The Path to Grand Unification

Infinite Game Company, the largest virtual gaming company in the Free Business Alliance, held nearly 70% of the global market and maintained good partnerships with many countries and warlords.

It had a military background of its own, controlled the most cutting-edge communications and artificial intelligence technology, used virtual game operations to make profits and collect data, and developed the latest intelligent weapons. Those weapons then flowed across the world through military channels.

It was a super corporation that called itself a gaming company but was actually a multinational arms dealer, and one of the major forces opposing Hong Alliance's Googol Tech.

Lin Li accepted the invitation to become a world administrator that night. Yet only two days later, the Board of Directors issued a transfer order. He would be heading to India as the executive president of its local branch, with all of Infinite Game Company's resources there placed under his control.

Outside the Commercial Alliance, this super corporation would not seem nearly so harmless. Controlling all resources meant Lin Li would have several armies in his hands—several warlord factions in India had been formed with Infinite Game Company's support.

This also gave him a deeper understanding of Li Heng's power. That night, he had received this answer: "The concentration of power also means the concentration of weakness. As long as those controlling everything remain fragile humans, controlling someone in a high position is enough to affect the entire situation."

Without question, certain members of Infinite Game Company's Board of Directors had unknowingly fallen under Li Heng's control during the past month. That was how Lin Li had leaped from a game designer at headquarters to a regional overlord.

In southern India, Lin Li stepped off the plane alone. Company personnel who had been waiting at the airport picked him up and began introducing the branch's key personnel and primary business operations.

The advantage of AI management was the complete centralization of power. A president parachuted in from headquarters could take control of the situation in a short time. Executives could no longer pay lip service while secretly defying orders, form cliques, and turn around to oppose the Board of Directors in defense of their own interests.

In just a few hours, the handover of all authority was complete. Lin Li had effectively taken control of every resource here, and he could mobilize the forces of several warlords at any time. He had become one of the most powerful people in this land.

On the top floor of a building bearing the Mobius Strip logo, Lin Li sat quietly in his office. A thin black line extended from the base of his neck, ending in a pink sphere with several short tentacles. Abu wriggled around in circles across the desk like a starfish.

The artificial intelligence spoke. "Please note, you have a new communication request. Do you wish to accept?"

"Accept."

The scene inside the office changed. An image of an Orange Cat lying sprawled across the desk appeared. Lin Li raised an eyebrow. "You've turned into an Orange Cat now?"

The Orange Cat's outer layer split open, and a several-centimeter-long tentacled creature crawled out from the flesh inside its body. It resembled Abu's current appearance and looked as though it belonged to the same species.

The tentacled creature spoke in Li Heng's voice. "A newly developed breed. It has no physical enhancement ability. It parasitizes animal bodies to control their brains, allowing it to collect and transmit information remotely."

These Parasitic Amoebas could reproduce through spores. They drifted through the air and seawater to every corner of the planet. They possessed only the most basic parasitic abilities and no advanced intelligence. Compared to Symbiotic Amoebas like Abu, they were far simpler and consumed much less energy.

They would parasitize small and medium-sized mammals, reptiles, and birds, continuously gathering data from around the world for Li Heng and becoming a biological surveillance system spread across the planet's surface.

Abu, crouched on the desk, rolled over beside the image. Two black dot-like eyes emerged from its pink spherical head as it observed this similar-looking member of its species. It spoke disdainfully in Lin Li's mind. "It's nowhere near as good as me. They're all brainless idiots without even self-awareness. They're not even as smart as animals."

Lin Li ignored it. Abu had now become an emotional dumping ground, and it was acting more and more like a child.

He brought the topic back to the point. "You should tell me your purpose now, shouldn't you?"

Li Heng had never told him the ultimate goal behind all these actions. According to him, he could not guarantee that information would not leak within Commercial Alliance territory. His preparations were not yet complete, and if the specific intelligence leaked, it might turn into a world war lasting years.

The small sphere in the image twisted and dissolved into bloody foam, merging into the Orange Cat beneath it. The Orange Cat, which had been lying there asleep, woke up as well and opened its eyes, staring blankly ahead.

The next moment, Li Heng's image appeared. This time, he looked like a three-eyed youth. The eye in the center of his forehead had a golden pupil, and countless thin threads atop his head still connected to some unknown place.

Li Heng smiled and said, "Getting you here was enough. I've completely taken control of this land's Information Network. No one else will discover our conversation."

Large amounts of data began transmitting. Lin Li carefully examined this enormous plan, filled with countless details. At last, he pieced together every fragment of the puzzle and understood the philosophy of the super life-form before him.

Human Great Unification Plan: Shatter all existing national regimes and reorganize them into a unified civilization.

1. An undersea biological army composed of Jelly possessed an absolute advantage over the existing navies of Hong Alliance and the Free Business Alliance. It would be enough to confine every country to land and sever all maritime transportation.

2. Release large numbers of Symbiotic Amoebas into Hong Alliance and the Commercial Alliance, causing intense internal conflict between Superhumans and ordinary humans and plunging the two major organizations into chaotic civil war.

3. While the two major organizations were caught in internal turmoil, achieve absolute control over the Information Networks of all remaining countries, alter the memories of everyone in power, destroy all nuclear weapons, and complete a peaceful transformation within their regimes. These countries would form the prototype of the Human Unified Alliance.

4. The victor between Hong Alliance and the Commercial Alliance would break the blockade, destroy the alien organisms, save all human nations, and form the final unified civilization.

Those were the broad steps of the entire plan, though it contained a vast amount of additional detailed information. Lin Li spent quite a long time fully digesting it. Finally, he let out a long breath and leaned back in his chair.

The title of the plan seemed wildly unrealistic, but after reviewing that data and experiencing Li Heng's power, Lin Li understood that it had a considerable chance of success—at least more than fifty percent.

For an undertaking as enormous as human unification, a success rate above fifty percent was already extremely high. Even Hong Alliance, the strongest organization among humanity, had yet to erase the boundaries between nations, much less shatter and merge national regimes across the entire world.

Li Heng could read other people's memories and disguise himself as anyone. Only DNA sequence testing could uncover the Inhuman truth beneath his appearance. Yet aside from the artificial intelligences of Hong Alliance and the Commercial Alliance, no other country's information technology could stop his infiltration. This meant that even if machines identified his true identity, that fact could not reach those in power.

In those places, he could turn everyone blind. The information and orders received by the armies and administrators of those nations would all be sent by him, while those in power could have their memories altered with ease and be turned into puppets. By himself, he could completely destroy the existing regimes of most countries, and it would not even take much time.

But the two behemoths, Hong Alliance and the Commercial Alliance, were different. Li Heng could only spy on unimportant parts of their Information Networks. The moment he issued a major order that did not fit the circumstances, he would quickly be discovered.

And if they fought head-on, without the support of the oceanic Jelly organisms, his battle against those two major organizations on land would turn into a war of attrition—he could not defeat their armies directly, and neither could they kill him.

Thus, the true difficulty of the Human Great Unification Plan lay with those two organizations. If either one collapsed and disappeared, the remaining one would have enough strength to control everyone else.

Lin Li suddenly asked, "But Hong Alliance knows you exist, and they have your body cells and genetic data. Their odds of winning this war are much greater. Do you want Hong Alliance to become the final victor?"

Li Heng, in the form of a three-eyed youth, nodded. "That's right. Legally speaking, I'm still a citizen of Hong Alliance. It isn't difficult to understand why I would make that choice, is it?"

Lin Li shook his head. "You've already decided to shatter all existing regimes. To you, there should only be humanity, not distinctions between nations."

After unification, so-called nations would become relics of the past. Just as Qin destroyed the six states and unified the Central Plains, after a thousand years, who would still think of themselves as people of Zhao or Yan? No matter whether the unified regime changed again in the future, only Earthlings would remain in the end.

If such unification were merely an internal human war, it might face tremendous resistance. But with the threat of alien organisms, the victor would hold the moral high ground of saving Human Civilization and possess overwhelming momentum in both power and legitimacy.

Li Heng said, "If you really want to know why, it's simple. Hong Alliance has more people—two billion against one billion. Isn't that an obvious choice?"

His power came from all humanity. Naturally, two billion people provided more information than one billion. To him, having more people meant being in the right.

Yet Lin Li would not let it go. He continued, "Then wouldn't directly helping Hong Alliance destroy the Commercial Alliance achieve the same goal? If humanity is the source of your power, wouldn't ending the war quickly and reducing deaths better serve your interests?"

In fact, that choice was clearly more reasonable. Help the nation he came from sweep away every external enemy, accomplish the great cause of unification, and become a great hero praised by the people, rather than a villain secretly manipulating alien organisms through conspiracy.

Li Heng said calmly, "Because human lives are too short. They can only see a limited past and future within their finite lives. They can only fight with all their strength for the present, for everything before their eyes."

A five-year plan was normal. A ten-year plan was not difficult. A hundred-year plan was hard even for a nation to achieve. Throughout history, under the cycle of dynastic rise and fall, how many regimes had lasted more than three hundred years?

The talk of charging into the cosmic stars was more like a joke. Gliese 581g, the nearest potentially habitable planet to Earth, was also 20.5 light-years away. Even with controlled Nuclear Fusion technology, traveling at 0.1 times the speed of light would take two hundred years to get there. A round trip would take a full four hundred years, longer than the existence of most regimes in history.

Even with cryogenic hibernation technology, would humans with an average lifespan of only eighty years be willing to cross twenty light-years and spend centuries searching for an unknown possibility?

The brave and fearless heroes would endure centuries of lonely travel before finally crossing the stars and returning to Earth. Yet never mind their relatives—even their own country would have long vanished into the river of history. Those so-called heroes would have long since been forgotten.

A summer insect cannot speak of ice. Individuals with short lives were constrained by objective reality and could not make plans spanning a thousand years. Yet to the universe, a thousand years was only an instant. Human life was far too short, while the distances between planets were far too vast.

Only longer lives—thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, even immortality—could make it possible. Only humans freed from the limits of lifespan and their current forms of life could truly possess the courage to explore the stars and the patience to persevere.

There was great terror between life and death. Humanity's strongest emotions erupted when facing death. Hundreds of thousands of people died around the world every day, and their pain, despair, attachment, longing, and hatred when facing death constantly battered Li Heng's mind.

These dead people and living people together had made him what he was now, and they had also shaped his current goal:

"Whether it is the Grand Unification Project or releasing Symbiotes to guide the emergence of Superhumans, the ultimate purpose is to change the form of human physical existence. I sincerely hope that every person can live on, free from the suffering of aging and disease. In this biological war, humanity will break every moral shackle, gather the strength of all humankind to explore the mysteries of the human body itself, and embark on the road to immortality."