Chapter 890: The Final Hour! |
At this moment, Xiao Yu’s objective had basically already been achieved. Enormous chaos was beginning to erupt and beginning to affect the current battlefield situation. In a war on this scale, organization, discipline, and coordination were the most important things. With tens of billions of warships, without coordination, there would probably be many cases of friendly fire.
And now it was no longer merely a matter of lacking coordination. Countless warships of the virtual life civilization were attacking one another. Even those that had not rebelled were attacking one another, and those that had already rebelled were also attacking one another.
Because they did not know who the rebels were and who were not. Under such circumstances, when the leader had not given orders, the only thing they could rely on was themselves. No one could save them. Only they themselves.
Xiao Yu knew that if given time, Virtual Life Number One could gather the entire situation back under control in a very short time. At worst, it could clear out all the replicates and replace them all with new replicates. For it, this was not a difficult matter at all. As long as it did this, all chaos would calm down in an instant.
But since Xiao Yu had already come this far and had already successfully stirred up chaos, how could he possibly allow this chaos to be calmed? If the chaos disappeared, Xiao Yu would have no opportunity at all when facing Virtual Life Number One.
Xiao Yu had already made arrangements in advance. They were those Supercomputing Centers under the control of his computational power, currently launching attacks at the virtual world level. If Xiao Yu fought a war with Virtual Life Number One in the virtual world, he would unquestionably lose. But merely to play a restraining role for a short time, preventing Virtual Life Number One from diverting its attention and reining in the current situation, Xiao Yu could still do that. And that was all Xiao Yu wanted.
After the Human battleship destroyed the virtual life civilization’s fifth Star Cluster-Class battleship, the number of warships that had come here to the steel planet for reinforcement had already reached more than two billion. Yet among those more than two billion warships, Xiao Yu did not know how many rebels there were. Xiao Yu only saw boundless chaos already spreading here. The warships of the virtual life civilization were attacking one another, while the Human spaceship formation seized this opportunity to push forward desperately, forward again.
Behind the Human spaceship, the Dream, Azure Dragon, Firmament, Nine Provinces, and other Star Cluster-Class battleships were also leading their own forces, desperately charging toward this place. The forces of the virtual life civilization that had originally held these battleships tightly outside the perimeter had now fallen into chaos themselves. Under such circumstances, how could they still block a fleet that coordinated exquisitely and feared no death? Almost in an instant, these fleets broke through what had originally been an impregnable obstruction and charged toward this place.
Support the Human battleship. Destroy the steel planet and Virtual Life Number One hiding inside the steel planet. Victory lay ahead. As long as Virtual Life Number One could be destroyed, the overall situation would be settled.
The Imperial Guard Corps had not fallen into chaos. In fact, this was also the last force that Virtual Life Number One could firmly control. Under the Human spaceship’s desperate assault, although the Imperial Guard Corps no longer had a Star Cluster-Class battleship as flagship and core, they were still desperately blocking the Human spaceship’s advance. Because these replicates knew that once Virtual Life Number One was destroyed, they too would die. They were now fighting for their own lives.
But how could Xiao Yu possibly let go of such a good opportunity? This opportunity was something Xiao Yu had spent several hundred years painstakingly planning to finally obtain. Once lost, it would never come again. This was the closest Xiao Yu had ever come to success. If he failed once, he would never have another chance to recover.
The chaos was still continuing. It seemed that having received Virtual Life Number One’s orders, many warships that had come for reinforcement risked death to break out of the chaos and join the legion blocking the Human spaceship’s advance. Lightsabers and beams had already become as dense here as a fishing net, and space had become so chaotic that it could easily tear a white dwarf apart. Almost every second, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of warships were being destroyed, yet at this moment all beings had lost their fear. Those in chaos remained in chaos, while those at war carried on with the war to the death.
The war in the virtual world was equally intense. Just behind Xiao Yu, in a place that the flames of war had not yet reached, stood more than sixty enormous buildings each several kilometers tall. These buildings were all solid, and only specially made small robots could move inside them. Within these buildings existed countless crisscrossing lines, each data line connected to one computational terminal. Countless computational terminals linked together formed these immense Supercomputing Centers.
Every Supercomputing Center could simultaneously control hundreds of millions of warships. But at this moment, they were not controlling a single warship. Under Xiao Yu’s guidance, their vast computational power was surging through the data channels created by Xiao Yu’s spy equipment, raging through the internal network of the virtual life civilization. It was precisely these Supercomputing Centers, along with Xiao Yu’s computational power, that were tying down Virtual Life Number One’s attention, allowing the chaos on the battlefield to continue and leaving Virtual Life Number One with no energy to rein in the situation here.
The shell of one Supercomputing Center was gradually turning red. Turning red meant that the temperature of its shell had risen to around four thousand degrees Celsius. This was a sign that its computational power was operating under overload. Although Xiao Yu had done everything possible to improve its performance, improve its heat dissipation, and lower its temperature, he still had no way to stop this trend. In the end, all of a sudden, this Supercomputing Center exploded. Like a heavy bomb, it turned into fragments in the empty universe.
Excessively violent data flow destroyed its core equipment. Even with its performance, it truly could not process so much data in time. Its load had already reached its limit, and its data burden had also reached its limit. The consequence of exceeding the limit was just this, a violent explosion and disintegration.
Fortunately, its distance from the other Supercomputing Centers was great enough that its explosion and disintegration did not affect the other equipment.
Xiao Yu felt that his mind had been stretched to its absolute limit. Virtual Life Number One’s counterattack in the virtual world was much fiercer than Xiao Yu had expected. And with Xiao Yu’s current computational power, this number of Supercomputing Centers was all he could manage. If there were any more, he would collapse on his own before Virtual Life Number One even attacked.
“How could I let it catch its breath?” Xiao Yu thought rapidly. “Fortunately, I still kept some Supercomputing Centers in reserve!”
After this Supercomputing Center was destroyed, under Xiao Yu’s guidance that massive data flow rapidly rushed into another standby Supercomputing Center. Almost in an instant, this Supercomputing Center became brilliantly lit. Countless indicator lights began flashing there, and countless robots carried out maintenance on the Supercomputing Center according to the guidance of those indicator lights.
“I can only keep up the offensive in the virtual world for five hours at most. In other words, in at most five hours, the chaos on the battlefield will be calmed, and once the chaos is calmed, I will have no opportunity at all. Within these five hours, Virtual Life Number One must be destroyed. Either it dies or I die!” Xiao Yu thought madly. “Attack, attack!”
The Dream spaceship was the first to rush to the Human spaceship’s side. The two Star Cluster-Class battleships joined together and launched a frenzied assault against the torrent of warships and the land of madness and chaos before them.
Since it was chaos, there was naturally no order to speak of. Their own side was among the targets of attack, and the enemy was even more among the targets. Moreover, the rebels were always only a minority. Those who had not rebelled might not be able to tell whether the people who were originally comrades were now comrades or enemies, but they knew one thing, the enemy was always the enemy.
Attacking Xiao Yu’s fleets could never be wrong.
At this moment, countless warships were responding to Virtual Life Number One’s summons and converging toward the steel planet. The longer time dragged on, the more unfavorable the situation would become for Xiao Yu.
Xiao Yu was desperately shortening the distance between his fleet and the steel planet. The distance of hundreds of billions of kilometers had now become less than one hundred billion kilometers. Under normal circumstances, Xiao Yu would need less than four minutes to cross one hundred billion kilometers, but now, it was a chasm he might not be able to cross even if he gave up his life.
But he still had to fight for it.
Rebels, non-rebels, the Imperial Guard Corps, Xiao Yu’s warships, the steel planet’s native defensive forces, various star system defense facilities. These countless existences thoroughly stirred this entire region of space into a tangled mess.
And the Human spaceship and the Dream spaceship were cutting through all obstacles, advancing with difficulty yet steadily, always advancing.
The chaos seemed to be showing signs of decreasing. Behind the battlefield, more than half of those Supercomputing Centers had already been destroyed. Constructing a Supercomputing Center was far more troublesome than constructing a warship. Constructing one Supercomputing Center was even more troublesome than constructing a Star-Class battleship. Xiao Yu had only stockpiled this many Supercomputing Centers.
The offensive in the virtual world was weakening. The weakening of the offensive in the virtual world meant that Virtual Life Number One could devote more energy to reining in the chaos of the real world, and once the chaos in the real world was calmed, Xiao Yu would never have another opportunity.
There was only the final hour left.