Inside the Human Consortium eting room, the committee mbers were all uneasy.
Since the parasitized forms attacked the Landing Site, the situation on the ground had remained unclear.
Before the feed was cut, they had confird the questioner had finished asking, but they hadn't yet heard the answer.
The news transmitted earlier from Xisiya was also not optimistic.
Parasitized-form Ascendants had killed large numbers of ordinary parasitized forms, attempting to deprive the alien intelligence of food so as to harm humanity.
The thod of killing the enemy at the cost of heavy self-loss was sothing the Human Consortium had not expected.
All they knew now was that Xisiya Soldiers suffered heavy casualties and had withdrawn from the core zone. Uninjured soldiers from the outer lines would rotate in to replace them, but no updates had returned yet.
“This was our mistake.”
Amid the group’s anxiety, Gao Liangwei was the first to admit fault.
“We were constrained by inertial thinking and made two cognitive errors. First, we assud there were only a tiny number of Ascendants among the parasitized forms, and that they couldn’t organize effectively. Second, we assud that even if these parasitized-form Ascendants organized, they would be treasured as scarce combat assets and used sparingly. We were wrong on both counts.”
Torafuto clenched his fist. “That Prophet gathered all the parasitized-form Ascendants near Wuze, then refused to let them engage the allied forces head-on, instead sending them on suicide missions. That’s brutal!”
“The Prophet is smart. It knew a few hundred Ascendants alone couldn’t decide the outco of the frontline, so it used them as surprise-attack forces.”
“The Prophet’s plan nearly succeeded.” Another committee mber breathed with relief, “If the World’s Number One Ascendant, Shadow, hadn’t been on the scene and imdiately intervened to stop them, they definitely would have killed the questioner first and used the opportunity to ask sothing else.”
Mary looked at Gao Liangwei and asked, “Chairman Gao, are you sure Shadow appearing at the Landing Site wasn’t ordered by Beixing?”
“No, we had no knowledge of that.”
Mary then turned to Torafuto. “What about you in Xisiya? Shadow wore your Xisiya Soldiers’ uniform. How do you explain that? Did he steal a uniform from a warehouse and put it on, while your elite on-site forces failed to notice a stranger among their ranks?”
Torafuto frowned and shook his head.
Only Yelanka and Sigaochin in Xisiya knew about Guan Tong entering the Landing Site; Torafuto was unaware.
“No matter what his purpose was, from the result alone his intervention was crucial, and it may have saved many innocent lives,” Torafuto said. “From that perspective, as a Xisiya committee mber, I’m grateful.”
At that mont, a new piece of information reached the Human Consortium.
It wasn’t an update on the ground situation, but rather results from the earlier deploynt of a Mind Power cara device on the food.
The research departnt had successfully obtained an extrely brief but precious internal recording of the alien intelligence consuming its food.
After analyzing the footage, they made an astonishing discovery.
An analyst connected remotely into the eting room projected the video onto the screen. When it played, it showed countless black specks, far smaller than ants, moving at high speed.
The movent of these specks was extraordinarily harmonious, giving a sense of a precise rhythm, as if a rigorously composed symphony were being perford.
But the video was extrely short, ending in less than three seconds, leaving the committee mbers baffled.
The analyst’s voice then sounded: “Esteed committee mbers, what you are seeing is the cross-sectional footage of the alien intelligence consuming food, slowed down by one thousand tis.”
“What? Slowed by a thousand tis!” one mber muttered involuntarily.
Without being told, no one could have imagined that the high-speed black specks in the footage were shown at a thousand-tis slow-motion.
Mary said in surprise, “Even slowed by a thousand tis it’s still so fast? At normal speed you couldn’t possibly see it with the naked eye.”
“That’s correct,” the analyst said, voice tinged with hardly contained excitent. “Moreover, besides the one-thousand-tis slow-motion, this footage has been magnified nearly ten thousand tis.”
The committee mbers reacted with another round of astonishnt.
The analyst continued, “Based on our analysis of these black specks, we believe… we believe these black specks are very likely—”
The analyst took a deep breath.
“—very likely nanobiological organisms or robots! This alien intelligence might actually be an aggregate entity composed of hundreds of billions of nanobiological organisms or robots! Its feeding process is essentially an instantaneous decomposition of the target upon contact!”
...
At the Landing Site’s core area, the large spherical black Shadow Domain had not yet dissipated.
Inside that domain, Guan Tong was lost in thought.
Because of certain questions about the Doomsday Rules, the alien intelligence had already behaved abnormally earlier.
After he asked about the Wordless Book, it changed completely, abandoning the fixed logic of “question-feeding-answer.”
However, its rule about not consuming the questioner still seed to hold. Earlier Guan Tong had mistaken its intention, thinking it wanted to eat him, but what it truly wanted to eat was the Wordless Book.
After Guan Tong stored the Wordless Book into the panel’s Storage Box, the alien intelligence collapsed like a deflated balloon, slack and motionless on the ground, as if it had crashed.
This abnormality was odd and hard to fathom.
“The Wordless Book’s attraction to it proves this thing is extraordinary. Perhaps even more special than I imagined,” Guan Tong thought.
“But I didn’t obtain any new information. Instead of gaining, I invested heavily. If I give up now, that would be a huge loss.”
He really had invested heavily this ti. Not counting the half month’s ti cost, the fight with those parasitized-form Ascendants alone spent a lot of Mind Power, and his internal organs had suffered concussion-like injuries.
Just now, to avoid and test, he had even used the one-ti Silver Doppelganger Talisman. Coupled with the constant drain to maintain the Shadow Domain, his reserve Mind Power had been consud rapidly.
Leaving now would waste all that effort, which he found hard to accept.
What he found most unacceptable was failing to obtain any valuable intelligence—knowing the alien parasitized forms craved the Wordless Book was sothing, but not of much help to him.
After pondering for a mont, an idea occurred to him.
“Tear out a page… and try?”
Feeding the entire Wordless Book to the alien intelligence in hopes of gaining information would be madness—unless he was insane.
But what if he tore out only a single page and fed that?
When he first got the Wordless Book, he’d been bored and flipped through it, only to find no end—the pages seed infinite.
So tearing out one page and letting the alien intelligence eat it to see what changes occurred was worth a shot.
...But he had to prepare first.
Guan Tong increased his distance, and then sensed the shadow line he’d left on Uenoshi.
This was a contingency he had prepared when he parted from Uenoshi; if necessary, he could instantly use Body Swap to jump to her.
After confirming everything, he took out the Wordless Book, flipped to a blank page, and tore it out.
Writing on it was difficult, but tearing out a page seed easy. Whether a torn page still carried any effect, Guan Tong didn’t know—he had never tried.
The mont he took out the Wordless Book, the previously inert alien lifeform stirred again. Guan Tong imdiately commanded a shadow hand to grab the torn page and send it before the creature.
Like a tiger pouncing, the black mass lunged and the torn page was swallowed in an instant.
Guan Tong imdiately stored the Wordless Book back into the Storage Box, then watched the alien lifeform intently to see if anything would change.
His experint seed to have an effect. The alien lifeform that had consud one page visibly transford: what had been a viscous black puddle rapidly reshaped into a huge construct.
This is… a spaceship?
Guan Tong stared at the outline that resembled a spaceship, perplexed as to why such a change had occurred.
In the next mont, intermittent sounds issued from within its body.
“Divine… starship…”
What was it saying?
Guan Tong was puzzled.
Could it be answering my question?
“...out of control...fragnts...”
The brief fragnt cut off abruptly, and it imdiately reverted from the apparent spaceship back into the black puddle.
Guan Tong hadn’t understood a thing. Just as he wondered whether to tear another page and feed it, he watched as a small portion of the creature’s mass separated from its main body.
Then Guan Tong watched open-mouthed as that small portion of the alien intelligence’s body transford from a lump of “mud” into a sheet of paper.
This is...
Guan Tong couldn’t believe it—had it eaten and then vomited it back out?
But why?
Earlier it had consud nearly a hundred thousand parasitized forms and had never once been seen to expel anything.
He commanded Shadow to pick up that sheet of paper, but to be cautious did not bring it close to himself; Shadow held it at a distance.
He then took out the Wordless Book again, but this ti the alien intelligence didn’t react; it no longer lunged to devour imdiately.
Guan Tong’s mind churned with questions. He heard movent outside the Shadow Domain—Sigaochin had returned with people.
...Ti to leave here for now.
With the alien intelligence stabilized, there was no need for him to summon the living dead any longer.
His imdiate priority was to leave with the sheet of paper that had ford from part of the alien intelligence’s body and think through what had happened.
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