Chapter 173: Feedback From Hive Mind Cluster Consciousness

When Chen Ming saw that the blood of the Zerg could affect the Mechanic race, he subconsciously wondered if the Zerg had evolved the ability to restrain the Mechanic race. But Chen Ming immediately thought that this idea was too exaggerated and denied it. Even if the Zerg on the space station teleported here from the moment Chen Ming left the space station, fought with the Mechanic race, began to adapt to the Mechanic race's ability, and evolved blood that restrained them, it took only half a year in total. Half a year, evolved the ability to target a combat weapon left by a civilization. It shouldn't be the case. But in this case, the problem in this gray-green blood seems to be even bigger. Just as Chen Ming was thinking, the battle on the edge of the city continued. Although the blood of the Zerg has a considerable restraining effect on the Mechanic race, the situation on the battlefield at this time is still one-sided in favor of the Mechanic race. As a large number of cysts among the incoming Zerg fell, the Zerg charging in front lost their firepower support and were gradually suppressed by the Mechanic race. Relying on the killing speed faster than the speed of the insects, they forced the Zerg back to the vicinity of the caves they dug.

But even though these insects could not see any chance of winning, they continued to maintain their madness, struggling desperately with the seemingly endless number of insect swarms.

But just when the Zerg were forced back to a certain distance outside the city by the firepower of the mechanical race.

Chen Ming suddenly heard the roar of artillery from a position near the center of the city.

Along with the roar of artillery, dozens of red streamers instantly rose into the sky.

If Chen Ming remembered correctly, he had just seen a large warehouse near the tower. The icon of this warehouse on the map of the city he saw was a sharp weapon-like icon.

This sudden red streamer was most likely a weapon there, or a special type of mechanical race.

These streamers fell from the sky again within a few seconds after the launch.

The fire accurately hit the Zerg swarm and the channel dug by the Zerg swarm, and dozens of miniature mushroom clouds burst out.

All things related to insects were covered by the artillery fire.

The flames and mushroom clouds had not yet dissipated.

The hot and scorching breath had already spread outside the city.

The remaining insects crawled out from under the completely charred bodies of their companions and rushed towards the mechanical race with their last bit of strength.

Even if they died, they would at least spray their blood on the enemy.

However, their end was doomed to failure.

The insect swarm had no room to struggle under this pure firepower coverage, and the number of surviving insects was only less than half of the initial number.

They were no longer a force to be reckoned with, and could not threaten the city of the mechanical race.

As the last insect fell under the gun of the mechanical race, the battle that lasted for nearly an hour finally ended.

And at the moment the battle ended.

Many of the mechanical races that were still active just now fell down in an instant, and entered hibernation again like before.

But at the same time, the electrical signals of many fallen mechanical races were completely cut off, and they fell into death completely.

The death of some mechanical bodies did not cause any impact.

Soon many mechanical races came out of the city and came here to clean up and sweep the battlefield.

However, when it comes to cleaning, these mechanical races only put out the flames and collect the bodies of the dead mechanical races.

The bodies of the insects lying outside were not taken care of by the mechanical races.

Moreover, when it comes to recycling, many mechanical races who came to collect the bodies of mechanical races fell down halfway, and like these mechanical races to be recycled, they died completely.

This scene made Chen Ming, who had been observing all this, feel an indescribable regret and sadness.

It was a regret for the demise of civilization, and the sadness that the remnants of this civilization would soon die along with civilization.

Of course, Chen Ming was not swayed by emotions.

He just felt a little emotional when he saw this scene.

He did not forget that the mechanical races are now almost all over the universe, at least they are not uncommon on the road of the empire's development.

Chen Ming now only wants to figure out one thing.

How did these insects appear here?

The only place that can figure this out and get clues is the city of the mechanical race.

But Chen Ming has already controlled the tower, and he can be sure that there are no relevant records in the database inside the tower.

However, such a large city is not the only one with a central database here.

There are many independent small databases distributed in different places in the city.

The data from different areas of the city will be concentrated in these small databases first, and through classification and analysis, the valuable data and information will be integrated into the database of the tower in the core area.

The information of the Zerg will definitely not be worthless information.

But there are still some places in the city that are out of the control of the tower.

That's why he needed his robot to help observe the situation on the battlefield.

Those places that are out of the control of the tower may have relevant records.

It's not that Chen Ming can't repair and connect the area, but because a city is much more difficult to handle than a cruiser, his mental power is not enough.

He doesn't know which area will store this part of information, and the efficiency of reconnecting those detached areas to the tower through psychic power is too low.

It's better to determine the location of different small databases and let his robot go there in person.

Chen Ming didn't waste time.

While the mechanical race was still dealing with the battlefield, he let his robot take the core and start running to the area in the city that the tower couldn't affect.

The whole city was divided into 36 areas on the map found by Chen Ming, 23 of which were still under control.

There are 13 areas left, which should be enough to visit all of them today.

The impact of the battle between the mechanical race and the Thorn Zerg was completely quelled after three hours.

And Chen Ming finally found some clues in the tenth area after controlling the robot to search nine areas.

Since Chen Ming arranged the route of action according to the position of the robot.

So he has not come to this area relatively close to the center of the city until now.

Then he found that the database of the control center here is still running.

Although the database here is also damaged, the undamaged part happens to save all the videos of the past six months.

And it happened to be in the video of a night five months ago.

Chen Ming saw a bright fire suddenly appeared in the dark sky at night, and something was entering the atmosphere.

Although because of the darkness around and the fire caused by friction on the things entering the atmosphere, Chen Ming did not know its specific appearance and could not confirm what it was.

But at the moment when this thing entered the atmosphere.

Chen Ming saw that the entire mechanical city in the video became active, and they were preparing for battle.

Although there was no actual battle until the thing landed.

But after seeing the Zerg attack just now and the reaction of the mechanical race.

Chen Ming has sufficient reason to believe that the Zerg entered the atmosphere of the planet from space.

If he wanted to find out what the Zerg was all about, he had to investigate the landing point of the Zerg and the trajectory of the object when it entered the atmosphere.

Everything would be easy with the video.

Chen Ming first determined the flight trajectory after entering the atmosphere based on the video, and a simple calculation confirmed the trajectory of the object before entering the atmosphere.

Then he used the highest point to perform a high-power scan to determine the positions and trajectories of all asteroids and other celestial bodies in the circumstellar orbit.

Finally, based on the calculation, he pushed the trajectories of these asteroids back five months to the day when the video was recorded.

In this way, in addition to the trajectory of the object that entered the atmosphere, Chen Ming could also accurately know the celestial environment in the circumstellar orbit at that time.

At most, the newly added or disappeared celestial bodies in these five months could not be determined.

But these were enough.

Because on the day when the object landed, the trajectory behind it calculated by Chen Ming happened to overlap with several large asteroids gathered together.

Even if Chen Ming might have some calculation errors, the results he calculated could not completely misalign with the positions of these asteroids.

These bugs must have come from those asteroids.

At this moment, Chen Ming suddenly doubted whether he was wrong.

First of all, he could be sure that the Thorn Zerg was indeed a kind of bug that often appeared in asteroids.

Does this mean that the Zerg here also grew from asteroids, just like the space station?

And did these cystic worms really evolve by themselves?

Several questions flashed through Chen Ming's mind quickly, but such things still had to be seen with one's own eyes.

Chen Ming quickly confirmed the positions of the asteroids he suspected today and quickly locked them.

He immediately let the highest point approach and planned to scan the asteroids.

But when he went over, he found that it seemed unnecessary.

Because there were very obvious gaps on those asteroids, one side was missing, revealing that the interior was completely hollow and full of various disgusting growths.

This does not mean that Chen Ming's previous guess was correct.

Instead, it made him more certain that the bugs must be from outside.

Because Chen Ming asked the Supreme Point to do a simple scan.

It can be determined that the gap on the asteroid was not broken from the inside out, but was smashed from the outside with extremely violent means.

It was the bugs that invaded this asteroid that might be valuable to them, and went to the planet below after a while.

After confirming that there was no sign of life on the asteroid, Chen Ming sent a shuttle carrying several robots into the asteroid with a diameter of about two to three hundred meters.

However, after a search, the robot found nothing valuable and could only extract some growths and a little bit of green gelatinous residue and return to the spacecraft.

Their names are [Thorn Zerg Solidified Secretion] and [Thorn Zerg Glue], and it is not clear what they are used for.

However, at this time, Chen Ming finally found a very detailed research report on the Thorn Zerg on different research websites.

It was written by several biological masters whose names Chen Ming had heard of decades ago.

This paper describes the specific situation of the entire Thorn Zerg in great detail, much more detailed than Chen Ming knew.

The Thorn Zerg itself is not a rare creature, but very common, so common that it is somewhat rampant.

It is because of human factors that it has become quite rare now.

The reason for this situation is that when the Empire discovered the Thorn Zerg, a species that is everywhere, it happened to be the period when the Empire was expanding abroad.

During this period, the Empire often encountered many creatures that were harmful to humans.

In the face of the almost endless benefits brought by development and the benefits that were enough to make anyone and any force jealous to the point of outrage, any creature that blocked the pace of human development must die.

Then the Thorn Zerg was basically extinct during the Empire's development period.

Later, someone discovered that something seemed wrong, so they deliberately left some Thorn Zerg for research.

There should still be individuals being cultivated in the Empire.

There must be some outside, maybe squatting in some asteroid.

The spread and harm of the Thorn Zerg are still very obvious, and now there is an additional rare feature.

It was only before that it was used by the military in the star region to build a space station.

However, judging from this paper, these bugs are not a big deal.

Probably.

After reading this paper, Chen Ming always felt that something was wrong.

Because according to the records in the paper, these bugs did show a certain ability to evolve in the past.

However, they soon almost died out under the Empire's deliberate extermination of such dangerous creatures that affected development, and they could not evolve at all.

But the basic unit of this fast time in the paper is year, because the pioneering era lasted for hundreds of years, and the empire has been affected by bugs all the time.

And the bugs that Chen Ming encountered only took two days to evolve from the most primitive ordinary bugs, that is, those broad-strider bugs, to the ability to spit acid.

After another two or three months, they disappeared from the space station and appeared here. It doesn't look like they have weak evolutionary ability.

In the past, it may be because all the internal conflicts of the entire empire were dispersed by the benefits brought by the pioneering, and the empire worked together to deal with the troubles on the road of pioneering, resulting in the fact that the evolutionary ability of the bugs could not be exerted no matter how strong it was.

But the time is different now. Chen Ming is really worried about the problems hidden behind these bugs.

And his problem has not been solved yet.

How did these bugs get here? Why did they raid the city like crazy because of him or because of the mechanical race?

It can't be said that they have the same hive mind as the mechanical race, and if one of them evolves, the others can also evolve, causing the bugs here to evolve into cystic bugs like those on the space station?

No, it's impossible.

Chen Ming denied his thoughts again.

Unless they have psychic energy, this is absolutely impossible.

How can a hive mind survive hundreds of light years apart?

If there is such a perverted ability, the Zerg could not be easily killed to the point of extinction by humans in the pioneering era.

Could it be that... the Zerg on the space station really evolved the ability to fly in space or even fly in hyperspace channels and flew here?

Chen Ming still couldn't be 100% sure, he still lacked evidence.

But there is one thing he can be sure of, these bugs may be a big threat.

He has to find a way to take away some of the corpses of the bugs and send them to the empire, either to the boss or to Baiquan.

What he said should be enough for them to pay more attention.

In order to avoid the situation of the previous insect plague.

The empire is not so united now.

Chen Ming sent out several landing craft again, landed near the mechanical city, and found an opportunity to take away the corpses without any obstruction.

There are four kinds of bugs here.

Chen Ming had seen the [Thorn Zerg·Broadstrider] and [Thorn Zerg·Blister] before.

The largest [Thorn Zerg·Giant Spider], and the [Thorn Zerg·Shellworm] with a beetle appearance.

In fact, there is another kind of insect that Chen Ming has seen before, but there is no corpse here, [Thorn Zerg·Larva].

It is impossible for the Zerg to not have larvae, which is why Chen Ming is worried.

The Thorn Zerg is likely to still be breeding deep underground on this planet.

After sending all the corpses of these insects to the Defender and freezing them.

Chen Ming was a little bit naive and let his robot try to contact the mechanical race.

In the battle just now, Chen Ming saw a lot of mechanical races that obviously had good individual combat capabilities.

And there were also mechanical races that could fire that special artillery in the back, which obviously had a considerable advantage in ground combat.

It would definitely be worthwhile to find a way to take one away and compare it with the blueprint in his hand for research.

Chen Ming's robot's behavior of secretly carrying the dead mechanical race was not discovered by other mechanical races.

He did successfully obtain the corpses of several mechanical races.

In addition to Chen Ming's existing [Standard Mechanical Race·Quiet Mantis] and [Small Mechanical Race·Worker Bee],

There are also the [Standard Mechanical Body·Flying Mantis] as a melee unit with high-speed combat capability, and the [Small Mechanical Body·Digging Worm], a large frontal combat unit.

Although Chen Ming didn't know why this several-meter-tall big guy was a small mechanical body, it didn't matter, the name didn't affect its ability.

In addition, Chen Ming was very envious of the [Mechanical Medium Mechanical Body·Fiery Silkworm] that could fire artillery. Several of them were completely dead in the area where they usually stationed. After being controlled by Chen Ming, they were successfully taken away from the city.

Then, Chen Ming couldn't help but reach out to the living dormant mechanical bodies.

Then he was surprised to find that these dormant mechanical bodies seemed not to be affected by external things, even if his robot had touched the shell of the mechanical family.

These dormant mechanical families seemed to be triggered only by fighting.

Of course, Chen Ming still didn't let his robot be exposed directly on the streets of the city or in front of those mechanical families that were still active.

He just wanted to take away a few living mechanicals and make sure that the one he controlled before was an exception.

Chen Ming took away several dormant mechanicals as easily as he took away the bodies of other mechanicals, and transported them directly to the highest point.

There are many devices inside the highest point that can interfere with the normal operation of the machinery, and Chen Ming does not need to worry about the mechanical bodies suddenly erupting.

When the mechanicals were transported to the highest point.

The robot that Chen Ming sent to confirm the landing position of the bugs in the video was still on the way.

So he simply came directly to the warehouse and came to these dormant mechanicals.

In order not to damage these dormant mechanical bodies, Chen Ming chose to directly control these mechanical bodies and keep an eye on their panels.

Just like the damaged mechanical body before.

The consciousness column on their panels also changed from [Individual consciousness: Sub-individual (dormant)] to [Individual consciousness: Sub-individual (abnormal)].

This is a good thing and a bad thing for Chen Ming.

The good thing is that he doesn't need to worry about the mechanical race he controls being affected by the "Queen Bee" of the mechanical race in the future.

The bad thing is that after losing the consciousness assistance of the group, the mechanical bodies he controls have become a little "stupid" in behavior.

Wait.

Chen Ming suddenly felt that something was wrong.

As the number of abnormal sub-individuals of the mechanical race he controls increased.

These abnormal sub-individuals seemed to have built a hive cluster of thinking networks.

They were sharing their computing power with each other.

And then Chen Ming also discovered another special place.

That is, when he controlled these mechanical races as abnormal sub-individuals, his mental power did not seem to be consumed.

Chen Ming's psychic power can control many things.

But he must continuously consume his mental power to control everything, anything, and any one thing.

Even if it was the spaceship that Yu Hui helped control, he had to at least spend a little mental power to control the spaceship.

Although the continuous consumption is very small, this consumption is necessary.

However, the machines he was controlling now changed from normal consciousness to abnormal machines.

Except for the little mental power consumed in controlling them at the beginning, there was no subsequent continuous mental power consumption.

But Chen Ming could still give them orders normally.

This seemed a little wrong.

Chen Ming temporarily put aside his attention to other things and focused his mental power on himself and the machines, observing them carefully.

Chen Ming had just focused his consciousness.

The next moment, his eyes suddenly widened.

Because these machines not only did not consume Chen Ming's mental power.

In fact, they were feeding him back.

After these mechanical races were transformed into abnormal sub-individuals, their weak and abnormal individual consciousness fed back to Chen Ming's consumption of mental power to control them.

"Is this... the influence of hive mind?"

Chen Ming understood.

After he controlled these mechanical races, they became abnormal sub-individuals.

These mechanical races took him as the core consciousness and built a new cluster of hive consciousness.

He was the "Queen Bee".

Chen Ming immediately began to check his own consciousness. There was no change except that his mental power had been fed back by these abnormal sub-individuals.

But Chen Ming still had some doubts about whether these mechanical races would affect his consciousness in turn.

But he immediately realized that he didn't need to worry about this.

His psychic instinct would help him eliminate all dangers.

If there was really a problem, he would definitely know it in advance and directly disconnect from the mechanical race, or directly kill the consciousness of those weak abnormal sub-individuals.

But if there was no problem...

Chen Ming swallowed his saliva subconsciously.

The effect that the consciousness of the mechanical race could feed back his mental power was self-evident.

Chen Ming had a full view of the entire decaying city through the tower's surveillance, and once again couldn't help swallowing his saliva.

He wanted this city.

The Thorn Zerg on this planet must be cleared.