The Battle in the Asteroid Belt (Part One)

Most species that pursue death are information-based species.

When other species die, they really die. Very few civilized species have the option of multiple lives.

After all, not everyone can become the Fourth Catastrophe.

For information-based species, however, death had another name: "version update."

The "virtual personality" technology and "consciousness duplication" technology in the Cyber Testing Grounds could both be considered forms of "version update."

Technologies like these were "prohibited technologies" in most civilizations, also known as 404 technologies, because they involved altering the form of a species.

This was a field that only ascension technology could touch.

Thus, when Gao Gong entered the ruins, he guessed that they belonged to an information-based species.

However, after truly entering the ruins, Gao Gong overturned his own assumption.

The blue-skinned, fish-gilled humanoid statue nearby represented the Aida, a standard aquatic life-form.

The way he had killed himself was by tearing off his own blue gills and suffocating to death.

The cloaked, masked man beside him, who had killed himself with a lightsaber, was a standard member of the Jedi race, a civilized species skilled in lightsaber melee combat. They were also known as the cosmic swordsmen.

As for the statue of the species that looked like a "blue mushroom" behind them, Gao Gong did not recognize it. However, judging by the faint mental aura emanating from the tips of its tentacles, he guessed that it was probably a life-form similar to a "brain in a vat."

Not only were their methods of death different, even their species were different.

Thus, Gao Gong overturned his earlier conclusion once again.

"These statues—"

Gao Gong murmured.

These were not simple statues. Relying on the instincts of a high-level carbon-based species, Gao Gong sensed the aura of different species within them.

That aura felt as though