After several seconds of stunned silence, Hao Ren finally cried out, "No... brain core?! Isn't that one of your vital organs?"
The Firstborn did not answer. Instead, a huge, chaotic mass of thoughts that nearly made his head split suddenly surged into Hao Ren's mind. At first, he thought he was under psychic attack, but he soon realized that countless inexplicable memories and pieces of knowledge had appeared in his brain. He understood that this was a more advanced form of communication. The Firstborn had probably found conversation too inefficient and directly shared its knowledge and experiences with him.
After searching through those memories, Hao Ren was dumbstruck. "This is..."
The Firstborn on the Zhuom planet had no brain core because it had evolved its brain core into another form ten thousand years ago!
Under normal circumstances, a mature Firstborn would have several brain cores in its body, with the number never exceeding ten. But the one on the Zhuom planet was different. To accommodate that immense virtual world and ensure better compatibility with the programming language created by the Zhuom people, the Firstborn here had deliberately remodeled its body. It had broken its brain core down into countless neural clusters and distributed them evenly throughout its body. These additional neural clusters could grow more neural tendrils, which were the key organs connecting to the mechanical equipment outside. Breaking the brain core into countless small parts had another function: it provided sufficient backups. Even if two-thirds of the planet were struck by disaster, the remaining one-third of the neural clusters could still maintain the integrity of the virtual world.
The Firstborn of today had effectively dismantled its brain and integrated it throughout its entire body. More than a million "miniature brain cores" were scattered beneath every inch of the Zhuom