Green Mountain Ridge, inside a research institute built into the mountain.
Fourteen "artificial Ninth-Tier Cultivators" floated silently in the air, their eerie blue glow lighting the faces of more than thirty onlookers.
Calling them "artificial Ninth-Tier Cultivators" was not quite right. They were not humanoid at all. It would be more accurate to call them highly intelligent military weapons, or Ninth-Tier intelligent spellcasting platforms. But like Spiritual Cultivators, they had many Spells built into them, and their power happened to be comparable to that of Ninth-Tier Cultivators. This world's soul-fusion technology and programming had given them near-human intelligence, so the name would do for now.
They looked like objects carved from translucent energy crystals, hovering in the air as their eerie blue glow brightened and dimmed like breathing.
Chen Shu could sense the immense energy inside them.
This was the young woman's research project.
Fourteen had been made. The Spells they cast were nearly as powerful as those of ordinary Ninth-Tier Spiritual Cultivators—terrifyingly so.
Unfortunately, the achievement depended almost entirely on the Heavenly Palace's energy, which could not be replicated. Fourteen was all they could make, and the Yi Nation had sacrificed the Heavenly Palace, a source of immense strategic deterrence, to do it.
"We call them Azure Demons."
A researcher in a white coat stood at the front and introduced them. He glanced at the project's principal researcher, tucked away in the crowd. Doctor Ning, usually so stern and difficult to get along with, looked unusually docile now, like a little girl standing beside her parents.
"There are fourteen Azure Demons in total, Units One through Fourteen. They're as powerful as Ninth-Tier Cultivators, so they can cross the Plane Barrier and continue operating normally in that withered, shattered plane.
"They possess a degree of intelligence and can fight independently,