In the lower experimental base of Hall of Halls, while Bruce was speaking with Dr. Haisen, a subordinate entered the room.
"Your Majesty, the Dean of Saint Mary's Sanatorium reports that Miss Yishan has gone missing."
Bruce and Dr. Haisen paused their conversation and turned to look.
"Missing?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. The Dean mobilized all staff and turned the sanatorium upside down, but still couldn't find Miss Yishan. Your Majesty, should we dispatch some personnel to search throughout the city?"
"...No need. You may go."
"Yes."
After the subordinate left, Dr. Haisen asked, "Your Majesty, you don't intend to retrieve Miss Yishan? For her to slip out of Saint Mary's unnoticed, someone must have helped her, right?"
Dr. Haisen knew this mental sanatorium housed patients from wealthy and powerful families, with extremely tight security. Yishan wasn't a powerful Ascendant either; it was almost impossible for her to escape without alerting the guards unless someone assisted her.
"I don't want to deal with her affairs. Even if she dies somewhere, it doesn't matter." Bruce spoke with a blank expression, clearly not caring at all about the life or death of his own biological daughter.
Dr. Haisen was secretly stunned. Remembering how Bruce had meticulously plotted for his son Gaelid's sake, he thought to himself that both were his biological children, yet the difference in treatment was far too great.
However, recalling the outcome of the previous wedding, Dr. Haisen believed Bruce probably felt Yishan had lost her value. In the past, he might have been able to marry her off to some Senator's child to consolidate an alliance of interests.
But now, after a great purge across all of Suroma, Bruce no longer needed to strengthen his power through marriage alliances with anyone.
"Let's continue our earlier topic." Bruce said. "Tell me how the various combat weapons are performing under the rules' influence."
"Very well, Your Majesty, please take a look."
Dr. Haisen opened the large screens on several walls, which played various video clips.
These videos showed various combat units from Suroma equipped with electronic chips, including but not limited to modified bodies, large war weapons, intelligent weapons, and so on.
Dr. Haisen explained to Bruce while referencing the video clips.
"The most severely affected by the rules are purely intelligent weapons like auto-tracking missiles and war weapons. Under the rules' influence, the algorithm chips inside them have their friend-or-foe identification systems iterated out first."
In the video, a war weapon that was originally undergoing maintenance suddenly activated its weapon module on its own, using its mounted autocannons to mow down and eliminate a team of over a dozen people—composed of both real humans and robots—who were maintaining it.
"These things can't distinguish friend from foe. Even the built-in whitelist failed?"
"The whitelist didn't fail—it simply no longer exists." Dr. Haisen said. "I analyzed one chip that underwent accelerated emergence and found that its algorithmic program had completely erased the whitelist. In exchange, combat efficiency has drastically improved, and the updated weapon targeting accuracy has also become higher."
Bruce said, "A weapon that can't distinguish friend from foe—even if its power becomes stronger, the danger applies to both sides equally. What your team needs to do is study and preserve the new algorithms, then combine them with friend-or-foe identification after the rules end."
"Yes, that is precisely the team's current goal." Dr. Haisen said. "We will absorb all the benefits brought by the rules, and use that one month of precious time to obtain as many optimized algorithms as possible."
At that moment, another video played on the smaller screen—this time featuring several modified bodies.
Those people were walking down the street when one of them suddenly exploded without any warning, affecting several others nearby. The metal components on their bodies were all impacted.
One person had their upper body violently set ablaze. Another suddenly convulsed like an epileptic seizure, with drool continuously flowing from their mouth. The most terrifying was one person whose body spontaneously decomposed—all metal parts detached, and the whole person collapsed like a toppled stack of blocks.
"What's all this about?" Bruce asked.
"The chips in their bodies were overclocking under the rules' effect, updating different enhancement strategies." Dr. Haisen explained. "But the core personnel safety detection program inside the chips was iterated out, so..."
Dr. Haisen paused. "The bad news is that several Ascendants died. But the good news is that through their deaths, my team collected several enhancement ideas for modified bodies.
"My plan is to implant the enhanced chips into new modified bodies again, to see if we can further iterate and optimize strategies, achieving an effect similar to an evolutionary algorithm."
The so-called evolutionary algorithm, also known as an evolution algorithm, is an extremely profound and complex mathematical logic. Once applied, it can continuously find the optimal solution to a problem through self-iteration.
This algorithm was originally very difficult to implement on modified body chips, but with the assistance of this rule, it seems there is some possibility.
"In other words, we need more Ascendants to die to provide chip data?"
"Uh... although that's true, considering the returns, I think..."
"Go ahead." Bruce interrupted. "Since they signed the modification consent forms, these people's lives belong to me, not to themselves."
"Yes!"
Dr. Haisen, having obtained the experiment approval, was extremely excited.
"Your Majesty, rest assured. My team will not let you down. We will use the rules to research the next generation of more powerful modified bodies!"
Bruce nodded and then asked about another project: "How is the progress on developing Mind Power anti-intrusion equipment?"
"It is being actively advanced." Dr. Haisen said seriously. "We are hopeful of achieving results around the time the rules end."
He knew this project was Bruce's top priority, because its results were related to dealing with "Shadow."
The outcome of the battle at Wensilisa Castle had once again proven that Shadow's intrusion and internal explosion were impossible to guard against. No matter how powerful ordinary modified bodies were, they simply couldn't contend with him.
So to deal with him, they had to find a way to counter this special type of attack.
Although some Mind Power defensive items could block intrusion, such items couldn't be mass-produced, and against Guan Tong's astonishing amount of Mind Power, their effectiveness was not particularly good.
The task Bruce assigned to Dr. Haisen was to treat Guan Tong as a hypothetical enemy and take targeted measures in research and development.
Specifically, they needed to invest massive resources into developing an anti-intrusion device to be equipped on modified bodies, similar to how the "Red Demon" combat weapon with mirrored armor was created to counter Adam's abilities back then.
Since Guan Tong's current threat far exceeded Adam's, Bruce had to prepare in advance and planned to eliminate him as soon as possible, to avoid any complications from prolonged delays.
"Your Majesty."
At that moment, another subordinate entered the room to report.
"There is someone who wants to see you. He says he was sent by Han Qiu."
Hearing the name "Han Qiu," Bruce's face turned cold. There was no doubt he had zero goodwill toward his "son-in-law."
Because he still hadn't figured out that the purpose of Han Qiu's arrangement of this wedding was simply to make either him or Guan Tong die.