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

Chapter 358 marks the start of mass troop production.
"Brother Ma, the end of one era often marks the beginning of another."

Zhuge Qing's calm yet powerful voice pulled Ma Xianhong back from the brink of daze.

"And we are standing at the entrance to this new era."

He walked to Ma Xianhong's side, his gaze sweeping over the array of puppets:
"Next, our goal is very clear, and it can be divided into three phases."

Ma Xianhong subconsciously straightened his back and listened attentively, like a student waiting for a teacher to give a lesson.

"First, I need a group of weapon refiners who are proficient in the Divine Refinement Technique."

Your skills are unparalleled, but one person's energy is ultimately limited.

We need to systematize your knowledge and cultivate a team—a team that can understand and execute the core methods of the Divine Machine Hundred Refinements.

This will be the cornerstone of the entire plan.

Ma Xianhong hesitated slightly, then nodded.

The Divine Craftsmanship is profound and extensive; even he achieved his success only through the support of his family's heritage and his own talent.

However, with the blessing of the body-cultivation furnace, this process will undoubtedly be shortened.

"Second, replicate and improve the body-cultivation furnace."

The furnace you brought back has a core technology that combines the expertise of a master craftsman with the skill of a double-handed operator, but its control program is still a bit crude.

Perfection is essential; it's a prerequisite for our mass production of 'artificial souls.'

Body-cultivating furnace...

Upon hearing that familiar name, Ma Xianhong's heart skipped a beat, but he still nodded.

The plan is theoretically sound; the only constraint might be resources.

But this wasn't a problem for Zhuge Qing...

……

Several hours later
A report with the highest level of security was delivered to an office that looked ordinary on the outside but was heavily guarded on the inside.

The office was filled with smoke, and several composed men sat around a long table, each with a serious expression on their face.

When one of the elderly men, with gray hair but still sharp eyes like an eagle, read out the contents of the report word by word, the air in the entire conference room seemed to freeze.

"...Based on the reverse engineering and integration of the 'Cultivation Furnace' and 'Divine Refinement' technologies, combined with the breakthrough progress of the 'Artificial Soul' project, the 'War God' series of power armor has the theoretical and technical foundation for large-scale mass production."

Requesting the allocation of special resources to initiate the next phase of the mass production plan…

The report was short, but every word was like a bombshell, causing a huge uproar in the hearts of these high-ranking officials who had long been accustomed to great things.

War God Armor!

They understood the weight of those four words better than anyone else.

To verify the ultimate combat capability of this individual soldier equipment, they secretly organized an unequal combat exercise.

The images of the exercise are still vividly etched in everyone's minds.

It was a drizzly afternoon at a secret training ground in the south.

A tester clad in the Xingtian Armor faced a fully-equipped special forces company armed with the latest weaponry.

Once the signal to begin the exercise was given, everything turned into a one-sided crushing defeat.

The bullets struck the armor's shield, only creating weak ripples of energy.

The automatic rifle fire couldn't even slow the armored warrior's advance for a moment.

The armor-piercing bullet fired by the sniper from 1,500 meters away only made the red figure sway for a moment.

The armor's counterattack, however, was devastating.

It did not use any weapons of mass destruction, but relied solely on its unimaginable mobility and strength, as well as its terrifying computational power that aided in combat simulation.

Like a ghost, it darts through the jungle at high speed. Each appearance means the destruction of an armored vehicle or the precise destruction of a firing point.

It even dodged an anti-tank missile by a fraction of a second, instantly moving tens of meters away.

The exercise report concluded that even with the testers clearly "going easy" and using non-lethal methods, the armored units still achieved a victory with ease.

The only limitation is that the manufacturing process of this armor is too complicated. The refining of the core components requires the top weapon-refining masters among the supernatural to spend several months, making mass production impossible.

But now, Zhuge Qing is actually saying... it's ready for mass production?!
After a brief silence, the white-haired old man slammed his hand on the table, his voice resolute.

"Approved! Tell logistics that this plan has the highest priority! We'll give him whatever he wants!"

The order was quickly relayed.

A few days later, when a seemingly endless convoy of heavy trucks, escorted by armed personnel, slowly drove into the underground base of the Engineering Department of the Foreign Affairs Bureau, Ma Xianhong was once again utterly shocked.

The carriage door was opened, revealing not ordinary metal or ore.

There is "mysterious iron" that exudes a faint, chilling aura.
There are "sunken wood" as heavy as mountains and engraved with natural patterns, and boxes of "jade" flowing with metallic luster... These are all top-grade treasures that craftsmen dream of and are sold by the gram on the market.

When he was with Qu Tong, he would be happy for days if he could occasionally get a small piece of something.

But now, these things are being delivered to him in units of "vehicles".

Ma Xianhong couldn't help but step forward, reaching out to touch a huge piece of ore, feeling the immense primordial energy emanating from it, and his mouth went dry.

As the ancients said, it's certainly good to have a big tree to lean on for shade!
……

With the full support of massive resources, the entire engineering department has become a high-speed, precision machine.

The team responsible for Lü Liang was the first to achieve a breakthrough.

In a special ward, which was isolated by layers of talismans and magic arrays, Lü Liang woke up from his coma.

Unlike before, this time, he clearly felt a surge of power within him.

A power that is both innate and utterly unfamiliar.

He raised his right hand, and a faint red light appeared on his palm, unlike the blue hand of the Soul Clarity Technique.

Along with the breakthrough in the research, another report was placed on Zhuge Qing's desk.

The research team successfully extracted a special, encrypted information fragment from deep within Lü Liang's genetic information, which resembled a DNA double helix.

After deciphering, it turned out to be the complete training method for the Dual-Handed Technique, a legend that had been lost for nearly sixty years.

Just as Zhuge Qing had guessed, after the Jia Shen Rebellion, Duanmu Ying, one of the Thirty-Six Bandits, actually came up with this incredible method: he directly "wrote" the cultivation technique into his bloodline, turning his acquired abilities into innate superpowers.

Zhuge Qing immediately tried out the cultivation method as soon as he obtained it.

With the blessing of the divine wisdom of Zhuge Liang, every pass and every trick was instantly analyzed, understood, and mastered.

In just a few hours, when Zhuge Qing opened his eyes again, his gaze was completely different.

He raised his hand, and a potted plant placed in the corner moved on its own without any wind, slowly drifting to his front.

His fingertips glowed red as he gently brushed across the leaves.

He could clearly see that the plant's life form was undergoing subtle but fundamental changes.

Its leaf veins became more robust, its color became more emerald green, and even its DNA structure was optimized and recombined according to Zhuge Qing's will.

This is the power of the Red Hand: interference with the physical body and the deepest levels of life.

Then, a soft blue light emanated from his fingertips.

In an instant, he could "see" its blurry "memories," from a seed sprouting from the soil to its first exposure to sunlight and its first watering...

Perhaps because [Wuhou] is a spirit, his ability to interfere with "sex" is far stronger than he expected.

If he wanted, he could even completely reshape Ma Xianhong's personality, erasing all his pain and confusion while preserving his talent and creativity as a weapon refiner, turning him into a flawless "tool".

The thought flashed through his mind for only a moment before Zhuge Qing calmly suppressed it.

He was fully aware of the terrifying nature of this ability, but his heart remained completely unmoved.

His power stemmed from countless coincidences, making it virtually impossible to replicate. (It's suggested to change this to "his power comes from himself.")
He already possessed worldly things like status and wealth, so he had no need to resort to such distorted means.

Once he made up his mind, Zhuge Qing immediately immersed himself in the next step of the plan.

That means we're starting to perfect the cultivation furnace...

Because they had already mastered the Dual-Hand Technique and the Divine Refinement Technique, they now had all the pieces of the puzzle to create the Body Cultivation Furnace.

Moreover, this time, he further improved it using Ares technology, resulting in a several-fold increase in the furnace's performance.

It can copy personality information and create artificial souls from it.

Meanwhile, under Ma Xianhong's leadership, the newly trained team of Divine Machine Refinement Weapon Masters were working overtime, producing a large number of "Ru Hua" doll bodies.

The first batch of dolls, endowed with "artificial souls," were immediately put into production.

Their job is not to forge armor, but rather... to manufacture and assemble more dolls.

With an abundant, even luxurious, supply of materials, the number of dolls began to grow exponentially.

A week later, when tens of thousands of identical "Ru Hua" dolls were neatly arranged in the huge underground workshop, Zhuge Qing issued a new order.

All the puppets were put into various stages of armor manufacturing and began the forging process.

They are made of the strongest alloys and never tire;
Their "souls" can be changed at any time.

These mechanical puppets can operate 24/7 without interruption.

With a synchronized soft "hum," tens of thousands of mechanical arms simultaneously lit up with the brilliance of Qi flames, illuminating the entire underground base as if it were daytime.

The armor production line is finally complete...

(End of this chapter)