Wow! The item-dropping rate is really high!

"Restart the server!"

The first required action the other party suggested made Bai E frown.

Knowing that the electronic demon had not dissipated, Likok, the minister of the City Information Department, was prepared to completely destroy this base, to annihilate the core where the electronic demon resided.

A stark conflict in perspectives emerged once again, presenting Bai E with a sharp choice.

"Why do we have to restart it?" Bai E asked cautiously, trying to find loopholes in the other party's words, "You've had plenty of time over the past few centuries to complete this step at any moment."

He suspected it was a trick of the electronic demon, but he couldn't dismiss the possibility that it was indeed assistance.

"Because the time is only right now; because the guards here have already been manipulated by the electronic demon, and no one else can complete the final step."

"The final step?"

"To kill me!" The other party's tone was steady yet fervent, as if pursuing a belief unhesitatingly, "The 500 years set by Mr. Chen is for It to adapt to the human body. The moment It has fully transformed the core source information to fit the human body, is the moment when It and I both perish. It is adapting to me, and I am adapting to It...

The moment the transcription is complete, It will have full control over my body, but I will have also trapped Its core. This is the only chance; It has adapted to me for 439 years, and I have adapted to It for 439 years. Once my will is completely erased by It, It will have no weaknesses forever! This one opportunity will never come again!"

"Too fantastical..." Although the world itself was quite fantastical, in the end, a logical explanation was needed.

Bai E's eyes narrowed slightly, "I don't believe it! Prove it to me."

"You dissected those soldiers' corpses!"

A chill went through Bai E's heart.

[So I was indeed being monitored by some means... Is it the team's radio communication?]

The pixelated figure continued, "You didn't find the central control chips inside them."

"Right."

"Because we don't have chips at all. We are not the bio-warriors who were turned during the initial rebellion! We were brought in later."

[You are learning background information about the target relic (current information unverified)...]

Bai E's gaze became slightly distant as he logically deduced along this line of thought, "So..."

Discover more stories at empire

"So even without the chips, that demon can still control the hearts of people!"

"What about you?" Bai E stared intently at the other party, trying hard to focus on the two dark spots on the pixelated head, "What makes you immune to its control?"

This time there was a long silence, and after a prolonged quiet, a voice, heavy with sorrow and distorted with electronic noise, finally spoke, "Because... I was the finest warrior of our time. I have fought against It for over four hundred years, and now... even the decades of my earlier life have been lost."

Within his consciousness, time flowed at an extreme pace, the incessant barrage of information day and night had spanned several millennia for him.

In those endlessly woven beautiful dreams, he had lived countless vibrant and brilliant lives.

The most authentic decades of life experience were diluted among the varied existences of several thousand years.

He had even lost his own name.

"I am the finest warrior, but I... I don't remember my name anymore."

The outpouring of sorrow momentarily infected Bai E, but fortunately, "self-restraint" instantly detected and intercepted this spread of emotion in his heart.

"..." Bai E didn't want his judgment to be swayed by emotions; he just hardened his heart and continued to ask, "You forget your name yet remember all this?"

"This is all I remember now..." the other's voice was filled with sorrow, so profound that even the electronic noise couldn't conceal it.

"..."

Bai E frowned tightly, his mind whirring at full speed—

So the question came back to the operation itself: restarting the server.

"Why do you absolutely have to restart the server?" Bai E squinted, trying to question based on the information that was out in the open, "You should know that when the global network falls silent and the paradise that sustains Its existence gradually disappears, It too will progressively weaken.

This Root Server, where the electronic demon was born, is the last vessel for storing Its core source information; the two are essentially inseparable. To completely destroy It, you should destroy this base... not restart it."

This was what Minister Likok and himself had deduced, and it was also what he had understood from documents left from hundreds of years ago.

The construction of this base had been extremely difficult; thus, it was very precious. It was decided to use time to whittle away the core will of the electronic demon in order to leave a sliver of hope for future generations to reutilize it.

This was the founding core of the electronic silence agreement.

However...

"That's false."

The pixelated figure spoke calmly revealing the "truth," "Destroying this base will not completely annihilate Its core, and back then, we didn't preserve this base with the intention of leaving a gift for you. It was a matter of necessity... This is a contest between us and the electronic demon, a war... that has persisted for 439 years!"

"You need to convince me." Bai E looked steadily at the other party.

Without a logical chain of reasoning, he would not doubt the modern scientists who had accompanied him all this way and instead trust a bio-modified warrior from ancient times, who was most likely controlled by the electronic demon.

"The data has already deceived you once... We don't have any chips! We are not the first batch of biochemically modified soldiers to rebel, the established starting time for the Electronic Silence Agreement is fake, the records regarding the Electronic Demon's traits are fake, and the final decisions on how to deal with the AI rebellion... it's all fake.

All of it was just a grand deception we staged to fool that demon!"

History, as it truly happened, is often more magnificent than the snippets recorded.

The truth is this—"

After cleaning up all the chaos left by the Electronic Demon's rebellion and promptly recovering the base, the ones who subsequently came to be stationed here were, of course, normal humans.

But the top scholars of that era all knew that the influence of the Electronic Demon was far from over.

Though its core was born within the Root Server Base, once it came into existence, its tentacles reached throughout the networks of all eras.

Cutting off the network was indeed the biggest plan to weaken It, but ultimately it couldn't be completely eradicated, unless humanity completely abandoned the development of Intelligent Technology. Otherwise, reactivating Intelligent Technology at any time would awaken this demon that, once existed, exists forever!

However, in the vaguely remembered era of the "Ancient Strongest Warrior," an accidental discovery by a few top scientists of the time revealed the Electronic Demon's erosion of normal human thought.

It was cautious and took pride in believing that no one had discovered it.

While scholars, troubled by humanity's inability to use intelligent network technology ever since, hatched a plan in their minds and designed a different kind of war that would last for hundreds of years!

The Electronic Demon, still powerful shortly after the global network was disconnected, would be aware of any records on electronic devices or within sight of such devices... except within the human heart.

Therefore, some scholars claimed to have discovered the Electronic Demon's absolute weakness, and the 500-year Electronic Silence Agreement was publicly issued. In secret, however, the real war plan was passed down in whispers—

Humanity would use hundreds of years of disconnection to demonstrate their true resolve, and during this disconnected period, they deliberately left a "shortcut" backdoor for It.

The myriad bioelectric signals within the human body form an extremely complex feedback loop, and the soul that arises from brain thought is also a field of electromagnetic waves. In some ways, there's almost no difference between the human soul and the Electronic Demon, both essentially existing as electromagnetic field entities.

The once-defeated Electronic Demon desperately yearned to break free from the confines of the human network. Only by transcribing itself into an electromagnetic field compatible with the human body, possessing the ability to switch freely between the two, could It achieve true eternal freedom.

But humans and pigs share 97.7% of their genes, and it is just a difference of 2.3% that creates the vast physiological gap between them.

The relationship between the human soul and the Electronic Demon, both being electromagnetic fields, is similar. No matter how strong in mental power the Electronic Demon is, it struggles to directly invade and nest within the human body; at most, it could control it.

Unless... there is a target with a lifespan long enough and a soul resilient enough to support Its lengthy transcription matching process that would take hundreds of years.

At such a time, the "Ancient Strongest Warrior," after undergoing human biochemical modification, was brought here to guard the base...

The war between the Electronic Demon and the "Ancient Strongest Warrior" thus began from that day.

A plan that took hundreds of years, all in preparation for the final strike when the successors of later generations would arrive today.

439 years have transformed the earth, but the whispered lineage of knowledge has been lost at some unknown time; still, the lonely warrior carried on his solitary war.

The 500-year agreement is the display of human determination to disconnect from the network and their plotting.

The 439-year reboot is the human resolve to judge and act upon the situation.

"You've arrived early, but just in time," the Ancient Pixel Warrior calmly said to Bai E, "I don't know how much longer I can hold out, but your early arrival might just be the choice of fate. Activate the server cluster to accelerate Its transcription adaptation, let It fully integrate with me! That's the only way to eradicate this eternal enemy of humanity at its root!"

Due to some effects difficult to explain in a short time, the Electronic Demon, with most of its main body already transcribed, could not stop this involuntary accelerated transcription.

And to think that the Electronic Demon thought it could come and go within the human body as it pleased?

Why would that be?

While compressing its own informational magnitude and transcribing its core to adapt to the human body, the "Ancient Strongest Warrior" was also familiarizing himself with everything about the other.

The first human to match with It for hundreds of years also had some degree of binding power over It, a one-time opportunity that subsequent generations could never replicate!

[You are learning about the background information related to the target relic (information not confirmed)…]

"Future heir, tell me, what is your judgment…" The pixel person gazed quietly, the two dark block dots seemingly shining with intelligent light.

"..." Bai E's eyes flickered, his brain working at high speed.

The other's words seemed impeccable, with two entirely different developments standing before him...

He couldn't tell...

"You don't have much time left to choose…" The pixel eyes blinked gently, "Your companion has already decided to attack. If you're unwilling to believe or cooperate, I can only prevent your destructive actions!

If the base is destroyed before the transcription is complete, It will certainly fall into the predicament of waiting for humans to rebuild the intelligent network, but we will forever lose the last chance to annihilate It! Moreover, my lucid time... is running out."

...

"Beep~ Beep~" The red light on the earpiece blinked gently.

The two squads that were found heard the cold order issued by their superior, Gregory: "Take up your weapons, kill everything, destroy everything!"

...

[Regarding the true mission that this relic carries, do you decide to stick with your initial judgment, or choose to trust...]

[Warning: If the judgment is incorrect, the exploration of this relic will be reset to zero and will be permanently ineffective, unable to be explored again.]