Chapter 138: Soul Shattered
Tu Lanxun looked at Dong Tianlong with his eyes wide open.
She really wanted to know what the other party would say.
Was he lamenting his own life? Or perhaps he thought he was the only child beloved by his father and uncle, only to discover he was nothing, no one loved him the most. He even discovered he wasn't a descendant of the Dong brothers?
For many people, not being loved is a terrible thing.
This may also include Dong Tianlong, who has never lacked money but lacks attention?
Unexpectedly, Dong Tianlong said something surprising: "I am completely Dong Yijian's son and Kris's nephew - that's the legal basis. Genetically, I can call them both my biological fathers."
Wen Chong narrowed his eyes slightly, then suddenly looked up: "Was your birth genetically edited?"
"Yes." Dong Tianlong said this with a faint, ironic smile on his face. He raised his pale face and said, "My genes are perfect. For them, I inherited all the genes they share as twins, and the other half comes from a supposedly powerful maternal gene donor."
Li Ao asked, "Is this Kris' girlfriend from college?"
Dong Tianlong was slightly startled, gave them a complicated look, and replied, "No, she's dead. Don't you know? She died many years before I was born. My maternal genes come from that woman's cousin, so I'm somewhat related."
Li Ao frowned. "Did she completely volunteer? And you hate the Dong brothers because of the gene editing?"
"What are you talking about? My body is perfectly fine." Dong Tianlong twisted his sturdy neck and suddenly gave Wen Chong and Li Ao a sly smile. "But there's something seriously wrong with my soul. I feel nauseous all the time."
Wen Chong took over the conversation: "Soul?"
Dong Tianlong nodded: "I would rather have only a body, be a vegetable, or even a walking corpse. I don't want such a soul."
Seeing his despair, Wen Chong couldn't help but explain briefly for his mental health: "From the perspective of soul theory, the soul of every baby that opens its eyes is a small portion separated from the universal consciousness. It is completely new and clean."
Dong Tianlong stared at her numbly, a look of even deeper self-loathing on his face. He looked around, as if looking for a place to bang his head, but ultimately failed. He said in a trembling voice, "My soul isn't like that."
Li Ao: "What's that like?"
Dong Tianlong spoke with a voice as if he was swallowing a cockroach, and said with difficulty: "My soul... my soul... you have heard of my uncle's girlfriend... not the one on campus, but the computer..."
"He has an AI wife," Wenchong replied.
Dong Tianlong nodded quickly, "That's it. I guess the original body of that thing was Kris's girlfriend, but she used to have a soul..." He moved his lips incoherently, "She is the maternal provider of my genes, and the source of most of my soul..."
Li Ao's face darkened when he heard this: "What do you mean? Please explain clearly."
Dong Tianlong swallowed his breath. "Viola, that's the woman's name. Viola left a copy of her soul when she committed suicide, and Kris got it. He decided to do something with it. So the copy was replicated again, its memories and experiences erased, and it became its original fetal form... Then, it was placed into the genetically edited and cultivated body... of mine!"
In other words, in a sense, Dong Tianlong is another incarnation of Viola?
Kris compiled his brother's paternal genes, added them to the maternal genes of his deceased girlfriend's cousin, and finally injected the blank soul of his deceased girlfriend... and then created a son for his brother?
"That's not the most important thing." Dong Tianlong hysterically denied the horror of his previous words, "The most important thing is this! This!"
He pointed his index finger at his front, between his head and chest, and Dong Tianlong said, "Have you ever looked in the mirror for me?"
Li Ao looked at the one-way mirror that connected to the observation room, wondering if it was always on. But Wen Chong stopped him. Wen Chong stared at Dong Tianlong and asked, "Have you ever participated in and observed the soul transformation projects at Tianguo Group and Deshi Hospital?"
"Looking in the mirror" is a jargon used within the Kingdom of Heaven Group and even in the world's top soul technology industry, meaning "look at his soul."
How could Dong Tianlong, who is so uneducated and unskilled, know such things unless he is deeply involved in the business?
Dong Tianlong smiled weakly, "Of course not, I found it secretly myself."
Wen Chong understood instantly: "It's about that incident when you had a falling out with your father and uncle when you were in your early twenties."
"You're right." Dong Tianlong straightened his face and said slowly, "I discovered that my soul is different from others. At first, I just wanted to show off and scare my buddies, but when I really looked in the mirror... just look at it."
Wen Chong had someone bring in the soul-scanning device. It looked like a small cross between an ultrasound machine and an X-ray machine, with a probe attached to the heavy machine itself. She had Dong Tianlong sit down while she scanned his body from top to bottom.
The image that came out was indeed not that of a mortal body, but the appearance of a soul beyond the skin.
Everyone present was suffocated.
In order to conduct a control experiment, Wenchong scanned the soul images of Zhang Nuli and Li Ao on the spot, and arranged them together with Dong Tianlong's. Everyone who saw this set of images turned pale, and Xiao Zhang and Lao Wei turned around and covered their mouths and started to retch.
It's not a physical nausea, but a mental shock.
The souls of Zhang Nuli and Li Ao both looked like complete souls, similar to the other souls Tu Lanxun had seen. They were gray, vaguely human-shaped luminous bodies. One could clearly see the appearance of Zhang Nuli and Li Ao, and there was an indescribable feeling that they were both similar and different from the body.
But Dong Tianlong's soul is completely different.
It was a soul in the same human shape—but not complete, more like a human shape that had been reassembled after being dismembered, a little crooked and a little weird—and the overall color was gray-red.
Most of the gray belonged to the soul itself, but the limbs had a magnified feeling of being torn. The gray face gave them the answer: it was not Dong Tianlong's face at all. Instead, it was the face of another bookish woman with an exotic aura. It was not difficult to guess that it was Viola.
There is absolutely no trace of Dong Tianlong's face.
Inside this young, middle-aged man's body was the shattered, unfamiliar, long-dead soul of a woman. It was artificial.
"What are those red things connecting the gray fragments?" Tu Lanxun recovered his breath quickly and asked Wen Chong.
Wen Chong's voice was unusually complex. He said, "It's also a soul, but it belongs to someone else. In other words, the year Dong Tianlong was born, soul technology within the Tianguo Group and even worldwide was in its infancy. It's always been a secret research endeavor. That's why the Kris brothers were unable to successfully restore a copy of Viola's soul and inject it into Dong Tianlong's embryo."
"Yes. I've seen the project data. Although I don't understand it, the report states that the woman's soul was shattered." Dong Tianlong practically collapsed in the interrogation chair and said numbly, "To glue her back together, they used a lot of soul fragments from other experimenters. Maybe that's too nice a word. They weren't soul fragments at all, they were just leftovers from the 'slaughterhouse'!"
Therefore, those soul scraps from all over the world, whose original owners were not recorded, became the glue of Viola's soul, and gave rise to the present Dong Tianlong.
Dong Tianlong said with a mixture of tears and laughter: "You know, I am something that should not exist. I am not a person. My body is a prefabricated can, and my soul is a monster with a body parted and stuck together with a mess of meat. I... who am I..."
He has none of Viola's memories or personality, and looks exactly like her. Deep down, he doesn't think he is Viola.
His birth wasn't the product of a natural cycle, nor was it the result of love or desire. Instead, his arrival was defined from beginning to end by inhuman values. It was like someone discovering they were a piece of spitted-out chewing gum that had transformed into a spirit.
This is precisely the source of pain.
Do people really know what their souls are like beneath their skin?
Is it possible that the soul is another person, or something else entirely?
Tu Lanxun mentally questioned him. Dong Tianlong's discovery was no different than discovering a writhing parasitic nest within your body: imperceptible on the surface, yet the nausea within constantly permeates your mind, making your very existence feel like torture.
And it seemed that he had no choice but to commit suicide.
No, suicide cannot solve Dong Tianlong's problem.
Dong Tianlong was extremely depressed, staring with a pair of lifeless eyes, and said, "I went to argue with my dad, but he ignored me. Then I went to scold Kris. Guess what Kris said to me?" He laughed hysterically. "Kris advised me to cherish my life, not to ask where I came from, and to forget about it and live a good life."
"Because dying is useless. Hahahahaha..."
"He said that if I died, I would return to my soul state and completely turn into that corpse monster... Haha... I couldn't even keep my current face called Dong Tianlong... I wanted to continue living a life of feasting and revelry. I numb myself, I numb myself..."
Under the sympathetic gazes of the crowd, Dong Tianlong smiled and sobbed, pressing his face into his hands and starting to pick at his skin. "Have you heard the story of Painted Skin? Now I am just this skin. I only want the body, not the soul... Can you give me a soul in exchange..."
No one can do it.
His birth was a mistake.
Before Dong Tianlong scratched his face with bloody marks, he was restrained by Wen Chong and Li Ao. He was already talking nonsense due to mental breakdown. Wen Chong gave him an injection of sedative and sent him to a nearby hospital.
Standing at the hospital entrance, Wen Chong pushed Li Ao back to sort out the transcripts, then turned to Tu Lanxun and said, "The investigation into Xiao Kunshan is almost done. Guess what?"
Tu Lanxun noticed that Wen Chong was a little tired, so he responded, "What's wrong?"
Wen Chong smiled and said, "The red space in Xiaokun Mountain is connected to the red space on Xingfuquan Road. We are now preparing to send a soul to try to enter. Do you have any backup personnel?"
Tu Lanxun rolled his eyes and quickly said, "Yes!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com