Generally speaking, the process of reasoning and the process of applying physics are not that far apart; both emphasize a gradual, step-by-step progression.
But in this world... if your personal capital is strong enough, everything can be accelerated.
Just as even the most difficult game can be turned into a "no-damage speedrun" in the hands of a pro, right now, after Lei Ting stared into the "Ghost’s" eyes for a few moments, he didn't even have to say anything. This fellow, who had seemingly etched the phrase "he who understands the times is a wise man" into his very psyche, reached a new height of cowardice.
"Ask away, ask away! Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you. There’s no need for violence..."
Lei Ting: "..."
Lei Ting: "."
—It was clear this guy’s life was destined to be very long. Mostly because he knew exactly when to bow and when to scrape.
...
Not long after the conversation began, Lei Ting was genuinely startled. "...So, you are already hundreds of thousands of years old?"
"An organism’s concept of time is meaningless to m—"
"—I mean, yes."
The "Ghost" seemed accustomed to a more efficient way of thinking and expressing itself; its mental response was so instantaneous that it nearly let a slip of the tongue pass.
Lei Ting raised an eyebrow.
"..." Perhaps to make up for the mistake before this invincible enemy, the Ghost quickly offered new information. "That’s right, I have existed for over six hundred thousand years... This is my home. Six hundred thousand years ago, it didn't look like this—back then, it was covered in rifts and active volcanoes. The geological activity was so violent that my mother civilization lived on the brink of death from the moment of its birth..."
"Every day, we lived alongside natural disasters. Later, our supreme ruler initiated a plan for this reason. It transformed our form of existence into what it is now—a state somewhere between organic life and a pure mental construct."
"This choice successfully allowed our civilization to endure. However, in the tens of thousands of years that followed, nihilistic trends ran rampant through our civilization. Devastating wars stretched on without end. Eternal existence and individual emptiness led a vast number of my compatriots to choose death even after the wars concluded... But when their thoughts died, the collective mental aggregates of the individuals remained by our side. And so, everything became what you see now."
"..." Lei Ting didn't say whether he believed these words. He merely tilted his head slightly, meeting the other's gaze, and asked, "How was such a transformation achieved?"
"I am not a technician..." The Ghost looked somewhat troubled. "I only know that we needed to discard our original bodies and inject a kind of black potion between life and death to achieve this."
"As far as I know, this thing," Lei Ting patted the life support pod, "is a product of the 'Star' civilization. Including the potion inside—are you a member of the 'Star' civilization?"
"...No, I am not." The Ghost’s emotional reaction was incredibly calm. "We were merely one of the vassals of 'Star'."
"'One of'? It seems their domain was not small."
"Of course. The entire galaxy was the territory of 'Star.' This was certified by the Star Network Center..."
"Star Network Center?" Lei Ting narrowed his eyes, catching this key term.
—That’s right. The "Star Network" was actually an imported product. Its related technology originated from a certain civilization on the other side of the observable universe, but the specific time of origin was unknown, the name and social structure of the originating civilization were unknown, and the technical principles of how they were deployed to various nebulae were equally unknown.
Currently, the Star Network within the Milky Way was in a state of extreme isolation, like a local area network. Only once every 330 years, during the cosmic shockwave tides, could it bypass limitations to contact the outside world. During the last contact, a civilization in the Andromeda Galaxy had replied, but the specific content remained unknown. Even now, the Coalition still had a research institute dedicated solely to deciphering the meaning of that message.
However...
The Star Network had always occupied a massive part of people's lives, yet most knew very little about it. At the very least, Lei Ting himself did not know that the Star Network possessed a "Center" that could determine control over a galaxy.
"Certified by the Star Network Center"... a judgment from an "external perspective"?
A flash of insight struck Lei Ting’s mind:
*Is this why the Coalition must maintain a facade of harmony?*
"...Ah," the Ghost also realized it had answered too quickly again, but since the words were out, there was no taking them back. "Yes, the 'Star Network Center.' No one knows where it is located, but it knows everything. I don't know much more than that—back then, I wasn't an important figure, at least not in non-combat situations."
"I see." Lei Ting smiled. "Then, where did this machine come from? Do you still have the solution inside?"
The Ghost seemed to realize what he wanted, which made it relax significantly. "Yes, of course I do!" it answered the more important question first. "As for this machine... I brought it out from that 'Star' civilization research institute outside back then. If you need it, I can give this to you as well!"
"I appreciate your generosity." Lei Ting nodded. "Why do you still have emotions?"
"..."
The Ghost was caught off guard by this question, and a storm-like flow of information surged through its mind again.
This time, Lei Ting discovered even more new things. Although this fellow should have been a "Carbon-type 1" lifeform before discarding its physical body, its habitual thinking patterns were overall more efficient than those of the Orion people. Perhaps a single thought of its contained the information volume of a month of hard contemplation for an Orion, which meant its life form before death was more advanced than that of the current Orion people.
"Losing the hormonal system of an organic body yet maintaining mental activity... it’s strange, isn't it?" Lei Ting smiled with a seemingly gentle expression. "That 'nihilistic' trend you mentioned—could it be that most of your 'compatriots' gradually lost their emotions and even their sense of self after this experiment, which in turn gave rise to pain and turmoil?
"...No, I missed a condition—"
He drew out his deep, resonant voice. This made him look entirely unrelated to "accidental."
"—If a decision had such a significant and far-reaching impact on a high-tech civilization, how was it passed and cooperated with?" Lei Ting asked with great interest. "Did you have a voting system? Was every one of you willing to become a 'Ghost'? Or rather, were you actually unwilling to become like this, unwilling to become something completely different from your former selves..."
Lei Ting smiled, casually tapping the life support pod from the "Star" civilization.
"But you had no say in the matter," he said. "The power of decision lay with 'Star,' who possessed extremely high levels of biotechnology and were researching the changes and fusion of psychic power.
"See, the 'Stars' crushed you, and you were powerless...
"The only thing you could do was, after they vanished among the stars, use the funerary objects they left behind to maintain your existence as a 'spirit-aggregate lifeform' without wavering. You lived a long, ignoble life, bowing and scraping to every stronger being, reaching out to every place where profit could be seized, not hesitating to participate in wars and murder innocent people for it."
"I want to know, 'Ghost,' did you ever have friends, family, or lovers?" Lei Ting seemed to be attacking with words, yet his phrasing was so elegant. "Do they know that the current you, having crossed thousands of years that they could not survive, has become an existence that can even fabricate its own homeland?
"Or rather, has a lie been told for so long that you’ve even deceived yourself?"
The Ghost did not answer. It floated silently in the sky as the surging waves finally flattened out completely. Spray erupted high into the air, droplets passing through the hem of its robe.
Hot mist billowed.
The fellow looked like its mental state had shattered, but Lei Ting had no intention of caring about an enemy's psychological health. On the contrary, this was exactly his goal.
"Alright, answer me," he said. "You were once an experimental subject of the 'Star' civilization, weren't you?"
"..." The Ghost still did not answer. Its thoughts were in such a mess right now that its information processing speed had slowed down significantly.
Lei Ting was merciless. Two "Solar Alloy" cubes, each one cubic centimeter in size, floated up from his fingertips. With a snap of his fingers—muffled by his glove—they collided, exploding with a terrifyingly fierce golden light and a booming heatwave.
A small portion of the Ghost's main body was instantly annihilated by this horrific energy. It snapped back to its senses, letting out a sharp cry that sounded like a wail and a roar at the same time.
"Wake up and answer my question, and I will give you a swifter death," Lei Ting said. "Otherwise... invader, for a duration longer than your life, you will feel every bit of pain my compatriots felt because of your power. You know I can do it."
"I heard from 'Ruo' that you were a good man!" The Ghost, weakened by more than a degree, was both shocked and furious. "Is this how a good man acts?!"
"This is exactly how a good man acts." Lei Ting thought to himself that Ruo certainly had a wide circle of acquaintances, but he didn't bother explaining anything to this guy. Even a dog living for six hundred thousand years should be stronger than this fellow's current state; it was clear that being so afraid of death that one becomes timid is indeed the greatest obstacle on the path of evolutionary progress. "Tell me your true identity, the real cause of these lonely ghosts, and... where did the 'Star' civilization go?"
The Ghost was furious and powerless, and because it was powerless, it could only be furious. In the end, for the sake of that undeniable survival instinct, it chose to bow its head. "I am... an experimental subject of the 'Star' civilization. Or rather, my entire race was. We are essentially the result of the 'Star' civilization replicating a certain stage in their own racial evolution, all to participate in a great plan..."
"What plan?"
"...The 'Ascension' Project," the Ghost said. "The core goal of this plan was to trigger a special 'Spirit's Depths' phenomenon. In modern terms, it was to ensure that after certain lives died, their 'Spirit' and 'Thought' would not separate, and the whole would remain in the material realm.
"Through this, 'Spirit' could discard 'Life' and exist independently, ascending into another, even more powerful form..."
It suddenly began to sneer coldly.
"And before this experiment progressed to its middle stages, there were no individual superhumans in the galaxy. Even if the souls of some organisms had this potential, their life forms prevented them from releasing it, turning it instead into a kind of 'inward-looking [Self]' philosophy.
"Every life in the galaxy now, including the so-called 'carbon-based lives,' has a genome that has, without exception, been artificially manipulated by those bastards of the 'Star' civilization... especially the races of 'Limit-Breaker' individuals like you! 'Solar Star'!"
***
