by <unknown>
Boss Bai smiled and said unhurriedly, "First of all, I know that the starship of the wizardly civilization tried to launch a few escape capsules before the destruction, but they were all obliterated in a cruel space storm. However, even though the escape capsules were obliterated, parts of the pieces that contained the important information splashed out and wandered aimlessly in space, until they floated to the main planet of the Martial Meritocrats Sector or even dropped on it. It is a perfectly reasonable deduction, isn't it?"
The Fist King nodded his head. "If the starship of the wizardly civilization was truly about to be destroyed, all the escape capsules and information naturally needed to be launched to fight for a one-billionth chance of survival. It's a reasonable speculation."
"Secondly, the Martial Meritocrats Sector had been an important test base of magical equipment in the Imperium of True Human Beings since hundreds of years ago. All kinds of bizarre, creative devices and techniques had been invented in this place and were spread to the entire Imperium after complicated researches and experiments. Naturally, for a very long time, the most distinguished and innovative, or in other words, the most insane and unorthodox scholars were gathered in the Martial Meritocrats Sector."
Boss Bai continued unhurriedly, "Then, let's make another bold assumption. If a genius scholar who was ambitious and insane discovered a… mysterious crystal chip that was utterly incompatible with the current training system, or a certain information clip that did not have a real entity, by accident during his work in the Martial Meritocrats Sector several hundred years ago, what would he have done?
"Report the issue to his superior and submit his discovery to the country? You must be kidding. That was the Imperium, and he was an Immortal Cultivator! He did not have any reason to reveal it to the public, did he?
"Instead of publicizing the shocking secret and handing over the extraterrestrial treasures to the country, it seemed a better option to conduct his own studies with the discovery as the core, hoping to absorb new techniques and the most powerful strength from it, right?"
The Fist King calculated for a long time before he nodded his head again. "That's right. If he was a classic research-type Immortal Cultivator, he certainly wouldn't have told anybody else but researched it in secret on his own. It would not be published until he had major achievements. Otherwise, it was very likely that he would be killed, his trophies and his researches stolen."
"Great minds think alike. Next, it would be your origins, Fist King."
Looking at the Fist King, Boss Bai laughed. "The tutors I sent to the fleet of the Cultivators got along quite well with those Cultivators and the sinners on the Land of Sins. Occasionally, they talked about the culture and the history of the Land of Sins. I also chatted with Han Te about your past and how he met you and Li Yao. Gradually, I figured out your background.
"Fist King, Han Te is too naïve a guy after all and can't stop me from learning what I want to know at all. You wouldn't blame him at all, would you?"
The Fist King shook his head. "No. My past is not exactly a secret. Everybody from the Land of Sins knows it. Even if Han Te didn't tell you, other sinners from the Land of Sins could've still told you. I would've told you in person if you had come to ask me. What's the big deal?"
"Precisely. The background and experience of 'Lei Zonglie' is certainly not a big deal and can be revealed to the public."
Boss Bai stared at the Fist King like a rat staring at chopped meat. "But the more I studied your rise, the weirder it appeared to me. I had a strong feeling that you were not Lei Zonglie!
"The real Lei Zonglie, even if dead and given abundant training techniques by spectral Cultivators, wouldn't be someone like you.
"The weird feeling got more and more intense after you miraculously rose half a year after you came to space and grew from a continental bandit on the Land of Sins into an excellent fleet commander, so intense that I was almost certain about it.
"A tough bandit from the continent has turned into a starship commander so quickly and improved the strength so much by the way. Right, you also become a specialist in cyberwarfare. Isn't it too unbelievable, Master Fist King?"
The Fist King was silent for a long time before he said after a bitter smile, "That's true. According to my calculation, such a speed of learning and advancement is truly attractive, particularly for people like Boss Bai.
"If possible, I should've kept a lower profile.
"But it can't be helped. I promised Li Yao to protect Miss Liu Li as well as Han Te, the sinners from the Land of Sins, and the Cultivators of Starlight. Li Yao saved my life before, and he is of great help for my future development. So, the promise ranks high in my priority sequence. I have to swallow resources every second to make myself stronger without caring about the cost. How can I possibly keep a low profile?"
"It does make sense. Besides, even if you intended to keep a low profile, it would've been useless."
With a casual smile, Boss Bai said, "Someone as unique and strong as you is like a supernova outbreak in a dead universe. Your brilliance can be felt from tens of billions of lightyears away. You cannot lay low however you disguise yourself."
The Fist King said, "Maybe. Then, if I am not the real 'Lei Zonglie', which person do you think I am, Boss Bai?"
"Person?"
Boss Bai asked back, "It appears that you hope you are a person, but I don't think you are one, at least not a regular person, but a 'Gaoist—man in the shell'."
"I am not."
There was vague sorrow and confusion in the Fist King's calm voice. "I don't know… what I am exactly, but I'm certainly not a man in the shell from a wizardly civilization. I do not have any memory data in that regard."
"Memories are not very reliable. They can be modified or even covered. Compared to memories, what really matters is your heart, your abilities, and your definition for yourself at this moment."
With his hands behind his back, Boss Bai said casually against the manmade wind, his sloppy shirt and short pants fluttering in the wind, "I am a man who likes random thoughts. It's a bad habit that I picked up when I was faced with life-and-death decisions every second in the sunless, terrifying caves.
"A moment ago, I imagined the social form and the backstory of the wizardly civilization. Right now, let's let go of the biases and infer the Fist King's past that other people and even yourself don't know about, shall we?
"With the abilities to control so many artificial bodies, if you are not a spectral Cultivator with an extremely high mental power, you are almost like an extremely advanced battle-type spiritual puppet or a control system of a group of battle puppets. Don't be surprised. Anyone with the slight analysis ability and imagination would have reached the conclusion, right?
"Assuming that you are truly a spiritual puppet, which is so advanced that you can simulate the activities of humans vividly, would there be any direct or indirect proof to support the assumption?
"Haha, I studied the laboratories in the Martial Meritocrats Sector in retrospect and realized that there were indirect proofs. About three hundred years ago, it was a peak period of the development of intelligent battle puppets in the Imperium of True Human Beings. Hundreds of battle puppets with the abilities of auto-upgrading and auto-thinking were created. It was the last golden period of the Martial Meritocrats Sector before it was taken over by Wuying Lan and Li Lingfeng.
"In other words, two to three hundred years ago, at least dozens of spiritual puppets of different types, which could upgrade and think on their own, were born at the same time."
After a brief silence, the First King said, "The Imperium has never successfully developed any auto-upgrading spiritual puppet that is capable of what I can do."
"Exactly. The regular spiritual puppets are not capable enough, but what if it is a spiritual puppet with a chip from the wizardly civilization? Or maybe it is not a chip with a real entity, but a series of data, a complicated mark, or a new energy release model from the wizardly
civilization?"
Boss Bai said, "Do you still remember what we were discussing just now? An ambitious, crazy scholar found a chip that was incompatible with the current world, and he decided to keep it to himself for secret studies.
"However, studies consume a lot of resources, and it cannot be entirely kept a secret. On the Land of Sins two to three hundred years ago, at least hundreds of scholars and specialists were working at the same time. They were all the smartest and most sophisticated people. How could the scholar have conducted his experiments in secret without being discovered?
"I tried to walk in the shoes of the crazy scholar and thought hard for a long time. Then, it suddenly occurred to me that I had been too stupid. There was absolutely no need to begin a new, independent research. All the man needed to do was to embed the ultimate treasure from an alien civilization into the public research that was being conducted right now. That way, he could both keep it a secret and make use of the official resources, couldn't he?
"For example, assuming that the scholar who found the alien chip was a specialist in the field of artificial intelligence and auto-upgrading spiritual puppets, who was doing researches on that aspect in the Martial Meritocrats Sector, he could secretly embed a chip to the crystal processor of a spiritual puppet to be tested, or import certain data into it, or 'stamp' something on the crystal processor through other methods, before he projected the seemingly plain spiritual puppet to the Land of Sins for survival experiments. Wasn't it convenient, easy, and unalarming?"
"Despite the lack of evidence, Boss Bai's deduction does make sense."
The Fist King said calmly, "The only problem is, what happened later? If a crazy scholar found a fragment of the wizardly civilization, embedded it to a spiritual puppet to be tested, and projected it to the Land of Sins, there was no reason why he would forget it, was there? Where did the man go later? Why did he never examine his 'experiment subject' later?"
Chapter 2465: A Lose-Lose Battle! |
"It's not strange."
Boss Bai deduced with a smile, "First of all, for the researchers in the laboratories on the Land of Sins, the odds of accidents or death were extremely high. What they created and tested were highly-unsteady new techniques, new magical equipment, and new drugs. The laboratories were exploding all the time. The news might get out of control. The experiment subjects being tested with new drugs might get on a killing spree. Also, the conspiracies among the researchers were not few either. What's the big deal to kill a few people when they were fighting for research funding? Many academic leaders died uncanny deaths when they were about to make achievements.
"So, the crazy scholar that we talked about might've had an accident and got killed a long time ago. Soon after that, the studies on the spiritual puppets with the auto-learning and auto-upgrading abilities suffered major setbacks. The laboratories on the Land of Sins suffered heavy losses and could not go on anymore. They were not revived until Wuying Lan came to clean the mess a long time later.
"So to speak, the whole thing was buried with the death of the crazy scholar. Even Wuying Lan and Li Lingfeng did not know anything about it. It's a very plausible possibility!"
The Fist King hesitated before asking, "But it was such a major discovery. Even though he was dead, did he not leave any last words or traces?"
"Wrong. We know the existence of the starship from the wizardly civilization in advance. That's why the fragment is so important for us."
Boss Bai shook his head and said, "But for that crazy scholar, it was possible that he did not crack the secrets of the fragment and was unaware of the wizardly civilization. He just wanted to perform a random test on the slightly weird fragment that he discovered.
"For him, the thing was very important, but not so important that he was still thinking about the fragment when he was about to die. The Immortal Cultivators are all selfish guys who do not care about the life and death of other people. Did the fragment still matter when he was about to die?"
The Fist King still shook his head. "Everything is just your hypothesis. If I had really gained a certain… gift from the wizardly civilization, I wouldn't have struggled to survive for such a long time on the Land of Sins. I would have united the Land of Sins, marched to 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky', hacked the crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus there, established my own fleet, and roamed the sea of stars! Why did I have to wait to this day? If that were true, the Big Bai Pirate Gang wouldn't get to play a role at all!"
"Hahahaha. It's as expected of the ambitious Fist King. That's exactly what I'm confused about. Your performance in the recent half a year is far from the past. If you were one tenth as capable as you are today, it wouldn't have been a problem at all for you to turn the Martial Meritocrats Sector upside down. Then, were you keeping a low profile while you were preparing yourself because of the surveillance of 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky', or was there more to the story?"
Boss Bai stepped forward and said, "I thought that you were playing meek to avoid attention. That's why I decided to have a candid conversation with you. However, judging from your reaction, if your acting skills were not a hundred times better than mine, you really did not know anything about it, did you? In that case, something inside your brain might've been hibernating, sealed or growing in the past hundred years, and it was not unlocked by accident until recently.
"Hey, Fist King, have you encountered anything or anyone unusual in the past year? Well, fine, you don't need to tell me. You indeed encountered an incredible monster—Li Yao, who also saved you."
"He did not just save me; he also gave me a new life."
The Fist King's dull voice gradually became clear. "When the gigantic body 'Great Iron City' that I had used for a long time was completely destroyed, it was Li Yao who rescued the core units of my mainframe crystal processor and got a new body for me. As for what he did to my brain, I have no idea at all."
"Ha!"
Boss Bai's small eyes were glowing like fireworks. "In that case, everything makes sense now!"
"I am…'Gaoist—man in the shell'?"
The Fist King stared at his hands where metal colors were reflected and mumbled, "I don't know. I truly don't know."
"It doesn't matter."
Boss Bai's fancy short pants were waving crazily in the air in surging noises, but his casual voice was clearly audible in the tidal roars. "I'll help you find the answer."
He walked to the Fist King step by step. After every step, the hills of garbage in the forsaken port behind him would slightly get rid of the artificial gravity and drift to the midair.
The Fist King's manmade eyes gleamed, and the ground where he was standing on had thousands of cracks. He spoke faster, "Boss Bai, do we have to fight? Even if I am associated with 'Gaoist—man in the shell', it is nothing but some broken data. I do not know the first thing about wizardly civilization. Also, didn't you say that the wizardly civilization was destroyed a long time ago? Then, why do we have to fight?"
"Feelings can be gradually developed, and reasons can be found while we are fighting—as long as you want to."
Licking his lips, Boss Bai looked at the Fist King passionately and tapped his temples with his finger. Then, he said, "Ah, I've got a perfect reason. Kill to keep the mouth shut."
"Kill to keep the mouth shut?"
The Fist King said, "I don't know anything at all. Why do you need to kill me to keep my mouth shut?"
"I am not the one who is doing the killing, but you are, because I have revealed such a great secret!"
Boss Bai grinned and bared his teeth that looked like those of a shark. "In order to protect myself and not to be killed by you, I can only attack you first. Isn't that a plausible reason for us to fight?"
The Fist King was lost for words, not knowing how to respond after searching his entire database.
"Besides, do you really 'know nothing'?"
Boss Bai's eyes suddenly grew sharp and gloomy as he said, "My dear Fist King, with your comp
utational ability, and having been in touch with so many tutors from the Big Bai Pirate Gang and even visited my flagship in person, you would be such a disappointment if you still couldn't figure out who we are."
The Fist King was silent for a moment before he replied, "I have guessed your identity, but it is not my business. After all, I'm not on the Immortal Cultivators' side. Your identity is none of my concerns."
"Oh?"
Boss Bai smiled warmly. "Why don't you tell me about it?"
"You and Li Yao obviously have known each other for a long time, and both of you are in the Divinity Transformation Stage. Even a regular expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage can only be raised by an enormous force that is famous nationwide, let alone two, both with a Colossus. It is impossible that such a force is never heard of before!"
The Fist King said, "Your flagship may deceive common starship specialists with the modifications and disguises, but it cannot trick me. The style is obviously the opposite of the mainstream of the Imperium.
"Also, as a ferocious space pirate, you took in the Cultivators of Starlight without any hesitation, at the risk of becoming an enemy of all the Immortal Cultivators in the Imperium. It was utterly unreasonable, or at least not just because of 'friendship' and 'compassion'.
"In conclusion, you must be from a certain powerful force outside of the Imperium, of course not the Alliance of the Holy Covenant, but a vigorous country of Cultivators.
"As for the reason why you came to the Imperium, you are here as a spy, special agent, or vanguard, aren't you?"
"What a good guess."
Boss Bai burst into laughter. "Look, don't we have even more reasons to fight each other until one of us dies in order to keep our own secrets safe?"
"Wait!"
The Fist King said in a hurry, "I don't care who you are at all. All I want to do is to carry out my survival and strengthening policies. I never intend to inform the authorities of the Imperium. Why do we have to fight at such a critical moment? Do you not know that a life-and-death battle will significantly lower our odds of survival, and we may die together? Isn't survival the most important thing?"