Chapter 678: Alpha: First Sight
Lao Jiang almost failed.
He had somewhat underestimated the difficulty of this exploration. After all, this was his first time exploring a new world with his own ability of traveling without the help of a star array.
In Mr. Crow's words, this means that Boss Jiang has moved beyond the initial level of "World Wanderer" and entered an advanced level where he uses his own strength to complete his roaming of the starry sea without the use of tools.
It’s the first time.
There will always be some confusion, and there will always be problems where you cannot accurately locate the location or find the specific way.
The first time for anything is always hard.
Fortunately, the coordinates of the Iron World calculated by the Central Center are very accurate.
During this extreme distance jump, under the pressure that almost squeezed Lao Jiang's soul to the point of bursting, he struggled to open the coordinates in the dark star field.
"Bang"
With a loud bang, Lao Jiang fell from the sky in a shining posture, holding the black suitcase in his hand, and crashed headfirst into a pile of garbage that exuded a disgusting smell of rust.
It was like a small meteorite falling to the ground, knocking apart the pile of rusty garbage that was made up of all kinds of strange mechanical wreckage and was full of potholes due to acid rain.
Let all kinds of strange shaped parts fly everywhere.
There were also a lot of sharp steel garbage stuck in Lao Jiang's body.
If Boss Jiang's body had not been strengthened several times by the Black Hand Society's genetic potion and the Fruit of the World, making it stronger than other body cultivators of the same level, the force of this fall would have been enough to pierce his heart and lungs.
He will be very tired now.
The body can hold on, but the soul is very tired and needs recuperation.
Just lying there with his limbs spread out in this garbage dump that smells of rust, his eyes open, looking at the sky above his head.
Surprisingly, the sky here is quite beautiful. It is not as dark and gloomy as Lao Jiang had guessed. Instead, it is full of various colorful lights.
The dark background of the sea of stars and the falling rain blend together to create a confusing yet brilliant contradictory look.
but……
"Cough cough cough"
Boss Jiang's first breath in the new world made him cough loudly. There was air here, but the oxygen concentration was so low that it was almost negligible. Instead, the air was filled with all kinds of strange smells.
Taking this sip is like swallowing a concentrated version of industrial waste gas, and it must contain high concentrations of toxic gases that are harmful to the human body.
The toxicity is so strong that even a practitioner like Lao Jiang feels a stinging pain in his lungs. If it were an ordinary person here, just this one breath would be enough to make him die instantly from heart and lung poisoning.
It was still raining heavily in the sky.
It's not ordinary rain, but extremely corrosive acid rain.
It was difficult to see the scenery farther away in the hazy rain, but as Boss Jiang stood up from the steel garbage dump, all he saw were various garbage dumps surrounded by clouds formed by acid rain.
What would a world of steel look like?
Let Boss Jiang tell you.
It's just a garbage dump...
Hundreds of small garbage dumps merged together to form a super-large garbage mountain, with a radius of at least 100 kilometers, all made up of these broken mechanical garbage.
Jiang Xia lowered his head and saw the wreckage of a spider-like robot under his feet.
It should have a humanoid upper body and an iron spider-like lower body, but now, it was torn apart as if it had been attacked by some brutal beast.
The upper body was missing and the lower body was in tatters.
The surface of the machine is covered with gray rust due to acid rain, but you can still vaguely see the rough connection structure at each key point. It is not sophisticated, but full of a steampunk feel.
It's incredibly crude, but somehow it manages to move and fight.
Jiang Xia soon lost interest in the corpse of the robot that had been dead for who knows how long. He looked further away and saw that this huge mountain of garbage was basically made up of the "corpses" of these robots.
"Um?"
Lao Jiang soon noticed another thing.
His data-conscious soul, strengthened by the fruit bestowed by the Data Heart of the World of Eden, was very sensitive to the huge and sophisticated data network shrouding this silent world of ruins.
It is like a data world formed by robots exchanging data and information. Its size and scale are even several times larger than the dream world compiled by the center of the Eden world.
This means that the number of mechanical lives existing in this steel world is an extremely exaggerated astronomical number.
"Don't connect to the 'War Network' rashly!"
Just as Lao Jiang tried to "dive" his digitized consciousness into this data world, he was immediately warned by the mechanical life "Metal" in the suitcase.
These seven mechanical life forms trapped in the wasteland have lost their bodies. All that remains are data streams, which can be considered their "souls".
Now Jiang has also become aware of data, and the two sides can communicate remotely using data streams.
"Why not?"
Lao Jiang asked:
"Are you afraid that I'll discover the secrets you haven't told me?"
"No, Mr. Jiang...Boss."
Metal immediately explained:
"It's because the way your consciousness data is encoded comes from the world of Eden, which is completely different from the way the mechanical life forms in the 'Fortress of Doom' are encoded.
Once you rashly connect to the war network, a data singularity will be formed.
This will be immediately discovered by the "patrollers" in the inner circle. They will locate you and send an army of annihilators to attack you and capture you.
Do not doubt the acumen of my compatriots at the data level. Consciousness uploading is a skill for you carbon-based creatures, but it is an instinct for silicon-based life forms like us.
Just like you eat and drink water.
If you don’t want to provoke a boring and pointless conflict, follow this advice.”
"Well, I'm always open to suggestions."
Lao Jiang nodded and gave up his plan.
He glanced around and asked again:
"What is this big garbage dump? Where is it located in your world?"
"According to your description, we should now be in the outermost ring of the Doomsday Fortress, which is the 'Valley of Losers' among the thirteen rings.
This is the final destination of all the 'slaves' who have experienced the 'promotion fight'.
It is connected to the 'Big Furnace'. Every three days, the mechanical wreckage here will be sent to the Big Furnace by the 'Scavengers', and after being re-smelted, it will be thrown into the 'Rust Hill'.
The remains of these losers will be implanted with 'mind chips' made by the craftsmen of 'Gear Castle' and reborn with new steel life.
Then continue the never-ending search for self-transformation and strengthening.
When their simple logic calculates that their combat power is sufficient for promotion, they will go to the 'battlefield' to fight for promotion.
If you win ten games in a row and destroy ten opponents, you will be eligible to be promoted to "Militia" and sent to the 12th ring to repeat the process again. "
Metal obediently told Boss Jiang the news he knew. By the way, when Boss Jiang, with sufficient spiritual energy supply and completely ignoring the fact that there was no spiritual energy in this world, began to fly rapidly away from the garbage mountain, Metal also gave him some basic information about this steel world called "Alpha".
“Alpha is a world of silicon-based life, boss.
The reason why the sky you see is full of gorgeous lights is because our world is full of various radioactive energies and chaotic magnetic fields of various frequencies.
After leaving the Valley of Losers, you can still see energy towers scattered across the mechanical land.
The form of this world is something that carbon-based creatures cannot imagine or understand.
Just in the outermost ring, there are hundreds of millions of mechanical life forms of all kinds. From the weak to the strong, from humanoid to beastly, from peaceful to manic, they form a posture that is very different from flesh and blood life forms. "
"What is that?"
After Lao Jiang flew out of the Valley of Losers, he was immediately attracted by the scenery in front of him.
This world has no soil. From what Lao Jiang sees, the world is made up entirely of silver-gray and black metal, although his mechanical subordinates tell him that they are only in the outermost ring of the world.
But because the Alpha world is so huge, it does not look like a ring structure at all, but rather like a layered earth.
There is no feeling of ups and downs, it's like standing on a large piece of iron with clear layers.
Everything seems to be connected and assembled like Lego blocks of various metal blocks, but on the surface of this "metal land" there are a large number of strange crystal clusters.
They are like vegetation covering the ground.
This cold steel world has also been transformed into an ecological scene.
What surprised Lao Jiang the most was that in those crystal forests, there were beast-like steel creatures walking slowly.
They look like dinosaurs, but generally have streamlined, scale-like shells, but most of them are not fully covered. Under the shell, you can see colorful crystal clusters and some things that look like wires.
They make strange electronic roars, and their shells are not made of metal, but more like an exoskeleton with a strange material between metal and bone.
There are also some burrowing worm-like things that live in symbiosis with them.
Their entire bodies are simply made up of these energy crystal clusters, which are colorful and can change color. They don't have a "head" in the conventional sense, but are more like a random combination of crystal clusters.
It can be broken into sections at any time and split into two different individuals.
Or combine together to form a larger individual.
“That’s a primitive silicon-based beast, boss. It’s the oldest creature in our world and another kind of life in the Alpha World besides mechanical life.
They have characteristics similar to carbon-based life.
There are larger cells in the body that use light, magnetic fields, and atomic energy to drive their own activities, and their metabolism is quite slow.
They respond to each other with energy waves of special frequencies.
They have the wisdom of wild beasts, generally have a long lifespan, and have great brute force. Some warbands use them as camels, and when the battle is fierce, they will also put on steel armor for them and let them charge into battle. "
Metal explained to Mr. Jiang:
“The silicon-based beast has a nanoworm-like design in its body that can repair external injuries.
They absorb energy and occasionally devour original crystal clusters to obtain the raw materials needed for growth. Some ancient individuals will even have exaggerated appearances similar to crystal dragons.
It is said that the great Mechanical Sage has a powerful crystal dragon serving him.
But the genes of these beasts are too primitive and lack controllability, making it difficult for them to achieve true group evolution and produce their own civilization. "
At this point, Metal, the traitor of the mechanical world, said with emotion:
"According to the research of the 'Great Library of Origin', the origins of us mechanical life forms are some relatively lucky silicon-based beasts. Our ancestors have accumulated collective wisdom through repeated selections, and the survival of the fittest has continued.
These wisdoms were preserved and passed down, and through years of evolution, mechanical neurons capable of thinking were evolved, and food also changed from the most primitive crystal clusters to more other metals.
Eventually our form changed, with steel as our bones and energy organs evolving.
At the beginning, our civilization was actually the same as humans. We first learned to use tools, then developed advanced intelligence, and finally became the current main body of civilization in the Alpha world.
The reason why the Mechanical Sage is great is that it has developed the technology of self-made "smart chips" for us. It allows us to no longer rely on primitive reproduction, but to mass-produce new compatriots!
So in these five hundred years, our population has expanded a million times.”
"You can produce your own kind. No wonder such a brutal and warlike civilization can multiply to such a large scale."
Lao Jiang sighed.
He continued to move forward in this cold, monotonous metal world without any color changes, and soon discovered some mechanical life wandering in a valley.
Their appearance is exactly the same as the robot wreckage that Boss Jiang saw in the Valley of Losers.
They are all those big, black and rough structures, both human and animal shaped, without any sense of mechanical precision, even the gears and exhaust pipes are exposed, and they are engaged in a huge melee in the valley.
There is no cooperation, no planning, just fighting against each other.
They regard every compatriot as an enemy and kill each other with a tough style, using metal claws and bullets, as well as heavy punches and cold weapons.
There was no river of blood, but the flying mechanical parts all over the ground made Lao Jiang feel the cruelty of this internal struggle.
He also saw a humanoid robot with a broken leg, dragging a mechanical battle axe, and struggling to roughly connect the chopped-off leg of the spider robot in front of him to its own broken leg.
This shaped it into a strange appearance, and then it continued to fight, and was finally entangled and strangled by another snake-like robot.
"What are they doing?"
Lao Jiang asked.
Metal was silent for a few seconds, then replied:
"They are 'reinventing themselves'.
Kill your opponents, loot more powerful modules, strengthen yourself, and move on to the next battle.
The cycle continues, becoming strong enough to triumph and be promoted.
Or be smashed into wreckage and become part of the victor.
This is how the foundation of the Alpha World works."
