Translator: AnubisTL
In its earliest days, the Reincarnation Plane was never meant to be the meat-grinder war fortress it had become.
It had once nurtured a unique civilization—a swarm of creatures that had unexpectedly ignited the spark of intelligence from their mindless, insectoid origins.
They were resilient, united, and possessed a staggering capacity for learning and evolution.
Intelligence brought technology, and technology drove progress.
They emerged from their subterranean nests to the surface, building city-states and unraveling the mysteries of the starry sky. Finally, they turned their gaze beyond their own plane, toward the vast unknown that wizards called the "Endless Chaotic Void."
The first expeditionary force was assembled. Filled with a mixture of hope and trepidation, they attempted to leave the cradle that had nurtured them and venture into the sea of stars... This should have been the glorious coming-of-age ceremony for their civilization.
Then, disaster struck without warning.
On that day, the Endless Void, which had always followed a certain chaotic rhythm, suddenly erupted.
Terrifying torrents of energy, material storms, spatial folds, and even ripples in time—all far exceeding the limits of the civilization's knowledge—were stirred by an invisible giant hand. They coalesced into a tide of destruction and swept across the void.
The Expeditionary Force Fleet, having just breached the planar barrier and not yet begun its voyage, was snuffed out like a candle in a gale, leaving no wreckage behind.
The terrifying aftershocks even shook the plane itself. Tectonic plates shifted, Earth Vein Energy went berserk, and the ecosystem teetered on the brink of collapse.
For this civilization, still in its infancy, it was nothing short of an apocalypse.
Repairing the severely damaged plane alone drained nearly all their resources and the lifeblood of their scientists.
An even more despairing conclusion soon emerged from their most elite scientists: based on the trajectory and characteristics of the destructive shockwave, it was no natural phenomenon. It was most likely the mere aftershock of a battle fought by some unknown entity at an unimaginably distant location.
A mere wisp of leaked energy, having traversed countless light-years, had nearly annihilated their entire civilization.
Panic spread like a plague.
Fortunately, the innate collectivism and discipline of the Insect Civilization took hold, forcibly pulling their society back from the brink of collapse and restoring order.
After long and agonizing debate, the High Council finally reached a decision: since a threat of such terrifying magnitude existed externally—one that could destroy them again at any moment—they had to acquire the power to fight back.
As it happened, the plane also needed a complete overhaul to repair its damage. So, they decided... to forge the entire plane into an unprecedented Super Weapon.
A plan, so grand as to be insane, was set in motion.
They would mobilize the full power of their civilization, reshaping mountains and rivers, rewriting energy circuits, and attempting to transform the plane itself into a war fortress capable of active defense—and even retaliation—against such a "cosmic-level disaster."
The process was excruciatingly difficult, fraught with technical barriers and immense sacrifice.
But through sheer, tenacious will, they stumbled their way to the end.
Yet, just as they were on the verge of success, the scientists responsible for the core system brought devastating news: due to deficiencies in their fundamental theories and the limits of materials science, the "Super Weapon" they had originally envisioned—one capable of influencing the outside world and striking first—...had failed.
The final system, its core functions severely crippled, retained only a single capability: upon detecting an irresistible threat to the plane's dominant civilization, it would trigger a mandatory, plane-wide time reversal, resetting everything to a "safe point" before the threat emerged.
This meant they had built an impenetrable fortress—a "turtle shell"—that could only keep them trapped inside.
If they ever left the plane, they would remain as fragile as insects, capable of being annihilated by a single stray aftershock of battle.
Even more fatal was the fact that the power of time reversal granted them no immunity.
With every reset, their memories, technology, and social structures would be wiped clean. Their civilization would even regress.
What was this infinite cycle but slow-motion suicide?
To resolve this paradox, the civilization, its technological prowess already exhausted, finally chose a solution of absolute cruelty.
Abandon the flesh. Merge the spirit.
They forcibly stripped away the consciousness, memories, and wisdom of their entire populace—the very "soul" of their civilization—using the most advanced technology they could muster.
After fusion and digitization, this collective consciousness was injected into and solidified as the "Core Will," the central control unit of the Time Paradox Generator.
Next, their bodies underwent massive biological modification, transforming them into "biological weapons" possessing basic combat instincts and a certain capacity for learning—the prototypes of the Scythe-Skull Race.
Theoretically, the "Sphere Will," sheltered within an independent timeline, could remain immune to the effects of time reversal. Through some form of spiritual connection, it could remotely command the army of bodies in the outside world, conducting infinite cycles of reincarnation and trial and error.
Whether the bodies outside died or were reset mattered not; as long as the Sphere Will endured, the spark of their civilization remained. Through each reincarnation, they could continuously "optimize" their armed forces.
The tapestry of memories ended here. To survive, a civilization had chosen to collectively "ascend" as ghosts in the machine, driving their own "relic bodies" to wage an eternal war.
Jieming's consciousness struggled to the surface like a diver emerging from the deep sea, breaking free from the viscous, sorrowful torrent of data.
He snapped his eyes "open," gasping for air as if he had nearly drowned in that vast and desolate sea of memories.
As his consciousness tore itself free from the immersion in history, a wave of complex emotions washed over Jieming.
But the sentiment lasted only a fleeting moment.
His gaze cleared, returning to its usual sharpness.
This is no time for nostalgia. The information he had just extracted from the data stream contained more than just the history of this civilization. It also held a massive trove of technical data on the Sphere's architecture, energy circuits, firewall nodes, and operational protocols. That was his most critical weapon now.
He sprang into action.
Wielding his mental power, Jieming applied the newly "learned" method. He precisely injected energy signals, each encoded with a specific frequency, into several key energy hubs on the Sphere's surface.
Hum...
The Sphere's surface pulsed with a rapid flicker of light. Then, a virtual interface—a complex web of three-dimensional patterns and energy lines—materialized before him.
Its design was a far cry from the wizard runes he knew, possessing a geometric elegance and the fluid grace of biological circuitry. Yet, its fundamental logic of input, output, control, and storage remained familiar.
Jieming's hands flew across the virtual interface, his consciousness and movements synchronized as he rapidly input commands.
The technical data he had just acquired in his mind now served as the blade for this breach.
(End of the Chapter)
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