Enlightened Empire

Chapter 479: Limits of the Research

After Corco and Sumaci had retreated from their veranda, they came to their dining room. Although the entire building had been built at break-neck pace to accommodate the erratic travel schedule of the two leaders, southern Medala's workers had plenty of experience with quick construction by now. In this case, only a few walls had to be pulled up anyways. The royal fleet would carry all the furniture, including a kitchen, fully equipped with anything a lover of food might need.

Still in a low mood, Corco stoked the flames of the stove and began prepping some fish, which had been freshly caught by the divers in the afternoon. Maybe, he thought, if he could hold and taste the results of their efforts, they wouldn't feel quite so superfluous anymore. Clearly, Sumaci could follow his thought, and once again tried her best to cheer him up.

"You know, now that I think about it, we still learned a lot of useful things," she tried to argue, as she removed the scales from the fish. "At least we now have a decent idea how Amautu managed to train his warriors so well. Wasn't that the goal of this journey in the first place?"

Truly, they had gone on this trip in response to Amautu's powerful warriors and assassins, and just as Sumaci said, they had found a possible explanation for their strength. Even the speed of their cultivation could be explained. Thus, the goals of their trip had been fully completed. Any other thoughts of a genetic revolution of society had purely been Corco's wishful thinking. However, the reminder didn't make the king feel any better. Rather, he had done his best to not think about their conclusions about Amautu either.

"If our guess is actually true, then it's pretty horrifying," Corco said, as he heated up the oil over the flame. "I don't want to believe my brother is this far gone that he'd do something so crazy, so... inhuman."

Of course, Corco had no idea what kind of man Amautu was right now. The last time they had met had been years ago in Arguna. In Corco's worst fears, the young king who had a somewhat romanticized idea of the Chutwa scholars and their philosophy of the Way had since been completely brainwashed by his teacher and fellow disciples, and was now little more than an obedient puppet, willing to sacrifice anything in pursuit of Chutwa's great cause.

"He might just be desperate," Sumaci argued, before adding a wink and a joke. "I mean, he's up against us, right?"

Of course, Maci would know what he was worried about. After all, he had spoken about his fears more than once. Not only would Corco regret seeing his brother reduced to a puppet, his clever, younger brother a mere shadow of himself. Even more so, the King of the South dreaded to see the lives of his people in the hands of unscrupulous villains. As outsiders, the scholars could do anything to achieve their goals, no matter the damage to Medala's people. In the face of such possibilities, even his wife's attempts at levity achieved nothing.

"Yeah," a depressed Corco just replied with a forced smile. For a while, both of them just focused on their cooking in silence. While Corco was still trapped in his own thoughts, swirling in endless circles of futility, he was thankful to be interrupted by Sumaci again.

"Hey, didn't they send us the reports of the plant experiments earlier? What did it say?"

When she asked, she was already seated in their eating area, sat on her chair backwards with her chin rested on the backrest as she watched Corco stir frying the vegetables.

"That one isn't looking optimistic either. Apparently, there was no significant effect," Corco glanced over to his wife, before he focused on the fish grilling over open flames. He'd have to be careful to take it off soon if he didn't want the fish to end up dry. Although handling multiple dishes at once like this was stressful, he was thankful that he didn't have too much time to think about other things while he worked.

After all, the report about the plant experiments had truly been terrible news. Their plant research had been initiated based on the greatest discovery of their research team so far, even greater than their conjectures about Amautu's warrior army.

In earlier experiments, they had attempted to let warriors cultivate not for themselves, but for others. In the experimental setup, warriors would cultivate, but focus not on improving their own bodies, but those of others instead. Some cultivators would try to change, commoners, some would try with warriors, some subject pairs would be strangers and others family members. The results had been astonishing.

The one experiment Corco hadn't shown any faith in beforehand had proven fruitful. At close distances, cultivating in another's stead was truly possible. Results were better if the cultivatee was a family member, and effects were minimal unless the cultivatees exerted themselves in conjecture to the cultivation practice they were subjected to.

In short: Influencing other living beings through cultivation was possible! As a result of this sensational discovery, two more experiments were set up: One to test the effects of cultivation on animals, and another to test the effect on plants. They had received the results of the plant experiments from a nearby island this morning, which had shown that — so far — none of the plants had shown any reaction to their attempts, much to Corco's disappointment.

"I should have known," Sumaci commented. "No wonder you've been so down all day."

"If we can't manipulate plants, then we can forget about genetic modification," Corco simply summarized.

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He had explained many times before just how important this step was to his plans. Though usually, he sounded excited when he spoke about this part, not as indifferent as he did right now.

As he chucked the vegetables through the air in an attempt to look competent and stylish, he sighed at the logical conclusion of their failed experiment. "If we want new, better breeds of our plants, we'll still have to do things the slow, old-fashioned way."

After all, he couldn't ask the plants to cultivate for pest resistance themselves, could he?

"But at least the animals showed promise, right?" Sumaci tried to cheer him up. They had received the results of the animal tests a day earlier, so she had skimmed through the file herself. However, Corco could only sigh again in the face of her optimism.

"Kind of," he said as he checked the fish again. "I mean, yeah, animal manipulation has proven possible, but I guess you didn't read the entire thing in detail." He interrupted his work and waited for Sumaci to shake her head before he continued. "So far, none of the changes induced in the animals have been carried into the next generation. They haven't tested larger animals with longer pregnancy cycles, but there's no reason to believe that anything will change."

Faced with the grim reality, Corco didn't think or do anything for a second, as he just stared into empty space. Only the sizzle of the hot oil right in front of him brought him back to reality.

"To be honest, I got too excited when I made my big CRISPR plans," he admitted, as he worked hard to save his stir fry from his own neglect. "This is something we should have expected long ago. I mean, warrior children don't actually inherit the superhuman strength of their parents. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to cultivate from square one every generation again. We shouldn't even have bothered with these test. The results were obvious from the start."

"Maybe cultivation only takes effect slowly and gradually. I mean, warriors are a lot larger and stronger than ordinary people. It might take a few generations of repeated effort to show results." Sumaci tried to stay optimistic. In the face of his wife's unwavering support, even the downtrodden Corco had to smile.

"Maybe. Or maybe the larger size of warriors is just the result of selective breeding, or maybe the children of warriors just have better food and are trained from childhood," Corco easily listed two more likely explanations for the average size of Medala's warriors, before he admitted the truth: "Honestly, this is quite frustrating."

"Well, I still insist that it's too early to give up on the inheritance of genetic traits. We should keep the experiments running for a few generations at least, just in case," Sumaci insisted. Meanwhile, Corco silently added some salt and spices to their meal, only half-listening as his wife tried again to salvage his mood.

"Even if cultivation doesn't affect the next generation, and even if there are no cultivation techniques anywhere in the world which do so, that doesn't mean that intergenerational mutation is entirely impossible," she continued. "If no such techniques exist yet, all we need to do is develop them."

All of a sudden, Corco forgot all about the food right in front of him. The excited king stared at his wife as he frantically thought about the possibilities he had so far overlooked.

"That's right!" he shouted, and began to pace back and forth in front of the stove. "Maybe there is some way to change the dna in the sperm or ovaries or something? If we can achieve that much, traits have to be passed on to the next generation, surely. Our cultivators definitely need to learn more about the process of human reproduction first, especially Eclestius. Maybe if he can properly visualize the process of combining dna, he can really develop a technique which will make it possible to inherit traits modified by cultivation across generations."

"See, it's not all doom and gloom," Sumaci commented. With a smile on her face, she jumped from the chair and came towards Corco. "If we stay focused, our investment is sure to pay off some day. No one else has ever looked at cultivation to this extent, and with such rigor. Surely, our efforts will soon bear fruit."

"That's right," Corco said, still deep in thought. As he put his arm around his wife, they slowly walked towards the kitchen table. "Though our biggest problem is how slow these cultivation experiments are to set up. Every time we want to test something with a fresh batch of people, they need to learn the cultivation technique, and then practice it until we see any visible results. That process alone can take a year or longer. It's really no wonder we haven't achieved much so far. Like this, the number of tests we can run is just way too few, even with all our investment and manpower."

"In that case, maybe we can shorten the cultivation time itself?" Sumaci suggested. "Wouldn't it be possible to redevelop our basic cultivation techniques first, to make learning them faster, and make their effects show sooner? I'm imagining a really basic technique with weak effects, just enough to make it viable for testing. If we can develop something like that first, we'll save time on every single test after that."

In response to Sumaci's out of the box idea, Corco shook his head. He himself had already thought about something like that before.

"No, a technique like that would take ages to develop as well. I mean, consider this: Even if Eclestius can somehow come up with something this demanding immediately, we would still have to extensively test the technique before we can use it. First, we'd have to test if this new technique is safe to cultivate, in the short and in the long term. After that, we'd still have to find out whether or not a specialized technique like that could alter the results of other tests, or if it is even viable to use in experiments in the first place. To do that, we'd have to test the new technique against some old techniques, of course, which just means we'd have to wait for another year anyways. It's not a bad idea in the long run, but for now, it won't be a great help, I think."

While Corco explained, Sumaci didn't look discouraged at all. Instead, she seemed to be thinking hard, until her face lit up like the sun.

"Then why do we let all the test subjects cultivate at all?" she asked. "We've already found out that cultivators can train for others, right? So wherever applicable, we could just use dedicated, experienced cultivators, who could use various techniques to prep the test subjects for all kinds of experiments."

In shock, Corco stopped in front of the kitchen table and stared at his clever student. This was such an obvious solution, why had he never thought about it himself? Obviously, this wouldn't work for every single experiment, but at this point, any improvement to their sluggish pace felt like a miracle. Excited, Corco hugged his dearest Maci, forgetting the world around him. Only his wife's voice — devoid of any of his own passion — once again brought him back to reality.

"Hey, do you smell anything burnt?"

In panic, Corco finally remembered his duties, and rushed back to the stove, to save their dinner from the inevitable damnation of the flames.