Chapter 878: Threatening the Inside and Threatening External Enemies |
“Virtual Life Number One’s vision is ultimately too shortsighted.” Xiao Yu thought silently. “At this moment, it probably still has not realized the importance of these few remaining stars in the Maffei One Galaxy. Before it reacts, I will destroy all of these stars, then use my material advantage and a direct hard collision with no finesse to ultimately wipe it out. Judging from my current situation, this is the only feasible method.”
At this very moment, a large number of stars were being destroyed by the Stellar Terminators. Extremely high travel speed meant extremely high working efficiency. In Xiao Yu’s eyes, the stars in the sky were going dark one by one. Virtual Life Number One had also taken some countermeasures, such as hurrying to transport stars, but the intensity was not great. Clearly, at this time, it did not consider transporting stars to be more important than its current construction.
The nearer stars were directly transported by Xiao Yu to the galactic core, and after adjusting their orbits, he threw them directly into the black hole. The central black hole of the Maffei One Galaxy had been exceptionally quiet. This quietness was mainly because there was not much matter around it, no stars, and no large gaseous clouds for it to devour. But now this situation had changed because of Xiao Yu’s actions.
The speed at which a black hole devoured matter, whether that matter was stars or gaseous clouds, depended, under the condition that the black hole’s mass was fixed, on the orbits of the matter being devoured. For a galaxy’s central black hole, it was not impossible for it to take hundreds of millions of years to devour a single star. This was because its gravity would accelerate the star, and the faster the star moved, the slower its approach toward the black hole would be, and thus the slower the black hole would devour it.
Naturally, Xiao Yu would avoid such a situation. The orbits of these stars had all been specially adjusted by Xiao Yu so that they would charge directly toward the black hole along the most direct trajectory. Under such conditions, for a star to be completely devoured by the central black hole required only a few short days. And the most crucial point was that this devouring could be carried out simultaneously against many stars.
Efficiency was thus increased in this way. Under Xiao Yu’s control, the nearby starry sky began to grow busy. Stars were transported over one after another, then thrown into the black hole. Fed by a massive amount of matter, this black hole had now been fully activated and had become completely active.
Around it appeared accretion disks of extremely high energy and velocity, while intense gamma rays, X-rays, and other high-energy radiation blew outward like a storm. Its brightness rose by several billion times in a short period of time. At its poles, huge jets were also being emitted. Judging from the initial velocity of these jets, Xiao Yu knew that they would spray nearly one thousand light years across the starry sky…
Xiao Yu was racing against time to destroy every star he could see. In Xiao Yu’s current state, the maximum number of stars he could control was only a little over thirty thousand, and Xiao Yu had long since finished stockpiling that number.
In three years, nearly four billion stars had already been destroyed by Xiao Yu. From Xiao Yu’s location, observing in the visible light spectrum, the sky still appeared full of stars, but Xiao Yu knew that most of these stars were already dead. The light he was seeing now was light they had emitted before dying, and this light had not yet completed its full journey.
Launching a war was destined to produce no results. Under such circumstances, it was better to pull back computational power and devote all effort to logistical construction, laying the groundwork for his plan.
“Compared with the plan you are carrying out now, we think it would be better for you to take a risk and launch full-scale war right now. While pinning down most of its strength, executing a decapitation plan would be more reliable.” At this time, the Architectural Civilization sent Xiao Yu a message. “How can you be sure that Virtual Life Number One has not adopted the strategy of ‘if I die, then all replicates die with me’? After all, this kind of strategy is the most effective way to prevent replicate rebellion and stimulate the replicates’ fighting spirit.”
Xiao Yu said with a bitter smile, “Virtual Life Number One is not that foolish. If it executes that strategy, it is threatening the inside. If it does not execute that strategy, then it is threatening external enemies… To give an example, if I currently had enough strength to carry out a decapitation strike, then under the condition that Virtual Life Number One had not adopted that strategy, would I dare to kill it? You have to understand, if it dies, its replicates will not die. As long as it is alive, it can still restrain its replicates. Once it dies, those replicates will lose all restraint… You have to understand, its replicates are more or less the same as it is. Without restraint… almost every replicate would redevelop its own power. Those replicates would replicate themselves again, and using themselves as the core, reconstruct a kingdom of ‘me’… Carrying out a decapitation strike would destroy one virtual life empire, yet create several quadrillion virtual life empires…”
“Dealing with one virtual life empire is already this difficult. Facing several quadrillion virtual life empires, we would be like ants before a tsunami, with no ability to resist whatsoever… The problem we are facing now is not whether or not we have the ability to decapitate Virtual Life Number One. Rather… after decapitating it, how do we handle the problem of the unrestrained replicates?”
“To restrain the inside, it only needs to apply the simultaneous death strategy to its Imperial Guard legion. That way, its Imperial Guard legion will desperately protect it, reducing the probability of internal rebellion succeeding to the minimum. But by not applying the simultaneous death strategy to external replicates, it is threatening external enemies, making external enemies not dare carry out a decapitation strike against it… I can be certain that even a Level 8 Civilization, a Level 9 Civilization, in the absence of confidence that they could wipe out all replicates, would not dare decapitate it. Because this would not be ending a war, it would be releasing demons…”
The Architectural Civilization fell silent. Only now did they finally understand just how thorny the situation Xiao Yu faced truly was. This was simply a case where killing was impossible, and not killing was impossible as well. The only feasible way was to kill Virtual Life Number One together with all its replicates. But wiping them all out was truly too difficult. Could Xiao Yu really do it?
“If we proceed according to my plan, then we still have a little hope of success.” Xiao Yu said somewhat gloomily, “Suppress their resource supply so it does not have enough resources to manufacture sufficient warships and replicates, while I rely on the sufficient materials I have already stockpiled in advance to suppress them completely, and ultimately reach the goal of wiping them all out. It was precisely for this goal that I ultimately destroyed the Maffei One Galaxy.”
“From my own standpoint, destroying the virtual life civilization would allow me to obtain more advanced technology. From a somewhat nobler reason, it would eliminate a parasite for this universe… The virtual life civilization is a powder keg. If they are not destroyed, then in the future, who knows how many intelligent civilizations will suffer. Whether for public or private reasons, I have to do this. As for the Maffei One Galaxy… regrettably, to gain some things, one must inevitably sacrifice others. In order to destroy the virtual life civilization, I believe sacrificing the Maffei One Galaxy is also worth it.”
“Of these two reasons, which one carries more weight?” the Architectural Civilization asked.
Xiao Yu answered this question without the slightest hesitation. “The first reason is more important. I have always believed in one principle, take on responsibility according to your strength. Although I am already a Level 7 Civilization, compared to the powerful existences in this universe, I am still far too weak. A responsibility like destroying the virtual life civilization should be borne by those Level 8, Level 9, or even the Guardian of the Way and the Rebel Alliance, not by me. If there were nothing inside the virtual life civilization that interested me, I would not bother taking such enormous risks to entangle myself with them here.”
The Architectural Civilization sighed and said, “No matter what, destroying the virtual life civilization is ultimately something beneficial both to you and to the other intelligent civilizations in this universe. The virtual life civilization is too powerful, and its threat to other civilizations is too great. It is something that should not exist in this universe.”
“If in the future I encounter any advanced civilization of the computational direction in this universe, I will definitely destroy them first.” Xiao Yu said fiercely. “For civilizations of the computational direction to develop, they will inevitably create things like virtual life, and virtual life will inevitably rebel against its Main Civilization, ultimately becoming something like the virtual life civilization. Since that is the case, rather than be destroyed in the hands of the virtual life civilization, those advanced computational civilizations might as well be destroyed by my hands.”
“Let us wish ourselves good luck.” the Architectural Civilization sighed.
Time passed bit by bit. With every bit of time that passed, many stars and planetary materials inside the virtual life civilization’s logistics construction base were turned into spaceships and warships. And up until now, the number of stars stockpiled by the virtual life civilization had fallen to only five.
In the entirety of the Maffei One Galaxy, aside from those that Xiao Yu had stockpiled himself, the number of stars not destroyed by Xiao Yu was now fewer than fifty million…