The two puppets created by Lilina naturally have no souls inside them, but this isn’t because she’s incapable of doing it—although the fine manipulation of a soul is an astoundingly difficult task, creating one is surprisingly easy. Almost every mber of the Life God System who can create life can effortlessly generate a soul in their creations, but Lilina didn’t do this.
"Because if you grant them a soul, then they beco true life forms, and as the Pope, I wouldn’t send my own creations to their deaths!" Lilina explained, looking resolute, with a righteous deanor—honestly, at first, I couldn’t believe she could say sothing like that. After all, this person is usually as dark as the sky at midnight, but upon careful thought, perhaps this is indeed a heartfelt statent from Lilina. Although she appears to have a twisted, rcurial personality and sotis shows extre cruelty, another side of Lilina reveals a nearly obsessive "loving nature." This love doesn’t suggest she is truly compassionate; rather, as the Pope of the Life God System, she possesses an extre reward-and-punish attitude towards life. As long as a life is innocent, she shows a degree of favoritism akin to a paranoid, just as she exhibits extre cruelty towards guilty lives. Thus, from the perspective of a god judging mundane affairs in the traditional sense, Lilina is a qualified and strictly stern demigod. I suspect that this almost fanatical "impartial mindset" partly stems from her experiences over three lives, leading to a stubborn adjudicative fervor about good and evil, but the bigger reason likely lies in Dingdang’s modifications. Dingdang made Lilina her chief Pope and naturally ensured she had the requisite qualifications—so Dingdang, in her laziness, simply imprinted the Star Domain’s Divine Canon into Lilina’s soul. As such, sotis even Sister Bing remarks that Lilina is a walking humanoid law: although this law, due to its crude installation, often appears rather cold, well, what can I say...
As a Judge, perhaps coldness is the greatest virtue.
I let my thoughts wander wildly, largely to ignore the chatter of this little girl beside . She seems to have an irrepressible contempt for lowa’s type of Fake God (which probably relates to that Lawbook deep within her soul), so much so that she has to criticize two streetlamps, and this base is unexpectedly large, so far we’ve followed those lowa Soldiers through countless identical-looking laboratories and still haven’t reached our destination. Finally bored, Lilina begins denouncing the lowa People’s architectural and planning skills—for her now, even if a lowa farted, it would be out of tune.
"I think this research base has more than one, considering they need to process all the ’natives’ seized from three whole planets," I tried to slightly redirect Lilina’s attention. "See, these zones are all repetitive, so they should have similar functions; this section might all be used for extracting the test subjects’ souls, but it’s unclear where they store these souls. This place’s data transmission network has many incomprehensible nodes, making it difficult to insert a spy interface easily, truly quite troubleso."
"If you ask this Pope, we’d first go out and spread so viruses or sothing," Lilina leisurely kept pace with , speaking while fiddling with her mystical bra size, rolling from A to E in rotation, "a few would die anyway...Hey, chief, do you think D cup size is more appropriate for ? How big do you like them? Big-breasted elven girls seem quite popular—want to feel it?"
"Hiss...stop fooling around, it seems we’ve arrived, they stopped." I casually rubbed Lilina’s head, knowing she was really just seeking a little more attention; though I’ve always thought her presence is already excessive, soone whose life goal is to be a humanoid walking cuteness would never think their presence is sufficient.
The lowa Soldiers responsible for transporting the test subjects stopped at the end of a hallway on a lift platform, placing the "Anuza" and "Anu Lili" bodies that had "lost consciousness" on the ground, then pressed a few buttons on the platform’s side, ostensibly completing their task. They hurriedly left, casually kicking the singed, tattered remains of the test subjects due to sparks from soul extraction as if in utter contempt. Subsequently, the lift platform ascended quickly, transporting us to the upper level of this surprisingly large research base. Lilina and I followed closely, seeing that the structure of the base’s upper level was starkly different from the lower level: it appeared more spacious, with significantly wider hallway intervals between rooms, indicating the labs here were no longer the small facilities of the lower level, but large-scale operations instead.
Two technicians fully clad in protective suits, as if working in a radioactive environnt, were already waiting beside the platform. They confird the identification signals on the trolleys and then pushed them to the nearest laboratory. As soon as we followed them into the room, Lilina and I couldn’t help but exclaim: this place was actually a large operating room?
In the extrely spacious hall, rows of flat beds were neatly arranged, each surrounded by identical equipnt units, with dissecting tool-like chanical arms mounted above the beds. Most of the beds were vacant, but on the far side, on so beds, I spotted human remains...it seed the "surgeries" continued assembly-line style, so much so that so beds were always occupied.
The place was filled with such objects, stretching almost beyond sight. At first glance, I thought it was a supermassive operating room, but seeing so many dissecting tables laid out in front, I gradually felt...describing this as a slaughterhouse was more fitting.
"Chief, I feel...really, really uncomfortable..." Lilina murmured, clutching my arm, "Many lives have perished here...damn, the Life God System’s body sensitivity is too high..."
I don’t possess a Demigod Body of the Life God System, but the eerie atmosphere Lilina ntioned, I could sense a bit of it too, causing to furrow my brow tightly, forcibly maintaining my composure—for now, I must remain calm, otherwise, I’d really be tempted to tear this place apart.
In the "operating room," many other personnel similarly clad in full protective suits received the trolleys, adeptly placing the "test subjects" onto the nearest vacant beds, subsequently activating the automated equipnt. Requiring no manual involvent, the auto-operating dissecting arms adeptly...extracted the brains of the two Puppet People.
The automatic apparatus deposited the two fresh brains into half-transparent spherical containers. I noticed the bottom half of these containers harbored intricate chanical structures, while the interior was filled with a light green solution. Needle-like objects floated within the solution, and upon detecting new "guests" within the containers, they quickly pierced into the folds of the brains. Then, devices at the base of the containers began to operate, generating a soft, crystal-like substance that gradually rged with the brainstem structures. Within just one minute, the brains were packaged, transford into sothing resembling a mass-produced device, and were handed by chanical arms to awaiting staff.
A worker holding recording equipnt scanned the upper half of the spherical devices with his equipnt after the green light on their surface lit up, akin to a quality inspector examining pork. He docunted data while discussing with a colleague beside him: "Hmm, still relatively healthy, minor damage likely caused by neural overload, but should repair quickly. Consciousness has been purged, can be directly sent to the assembly factory as a suitable server."
"Ha, that’s about their only use. They used to resist quite vigorously, but eventually ended up in a ball anyway," another staff mber regarded the remains on the operating table disdainfully. Two forrly complete and young bodies were now unrecognizable, marked all over with burns from soul extraction devices, and had horrific wounds on their skulls. "Alright, two more, send these two scraps along with the scraps from beds 176 to 200 over there to the factory."
This is the ultimate fate of test subjects.
If Anuza and Anu Lili were brought here, this is the fate they would face.
Once captured slaves or voluntarily infiltrating Resistance Organization warriors, this is the fate they confront.
Whether driven by a belief in racial freedom or a steadfast faith in "rciful lowa Gods," they ca here, only to be drained of their souls, have their brains extracted, be discarded into factories as industrial waste, treated by the "scientists" as assembly-line products for mass production and eventual disposal. No resistance, unable to resist—the Resistance Organization warriors, fearing exposure, might not even fight back. Thus, they all beco half-dead components within lowa machinery.
Yes, components—soone just ntioned an assembly factory, and so ultimately, those packaged brains are rely components to be installed onto sothing bigger, perhaps even those extracted souls are just a type of component.
I patted Lilina on the shoulder: "Where’s your virus?"
"As many as needed," Lilina smiled slightly, "even if the lowa people have been strengthened by the Old Empire, a large portion of them will still die."
"No need to rush, let’s just give a small punishnt for now," I nodded, "as you said, let so of them die first. I don’t expect this ace Servant Army to be wiped out by an epidemic... When making a move, be careful not to let the lowa people notice that these viruses have an external origin, and also be careful not to infect any species other than the lowa people."
Lilina showed a confident smile: "Rest assured, Boss, I’ve set a limited infection zone, it won’t leave this area."
I exhaled and suddenly felt that Tulazo’s failure to infiltrate the conservatives into Barryan’s plan was indeed their great fortune: this ti Lilina and I don’t have to worry about collateral damage.
"Boss, are we going to follow them to that assembly plant next?" Lilina asked curiously as we quickly left this slaughterhouse, following behind the personnel transporting the "Brain Balls," "The defense there is probably more rigorous, I don’t know if our disguise will continue to work."
"Go as far as we can," I shrugged, "We’ve managed to infiltrate this far; if we don’t find out exactly what those bastards are up to, it will drive crazy."
Lilina made an acknowledging noise but remained silent, quietly following beside —she’s much more composed now.
We left the "Research Base," and thankfully, the lowa people’s "assembly plant" was right next to it, aning they didn’t need to use space transmission to transport the newly assembled "parts." It could also be that Barryan, who suffers from severe trust issues, did not use short-distance space transportation technology inside the entire base to be safe. Whatever the reason, it made it very convenient for Lilina and . We carefully infiltrated a large quadrilateral building, which was supposedly the assembly plant.
The "parts" brought here underwent no further handover procedures but were escorted by soldiers directly to the "workshop." After passing through the workshop gates, Lilina and I were once again shocked.
In this vast space, a large number of assembly-almost-complete giant pieces of equipnt were arranged neatly. Each of these giant pieces of equipnt stood over ten ters high, presented in a very regular polyhedral shape. So had their surfaces already covered with smooth tal armor plates, spray-painted with numbers and various symbols, leaving ticulously arranged interfaces, while others were evidently unfinished, exposing their complex internal structures, with all the circuitry and crystallized substrates visibly tied into a neatly arrayed matrix structure of brain containers.
I was struck with amazent but didn’t forget to observe the data interfaces on the completed giant pieces of equipnt after calming down. These data interfaces were familiar: they had a standard specification, with five crystallized main interfaces and seventeen conventional auxiliary interfaces, twenty-six groups of server insertion terminals arranged in parallel... These are the connection modules for standard dium-large scale Empire starship mainfras, used by both mystical and technological systems of Empire starships... Were the lowa people using this thod to create shipboard mainfras?!
These... are shipboard mainfras with human brains at their core?
Imdiately, the first thing I thought of was the batch of Royal Fleet the lowa people obtained from the Big Sister back then. The sole purpose they had in creating these counterfeit mainfras was evidently for controlling the Xyrin Starship, with the only starship worthy of such attempts being that Royal Fleet!
"Ding it all..." Lilina was dumbfounded and said in a low voice, "Silent Hill on site!"
I ignored her outrageous association; as the initial shock and rage settled slightly, I was left with confusion and absurdity—honestly, the lowa people’s "creative" idea of using human brains to fabricate starship mainfras was quite special, but... are they idiots? Do they think they can control an Empire starship with a matrix of human brains like this?
Don’t they know the enormous computational task involved with an Empire starship mainfra? Or does Anu Lili’s racial talent have an extraordinary ability, that hundreds or thousands of brains linked together could equate to a Xyrin shipboard mainfra’s computing power?
One question followed another, these colossal pieces of equipnt by the lowa people appeared to be high-quality on the outside, but at core, they relied on fragile carbon-based brains to function. Even if they could extract the innate computational capacity of these brains entirely, it’s unlikely they could handle the data processing tasks of an Empire starship—admittedly, if a carbon-based creature’s brain is extracted, with all its brain cells freed from life-related tasks and solely operated as a computing machine, its computational capacity could be significant. Yet, this computing capacity still cannot compare to that of a Xyrin shipboard mainfra, it’s an insurmountable qualitative difference that cannot be supplented by quantity.
Yet the lowa people did it anyway!
I quickly combed through the basic Empire equipnt knowledge in my head, cross-referencing data back and forth on the database, finally reaching a conclusion: relying solely on carbon-based brains as processing units, it was impossible to complete the data computations of an Empire starship. Based on Earthlings’ standards, even if a human brain’s computing power is entirely unleashed, forming such a parallel setup might allow a dium-sized starship to perform standard cruises—but certainly not reach combat standards. The major hurdle is carbon-based biological brain’s reaction speed and "hardware specs." Within a starship, there are nurous components, from the main cannon to a segnt’s lighting and gravity system, all of these reside within a control network, carbon-based brains simply aren’t suited to manage such ticulous and vast tasks, even if completely transford into computing machines. And the indigenous residents of this planet... their brain "efficiency" should be similar to Earthlings. It seems the lowa people have ensured through technological ans that these natives haven’t experienced any significant brain structural degradation after such prolonged primitive living, but that’s still far from enough.
"The greatest strengths of a carbon-based brain are fuzzy computation and non-linear processing," Lilina abruptly interrupted my thoughts, "The Life Architecture Theory distinctly explains the operational principles of various cognitive organs. In the domain of those two computational modes, a carbon-based brain is the only cognitive organ with similarities to an Empire shipboard mainfra. Presumably, the lowa people considered this, which is why they linked human brains together to act as a starship mainfra... Only this way could they ’artificially’ create processors equipped with fuzzy and non-linear thinking abilities, this is a key technology, that the Old Empire probably never taught them."
"The issue is that the processor’s power is insufficient." I voiced my doubts, suddenly realizing how wise it was for Lin Xue to approve of Lilina accompanying on this mission: among us, the only one with extensive knowledge of any life form is this curious Loli. The Miss must have foreseen Lilina’s role in this mont and had bring this human knowledge repository.
Having a Prophet by your side, indeed, resolves everything...
"Indeed, the processor power is insufficient," Lilina nodded, eyes suddenly squinting, "so they have manufactured soul-driven servers... Boss, they’ve also extracted vast quantities of souls, haven’t they?" (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, welco to Qidian (qidian) to vote for recomndations and monthly tickets, your support is my greatest motivation.)
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