Star Empire

"They are "smelting" us, Your Majesty." Kriz gave the answer truthfully. "This is the "order" issued when the Great Wall of Void exploded."

".So that's it."

"Your Majesty, there is no doubt that the "Decisive Battle Flagship Function Branch" appeared earlier than the ignition and detonation time of the Great Wall of Void. But in my opinion, the active elements of that group of Decisive Battle Flagship Function Branch include sudden appearance and sudden self-destruction. , detonating fault zones, using fault zones as "smoke bombs" to ambush the decisive battle flagship, etc., each of these has a very clear purpose."

"Furthermore, this ambushed giant ship established a clear connection with the subsequent invasion of the decisive battle flagship fleet. Connecting these elements, this series of Σ fleet actions have a clear logic. Their actions are impossible It is caused by the pollution caused by the dead tide. Creation that is out of control due to the pollution of the dead tide will only release its own desire for destruction without logic."

".So, it is possible that Σ creation actually still retains logic and wisdom? Logic and wisdom at a considerable level and to a considerable extent?"

"No, Your Majesty. They themselves may not be too different from the descriptions in the imperial historical data. On the surface, they themselves have indeed been transformed into decayed corpses due to contamination from the inside out. This is no problem. But Your Majesty Vidoville, you You also know that the tiny centipede is still alive but the fleet formed by them is much larger and more complicated than a centipede."

"I know, we know. Kriz, please go ahead."

"The actions of the smelting weight civilization should adopt specific methods for a specific civilization. Naturally, the starting time of smelting will not be exactly the same. After all, the star civilization inherited the weight creation at that point in time, but other successors may not necessarily When do we have to wait to get the weight creations, and the conditions corresponding to their triggering of "smelting" must also be different. Regarding these aspects, my guess is that the "detonation" of the Great Wall of the Void announced the full launch of the smelting operation. As for the smelting operation "the connotation"

"Say it, Kriz."

"The overall idea of ​​Σ's "smelting" civilization is actually very simple - constantly sending troops that can cause heavy losses to the civilizations that need to be smelted to attack these civilizations, but the troops sent by Σ will not kill the beings being smelted. Wait until this After the "smelting" of the wave is completed, the troops sent out to attack will either retreat or choose an appropriate way to lose the battle."

"Ah, the "appropriate" here means that it is either difficult for the weight civilization to detect that the defeat of the Σ force was intentional. For example, the Σ fleet will leave an extremely difficult but manageable mess, allowing the weight civilization to Too busy to deal with the endgame, even if they discover the purpose of the Σ Force, reality will force everyone to have no time to think about it. When they have time and thoughts, a new "smelting" may come."

"The basic idea of ​​doing this is not difficult to understand. In fact, it is to rely on external forces to force civilization to advance, to force civilization to face their different offensive postures and come up with their own defense methods." Vidoville said softly. "It's just that by doing this, are you really not afraid that these civilizations on the verge of despair will be completely shattered, and will they really give up and wait for death in the face of powerful attacks?"

"Your Majesty, the star civilization has not been completely destroyed, nor has it been carried away by anger to carry out desperate revenge. However, the signs of these trends of thought have always existed and have approached the critical point many times." Kriz said softly. .

"From the Origin Era, the Ark Fleet abandoned everything in the universe and set sail hastily, to being hunted down by the powerful facilities and terrifying pollution of the unknown civilization when it was a toddler in the void, to the end of the Renaissance Era, the end of the Ascension Era and the decision-making The 123rd War of National Destruction in the late calendar year. Your Majesty, Star Ming Civilization has never really given up, and the atmosphere of giving up has never really invaded the entire empire, and it has always been like this."

"During the Leap Annals, although the red reality was detonated by that special fuse, which caused the entire empire to fall into a long-term madness, even if your souls were shattered, the continued story never really gave up resistance."

"Kriz, what did you see?"

"Yes, Your Majesty." Kriz was silent for a while before continuing, "Actually, it is very difficult for an entire group burdened with symbolic meaning to completely give up on the struggle for survival - even if it breaks Everyone is struggling to survive, let alone us who are in the order zone? Of course, it is not impossible or impossible to give up life, give up survival and choose death. Σ has taken this into account in the plan, so there are more Less hands-on use of false information.”

"Your Majesty, Σ has done many things by using virtual information, and it has had various impacts on star civilizations, such as the germination of the concept of unified information, the need to unite various races to develop and prosper together, and the need for multiple technological paths The emergence of ideas such as common development, as well as the emergence of relatively specific concepts such as truth and technology concepts, are all catalyzed by the disturbance of false information left by Σ civilization and its influence on the star civilization."

"They can make false information work in silence, and they will naturally consider how to make false information actively play a role. We don't know what Σ did in the end, but it is certain that they are likely to collapse before they perish. They are already thinking about how to make everything move in the direction they want - and they must be thinking much deeper than we expected."

"However, when it comes to using false information to perform such relatively precise activities, this is still a bit too advanced for us." Kriz saw a purple-gold flash behind him.

"So far, we can only confirm that virtual information exists but cannot accurately control it. Virtual information can penetrate into the order environment and cause changes. Virtual information can be affected and change in large-scale drastic changes in actual information. Void Sky Survey Radar Special radar waves can be used to extract fuzzy information from false information disturbances to form relatively specific stories. But relying only on what we know now, we are still quite far away from the level of utilizing or even controlling false information."

"Your Majesty, I discovered something new." Kriz suddenly said: "I noticed a word - top civilization."

"Top civilization?" The attention of Vidoville and Weisrifan was firmly attracted by this word.

"Yes, there is such a word in the cultural information of Σ civilization - they claim to be "top civilization". And Σ has a relatively clear definition of top civilization. Your Majesty, the precise content is a bit vague. I One sentence can only be spliced ​​together based on the remaining fragments: the dividing line between a super civilization and a top civilization is roughly "whether it has unique information disturbance power that belongs to the civilization itself."

"After a civilization reaches the top civilization level, the civilization may be able to use its own disturbance force to interact with virtual information in the void in a relatively simple way, and then roughly control the virtual information to carry out activities. If my guess is not principled If you are wrong, Your Majesty, one of the important reasons why Xingming Civilization has never completely given up or lost its mind is that Σ Civilization has interfered with Xingming Civilization with false information. However, the most important reason still comes from ourselves - a person who really wants to You can’t stop people who give up their lives and seek death.”

".I see, this is an area we have never considered. We have considered that Σ civilization will use various possible means to interfere with our development, but they are all limited to the scope defined by actual information." Victorville said thoughtfully. Said thoughtfully.

"By using false information as a medium to interfere with us, we are indeed unable to effectively defend against the interference of false information. Even now, we can only weaken the crystallized layers created by skyquakes through multiple layers of shields and cannot directly block them from the world. Outside the barrier. At that time... we only considered the "low existence attribute information" at the micro and extremely micro levels, but now it seems that they are not "virtual"... It seems that Σ civilization has a great impact on the development trajectory of the empire. The level of interference is much deeper than we once expected."

"Then, Your Majesty, let us return to the previous topic - the main purpose of Σ is to make the weight civilization quickly become powerful, so on the one hand, it uses false information to push the civilization to forget distracting thoughts and accelerate forward, on the other hand, it uses the absolute number of people who are still huge." Troops "attack in a variety of ways, forcing the empire to adapt to various play styles and battlefield environments."

"Your Majesty, you can see that there is an obvious progressive relationship - first, a large number of mixed tactics are used in a small area, forcing the smelted weight civilization to quickly accumulate initial combat experience, improve reaction capabilities and respond to The war felt numb, and then gradually increased the technical limit of the weapons used to smelt weights, forcing the weight civilization to face all its technical loopholes and face various conjectures that were once considered "terrible"..."

"The next step is the test of orders of magnitude. Although the growth rate of exponential explosion is not slow, for civilization and wisdom, there are obvious "comfort zones" and "clear understanding zones" in orders of magnitude."

"When within these two intervals, we can easily identify the quantity, we can intuitively feel the quantity, and we can discern how big the difference between these numbers is - but once the quantity of the entity Beyond the scope of the clear cognitive zone, we can no longer clearly feel the above-mentioned elements. Even if we can still clearly record and utilize these data, we will vaguely reject these out-of-control data under the influence of instinct. "

"The consequence is that some of our values, such as the number of battleships and world control, will be stuck within a certain range. To break through, we must break the limits set in our hearts. And the power to break this limit, It’s just an even more crazy attack by Σ Civilization’s troops.”

"The star civilization that rushed out of the Great Ruins Ring noticed the macroscopic probabilistic lightning chain, touched the branches of the world and was violently attacked by the branches of the world of Σ. The empire noticed the macroscopic structure formed by the world in the void - Made by the Empire He built his first "World Tree". Although more than half of this tree was burned by war and death waves, the remaining part was enough to force the empire to jump out of the limitations of the previous numbers - the empire controlled the world more than At the peak of the last era, there were more than ten orders of magnitude more, and this number also exceeded the number of stars in the starry sky that the empire once controlled."

"But Your Majesty, you know, this is still not enough - everything that follows can also be explained in this way." Looking at such a story, the cold and desperate feeling seems to have traveled through hundreds of millions of years of history, and they poured into Cree Zi's ​​heart was filled with biting chills.

"Warships with more functions are needed, more comprehensive defenses are needed, more versatile formations and combat methods are needed, and more tests are needed. The void survey radar can retrieve fuzzy targets in the distant void and assist the very high frequency non-linear radar in conducting detection. Precise positioning of targets across the void. Targets in the distant void must master the means of capture, otherwise the consequences will be endless. This is not enough. As time goes by, more and more equipment is mobilized, just as the void is regularly The broadcast is malicious."

"Kriz, we want to know that the Σ facility has shown periodic activity in the Leap Era, and this periodic activity seems to be similar to the activity cycle of the death tide in the void. What kind of hidden secrets does this contain, and what do we need? Know - is the formation of "red reality" caused by our own consciousness and cognitive problems, or are there external objects interfering with us?" Vidoville marked a new key issue.

"The first question. Your Majesty, there is no more secret in this." Kriz answered neatly, "According to the results of my current observations, there is no death tide activity in the vast area in the void. Very clear periodic changes. Death tide activities do have burst periods of different sizes and quiet periods of varying lengths, but they currently do not seem to have much to do with the information activities of the order world, just like the "spiral world maze" Same."

"As for the facilities left over from the Σ civilization that will be intensively active and follow the new outbreak of the death wave, Your Majesty, the death wave activities are caused by the activities of the Σ facilities. You know, it is not that difficult to open a door to the death wave - —A piece of highly contaminated debris may trigger a gate of death tide after being strongly stimulated by the outside world, but only very few parts of the gate of death tide opened in this way can be utilized by us."

"But for void phenomena such as death wave outbreaks, they don't care what the "door" looks like when they open it, and neither do we. We just know that a new death wave activity is about to come."

"So Your Majesty, the actual situation is: as the highly polluted facilities and fleet activities of Σ civilization increase, they will inevitably throw out a large number of debris containing high concentrations of death wave pollution in the void or in various worlds, and The large-scale activity of information aggregates contaminated by dead tides will themselves release corrupted information similar to fracture zones."

"The initial impact of these fragments and very unpositive interference on the world of order is still weak. They may be suppressed by the remaining functions of the Σ world's sovereign facilities, but once these pollutions become large-scale, those remaining functions cannot be suppressed. These are polluted. More Death Tide Gates will erupt, and from a distance, from our perspective, Death Tide activity will enter a period of intense activity."

".It turns out that this is really the case. It is really just like this."

"Your Majesty Victorville?"

"Nothing, continue to answer the next question."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Surprised? Wake up? regret? Or something else? Kriz felt very complicated emotions. The Majesty Victorville in front of him relies on his quite powerful combat power. He can indeed lead the fleet to overcome many challenges and block the invasion of the war for the empire.

But many times, such as in the Leap Annals and the Decision Annals, he is obviously not qualified as a ruler from the current perspective - at that time, Vidoville could not listen to the dissuasion of others and allowed himself to make all kinds of speculations. He seems to have unconditionally brought these horrific and unsolvable fantasies into reality, and is fighting against these nihilistic thoughts all the time.

But if we really wanted to criticize him, considering the situation at that time, could such criticism really be made at that time? At the end of the Leap Era, this special weight creation was led out of the empire by the detached decisive battle flagship. Faced with Σ's crazy and brutal "one-day offensive", he had to choose to take away only the most obvious "predetermined samples" that were marked. This made him criticized and cold-eyed. But then, is there really a better solution?

He may bet that he can save more lives, but if he loses the bet, the Doomsday-Creation of the decisive battle flagship team may completely tear apart the empire's flagship, leaving an indelible wreckage in the void. . Hundreds of millions of years later, Void Fierce Sun may still be able to create a new powerful civilization through the weight effect, but at that point, the new life may no longer have anything to do with the past users.

In those long and painful years of decision-making, all existences believed that the world was no longer worthy of new life, and all existences believed that civilization was dead. Civilization has been on the verge of extinction in front of our eyes time and time again, but the real death will not really come due to various internal and external factors. Ask yourself, if you experience such inner demons personally, a few words of advice, a few sets of data, etc., can it really move a person? Is the consciousness on the verge of collapse after tens of billions of years of accumulated pressure? And the influence of red reality, etc., red reality? !

Kriz immediately turned the camera, and he pointed the "monster" and the void survey radars connected to the "monster" to a new historical iteration.

"Your Majesty, the problem with Red Reality is not just that the soul is diluted."

"What?"

"The reason for the red reality is not just that the empire's network diluted the souls of the living beings at that time - that is just one of the factors, there are other disturbances. Your Majesty, I faintly heard the sound of the "death knell" from the red reality ."

"Death Knell? Are you talking about the 'Death Knell' of the Σ Quadrant Continent?" Weisrifan immediately confirmed.

"Yes, Your Majesty, but this death knell does not come from the quadrant continent that attacked us - I think similar things may have happened in quadrant continents located in other quadrants."

"When they are in the same quadrant, the "Nine Heavens" and "Death Knell" systems that you are familiar with will unfold and function as recorded in the imperial historical data. However, in other quadrants, these functions may not be able to unfold in parallel, but they can also It can have a certain impact - for example, it can subtly interfere with us, making us think of blood, destruction, no more life, etc."

"But a long time ago, before civilization believed in Gouchenxing and called itself "Xingming", the "blood" flowing in the bodies of the ancestors was no longer red."

“So that’s how it is”

"Also, your majesties, there is also a problem with the story that follows." Kriz said categorically. "He was called a "madman" and was denied what he did and thought that he had taken the wrong path a long time ago. , I have deceived and paralyzed myself for too long. At that time, His Majesty Vidoville first thought of these contents, and the remaining souls of the entire empire collapsed like a chain reaction."

"All this can barely be explained, but after that, the empire showed too much hatred, to a level that the empire at that time simply could not produce. After that, the empire originally still expanded relatively "conservatively" The action completely turned to radicalism and madness.”

"Your Majesty, my ability is still limited at present. I cannot tell where this unreasonable hatred comes from. However, I have a guess - perhaps because Σ is still dissatisfied with the empire's actions at the time, they may have considered personally Our actions not only failed, but also violated the purpose of their previous actions."

".If your conjecture is true, this can explain why the Quadrant Continent finally fired that "dead light" on us, evaporating the whole thing almost instantly by deleting the simple information control code in our bodies. The full power of the Empire at that time.”

Weisrifan said slowly. "Although malicious intrusion and interference have greatly increased the speed of the empire's strength, it has also caused serious pollution to civilization. Therefore, the Quadrant Continent must finally clean up this pollution, and if it wants to do it more thoroughly, it will be affected by The contaminated entities and other information structures derived from them need to be cleared away, and it is appropriate to use us to detonate them, because we are the most closely connected to all things in the Empire."

"But one thing worth noting is, how could Σ still have the ability to carry out such interference?"

"Your Majesty Vidoville, Your Majesty Vesrifan, I'm sorry, I can't answer this question." Kriz shook his head.

"But Your Majesty, what I can see is that after this, the interference from Σ - I mean the interference that has been entangled and accompanied for a long time, and the information about the entanglement between the star civilization and the Σ civilization has almost completely dissipated. . That "dead light" is like creating an insurmountable event horizon for the influence left by Σ civilization itself. No matter what role those entanglements and influences have played, they are all locked up. Within the horizon, shut in the past years.”

"And the star civilization passed through it."