Chapter 431

The initial reincarnation plane was not born as a meat-grinder-like war fortress.

It once gave birth to a unique civilization, a group of creatures that accidentally lit the spark of wisdom from ignorant insects.

They were resilient, united, and had amazing learning and evolutionary capabilities.

Wisdom brought technology, and technology drove development.

They walked from underground nests to the surface, established city-states, explored the mysteries of the starry sky, and finally cast their gaze outside the plane, toward the vast unknown that wizards call the "Endless Chaotic Void."

The first expeditionary force was formed, the first time they tried to leave the cradle that nurtured them with hope and anxiety, and move toward the sea of stars... this should have been a glorious coming-of-age ceremony for a civilization.

Then, disaster struck without warning.

That day, the endless void, which had originally followed a certain chaotic rhythm, suddenly boiled.

Terrifying energy turbulence, material storms, space folds, and even time ripples that exceeded the limits of the civilization's cognition at the time were stirred by an invisible giant hand, turning into a destructive frenzy that swept in.

The expedition fleet that had just left the plane barrier and had not yet had time to sail far was like a candle in a gale, instantly annihilated, leaving not even wreckage.

The terrible aftermath even shook the plane itself, continental plates shifted, ley line energy went out of control, and the ecosystem was on the verge of collapse.

For this fledgling civilization, this was no less than a devastating disaster.

Just repairing the severely damaged plane drained almost all of the civilization's resources and the hard work of its scientists.

And a more desperate deduction subsequently spread from the group of top scientists: according to the trajectory and characteristics of that destructive impact, it was not a natural phenomenon, but highly likely the aftermath of a battle between unknown existences occurring at a distance unimaginable.

Just a trace of leaked aftermath, spanning who knows how many light-years, almost destroyed their entire civilization.

Panic spread like a plague.

Fortunately, a certain collective and disciplinary instinct of the insect civilization played a role, and society was forcibly pulled back to order on the verge of collapse.

After long and painful debates, the high-level council finally made a decision: since there is such a terrifying threat existing outside that could destroy them at any time, then they must possess the power to confront it.

It just so happened that the plane also needed to be thoroughly transformed to repair the damage, so why not... forge the entire plane into an unprecedented super weapon.

A grand and crazy plan was launched.

With the power of the entire civilization, they transformed mountains and rivers, rewrote energy circuits, and tried to turn the plane itself into a war fortress capable of active defense and even counterattacking that kind of "cosmic-level disaster."

The process was extremely arduous, full of technical barriers and sacrifices.

But with tenacious will, they stumbled to the end.

However, just as they were about to succeed, the scientists in charge of the core system brought desperate news: due to the lack of basic theory and the limits of material technology, the "super weapon" they initially envisioned that could influence the outside world and take the initiative to attack... failed.

The core function of the final system was severely castrated, leaving only one item—when it detects that the main body of civilization within the plane encounters an irresistible threat and is on the verge of extinction, it activates a mandatory time reversal covering the entire plane, resetting everything to a certain "safe point" before the threat occurred.

This meant they had built an incomparably sturdy "turtle shell" but could only lock themselves inside.

Once they left the plane, they were still the fragile bugs that could be destroyed by a trace of battle aftermath.

A more fatal problem was that the power of time reversal could not exempt them themselves.

Every time it restarted, their memories, technology, and social structure would be reset, and civilization would even regress directly.

How is such an infinite reincarnation different from chronic suicide?

To solve this paradox, the civilization, whose technical level was already stretched thin, finally chose a "solution" that was cruel to the extreme.

Abandon the flesh, aggregate the spirit.

They forcibly stripped away the consciousness, memories, wisdom... the "soul" of the entire civilization of all citizens with the highest technology they could reach at the time.

Later, through fusion and digitization, it was injected and solidified into the "core will" of the core control unit of the time paradox generator.

Then, they carried out large-scale biological transformation on their bodies, turning them into "biological weapons" with basic combat instincts and certain learning abilities—that is, the prototypes of the Sickle-Skull tribe.

Theoretically, the "sphere will" with an independent timeline hiding place can be immune to time reversal and remotely control the external army of bodies through some kind of mental connection to conduct infinite reincarnation trial and error.

And it doesn't matter whether the external bodies die or are reset, as long as the sphere will is still there, the fire of civilization is there, and it can continuously "optimize" its armed forces through reincarnation.

The scroll of memory ends here, a civilization, in order to survive, chose to collectively "ascend" into ghosts in the machine, and drove its own "remains" to conduct eternal war.

Consciousness struggled to surface from the deep sea, breaking free from that viscous and tragic torrent of data.

Jie Ming suddenly "opened" his eyes, subconsciously gasping for air, as if he had almost drowned in that vast and desperate sea of memory.

Consciousness broke free from the immersion of history, and a complex emotion flashed in Jie Ming's heart.

But this emotion only lasted for a moment.

Jie Ming's eyes returned to clarity and sharpness.

Now is not the time for sighing; the massive technical data he obtained from the information flow, besides the history of this civilization, also synchronized the structure of the sphere itself, energy circuits, firewall nodes, and operating protocols, which were the most critical weapons at the moment!

He immediately took action.

Consciousness manipulated mental power, and according to the method he had just "learned," accurately injected energy signals with specific frequencies and encodings into several specific energy flow hub nodes on the surface of the sphere.

Hum...

A stream of light flashed rapidly on the surface of the sphere, and then, in front of Jie Ming, a virtual operation interface composed of complex three-dimensional patterns and energy lines was projected out of thin air.

The interface style was completely different from wizard runes, full of geometric beauty and the flowing feeling of biological circuits, but its basic input, output, control, and storage logic were connected.

Jie Ming's hands flew, consciousness and actions synchronized, and he quickly entered commands on the operation interface.

The technical data he had just obtained in his mind turned into a sharp blade for cracking at this moment.

The progress of cracking the sphere's internal system firewall advanced rapidly under Jie Ming's flying fingers.

The sphere's defense system, having lost its "active defense" capability and facing the targeted cracking of internal protocols, retreated steadily.

"No!!!"

Just at this moment, a huge will mixed with anger, panic, and despair erupted from the depths of the sphere again, directly impacting Jie Ming's consciousness.

This time, it was no longer a chaotic torrent of information, but a mental roar full of emotion.

"Stop! Invader! Stop!" The will roared, "We just want to live! We gave up our bodies, gave up our freedom, just to survive in this cruel void! Spare us! We can negotiate! We can hand over some technology! Stop cracking!"

The wailing and begging, completely different from the cold and grand will before, appeared humble and shrill.

Jie Ming felt the turbulence brought by mental power under this roar, but his expression did not change at all.

The movements on his hands did not stop at all, and the cracking progress bar continued to climb.

However, in order to prevent the opponent from constantly interfering with himself, he separated a strand of consciousness, carrying a trace of mockery, and "returned" a piece of information directly:

"You say, you want to live? But your civilization, hasn't it already perished long ago?"

The will inside the sphere paused suddenly, as if it had been stabbed by this sentence in the truth it least wanted to face, and appeared a short "downtime."

Jie Ming took this opportunity to accelerate and break through two more layers of encryption protocols, while continuing to transmit information, his tone as cold as a knife:

"Now occupying this plane, as the main body of war, possessing social forms, struggling to survive in constant death and reincarnation, is the Sickle-Skull tribe."

"They are the bodies you 'abandoned' back then, which have re-bred new life belonging to this plane under the influence of long time and reincarnation laws, possessing their own ignorant yet resilient collective consciousness."

"And you," Jie Ming's consciousness "sound" continued to dissect mercilessly, "self-proclaimed masters and continuers of civilization, but in the observation and definition of us wizards, you are just remnants of consciousness aggregates imprisoned by your own fear and parasitic in this machine, a withered branch on the evolutionary tree of civilization that was actively cut off but thought it was still the trunk. You are the scraps 'abandoned' by civilization."

"Nonsense! Presumptuous! Bastard! We are the essence of civilization! It is a sublimated form!" The sphere will was completely enraged.

Perhaps because it was poked in a sore spot, the roar became more crazy and shrill: "It's you! It's you foreign invaders! You destroyed our home! You interrupted our path of sublimation! You are the destroyers!"

Facing this accusation, Jie Ming's expression did not fluctuate, and his cracking movements actually accelerated by another point because of the opponent's violent emotional fluctuations, finding several more logic vulnerabilities.

"Invaders? I admit, indeed so, the wizard civilization came with the purpose of conquest and knowledge, which is not something worth denying." Jie Ming responded frankly, "But the one who destroyed this world was never us."

Speaking of this, Jie Ming not only carried mockery in his mental will, but even couldn't help but show a trace of mockery on his face:

"The one who destroyed this world is you yourselves. Or rather, it is 'you' part of the consciousness that chose to escape, fear, and self-imprisonment."

"You... what did you say?!" In the anger of the sphere will, for the first time, mixed with uncontrollable trembling, that was the fear of having its deepest secret poked.

"That historical record, it's beautiful, it's tragic, but full of holes." Jie Ming said while performing the final firewall removal operation, calmly stating his reasoning.

"As a high-level civilization with independent consciousness for individuals, was the social chaos after the plane was damaged really calmed down by 'insect discipline'? When the super weapon plan was found to be a failure and could only create a time cage, did the entire civilization really agree so 'unitedly' and 'selflessly' to the cruel ritual of 'spiritual sublimation'?"

"Also, according to our actual research, low-level Sickle-Skulls mainly rely on pheromones and the instinct at the soul level to transmit information, they are more like independent newborn life. Only a few high-level individuals show characteristics similar to 'remote control' or 'memory implantation.' And your so-called 'mental connection to control bodies,' if it were truly perfect, why would there be so many uncontrolled, and even 'war-weary' and 'fearful' emotions contrary to your will spreading among the Sickle-Skulls?"

Jie Ming's reasoning was like a jigsaw puzzle, piecing together the scattered clues into a cruel truth:

"So I speculate that the initial Sickle-Skull civilization must have split severely in the face of disaster and despair. One faction, perhaps called the 'Exploration Faction' or 'Resistance Faction,' they might have insisted that they should continue to research and repair the plane, believing that they should eventually move toward the starry sky, even if facing unknown dangers."

"And the other faction, is you—the 'Lockdown Faction' or 'Fear Faction,' who were completely scared out of their wits by that disaster, believing that only by completely closing the entire plane and transforming it into an absolute defense fortress... even if it is just a time cage, can they obtain 'safety'."

"The so-called 'spiritual sublimation' and 'body transformation' were not voluntary feats of the entire civilization at all, but highly likely the cruel suppression and transformation of the losers by you 'Lockdown Faction' after you won the struggle!"

"You crushed or imprisoned their consciousness, and transformed their bodies into the initial, and also the most basic Sickle-Skull war weapons, as cannon fodder and consumables for you to guard the 'turtle shell'!"

"And you yourselves," Jie Ming looked at the mechanical sphere whose light was gradually dimming and seemed to be trembling, "the so-called 'sublimation,' I'm afraid it's just transferring the consciousness of your fear collective into this relatively safe control core, lingering on in another form, and deceiving yourselves that you are still the masters of civilization, still conducting a great 'survival defense war'."

"Those high-level Sickle-Skulls, perhaps some are indeed 'control terminals' you reserved, but more, I'm afraid, are 'deformed products' with partial primitive memory imprints re-evolved from those transformed bodies during the long reincarnation."

"No... it's not... you're talking nonsense! We are the saviors of civilization! We saved..." The roar of the sphere will became chaotic, broken, full of the frantic denial and anger of being poked at the most unbearable truth.

But its reaction just confirmed Jie Ming's deduction.

Beep!

A crisp system prompt sound representing permission change rang in Jie Ming's ears.

The final core firewall, removed.

(One more chapter.)

The data flow and operation permissions representing the highest control of this "time paradox generator" opened its doors to Jie Ming like an undefended treasure.

(End of chapter)