Dialogue

In a new-style city in southern India, filled with skyscrapers bearing the Manohar logo, Li Heng, who maintained the appearance of a young child, was discussing the progress of the plan with Lin Li on the 25th floor of a high-rise.

On the other side of the spacious room, Achilles was adapting to his new body. He had been transformed into a genderless angelic form, lacking even the channels for excretion—the stomach of this angel consisted of a strong acid digestion section and a high-temperature furnace, capable of converting food waste into basic gases to be expelled. In a sense, he was much like a jellyfish or a starfish.

In fact, having become an angel, Achilles was no longer subject to human concepts of gender. This body lacked even the capacity for reproduction. Perhaps, once the Hong Alliance and Li Heng discovered a way to make human brains continuously generate nerve cells, he would become no different from the angels of legend.

In short, whether he, she, they, or it, these were merely labels for biological entities. As Li Heng's power grew, the boundary between life and non-life would become as blurred as the distinction between male and female, even becoming freely interchangeable. To him, so-called angels were no different from self-aware intelligent robots.

With a sudden, violent flap of his two wings, Achilles stomped a massive crater into the room's thick metal floor. He lunged with all his might toward Li Heng, who was not far away; it was said that the guy who had crafted his body was far stronger than Lin Li.

The child, having just obtained an angelic physique, felt his confidence swell violently. He no longer held Lin Li in any regard; he wanted to see just how powerful this being, described as the strongest creature on Earth, truly was.

Then, there was no "then." Without even turning his head, Li Heng swept an invisible tentacle across the space. Just as it had been during his first encounter with Lin Li, Achilles was once again shredded into pieces. His limbs and wings were torn off in an instant, leaving only his torso rolling to a stop beside Li Heng.

Transparent tentacles coiled, and Li Heng pieced the still-bleeding Achilles back together, remarking casually, "I let out some of your blood; it should help clear your head. You weren't this impulsive before."

Achilles, pale from blood loss, calmed down from his excitement. This newborn body had indeed affected his brain's judgment; the sudden surge of immense power had intoxicated him, and the superhuman senses that made the world feel within his grasp had caused his confidence to inflate to an extreme degree.

However, being torn apart again without any resistance dealt a blow to his ego. He wrapped his white wings around his head, covered his face, and ran to a corner to eat snacks. His lifelong craving for survival had fostered a madness for food, and his furnace-like stomach allowed Achilles to enjoy thousands of human portions of food in a single day.

Squatting in the corner, Achilles watched the three-eyed child floating in mid-air. To human vision, this was a magical scene, but his angelic body, capable of seeing infrared and ultraviolet light, told him it was merely an illusion. Every vertebra of the child extended a tentacle, and a total of thirty-three hundred-meter-long transparent tentacles wove and coiled into a massive chair that held his body aloft, creating this magical spectacle.

Achilles flapped his wings, feeling somewhat dejected. He rubbed the beautiful, gem-encrusted horns on his head and looked with envy at those twisted, chaotic limbs. Both of these guys had so many tentacles, and the more they had, the stronger they were. Perhaps he should try to switch to a tentacle-monster body in the future.

One of Li Heng's tentacles connected to the one behind Lin Li's neck, and a massive stream of information flowed between them. Having transcended their human bodies, they no longer needed to use ordinary language to communicate.

Language is an abstract summary of natural phenomena; its existence greatly enhances the efficiency of communication between intelligent beings, allowing knowledge to spread and civilization to grow.

However, precisely because it is abstract, compressed information designed for the dissemination of knowledge, it cannot compare to complex visual data when two people face-to-face need to describe something in precise detail.

The status of major cities across the globe, the control permissions for the Jelly creatures and giant biological weapons, the Reincarnator and that script, as well as the distribution of human military forces across the entire Eurasian continent—all this complex information was received and understood by Lin Li in a short span of time.

After digesting it slightly, he asked Li Heng, who was floating in mid-air, "The Hong Alliance might not necessarily act according to that plan. What if they choose to immediately target the specific defect of the Jelly creatures and break the maritime blockade?"

Li Heng shook his head and said, "The so-called defect is nothing but a lie. If there really were a defect, how could Ai Liyuan, who participated in the research from start to finish, not know about it?"

The soldier named Gu Qi did not know these core secrets; in his eyes, these Jelly creatures were created solely by this immortal demon, and Ai Liyuan was merely someone as deceived as he was.

But Ji Hong knew this, and he understood that the so-called genetic defect was nothing but nonsense.

"The defect will only appear at the right moment. They have no way to solve the Jelly creatures ahead of schedule. Recycling the corpses is merely for consumption and reproduction; after all, that flesh and blood material is also a resource."

Only when the situation in the world had progressed to the point where only the Hong Alliance and the alien forces remained would Li Heng trigger a defect in all the Jelly creatures. Upon encountering that man-made, special bacteria, they would execute a self-destruct command in their brains. The so-called memory confusion was nothing more than the mass suicide of the Jelly creatures.

He said to Lin Li:

"Don't worry so much. Both we and the Hong Alliance are playing with our cards on the table. For someone like Ji Hong, one only needs to show him everything, and he will naturally find the most rational path that is most beneficial to humanity. Having built the most powerful organization on Earth from nothing, he is not comparable to the puppets on the surface of the Commercial Alliance."

The structures of the two major organizations were completely different; the officials with the most power on the surface of the Commercial Alliance were actually mostly just spokespeople pushed forward by certain interest groups.

Lin Li nodded. After all, he was not an individual like Li Heng who could be called invincible on Earth. This time, he had to face the civilization of the entire Eurasian continent alone. Both Western Europe and the Hong Alliance were his enemies. From the surface, his pressure was the greatest; one wrong move would lead to death.

Li Heng smiled and said to him, "You've started to fear death now. I used to see you as someone who didn't care about anything. It seems your fusion with Abu is proceeding quite smoothly."

As the emotional fusion between the Symbiote and the human deepened, their consciousness and memories would gradually assimilate into a single intelligent entity, much like the left and right hemispheres of a human brain. The current Lin Li had already become a new, intelligent consciousness alongside Abu.

He could now think using two modes of thought simultaneously: one half was the cold and rational Lin Li, and the other half was Abu, filled with various emotions. The opposition and unity of these two consciousnesses created a new self.

Lin Li said, "It's an interesting feeling. You wanted me to become a person with multi-threaded consciousness from the very beginning. You hope to cultivate an individual with a thought process similar to your own."

If this multi-threaded thinking could be continuously accumulated, perhaps one day a new human with tens of thousands of personalities, just like Li Heng, could emerge.

Li Heng shook his head: "Matter determines consciousness. Only a brain identical to mine can cultivate an individual with the same consciousness. To this day, I don't even know what matter my brain is composed of; it has already transcended the basic particles known to humanity."

Li Heng had indeed considered using this method to create similar intelligent beings, but after connecting two human brains, their memories would gradually merge amidst mutual conflict and chaos. Ultimately, it would not form two consciousnesses, but rather lose the boundary between "me" and "others," eventually becoming a single consciousness possessing two sets of memories.

Lin Li was special; his genetic mutation formed his unique brain. The Symbiote could only form a dual-threaded second consciousness within him. For ordinary people, the Symbiote would not cause a change in their consciousness; that newborn, infantile consciousness would merely evolve into a new organ closely linked to the amygdala while absorbing excess emotions, and that was all.

Looking at the massive rattan chair woven from twisted tentacles behind Li Heng—a sight invisible to ordinary people—Lin Li contemplated the full scope of the plan.

In the plan, the Hong Alliance leadership would be an absolutely rational, unified consciousness without internal conflict. But in reality, humans always had weaknesses. If the Hong Alliance did not choose to act according to the script and was unwilling to conserve their strength but instead chose to resist with all their might, the success rate of the plan would drop sharply.

Lin Li raised the question; this was the part he found most baffling. Even if Ji Hong himself was absolutely rational, the other high-ranking officials might not be willing to endure this humiliation.

Li Heng smiled and said, "Lin Li, you have overlooked the most critical point: I am immortal, and the Hong Alliance knows that I am immortal."

All human behavior has a fundamental cost—time, or rather, lifespan.

In this world, behind every effort lies an most important price: lifespan.

Once the direction of one's efforts is wrong, this price is irreversible. This is why choices are often more important than effort.

However, for Li Heng, who possessed an eternal lifespan, making the wrong choice did not matter. Endless time meant he possessed endless costs for trial and error. Even if the Hong Alliance were to unite as one and expose all his abilities, even if all of humanity were to unite to temporarily push back his biological weapons and Jelly army, Li Heng would still achieve final victory.

Ji Hong would eventually die, the current united human leadership would die, and even the Hong Alliance would fall apart in thousands of years. Humanity would, by then, have completely forgotten the threat of this immortal demon.

And for the immortal Li Heng, failure was not a major problem. He could fail a hundred or a thousand times; his permanent lifespan meant he had no need to care about time costs.

Li Heng said, "This is the difference between you, me, and ordinary humans. Individuals with limited lifespans fear making mistakes because it means they have wasted time. But I do not fear mistakes. Even if this plan fails, I can just do it again."

To him, if the plan succeeded, all of humanity could gain a longer lifespan, and he could gain more information and grow faster.

If the plan failed, he would simply slowly alter human memories. By the time those who knew of his power were all dead, would the new humans with distorted thoughts still be able to unite to resist him?

At the end of the day, he was the stronger party. He had laid out his abilities completely only so that humanity might survive a little longer.