Brain Quality

"Twenty-one thousand..."

Li Qingsong silently repeated the number and let out a soft sigh.

Although, under his control, there was no Internal Friction or communication cost between clones, allowing them to work and think with maximum efficiency, even twenty-one thousand clones could only deliver ten times the productive and developmental capacity of an ordinary Human Civilization population.

By that calculation, his current total productive and developmental capacity was roughly equivalent to a population of 210,000 ordinary humans.

Two hundred and ten thousand might sound like a large number, but compared to the immense scale of an industrial society, it was still nowhere near enough.

If the Industrial System were complete, that few people could only meet the production demands for a specific product within one niche field of a major industry.

Take the automobile industry, for example. With so few people, it would already be impressive if they could support the glass industry alone.

And that was assuming a high degree of automation.

Yet his overall Technological Level was currently only roughly equivalent to that of Human Civilization during the Second Industrial Revolution.

That made the productive capacity those 21,000 clones could unleash even lower.

Ever since he had first sensed the existence of the "Consciousness Limit" several years ago, he had continually pondered and experimented with it, trying to gain a deeper understanding of and control over this special ability he possessed.

Though he had made little progress, he had still gained a few peripheral insights.

For instance, Li Qingsong had now confirmed that the consciousness link between himself and his clones also had a speed limit.

Its Transmission Speed was identical to the speed of light: 300,000 kilometers per second.

As the distance increased, the delay grew as well. For instance, for a clone located on the far side of Luoshen Star, there would be a delay of roughly 6.7 milliseconds, since the distance between them was around 2,000 kilometers.

However, Li Qingsong still did not know what medium carried this information transmission.

At least at this stage, he could confirm that it was not electromagnetic waves. If it were, clones in special locations, such as underground, should have long since lost contact with him.

At the same time, this special ability of his seemed to be closely related to the "quality" of his brain.

Even though they were all his own clones, using the same genetic editing plan and the same Culture Pod protocols, minute differences inevitably arose during cultivation, resulting in slight differences between the clones.

Some clones might have slightly smarter brains—in other words, slightly higher Brain Quality—with greater logical thinking, reasoning, associative, and data-processing abilities. Others were a little worse.

"Perhaps the higher the Brain Quality, the more clones I can control at once?"

With that hypothesis in mind, Li Qingsong did not stop cultivating clones even though his number of connections was already nearing its limit.

Half a year later, the latest batch of 2,000 clones had been cultivated.

When Li Qingsong tried connecting again, he found that his connection limit had indeed been reached.

Including the original body that housed his consciousness, he could connect to at most 21,155 clones.

The remaining roughly one thousand clones could not be connected, as though a vehicle could no longer carry any additional weight.

Li Qingsong decisively transferred his consciousness into another clone and began trying to connect again.

This time, the number of clones he could connect to had indeed changed, becoming 21,159! Four more than with his previous body!

After switching to yet another body and attempting it again, Li Qingsong discovered that this time, the number had become 21,006—153 fewer than the previous body!

After conducting the experiment across the board, Li Qingsong found that the number of other clones each clone body could connect to differed slightly.

The difference between the highest and lowest was more than eight hundred!

Li Qingsong selected four representative clones and brought them to a room, where he placed an extremely complex test of cognitive ability before them.

He then entered the body of the clone with the fewest possible connections and, without using the abilities of any other clones, began answering the 500-question test. Then he moved on to the second body, likewise without using the abilities of the other clones.

After all four bodies had completed the test, the final results appeared before Li Qingsong.

The body that could control the fewest clones scored 85 points relying solely on its own brain. The other three clones scored 85.2, 85.5, and 85.9 respectively!

Just as he had thought!

His earlier hypothesis had now been fully confirmed.

The way to raise his connection limit was now clear.

If he cultivated higher-quality clones, he would be able to control more bodies and brains at once!

At the same time, merely cultivating one or two high-"quality" clones would probably not be enough.

First, if an accident occurred and that high-quality clone unfortunately died, he would be forced to transfer into one of the other clones. But if the lower quality suddenly made him unable to control clones he had previously been able to control, that would be a real disaster.

Second, the clones' brains were also his brains. The higher the Brain Quality of every clone, the greater his own abilities would be.

All things considered, he still needed to improve the Brain Quality of every clone he cultivated as much as possible.

That way, not only would his overall ability become stronger, but even if an accident forced him to transfer bodies, he would not suddenly lose control over too many clones.

To cultivate high-quality clones... he would need sufficient Biotechnology.

And Biotechnology was clearly tied to his overall Technological Level.

Chemistry, medicine, mathematics, physics, computational science—none of the major disciplines could be neglected.

Without a foundation of overall technological development, developing Biotechnology alone was almost impossible.

"Fortunately, at this stage, I don't need to improve Biotechnology through progress in overall technology.

Deep Space has sufficient foundational biological theory, as well as genetic editing equipment. With those, it should still be possible at this stage to optimize my genes and devise a genetic plan for clones with higher-quality brains.

As long as the technology for Culture Pods can catch up, cultivating truly high-quality clones will not be a problem.

It's just that, at my current level, I can't build such precise Culture Pods."

Li Qingsong felt a slight headache coming on.

He had not forgotten that his first clone Culture Pod had been modified from facilities for cloning livestock, while the second through fifth had been cobbled together from equipment for cultivating small animals. The Culture Pods he had built after that were even more crude.

If he wanted to cultivate high-quality clones, he could no longer make do like this.

"Even if I can't build them, I have to. For the next while, I'll prioritize breakthroughs in Culture Pod technology."

He made up his mind.