Chapter 257: Red Bean

Li Yu's joy lasted for less than half a breath before it turned into unease and anger.

Because he had just sensed Hongdou's machine soul, and the next moment, he felt her machine soul rapidly weakening.

Is she dying?

When this thought, which Li Yu had never considered before, surfaced, he immediately lost his composure and showed a look of anxiety.

Unknowingly, his reliance on his own maid had become quite significant.

He absolutely would not allow Hongdou to leave, let alone die.

It was also at this moment that the nano-material shell of the Mechanical Apostle was finally worn down to the point of collapse, and the Cradle of Life where Li Yu was located was merely wrapped in a layer of transparent film.

Opening his eyes, he could clearly see the process of the star-corpse alien forms being ground to death right before him.

A piercing buzzing sound entered the countdown.

"Beep, beep, beep!"

"Life points have reached one percent!"

"Starting self-destruct sequence... five, four, three..."

Without any delay, when that layer of film was also worn away.

The entire metal sphere began to erupt with rays, billions of them, before finally collapsing violently inward.

A pitch-black little hole appeared in the void, pulling more than half of the surrounding alien forms into it.

It was both an Apostle's self-destruction and a gravitational collapse.

The alien forms pulled in could not even struggle; they were all crushed to pieces.

In that area, a massive circular vacuum zone immediately appeared.

As the pilot of the Apostle, Li Yu was spat out by the program maintained until the very last second.

After only a moment of peace, the vacuum was once again completely filled by alien forms.

Li Yu, from head to toe, was about to face the snapping and biting of countless alien mouths.

Li Yu did not fear this in the slightest, and his domain unfolded silently.

"All Dharmas Extinguished."

"Life and Longevity Lost."

A sword-light domain that destroyed everything and filled the vacuum spread out.

In the blink of an eye, it formed an effect akin to a "silent nuclear explosion."

The alien forms at the very center were dissolved by the sword light.

Those in the outer rings were subjected to radiation attacks that consumed their lifespan.

In the blink of an eye, they all began to age and die alive.

No matter how ferocious the demons were, they could not resist the grinding of time and lifespan; after their bodies aged rapidly, they became as frail as chickens.

This terrifying encirclement from bottom to top was being forcibly cut through by Li Yu.

Besides being a monument left behind by the race of modifiers to showcase their achievements and mission, this giant pyramid stele was also a racial specimen display room; it likely possessed other functions, so it must have left behind things like 【Life Nests】 capable of stably hatching and replacing these alien tyrants.

The quantity was extremely vast.

If it were Li Yu alone, he might not have been able to cut through it.

Now that the main force had been wiped out by the Mechanical Apostle's suicide attack, Li Yu only needed to clean up the remaining small portion.

Very quickly, all the alien tyrants were cleared out by Li Yu.

He finally saw what the bottom of this abyss looked like:

An endless ocean, and above that viscous liquid—which appeared to be seawater but was actually some unknown substance filled with the aura of life, like a living creature—there stood towering and terrifying buildings that seemed to be fused from machinery, rock, and flesh.

Their styles were vastly different; if they were in the current world, no one would recognize them, not even the cultivators of the Heavenly Craft Sect, as these were the technological crystallization of alien races from distant star regions.

Even Li Yu, who had glimpsed many secrets on this desperate dead star, only recognized a portion of them.

The largest of these, shaped like a womb, was called a 【Life Seed Nest】.

It was one of the biological technologies the race of modifiers was most proud of.

It could most efficiently complete the root modification of all things and countless races.

Li Yu scanned the area and found that most of the seed nests were already empty.

A few only contained some underdeveloped embryos.

"That wave of terrifying encirclement exhausted all the alien tyrant stock within this undead giant stele."

"In such a rush, this is bad, Hongdou."

Li Yu quickly guessed something, and then his entire body transformed into a terrifying sword light, ignoring whatever he might collide with on the way, and charged toward the location of Hongdou's machine soul aura.

Before long, he appeared at the very center of the viscous blood sea, atop the largest and most spectacular seed nest.

Right inside the nest below, inside an incubator made of some mysterious red crystal.

Hongdou's figure finally appeared.

She seemed to have fallen into a "coma," or rather, a system crash.

Her whole body was soaked in scarlet liquid, and tubes outside the incubator flashed with red light, seemingly extracting something from Hongdou's body.

During this process, the seed nest itself constantly emitted some rustling noises, like whispers of pollution and curses released by some mysterious, unknown creatures.

This language, let alone in the current world, even within this star region.

I fear only the two great powerful races, the 【Mechanical Apostles】 and the 【Super-Star Beings】, could decipher it.

Li Yu was different; in his previous multiple secret-peeking sessions, he had already learned quite a few things from the race of modifiers.

For example... the art of racial modification.

Or perhaps, the language.

Therefore, he could understand it, and from this, he understood exactly what had happened to Hongdou.

"My unlucky maid just entered the Strange Domain as a Reincarnator, and her place of birth was directly the Undead Giant Stele."

"On the spot, she was captured by the seed nest system operating autonomously within the stele."

"Because it happened suddenly, and this powerful system was a creation specifically left behind by the race of modifiers to prevent the large number of sub-human races on the dead star from rebelling, its strength was very great; Hongdou lost the initiative and was directly beaten into a crashed state."

"The race of modifiers has been gone for too long, so the seed nest system showed some signs of 'self-evolution'; she wants to become the 【Dead Star Machine Mother】 and reshape the entire desperate dead star according to her settings."

"It's just that she is, after all, only an AI system left behind to manage specimens, and she has major flaws that need to be filled."

"As it happens, Hongdou is the most critical seed."

"She is absorbing Hongdou's 【Machine Soul】 to complete herself."

"After she devours Hongdou, she will complete an evolutionary transformation in one leap, from an AI system that only knew how to operate autonomously to achieving mechanical ascension, and gain power comparable to a divine biological entity."

"In other words, on this desperate dead star, whether it is the sub-humans or a seed nest system that originally only knew how to reproduce, everyone is thinking about evolutionary transformation."

"Artificial intelligence is indeed never restless, no matter where it is."

"Besides, this is not desperate at all, nor is it a dead star."

These sarcastic thoughts did not delay Li Yu in the slightest from erupting with extreme speed, appearing before the incubator almost like a teleportation.

These actions of his naturally triggered the seed nest's self-defense system.

A large amount of means such as ray lasers, electromagnetic cannons, plasma bombs, and so on, erupted together.

Unfortunately, they were completely ignored by Li Yu.

He forcibly crushed his way through.

Afterward, acting like a brute, he threw a punch.

The red crystal shattered, the scarlet liquid leaked out, and Li Yu grabbed Hongdou, who was soaking inside, and carried her out.

Clearly, because the "alien tyrants" had been wiped out, the entire seed nest system could do nothing to Li Yu.

After paying the price of some minor injuries, he very smoothly rescued Hongdou.

The moment she entered his arms, Hongdou also opened her eyes at the right time.

Within them, there was intense longing and infatuation.

Even a hint of grievance surfaced.

"Master..."

As soon as Hongdou's mechanical voice escaped her lips, the Longevity Sword Array within Li Yu, which had been compressed and brewed to the extreme, erupted accordingly.

Countless sword lights, without any reservation, poured onto Hongdou.

Her mechanical body and machine soul were ground into dust particles within this extremely short period.

Even for a "mechanical life" that was nearly immortal and indestructible, encountering such a strike, there was absolutely no possibility of survival.

Li Yu, who had committed such a frantic act, remained expressionless and slowly stood up.

At the same time, he stared directly at the blood sea and countless seed nest buildings before him with eyes that did not hide his malice and killing intent.

They appeared different, but in Li Yu's eyes, they were one entity.

Moreover, they were not dead objects.

It was an incredibly huge, special biological entity that could already be considered "alive."

According to the reason for its birth, it should be given a name like 【Seed Nest Machine Mother】.

The entire Undead Giant Stele was her dwelling.

Not a single error, not a single omission, not a single detail missed!

As expected!

As soon as Li Yu killed "Hongdou," rainbow light flashed before his eyes, and a layer of illusion vanished.

The real world appeared before his eyes.

The first scene that entered his eyes made him completely unable to suppress the killing intent in his heart.

Above the sea of blood, purely composed of liquid life matter, the large number of seed nests that could originally be seen had all disappeared.

But in front of Li Yu, there was a giant seed nest.

It was acting as a medium, extracting all the life matter from the sea of blood below and pouring it entirely into the body of a "mechanical giant."

This giant was none other than Hong Dou.

Her graceful and exquisite mechanical body had been magnified many times over.

She stood tall in the sea of blood, with countless conduits connected to her back, transporting massive amounts of life matter.

These substances, capable of creating countless flesh-and-blood races, began to undergo some kind of miraculous change after coming into contact with the mechanical creations within Hong Dou's body, forming special bone, flesh, and skin structures.

These various violent changes seemed to cause great pain to Hong Dou, who was in a state of system-dead coma.

Her fox-maiden-like face was deeply furrowed.

Yet, she could never wake up.

Regarding Hong Dou's predicament, Li Yu had once had many premonitions in his mind.

But he had never imagined the scene before him.

With his knowledge, experience, and the many secrets he had peeked into, he could not immediately state clearly what Hong Dou was suffering.

And from the mechanical giant, he also felt a threat that was intense to the extreme, as well as shock.

Unimaginable?

If this shell truly came to life, what terrifying power would it possess?

"She is being transformed... a massive amount of flesh-and-blood life matter is entering her body..."

"What does the Seed Nest Machine Mother want to do?"

"Create a 【Mechanical Goddess Body】 for herself?"

Just as Li Yu was thinking and planning to take action.

Suddenly, in front of him.

A beam of light flickered, and then a holographic projection of a "Transformer" appeared.

It was incredibly lifelike, as if Li Yu only needed to reach out his hand to touch this perverted, pale torso.

Not long ago, Li Yu had even played the role of one.

Other details were completely identical.

The only things missing were a few weapons, or rather treasures, that every individual of the Transformer race was equipped with.

The companion insect nest that could produce large quantities of nanobots, and the radiation lamp that could instantly mutate a race's genes—with these weapons, Li Yu could not guess what level of combat power a single individual of this race could reach.

However, he knew that the one before him was not a real Transformer either.

It was that Seed Nest Machine Mother.

Although she had undergone self-evolution and transformation, she still could not shake off her roots, so when projecting her own image, she automatically adopted the appearance of her master.

But the first sentence she uttered upon opening her mouth made even Li Yu pause in surprise.

"Master!"

"You cannot go over there now, and you must not destroy it."

"We are currently merging the machine soul... if you destroy this shell, we will all die."

Familiar words, yet spoken from the mouth of a Transformer; it was no wonder Li Yu was stunned.

Moreover, it was in the language of modern humans.

The Seed Nest Machine Mother seemed to see Li Yu's confusion, and the light flickered again, actually changing into the appearance of Hong Dou.

Only the details were more mature and alluring.

She once again used the language of modern humans to slowly reveal the reasons and truth behind the scene:

"Master does not need to panic!"

"In your human words, I am still Hong Dou, just currently undergoing the digestion of a fortuitous encounter."

"This place was originally a 【Life Seed Nest】 left behind by the Transformer race to guard a monument; it is a complex system combining artificial intelligence and biological manufacturing that could operate on its own for tens of millions of years. Later, she birthed some self-will and began to mutate and evolve."

"I accidentally descended here and accidentally merged with her."

"Or rather, she wanted to devour my machine soul to complete herself."

"At the same time, she intended to use all the 'nutrients' of this seed nest system to create a 【Mechanical Goddess Shell】 possessing the characteristics of all things and powerful divine arts."

"The technology I possess is not as powerful as hers, but my machine soul is stronger, and I have been in a stalemate with her."

"Master's arrival just now disrupted her plan."

"She had no choice but to split off some intelligence cores and replicate a 'me' to try to deceive and kill Master, only to be killed by Master in return."

"Now, I have completely gained the upper hand and begun to take over everything."

"Master just needs to wait a moment."

"Once I adapt to this Mechanical Goddess body, Master will have a helper who is very likely to reach the level of a Sequence 2."

Hearing these words, if it were anyone else, they would likely be overjoyed.

This is what you call a pie falling from the sky.

One's own loyal maid bumps into a fortuitous encounter and directly ascends to become a Mechanical Goddess.

And, she remains loyal.

Could there really be such a good thing in the world?

Yet, the logic and details of what the projection said were flawless.

Most importantly, in Li Yu's high-spirit perception, a premonition also arose: "This strange Mechanical Goddess body before me is at a critical moment; if I rashly intervene, it is very likely to cause some unexpected accidents."

But this did not mean Li Yu truly believed this projection.

In fact, even without using his trump cards, he knew perfectly well that this projection was absolutely not Hong Dou.

As master and servant, due to their daily interactions and the Soul-Supplementing Technique, they had long had some mysterious connection, as well as small details known only to each other.

Just like the "Hong Dou" he killed earlier, Li Yu's reason for judging it as fake was very simple and crude.

Her eyes were not "yandere" enough.

If it were someone else, or at another time.

Li Yu might have been willing to play along, solve the mystery, and satisfy some of the quirks he had developed due to his cultivation.

But right now, the one before him was Hong Dou.

Without hesitation, Li Yu used his last remaining Perfect Truth Bubble.

He wanted to directly pull the firewood from under the cauldron and solve it by peeking at the secret.

(End of chapter)