Chapter 238 The Divine Child Project "Dad?" Shana tilted her head...
"Dad?" Shana tilted her head and leaned closer curiously.
"Hmm." Sang Zhitao handed the photo forward again.
The photo shows a family of five. A middle-aged man and woman are sitting in front of them, and behind them, a young man in his mid-twenties is embracing a woman of similar age. The woman is also holding a baby dressed in a little princess dress.
"Are these your family members?" Shana looked at Sang Zhitao and then at the photos.
Sang Zhitao nodded: "Yes, in front are Grandpa and Grandma, and behind are Dad and Mom."
"Didn't you grow up in the quarantine zone? How do you know that these are your family members?" Yas asked coldly, frowning.
Sang Zhitao saw that he was looking at her with a wary gaze: "It was my grandmother who raised me who told me this."
"After she died, I grew up alone in the quarantine zone."
“How pitiful…” Shana and Lillian exchanged a glance, looking at Sang Zhitao with pity in their eyes.
Sang Zhitao gave a sweet smile: "Thank you~"
"You're lying!" As examined the photo closely for a long time, then pulled Shana and Lillian behind him, his cold gaze piercing Sang Zhitao.
Sang Zhitao looked at him blankly, holding warm water in her hands.
Shana and Lillian were also startled by his actions.
Seeing his serious expression, their long-standing experience with their companions made them subconsciously trust their companion's vigilance, and they subconsciously raised their weapons and stared at Sang Zhitao.
Sang Zhitao was increasingly confused by their actions. Seeing that the dagger in Yass's hand was about to be handed to her, she quickly waved her hand and explained, "What I said is true. I really did grow up in the quarantine zone. My grandmother told me that the photo was of my family."
Shana looked at Sang Zhitao's anxious face, then glanced at Sang Zhitao's height of only four or five years old, hesitated for a moment, and then poked Yas in the back: "Is it possible that there is a mistake?"
“I’ve seen people with dwarfism. Although they are as tall as children, their faces are mostly those of adults. This child… looks like a normal child, doesn’t he?” Lillian hesitated before speaking after carefully examining Sang Zhitao.
Yass, however, remained indifferent, picking up the photograph and pointing to a peach blossom: "Then how do you explain this?"
Sang Zhitao felt helpless and wanted to walk up to the photo to take a closer look.
Before she could even walk over, Shana and Lillian had already seen where As was pointing.
It was a clock hanging on the wall that had been accidentally photographed. The time on it wasn't fully visible, but even the time displayed in the barely legible parts left Shana and Lillian in disbelief.
Looking at their expressions, Sang Zhitao's heart skipped a beat.
In the blink of an eye, she had arrived in front of Yas.
Yas cautiously handed the photo to Sang Zhitao, reminding her, "Top left corner."
Sang Zhitao looked at the clock in the upper left corner of the photo, which read September 13, 1999 in the Gregorian calendar...
Sang Zhitao stared blankly at the time, rummaging through the original owner's memories in her mind.
However, the original owner had been living in the quarantine zone since she opened her eyes, and only her grandmother was by her side. The only outsider she met was a supplies exchange merchant who would only appear on the path once in a long while.
She hadn't noticed anything wrong with the clock, but now that she thought about it, the blank look on her face became even more pronounced.
Seeing her confusion, Yass smirked: "It's the year 502 in the Gregorian calendar, and today is July 6th."
"Huh?" A question mark appeared on Sang Zhitao's forehead. She looked at Shana and Lillian, and after receiving the same expression of approval from them, she realized that they were right.
She froze, then couldn't help but lick her lips, which meant...
"So, it's three hundred years after the photo was taken?" Sang Zhitao's voice was a little dry.
Yass nodded: "So who exactly are you?"
Sang Zhitao stared blankly at Yas, repeating her life story that she had told several times before: "As far back as I can remember, I lived with my grandmother in the quarantine zone. I didn't know it was called a quarantine zone; I only knew that apart from the yard and the house, everywhere was dangerous."
“Every day I get up and pick up the fruits left behind after the plants fight, and then collect the shells. When I collect a thousand, a commodity exchange merchant will come to the courtyard to exchange them for some living supplies for us.”
"My grandmother passed away two years ago, and I have been living alone in the courtyard ever since."
"The day before yesterday, I discovered that the fighting between the plants had spread to the small yard."
"Last night, the plants suddenly attacked the courtyard. When I was attacked by a giant feline, I ran into the grass that was taller than a person and then accidentally fell into a deep pit. When I woke up, I saw Shana."
Shana turned to look at Yas: "I think what she said makes sense."
Yass couldn't help but roll his eyes at her: "You think everyone is a good person."
"She's just a four or five-year-old baby, she can't hurt us." Shana looked at Sang Zhitao with a pitiful look in her eyes and then at Yas.
Yass took a deep breath before looking at Sang Zhitao and said, "You said the people in the photo are your family, but those people are from three hundred years ago. No one can live for three hundred years."
"So, your grandma is lying to you."
“It’s not like no one can live for three hundred years…” Lillian suddenly interrupted him, “You forgot, the one in the Spiral Tower has lived for almost four hundred years.”
“That’s an exception,” Yass couldn’t help but frown and retort. “Look at their clothes in the photos, they’re obviously not rich people. How could they possibly use a method like the Spiral Tower to survive?”
“And…” As glanced furtively at Sang Zhitao, “There are only three people in the Spiral Tower who have lived to this age, and they all used that method…”
Lillian frowned, thought for a moment, and couldn't help but retort, "But she really looks like the woman in the photo."
Lillian refers to the young woman in the photo, who was also the woman Sang Zhitao initially thought was her mother.
Yass was speechless for a moment after being asked that question. After looking at the photo and Sang Zhitao's fingertips several times, he put the photo in Sang Zhitao's arms and said, "I don't care anymore!"
Shana couldn't help but pat his head: "Alright, you're still a baby."
Sang Zhitao held the photo in her hand, feeling a sense of dystopian future.
"If the person in the photo is from 300 years ago, then I don't need to look for my father anymore?"
“Perhaps you can find a pile of bones, or maybe just a pile of mud…” Yass’s words were interrupted by Shana poking his hip.
Sang Zhitao sighed helplessly, "Alright..."
“Perhaps you can join our team~” Shana smiled and hugged her.
"But I don't know what my special ability is?" Sang Zhitao looked at her helplessly.
"Are you jealous? Hateful? Angry? Are you upset? Were you just saddened to hear that Grandma lied to you?" Lillian's words rushed into her ears like a machine gun.
Sang Zhitao shook her head: "No."
Lillian's pupils dilated slightly, as if she had been struck by Sang Zhitao's answer: "Don't you have any emotions?"
"Aren't you afraid when you're attacked by mutated plants and animals?" As if he had thought of something, he looked at her with a questioning gaze.
After tilting her head and recalling the memory, Sang Zhitao shook her head and said, "No, I was just a little nervous?"
Yass looked at her with a solemn expression and remained silent.
Shana seemed to have thought of something, and her expression turned somewhat unpleasant.
Only Lillian, being young, didn't react immediately. She just stared at Sang Zhitao in surprise and kept asking, "Not afraid at all? Didn't you say that beast was huge?"
Sang Zhitao shook her head again: "Really not, I just feel nervous."
Lillian frowned, looking at Shana with disbelief, hoping to get some emotional support from her, but when she looked up, she saw that Shana and As were both looking very serious.
They immediately sensed something was wrong and quickly asked, "What's wrong? Why do you all look like that?"
Shana licked her lips, glanced at As, and hesitated for a while before saying, "Do you remember the Divine Child Project?"
Lillian then realized what was happening, glanced at Sang Zhitao in surprise, and asked cautiously in a tentative tone, "Impossible, right? Wasn't it... already stopped?"
"Do you remember when the call was made?" Shana continued to ask.
“I remember the last batch of the Divine Child Project was halted seventy-five years ago,” Lillian said, frowning as she recalled for a moment before looking up.
Shana looked at Sang Zhitao and said in a heavy tone, "I suspect that Taozi is a test subject of the Divine Child Project."
Yass nodded: "Judging from the performance, it seems very similar."
Lillian questioned, "Do you mean Peach is over seventy years old?"
Yas looked at Sang Zhitao, then looked down at the photo in his hand. After a long silence, his eyes were fixed on a certain spot in the photo.
He stiffened, looked up at Sang Zhitao, and said in a detached tone, "Perhaps she didn't live for more than seventy years..."
"I knew it!" Lillian breathed a sigh of relief and couldn't help but raise her hand to pat As on the shoulder.
“But he has lived for three hundred years…” Koyas’s next sentence shocked Lillian and Shana.
"How could that be?!" Lillian took a deep breath. "You're getting more and more absurd!"
Yas shook his head and pointed to the faint tattoo on the wrist of the middle-aged man sitting in front of him in the photo, saying, "He is the initiator of the Spiral Tower Divine Child Project."
“That doesn’t prove that Peach was a test subject of the Divine Child Project three hundred years ago, does it?” Lillian took the photo, looked at it carefully for a long time, and then looked at Yass with a puzzled expression.
A flicker of emotion, whether pity or something else, flashed in Yas's eyes: "Then let's give it a try."
"Give it a try?" Shana and Lillian looked at him, puzzled.
Yas nodded emphatically: "You all still remember the details of the Divine Child Project, right?"
Shana nodded, while Lillian shook her head.
Shana stared at Lillian for a moment before clearing her throat and saying, "The Divine Child Project is to cultivate powerful superhumans."
Yas nodded: "Initially, everyone thought that strong emotional stimulation would create superhumans far surpassing the current strongest, but later the experiment had some problems, causing many human tragedies, so it was stopped."
As he spoke, Yas looked at Sang Zhitao and said, "Each batch of experiments contains different emotional ability users, but only one type of emotional ability user appears in the first batch of experiments."
"What superhuman?" Lilith asked, puzzled.
As stared intently at Sang Zhitao: "The Healer..."
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Author's Note: I changed my keyboard, and now every time I type, it sounds like fingernails scratching a blackboard. You get what you pay for! The matching mouse cursor keeps trembling and then suddenly flies off course. So annoying!
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