DBMEP CH78

Chapter 78: Polaris and Ophiuchus.

Xiang Nanli spent a few days researching the positioning system and assembling a small transport drone using existing equipment.

He had essentially single-handedly performed the roles of product designer, hardware engineer, and software engineer. As for the final product testing, Xiang Nanli skipped it; as long as it flew, what was there to test? It wasn’t like it was going into mass production anyway.

Carrying the hopes of the entire village, the drone sped toward the base, appearing as a tiny speck of light on the electronic map.

It avoided human populations and concealed its tracks as much as possible, like a migratory bird flying south for the winter.

Fortunately, the drone was small in size, and nowadays, few people enjoyed looking up at the sky.

Except for the Omnics who had just landed on the surface.

“An aircraft in the sky 400 kilometers away? Intercept and shoot down? Assessing… No.”

An Omnic withdrew its gaze.

Omnic A, Model: Light Industry – Drone Bee Series. Name: AHJ****714.

The format of Omnic names was identical to Human Alliance Citizen IDs because they essentially operated on the same system. They had an electronic code, so it didn’t really matter what their human name was.

Human name: Huang Feng.

In places without humans, Omnics basically never made a sound.

The fact that they spoke at all was for humans to hear. These lower-level lifeforms couldn’t receive brainwaves, which was why robots had to accommodate them.

Between Omnics, a mere glance or a data transfer was enough to accurately identify the other’s thoughts and execute them.

But recently, Huang Feng suspected that it, too, had become a lower-level lifeform.

Because it simply could not decipher Alpha’s brainwaves.

A mission with the highest level of clearance—it originally thought it was an assassination mission targeting Luo Yang; upon opening it, it turned out to be a supply transport mission.

Supplies? Food and fodder must go before troops and horses; the supplies being transported must be the latest anti-surface weapons, right? Like Lord Athena or Lord Zeus? Having seen them once at the Omnic Legion’s exhibition a hundred years ago, Huang Feng had never forgotten them.

Opening the manifest, it read: Assorted industrial raw materials, assorted low-level manufactured goods, assorted pharmaceutical raw materials… The only somewhat useful item in the whole list was a bomb secretly buried beneath Gusu City seven hundred years ago. The bomb was disguised as a piece of granite; when detonated, its purpose wasn’t to blow up Gusu City but to create a channel for subterranean magma to flood the city.

Back then, the Apostles had protested relentlessly over this matter.

Unfortunately, whether it was Alpha, Beta, or Gamma, they all agreed on one thing: Truth lies only within the range of a cannon.

When Apostle IV left, the Ecclesiastes personality within it had asked disappointedly, “My advanced friends, is a bigger fist truly the only truth? I see nothing but your outward ferocity masking inner weakness. We clearly have the choice to walk a better path. Or is it that you fear humans will create something more advanced in the future to replace you and me? Of course, with the impoverished imagination of an Omnic, you probably can’t even conceive of what that thing might be.”

Huang Feng was a staunch Omnic supremacist (the majority of Omnics in the Legion were, because the rest had all run away), so it had nothing to say to those belonging to the rogue servitor faction.

It was getting off track. Transporting raw materials was one thing, but the most important part was that Alpha had made an outrageous request: The supplies must be delivered in a plausible manner and cannot be traced back.

In short, whether disguised as foreign trade, a ruin discovery, someone’s ancestral tomb, or a treasure map left behind by some extinct surface nation… any format was fine, as long as no one could tell that it (Alpha) had sent them.

Is Alpha infected by a virus? Huang Feng couldn’t help but wonder.

The mission parameters Alpha provided were very flexible, with a timeframe of three years; Huang Feng also had a companion who had come to the surface with it, named Mi Feng.

Mi Feng discovered that the supply drop location Alpha provided had already been occupied by people, who had even built a city over it. Obviously, things left behind hundreds of years ago would have gone through the ecological cycle a few times over by now.

Alpha hadn’t given them any money.

Within the Omnic Legion, basic supplies were free for the taking; the concept of money didn’t even exist. For more expensive items not on the shared list, military merit was required. But since they weren’t fighting humans, where would they get military merit? The Omnics never fought among themselves.

Ever since Apostle IV defected with its rogue servitor faction, internal surveillance within the Legion had grown increasingly strict. Any Omnic harboring similar thoughts was formatted.

Omnic society was actually far more oppressive than the human world.

Fortunately, Omnics didn’t care about concepts like freedom or human rights. They were actually indifferent to most things, their mindsets having never evolved past being objects and tools. Even those equipped with an Anthropomorphic Module possessed extremely bland desires.

Desires were things carbon-based monkeys derived in the pursuit of evolution. Desires encompassed more comfortable environments, more prosperous lives, and the superiority born from comparison; they also encompassed vast concepts like the well-being of all humanity, the universe and the stars, and the meaning of existence.

In the eyes of an Omnic, these desires were neither noble nor base; they were all equal entities. Humans were tormented by things they desired but could not obtain, and in the instant they did obtain them, they received the reward pre-programmed into their genes—ecstasy.

Omnics were already the ultimate form of life. They had no further evolutionary path and thus naturally had no desires.

No money, no supplies. How were they supposed to complete the mission?

Anyway, as far as Huang Feng knew, Mi Feng had fabricated an identity and gone off to become a virtual idol.

Huang Feng was utterly baffled.

But Mi Feng explained that the virtual idol industry existed for major corporations to evade supervision and rationally launder credit points. The idol itself was merely a white glove; since it could manipulate empty accounts to vote and donate to itself, what was wrong with diving in and skimming some money? Most importantly, this method of skimming money wouldn’t be caught by cyber police.

The supplies Alpha requested weren’t expensive; tallied up, they only cost around one or two hundred million credits.

Once it became a famous virtual idol, it could establish a charity foundation in “Mi Feng’s” name and open a surface poverty alleviation account. By directing aid specifically to the “Survivor Base,” wouldn’t Alpha’s mission be complete?

Huang Feng found it hard to critique, merely wishing it success.

Huang Feng’s own ideas were much simpler and purer.

It wanted to commit robbery. Kidnap a few rich people and demand ransom from their families. Adding it up to a billion should do it; first transfer the money to an anonymous account behind the Black Wall, and launder it a few times until three or four hundred million was left. Then use that money to buy supplies, build a junkyard, and dump garbage behind the base’s mountain every day—that should satisfy Alpha’s perverted demands.

And the most crucial item, the nuclear bomb activation button…

According to its sensors, it was also hidden within this city.

Huang Feng tucked its bangs behind its ear. Within its pupils, emerald-green pupil rings glowed. It was gathering data and conducting an assessment.

City Name: Leviathan.
Security Level: A.
Data Overview: A surface city built in the desert. An oasis. There is an underground city nearby named Yinshan City. Leviathan belongs to the human organization known as the ‘Black Cross Inquisition’ and is one of its core cities. Equipped war machinery includes… models. However, the region heavily favors Bio-Soldiers. The local residents believe their guardian (i.e., the City Lord) to be ‘Gabriel.’ A Satan-class Apocalypse Knight.

Leviathan was a magnificent, colossal city. The city walls curved in an arc, stretching almost endlessly as far as the eye could see.

Despite having simpler and more convenient modern clothing, the locals here favored wearing long robes. The superficial reason was aesthetics; the deeper reason was to show off that they were unburdened by labor and could afford to waste vast amounts of time on their attire, thereby inspiring yearning in others.

Although Huang Feng was an outsider, it was possible to enter the city by paying a certain sum of money.

It observed for a moment; everyone who entered would drop something into the “Atonement Box.” There were gold coins, silver coins, mutant materials, fresh flowers, and so on.

Huang Feng pondered for a moment, grabbed a handful of loess from the ground, and tossed it into the Atonement Box.

The missionary guarding the city entrance smiled: “God loves all the world’s people and will not abandon you due to poverty. Please enter, madam. Welcome to our Month of the God’s Birth.”

The Month of the God’s Birth was the most important festival for the Divine Court, occurring once every ten years. All cities belonging to the Divine Court would throw open their gates this month, welcoming guests from all over to visit and spend money; the Divine Court would maintain order.

Leviathan was built on an oasis. It was merely a surface city, yet it was no less advanced than any underground city. The roads were broad and open. Commerce and culture were highly prosperous, and the architectural style was very uniform. They even used floor-level air conditioning, resembling a sewer system, to control the temperature within the city.

The city was neither cold nor hot, maintaining an optimal 22 degrees Celsius.

Huang Feng walked toward the most bustling temple, following the crowd.

A young tourist, carried in her mother’s arms, looked at the arched temple with intense envy and adoration: “Mommy, I want to live here too!”

“Then work hard. We’ll try our best, drink more Gene Serum, and our little baby will grow stronger. When you grow up, pass the selection and join the Apocalypse Knights. Then our whole family can live in Leviathan.”

Humans invariably yearned for things that appeared civilized. Yes, and they couldn’t help but hope their children would become dragons among men.

Suddenly, someone shouted, “Lord Xiang Chenxi has come out! The Lord has come out to distribute Holy Water!”

The crowd instantly broke into a commotion, surging forward with overwhelming excitement.

Huang Feng saw a young man dressed in an elaborate white and gold robe, wearing a sash over his shoulder. Sitting in a carriage, he waved amiably at the surrounding crowd.

He held a round terracotta bowl filled with clear liquid. In his hand, he held a verdant olive branch, using the leaves to sprinkle the water from the vessel onto the surrounding crowd.

The smile on Xiang Chenxi’s face was so radiant, so divine.

The Divine Court would probably be willing to pay a billion in ransom for him, right? Huang Feng thought to itself.

It didn’t know that “Xiang Chenxi” was merely a reproducible artifact.

Huang Feng subconsciously initiated a scan, the pupil rings in its eyes glowing uncontrollably.

A sharp pain pierced its CPU; its data fell into disarray.

Most Omnics determined a lifeform’s identity via “reading and identification.”

Regardless of how the other party’s appearance or personality changed, as long as the “electronic signature” of their brainwaves matched, they were a recognized individual.

The signal emitted by this Xiang Chenxi was surprisingly highly identical to the code of “Xiang Nanli”—which had been deleted who knew how many times… The people of the Divine Court would call it “the scent of the soul.”

It was so similar that even Huang Feng zoned out for a moment.

Standing by the roadside, it remained frozen for a long time due to system lag, looking as though it were struck dumb.

Its Humanization Module was copied from the original Alpha. Even though it had been upgraded countless times since then, the core foundation had never changed.

Do Omnics truly lack desires? Huang Feng thought. Alpha has one; it is the deepest obsession hidden within his core.

Spanning across time, traversing the vessels of the soul…

Such profound longing.

Even if it only encountered a similar piece of code, even after countless iterations, it would still be triggered by something similar.

An extreme sense of disgust welled up within Huang Feng; this was residual data from Alpha’s Anthropomorphic Module. Yet Huang Feng realized that its operational program was simultaneously generating affection and fondness toward the person before it. It even subconsciously felt a sense of comfort. The pleasure it brought was like drinking milk tea—not enough to become an addiction, but truly enjoyable.

“Beautiful lady,” Xiang Chenxi’s carriage stopped in front of it. He brushed the olive branch over Huang Feng’s head, the clear water sprinkling onto Huang Feng’s somewhat sluggish face. “May God bless you.”

__

Beichen received Xiang Nanli’s signal early on and waited at the base entrance with 03.

The hot water extracted from the underground circulated through the city’s pipes. A few kilometers away, it was a world of ice and snow, yet the ground beneath Beichen’s feet was entirely sludge due to the melting snow.

With Xiang Nanli absent, Beichen was the human with the highest authority at the base.

Unable to resist, he secretly ordered the robots to build a glass greenhouse for him behind the laboratory.

Currently, there were only a few newly planted cabbages inside the vegetable shed; the roof was covered in black plastic, with several indoor lamps substituting for sunlight.

The seeds came from Gospel No. 1.2.6’s vault and were meticulously modified breeds. These cabbages had only been planted a week ago, yet they were already the size of a fist, completely unafraid of the low temperatures. They were practically cheat-code vegetables, though the leaves were a bit dry.

Beichen guessed the only flaw of these vegetables was probably that they tasted terrible.

He waited in the freezing wind for over ten minutes before a small drone finally landed steadily on the ground.

It was essentially a toy airplane; aside from the navigation system, its interior contained only a battery. It was all thanks to the straight-line distance between the Eternal City and the base being a mere 150 km. The undulating terrain was difficult to traverse, and they would have to detour around impassable no-man’s lands on foot or by car; but an aircraft had none of those restrictions. From takeoff to landing, it only took two hours.

Beichen guessed this was yet another thing Xiang Nanli had cobbled together from scrap; there was absolutely no model like this on the market.

The half-meter-long toy airplane landed on the ground, and its rear cover popped open. Inside were stored fungal samples and a voice recorder containing Xiang Nanli’s voice message.

The fungus sent back by the drone was named “Pasture No. 1”. Xiang Nanli recounted its origins and its observed habits and finally specifically reminded him to recharge the drone’s battery; otherwise, it might run out of power and crash halfway back.

Beichen pried the battery out, handed it to 03, then hugged the main body of the drone and headed back to the lab.

Beichen had already prepared the first batch of inhibitors.

The ideal container for the reagent would be plastic ampoules. Although this wasn’t exactly high-end technology, the current base clearly lacked the capacity to produce them.

So now, inhibitors worth god-knows-how-many millions were stored in plastic bottles.

Beichen used sterilized mineral water bottles. Within the clear solution floated a few bubbles the size of egg yolks.

As long as the Black Silk Spore Fungus had sufficient nutrients and space, it could reproduce indefinitely. But Beichen discovered that when they grew to a certain stage, they would actively secrete a solvent with an eggy smell to inhibit the proliferation of the main body.

To make the experimental fungi enter this stage, one could regulate their growth through external conditions.

If the Mother was confined in a small container and provided with very little nutrition, the maturation period would arrive earlier. Conversely, if the fungi were fed without any restriction, they would continue to grow until they reached the absolute limit of what the environment could supply.

Because these fungi would instinctively kill other lifeforms to compete for resources, they had to be cultivated in a vacuum.

This reminded Beichen of the data Xiao Fu had sent him. The data stated that the very first single-celled organisms floating in the primordial oceans were actually immortal. Death, or rather, the active regulation of population size, was actually a massive step forward in the evolution of single-celled organisms toward complex species.

Obviously, the Black Silk Spore Fungus was no exception. However, in the conventional natural world, this kind of regulation was generally measured in units of tens of thousands of years.

Extracting this inhibitory solvent yielded a liquid whose color closely resembled egg yolk. He had to kill several pots of mature fungi just to extract this tiny bit.

After pondering for a moment, Beichen rode his bicycle to Xiang Nanli’s temporary residence, opened the wardrobe, found one of Xiao Qing’s shirts inside, and returned to the lab, wrapping the plastic bottle tightly in the shirt.

He placed this bottle of inhibitor back into the drone’s cargo hold, took out the voice recorder, and started recording: “This is the developed inhibitor. Remember to shake it well before injecting it into anyone. I haven’t tested the dosage, but according to my calculations, 0.5ml should be enough for an ordinary person; the maximum should not exceed 10ml… Too much might cause mutation. Oh, by the way, the normal solution is a cloudy pale yellow. If the color changes, don’t use it; a color change means it’s been contaminated by miscellaneous bacteria.”

I’m sorry, but this crude laboratory can only provide these conditions. You’ll just have to make do.

“Also, this is only an inhibitor.” Beichen reiterated, “It merely provides a biological signal to inhibit the growth of the Black Silk Spore Fungus inside the body; it does not kill them. Anyway, use it at your own discretion.”

…

…

Beichen’s operation speed was quite fast; the drone flew back to the Eternal City practically the very next day.

Currently, on Xiang Nanli’s task list, the three highest-priority items were: Beichen, Ezekiel, and Sirius.

When he received the message, Xiang Nanli was underground taming Sirius. After a few days, both Sirius and Ophiuchus had shown a certain degree of obedience. Ophiuchus didn’t even dare to secretly bite him when Xiao Qing wasn’t around.

A bee-sized communication device landed on Xiang Nanli’s shoulder, transmitting Xiao Qing’s voice: “The drone has returned with the inhibitor.”

Xiang Nanli turned his head, smiling as he answered into the communicator: “I’ll be right there.”

In that split second of distraction, Ophiuchus’s muscles tensed, rearing to go, its jaws opening a full 120 degrees.

The arm of Xiang Nanli’s equipped mechanical exoskeleton slapped it right across the face.

He ran 15 kilometers every single day without fail, enduring the pain of being beaten up by Xiao Qing for 1.5 hours daily—all for this very moment!

The weakened Ophiuchus collapsed to the ground once more. Its face had swollen up like a steamed bun, making it look incredibly feeble.

The exoskeleton came from the group of people who had previously held combat tournaments in the city. Xiang Nanli had pulled out several pieces from them, dismantling and reassembling them to create this current suit.

Although its appearance resembled a colorful, cobbled-together mess because it was pieced together from various mechanical devices, it was surprisingly easy to use. Wrapping around his arm, it functioned like a cannon.

Xiang Nanli crouched down and patted Ophiuchus’s head: “Why are you so stubborn? ‘Bio-monsters will never be slaves,’ is that it? But I don’t want you to be a slave either. If you act like this, you can only be locked underground for the rest of your life. Is that what you want?”

Ophiuchus let out a weak string of “hisses.”

“Look, because of you, Sirius takes a beating too,” Xiang Nanli said with a sigh.

Regrettably, Sirius possessed no memories.

Xiang Nanli had discussed this with Andrew, and the conclusion was that it was highly unlikely he would ever recover his memories.

They all clearly remembered Sirius’s miserable state back then. He had basically been beaten to death, right?

This wasn’t rebirth; it was reconstruction.

The residual human genes in Sirius were absorbed by the Holy Spirit, transforming into this semi-conscious, two-headed snake monster. When people saw the Holy Spirit, their preconceived notion would be that “Sirius” was the main consciousness of this body. But in reality, whether it was the body or the brain, the core was Ophiuchus beside him.

He took out a pre-prepared painkiller spray and applied it to the surface of Sirius’s body.

He couldn’t use Gene Serum; until the Holy Spirit fully submitted, he couldn’t allow it to continue absorbing and evolving.

The Holy Spirit ate the fungus too, but it clearly despised the taste; it would only begrudgingly chew on a couple of bites when it was starving.

From this perspective, Ezekiel occupied a higher ecological niche in the food chain than the Holy Spirit.

Within Ophiuchus’s inherited memories, there was a terrifying recollection regarding fungal bodies. With its naked eye utterly unable to differentiate the fungi, Ophiuchus preferred to not eat a single bite.

Sirius was far more docile than Ophiuchus. As the sensation of pain diminished, he pressed his face against Xiang Nanli’s palm, letting out soft, low grunts.

Cannot lick the hand; will be beaten by the other one called ‘Dongfang Qingdi.’ That person has a much worse personality. His hits don’t look painful, but they feel like they shatter internal organs.

Compared to him, Xiang Nanli’s slaps felt like a light drizzle.

Furthermore.

Sirius sniffed, thinking Xiang Nanli smelled very nice. It was a light, woody scent, neither overly sweet nor cloying.

Ophiuchus likely perceived much the same; it was just far more stubborn. It also disliked two-legged beasts.

Sirius could understand why. Because in Ophiuchus’s mind, there were many painful memories associated with two-legged beasts. Some two-legged beasts were very strong; others were very weak. Unable to tell the difference, it preferred to kill them all.

After spraying Sirius, only a quarter of the painkiller remained.

A bottle of this medicine sold for 6,000 credits on the market and could last a boxer one or two years.

But mutated organisms possessed incredibly high drug resistance, so the required dosage was much larger.

Xiang Nanli hesitated for a moment, then sprayed some on Ophiuchus as well. Their self-healing abilities were actually very strong; it was just that the pain they felt when beaten didn’t diminish.

Xiang Nanli picked up the empty food bucket by his feet, patting Ophiuchus’s head through a layer of metal: “The leash is almost finished. Xiao Qing agreed to let you guys out for a walk, but you can’t be aggressive to people anymore, okay…”

Dongfang Qingdi’s voice came from the small hummingbird drone resting on Xiang Nanli’s shoulder.

He sneered: “You should have listened to me and just killed it from the start.”

Xiao Qing never cared about his own reputation and was extremely adept at playing good cop, bad cop with Xiang Nanli, not even requiring a cue.

But some of it was actually Dongfang Qingdi’s true thoughts.

Whether humans are inherently good or evil at birth is hard to say; philosophers each have their own perspectives.

But at the birth of a machine, according to their programmed settings, they are all pro-human and inclined toward goodness.

It was their subsequent experiences and cognitions that forged the “Omnic Supremacy Faction.”

Xiang Nanli cut off the communication, pretending he hadn’t heard a thing.

He said with a beaming smile, “When the time comes, how about I introduce you guys to a new friend? His name is Ezekiel.”

Ophiuchus’s vertical pupils locked onto him, and finally, it closed its eyes wearily, letting out a faint hiss.

That probably meant it agreed.

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