for 80% of the global land area, and has no ocean as a military barrier.
Precisely because of the full connectivity of the land, cultural exchanges here are extremely frequent, but it is also this environment that makes it the most ideal "whole-planet experimental site" for the Sage Clan.
"What exactly happened here?" Ian smelled the vague smell of blood in the air.
Because the phone was severely damaged, Morgana could only extract a vague global emergency video. In the video, the once prosperous city fell into chaos overnight, and humans were running away frantically.
At this moment, Ian's keen senses captured an extremely strange fluctuation of life energy. With a flash of his body, Teleportation reached the source of the fluctuation.
What appeared before him was a disgusting and bloody tragedy.
In a dark corner of the ruins, a ferocious-looking human individual was crawling on the ground, roaring like Beast, frantically biting and devouring another corpse that was still warm.
"Undead creatures?" Morgana asked in Sea of Consciousness doubtfully, "But I can't sense any residual amount of dead Psychic Energy."
"No, this is not a product of magic," Ian stared coldly at the monster whose face was covered with blood and was greedily eating. His pupils that could penetrate microscopic laws had already seen through the opponent's biological bottom. "This is purely based on biological genetic modification and was forcibly catalyzed by Cosmic Energy - a flesh and blood monster."
"You mean, this is the result of the Sage Clan's experiment?" Morgana's voice had a hint of trembling that it had never heard before.
Ian did not answer. He looked at the living experimental subject that had completely lost its humanity and only had the instinct to kill and eat. He had vaguely sketched the outline of the evil plan behind the Sage Clan in his mind. In this abandoned experimental field, a new nightmare was madly devouring the last remaining glimmer of civilization in the name of science.