283: Chapter 269 Central Control Room (9/10) 283: Chapter 269 Central Control Room (9/10) It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Previously, Ian had learned from the murals that the ancestors of the Redwood Natives used many thods to ensure their descendants rembered the knowledge they needed.
The most stable and effective learning machines were abandoned due to difficult maintenance and excessive energy consumption.
Ultimately, this laboratory with an extraterrestrial heterogeneous ecosystem chose to use a biological plugin to carry those essential mories, while also modifying themselves, imprinting part of the most critical knowledge and thought patterns into their offspring’s DNA.
Ian knew that the Terra People were a stable species with extrely stable DNA that seldom experienced abnormal mutations due to reproduction.
The advantage was that even in various extre conditions, they could remain stable without mutations; the downside… paired with the Terra People’s bio-alchemy, there were no downsides.
But if there were no bio-alchemy, at worst, it would lead to mutations and difficulty in adapting to so extrely unusual special environnts.
However, the Terra People were inherently adaptable to all environnts, so this downside was virtually nonexistent.
Similarly, if knowledge was encoded into the Terra Technology’s biological plugins or even in their own bodies, it surely would be a more stable thod of inheritance than anything else.
However…
All technology works without issues only under the premise that humans don’t cause problems.
One generation’s Redwood Great Elder had different thoughts.
He wanted immortality.
“Is it about modifying auxiliary cognitive organs to overlay his own mories over those who have installed such cognitive devices?”
At first, Ian considered this possibility.
Very likely.
Of course, as the Great Elder who inherited the technology of the previous era, he would be very clear about the differences between remnant echoes, Echo, and Mirror, compared to the Great Shaman whose abilities had degraded innurable tis.
A re overlay of mories, a remnant echo, is certainly not true immortality.
Even parasites modified with neural networks and cognitive algorithms were just echoes.
They were still far from the true immortality offered by the Mirror thod.
But the problem was…
“This world has Spirit Energy ah—If the guess about this auxiliary mory plugin is true, its rapid linking and knowledge transfer are probably also a kind of cognitive sharing through Spirit Energy.”
Crushing the brain of the Brain-Eating Parasite in his hand and closely observing the residual traces of Spirit Energy, Ian didn’t feel disgusted but was rather full of interest, “Could it be that the Great Elder rged himself into the Spirit Energy Network of the Brain-Eating Parasites, and by continually updating the hosts of the Brain-Eating Parasites, he could ensure his thoughts would always be passed on?”
“And is it that Master Gossay showed abnormalities previously because he had encountered knowledge stored in the Brain-Eating Parasite’s Spirit Energy Network or a part of the Great Elder’s mory?”
Considering these possibilities, Ian began to understand why the Redwood Natives left the Redwood Base all those years ago.
A Great Elder in possession of almost all the keys, in pursuit of immortality, turned his fellow tribesn into flesh and blood tools for copying his own consciousness, leading to a rebellion among the Redwood People—their battles caused considerable damage to ecological tools, and various Magical Beasts and creatures that were within the ecosystem left it, deteriorating the originally stable base situation.
—Although the specific ti is unknown, if the Frost Crystal Dragon and Parasitic Frost Butterfly of the Fourth Energy Level could fight in a cooling store, the chaos back then must have been dozens of tis more intense than now.
The Great Elder definitely failed, which could be inferred from the fact that all Four Keys were preserved by the Natives.
But due to the destruction of the ecosystem, they still had to leave the ‘Holy Ground’.
“That Great Elder might not have died completely—Just like the Great Shaman, the Crocodragon’s death could have been a thod of escape for him, and it’s possible that there are contingencies he left within the Redwood Natives.”
“Of course, with the Crocodragon dead, even if the Great Shaman were truly alive, it would be aningless, and he definitely didn’t have that high level of technology, at most just a backup of a mory.”
After washing his hands in the river, Ian stood up and looked around, pondering, “As for the Redwood People of that ti, they probably wanted to destroy all the Brain-Eating Parasites.
But obviously, they didn’t manage to do it and had to evacuate the base in a hurry—looking at the current situation, the Brain-Eating Parasites are alive and well, just a bit dazed and confused.”
Combining various pieces of information, Ian felt a bit emotional as he ford a rough guess about what happened back then in the Redwood Base, “It’s also lucky that Inega II resisted the temptation back then.”
“As one of the strongest Spirit Energy Users of that era, transferring his own soul must have been effortless, right?
After obtaining the Echo technology, he could freely transform anyone who t the requirents into a Mirror.”
“Rember, given the popularity and prestige of Inega II at the ti…
even if he wished for immortality, there would probably be young people worshipping him, eager to offer their bodies to beco the new vessel for him to walk the world.”
“Just like my family at the ti, the first thought upon acquiring such a secret thod was to grant him eternal life.”
—Perhaps, it was this near divine worship that led Inega II to ultimately reject the thod of Immortality.
Because he understood how tempting immortality was, Ian could appreciate what Inega II of that ti turned down in terms of benefits and the future.
After waiting a while longer, Ian realized it would take so ti for Shasha and Andor to wake up, so he used Foresight View to observe their futures.
After making sure there were no major issues, he proceeded to explore the surroundings.
The gargantuan eel was gone, and Patrick hadn’t caught up; it was likely that the eel started fighting with him after losing its target.
Yisen Gard was now with Master Gossay…
Ian didn’t know if Yisen Gard, after hearing his hint, had prepared any ans to counter Patrick, but with Master Gossay there, there should be no problem.
Following the gently flowing underground river, Ian observed the man-made and natural tributaries stretching in all directions.
One downside of Foresight View is that in the absence of danger, even with diums like the frost butterflies, it’s not possible to tell which direction is the one he wants to go…
Indeed, danger is distinguishable, but whether it’s dangerous or not doesn’t necessarily align with Ian’s needs.
At this mont, he could only randomly pick a path and take a gamble.
Ian chose an upward river path because he heard faint sounds of movent from the other end of the river, not the sound of water, nor the sound of magical beasts, but sothing regular, resembling the noise of chanical operations, piquing the youth’s curiosity.
It didn’t take long for him to see the source of the sound.
There was a person.
Thump, thump, thump.
In the semi-natural cave that had been repaired, there was supposed to be a maintenance staff rest station built by the civilization of the previous era.
The remnants of a decaying riverside maintenance hut could be seen, and right in front was a sealed tal door.
This tal door didn’t have the corrosion-resistant inscriptions that protected the rooms near the sacrificial ground, and it was almost entirely rusty by now, but it was still sturdy.
Thump, thump, thump.
A naked figure, looking very similar to the mutants seen before, was pounding forcefully against the door.
Ian gripped his longsword tightly, expecting that the mutant would turn and attack him the next mont, but the figure completely ignored his presence and continued pounding on the tal door, which had already dented inwards significantly, with a very regular rhythm.
Thump, thump, thump.
He kept on pounding, muttering so incoherent words to himself.
“Must return to the Central Control Room, must return to the Central Control Room, must return to the Central Control Room, must return to the Central Control Room…”
There were many skeletons in front of the tal door, so human, so wild beasts, and so magical beasts.
Most of the skeletons had turned to white bone, but so were still decaying.
Picking up a long bone, which appeared to be the spinal bone of so beast, it had completely ossified.
Instead of a spine, it was more like a stick.
Similar mutations had occurred everywhere, every corpse had been parasitized.
Thump, thump, thump.
When Ian approached the mutant from behind, he was still continuously knocking.
The youth narrowed his eyes, a silver-blue halo flickered, and it seed he discovered sothing,
Snap, he swung his sword, shattering the mutant’s head, but it was empty inside.
Only a segnt of a growing pink tapeworm was wriggling.
The movent still didn’t stop, the pounding continued.
“The head is hollowed out by eating, and yet it continues to knock on the door?”
He said lightly, and with another swing of his sword, Ian shattered the mutant’s body completely.
His stomach was ripped open by his own spinal bone, and together with the spilling innards, ca densely packed masses of red and blue eggs and tadpole-shaped larvae.
These worms were feasting on the flesh and blood, growing themselves, and rging with each other, connecting their own nerve structures together, reshaping all the sensory structures within the host’s body.
And yet, even in such a state, the humanoid’s muscles were still dragging what was left of this broken body towards the door.
“Must return to the Central Control Room…
protect the first ecological laboratory…
cannot…
cannot let the Great Elder succeed…”
A still-intact mouth and throat squeezed out mangled voices that humans could no longer understand, only the youth with the silver chip could decipher and comprehend.
These words brought him a brand-new puzzle.
“Not let the Great Elder succeed?”
He murmured to himself sowhat puzzledly, then looked down at the parasitic mutant beneath his sword, “Strange, according to the clues, shouldn’t the parasite’s puppeteer be the Great Elder?”
“What’s going on here?”
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