The Perfect Test Subject

"In that case, I won't bother trading your brother's life for anyone's survival. I want to die knowing why — so tell me what this inhuman crusade of yours is really about, this crusade that's every bit as monstrous as the Black Church, and I'll let your brother go. At least your secret will stay buried in this Desolate City." Mo Fan spoke plainly.

Lu Nian was surprised.

Not by the sudden change of heart — what surprised him was that this kid, who had so clearly been terrified of dying, showed not even a flicker of unease now that death was certain. Anyone else in his position would have been on their knees begging for mercy.

*Is he stalling for time?* The thought crossed Lu Nian's mind.

His experience told him that was exactly what Mo Fan was doing — but for the life of him, he couldn't work out what the boy hoped to gain. No one was coming to save them out here in the wilderness. And even setting aside whether these students could handle his subordinates, with a High-Level Mage like himself on the field, none of them were walking out alive.

After a moment's hesitation, Lu Nian agreed.

A few words in exchange for his brother's life — it was worth it. He knew that if he pushed these students far enough into a corner, they would drag Lu Zhenghe down with them just to spite him. He understood all too well the pathetic need for revenge that the weak clung to in their final moments.

"There is an experiment…" Lu Nian said, standing still, his voice flat and measured. "An experiment that could shatter the self-deluding fantasy humanity currently calls reality."

"For the benefit of all mankind? How noble. What does that have to do with a bunch of students out on a training exercise? Don't tell me we stumbled onto one of your dirty little schemes and now you have to silence us? The problem is, we haven't seen a thing!" Mo Fan said.

"Dirty?" Lu Nian took a long drag of his cigarette and smiled. "Not dirty in the slightest. Every great undertaking demands rivers of blood. Yes, many lives have been lost for this experiment — adding your group to the count changes nothing. But if it succeeds, the meaning it creates is beyond comparison. No one will have to live under the iron heel of Demon-Beasts. We might even carry the fight to their very Nests…"

"Go be great somewhere else — what gives you the right to slaughter us?" Mo Fan shot back.

"Butchers like you — how are you any different from the animals of the Black Church? And yet you stand there preaching from some moral high ground." Peng Liang found the nerve to shout.

"Hmph. What could students coddled in their ivory towers possibly understand? Those magic teachers preach endlessly about glorious victories in battle — they never tell the world how many have perished across all those wars against Demon-Beasts, how many cities have been wiped from the map. Humanity carries on as though it rules this world: constant triumph, constant heroes rising, civilization thriving under the protection of the mighty. Absurd! Laughable! Those of you who have never lived through war simply don't understand — humanity is barely clinging to survival in its little cities, breeding mindlessly, telling itself that more numbers equals more strength. What it doesn't realize is that the moment humanity breeds enough, the Demon-Beasts open a grand feast. They consume humans freely, yet with just enough restraint. They don't eat everything at once — if they did, humanity would stop reproducing, and there would be nothing left to eat the next time. What is war, truly? Nothing more than the Demon-Beasts getting hungry after humanity has bred enough."

He did not smile as he spoke. His dark face was set in the hard, indignant gravity of a man who believed every word.

He had lived through the wars between Demon-Beasts and humanity. He had seen it firsthand. He knew the truth better than these sheltered students ever would.

Mo Fan felt his heart sinking.

Those words cut too deep. Pushed a little further, they would be the same script the Black Church used to brainwash its Cultists.

If the Bo City disaster was only a small glimpse of what war truly looked like, then perhaps Lu Nian wasn't wrong.

But he hadn't imagined humanity could be so utterly diminished. Especially that line: *They don't eat everything — if they did, humanity would stop reproducing, and there'd be nothing left to eat next time.*

Which meant humanity's survival wasn't a testament to how well Mages had protected them — it was the Demon-Beasts' sustainable harvest strategy. How utterly bleak. How deeply terrifying.

Was any of this true?

Mo Fan didn't know.

"Humanity's ability to survive, to create, to reproduce — none of that speaks to human greatness. It only means humans make better livestock than pigs or sheep. No feed required, and the returns are extraordinary." Lu Nian's smile twisted into something ugly.

He was enjoying this — the demolition of their certainties.

When he first went to war, he too had believed Mages were humanity's shield, its bulwark against the Demon-Beast tide. And then he discovered the truth: before the true Demon-Beast Clans, the Tribes, and their vast Empires, humanity was utterly helpless.

His once-bright worldview had been shattered on the battlefield. Now, watching it shatter in these students, he felt a vicious, indescribable satisfaction — a revenge he hadn't known he needed.

"So with all this grand talk about humanity's fate, what does any of it have to do with us?" Mo Fan pulled the conversation back to the present.

He had no interest in sweeping abstractions. He just wanted to know why Lu Nian wouldn't let them go.

He had never even met the man before, let alone known anything about some experiment.

"The experiment concerns…" Lu Nian paused, turning it over in his mind. It hardly qualified as top-secret at this point. "A new Element."

"What?!" Mu Nujiao and Zhao Manyan both exclaimed at once.

A smile touched the corner of Lu Nian's mouth as he repeated himself. "A new Element. If we succeed, we will be the founders of a magic system no one has ever wielded."

"The emergence of magic gave humanity the faintest fighting chance against the Demon-Beasts. But even after tens of thousands of years of development, the Elements that Mages can awaken are still too few. The most recent New Magic System — the birth of the Light Element — did restore some dignity to humanity. But it is far from enough. We need something stronger still."

As he said this, a light blazed in Lu Nian's eyes that he could no longer contain.

If moments ago he had been a cold, decisive devil, he was now a man consumed by something beyond reason — a fanatic lost in his own obsession.

He was feverish. Unhinged. Even Lu Zhenghe, his own brother, had never seen this side of him. Lu Nian had kept his madness perfectly concealed behind that cold exterior all his life.

"You're saying you're about to create a new Element?" Zhao Manyan stared at him, disbelief etched across his face.

"That's right. Did you think I was just some delusional lunatic?" Lu Nian smiled.

"But… that's…" Zhao Manyan was lost for words.

"You — Mo Fan — are the perfect test subject for the new Element." Lu Nian pointed directly at Mo Fan, his eyes moving over him like he was appraising a rare and flawless specimen, years of suppressed fanaticism finally breaking through the surface.

"Me?!" Mo Fan pointed at himself.

"You. Because you were born with Dual Elements."