The vice-president gazed at Rui with a bewildered expression.
"...You are aware the tissue is entirely dead, Your Sagehood?"
"Of course," Rui remarked. "But that isnāt enough to stop me. I will resurrect a handful of cells and create stem cells out of skin cells."
Even back on Earth, he was aware that scientists had managed to convert human skin cells into stem cells through a form of biotechnology called pluripotent stem cells technology. He was certain that he could do the same for evolutionary skin cells after he resurrected them, especially given that they were highly genetically adaptable in the first place.
"What do you mean by āresurrect?ā" the vice president stared him dumbfounded. "No one has cracked death aside from the Immortal Sages, and even they donāt resurrect the actual body itself. Itās impossible."
Amare lit up with a hint of pride. "Rui can resurrect the dead, donāt you know? He can do anything!"
Rui coughed. "Not quite, no. But yes, I am able to induce changes that essentially reverse the process of the dead. But there are conditions. For one, I canāt resurrect anything for which I donāt have a model of life for."
In the case of Amare, he had an extensive SOUL model as well as the Angel of Laplace.
In the case of Anthea, the former was not extensive and was limited to whatever he conjured up in battle.
"But I donāt need an extensive model of life since I donāt intend to resurrect the evolutionary supreme leader," Rui shook his head. "I just need a handful of his cells. Hell, even one cell would be enough. I can get it to reproduce and divide to give myself a lot of his stem cells."
The vice president gazed at him with a stunned expression. "...Even if I accept that you can resurrect a dead cell, what do you intend to do with it, Your Sagehood?"
"I intend to integrate his cells into my body," Rui replied. "As much as possible, anyway. Ideally, I would like to become a human-evolutionary hybrid who retains his Martial Path while also getting as much genetic adaptive evolution as possible. But I will settle for whatever is possible. Iām not quite sure how I will go about it, but..."
His pitch-black eyes sharpened.
"I suspect I will need the Divine Doctorās help for this."
Integrating evolutionary cells into his body was not going to be easy. Just because he could resurrect the dead did not mean that he could integrate the flesh of a different species altogether into his Martial Body and produce a stable biochemical ecosystem with minimal rejection.
The former was pure brute force, in a sense. He relied on his extraordinary cognition to obtain a blueprint of the past and used his supreme power as a Martial Sage to manually move his body towards that blueprint with pure force.
This time, however, he didnāt have a blueprint for the end goal.
He didnāt know how to produce a stable hybrid fusion.
There was also the fact that his body was made up of Gu.
His body had adaptively evolved an aggressive and explosive cancer to keep the Gu in bay and to continuously cultivate more and more of it while also continuously growing more and more resistant to it.
Any external flesh that entered his body would die in a heartbeat.
He couldnāt allow his blood to touch another human being or Martial Artist, or they would die in a heartbeat. This extended to all bodily fluids, unfortunately, which meant that he couldnāt have... āfunā with Amare until he found a solution to this issue.
But it also meant that he needed to be very careful about introducing new cells to his body.
In the case of Anthea, however, the man had just barely managed to adaptively evolve to a small amount of the Gu before his death. In fact, the technical reason he died was more so due to the end of his lifespan rather than the Gu killing him, although it certain exacerbated his dying.
How well would the evolutionary cell be all to handle the Gu inside his body that had already grown stronger after destroying Antheaās body?
He didnāt know.
There was too much uncertainty.
That was why he needed the Divine Doctor to help him with integrating Antheaās flesh into his body. The only issue was that he would need to find him in the true world and would also need to convince him, the man was not pleased at Ruiās impotence in helping him diagnose Gaia.
"If possible, could you supply us with a sample as well? We can gain far more data on living cells than we can dead." The vice-presidentās voice brought him back to reality.
Rui nodded. "That will be vital, given that the next generation of evolutionaries are going to have his blood running through their veins. It will be good to conduct tests to understand exactly what they will be capable of. Now..."
He gazed at the vice-president with an unyielding gaze.
"Open it up and let me in there."
The vice-president of Esocline Federation heaved a sigh.
"As you wish, Your Sagehood."
It wasnāt long before the chamber was opened and Rui was allowed inside.
He walked on air as he found himself standing right before the suspended corpse of Anthea.
It reminded him of their battle.
"...You were strong."
Anthea was perhaps the strongest non-Transcendent individual that Rui had ever fought.
Although, had he been allowed to continuously evolve in that fashion, he might very well have reached truly become an absolute Transcendent being even if he would have also been weakened by his age.
Before Rui had blasted him with his Gu, he was essentially a Martial Squire compared to what he was before.
The boost he had gained by undergoing continuous evolution was equal to that of a Squire Body Evolution.
A single blow had allowed him to shatter Ruiās arms into paralysis.
"But not even that is equivalent to the power of the true higher Realm..." A faint murmur escaped Rui.