Ata Lin's combat prowess was exceptional—astonishing, even.
He and Qu Yuan had agreed to move toward each other, protecting the Liemeong as they fought fiercely for an entire day.
When they rendezvoused with the Mount Lu, the Dark Matter radar was almost completely filled with layer upon layer of red fog. Only a dense string of dotted lines remained, representing the Mount Lu Fleet.
"Wasn't the Mount Lu supposed to be the only one left?" The Liemeong traveled parallel to the Mount Lu as it stared in amazement at the battered fleet, which still maintained a complement of eight thousand warships.
Qu Yuan answered calmly, "The others are all hollow-shell fleets..."
"Hollow shells? We tried that a long time ago. Void monsters wouldn't waste so much power chasing an empty shell." Liemeong was bewildered. It wasn't as if they hadn't used this tactic before. How could it possibly attract six million Void Army troops? Qu Yuan said, "So you tried it before? Yes, a fleet of pure empty shells is useless. The Void's priority is eliminating populations."
"But after one rearguard action after another, our crew kept dwindling, and the Void Army we could hold back grew smaller and smaller."
"To restrain and attract more enemies, we artificially generated and replicated every crew member."
Liemeong asked in surprise, "What use is that? Replicants don't have souls."
There were two ways to create people. One was to provide everything a mother body needed inside an apparatus and naturally cultivate the offspring. With this method, the offspring completed a normal growth cycle. For example, if humans required a year of gestation, they were honestly cultivated for a year, at most being artificially matured one or two months faster through technology. People created this way had souls.
The second method was pure replication.