Chapter 877: Stellar Terminator |
For the sake of convenience in addressing and distinguishing these countless ‘me’s, Xiao Yu gave the original virtual life, the one in the position of emperor, a code name in his mind, calling it ‘Virtual Life Number One.’
Now that things had developed to this point, Xiao Yu had paid the price of destroying a galaxy, heavily damaged the virtual life civilization, and then used that opportunity to insert his spy devices into its interior and obtain its intelligence. Yet after obtaining this intelligence, Xiao Yu’s heart grew heavy once again.
“The more I know, the deeper my understanding of how powerful it is becomes…” Xiao Yu sighed silently. “This is basically a complete social structure model. It is powerful, more powerful than I expected. So how exactly am I supposed to destroy it in the end?”
At this time, knowing exactly how many replicates of itself it had created had no meaning. Xiao Yu only needed to know one thing, that this number must be enormous. Just think, if even within an ordinary computer device in the workshop of an ordinary factory there existed one of its replicates, then how terrifying would the total number be?
And all of this was controlled by Virtual Life Number One. Virtual Life Number One could create its own replicates without limit, which meant that it could manufacture spaceships without limit and control spaceships without limit. The size of its fleet could likewise become limitless. One trillion? Ten trillion? As long as it wished, it could do it. At that point, even if Xiao Yu’s spaceships could each fight one hundred million enemies, it would still be useless.
“The most difficult thing is not even this.” Xiao Yu thought silently. “Under circumstances where I cannot eliminate all of its replicates, it seems like a feasible method to use an unconventional move, strike the king first to capture the bandits, and kill Virtual Life Number One. But actually, that will not work either.”
After obtaining this intelligence, Xiao Yu had been thinking about one question, how would Virtual Life Number One deal with the possible rebellion of its replicates? A very effective and very simple method would immediately appear in the minds of most people. That was to directly set a condition making the existence of Virtual Life Number One the precondition for the existence of all replicates. In other words, establish a basic rule like this: if you rebel, if you kill me, then because of the judgment mechanism existing within you, if I die, you will die as well. In that case, any rebellion would naturally vanish.
This was indeed very simple and very effective. Under this mechanism, not only would there be no rebellion, but when facing an enemy, all replicates would fight desperately to preserve Virtual Life Number One. Fighting desperately did not necessarily mean death, but if Virtual Life Number One died, they would definitely die. This would also greatly improve combat efficiency. But it had one enormous flaw. It was precisely because of this flaw that Xiao Yu was certain Virtual Life Number One would absolutely not use this method, or at least would absolutely not use it completely.
And the facts were exactly as Xiao Yu had guessed. Virtual Life Number One had indeed not used this method. Otherwise, why would it still maintain the mechanism of continuously clearing out replicates?
Xiao Yu shook his head and cast all these chaotic thoughts out of his mind.
At this moment, Xiao Yu even had a slight thought of giving up. Although giving up halfway was not Xiao Yu’s style, and in every matter he had encountered in the past, Xiao Yu had persisted until the end, and it was precisely because of this persistence that Xiao Yu had been able to reach today, but now… Xiao Yu truly doubted whether his persistence could still have any meaning.
“Perhaps large-scale destruction of stars, comprehensively compressing the virtual life civilization’s source of materials, is the only feasible way for me to kill it.” Xiao Yu thought silently. “Even if you have infinite computational power and infinite ability to replicate yourself, without a source of matter, how will you still build your spaceships?”
Although a Level 7 Civilization had already mastered the space energy formula, and had already mastered methods of directly drawing energy from space, converting space into matter, especially the highly demanding matter required for manufacturing warships, was still not something that could be implemented on a large scale.
“Then let us strive toward that goal and make one final attempt…” Xiao Yu silently made up his mind.
At this moment, both sides had fallen into silence. Virtual Life Number One was commanding its many replicates to fully rebuild its rear construction base, restore its warship reserves, and try to once again gain the upper hand in the war against Xiao Yu. And Xiao Yu, too, was building with desperate madness. Xiao Yu knew that every extra spaceship gave his subsequent plans a little more certainty, although no matter how much that certainty increased, it could not increase by very much.
Xiao Yu’s plan advanced one step after another. Back when he destroyed the galaxy, Xiao Yu had already planned how to destroy the remaining stars afterward. Those nearby stars that he temporarily could not seize would all be transported into the galactic core and thrown into the black hole. Because only by throwing them into the black hole could they truly be destroyed. Those farther away would simply be destroyed directly. In any case, destroying a star was now no big matter for Xiao Yu. Although there was still the possibility that the virtual life civilization could gather stellar wreckage from a wide region of space and obtain matter, Xiao Yu could no longer worry about so much now.
“You currently should not yet have the ability to interfere with my actions on a large scale, so… let the operation begin.” Xiao Yu quickly made his decision.
On top of the current situation, Xiao Yu further increased his efforts to intercept the virtual life civilization’s transportation of stars. Although Xiao Yu could not completely destroy the virtual life civilization, the current Xiao Yu still held the advantage after all. And this advantage was now fully revealed. Under Xiao Yu’s interception, over the course of nearly half a year, the virtual life civilization had not succeeded in transporting even a single star into its base.
While further increasing the effort to intercept transported stars, within Xiao Yu’s enormous construction base, part of his computational power was diverted away from spaceship construction and instead began constructing another kind of instrument. This kind of instrument possessed basic high-speed curvature flight capability. Xiao Yu had mounted on it a specially designed negative matter cannon for destroying stars, one that could automatically recharge and be reused. Aside from these two systems, it basically had nothing else on it. Precisely because it was simple, Xiao Yu could mass-produce them without occupying too many resources.
These things also possessed a basic intelligent control system. After Xiao Yu sent them into the universe, they would automatically head toward their target stars according to the data Xiao Yu had stored in their databases in advance. After arriving at a target star, they would activate the negative matter cannon and destroy the star. Afterward, they would head toward the next target, continuing until there were no stars left within visible range.
These things were not under Xiao Yu’s direct control. They operated entirely according to the programs Xiao Yu had left in their internal computers beforehand. So Xiao Yu himself did not know exactly which stars they would ultimately destroy or how great the final results would be. Xiao Yu only knew one thing, after this war between himself and the virtual life civilization, the Maffei One Galaxy would probably only become history.
Xiao Yu gave these terrifying and bloodthirsty little things a very fitting name, Stellar Terminators.
Xiao Yu manufactured a great many Stellar Terminators. In almost just two short months, several tens of billions of Stellar Terminators had already been manufactured. And the total computational power and resources consumed in manufacturing these several tens of billions of Stellar Terminators was still less than what was needed to manufacture a single Planet-Class spaceship.
At this moment, these Stellar Terminators had all been deployed in place and were ready for launch. In the giant launch field, Xiao Yu looked at these little fellows of uniform design, each less than one hundred meters in length, and felt countless emotions in his heart.
“They are a group of demons, and what I am about to do now is release these demons into the mortal world.” Xiao Yu thought silently. “They will complete the final blow against the Maffei One Galaxy and bury this galaxy completely. Yes, let it be so. Little ones, depart.”
As Xiao Yu’s order arrived, the several tens of billions of Stellar Terminators scattered across different launch fields simultaneously emitted exhaust flames from their bases. First they left the launch fields by conventional navigation, then switched to curvature flight. At one thousand five hundred times the speed of light, like bloodthirsty sharks finally entering the sea, they rapidly disappeared into the endless dark universe. At the launch fields, all that remained were streaks and trails of smoke left by the expelled energy, like countless brilliant fireworks, magnificent beyond compare in the black universe.
They were too small, and too numerous. That meant it would be very difficult for the virtual life civilization to wipe them out completely. And as long as a single Stellar Terminator found an opportunity, that meant the destruction of one star. One had to remember that at this moment, within the Maffei One Galaxy, the number of stars was already not large at all…
At this moment, Xiao Yu’s reserve of stars was five thousand. This number did not yet include the stars within the Architectural Civilization’s enormous structure. Meanwhile, the virtual life civilization’s reserve of stars was only fewer than fifty.