Luo Qi's attempt to catch the cat failed, so he erased the other ninety-nine copied worlds and expanded his zone of control to include Cthulhu.
For the people of those ninety-nine copied worlds, everything ended in an instant, without even a moment of pain, just as it had when they were first copied.
They knew nothing.
It was nothing more than an observational experiment. The pitiful lesser civilization was like data, copied and deleted at Luo Qi's whim, yet its people sensed nothing wrong.
The Crystal Civilization had not abandoned intelligent AI either. It merely cleared the AI caches more frequently and lowered the AIs' intelligence.
With sixty billion people to support, halting automated production and manufacturing would have been a catastrophe.
Through the endlessly repeating cycles, Nagus acquired a great deal of knowledge and learned the secrets of the upper ranks. He became one of them himself.
Luo Qi remained behind the scenes, watching the Crystal Civilization develop for another 195 years. They developed their fourth rocky planet in preparation for the next round of population expansion.
Population expansion had one advantage: it could produce enough exceptional individuals.
This was one drawback of carbon-based life. Abilities varied within a population, and it was usually a small minority who led technological progress and drove society forward.
At the same time, that minority could not do without the broader population that nurtured them, because they could not guarantee that their own descendants would be outstanding enough to shoulder their civilization's development.
The Crystal Civilization's technological framework also developed rapidly. They possessed a tough neutron war star, though it was only 1,000 meters in diameter.
They upgraded their military power armor and large combat robots. Even Luo Qi could only exclaim, "Holy shit." Iron Man himself would have been beaten into submission.