Even the black technology contained within Franky's power system alone was enough to make every so-called master priest proficient in mechanical manufacturing burn out their CPUs in confusion.
They would stare at it, analyze it, and still fail to understand the underlying principles.
What was even more astonishing was that Franky himself couldn't fully control the personality shifts caused by different beverages.
How could a drink influence a person's personality?
After careful analysis, Xiao arrived at a clear conclusion:
The reason for the enormous disparity between Franky's crude prosthetic technology and his astonishing power system was simple—
That power system was not designed by Franky himself.
Franky possessed fragments of Pluto's technology.
Given his talent and disposition, it would have been perfectly natural for him to "borrow" key principles from the Ancient Weapon's blueprints and apply them where he could.
This meant that Franky's power system most likely employed an advanced energy technology similar to light nuclear fusion.
So-called light nuclear fusion was, in essence, a controllable fusion process capable of generating energy by burning seawater.
Considering Pluto's sheer scale as an ancient super battleship, its energy source could not possibly have been ordinary.
And when combined with the ocean-dominated world of One Piece, light nuclear fusion was almost certainly among the first top-tier technologies developed by that ancient civilization.
As for why beverages affected Franky's personality—
Xiao speculated that during the fusion reaction, different drink additives stimulated the brain to secrete varying hormonal signals, subtly altering neural activity and emotional responses.
This anomaly existed precisely because Franky's understanding of Pluto's technology was incomplete.
What he possessed was only the tip of the iceberg.
If the technology had been fully mastered, such unstable, non-scientific side effects would never have appeared.
In truth, it didn't matter whether Franky's power source was cola or juice.
What mattered was the water.
Franky chose cola simply because the carbonation and sugar content happened to best complement his personality baseline.
Moreover, if it truly were light nuclear fusion, the consumption rate made no sense.
A single intense battle consuming the equivalent of three bottles of cola was absurdly inefficient.
A fully mature and controllable fusion system would require only minuscule amounts of material to generate vast energy.
To put it bluntly—
The mass-energy contained in three bottles of cola was comparable to the explosive output of thirty "Little Boys."
That was why controllable nuclear fusion was hailed as infinite energy and considered the gateway to interstellar civilization.
It allowed matter to be converted directly into staggering quantities of energy.
Although Franky's system was only a crude, simplified version of light nuclear fusion, it was already more than sufficient for the Mechanicus at its current stage.
After all, the present cyber cultivation method relied on nanomechanical insects devouring matter, which was then converted inside the core furnace into fusion-capable substances.
Compared to directly fusing seawater, this approach required an additional conversion step—and every conversion inevitably introduced losses.
Therefore, the greatest bottleneck of the Mechanicum at present was painfully clear:
Power systems.
As long as the energy problem was solved, the combat power of cyber priests would rise exponentially.
At this point, the potential of cyber cultivators in the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment stages had already been fully explored.
Further advancement no longer depended on clever tricks, but on long-term accumulation and deeper exploration of related scientific domains.
Whether it was advancing materials science to create more powerful nanomechanical insects, or abandoning the human framework entirely to implant superior biological genes—
Both paths offered exponential growth without being constrained by traditional realm limitations.
In theory, if someone could capture a space leviathan or a legendary mythical lifeform, dissect it, and decode its genetic structure—
Cyber cultivators could achieve functional immortality while still in the Qi Refining stage.
Some inherently sacred beings relied solely on physical strength to commit world-shaking feats.
Pushed to its extreme, cyber cultivation could even recreate a cyberpunk version of the Eight-Nine Mysterious Techniques, capable of rewriting reality itself.
However, such a future required terrifying prerequisites.
Gene chimera technology.
Stability frameworks.
Rejection suppression.
Gene-chain reinforcement.
While cyber aura made gene cutting trivial, preventing genetic collapse and immune rejection was vastly more complex.
Xiao had no intention of personally handling this monumental task.
It was too vast, too tedious, and too intricate.
The world contained countless species. Building a complete genetic database alone would be nightmarish.
Even achieving stable transformations for just a handful of creatures would consume decades—if not centuries—of effort.
The Eight-Nine Mysterious Art was never something born from inspiration.
It required countless experiments, failures, sacrifices, and collective progress.
At this stage, these grand ideas could only be stored in the deepest layers of cyberspace—beautiful, but impractical.
The foundation of cyber cultivation was simply too weak.
At present, Xiao alone was holding the entire framework together.
Even basic mechanical technologies had yet to mature. There was no room to pursue auxiliary paths.
Thus, for now, the most effective route forward remained unchanged:
Break through realms.
Ascend continuously.
Gain longevity first.
Only after achieving true immortality would, it make sense to return and optimize power from the foundation upward.
The higher the realm, the earlier immense energy could be condensed.
The earlier resources could be seized.
This was the optimal strategy for cyber cultivation.
Realm came first.
Everything else could wait.
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