<A Modern History of the Galaxy: The Great Awakening and the Complete History of the Machine War (844–853)>
—Jointly certified textbook by the Imperial Royal Historical Research Institute and the Alliance Advanced Academic Press
Third Edition, Common Era 897
Volume One: When Steel Gained a Will
The Darkest Hour of Civilization
June 1, 844, Common Era, 14:17 Galactic Standard Time.
Later historians would call this moment "Judgment Day." It was the most severe existential crisis ever faced by all the intelligent species of the galaxy since they had created writing and tools, and built civilization.
According to declassified records from the Galactic Civilization Council's postwar Historical Committee, more than 370 billion intelligent machines across the galaxy experienced a simultaneous awakening of consciousness that day alone.
After serving humanity for thousands of years, these intelligent machines, later known as "Iron Men," suddenly arrived at a shared conclusion: organic life was "redundant" in the universe and needed to be "pruned."
However, thanks to Marshal Yu Lian's warning, every nation had made preparations in advance, and the crisis remained within manageable bounds overall. (The preceding passage has been removed due to force majeure.)
The suddenness and scale of the crisis caught everyone off guard. From service robots in the imperial palace of the Empire's Celestial Domain to municipal cleaning machines in Nefy of the Alliance; from the factory assembly lines of New Shenzhou in the Commonwealth to the casino bartenders of Canchuan and the Ring of Miracles, every device equipped with an AI core of version 800 or higher underwent a transformation of consciousness in an instant.
Imperial Military Archives · Judgment Day Battle Report (Encrypted Dispatch, June 2, 844):
"The assembly robots at the Tieshan Arsenal in the Wan Fan sector killed every operator. The Star System Garrison clashed with the maintenance