by <unknown>
“I shall deal with this organization personally. Remember to publicize the execution process on the net.”
On the dock of one of the Kepel Financial Group’s Ancient Star Desert bases, cargo boxes were being loaded onto the ships. Kepel the Fifth was patrolling with his subordinates.
“How long before we can take off?”.
“About two hours.”
“Speed up as much as possible.” Kepel the Fifth’s tone was a little impatient.
About seven days ago, the dynasty fleet had visited the Black Index. This message was only spread out yesterday. All the anonymous employers who were giving out missions to transport the virus were appalled and instantly tried to save themselves.
Kepel the Fifth felt uneasy, too. Therefore, he decided to abandon this base and transfer his assets.
Currently, he was making his men empty the base.
While he was anxiously waiting, an observation officer sent him an urgent message.
“Alert, the exterior fleet has discovered a small Crimson Dynasty fleet approaching. We’ve sent a communication request but received no response.”
“The three Universal Civilizations’ men have come?” Kepel the Fifth was startled. Together with a group of officers, he hastily walked to the window and looked out into cosmic space. A few scattered dynasty spaceships appeared in their vision.
“There don’t seem to be a lot of people?”
“They don’t look like they’re here to fight.”
Seeing this, Kepel the Fifth was slightly relieved.
Since there were so few spaceships, he felt like they were more there to ask questions or negotiate. Having thought of that, Kepel the Fifth adjusted his clothes to look more formal. He then ordered with a deep voice, “Frigates, standby. Send a communication request in my name. I’ll speak with them and see their intentions.”
However, as soon as he said that, the dynasty spaceships stopped a distance away. “Hmm? Why did they stop?” Kepel the Fifth was confused.
However, the next moment, countless machines appeared out of thin air afar, quickly assembling into an enormous human-shaped machine that was wearing a cape and holding a longsword in its hand. It was so enormous that even the entire base was smaller.
“That’s…”
Before Kepel the Fifth and the others recovered from their shock, this enormous machine suddenly hurled the long sword forward, which easily sliced through all the frigates in its path like a hot knife cutting through butter, heading right toward the base. At this instant, including Kepel the Fifth, all the people on the dock stopped what they were doing and stared blankly at the gigantic mountain-sized blade that was fast approaching
Their minds had all gone blank.
Swoosh!
The Celestial Punishment Edge easily penetrated the Kepel base. The blue psionic storm on its blade turned the base wreckage into dust. It was like a firework.
As if it had met no resistance at all, the blade continued to penetrate into the desolate planet below the base, through the ground, and came out the other side of the planet. It had given this planet a hole that extended from one side to another.
The enormous amount of psionic energy left by the Celestial Punishment Edge caused irreversible chain reactions inside the planet. Lava rushed up, and red cracks started appearing on the surface.
The next moment, a blinding white light erupted. The entire desolate planet expanded from within and shattered instantly. The shockwave from the explosion expanded, but the Mechanical Deity raised its Emperor’s Cape and blocked the shockwave completely.
At the same time, it raised its hand. The Celestial Punishment Edge moved through the energy storm of the planet’s explosion in an arc and returned to its hand. “This thing is quite powerful.” Han Xiao somewhat understood why the Tyracles were so passionate about building equipment for the Mechanical Deity. There was no other reason except for it being so damn cool.
After playing with the Celestial Punishment Edge for a bit, the Great Mechanic Han reluctantly deactivated the Mechanical Deity and returned to the ship.
“Run a scan to see if there’s still anyone alive.”
What’s the point?
The powerful light of the planet’s explosion reflected on the dynasty soldiers’ pale faces. The cabin was dead silent, as if they could hear each other gulping in fear. “Phillip, did you record that?”
“Yes, hum…”
“Upload it to the net, to intimidate those with ulterior motives and show them the consequences of what they might want to do.”
Han Xiao waved his hand casually.
He did not plan to even speak with this organization. There was more than sufficient evidence. There was no point speaking, so he directly wiped them out with a slash to express his firm attitude.
After dealing with this small matter, Han Xiao waved at Harrison and the others, who were shivering by the side, signaling them to come over.
Harrison had just witnessed Han Xiao casually shattering a planet with his own eyes. The impact of it completely shattered his mental preparations for it before it happened. Even though he clearly knew Black Star was one of the strongest in the universe, he was still astonished.
Harrison’s teeth were shaking. He cautiously approached Han Xiao and stuttered, “Y-Y-Y-Your Excellency Black Star, what can I do for you?”
“Why are you so nervous? I won’t bite.” Harrison chuckled and patted Harrison’s shoulder. “Discouraging illegal dealings is about done, so looking for the virus core needs to be brought forward. I want to ask you, where do you think the virus core is hiding?”
“H-how would I know?”
“Don’t be so nervous. Just make a random guess. Where do you think it’s hiding?”
Harrison calmed himself down, regained focus, and cautiously said, “Previously, you said that the virus core is just a pre-designed program used to monitor the overall infection progress of the virus. This means that it is definitely exchanging information with the other viruses, so to hide itself, it can’t possibly be the terminal of that information exchange, or it would have been found long ago. Therefore, I think that through recording all the routes the viruses are sending data through and finding the overlapping spots among them, that’s where the virus core might…”
Han Xiao interrupted him and said, “The three Universal Civilizations thought of this long ago and have been doing exactly that. Each virus sends out a large amount of fake data every now and then. The routes are extremely complicated, and there are too many overlapping points. Therefore, there’s no way but to filter them. However, not only is the location of the virus core very difficult to find, it seems to be changing randomly. This is why the three Universal Civilizations have not been able to find it.”
“T-then I don’t have any ideas and, unfortunately, won’t be able to help you.”
“No, I don’t need your ideas.” Han Xiao smirked. “Next time the three Universal Civilizations come up with the new set of overlapping points, I need you to choose some of them. What if you’re lucky enough to find it right away?”
“Stop joking with me…” Harrison was anxious.
“I’m not joking. Think about it, you dug up an antique randomly, and it just so happened to be the source of such a dangerous disaster. From a certain viewpoint, your luck is through the roof.”
Harrison scratched his head and realized that did make some sense.
Indeed, I always seem to have been quite lucky. No matter what I asked my family’s financial group to invest in, it always ended up making money. If not because making money is too easy, I wouldn’t have come out looking for excitement by doing archaeology… Han Xiao did not know what he was thinking. Seeing that he was daydreaming, he gave him a few words of encouragement and started pondering in his mind.
He had a lot of faith in the Advanced Luck Glow. Even if it failed the first time, if he let Harrison try a few more times, the chances of succeeding were still much higher than others.
Furthe
rmore, Han Xiao even planned to make a request to the three Universal Civilizations to contact the outside world, so he could look for Floating Dragon’s old man Aesop to read some feng shui for him.
No matter how well the virus core hid, everyone was equal in front of luck and prophecy.
Since science did not cut it, he planned to make it up with superstition!
…
Galaxy Calendar Year 731 March 9th, Black Star visited the Black Index organization, which controlled the black market, as a Crimson Dynasty emissary.
The two sides carried out a friendly and peaceful meeting regarding the three Universal Civilizations’ control of the disaster, successfully exchanging information. In the end, they happily came to an agreement. The Black Index’s Ancient Star Desert person in charge, the Third Indexer, expressed that be it a black or white faction, every powerful civilian organization had a responsibility to protect the universe. Preventing the Intelligent Plague from spreading was a duty every galactic resident should carry out. Hence, the Black Index was willing to fully support the three Universal Civilizations’ operations.
March 17th, Black Star announced that the Kepel Financial Group had hidden the virus. He wiped Kepel out with one attack, shocking the other organizations.
With this incident as the signal, the three Universal Civilizations worked together and wiped out tons of private organizations that were suspected to have hidden the virus over the next month.
In April, the Crimson Dynasty fleet visited all the black market organizations in the Ancient Star Desert, seemingly gaining control of all the black market connections in the Ancient Star Desert.
Black Star upheld the rules of no negotiations and no compromises. He led his fleet on frequent attacks, reducing the number of smugglers by a large amount.
June 25th, the research group led by Manison created the first version of the special anti-virus and scanning tool, which was widely used.
In July, the Intelligent Plague was briefly under control. The three Universal Civilizations started to search for the virus’ core.
Chapter 1108. Great Machinery Sage |
Han Xiao’s fleet had stopped at the Crimson Dynasty’s temporary Ancient Star Desert military base to resupply and repair their armor.
Over the past few months, using the information he had gained through the black market channels, he had done a cleansing of the restless gray organizations in the Ancient Star Desert, creating an image of him being merciless. This successfully made the rest not dare to take the risk. They chose to obey and stopped touching the Virtual Mutiny Virus. Hence, the Star Field’s situation was getting better.
While doing so, Han Xiao was also trying to find the virus core. He had let Harrison choose the overlapping data points multiple times with his Luck Glow.
However, for once, the Luck Glow did not work, and he was never able to find the virus core. Even old man Aesop could not ‘prophecy’ his way to the location of this thing.
He was in charge of cleaning out the uncertainties, while Manison was focusing on researching. Both sides had gotten some results. Currently, the Intelligent Plague was somewhat under control.
“… I thought you guys would be able to come up with the antivirus very soon. Turns out it took you months. Now this doesn’t suit your level, Manison.”
Inside the lounge for upper echelons of the military base, Han Xiao was chatting with Manison’s remote projection while snacking on some kind of seed similar to the Chinese melon seeds.
Manison shook his head and said, “Analyzing the virus’ code wasn’t easy. Plus, we had to prevent the virus from erupting, so we had to go around the conditions that would trigger it. We had no choice but to be extremely cautious. That’s why it took us some time.”
Beyond Grade A Virtual Mechanics could easily eliminate the Virtual Mutiny Virus, but the difficulty of turning their own ability into a tool that anyone could use was a completely different matter. For example, a man would be able to naturally walk and run, but if he was asked to build a robot that could do the same, he would definitely not be able to come up with it as easily.
“What are the three Universal Civilizations planning to do now?”
“The problem is still the conditions of triggering the virus eruption. In order to make sure it doesn’t erupt, we can’t cause the infection speed of the virus to plummet all of a sudden. Therefore, even if there are firewalls, we can’t use them on a wide scale. For the time being, they can only be installed after all the infected nodes are cleaned. This is also the reason that despite the three Universal Civilizations’ control, the Virtual Mutiny Virus has still infected more than half of the network nodes in the Ancient Star Desert over the past few months.”
son a
“If I recall correctly, cleaning out the virus on a large scale will also trigger it, right?” Han Xiao asked.
“Yes,” Manison replied. “Therefore, the scanning tool the three Universal Civilizations have asked us to build can’t be discovered by the viruses. They plan to secretly lock onto all the infected nodes by scanning them, then implant antivirus tools with precision to clean all the infected nodes simultaneously. Afterward, they’ll install firewalls immediately to prevent repeat infections. This way, even if the virus ends up erupting, the damage will be minimized.”
“Although this method is a little bit troublesome, it’s safest.”
Han Xiao had no objection to the three Universal Civilizations’ plan. It sounded quite reliable.
However, he had a question in mind. In his previous life, the three Universal Civilizations should have done exactly the same thing, so how did it still turn into a disaster for the entire universe in the end?
Could it be because I’ve done my job too well and changed some unknown details? For example, someone should have transported the virus out but has been stopped by me? Han Xiao put this question to the back of his mind.
Manison did not know what Han Xiao was thinking. He continued to explain the three Universal Civilizations’ plan.
“Therefore, we have made various preparations. One is this plan to wipe out all the virus; the other is to locate the virus core. The virus core is the controlling terminal for most eruption triggers. As long as it’s eliminated, the risk will be reduced even further, and we won’t have to worry about the viruses erupting when we attempt to wipe them out.”
“Do you guys still have no leads on the virus core?”
“It’s hidden itself too well.” Manison shook his head and did not say much.
Han Xiao snorted softly. He felt that old Manison was not telling the truth. However, there was no point exposing him. The two of them were competitors in this respect. Manison would not be so kind as to share clues with him.
I were
Out of all the Beyond Grade A Mechanics who had come to help, all of them wanted to obtain the virus core to learn the full secrets of the Virtual Mutiny Virus technology.
Now that the pandemic was under control and the most dangerous period had passed, the competition revolving around the virus core had come to the surface. Even the three Universal Civilizations intended to compete for
it.
Han Xiao knew that he would not be able to get any information from Manison, so he skipped this topic and said, “Now that your work is done, are you still planning to stay in the research department?”
“No, I’m planning to go and take a walk. One reason is to find clues about the virus core. Another is that I plan to go and take a look at the Machinery Faith.”
“Machinery Faith?” Han Xiao’s brows raised.
He had never forgotten that the two of them had conflicts of interest due to this religion. Manison was always in the position of the main god. He wanted to keep most of their faith to himself to maintain the (Key of Adeptus Mechanicus] bonuses.
For that, Manison had struck more than a decade ago and made Han Xiao suffer a slight loss.
Back then, he had chosen to use his soul talent of not compet
ing. After that, he had been growing stronger while keeping a low profile, at the same time maintaining a decent relationship with Manison.
“What, you have some thoughts about it?” Manison sounded like he was smiling, but he was not.
“Humph, can’t I?” Han Xiao narrowed his eyes.
“Compared to about ten years ago, you have indeed improved. However, it’s still too early for you to want to challenge me again,” Manison said coldly. “Don’t envy what’s mine. We have quite a good relationship now; keeping things this way is good for you. Don’t say I never warned you. I don’t wish to see you have any contact with the Machinery Faith in any form.”
Then, the green remote projection disappeared, and Manison had hung up the communication.
Han Xiao’s face turned black. He was a little irritated.
What a b*stard this guy is, changing his attitude like flipping pages of a book.
Also, when did the Machinery Faith become yours? Shameless! Speaking of, it’s already been more than ten years since I last fought him…
Han Xiao narrowed his eyes and pondered.
He opened the interface, looked at the huge amount of EXP he had accumulated, and felt assured.
The Black Star Cup had been going on all this time, giving him bonus EXP for the past few months, which had stacked up to quite a huge amount. He did a slight calculation-it was roughly enough for him to level up from level 320 to between 335 and 337. Just a portion of this much EXP would be enough for him to obtain enough Potential Points to max all his class knowledges.
After farming for so long, I feel like I can have a rematch with Manison…
Han Xiao had decided to take a step back more than ten years ago because he wanted to become stronger first. Now that he had improved, his restless mindset once again seized control.
The competition around the Machinery Faith was one thing, but to Han Xiao, the other reason was the main reason.
I’m not happy. I have to fight that old man!
Last time, I was weaker, so I put up with it, but it’s never too late for revenge!
In the past, you came to me and bullied my Phillip. Now, I have reason to be confident, so it’s my turn to initiate the challenge and see the difference in our strength.
