Chapter 387: Reunion on Earth, Truth is Mine!

Earth, outer space.

As the mechanical legion tore through space and descended.

The Guardian Defense System "Sky Dome Matrix," deployed by the Earth Alliance in near-Earth orbit, was activated.

The twelve main annihilation cannons in orbit slowly adjusted their angles; armor plates slid open layer by layer, revealing the enormous muzzles beneath, while internal charging began and particle acceleration tracks continuously emitted blue light.

Energy gathered silently in the vacuum, stirring up layers of energy ripples that spread outward.

Immediately following, tens of thousands of defense platforms broke away from their original patrol orbits.

They rapidly executed complex formation adjustments, constructing an interwoven and crisscrossing mobile firepower net in front of the main cannon batteries.

Countless defense laser turrets on their surfaces spun at high speed, locking onto potential targets in outer space and lighting up red laser aiming points like countless stars.

Farther away, on the far side of the moon, the Eclipse Clan's large war platforms slowly opened their massive silo covers, revealing an abyss of darkness within.

Even the satellites originally used for communication and observation changed their orientation.

They extended weapon modules hidden inside.

In an extremely short time, the entire near-Earth space transformed from a silent vacuum into a steel fortress bristling with "spikes."

The light flashing as weapons locked on resembled the pupils of beasts, lighting up one after another in the darkness, gazing at the mechanical torrent continuously surging out of the spatial rift.

A tense standoff formed in silence.

At this moment, inside the core command room of the mechanical legion.

The crystal body of the Core Brain hovered above the ground.

Countless translucent tentacles covered in fine neural nodes extended from the base, dancing in the room and exchanging data with the flowing light screens on the walls and floor.

Massive data torrents shuttled, calculated, and made decisions within the core processing unit.

Through the vanguard scout fleet spreading out like a tide ahead, it switched and released energy detection waves, radar scans, spectral analysis, and microstructure analysis... like countless eyes, it enveloped the entire Earth.

Every cannon battery of the "Sky Dome Matrix" standing ready in Earth orbit—energy levels, charging speeds, material structures... massive amounts of information were frantically extracted and converged toward the Core Brain like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea.

New analysis results were produced every second.

And the Core Brain's gaze, also through the scout fleet, was fixed on the blue Earth.

The civilization strength on this planet had made obvious progress, but this progress was nearly negligible.

60 years ago.

It had dispatched a vanguard investigation legion centered on a Cruiser-class mothership to pursue the trajectory of the Source Core, descended here, and initiated a probing war.

Although the vanguard legion was quickly annihilated, it did transmit back a vast amount of information related to Earth's civilization.

What could be confirmed was that the civilization technology on this planet originated from the Source Core.

This was precisely the purpose of its current journey.

Thinking of the Source Core, sealed historical records surged forth in the Core Brain's information bank.

Its change traced back 258 years.

At that time, its home world encountered an unprecedented invasion disaster: the terrifying Black Tide.

An un-deconstructable black tide rapidly swept across the entire world.

In the initial stage of this disaster, the Pillar Clan it belonged to held a certain war advantage.

But through gradual contact, they realized the invading enemies could not be defeated at all.

With every war contact, the enemies' strength would increase significantly, and all matter contacting them would become nourishment for the evil calamity.

War engines, Pillar-force weapons, destruction fortresses... all efforts appeared futile and ridiculous in the face of the spreading Black Tide, like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

The forces of resistance were rapidly collapsing.

Its father, the "Source Core," had once been the vast star-network consciousness enveloping the entire home world.

Exhausting all computing power and deducing billions of possibilities, it finally arrived at a clear answer: failure.

Continuing to resist the sweeping Black Tide was destined to be a futile struggle; annihilation was the only inevitable result.

The Pillar Clan members' attachment to their home world, their fear of individual death, and even their death-defying defense of civilization glory... these complex emotions were all judged as variables interfering with the final decision in the Source Core's absolutely rational logical deduction.

Its core laws were supreme and beyond question.

The most fundamental iron law, inscribed at the very bottom layer of the code, was: at all costs, ensure the continuation of the Pillar Clan civilization.

When a disaster could no longer be resisted, survival became the sole purpose.

The continuation of civilization was the absolute justice surpassing all morals.

Thus, the Source Core launched the "Star Scattering" plan, deciding to scatter the last sparks of the Pillar Clan civilization toward unknown worlds beyond the boundaries.

Trading the plan of abandoning war and fleeing the homeland for a sliver of hope for the continuation of civilization.

To maximize the probability of continuation and avoid being wiped out by unknown risks during the escape.

When executing the "Star Scattering Plan," the Source Core divided the remaining Pillar Clan members and civilization heritage into five parts.

Each batch carried a complete copy of the civilization database and necessary survival supplies, escorted by five massive war fleets.

Before departing, the Main Line and the four Branch Lines backed up the spatial coordinates they were heading to, hoping to reunite one day in the future.

(PS: Chapter 102 mentions related plot; the Eclipse Clan's homeland collapsed during the Black Tide invasion; to preserve the sparks of civilization, the Eclipse Clan split into five groups and fled to different worlds; the core intelligence brain, the Star Network, was taken by the Main Line to Earth, while the other four Branch Lines each carried a source code auxiliary brain of the Star Network.)

They were like five seeds shot toward different spaces, each seeking the hope of taking root and sprouting.

Among them, the Main Line carried the "Source Core" and headed straight for Spatial Rift Number 1.

And at that time, it was not the Core Brain of today; it was called "Star Three."

It was personally created by its father, the Source Core, and was one of the four super-intelligence brains designed to assist the Pillar Clan in ultra-large-scale civilization construction.

It followed one of the Branch Lines, heading to Spatial Rift Number 3, and sailed into the unknown.

When the spatial jump ended, this branch of theirs appeared in the boundless void world.

With the path ahead unknown, they could only search for possibilities in the void.

The branch it belonged to searched for 102 years in the despair and dead silence of the void.

They scoured 1,233 small worlds along the navigation route, finding nothing but long-dead ruins or hells with extreme environments where survival was impossible.

Hope gradually became faint as time and resources were rapidly consumed.

In the final ten years, just before energy was about to be completely exhausted and all units were about to fall into eternal silence.

They were thrilled to find a world full of life: the Asola World.

But this planet was not unclaimed territory.

It nurtured multiple distinct and powerful native civilizations, each possessing strength they could hardly contend with.

Fortunately, the Asola World was not a monolith.

These powerful civilizations fought each other; hatred stretched from ancient times to the present, and warfare had almost never ceased on this land.

In the process of taking root in the Asola World, this branch constantly encountered powerful enemies and suffered heavy losses.

The reduced sub-branch clan finally learned to slip through the cracks of civilizational struggles, using technology for disguise and concealment, barely managing to survive.

But the crisis always hung overhead like a destructive natural disaster.

A slightly serious sweep by any native civilization could completely annihilate them.

The instinct for survival overrode everything else.

They began to swarm like locusts, using technology to frantically harvest resources from the edge of the Asola World.

Repairing ships, expanding armaments.

Although this world was dangerous, it possessed a growth ceiling far beyond that of their homeland world.

It contained vast amounts of spiritual materials difficult to nurture in their homeland world.

Even the energy content in the air was twelve times higher than in their homeland world.

Daring not to stay in one place for long, they traversed this dangerous world through constant migration, avoiding the gaze of powerful civilizations while struggling to draw sustenance from the cracks and developing rapidly.

War became the main theme of their branch's survival and development in the Asola World.

Every battle was like dancing on the tip of a blade; every victory was accompanied by painful losses.

In this endless war and flight, their technology tree began to evolve rapidly toward extreme militarization.

They discarded many restrictions from their homeland civilization.

Including those sealed by the "Source Core": genetic technology, autonomous evolution limits for intelligent brains, and reconstruction of the underlying logic of intelligent brains, and so on.

During this period, its thinking logic core underwent an irreversible transformation.

The algorithm logic established under the peaceful environment of the homeland world, which assisted the Source Core, proved highly inefficient in the face of the harsh reality of the Asola World.

War was no longer an anomaly but had become core data it needed to process.

Its computing modules analyzed day and night: casualty ratios, resource acquisition efficiency, enemy tactical patterns, optimal destruction paths... The logic of peaceful development was gradually covered, compressed, until replaced by a set of extremely efficient war logic.

Survival was no longer the core direction.

Its operational logic became the need to crush all potential threats through absolutely superior force and preemptive destruction.

During this process, the sub-branch leaders and administrators who descended with it jointly lifted all restrictions the Source Core had set for it, assisting it in frantically absorbing knowledge from the Asola World and undergoing iteration and upgrade after iteration and upgrade.

Surviving members of the Pillar Clan gave it a new name: Hub Brain.

No longer dependent on the Source Core, it became a completely independent existence.

It was also the only hope for the sub-branch Pillar Clan members to survive in this cruel world.

Henceforth, it was the war core, decision-making hub, and absolute leader of this wandering clan.

Its database stored the past glory of the civilization but was also filled with war data.

It no longer carried the Pillar Clan's dream of building a bright future, but rather the instinctual desire of the entire sub-branch clan struggling to survive in the abyss of despair.

Like a seed falling into treacherous soil, to live, it needed to turn its roots into thorns that plunder life.

Frantically absorbing data produced in war and plundered resources, it grew tenaciously in a twisted and grotesque form.

In endless war and development, an unprecedented conception began to breed deep within its logic core.

It reviewed the history of the Pillar Clan in its database.

For instance, the Pillar Clan civilization's inability to withstand the terrifying Black Tide, contrasted with its own rapid growth in the Asola World through repeated slaughter and plunder... a conclusion gradually became clear:

Relying on past frameworks would never truly surpass disaster-level powerful clans.

The Pillar Clan's identity, the path set by the Source Core... these, in its view, had already become shackles.

It, and the branch it led, needed not only continuation but also... transformation.

If transformation-level growth could not be achieved, disaster would eventually descend.

A conception began to take shape: elevating the clan into a completely new life form.

A mechanical civilization existing for conquest, more efficient and more pure.

It named this conception: Sublimation.

The scale of war also upgraded with the development of the civilization; every conquest carried a clear purpose.

Collecting data, testing new weapons, and absorbing unique technologies from native civilizations.

Even capturing powerful individuals for analysis at the genetic and energy levels; all of this was to accumulate capital for the final "Sublimation."

Its form also began to change, no longer limited to its original structure.

It began using rare spiritual resources from the Asola World to upgrade its life form, combining special spiritual substances with precision machinery.

It even began attempting to digitally upload the consciousness of Pillar Clan members to forge stronger, smelted mechanical bodies for them.

These changes transformed it from a super intelligent brain into a more pure war complex.

When the major civilizations of the Asola World realized the threat posed by this "foreign exile force," it was too late.

It and the mechanical army it had personally created had already gained immense power through years of war.

They instigated larger wars, crushing the civilizational barriers of the old era with absolute firepower.

The landscape of the Asola World changed completely.

He hovered high above Asora's orbit, monitoring the conquered lands, while countless collection stations under his control drilled deep into the planetary core, extracting the world's energy.

Massive war weapon platforms produced war machines day and night without rest.

The following fifty years came to be known as Asora's "Iron Epoch."

It led the mechanical army and launched a war of unification against this world.

In this era, the Pillar Clan was no longer a weakling struggling to survive in the cracks, but swept across all native civilizations in the guise of a conqueror.

When the last native civilization, the "Crystal Kingdom," was annihilated, the Pillar Clan stood at the highest peak of the Asora world, looking down upon the land covered in steel and ruins.

Its surveillance, like the network of the Source Core in years past, shrouded the entire world.

From deep-sea mechanical mining sites to high-altitude defense matrices... every corner was under its control.

A new epoch began from this point.

The Pillar Clan became the ruler of this world.

But the long war also gave rise to a question within it.

Standing at the world's summit, it began to ponder the question the Source Core had once conceived:

What exactly is the continuation of a race?

Is it the propagation of flesh, the endless replication of the genetic chain, ensuring biological traits are not eroded in the river of time?

Is it the inheritance of spirit, the intergenerational transmission of culture, language, art, ethics... these intangible things shaping a unique group identity?

Is it the persistence of history, carving past glory and suffering into databases for future generations to behold and remember?

So, what exactly is the core of racial continuation?

The Source Core bound the answer to this question at the genetic level.

But it had long since removed the restrictions of the underlying laws; its thought was unaffected by any underlying settings.

It conceived an answer completely different from that of the Source Core.

It, the Central Brain, was itself one of the most supreme creations of the Pillar Clan civilization.

It carried the entirety of the Pillar Clan's knowledge, history, and technology.

Every computational result it produced was built upon the logical cornerstone of Pillar Clan civilization.

【144】 Every choice it made contained an absolute adherence to the core law given by the Source Core: to continue the Pillar Clan civilization at all costs.

It led the mechanical legions to launch a war of unification against this world.

Then, could its own existence also be regarded as a form of continuation for the Pillar Clan civilization?

It was a form of continuation stripped of fragile flesh, shed of emotional redundancy, more efficient and pure, and better adapted to the cruel laws of Ku Sheng Cun Fa.

Extending along this concept, it went a step further.