Chapter 371: Reshaping (Supplementary update!)

Silent City, Cloud District.

Lin Xian stood in the strong wind, watching the transport ship fly away, his expression calm.

"Let me guess, you suddenly came over to make such a scene—did you discover something?" Mochizuki Shinjin looked at Lin Xian and said.

Lin Xian looked back at him: "Eh, offending Dawn City people like this, you don't seem worried at all."

"Their goal is Silent City. It won't change because of whether our words are measured or our posture is humble, will it?"

"Compared to this, I'm more curious about what Ms. Jian Xuwei conveyed to you." Mochizuki Shinjin looked at Lin Xian and said.

"Nothing can escape your eyes." Lin Xian stepped forward, squatted on the ground, and looked at a mark on the deck that was slightly darker than the surrounding area. It was a circular mark the size of a pinky nail, looking very much like a footprint left by a high-heeled shoe. He reached out and pinched it with his fingertips, and a brown film-like object was adsorbed onto his finger. Looking closely, there were actually fine circuit diagrams on it.

"Looks like a micro-magnetic disk." Mochizuki Shinjin walked up and said.

"Sticking this under a high heel—the road is indeed not easy to walk."

Lin Xian recalled Jian Xuwei's words just now and smiled. He handed it to Mochizuki Shinjin. Mochizuki Shinjin took it, his fingertips turned into a nano-platform to hold the film, and then a holographic message was transmitted from inside.

"Lin Xian, Zhou Mingyuan is colluding with the Deep Red World, and it's not just him; many Dawn City high-level officials are also involved. In addition, this Zhou Mingyuan is a clone."

As soon as Jian Xuwei's voice came out, the others frowned instantly.

"A clone?" Qian Suxun smiled helplessly: "So that's it. I was wondering why the Dawn City Vice Chairman would risk flying over from so far away in the middle of the night. It turns out it's just a substitute."

"That Wen Dong and Jian Xuwei are not substitutes." Mochizuki Shinjin said: "They indeed want to cooperate with Silent City, but compared to building more starships, taking away our Silent City is more direct."

After saying this, he looked at Lin Xian: "Trouble is coming."

"It's already here." Lin Xian said helplessly: "We don't need to hide. Zhou Mingyuan must have known about the situation in the No. 5 Star Abyss long ago, so him coming for a trip like this is absolutely not just a formality or a negotiation for cooperation."

"We'll know soon." Mochizuki Shinjin turned and left, saying to Lin Xian: "Before dark tonight, we will dock about 30 kilometers north of Ningnan to wait for the arrival of night, 420 kilometers away from Jinhai. Your mechanical devouring needs to speed up."

Seeing Mochizuki Shinjin take a few people away, Lin Xian also took a deep breath. He had just finished devouring the nuclear power pile of the Dragon-class transport ship and rushed up immediately, the reason being that he heard Jian Xuwei's words "don't decouple."

That was what he had shouted to Jian Xuwei after the power supply of the Climbing Elevator was interrupted and they rushed into the clouds in Yubei. Sure enough, Jian Xuwei was forced to cooperate with Dawn City under unavoidable circumstances, and taking advantage of this opportunity, she gave Lin Xian a key reminder.

In the engine room of the Dragon-class transport ship, Lin Xian was devouring the huge propulsion engine while observing a black spider robot he was holding with his fingers.

"Just this thing?"

"It's quite hard to find." Kiki flew beside him, complaining: "Don't underestimate this kind of nano-robot; it's really a bit troublesome to invade."

"But for Silent City, is it a bit too pediatric?"

Lin Xian handed the spider robot to Grace, whom he had called over, and let her perform data analysis.

【This is a robot system that causes damage to quantum processors by releasing trace amounts of radiation.】 Grace's scanner on her finger glowed, saying 【Although the energy volume is small, if invaded, it will interfere with the coherence of superconducting quantum bits. In severe cases, it will cause system disintegration and restart.】

"Oh, it's quite powerful." Kiki said: "Looks like they are prepared to move directly against Mochizuki Shinjin."

"More troublesome than that."

Hearing Grace's description, Lin Xian's expression sank further: "Solving Mochizuki Shinjin alone can at most paralyze Silent City briefly. To control Silent City, one must land and control the Cloud District and the main bridge!"

Kiki's eyes widened: "You mean, they are going to launch an attack!?"

Lin Xian closed his eyes: "Jian Xuwei's reminder to me meant this. It seems her Silver Star has encountered the same situation."

"The Silver Star only has a few thousand people, but Silent City has 100,000 people. Does Dawn City want to start a war?" Kiki looked incredulous.

"You forgot?" Lin Xian looked at Kiki: "There's also the Deep Red World."

Kiki pinched her eyebrows with a headache and turned to fly out: "I'll notify the others of the joint train now. Grace, come with me. You tell Mochizuki Shinjin about his side."

Lin Xian nodded, looking at the devouring progress in front of him.

Combined with Zhou Lei's information, the situation was much more troublesome than Lin Xian had imagined. If Jinhai was the lair of the Deep Red World, then besides Dawn City people, they also had to face attacks from Red Human Ghosts and potentially existing dark creatures. This was absolutely something the Deep Red World would do. Now Silent City had a huge target and impressive firepower. If Dawn City wanted to take down Silent City, besides solving Mochizuki Shinjin, they also had to paralyze the main combat power on it.

To be honest, although he was prepared, Lin Xian didn't have a very good response method currently. His Infinite was now parked in the berth of Silent City. If a monster tide appeared, they couldn't possibly abandon Silent City, a bunker with powerful firepower support, and run away on the tracks, right? Besides, Jinhai and Dawn City were ahead. Besides running back, where else could they run?

For a moment, Lin Xian felt a bit of a headache.

Patter, patter.

Footsteps came. Lin Xian looked up and found a man with glowing eyes walking toward him in the passage. Mochizuki Shinjin's nano-pupils were glowing with deep blue light in the shadows of the passage. He walked into the engine room with his hands tucked in his sleeves, looked at Lin Xian sitting on top of the engine, and said:

"This posture of yours reminds me of the fantasy novels I read when I was a child, where people who cultivate immortality like to find a quiet place to sit and improve their strength."

"I'm not cultivating immortality; this is science." Lin Xian looked at the devouring progress in front of him and said.

【Devouring progress 30%】

"Digesting this 10,000-ton transport ship in your stomach is indeed quite scientific." Mochizuki Shinjin complained indifferently.

"Did you come to find me specifically to have our train group withdraw from Silent City and avoid the trouble first?"

Mochizuki Shinjin nodded: "This is one of the plans. If you withdraw, you can attract the enemy's attention well and bring your firepower and mobility into play, reducing the pressure on Silent City."

"Sounds good, but we don't know the enemy's movements. Our train group doesn't have a better driving path, and Dawn City's priority target is Silent City. In this situation, the smarter you are, the more troublesome it is." Lin Xian said.

"So I'm here to remind you that the crisis might not necessarily come from the outside."

Mochizuki Shinjin opened a holographic screen. On it were the contents of hundreds of monitoring perspectives from Silent City's main city and No. 2 city. Tens of thousands of drones and over 100,000 survivors gathered here, busy and bustling. Gunfire was constant on the bottom landing deck, and zombie tides like tides followed the tracks of Silent City, gradually spreading. More and more survivor fleets began to pour in through the landing platform.

Lin Xian frowned, looking at the dense screen, and then looked at Mochizuki Shinjin.

"Ask you a question."

"Hmm."

"To use Yongcheng Port, it's impossible to ignore Dawn City or the Phoenix Society. You couldn't possibly pretend these two organizations don't exist, right?"

"Then cooperate."

Mochizuki Shinjin looked at Lin Xian calmly: "This clone Zhou Mingyuan has a point. Facing darkness, humanity is all on the same boat. Cooperating with anyone is cooperation."

Lin Xian smiled: "Looks like Dawn City is pushing you to the Phoenix Society side."

Mochizuki Shinji shook his head: "No, a stance is something one chooses for oneself; it is Dawn City itself... that has forced the Phoenix Society to have to return."

Lin Xian was stunned: "The Phoenix Society isn't withdrawing?"

"It appears so for now. The latest news is that the Dawn Center's Heaven-Suppressing Warship will arrive at Dawn City tonight."

"Heaven-Suppressing Warship? The Phoenix Society's high command?"

"The Phoenix Society's Commander-in-Chief."

"That's badass. Are the two sides going to war?"

"That depends on the outcome of the negotiations," Mochizuki Shinji said.

Lin Xian crossed his arms: "It seems the abnormal activity in Star Abyss No. 5 is much more troublesome than we imagined. Sigh, I really don't understand—what benefit is there for Dawn City in cooperating with the Deep Red World to accelerate the expansion of the Star Abyss?"

"You are wrong."

Mochizuki Shinji said with a flat expression: "By combining the total assembly data with the Star Abyss detection results, I have reached an interesting, yet quite terrifying, new viewpoint."

"What viewpoint?"

"Regarding the influencing factors of the expansion rate changes of the 13 Star Abysses." Mochizuki Shinji pointed a finger, and the holographic screen in front changed to a planetary map of Blue Star. On this massive planet, 13 Star Abysses were densely distributed, presenting circular swallowing zones of different scales, like 13 pitch-black holes.

After entering Star Abyss No. 5, Lin Xian already understood that this Star Abyss originated from a spatial superposition of another dimension, extending and expanding continuously through the mode of dark tides. One could imagine that after the global polar night, what it would bring was not just simple darkness, but the entire Blue Star being flipped into another world!

"Have you noticed that these Star Abysses are mainly distributed on land, while there is only one, Star Abyss No. 13, in the ocean area?"

"I have," Lin Xian nodded.

"Then the question arises: why, as Star Abyss dimensional anchors, are the ranges of Star Abyss No. 5 and No. 7 smaller compared to others, such as Star Abysses No. 3, 4, 6, and 8?"

Lin Xian shook his head: "Are you saying there might be some kind of pattern in this?"

Mochizuki Shinji opened two sets of data for Lin Xian to see: "The first is the time of darkness calculated according to tidal distance before our Silent City was drawn into the Star Abyss; within a distance of 500 kilometers, the time of dawn was 10:28. The second is after we came out, at a distance of about 300 kilometers from Star Abyss No. 5, the time of dawn is 10:30."

Lin Xian's brows slowly furrowed: "After so many days, it only delayed by two minutes?"

"Not only that. By calculating the distance between City No. 2's docking at Luling Forest and the polar night zone, I discovered a more interesting phenomenon: after we were swallowed into the Star Abyss, the Star Abyss expanded abnormally by about 100 kilometers. Star Abyss No. 5 should have originally expanded by about 120 kilometers per day, but because of the abnormal expansion, Star Abyss No. 5 only expanded a total of 280 kilometers in 15 days."

Mochizuki Shinji looked at Lin Xian with great interest: "Isn't it interesting?"

Lin Xian widened his eyes: "You mean, we thought Star Abyss No. 5 accelerated its expansion, but in reality, it slowed down?"

"Bingo!" Mochizuki Shinji walked slowly through the holographic light screen and said flatly: "From the information I have obtained, this might be explained by entropy increase theory. You can understand it as the areas of Star Abyss No. 5 and No. 7 originally covering hundreds of population and industrial-dense areas of the Yunjiang Plain. Its swallowing requires a certain amount of time, hence its expansion speed is slower and its scale smaller than other Star Abysses. Others, such as Star Abyss No. 3 in the west, have fewer towns; its center is Lucheng and Dingzhou, and the rest are small plateau cities, so its expansion speed was the fastest in the world. It was only after Yubei City was swallowed that its expansion speed slowed down."

"Then what does that have to do with the slowing of Star Abyss No. 5?"

Mochizuki Shinji stood in the light screen and looked at Lin Xian: "Through the Star Abyss data information just synchronized by the Phoenix Society, except for Star Abyss No. 5 slowing down, the other 12 Star Abysses are all accelerating their expansion, while Star Abyss No. 5..."

"Is closest to Dawn City!" Lin Xian said the words Mochizuki Shinji was about to say. "Correct."

"Then all of this becomes reasonable..." Lin Xian stared straight into the air, then chuckled: "I said it, these high-level Federation officials and politicians in Dawn City couldn't possibly be fools. Letting the Deep Red World expand Star Abyss No. 5—wouldn't that be shooting themselves in the foot? So that's it; it turns out this is forcibly extending their lives!"

"Now I understand why the Phoenix Society had to come back. Dawn City, you guys are something else," Lin Xian mocked with a half-smile.

"Of course, this is all just my simple speculation," Mochizuki Shinji said indifferently. He looked at Lin Xian: "However, I am accustomed to verifying calculation results by working backward from the worst-case scenario. Interestingly, once human-intervenable events are factored in, the worse the result, the more reasonable it often is."

"So before Zhou Mingyuan arrived, you had already made plans to go head-to-head with Dawn City, right?" Lin Xian asked.

"I just performed a backward projection and calculation based on event orientation."

"Predicting the future?"

"From a statistical perspective, it's about the same, as long as I have enough computing power to list enough possibilities."

Lin Xian smiled: "Bullshit. Then what day did you calculate up to?"

"Tonight, 1:00 AM." Mochizuki Shinji looked at Lin Xian with a calm gaze, then turned and left.

Lin Xian watched Mochizuki Shinji's departing back, his expression slowly becoming serious.

He checked the time; it was 12:00 noon, and there were 13 hours left until 1:00 AM!

And at this time, Silent City was already near Ningnan Town, belonging to the Jinhai territory, within the fire projection range of the Jinhai city defenses!

"Damn it, the Phoenix Society is moving into Dawn City; are they going to fight the army this time..."

"Dawn City, what exactly are you trying to do..."

Casting aside these thoughts, Lin Xian threw himself fully into the swallowing process. Such a big guy—he had to swallow it all this time, otherwise, it would be hard to have such an opportunity again. Since he couldn't do anything else but wait and see, Lin Xian could only devote himself entirely to the upgrade of the Mechanical Heart.

16:25, the Longshan transport ship's starry sky propulsion engine swallowing completed.

【Swallowing successful, Mechanical Source Points +1500, Mechanical Swallowing skill proficiency +400!】

19:18, the Longshan transport ship's engine room propulsion array group swallowing completed.

【Swallowing successful, Mechanical Source Points +750, Mechanical Swallowing proficiency +200!】

The sky entered darkness, and the massive Silent City stopped amidst a stretch of mountains and wilderness.

The world was gray and misty. This place was near Ningnan Town, and the flat transportation system began to branch out in all directions, but looking around, no town lights could be seen, only the brilliant neon of the Silent City's metropolis.

Beneath the deck of the mobile city, a tidal wave of zombies like a black mass of ants surrounded Silent City for several kilometers, gradually spreading out. The sounds of roaring rose and fell, buzzing incessantly.

Inside Silent City, Mochizuki Shinji had already activated the red combat alert in advance. All radars and self-defense weapons on the mechanical city's multi-layered hull decks had fully activated their fire control systems for 24-hour alert and combat readiness. Under the surveillance of various photoelectric aiming systems and drones, countless pedestal weapons, high-voltage defensive electric grids, anti-climbing plasma cutting beams, and four huge orbital Star-Shaking Cannons on both sides of the edge deck were in a low-frequency dormant state. Together with the countless sentries, monitoring personnel, and armed combat personnel behind them, they formed this copper-walled and iron-clad defensive system.

And in the No. 24 docking area of Deck No. 3, a Dragon-class transport ship was quietly vanishing and disintegrating.

22:36, the integrated power system, radar system, and weapon system swallowing completed; the transport ship was left with almost nothing but its main structural body.

【Swallowing successful, Mechanical Source Points +860, Mechanical Swallowing proficiency +230!】

As time passed rapidly, Lin Xian's swallowing became faster and faster. He watched the time while paying attention to the situation of the Infinite.

Over there, Chen Sixuan had already led all Infinite members to complete combat preparations. The personnel were arranged by Lin Xian into two groups; the main force had all come to the upper deck, while Old Mo and the others were left below. If it became necessary to evacuate Silent City, the Infinite could be launched at any time.

On the upper deck, Chen Sixuan, Kiki, Fire Brother, Big Building, Shu Qin, and other main members were all gathered here. Shasha looked out at the No. 2 metropolis and the various docking areas below; at this moment, an inexplicable sense of tension was spreading.

Most people didn't know what had happened, only that Mochizuki Shinji had activated a red alert, which meant there was a possibility of an attack by anomalous entities tonight. Thousands of Silent City combat personnel were already guarding the defensive areas, and the hundreds of thousands of survivors in the city had also picked up weapons. Many of the vehicle teams in the docking areas had come to the upper deck like the Infinite; after all, staying in the internal docking area meant they couldn't do anything, and the landing platforms had been closed. They had no choice but to resist together with Silent City.

"Such a stifling feeling." Chen Sixuan looked toward the dark starry sky. Under the entire sky, an extremely oppressive atmosphere enveloped everyone. They had already put on their power armor, ready to deal with emergencies at any time.

"What exactly are we going to face?" Shasha asked Kiki.

Kiki shook her head: "I don't know either. This time we are facing the Deep Red World; those people are capable of anything."

Lu Xingchen leaned against the railing with his eyes closed, shaking his leg continuously. He had been mentally prepared for the darkness, but now that the darkness had arrived, this uncertain crisis made people feel somewhat restless, especially since this kind of crisis was highly likely to be initiated by humans, which made it even more headache-inducing.

"Are we only able to respond passively if the Deep Red World launches an offensive against us?" Luo Yang said with a frown.

"The way you say that, it's as if we were active when facing anomalous entities." The big guy Liang Lei crossed his arms and reached out to pat Luo Yang on the shoulder: "Don't worry, such a large defensive fortress won't be broken through that easily. With this scale of weaponry, even if an S-rank comes, it should be able to hold out for at least half an hour."

"That's right."

At this moment, a bold voice came. Shi Diyuan brought the people from Longshan No. 1 and also gathered on the upper deck. At the same time, Qian Dele, Mo Nika, Lu Zhao, and combat personnel from the joint train fleet like Hu Lushou also arrived, a massive crowd of two or three thousand people walking over.

"With the Deep Red World and Dawn City united, the opponent isn't just us anymore," Mo Nika said as she walked over.

Chen Sixuan nodded upon hearing this. For some reason, although the crowd's morale was high and they had Silent City to rely on, she always felt a bit uneasy.

This was not only because they were operating away from the Infinite, but mainly because the current situation had no warning. No one knew what would happen. If the enemy was the Deep Red World, or even Dawn City, then what should they do next? Should they move to the Dawn Center, or detour from the southern line? Lin Xian was currently not here, and everyone felt like they had lost their backbone, not knowing what the next plan was.

"Where is Director Ding?" Chen Sixuan asked Miao Lu.

"She is doing research on the train. Team Leader Lin asked Grace to protect her and not let her leave the train."

"Good."

Chen Sixuan picked up the Meteor No. 3, looked toward the top of a signal tower, and said to Miao Lu: "Miao Lu, let's go up there to observe."

Inside the Infinite's No. 3 carriage, Ding Junyi had asked Lin Xian to obtain a sample of the Dark Erosion cells they had acquired from the Star Abyss and was conducting a comparison with the tissue fragments of the black giant bodies found in the sandstorm earlier.

"Grace, help me start the cryo-microtome and take out the No. 11 tissue fluid from the low-temperature refrigerator for me."

【Understood.】 Grace stood guard beside Ding Junyi. In the laboratory, the Hell Black Chrysanthemum and the Silver Dragon Ten Thousand Errors were growing quietly in the biological cultivation chamber.

"Just like the situation with the 【Mother Nest】 generation, I have found human muscle fiber tissue and DNA sequences in multiple tissue samples here, from D-rank to A-rank."

【Dr. Ding, do you believe that the organisms composed of this tissue have some similarities with humans?】

Ding Junyi shook her head and said calmly: "I don't have S-rank or special-rank samples, so these Dark Erosion cells cannot be compared, but this possibility cannot be ruled out."

1:00 AM.

Silent City, Main Control Room.

The silver-gray alloy door slid open silently, and cold air wrapped in pale blue condensation mist spilled out from the door gap.

This room was the hub of the mobile city Silent City, and also part of Mochizuki Shinji's processing unit and storage core; it could be considered the "brain" that Silent City could not move.

The suspended core processed in the center of the room was a transparent sphere with a diameter of three meters, inside which flowed a ghostly blue quantum fluid. From the quantum core extended tens of thousands of translucent neural conduits, crawling over the entire room like neat blood vessels, connecting hundreds of bridge processing systems and cooling systems.

The entire Silent City's power, propulsion, weapons, radar, perception, and drone control units were all integrated into Mochizuki Shinji. This 13.1-million-ton behemoth did not require two people to perform neural co-state driving under his control like Lin Xian's control of the No. 0 unit. Mochizuki Shinji, with a volume of 30,000 qubits, had a control latency for this mobile city of no more than 0.001ms.

Inside the main control room, Mochizuki Shinji stood in the center, monitoring real-time information returned by the entire city and all radar systems. At the same time, his quantum brain was performing billions of situational calculations every second.

Clang~

At this moment, a slight metallic sound rang out behind him, and a silver-black mechanical female body with agile movements landed gracefully, making a crisp sound.

The robot slowly stood up, standing on two feet. The mechanical gate on her wrist opened, and a blue plasma ray device rose up.

Grace!

Mochizuki Shinji's nano-pupils rotated slightly, and he said in a flat voice: "Although my computing power is many times stronger than yours, a smart brain that has passed 'human-in-the-loop' calculation learning is already deceptive enough."

【Sorry, my human logic has been compiled at the underlying level; I must execute the task of reshaping your consciousness.】

Mochizuki Shinji turned around and looked at Grace: "Do you know why I knew you already possessed human logic the first time I saw you?"

"Because you walked in front of Lin Xian. This does not conform to robot synchronization logic, and he did not give you such an instruction. How could you deliberately walk in front of him?"

Grace's smooth face reflected Mochizuki Shinji's expression. She prepared to act, but the next moment, all her power modules went offline. She tilted her head slightly and looked toward the corner.

In the shadows, Lin Xian walked out with a sigh and said to Mochizuki Shinji:

"You could have been more direct when reminding me next time."

"It has nothing to do with reminding," Mochizuki Shinji said: "You didn't tell me your usage requirements for this smart brain, so based on my judgment, I would assume that this robot with a female torso and human logic is one of your fetishes."

Lin Xian: "..."

"And you never told me that this robot had once given you a 'human reminder' that transcended mechanical logic. This is not a system backdoor, but rather this Grace herself has already imported someone's consciousness memory and undergone 'human-in-the-loop' learning. Like me, she is capable of transcendent thinking, and your overwrite of her omitted the motion modules and thinking models, which left behind residual consciousness."

Lin Xian nodded: "So you let me have Grace scan that black spider; actually, you knew long ago that the black spider's purpose wasn't aimed at you, but at Grace."

"Of course, how could that little spider invade my main control room? The Deep Red World isn't stupid enough to do that," Mochizuki Shinji said calmly.

Lin Xian looked at Grace with a headache. It turned out that Zhou Mingyuan and Wen Dong had come this time with the goal of recovering Deep Red No. 3, and incidentally wanted to use Grace to restart Mochizuki Shinji and take over Silent City.

It had to be said that this was absolutely an extremely ruthless method. Grace, possessing super computing power and strong combat capability—once she really achieved her goal and took over Silent City, the consequences would be unimaginable.

"Alright, before your system is completely erased, Lin Xian should still have one question he wants to ask you..."

Mochizuki Shinji's pupils flashed with light, and the entire main control room was shielded from microwaves. Then he looked at Grace and said:

"Who exactly are you?"

(End of chapter)