"If they destroy the gear, wouldn't all the machines on our side that use gears break down?"
Mo Qiong asked after Sister You returned.
Sister You sat down, rubbing her stomach. "I wish they would damage the gear."
Mo Qiong was startled. Janaan explained, "The things we made using the gear have no value now. First, anything that used the gear was an unfinished product that failed to meet our engineering standards. Second, our technology is highly advanced now, and it will take us a long time just to digest their technology. Those half-baked machines were going to be scrapped anyway, so even if they all become 'junk,' it doesn't matter."
Mo Qiong thought that made sense. Most of the Society's branches could produce a high-precision instrument, so losing one would only be a minor setback. The truly precious parts were the core components they couldn't manufacture—but those had been replaced by the gear.
Sister You continued, "If the gear is damaged to the point where it can no longer be recognized as a gear, it will be reborn inside the last machine that used it."
"If that machine no longer exists at all, then it will appear in the one before that, and so on. In theory, destroying it continuously can completely wear it away. But it's extremely useful, and even its side effect is useful... so we've never chosen to destroy it."
Mo Qiong could also see that the gear could be used to destroy machines that weapons were incapable of destroying.
Suppose there was a spaceship made of material so tough that even a nuclear bomb couldn't damage it. As long as they found out how it worked and had the gear replace some insignificant component, then destroyed the gear, the entire spaceship would immediately be rendered