They traveled through time at the same time, but the villainous scientist

Chapter 165 Adam Cell
After the noise and chaos completely subsided, the massive recycling operation proceeded in an orderly manner.

Unit 2 was secured to a massive offshore platform by a professional engineering team and transported, along with the equally enormous carcass of the Fish Angel, to NERV's headquarters in Japan.

Amidst the chaos and cover of the handover, an inconspicuous transport plane quietly landed.

Without attracting any attention, Kaji Ryoji quietly handed a briefcase to Ikari Gendo.

Inside the box was one of the most crucial keys to the Human Instrumentality Project, stolen from the German branch of SEELE—the embryo of Adam.

Afterwards, Asuka joined NERV, and then Zhang Qi, under the pretext of not having a room, gave Asuka, who wanted to live with him, to Misato Katsuragi.

After that, life returned to a brief period of peace and tranquility, but for a true chess player, the end of one battle is merely the beginning of another.

The ancient and stubborn ghosts of SEELE believed they possessed the complete map to the realm of the gods.

They possessed Adam's soul, as well as the fragments of his body that had been torn apart in the Second Impact;
They deciphered the theory behind the S2 organization, which controls Lilith, the mother of humanity, and the Spear of Longinus, the only weapon capable of suppressing her power.

In their script, everything is ready except for one crucial element—the complete annihilation of all the apostles who come knocking on the door.

This is why they tacitly allowed Gendo Ikari to build Tokyo-3 into a massive fortress and to use Lilith as bait to lure the Angels there.

Once NERV has dealt with all the Angels, they can directly activate Human Instrumentality, allowing humanity to return to Lilith's natal state and become ultimate life forms.

However, they underestimated the ambition of the other player on the board.

Gendo Ikari, this seemingly loyal executor, had already secretly laid out his own plans.

Through the series of clones of Rei Ayanami, he cleverly grasped Lilith's innocent and primal soul firmly in his own hands.

Now, through Zhang Qihe's manipulation and the blessing of Liangzhi, Adam, the apostle "father," has also fallen under his control.

From Gendo Ikari's perspective, the chessboard is already clear.

Once the last apostle falls, that will be the moment he overturns the chessboard, disregards SEELE's rules, and forcibly initiates his own "Human Instrumentality Project."

Unbeknownst to both sides, another player had quietly joined the game...

"That's really amazing..."

Inside the heavily guarded private laboratory, Zhang Qi gazed at the dizzyingly complex genetic map projected on the holographic screen and let out a heartfelt exclamation of admiration.

This is the genetic information deciphered from that tiny piece of Adam's embryonic tissue; it is the root of the Tree of Life and the origin of all the apostles.

Its arrival, along with the three apostle corpses previously obtained—the water angel, the day angel, and the thunder angel—and the newly delivered fish angel sample, finally completed the last and most crucial piece of the puzzle for him to analyze the S2 mechanism.

Just as he and his counterpart in the Guyver world had jointly deduced, the operating principle of the S2 Engine bore a striking resemblance to the core power unit within the Zombie God and the Giant's armor.

This is called convergent evolution in the field of biology. It is a phenomenon in which two or more organisms that are not closely related can evolve to have similar morphological features or structures because they live in the same type of environment.

In order to power the super life form, two civilizations in different universes developed similar technologies.

They are essentially energy converters based on specific cellular structures, capable of drawing almost inexhaustible energy directly from the imaginary space known as the "Dirac Sea." This energy is then converted by the apostles' unique cellular structure into the power needed to sustain their massive bodily functions and deploy their AT fields.

However, the two methods of implementation have taken completely different technical routes.

The "Descendants" of the Guyver Armor world are clearly more advanced in biotechnology.

They can highly integrate and crystallize these cellular-level energy extraction organs, ultimately forming stable structures similar to the energy amplification devices of giant armor or the crystals of beast gods.

The advantage of this high degree of integration lies in "controllability".

Not only can it freely define the abilities of the Beast God General, but it can also close down a miniature black hole after creating it, controlling it at will.

The first inhabitants of this world, their creations—the Apostles—had an S2 mechanism that was a more primitive and crude design.

The energy extraction organ is not an independent core, but rather diffusely distributed throughout the body's cells and tissues, deeply integrated with the organism itself.

The consequence of this design is the uncontrollability of energy.

Like Adam, which triggered the Second Impact, the energy it released when it awoke in Antarctica shattered itself into pieces, demonstrating immense power but also damaging itself.

Moreover, the abilities of the apostles are relatively limited, and most of them do not even have a human form.

If the technology of the Arrivers was a precise "surgical scalpel," then the technology of the First Men was probably a mountain-splitting axe.

However, there is only one thing in which the first inhabitants of this world were ahead of the arrivals: the study of the soul, which is outwardly manifested in the AT position.

In an instant, countless clues connected and collided in Zhang Qi's mind, eventually forming a bold deduction.

In that case, he could already guess to some extent the true purpose of the First Men creating these life seeds, known as the "Fruit of Life" and the "Fruit of Wisdom," and designing such a cruel "impact" mechanism for them.

This is not just about spreading life, but an incredibly vast experiment in the selection of civilizations spanning hundreds of millions of years!
By setting these rules of "survival competition," they force the life forms that ultimately emerge victorious to continuously advance on the path of evolution and fusion, eventually selecting the ultimate life form that can perfectly master and precisely control the energy of the S2 mechanism.

That life will become the most glorious proof that their civilization once existed.

"This is really... getting more and more interesting..."

Zhang Qi's eyes gleamed with barely suppressed excitement. He seemed to see two completely different yet complementary paths leading to the ultimate mystery of life.

The invaders of the Guyver Armor world are more focused on the ultimate research on the material side.

The Beast Gods they created represent the pinnacle of biological modification. Their ultimate life forms can even distort the laws of physics with their own will, creating and annihilating matter out of thin air, making them veritable walking humanoid catastrophes.

The world's first inhabitants seemed to devote more energy to the study of the spiritual, or rather, the "soul."

AT Field, Human Instrumentality Project, LCL Sea... all these concepts point to that unseen and intangible yet real realm.

Matter and soul, body and spirit—these two constitute life…

(End of this chapter)