Chapter 179: The Battle of the Aliens (5)

A brand-new structural diagram was embedded into Luo Qi's memory, a new Secret Language was written into his Consciousness World, and emerald-green wildfires burned in the void world.

Luo Qi's body was bleeding, lying in the courtyard of the Ancient Town, lying upon the dripping, emerald blood of the Abnormal Beast. Time seemed to have come to a standstill; a lithe Alien Seal Beast was frozen in the moment of its attack.

Yet Luo Qi's consciousness leapt up from his body; the moment he cast off his physical form made him feel light as a swallow. Thousands of Society Ghosts reconnected to his consciousness, as if he had added thousands of external devices to his brain. The world of thought became swift as flight once more, and an instant felt as long as several days; Luo Qi pushed open a door.

The most vigorous green flame was closest to him, and the clusters of flames scattered near and far around him were all Alien Seal Beasts distributed here, each cluster connected to the Alien Queen by a thin line of fire. All the Alien Seal Beasts formed a network of thought in this void, and occasionally a point of light flowed along the spiderweb-like thin lines. In the Consciousness World, that flash of communication light did not appear to flow particularly rapidly, but in the real world, it was but an instant.

Luo Qi examined this network of thought; he had guessed it would be like this, but when truly facing it, he was still somewhat shocked. The consciousnesses of Mages were not like this; every cluster of thought-flame, whether vigorous or dim, was isolated. It seemed much lonelier, yet every cluster of flame was unique. But now, judging from the state of the Seal Beasts' consciousness, the Seal Beasts' world of thought was interconnected, which meant that the Seal Beasts' consciousnesses were linked, and they shared the same Mental Network.

Luo Qi carefully observed the characteristics of these consciousnesses; they were completely different from the brains of mammals, as if they were insects that had climbed to the peak of evolution. Each individual Alien Seal Beast maintained a largely complete brain, yet they shared the same Mental Network from birth, influencing one another while maintaining a clear hierarchy. Luo Qi did not dare to be certain whether they needed to be put together in their entirety to count as a single biological organism, or whether a single Alien Seal Beast could be considered an independent creature.

He recalled the behavior of the Seal Beasts he had seen through the memories of Mages, vaguely feeling that their individual independence should actually be considered quite high, only that in war, the individual did not exist, and even after an individual died, it could continue to fight under the drive of the entire neural network. It was just that the fighting after death lacked method, somewhat like an arm that had already been injured. Although it could still swing, its accuracy and dexterity would inevitably have dropped significantly.

On another level, Luo Qi felt that the form of the Seal Beasts was clearly somewhat similar to Luo Qi's current state. He was in the mental world, connected to thousands of souls; they possessed a certain degree of self, yet they submitted to Luo Qi's consciousness. In the Ancient Town, Luo Qi formed a neural network with thousands of souls, sharing thoughts and memories.

Thinking of this, Luo Qi could not help but shudder in the Consciousness World, realizing that his pattern was similar to the Alien insects; this was not a comfortable feeling.

He did not directly merge into the Mental Network of the Alien Seal Beasts; being able to connect thoughts and being able to force lower-level consciousnesses to submit had long since indicated that the Alien Seal Beasts were also Telepaths. Fortunately, however, the brains of insects and humans were simply too different; for a Telepath like Luo Qi, it was impossible to directly read the consciousness of insects, and for the insect Telepaths, they were likewise unable to directly read the consciousness of mammals.

Luo Qi split off several Ghosts, which rapidly searched the consciousness of the Alien Seal Beast leader like crawling insects.