The sight of the drone swarm working in space was spectacular. Hundreds upon thousands of silver-white Disassemblers swarmed over the surfaces of the Ark giant ships like ants devouring a colossal beast, tearing and cutting into them. Blinding Cutting Beams lit up the hulls of every giant ship, stripping away layer after layer of their heavy armor, which had already stood for ten thousand years. But this dismantling was not meant to destroy them; it was meant to study and take over the systems of these enormous ships.
When Hao Ren went to repair the giant generators and search for the artifact deep within the Ark, he also issued Nolan a series of orders. He wanted Nolan to figure out the Arks' navigation systems as quickly as possible and take control of each Ark's operation. At the very least, she needed to be able to pilot the ships to wherever he wanted them to go. To that end, Nolan first removed the armor plates near every engine and power furnace on Qunluan (the engine power furnaces, not the shelter's power furnaces). After figuring out how the antiquated equipment worked, she decided that instead of tampering with the Arks' ancient navigation computers, it would be better to cut off the "nerves" of these ships and have the drones install a new set of controllers on the engines and power furnaces. Her idea had received the support of Giant Turtle Rock Platform's logic computer, so she was now putting it into practice.
The engineering drones flew toward the Ark giant ships with devices called "infiltration cores" clutched in their nimble mechanical arms, then attached the infiltration cores to key locations such as the engines. Infiltration cores were silvery-white spheres resembling droplets of mercury. They had soft surfaces and beautiful shapes, and contained