That speck of golden light moved with extreme speed. At the very instant the spatial wormhole closed, it precisely adhered to the hull of the diamond-shaped warship.
It triggered no alarms.
To Gestalt's scanning system, that speck of golden light had neither an energy signature nor any material form. It was like an insubstantial phantom.
They had not even noticed that they had already been marked.
The enormous diamond-shaped warship vanished completely at the end of the wormhole.
Peace returned to the chaos.
"Sir, we're just... letting it go?"
Heavenly Sovereign Suiren Shi looked at the sealed spatial barrier, his face full of reluctance and concern.
"Letting a tiger return to the mountains will bring endless trouble!"
The other generals echoed him. In their view, they should have struck while it was weak and finished it off, leaving that strange warship here for good.
Chen Ran turned and looked at them.
"Keep it here?" he asked. "And then what? Draw out that so-called Logic Celestial Body behind them? Draw out thousands upon thousands of warships like that one?"
Everyone fell silent at once.
That was right. It had already taken the Holy Mother Empress herself to deal with just one warship. If the enemy came out in full force, the consequences would be unimaginable.
"We know nothing about this Gestalt civilization. We do not know its scale, the precise location of its mother body, or how many other methods of attack it possesses that we cannot comprehend."
Chen Ran's voice calmed everyone down.
"War is not a matter of brute courage. Only by knowing ourselves and our enemy can we remain undefeated in every battle. I let it go for three reasons."
He raised his first finger.
"First, to establish our might. I want them, and the mother body behind them, to know that the Primordial World is a hard bone—one they cannot chew through without breaking their teeth. That way, they will be wary before their next move and conduct a more thorough assessment instead of rushing in to format us like they did today. This buys us precious time."
He raised his second finger.
"Second, to gather intelligence. Our conversation just now has already given us a preliminary understanding of them. And the little local specialty I sent along at the end will bring us even more information."
"What was that?" Human Sovereign Ziyi Shi asked curiously.
"It was a seed of humanity." Wisdom gleamed in Chen Ran's eyes. "I attached a trace of the purest aura of human civilization to it. It is like a locator, and also like a probe. As long as that warship returns to its mother body, we can follow the trail to roughly determine its location. We may even be able to use that seed to sense some of the fundamental characteristics of their civilization."
Everyone sucked in a cold breath.
So Sir had planned everything from the very beginning.
Letting the enemy go was actually meant to strike the enemy more effectively.
Such vision and strategy were already beyond their comprehension.
"What about the third purpose?" Earthly Sovereign Youchao Shi pressed.
A profound smile appeared on Chen Ran's face.
"The third purpose is also the most important one."
"What I sent out was not merely a probe."
"It was also a virus."
"A virus?" Everyone was even more confused.
"The Gestalt civilization is a pure civilization of logic. Its collective consciousness is like a precision computer. And what does the seed of humanity I sent out contain?"
Chen Ran paused, then said each word distinctly, "It contains the joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, love, hatred, affection, and enmity of our human race!"
"It contains the heroic songs of sacrifice, the schemes and imperial ambitions of rulers, the romance of scholars, and the daily necessities of ordinary people!"
"What are such things to a system of pure logic?"
"They are the most fundamental kind of logical gibberish—something it cannot understand, cannot delete, and cannot format!"
"I am very curious. When Gestalt's mother body tries to analyze this seed filled with humanity, will its central processor... burn out?"
After hearing Chen Ran's explanation, the entire bridge fell into deathly silence.
The way every general looked at Chen Ran changed.
Their gazes contained a mixture of awe, worship, and a faint trace of fear.
Killing someone was nothing more than making their head hit the ground.
But Sir's methods struck at the heart!
He wanted to contaminate and shake the very foundation of a vast Mechanical Civilization at its source!
Compared to directly destroying a warship, this was crueler and far more ingenious by a thousandfold!
"Alright, the threat has been temporarily resolved." Chen Ran clapped his hands, breaking the silence. "Pass down my order. The fleet will return. We need to consolidate our gains in the Northern Jialu Continent. Our human race also needs time to prepare for the next contact."
"Yes!"
Everyone answered in unison, their voices filled with relief at surviving the disaster and determination for the future.
After this battle, they had witnessed the terror beyond the Primordial World, but they had also witnessed the might of a saint and the unfathomable depths of Sir.
They now had a true pillar of stability in their hearts.
The enormous human fleet began to turn around and slowly sail back toward the Primordial World.
After giving Chen Ran one deep look, Nuwa's avatar also transformed into a streak of light and returned to the depths of the flagship.
Her heart was equally turbulent.
This Chen Ran residing within her—his wisdom and his vision—seemed even more mysterious than his origins.
In another chaotic universe, unimaginably far away.
A Logic Celestial Body composed of countless black geometric forms, larger even than a galaxy, floated silently.
This was the mother body of the Gestalt civilization.
Suddenly, a spatial wormhole opened on the surface of the Logic Celestial Body.
The diamond-shaped warship that had suffered such a severe defeat in the Primordial World emerged from it in a bedraggled state.
It slowly approached the mother body, preparing to link with it and upload all the data from this expedition.
At the very instant it came into contact with the mother body.
The seed of humanity planted by Chen Ran quietly lit up with a faint, almost imperceptible gleam.
Before you continue