The Mountains and Rivers in His Palm

On October 3, at eight in the morning, the campaign to wipe out the Fake Human Gene Colony began.

Although the enemy had not unlocked the Metal Gunpowder Tech Tree, they could use Flying Birds to drop explosive and incendiary materials. Wei Keng assumed they had long-range attack capabilities, so they still had to set up machine-gun positions behind cover, allowing them to quickly move their firearms if they came under enemy fire. Of course, later events proved this had been an overly cautious assessment.

Across the entire battlefield, Wei Keng could see six enemy-held highlands. The flat lowlands between them allowed large forces to move quickly, and there were two exits, one to the north and one to the south. Three of the highlands had extremely weak defenses, so the first step of the assault was to use Squad Platoon Tactics to feint an attack on two of them.

The feint needed artillery support. Through the shared perception of the Wei Keng Collective, a forward team observed the enemy positions two hundred meters ahead. They then used Telepathic Language to sense the artillery group's distance and firing angle. So the artillery received not only the enemy's Coordinate Data but also firing trajectories calculated from the team's own position. The artillery group calculated the trajectories from its own vantage point, and both sides quickly cross-checked their results. Once they had determined the cause of the slight discrepancy, they corrected the calculations using observations from a third position. Fire!

The three cannons achieved pinpoint accuracy on their second volley. Nearly all the Giant Beasts lying prone on the hilltop tumbled down amid the shattered rocks.

After the bombardment, Wei Keng lowered his assessment of the Fake Human Gene Colony once more. They had occupied this place for three hours without digging a single trench. The enemy commander—or rather, the conscious Node Life—really did have mush for brains.

A feint was still only a feint. They fired artillery and seemed poised to charge at the foot of the hill, but in the end, they never went up to seize the summit. It wasn't that they couldn't. It was that doing so would leave them without a reserve force for other tactical objectives.

Wei Keng thought, Climbing hills is exhausting. We only need to take one or two highlands to establish fire superiority. The main force should conserve its strength and be ready to move along the roads, cutting through enemy lines and controlling key routes.

Twenty minutes after the feint began, the Wei Keng Collective launched its real assault on the two highlands.

There were few Gene Colonies on either highland. Under the cover of machine-gun fire, Wei Keng hunched over and raced up the sloping path. There were no obstacles at all! Yes, none. Wherever Wei Keng looked as he charged uphill, the machine guns raked the area until it became a cloud of blood and flesh.

The garrison on those two hilltops consisted of fewer than six hundred individuals in Ape Form. They had already fallen into chaos when the trees were set ablaze by artillery fire.

An hour later, Wei Keng had taken both highlands. Three hours after that, the cannons—which had been dismantled into three parts—were hauled up the hills and reassembled. From this excellent vantage point, the entire area where the colony had clustered in the valley lay in plain view.

At this stage of the battle, they had absolute control!

Wei Keng's teams sealed off the northern and southern mountain roads with machine guns. The cannons could also fire down on every part of the area from above, trapping the entire humanoid Gene Colony within a ten-square-kilometer zone.

They had failed to break out three hours earlier, then failed to defend the highlands just an hour ago. Now, locked in place beneath Wei Keng's guns, they were like a Stone Stool trapped inside the Nine Dragon Cover!

Wei Keng's cannons fired from the hilltops again and again. There was nowhere to hide across the dozens of square kilometers. Shrapnel reaped the beasts in the valleys in swathes, while the Gene Colonies on the highlands were unable to move and had barely any defenses. They were like a swarm of ants: each cannonball was a cup of boiling water poured over them.

Here and now, this mountainous region became a smoky Purgatory for the Gene Colony.

By four in the afternoon, Wei Keng's cannons on the hilltops had wiped out four large groups of beasts. Two hours later, more than two thousand corpses lay scattered throughout the valleys. It was a true scene of carnage. There would be no recovery of life this time; the mass slaughter had left the colony collectively on the brink of death.

Perhaps only now did the highest-ranking Snake Woman Priestess in the colony realize the hopelessness of their situation. In the final moments before their destruction, she ordered the remaining members of the colony to charge the hill where the cannons were positioned, hoping to perish alongside part of the Wei Keng Collective. But that slope became their final graveyard.

As the sun sank until only half its disk remained above the horizon, the slope was stained with brown blood and strewn with bodies, like mosquitoes slapped dead on a college dormitory wall. The colony had vanished completely. At least, Wei Keng could no longer sense any sign of its existence.

The military mission was complete. Now it was time to withdraw.

That night, Wei Keng and Zeng Jiakan went over the map again, moving the pieces representing their corps through a number of colonies and back along their route.

Wei Keng pointed at a colony on the map. "This one is weak. We'll fight our way back through it."

On October 5, the corps returned from the area occupied by enemy colonies in Northern Guangdong, approaching from the west. This route avoided the radiation zones controlled by the strongest Gene Colonies.

Bai Linglu's comment: Oh, actually, those colonies weren't all that strong. The conservative tactics were purely a matter of caution; they didn't want to get bogged down while withdrawing. After all, he—Wei Keng—still had eighteen wounded, with no fatalities.

The supposedly weak Gene Colony Wei Keng had chosen wasn't actually small. It had around four thousand members, but they were undergoing metamorphosis.

"Metamorphosis" here was a biological term, as in metamorphic development: tadpoles and caterpillars completely transformed into different life forms as they matured, such as frogs and moths.

This Gene Colony had just emerged from a damp reservoir area. Most of its members were still amphibious forms—Giant Salamanders.

These ferocious Giant Salamanders were five meters long, with saber-toothed tiger fangs and shark-like crushing teeth in their mouths. Their bodies were slick and pitch-black, making them look like some monstrous reptilian Xenomorph.

They were best suited to Water Areas, where they could move swiftly across Tidal Flats. But these primitive forms were ill-suited to mountainous terrain. They were in the process of changing their life forms to adapt to the new environment; at the very least, their legs needed to grow longer, and their skin needed to retain moisture like a snake's.

Because they were in this unusual state of Gene Switching, many individuals were Dormant Development. Their Life Radiation seemed somewhat weak. So Wei Keng came knocking.

Starting on the morning of the sixth, the Wei Keng Group passed through the colony's territory.

In the Wei Keng Collective's combat records, the only word used was "pass through." The word "engage" never appeared.

It only counted as an engagement when two Collectives charged at each other. These creatures didn't even have a Collective structure, so Wei Keng really couldn't bring himself to call this a battle.

That didn't mean Wei Keng refrained from firing as they passed through.

They set up the mortars and laid down a barrage on several areas with strong Life Radiation Sources. It was like turning on a light at night, seeing a mass of mosquitoes outside the window, and spraying them with insecticide.

Wei Keng's grenade launchers fired Incendiary Bombs. Within five minutes of the flames landing in the jungle, open fires had broken out. The blaze sent the local species scattering in every direction. The Node Creature still retreated in a dense cluster, of course, so Wei Keng fired a second barrage.

In Wei Keng's perception, the Life Radiation Source where the Node Creature was located stopped moving and began to enter the jungle. Soon, what came into view was a stand of trees burned down to bare trunks.

As Wei Keng entered the jungle, his Life Radiation drew closer to the Node Creature from the perspective of this world's colony. The remaining creatures in the colony leapt up from the ashes in groups of two or three, trying to attack him. But their suicidal charges did nothing beyond kicking up clouds of Plant Ash. The jungle had burned bare, with nowhere to hide. They were like puffed-up teddy-bear crackers trying to stop a wheel, crushed to bits one after another.

The expression "an army passing through leaves everything combed clean" seemed apt today. Wei Keng passed through the burned jungle, stabbing every scattered individual in the colony.

Even at the end, though, Wei Keng passed through the jungle without approaching the Node Creature.

Old Master Wei Keng had no interest in satisfying his curiosity. His priority was to return. As long as the Node Creature didn't move, he would simply walk five hundred meters around it.

But after he had gone around it, Wei Keng's artillerymen assessed the situation and decided to lighten their load. They lobbed dozens of Satchel Charges in the Node Creature's direction.

With a rumble of Flame Bursts, Wei Keng bid a warm farewell to the Gene Colony blocking his way.

After the eighth, Wei Keng returned to the Supply Point, swapped out the wounded, and replaced weapon parts. One full Infiltration Attack followed by an Infiltration Return, and the mission was complete.

That made one trip! If they could do it once, they could do it a second time, then a third. Facing a region occupied by more than twenty-five colonies and at least thirty thousand Large Individuals, the six-hundred-strong corps had never expected to settle everything in a single battle.

Wei Keng: "There are plenty of enemies, and winter is long. I'm in no hurry."

Once back in the city, they could refill their Health Bar—the wounded would heal themselves—and their Mana Bar with ammunition, fuel, food, and medicine. Then they could head out for another round.

On October 15, Wei Keng launched another raid, this time against a stronger colony.

On the eighteenth, they cut through to its rear. On the nineteenth, they attacked throughout the day. Under artillery bombardment, Wei Keng's infantry regiment reached the place where the Node Creature was hiding: an old factory wrapped in layers of silken threads. They fired twenty-kilogram Satchel Charges into it all at once. The eighteen-meter-long Node Creature, shaped like a bamboo stick insect, broke into dozens of segments under the shock wave, then writhed in the flames for several dozen seconds. The colony lost its ability to think as one. It surged through the escape route Wei Keng had left open in his encirclement, straight toward the killing ground prepared beyond the perimeter.

In the end, perhaps only one twentieth of the colony's species escaped the flames. In this chaotic Natural World, the few survivors would soon be devoured by other Gene Colonies.

On the twentieth, as the Wei Keng Combat Camp withdrew, it wiped out a small Collective while marching sixty kilometers south.

On the twenty-first, it finally shook off the Gene Colonies to the north and returned safely to its Stationed Place.

The third Infiltration began on October 25 and ended with their return on November 2.

The fourth began on November 8 and ended on November 15.

Then came the fifth, then the sixth.

On average, they could make two trips a month. They would jump into the ring of Gene Colonies, beat them to a pulp, then jump back out—then jump back in, then back out again. One round trip took a week!

By mid-November, the Gene Colonies moving south had lost their momentum. They were like a chunk of meat "conditioned by electric shocks," their already limited ability to adapt worn down by Wei Keng's rapid, repeated attacks. They were growing exhausted, even afraid!

After all, the Wei Keng Collective remained in a steady state from start to finish, without suffering any substantial losses. To the northern colonies, it gave the unmistakable impression of a natural enemy.

On December 4, as the sixth Infiltration came to an end, the rumble of tractors sent all the small animals near the column scurrying into their burrows.

After the Wei Keng Collective crossed the mountain forest, they sensed something and began looking more and more often at the flowers, grass, and trees around them.

Zeng Jiakan followed Wei Keng's gaze. At first, he didn't notice anything, but then he looked more closely at the Grass, Wood, and Mountain Forest around them. It seemed as though the leaves on the trees were turning, as if trying to avoid something.

Zeng Jiakan caught up with Wei Keng beside him and asked, "Is there danger here?"

Wei Keng shook his head. "There's no danger. War is just too cruel."

In Wei Keng's Life Radiation perception, part of his awareness was gradually spreading into the Grass and Wood Forest. The most basic producers in these Food Chains had now entered his attention.

In the third phase of the conflict, Wei Keng attacked with tremendous speed during every Infiltration. After the artillery strikes, he left vast areas of the battlefield scorched earth. And when fighting the Gene Colonies, he casually destroyed even more plant life!

In battle, Wei Keng had always focused on eliminating the enemy's mobile forces. He had never given plants a thought. But in fact, after every animal Gene Colony occupied an area, it maintained a symbiotic relationship with the Plant Communities there! Now that Wei Keng had repeatedly disrupted those relationships, the plant Gene Colonies in the area were sending him connection requests.

The connection was the plants accepting Wei Keng's Gene Radiation.

In a fraction of the chlorophyll-bearing organisms, proteins similar to those in Wei Keng's Visual Photoreceptor Cells had appeared. The electrolytic control in the plants had also developed Bio-currents with frequencies corresponding to those in Wei Keng's Nerve Cells.

These changes were still too slight to have any noticeable effect. But according to the system's projections, once the hostile Gene Colonies had all left and Wei Keng had become the only colony in the area, the likely result was that he would be able to gain a faint awareness of his surroundings through the jungle.

Faint! Extremely faint! The maximum awareness that any single plant could provide Wei Keng was so negligible as to be uncountable.

This awareness could never reach the level of pain! Plants couldn't support Complex Sensory Organs to send signals to the gene-node species. They only used this synchronized pattern to let the upper levels of the Gene Colony understand the total energy of the ecosystem in their territory, then regulate the populations of herbivores and carnivores for sustainable use and growth.

Until now, these plants had always favored species with strong Life Radiation. Wei Keng hadn't been among their preferred choices. But after the war, the Life Radiation of those powerful species had been repeatedly shaken by Wei Keng's attacks, while his own Life Radiation remained constant.

If you used an Anthropomorphic Method to describe it as "the trees of this forest are beginning to submit to Wei Keng," you would end up with a distorted understanding.

Anthropomorphic thinking was an auxiliary function of the human cerebral cortex, a way of trying to understand one's own kind. Plants had no emotional organs. They merely followed Stress Instinct, much like Paramecia, seeking advantage and avoiding harm!

As the Life Radiation of the other animal colonies in the area became unstable from repeated attacks and constant mutations, Wei Keng's genes remained largely unchanged. So, as the plants received Life Radiation information from the top of the Food Chain, the Wei Keng Collective's signal accumulated more than any other.

This was an entirely objective phenomenon.

Standing on a tractor, Wei Keng made a rather chūnibyō gesture, stretching out his palm toward the vast mountains and rivers. It looked as if he were trying to control the sprawling jungle. But under Zeng Jiakan's gaze as he tried to record the moment, nothing happened! Oh, perhaps something did happen, but it wasn't important.

Wei Keng had only made the trees' roots spread out just a tiny bit. That was all he could do.

Wei Keng could manage only a tiny effect, a power he would forget as soon as it passed. Others in the Time-Space Administration Bureau would keep trying to develop it, but their seemingly worthwhile efforts wouldn't necessarily be correct.