Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 169

Chapter 169 – As If Generations Passed

The First Galaxy was occupied by the Freedom Corps inside and surrounded by the threatening AIs outside with no safe places left. The alliance troops had no choice but to retreat into the Heart of the Rose.

Both the Union Troops and Central Militia were completely baffled by the situation.

Going back home was no longer an option, and the Union’s central government now ceased to exist after this catastrophic event.

The commander of the Union Troops, who had hooked up with Wang Ailun and attempted to loot off the conflict between the pirates and Central Militias, had fallen in the line of duty in the confrontations earlier. The only person that could somewhat represent the Union Troop forces right now was a nameless Vice Admiral of the fleet who had barely gotten promoted after the war; not even Lin Jingheng could remember his name. Overwhelmed by the dazzling party filled with legendary figures, the Vice Admiral could only follow wordlessly behind them.

In addition, there was the strange AUS fleet that gave them a helping hand at the last minute…along with billions of Woltorian refugees on board.

The civilians that had never been through proper training all sat through a violent rollercoaster ride within the mechs. The injuries sustained were especially severe among the elderly and disabled, to the point where the medical capsules on board were almost completely filled. Aside from physical injuries, the survivors also had to witness the breakdown of their own homes throughout the galaxy.

Settling down the refugees was another tough job–thankfully, they had Lu Bixing around. The young Prime Minister was an experienced individual when it came to dealing with refugees and quickly settled the civilians.

“It’s been over 50 years since the last time we escaped from Wolto into the Heart of the Rose.” Zheng Di’s airy voice rang out through the communication channel, “The future was bleak, we only had our passions to light the path ahead. We’re too old now, despite still not being able to see the future, but our blood can no longer boil like it did in our youth; the road ahead is much hazier than it was before.”

Lin Jingheng didn’t speak. When the armed mobile was thrown up into the air aboard the heavy mech, he had been so busy covering Lu Bixing’s eyes that he didn’t realize a deformed vehicle door had broken a bone in his arm. The situation was too urgent at the moment that the sharp pain of the broken bone didn’t sting until much later.

He found an empty corner to lean on as he stretched out his arm, allowing the medical capsule to treat his injury. His gaze fell onto Lu Bixing subconsciously–the young man was currently adjusting Zhanlu’s system.

Lin Jingheng lowered his head to look at his own hands.

Nobody blamed him for letting the Freedom Corps go; in fact, nobody even noticed that it was a misfire.

The mental networks of the alliance fleets had been severely damaged during the battle with the AIs; virtually every one of them collapsed the moment the Freedom Corps charged with their attack. Both sides had just escaped the range of the super mechs and were stuck in a state of utter chaos, disarrayed in the midst of battle while Zhanlu’s mental network disconnected from the shock. That single shot fired by Lin Jingheng was already enough to be considered a small miracle from the number one sacrificial lamb of the Silver Fortress.

Yet only he knew that his hand had trembled the moment he locked the missile onto the Freedom Corps’ commanding ship.

“Does it still hurt?”

Lu Bixing’s voice rang out, pulling Lin Jingheng’s floating thoughts back to reality. The latter retracted his gaze and shook his head, then responded nonchalantly to General Zheng’s words as if he had been paying attention earlier. The commander spoke up in a composed manner: “Why are you dragging the conversation back to ancient times?”

Zheng Di choked up: “You little rascal, can’t you show some sentimentality!?”

“Sure, but that’s reserved for more romantic times and not for showing-off during ordinary times.” Lin Jingheng pulled back his arm that had already been treated by the medical capsule and moved it around for a bit before putting his clothes back on expressionlessly. “The First Galaxy has too much complicated politics, the rest of the galaxies are all being held hostage by biochip humans, and the size of Eighth Galaxy’s military is not on the same scale as the Union’s. Besides, even if we call for backup now, it takes at least ten days to pass through the wormhole; I can’t even tell what will happen ten hours from now, so can we take this time to have a meeting to discuss our next steps instead of dwelling on the past right now?”

“Let me have a few words on behalf of the Eighth Galaxy.” Lu Bixing put down Zhanlu’s robotic hand and walked over. He pulled on Lin Jingheng’s sleeves and personally checked to see if the wound had been fully treated while saying, “The Eighth Galaxy can temporarily take in these refugees; we’re all about being humanitarian here, so we can supply all necessities, don’t worry about paying us back. Our anti-biochip technology is still effective against the enemies so we don’t need to worry about pirates sneaking in. The only problem is that all of these refugees are elites and nobility of Wolto with many lingering connections; some are even officials from the Union government. It would be impossible to let them stay in the Eighth Galaxy for extended periods of time.”

“Right, we can’t possibly let our homelands fall into the hands of the pirates as well,” the General of the Fourth Galaxy responded anxiously. “But the chips…can the chips be forcibly taken out?”

“From my understanding, it’s possible to pull out lower grade chips within a certain time frame from the first injection. Due to the addictiveness of the chip, people who have the chip taken out will go through a period of withdrawal; it may be about as painful as the withdrawal from Eden or less.” Despite being the youngest, Lu Bixing had a calming and tranquilizing aura surrounding him amidst this storm of uncertainty. His voice was clear and content, creating a soothing effect on all the anxious hearts around him. “It’s hard to say for more veteran chip holders; the biochip will cause irreversible changes to the human body after long periods of time, so we should find a proper solution as soon as possible.”

General Nagus from the Third Galaxy chimed in: “It would also be unrealistic if we launch a counterattack right now. The land is now the enemy’s territory, it’s almost like they have a knife at our throats. What are we going to do, blow up Wolto like that crazy old man Woolf?”

“Woolf…” Zheng Di grumbled under his breath before asking, “Jingheng, are those things they said earlier all true? The pirates, and the Seventh Galaxy…”

Lin Jingheng didn’t hesitate this time and cut him off: “Yes, it’s true. It’s pointless to denounce the dead, say something more productive.”

“I actually have an idea,” Lu Bixing strolled over to Lin Jingheng and stood side-by-side with the commander. Perhaps due to his young age, this mysterious Prime Minister of the Eighth Galaxy showed no signs of fatigue even after a restless day and remained quite spirited. “First, if he’s a super AI that has the highest authority and permission access of the First Galaxy’s military, why didn’t Woolf chase after such a big target like us when we fled earlier?”

Zheng Di responded promptly: “Because it’s likely that we’re not his first target.”

Woolf’s first target was Lin Jingshu.

Lin Jingshu emergency warped away from the transfer portal after she was let off the hook. As one of the most important galactic transportation passages, there was no doubt that transfer portals were already controlled by that terrifying super AI. No matter where they went, the enemy AI would immediately track them down.

The Freedom Corps attempted multiple ways of hiding their tracks, but the fearsome AI always had a way to take down their facade.

After all, the First Galaxy was Woolf’s home ground.

The fleet could not land on the ground right now. Even though the land was now the homeground of the Freedom Corps, fighting against superhumans was still better than facing the super AIs. Woolf had been an infamous madman even before his death; he was even more terrible as an AI. That last bit of humanity in him was completely wiped out. Even Wolto wasn’t spared from its deadly attacks, who could guarantee that any other planet would be safe?

Humans had weaknesses, but AIs didn’t.

An escorting mech exploded beside the commanding ship in a desperate attempt to protect its leader. Lin Jingshu was on her way towards the border of the First Galaxy to flee the range of the super AI.

“Master, there are mechs blocking our way near the border!”

Lin Jingshu responded chillingly: “Don’t be scared, force our way out. They’re merely…”

Within the blink of an eye, she thought of something. As her face grew pale, she suddenly ordered: “Wait, retreat back where we came from!”

The sirens inside the mech were already screeching in horror.

“Let’s try thinking from Woolf’s perspective,” Lu Bixing continued on at a smooth pace, “if what Miss Lin said is true–the part about how she will become an AI if we kill her–why would Woolf continue to chase after her life? Her biochip empire won’t collapse even if she’s dead;there would be no point in doing so.”

Lee fell into deep thought as he said: “What the Prime Minister is saying is that either the Freedom Corps was lying to us to get us to surrender or her grand ‘scheme’ of a biochip empire is still incomplete.”

“I personally lean towards the latter,” Lu Bixing replied. “I’m not familiar with these ridiculously anti-humanitarian super AIs, so I’m just going to use Eden as an example for now. I’ve heard that Eden’s system was built on the entire galactic transfer portal network throughout the galaxies and requires unimaginably massive hardware to support its functions. The entire White Tower served to provide technical support to running Eden, so we can imagine the amount of energy it takes to run the system. The type of ubiquitous AI that Miss Lin mentioned would require even greater hardware spaces and power sources than Eden to run properly. I can believe that biochips have the ability to sneak into crowds of people and infect humans like a virus, but can a massive engineering project like a super AI be done so discreetly as well? Even with someone as powerful as Woolf, who held the highest authority within the Union, after mobilizing all of the Union’s resources to build the AI, it seems to me that he could still only cover certain areas within the First Galaxy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have spent so much time luring everyone into his active range.”

Poisson from the Silver Third Squadron was the first to catch on to this train of thought: “Lin Jingshu can directly control certain chip carriers to pass her voice on; she chose a generation five, which made it look as if she was giving us some respect by choosing a higher-ranking individual. But this could also mean that she only has direct contact with very few high ranking chip carriers and can only indirectly control her pyramid structure with a trickle-down method from one level to the next. Is that right, Prime Minister?”

Lin Jingheng raised his head slightly: “In other words, if we can manage to kill the ‘queen bee’ while her biochip empire is still incomplete, we’d solve half of the problem already, right?”

Lu Bixing pressed down on the commander’s shoulder and said: “That’s not necessarily true, we can also just block out her–”

The communication channel was intercepted before he could finish.

Lu Bixing turned in shock: “What’s going on?”

“Prime Minister, it’s a wave of extremely powerful high-energy particles,” a technician on the heavy mech reported.

“Is it a solar storm from the First Galaxy’s sun?”

“No…”

Before the technician could speak, another wave of high-energy particles clashed with the fleet. This time, the interiors of the heavy mech shook under the impact as the shields were pulled up.

This level of high-energy impact was quite familiar.

“This is…”

“Prime Minister, Marshal, please look at the galactic map!”

Lu Bixing’s gaze shot up to see the real-time map jumbled into a mess.

“Transfer portals.” Lin Jingheng spoke up in a low tone beside Lu Bixing, “This aftershock was brought about by massive explosions of transfer portals; it’s the same as when we closed off the Eighth Galaxy back then–”

Lin Jingshu’s reaction was fast as she turned around immediately after arriving near the border of the First Galaxy. Despite her efforts, she and her vanguard mechs were still dragged into the explosive storm caused by the transfer portals. An invisible tsunami of high-energy particles swept through the entire First Galaxy; all digital devices, from space down to the ground, momentarily malfunctioned at the same time.

Near the border of the First Galaxy, all transfer portals leading out of the galaxy self-destructed simultaneously.

The entire natural wormhole area within the Heart of the Rose also shook through the aftershock; all members of the alliance fleet that lost contact with each other temporarily had no choice but to stick close together and hide behind each other’s shields.

With his own actions, Woolf showed what Lu Bixing couldn’t finish explaining earlier: the AI’s plan was to isolate Lin Jingshu along with her biochip followers that were spread throughout the galaxies and lock the queen bee inside this massive isolated island.

And the only thing this mighty super AI couldn’t control was the natural wormhole zone within the Heart of the Rose; this was the only portal that connected directly to the Eighth Galaxy.

Lu Bixing felt a chill run down his spine.

He heard Lin Jingheng let out a breath of air and speak up self-mockingly: “I always thought that Woolf’s decision to send Lorde to me was either another conspiracy or that he was really at his wit’s end and wanted to beg me for help while holding the Union’s seven galaxies hostage. I guess I was wrong, he was simply giving me a heads-up out of respect back then.”

There were no biochip humans nor horrifying super AIs within the Eighth Galaxy. It was tied to the First Galaxy through the wormhole and was destined to become a battleground for political and military power; even if they had the ability to single-handedly block off the wormhole zone right now, its effects were still dependent on modern technology. The Eighth Galaxy would be dragged into this warzone sooner or later…regardless of if they took the initiative or not.

Merciless and vicious, calculating and manipulative; if Lin Jingshu was the epitome of the former, Lin Jingheng could only barely count himself as a master of the latter.

It was already formidable to achieve one of the two characteristics, yet Woolf managed to hone his skills in both to the extreme. What a truly unprecedented game-changer.

Lin Jingheng let out a bitter laugh.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Lin Jingheng sighed in response, “I’m just thinking that it’s quite a shame that even if Jingshu and I were to team up, we still would be no match for that old man.”

“Think about the good side, at least we still retain the initiative instead of being forced to concede,” Lu Bixing spoke gently. “Wait, is that an image on the military camera? Did someone sail in?”

Lin Jingheng already ‘saw’ the visitor through the mech’s mental network.

It was a fleet of small mechs that stood like a harmless animal before the massive alliance fleet, staying a courteous distance away.

The insane aftershock of the explosions was finally over and the communication channel within the alliance troops was being repaired amidst the noise. At that moment, a small mech from the fleet before them sent in a contact request.

Lu Bixing lifted an eyebrow. “Connect them in.”

Harris’ familiar face appeared on the communication channel and faced Lu Bixing once again after two decades. That gentle farmer from the past had aged significantly, the fringe at the side of his face whitening over the years as he transformed into a reserved Prophet of the AUS. That young man who once carried luggage full of naive dreams had already trudged through countless trials and tribulations, becoming the revered Prime Minister Lu of the Eighth Galaxy.

The reunion felt as though generations had passed.

“Mister Hope?”

“Long time no see, Headmaster Lu.”