Immediately afterward, Huang Shang felt a slight dizziness, as though an almost imperceptible fissure had opened in the ground of "imperial truth" beneath his feet. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and the strange sensation quickly faded.
But Huang Shang would know that something had changed. The next time he received an order to destroy, that moment of hesitation might last a tenth of a second longer. For the Imperium's sharpest blade, that tenth of a second might become a crucial variable in the future.
Lin Ye sat cross-legged in the Mind-Sea Observation Hub. Before him flowed countless worlds' mental-image "responses" to the ripples of the new era.
"Detected a world of the eternal reincarnation type. Nonperiodic harmonic components have appeared in the underlying fluctuations of its mental images, weakly correlated with the emotional spectrum of 'questioning.'"
"Detected a world of the sole supremacy type. Aggression parameters at its core invasion nodes show a slight downward trend, potentially linked to a 'sense of meaninglessness.'"
"Received unsolicited connection requests from seven medium-sized alliances of moderate civilizations."
Lin Ye quietly practiced "contemplation." A breeze had risen, but it was still far from truly changing the worlds.
"Establish a priority observation list. Mark the nodes whose feedback signals are weak but possess 'potential for endogenous growth,'" Lin Ye instructed. "Open basic communication protocols to those actively requesting connections."
"At the same time," he continued, turning his gaze toward the "stubborn sectors" in the Heart Sea that remained intensely hostile, "activate the first-stage 'contact and assessment' protocol. Select extremist worlds with lower peripheral pressure and try dispatching 'ideological messengers.'"
"Messengers?" Harmonic Leaping Note asked.
"Volunteer mental images from the resonance network, with clear, firm convictions and backgrounds similar to those of the target worlds," Lin Ye explained. "They will transmit fragmented information