"You're lying to me? When did I ever lie to you?"
Xu Linna looked at Zhang Chen, completely bewildered.
As her gaze met Zhang Chen's, she suddenly smiled faintly and said,
"I understand. You can see the energy meridians within the human body, which is why you say I'm lying, isn't it?"
Zhang Chen nodded, not wanting to beat around the bush, and stated directly,
"Clearly, there's a very powerful energy flow within you, yet you just said you couldn't withstand the 'energy blizzard' attack!"
"With the abundant energy within you, you could sleep naked in a blizzard and be perfectly fine."
There was one more sentence Zhang Chen held back from saying.
The energy within Xu Linna was the most brilliant and dazzling Zhang Chen had ever seen among all survivors and monsters.
It was evident that her strength far surpassed any powerhouse Zhang Chen had encountered!
"Mr. Zhang Chen, you're really exaggerating. How could I be as amazing as you say?"
"But regarding the energy within my body, I do need to give you a proper explanation!"
"However, to explain this, I'll have to start from the very beginning, and it might take quite some time..."
Xu Linna said with a smile.
"I have plenty of time. You can take your time, no rush!"
Zhang Chen said, sitting on a large branch lying horizontally on the ground.
"Then... alright!"
Xu Linna nodded with a helpless expression, conceding,
"I know you're aware of the Progress faction's development, especially after you left the high-walled city of Tengxiang. You must have a general idea of all our research up to that point!"
"So, I'll pick up from where we left off after abandoning the high-walled city."
"Although the Progress faction won the dispute with the Gene faction and implemented Progress faction policies for quite some time."
"However, these policies didn't fundamentally change humanity's predicament in the apocalypse. Our living space was being steadily compressed, and... as you know, humans lost the ability to procreate. So, every person who died meant a permanent loss of one to the human population."
"Under this atmosphere of despair, the Progress faction split again."
Saying this, Xu Linna suddenly paused, her gaze fixed on Zhang Chen as she asked,
"How much do you know about Reincarnators?"
Zhang Chen shrugged and smiled faintly, deflecting the question by saying,
"It's me asking you now, not you asking me. Since you need to tell me everything honestly, why don't you just assume I know nothing about Reincarnators!"
Xu Linna pursed her lips, knowing that Zhang Chen didn't fully trust her yet and wanted to probe her.
However, this was only natural. If Zhang Chen could easily trust a stranger in the apocalypse, he probably wouldn't have survived this long so smoothly.
"Alright. Reincarnators were actually a plan we activated. Because we didn't want to become monsters ourselves, we summoned people from parallel worlds who met the criteria to this world through technological means!"
"Then, we used the meteorite energy to alter the pressure of time and space, causing the apocalypse to arrive gradually, giving these Transmigrators opportunities to grow!"
"And then, through the battles between Transmigrators and monsters, we depleted the monsters' combat strength."
"That ring is actually both the source of your power and your shackles!"
"So, to become stronger, you must rely on the ring. If the ring is lost – if you don't have a good way to sever the connection between the ring and your own energy – carelessly cutting off the ring on your finger will directly lead to the Reincarnator's immediate death!"
"To assist Reincarnators in their growth, we established a dedicated program team. They were responsible for programming the rings, enhancing their functions, and thus helping you adapt better to the apocalyptic environment."
"You should understand this well. From the meteorite energy, you should have realized that energy can be edited like programming, and the ring itself contains a certain amount of energy."
"Then, through something similar to your world's internet, the energy of all rings was connected into a network, maintained and operated by the program team."
"At the same time, we would also collect information on each of you through the rings, including your level, strength, and general experiences."
"However, due to the limited number of people in the program team, we couldn't monitor everyone. Therefore, only powerful individuals like you, who are at the forefront of strength, were monitored by us."
"Of course, only I and the people in our program team could clearly understand your profile information! Other humans had other jobs and were completely unaware of you."
"You said Reincarnators were a plan you had activated. What did you mean by that?" Zhang Chen caught a key piece of information from Xu Linna's words.
"That..." Xu Linna cast a look of approval at Zhang Chen and slowly said,
"Because we later discovered that our suppressing power over the apocalypse was gradually weakening. For instance, we set each stage of the apocalypse for 30 days, but in reality, they had started to shorten uncontrollably. In the end, we might completely lose our ability to suppress the apocalypse!"
"If that were the case, any Reincarnators we summoned would face beings thousands of times stronger than them the moment they transmigrated. Transmigration would mean death, and thus the Reincarnator plan would be meaningless!"
"In this situation, the Progress faction split. Only my program team and I firmly believed that Reincarnators could establish a common defense line against monsters with us native inhabitants and overcome the difficulties together!"
"But Tang Houde... who is also my teacher, believed that the Reincarnator plan had completely failed. As the leader of the Progress faction, he actually betrayed his original intentions and began to focus on genetic research."
"He wanted to continue humanity's legacy through technology and the transfer of human consciousness into cyborg bodies. They are now cultivating a large number of cyborgs in parallel worlds, ready to be deployed into this world at any time."
"They have even initiated the cyborg recycling program, and your Xiaobai is one of the key targets for their recycling."
"Once their cyborg plan is complete, the next step will be to destroy all Reincarnators!"
"The reason I have such abundant energy flow within me is because all the ring energy networks require a terminal server, much like the terminal server for your world's internet."
"However, your world's server is a machine, while the server for this world's energy network is me!"
"If I die, then all Reincarnators in the entire world, regardless of which generation they belong to, will instantly die!"