Translator: AnubisTL
Under the flurry of Jieming's fingers, the progress bar for cracking the Sphere's internal firewall surged forward.
Stripped of its "active defense" capabilities and facing a targeted breach of its internal protocols, the Sphere's defense system collapsed in waves.
"No!!!"
At that moment, a massive will—a volatile mixture of fury, terror, and despair—erupted from the Sphere's depths, striking directly at Jieming's consciousness.
This time, it wasn't a chaotic torrent of information, but a raw, emotional roar of the spirit.
"Stop! Intruder! Stop!" the will shrieked. "We only want to survive! We abandoned our flesh, abandoned our freedom, just to endure in this cruel void! Spare us! We can negotiate! We can surrender some of our technology! Stop the breach!"
The wails and pleas were a stark contrast to the cold, grand will from before, sounding wretched and desperate.
Jieming's expression remained unchanged as his mental power weathered the turbulence caused by the roar.
His hands never faltered, and the breach progress bar continued to climb.
To prevent the other party from continuously interfering, Jieming split off a wisp of his consciousness and, with a hint of mockery, "returned" a message directly:
"You say you want to survive? But hasn't your civilization already perished long ago?"
The will within the Sphere suddenly froze, as if this sentence had pierced the truth it most dreaded to face, causing a brief "system crash."
Jieming seized this opportunity to accelerate his efforts, breaking through two more layers of the encryption protocol. At the same time, he continued to transmit a message, his tone as cold as a blade:
"The ones who now occupy this plane, serving as the main combatants and possessing a social structure, struggling to survive amidst continuous death and reincarnation, are the Scythe-Skull Race."
"They are the bodies you 'abandoned' back then. Under the influence of the laws of reincarnation and the vast passage of time, they have been reborn as new life forms unique to this plane, possessing a collective consciousness that is both ignorant and resilient."
"And you," Jieming's conscious "voice" continued its merciless dissection, "claim to be the sovereigns and continuators of your civilization. But in our wizards' observations and definitions, you are nothing more than an aggregate of conscious echoes, imprisoned by your own fear and parasitizing this machine. You are a withered branch that was actively pruned from the evolutionary tree of civilization, yet still believes it is the trunk. You are the ones who were 'abandoned' by civilization as scraps."
"Nonsense! Insolence! Bastards! We are the essence of civilization! The sublimated form!" The Sphere Will was utterly enraged.
Perhaps because its sore spot had been struck, its roar grew even more frantic and shrill: "It's you! You alien invaders! You destroyed our homeland! You cut short our path to sublimation! You are the destroyers!"
Jieming's expression remained completely unchanged in the face of this accusation. In fact, the Sphere Will's violent emotional outburst had revealed several more logical vulnerabilities, allowing his decryption to proceed even faster.
"Invaders? I admit it, that's true. The Wizard Civilization came with the purpose of conquest and knowledge, and there's no need to deny that," Jieming replied candidly. "But the ones who destroyed this world were never us."
At this point, Jieming's mockery was no longer confined to his mental will; a faint, derisive smile even touched his lips.
"The ones who destroyed this world were you yourselves. Or rather, the part of 'you' that chose to flee, to fear, and to imprison yourselves."
"What... what did you say?!"
For the first time, the Sphere Will's anger was laced with an uncontrollable tremor—the terror of having its deepest secret exposed.
"That historical record is beautiful and tragic, but it's riddled with holes," Jieming stated calmly, his fingers flying across the console as he performed the final firewall breach.
"As a high-level civilization of individuals with independent wills, do you really expect us to believe the social chaos following the plane's damage was naturally quelled by 'insectoid discipline'? When the Super Weapon project was revealed as a failure, leaving only the creation of a Time Cage, did the entire civilization truly agree so 'unanimously' and 'selflessly' to undergo the brutal ritual of 'spiritual sublimation'?"
"Furthermore, our research shows that low-tier Scythe-Skull Race rely primarily on pheromones and soul-level instincts to communicate. They are more like independent, newly born lifeforms. Only a few high-tier individuals exhibit traits like 'remote control' or 'memory implantation.' If your so-called 'spiritual connection controlling the body' were truly perfect, why are there so many uncontrollable emotions—even those contrary to your will, like 'war-aversion' and 'fear'—spreading among the Scythe-Skull Race?"
Jieming's deduction was like a puzzle, piecing together scattered clues into a brutal truth.
"So I hypothesize that the original Scythe-Skull civilization must have suffered a severe schism in the face of disaster and despair. One faction—perhaps the 'Exploration Faction' or 'Resistance Faction'—likely insisted on continuing to study and repair the plane, believing they must eventually venture into the stars, even in the face of unknown dangers."
"And the other faction was you—the 'Seclusion Faction' or 'Fear Faction.' You were utterly terrified by that disaster, believing that only by completely sealing off the entire plane and transforming it into an absolute defensive fortress... even if it was just a Time Cage... could you ever achieve 'safety.'"
"The so-called 'spiritual sublimation' and 'body modification' were never a voluntary feat of the entire civilization. Instead, they were likely the result of a brutal suppression and forced conversion of the losers after your 'Seclusion Faction' won the struggle!"
"You shattered or imprisoned their consciousnesses and modified their bodies into the first and most basic Scythe-Skull war machines—cannon fodder and expendables to guard your 'shell'!"
"And as for yourselves," Jieming said, his gaze fixed on the mechanical sphere, its glow now dimming as if trembling. "Your so-called 'sublimation' is likely nothing more than the transfer of your Fear Faction's collective consciousness into this relatively safe control core. You are merely prolonging your own wretched existence in another form, all while deluding yourselves into believing you are still the sovereigns of civilization, still fighting a grand 'War of Survival.'"
"The high-rank Scythe-Skull Race... perhaps some of them are indeed the 'control terminals' you reserved. But most are likely 'monstrous offshoots' that re-evolved from those modified bodies over countless cycles of reincarnation, bearing only fragments of your original memories."
"No... no... you're lying! We are the saviors of civilization! We saved—" The Sphere Will's roar grew chaotic and fragmented, filled with the frantic denial and desperate rage of a truth stripped bare.
But its reaction only confirmed Jieming's deduction.
Ding!
A crisp system notification, signaling a change in authorization, echoed in Jieming's mind.
The final core firewall had been dismantled.
The data stream and operational permissions representing the supreme control of the "Time Paradox Generator" now swung open for Jieming, like an unguarded treasure vault.
(End of the Chapter)
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