The nuclear bomb, the most powerful weapon Earth's people had mastered, was finally tested on an uninhabited island in the Inner Star Sea, ten thousand kilometers from Tianxing City.
Mo Caihuan was already 126 that year. She stood aboard the spaceship with the princess and several cultivators and mortals, watching from afar the wooden frame on the deserted island. Atop it sat a round black metal sphere.
"Detonate it," Mo Caihuan ordered.
The princess activated the magic array, and fluctuations of spiritual energy appeared over the sphere. The spiritual energy detonated the explosives inside, which generated inward pressure, triggering fission in the nuclear fuel and releasing immense energy.
Boom!
As the violent explosion rang out, an enormous shock wave visibly swept through everything on the island. Trees burned to charcoal in the intense heat, rocks melted into lava, and the blinding flash seared their retinas...
A mushroom cloud surged into the sky, throwing the spiritual energy into turmoil.
"What tremendous power! That strike must rival a late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator's, right?" Ling Yuling exclaimed in wonder.
"Not quite," Mo Caihuan said. "A late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator can vaporize an island outright. A nuclear bomb's heat falls short of a Nascent Soul expert's divine abilities, but mortals can manufacture these things with their own hands, at a cost far below the resources needed to raise a Nascent Soul cultivator. Power isn't what matters most. Low cost is the key."
"The principal is right. Talking only about power without considering cost-effectiveness is playing the rogue," a young mortal scientist said calmly.
Everyone selected to participate in the nuclear test, cultivator or mortal, shared one trait: composure. They would not so much as change expression even if Mount Tai collapsed before them.
Success or failure would not shake them. They took no joy