Chapter 566

Inside the command post's meeting room, the atmosphere was solemn.

Jie Ming sat at the edge of the conference table, his gaze sweeping over everyone present.

In the entire meeting room, except for him, a Level 5 wizard, everyone else was a high-tier wizard of Level 6 and above—a dozen Level 7s, over a hundred Level 6s, and the Level 8 wizard Ma Ding in the main seat.

The specifications of this meeting were outrageously high.

But Jie Ming knew that he could be called here, not because of his strength, but because of the Entropy Brain.

That thing was discovered by him first, or rather, the reason the Entropy Brain could be discovered was because of him, so he could participate in this meeting. "Everyone is here."

Ma Ding's voice rang out, and the meeting room went quiet instantly.

His gaze swept over everyone, and he went straight to the point: "You all know the situation. The information-based organisms are blocked inside by us, but we can't get in either. The problem now is how to break through their defense line and go in to harvest Entropy Brains."

As soon as the words fell, someone spoke immediately.

"Direct strong attack." A Level 7 wizard stood up and said in a deep voice, "We were able to suppress them once before, so we can suppress them a second time. Concentrate the power of all high-tier wizards, forcibly tear open a gap, and then send an elite team in to harvest."

Some nodded, some frowned.

A Level 6 wizard wearing a deep blue robe shook his head and said: "It's not that simple. We were able to suppress them last time because they took the initiative to rush out and fight us within the ship plane. Now they have learned their lesson and are guarding behind the plane barrier. That is their home field; if we go in, the advantage will be gone."

"Then use the same means as previous wars, use high-power wizardry." Another wizard chimed in, "Directly blast open the plane barrier and destroy their core nodes. As long as the command system is taken out, the rest will be scattered soldiers."

A burst of discussion rang out in the meeting room.

Jie Ming didn't speak, just listened quietly.

Soon, someone stood up to refute.

That was a Level 7 wizard who looked quite old, with white hair and beard, but sharp eyes.

He raised his hand and pointed in the air, projecting a 3D image of an Entropy Brain.

"Can you combat-types use your brains... who among you has studied this thing?"

Everyone looked at him.

The old wizard pointed to the light-spot patterns inside the Entropy Brain and spoke slowly: "I studied it for three days. The structure of this thing reveals the social organization method of those information-based organisms—they have no command system at all."

"What do you mean?" someone asked.

The old wizard explained: "The patterns inside the Entropy Brain show that every individual information-based organism is a complete server node. They are connected through quantum entanglement states, forming an information network covering the entire plane. This network is perfectly flattened—no center, no levels, no so-called 'command post' or 'leader'."

He paused and emphasized his tone: "All decisions are automatically generated by the information network consensus algorithm. That is to say, every information-based organism is both a soldier and a commander. If you kill one, the rest will automatically fill in; if you kill ten thousand, the rest can still operate normally." The meeting room was silent for a few seconds.

The wizard who proposed bombing the command system had an ugly look on his face.

"Then... increase the destructive power." He gritted his teeth, "Anyway, we only need Entropy Brains, as long as the plane is not destroyed, it's fine." The old wizard looked at him and shook his head slowly.

"First, those information-based organisms won't stand there and let you bomb them. Once the plane barrier fluctuates, they will disperse, hide, or even actively transfer. What you bomb might only be a small part. More importantly, even if you really destroy the information-based organisms in this area, they can resurrect from other areas."

"Second..." He paused and looked at Ma Ding in the main seat, "The existence of this plane is too special, and the strength of the destruction cannot be guaranteed. The mission we received is on the premise of not destroying the plane. The value of this plane is extremely high; what we want is a complete plane, not a pile of ruins." The meeting room fell into silence.

Everyone was thinking, but couldn't come up with any good ideas.

For a long time, a female Level 7 wizard who had been silent suddenly spoke.

"Since attacking individuals is ineffective, why not change the thinking."

Everyone looked at her.

She said slowly: "We attack their connections."

"Connections?"

"Yes." She nodded, "The reason those information-based organisms are difficult to deal with is not because a single one is strong, but because they form an information network. If we can cut off their network and make them isolated individuals, then harvesting will be much easier."

Everyone's eyes lit up.

This is indeed a good idea.

"Indeed, the reason Wizard Jie Ming was able to definitively kill information-based organisms before was also because he cut off all their information links..." some wizards agreed.

But soon, the problem came.

"How to cut it off?" Someone frowned, "Their connections are quantum entanglement states, theoretically ignoring distance and obstacles. The information-type wizardry we currently have can at most interfere for a while, and cannot achieve permanent severance at all."

"And their information connections have self-healing capabilities." Another person added, "They will rebuild immediately after being cut off."

"And the reason we were able to isolate the opponent before was because we relied on plane manipulation and the magic array provided by Wizard Jie Ming. Now that the opponent is shrinking inside the Information Plane, we have no way to move the magic array in. Detached from the amplification of the magic array, there is no way to isolate them at all." Some also said. The discussion fell into a deadlock again.

Jie Ming sat in the corner, listening to the arguments of the crowd, but a thought flashed in his mind.

Cut off connections...

Attack connections directly...

He recalled the knowledge about network viruses from his previous life.

Those viruses don't need to destroy hardware, don't need to destroy servers, they only need to use the vulnerabilities of the system itself to paralyze the entire network. Although the wizard civilization also has things like the Magic Net, because wizards have had the technology of artificial souls helping to manage it since very early on, they haven't experienced things like viruses.

So if this thinking can be applied to wizardry...

A flash of inspiration crossed Jie Ming's mind.

He stood up abruptly.

Everyone was startled and looked at him one after another.

"Jie Ming?" Ma Ding raised an eyebrow, "Do you have an idea?"

Jie Ming took a deep breath and organized his language.

"I was thinking... can we design a special information data packet?"

"Data packet?"

"Yes." Jie Ming nodded, "Just like the information torrents those information-based organisms use to attack us, but more complex and targeted." He thought while speaking: "The core of this data packet is to ensure that any information-based organism that reads it will fall into collapse—either computing power is occupied in large quantities, or core information is polluted, or it simply destroys itself."

"But one-time attacks are meaningless." Jie Ming continued, "The key lies in that this data packet must be able to self-replicate. So we must find a way to make it automatically replicate multiple copies after an information-based organism reads it, and then spread to other individuals along the network connection of that information-based organism."

"In this way, as long as one data packet is deployed, theoretically the entire network can be infected."

Everyone stared at Jie Ming, their eyes complex.

For a long time, the old wizard muttered: "Self-replication... spread along the network... this..."

He looked at Jie Ming, his eyes flashing with light: "What do you call this thing?"

Jie Ming's mouth twitched slightly.

He couldn't say it's called a "network virus," right?

He coughed lightly: "Haven't thought of a name yet. But the principle is this principle."

Everyone looked at each other.

Someone frowned: "Sounds beautiful, but can it be done? This kind of information attack wants to self-replicate... that premise must be based on the characteristics of the information-based organisms themselves."

"Yeah, we haven't fully parsed the structure of information-based organisms yet; if we design it rashly, will we be countered by them?"

"And the deployment method is also a problem. How to send the data packet in? After sending it in, how to ensure that the first target it infects is weak enough not to transmit the alarm before collapsing?"

The discussion became heated again.

But this time, the atmosphere was clearly different.

Although there were various problems, at least there was a direction.