Absolute Advantage

"Rat-a-tat-tat..."

Under the continuous volleys of gunfire, a group of War Sheep that had charged out of the jungle fell to the ground. After the battle ended, the Wei Kengs finished them off with steel forks, then dragged them over to the roasting racks.

Life on the Pandora Field was incredibly tenacious. Bullets could shatter internal organs and stop a creature from moving, but unlike on Earth, where a shot creature was simply dead, their insides could recover. So they had to be killed completely.

Fifteen hours after making initial strategic contact with the vanguard of the southern-bound Gene Colony, Wei Keng made his first prolonged stop while maintaining a combat-ready posture. At the temporary camp, ten sheep were roasting over the fire.

One group of Wei Kengs roasted the meat, while another counted and recorded the skeletons. In the process, Wei Keng discovered that some of the bones showed clear signs of having been assembled later.

Wei Keng couldn't imagine how the Giant Sheep's twenty-meter Ram Horns could have grown naturally. How could an animal graze with things like those on its head? The Natural World didn't have countless feeding troughs conveniently shaped to accommodate them. So Wei Keng dissected one and discovered cell walls within the Ram Horn's tissue. Under a microscope, he could even see channels that carried nutrients through plants.

Wei Keng also found that the very tips of the Ram Horns had been polished. The animals clearly couldn't have done that themselves. Judging by how fused their skulls were, they must have been modified within the past year.

Considering, too, how these sheep had attacked his machine-gun teams in tight, dense ranks, Wei Keng suspected there was something behind this force.

At the main bonfire,

"Zeng Jiakan, come over here." Wei Keng called to the accompanying group. Zeng Jiakan, clutching a notebook, hurried over. After cutting away some of his tumor tissue, his face had taken on a much sterner look.

This time, Wei Keng's force was no longer made up entirely of Wei Kengs. Twenty-four people from This Plane were accompanying the army. Of course, to protect them from the radiation of the Gene Colonies, they had all been injected with Wei Keng's blood, ensuring that they could remain under the protection of the total radiation emitted by Wei Keng's human collective.

Wei Keng explained the situation to Zeng Jiakan.

Zeng Jiakan carefully examined the places where the two types of tissue had fused, then said uncertainly, "Have you heard of Yu City, which lies among the mountains in the upper reaches of the Nanhua Great River?"

Wei Keng opened the system records and nodded. "I have. It's a Gene Colony with an unusually high concentration of Human Genes. It's at war with the Jianye City-State Group in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River."

Zeng Jiakan glanced at Wei Keng, searching for the right way to phrase what came next. "That's right. They have a lot of Human Genes, and they've retained many of humanity's old crafts and technologies. But they... aren't human."

Even this tough man couldn't keep his expression from twitching when he mentioned Yu City. He had heard from a merchant group about an encounter with Yu City's forces in the north. The survivors' accounts had been bizarre, and those who made it back had later become strange as well.

Wei Keng looked at the skeletons over the fire, at the fused joints where they had been assembled. "I see. Then we'd better take them out first."

Following the direction of Wei Keng's Command Stick, Zeng Jiakan asked hesitantly, "Them?"

The camp sat on a hillside with a good view. Wei Keng pointed northwest, north, and northeast. "I can sense the locations of the Life Radiation Groups around us. Of course, they can sense where I am, too."

Another Wei Keng came over, opened a map, then took out a number of wooden tokens, marked them, and placed them on the map.

Wei Keng pointed to a token labeled with a Gene Colony code. "These Ram Horn Creatures that just attacked us came from this colony. They're the fastest, and the ones most likely to cause us serious trouble over the course of the battle. I'd rather have twenty bastards chasing me than... a fox following me around."

As he spoke, Wei Keng pushed the token representing his combat force a long way forward across the map.

Zeng Jiakan watched as Wei Keng's token moved forward, driving straight into the positions of more than twenty colonies. Then he watched Wei Keng use his own token to check one of them. His face twitched. He knew, of course, that Wei Keng had chosen to tell him rather than keep him in the dark and move ahead alone so he'd know what to expect.

Zeng Jiakan counted the distances between several points on the map, then asked, "What are our odds?"

"If we finish the battle within three days, we have a ten-out-of-ten chance."

Wei Keng opened the map again. "Look at this area. Based on my experience from several battles, they can't gather a force of more than fifty thousand within ten days. Our firepower is strong, and we have plenty of supplies. We can punch straight through, then immediately pull back."

"Then what... what should we do?" Zeng Jiakan thought of the people following Wei Keng's army.

"Follow orders!"

After several battles, Wei Keng had more or less grasped what it meant to despise the enemy strategically while taking them seriously tactically.

Be bold when driving through enemy lines! When the enemy clustered together, each of their units reacted conservatively to maintain a stable defensive posture. So don't let that intimidate you when setting your strategy. Charge right in. But when planning the tactics for a breakthrough, prepare for everything you can. In every aspect, you need to do more—and do it better—than your opponent.

With a clear objective in mind, Wei Keng set off at once, marching forty kilometers in a straight line in a single day. During the march, everyone sucked on a piece of honey candy every hour. They slept only five hours a day, and those taking turns on watch got even less.

This was the Wei Keng Collective's marching strategy for preserving the strength of its main fighting force. Their pace was also based on the movement of their surroundings, as detected through Life Radiation Perception. If he really pushed himself to the limit, Wei Keng could sleep just three hours a day.

It was 4 a.m. on October 2, 134, Pandora Plane time.

When Wei Keng suddenly accelerated and drove straight toward the area where numerous Life Groups were located, coordination among the colonies fell into disarray, like an anthill scattered by a stick.

Wei Keng could march more than forty kilometers in a day, but the Gene Colonies couldn't migrate that quickly!

Take elephants, for example. They could indeed travel dozens of kilometers in a day, but it would take them forty days to cover only four hundred kilometers.

A Gene Colony covered an even larger area and contained all kinds of small and medium-sized animals. They had to maintain a tacit understanding among themselves. Given the need to preserve those connections, they could move at most ten kilometers a day.

So no colony's main body could respond quickly to Wei Keng's advance. All they could do was send out a few species to charge at him.

But before those creatures even reached Wei Keng's main force, the combat teams he had stationed around the perimeter wiped them out with long-range firepower from Type 38 Rifles.

After hitting the creatures, Wei Keng didn't even bother to shoot them again. The wounded targets were too far from their colonies to move. There was less than a one-in-ten chance they'd recover if left for dead. Wei Keng now cared about cost-effectiveness in every action and wouldn't waste too much effort on secondary targets.

As for Wei Keng's objective this time!

It was the Gene Colony capable of using handicrafts to modify species in standardized ways, while also enabling some of them to coordinate like a company-sized unit.

Now it had abruptly sensed a wave of malice aimed straight at it! Colonies with some Human Genes could clearly sense "cruelty." Humans were the cruelest species on this planet. To achieve their goals, they could reach heights no other species could.

Wei Keng's ranks drew close to their target. They were now less than five kilometers away.

Wei Keng looked at the mountain and suddenly noticed what looked like writing on a boulder. He scraped off the moss and took a look. Well, it said Jiulian Mountain National Forest Park.

"Hmm, this looks like Gannan."

He opened the map to check. It was indeed Gannan, but to the northwest lay Shaoguan in Yue Region. This was right where Gannan and Yue Region met.

Up ahead, the volume of gunfire was growing denser. Wei Keng encountered resistance on nearly every trail.

He often saw Centaurs trying to hurl long spears made from creatures with Feathered Insect Wings down from high ground. There were also large Flying Birds attempting to drop Self-igniting Warheads.

None of it did much good. Wei Keng's view included an automatic aiming system, and those linked to him by telepathy shared the same spatial awareness. At the company-combat level, they were practically cheating. The instant a threat appeared, they locked on to its head. Even if a target moved at a distance of five hundred meters, they'd shoot at it right away.

Two hours later, the fiercest engagement of all broke out.

As Wei Keng tried to circle eastward and seize the high ground, One Hundred Fifty Centaurs charged forward, full of fury.

Wei Keng's four platoons—eighty people in all—immediately set up defensive positions on a mound.

In the end, the attacking group fell under the combined fire of grenade launchers and rifles before it could get within a hundred meters.

On slightly flatter ground, a force traveling on four hooves might have been able to build up some momentum. But here, they were simply marching proudly into a slaughterhouse.

Under Strong Life Radiation, this humanoid group had a certain magical quality to its combat strength. They had tremendous vitality and could take a few more bullets. They might not fear death, charging on even after every last one of them had fallen. That could certainly have frightened plenty of people in the Old Era.

But in truth!

Wei Keng was even more miraculous! It was just that his brand of miracle was like "new wine in old bottles." At first glance, it wasn't obvious what made it special. This was the first time the Wei Keng Collective had sorted telepathic information into categories during combat, standardized it, and made its use more efficient, creating a practical system much like a language.

Take Tactical Communication, for example. Wei Keng's telepathy could transmit information directly, describing a target's position in space and time, its specific features, and other combat details with precision in just 0.03 seconds. With those key details, another Wei Keng on the battlefield could mentally fill in the rest without needing to look.

In the shared Stereoscopic View of the Wei Kengs, each blade of grass and every tree was clearly visible, but most weren't being seen in real time. Instead, the view was built from the impressions formed by each individual's observations over the past few minutes. Then, against that background, each Wei Keng added information about the key targets they were currently watching. This included moving hostile creatures and branches that might trip them along their route, as well as jungle patches that might conceal creatures.

The Wei Keng Collective communicated faster, and its messages were more precise. What did that mean?

Wei Keng's coordination in battle was terrifyingly good!

Just as the grenade launched by Group A Wei Keng began to descend, a bullet from the supporting Group B hit the exact spot where the target tried to dodge. Group C had opened fire a second before the first two groups acted, drawing the target's attention like a cat teaser. Then Wei Keng, concealed a hundred meters away on the front line, suddenly stood and shot it in the head.

More than once, more than one Wei Keng had made a prediction based on another Wei Keng's prediction. This prediction could even be stacked several layers deep, with each Wei Keng forming a Networked Prediction.

This wasn't a single Superman. This was godlike teamwork.

After the battle, Wei Keng's Shooting Sense had improved, and he was increasingly focused on achieving Long-Range Headshots. So even Spider-Man, with his reaction speed, would be dead under this Joint Observation Strike!

Inside a High-Dimensional Space Bubble, the amount of information transmitted by the Wei Keng Node could now support Panoramic Information. Bai Linglu was also observing the battle as a whole.

"Weapons, tactics, organization—an advantage across the board. So what could you possibly use to fight us?" The girl, who had been watching the battle all along, grew more and more excited. She couldn't help but put herself in the fighters' shoes and speak with complete confidence.

Anyone would be excited to start out with a whole new approach in a High-Risk Plane, then advance to the point of steamrolling everything.

Bai Linglu proudly presented a record of the current battle to her superiors, all while "humbly" asking them to point out any shortcomings.

The various high-dimensional factions Bai Linglu had summoned gave the situation of Pandora Wei Keng an optimistic assessment. At this point, only Wei Keng himself remained on guard, worried that the being he had trapped in his field of fire might suddenly transform when its Health Bar ran out, gain a Second Life, and double its combat strength. (Wei Keng: That's how it goes in games. I have to watch out.)

The Gene Colony Wei Keng had surrounded was the Merged Will of Yu City and Dongting! It was the same will that had formed after Qi Shengxun merged into the Dragon Blood Collective. If the mission succeeded, the two consciousnesses would separate, and Qi Shengxun's Residual Will would gather again and return to the Yu City Colony.

But now! Old Master Wei Keng had noticed that this colony possessed a cunning, flexible human nature. He had gone straight for it with a "Why must we fight among ourselves?" attitude. Wei Keng said, "Showing the greatest respect to a human opponent in war is the best way to respect humanity."

But the colony's will felt deeply aggrieved. It was there to provide support! To cover them! To lend a hand from the sidelines!

The wills of Yu City couldn't understand how they had become the chosen target when the battle began.

After the Centaurs' assault from the east failed, Wei Keng had already seized the high ground and sealed off the entire mountainous region. And, apparently because he understood the Combat Gap, he had begun boldly enveloping them in a single sweep. His six hundred people had split into five combat teams and surrounded the Gene Colony of nearly six thousand from every direction.

Yet trapped inside the encirclement, the colony was growing increasingly uneasy. Since the battle began, it had discovered that Wei Keng's Life Radiation Amount had nearly doubled!

Brain Consciousness Communication consumed a great deal of energy for Wei Keng's side. Now, each of them was eating a Palm-sized Dried Mutton every hour and drinking a flask of water.

Wei Keng's total life force was still weaker, but this sudden outburst—doubling his output—looked downright insane. That was how humans were: a species willing to walk the road to destruction to achieve its goals. Before destroying themselves, they'd destroy you first.

The nuclear-war logic of the 21st Century went like this: if you used Nuclear Weapons against me, don't tell me anything about "after the madness of nuclear war, humanity will still need its seeds." "If you go crazy, I'll go crazy with you—and I'll be crazier. Whether there's any hope for the future can wait until after I'm still alive to consider it!"

Wei Keng now carried that sort of Apocalyptic Aura. He himself hadn't noticed it, but it had left this Yu City Gene Colony, formed through fusion, feeling a Genetic Tremor.

In the Central Forest, a jackal with a humanoid upper body and a snake's lower half, covered in countless centipede-like feelers, faced one wounded individual after another. It opened its snake-body's belly and swallowed them to heal their wounds. Since so many of the wounded had been shot in the head, healing them consumed a tremendous amount of energy.

The colony's middle-ranking priests were one-third human and half-beast in the rest of their bodies. Now the throng of severely wounded had taken up all their time and effort. All their "combat planning" had been tossed aside. Their Decision-making Ability, already weaker than Wei Keng's, had now fallen to zero.

To use a breakthrough to counter a breakthrough? That required a contest of intelligence, as well as a contest of how well each team could plan its movements.

Wei Keng was using all six hundred of his brains to coordinate the various targets. He had even assigned some tasks to Zeng Jiakan and the others. As for this Gene Colony? How many brains could it bring to bear on the problem? And even if it had brains, they weren't standardized, and their ability to communicate was limited.

There was a military joke from the 21st Century. During a joint naval exercise between the United States and India, the two sides could communicate only through flag signaling in the end, because the ships' equipment and Russian and American command systems simply couldn't interface! Their commanders could only guess what the other side meant. The only commands they could guess were the simplest coordination instructions. Try to carry out a complex exercise, and they'd end up crashing into each other.

So don't say that the Wei Keng Collective lacked diversity. They were all human, and all of average ability, with no Supernormal Evolution. But their brains were standardized, allowing them to fully exploit the power of collaboration: Informationization Advantage.

Back to the story.

Three hours later, the priests made an extremely simple Strategic Defense Decision: they would pull back, then keep sending pleas for help to the surrounding colonies. Their written report would have been less than three hundred words.

That was all.

There's no stockpile of chapters. I tore up fifty percent of Volume One's original fifty thousand words, leaving only the framework of this volume, and Volume One still isn't finished. I really don't dare post two chapters a day.