Starting as a Mechanical Hunter

Chapter 900: Chapter 6: The Crimson Scar of Civilization

The way that white spaceship landed was extremely strange. At its base, four thick bionic arms suddenly extended, and then, centered on those arms, as if a flower were blooming, countless human‑thick bionic arms unfolded from within, like a carefully pruned flowerbed that suddenly flipped over onto the ground, turning into four pedestals. Then tens of thousands of arms bent at the same time, and from the elbow joints, jets roared to life as the spaceship completed its docking.

The spaceship’s main hatch opened, and a female professor with an ordinary appearance walked down.

Her gaze immediately fell on the four docked starships, and a strange gleam flashed in her eyes.

”Professor Aixin, it’s been a while.”

Gao Gong dropped down from the sky, speaking calmly.

”Hello, Mr. G,” Professor Aixin went straight to the point, ”you should know why I’m here.”

”Come with me.” Gao Gong nodded.

As Professor Aixin followed behind Gao Gong, she quietly sized him up. The figure before her seemed to blur into a mass of mist; wherever he passed, the surrounding space seemed to open to an immense vastness, yet at the same time shrink to an extreme tightness.

’A planet‑level civilization can actually produce such a powerful organism—this is practically the god‑tier our ancestors once theorized. It’s a pity he’s not a bionic man.’

Aixin’s ancestors were precisely the scientists who had developed the three Bionic Man Progenitors, and she herself had followed Black Rose, attempting to recreate the God of Bionics.

And now, the plan had finally succeeded.

Gao Gong arrived at the core area of the Du Gao Technology Headquarters. As the doors opened, a corpse lay quietly on a bed, fiery red hair spread out, expression serene, as if merely asleep.

Black Rose!

Aixin’s gaze shifted from the other woman’s full chest down to her flat abdomen, where a thin blood mark could be seen.

After a moment of silence, Aixin spoke. ”Infinite Consciousness informed me, telling me to retrieve the only relic shell she left in reality, to be used in creating the new high‑tier of the Bionic Realm.”

”Infinite Consciousness,” Gao Gong repeated, looking at her.

”You’re building up your civilization much faster than I expected.”

”That’s the greatest advantage of our civilization. Very soon, we’ll break through the constraints of a Level 2 Civilization and reach Level 3 Civilization.”

Combining the heritage of the six bionic giants, plus the Insect Nest Consciousness entity Black Rose transformed into—that ’Infinite Consciousness’—it wasn’t all that surprising that they’d break through Level 2 so quickly.

No matter what type of civilization it is, once the ’insect nest’ is implanted, its evolution speed is like a runaway wild horse.

”Take her with you.”

Aixin hadn’t expected him to be so straightforward, and froze for a moment, then hesitated. ”You don’t want to communicate with ’Infinite Consciousness’ at all? Right now all bionic men are nodes of Infinite Consciousness. If you want to communicate—”

”It’s not really a thing anymore.”

Gao Gong spoke faintly, his gaze also falling on the blood mark on Black Rose’s body. Ever since he unleashed that ’Wife‑Killing Slash,’ Black Rose had died. The divinized Black Rose—or rather, Infinite Consciousness—was no longer the Black Rose of the past.

In the cosmos, this was a very common occurrence.

During evolution, many races’ emotions gradually fade. In the course of ascension, some civilizations, with hundreds of billions, even tens of trillions of members, will even synchronously delete entire chemical hormone systems.

Black Rose went from being a person, erasing her humanity, and became an Insect Nest Consciousness.

She had long ceased to be what she once was.

Very soon, Aixin took Black Rose’s corpse and left. That White Egg Spaceship powered up again, and quickly vanished into the air, shrinking into a tiny speck.

Gao Gong stared blankly at the sky for a moment, then once again stepped into the Box.

With the help of the Civilization Evolver, the evolution speed of the civilization he was creating would not be slower than that of an insect‑nest civilization.

Moreover, he was walking the dual‑civilization route.

...

Outer space. Aixin glanced out at the view beyond the window. The route from Mechanical Split Star to their destination planet was somewhat treacherous, not only because of the Asteroid Belt, but also due to the endless Star Thief Groups.

The Cyber Test Field was under the protection of Advanced Civilizations; some low‑level civilizations’ starship teams didn’t dare come here to hunt for people. So over time, the three to four light‑year region centered on Mechanical Split Star had turned into a no‑man’s‑land.

However, the route she’d chosen was relatively safe, sheltered by several major Black Market forces. Generally speaking, Star Thieves wouldn’t be foolish enough to come here.

She was already a little impatient.

She slowly closed her eyes, and in the next moment, it was as though she had returned to the womb, and at the same time become a part of some supreme existence. A kind of indescribable comfort welled up from the depths of her soul.

In many civilizations, ’Insect Nest Consciousness’ is described as an evil existence, specifically manifesting as an insatiable greed toward intelligent species, an intense expansiveness and evolvability, and the fact that every member of the civilization seems to be branded with a Thought Steel Seal, never betraying the insect nest.

Thus, the image of a terrifying totalitarian dictator wielding powerful brainwashing technologies is born.

But in truth, the more advanced a civilization is, the more clearly it understands that ’Insect Nest Consciousness’ itself is not evil. It simply fuses consciousness with civilizational attributes, integrating it into every member of the civilization.

After all, people do not betray themselves.

Very quickly, Aixin met ’Infinite Consciousness.’

It seemed to be at the core of a star system cluster. Under the adornment of billions of stars, Black Rose’s phantom slowly stepped out of the dark matter. Hundreds of billions of light‑years of time seemed compressed into a single thought of hers, and every planet was one of her neural nodes.

”Infinite Consciousness!”

Aixin bowed to the ground with reverence.

She was not worshipping a god; she was worshipping her own divinity.

”Insect Nest Consciousness” is, in fact, the divinity that resides in everyone.

Black Rose watched her in silence, her eyes seeming to flicker with the spirit of time itself.

”I hereby apply to you for the ’Civilization High-Level Manufacturing Plan.’”

”Go do it,” Black Rose said softly. As her words fell, the Star System Cluster broke apart into at least a hundred Star Systems; each Star System then fissioned into 500 billion Fixed Stars; and each Fixed Star similar to the sun spontaneously assembled into its own Planet System and satellite system. These planets, Fixed Stars, and nebulae finally folded together into a single brain—that was Aixin’s own brain.

Aixin snapped awake, exhaling a long breath.

”Begin disassembly work.”

In the next instant, using Black Rose’s ”corpse” as the core, the floor, ceiling, and walls all flipped open, revealing rows of mechanical arms. At the same time, one Advanced Bionics plug-in after another was transported in. The naked body of Black Rose was quickly dismantled into individual components—head, arms, thighs, abdomen, and so on.

These removed components were not further broken down, but instead were implanted into other top-grade Bionic Parts that had been brought in.

As the living host of Infinite Consciousness, Black Rose’s body was of immense importance to the civilization—calling it a Civilizational Treasure would not be an exaggeration. After discussion, the scientific collective passed a plan: to use the ”corpse” to manufacture the upper echelons of the new civilization.

The advantages of this method went without saying; the civilizational regime would be further bound to the Insect Nest Consciousness, and this series of high-level figures would also gain the recognition of all Bionics.

Aixin had come to Mechanical Split Star precisely to carry out this work.

Very soon, one ”New Black Rose” after another took shape—there were maiden versions, mature-woman versions, stern and heroic types, and those still carrying lingering charm. In total there were twenty-six versions, and each version was the technological culmination of the new Bionics series.

These models corresponded exactly to all the Bionics models once present on Mechanical Split Star; old and new versions combined made precisely twenty-six types.

These ”New Black Roses” would lead Bionic Man civilization into a new future.

Yet Aixin suddenly frowned, because she noticed that from the chest down to the abdomen of every Black Rose there was a faint red mark—so shallow that one would miss it without careful scrutiny.

What was going on?

Aixin did not understand.

Could the injuries on the original shell have transferred onto the new bodies?

Was this the result of the modification process, or of the Insect Nest Consciousness—or could it be... residual Consciousness clinging to the corpse?

...

Gao Gong naturally had no idea that the ”Wife-Killing Slash” he had once delivered would, in its aftermath, introduce an unexpected variable into a nascent Bionic Man civilization. Right now, what he was debugging was the outer-space signal Launch System installed on the Great Curved Saber Spaceship.

This did not qualify as Level 3 Civilization Architecture; in the large-scale Blueprint, the technological content of this thing was not ranked very high. Yet in cosmic navigation, it was one of the indispensable ”three-piece set” for any Spaceship.

Large-scale signal launcher, shipboard Circulatory System, and energy replenishment system—

As long as these three pieces were intact, drifting in the Cosmos for several thousand years would pose no real problem.

If even one of the three was missing, then even warriors of a high-level civilization would be doomed.

”Open the Star Map.”

”Star Map opened,” Big A repeated.

In the next moment, Gao Gong seemed to be standing inside a miniaturized Cosmos: the Asteroid Belt, nebular layers, micro–Black Holes, supernova relics—various special markers lit up one after another.

”Mark for me the Star Map route from Mechanical Split Star to the Relic Black Market.”

In an instant, a long yellow line flared into view, with all special environments encountered along the way marked out one by one—fifty-six in total.

Gao Gong glanced at it, then suddenly frowned. ”When was this Star Map made?”

The Star Map had of course been pulled from the Mother City’s database, but to Gao Gong’s eye, there was something off about it.

Big A checked the Star Map’s edit time and said, ”This Star Map was edited during the planet’s initial birth period, approximately 3 billion years ago.”

”...”

Chances were it had been compiled incidentally by that ancient civilization back when it implanted the Relic Seed into Mechanical Split Star.

If he’d known the Star Map was this ancient, he would have asked Aixin for a fresh Star Map before she left.

Under normal circumstances, in a regular Star Domain, a Star Map was updated once every hundred years.

A Star Map that hadn’t been updated for 3 billion years—how archaic did that make it?

Could this map be trusted?

”Forget it,” Gao Gong suddenly thought of something. ”Mark the pulsars near the route.”

”Marking completed.”

Three tiny points of light appeared along the yellow line.

”Coordinates of the pulsars have been confirmed through outer-space monitoring stations,” Big A added.

”Good,” Gao Gong finally let his heart settle. After all, the lifespan of pulsars didn’t even come close to 3 billion years.

Confirming the pulsars near the route was a necessary step for Cosmos explorers before setting out.

Because pulsars were also known as signal Transfer Stations of the Cosmos.

In the absence of a signal network, many Interstellar Pirates used them to communicate.