Chapter 75: The Confusion of the Psionic Bug
[Platinum-White Sky (Amira Makarov) posted a new personal status]
[Month 3, Mycroft World Standard Time 18:44: Successfully completed the diplomatic mission! This group of Hualde people looks a bit fierce, but they're actually very gentle and easy to talk to! (Photo attached)]
[Location: Unknown Star Domain, Unknown World, Hualde Star River, Multiverse Star River. Sent using a 10th-generation Core Professional Edition Custom Psychic Terminal (Bright Gold Font)]
The magic net server, continuously expanding with the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, faithfully transmitted this information back to the server main body located in the Jetram Star Domain after a delay of over three hours. Then, it was fed back to other psychic terminals. Approximately six hours later, replies from other psychic terminal users finally refreshed.
[Platinum-White Sky (Ivan Makarov) liked your new status.]
[Big Bro (Note): Good job!]
[Developing New Multiverse Ingredients (Dwarf Nick) liked your new status.]
[Nick: These goat heads look like they'd taste pretty good...]
[Karin liked your new status.]
[Karin: Boohoo, you all can go to other worlds for missions, am I the only one stuck at the Void Base?!]
[Nick replied to Karin: Yes, it's you, only you, the one and only, the chosen one, the out-of-print unique seedling, the last survivor!]
[Nick's reply was deleted by Karin.]
[Nick has been removed from friends.]
[Nick has been blacklisted.]
[...]
[Syndicate liked your new status.]
[Lisa liked your new status.]
[Lisa: Sister Amira, when can we find a chance to get together? The last time we all gathered was six years ago. This year is also about the tenth anniversary of when we all met.]
Sitting in the temporarily built embassy room, Amira was simultaneously practicing magic and furiously scrolling through the internal information stream of her psychic terminal, liking every reply. When she saw this suggestion, her heart stirred slightly.
Indeed... As a disciple of Joshua Van Radcliffe, the Inferno Lord and God of Steel, the last time the First Squad, Priest, and the Dragon Girl and their group had all gathered for a meal was six years ago. Since then, every gathering has been missing someone. Either someone couldn't make it because of a mission, or preparations were halfway done when some big event caused by their teacher would disrupt any thoughts of entertainment.
Take, for example, the great expedition spanning the star river in recent years—everyone was so busy they barely had time to stand still, let alone find time for a meal.
But now, it's actually a good opportunity... Not to mention that everyone is on this side of the star river, and the great star river expansion is gradually slowing down. Once the diplomatic mission with the Hualde people is finished, Amira can return to the Void Base and enjoy the lag-free network service—pfft, no, she can finally have a good get-together with everyone!
Although, strictly speaking, their teacher Joshua's last closed-door disciple, Priest, was only formally accepted in 837, he had already caught their teacher's eye by 836. Besides, 836 was also the year everyone met Lisa. There's no need to be so precise. If they want to get together, calling it the tenth anniversary now is fine.
Thinking this, a smile curled at the corner of Amira's mouth. She began to focus her mind and input a reply into her psychic terminal. But just as she was halfway through typing, a notification sound marked with 'Special Attention' suddenly rang out in her psychic terminal.
[Joshua Radcliffe (Super Administrator Supreme Rainbow ID) liked your new status.]
[Joshua: Oh? You guys are having a gathering? I'll tell Number 3, Ying, and Lin to prepare. You set the time and place.]
[Number 3 (Central Administrator Supreme Shining ID) liked your new status.]
[Number 3: Great, great!]
[Ying (Administrator Exclusive Purple ID) liked your new status.]
[Ying: Supporting Master!]
[Lin (Administrator Exclusive Purple ID) liked your new status.]
[Lin: I'll go prepare right away!]
A bolt from the blue.
Amira's hand, holding her necklace-shaped psychic terminal, trembled.
The... the teacher is coming to the gathering too?!
While it's not a bad thing, this feeling... this feeling is exactly like a child's private party being crashed by parents and elders, or a student running into the head of discipline while singing at an elven opera house...
Amira calmed down for a moment and realized it wasn't so bad. Although everyone has deep memories of the teacher's overly strict teaching, aside from that, Joshua is indeed a generous instructor. He would make them run ten laps around Moldavia, but then specifically go kill a dragon beast to brew soup to replenish their energy. Hellish training was always followed by heavenly rest... Moreover, after so many years of cultivation, everyone's strength has hit a bottleneck. Except for geniuses like Lisa, almost everyone is stuck at the Gold Peak—near Ultimate Essence position.
If they want to become stronger, they really do need some guidance from their teacher.
On the other side of time and space.
Joshua placed one of his threads into the psychic terminal.
He liked the recent statuses posted by all his students, left comments, and then his gaze stopped on the most recent one—the photo of Amira successfully completing her mission in the Hualde civilization. He shook his head.
Of course, this wasn't because Amira's mission was poorly done. In fact, she performed excellently. The Hualde civilization possesses a unique 'Sacrifice' technique, which can directly strip the life essence from a living being and strengthen the sacrificer's life foundation.
Sacrifice is different from Battle Qi. Battle Qi enhances the essence while amplifying the user's ability to alter matter—generally meaning destructive power. The Hualde people's 'Sacrifice', on the other hand, is a special method of frantically piling up the foundation of life without changing the race, making the foundation incredibly solid, even turning it into a plateau. They advance to the Legendary Realm with a life essence similar to, or even surpassing, that of a Void Behemoth.
The Battle Qi of the Mycroft civilization is not a technique for solidifying life essence, but a combat tool focused on destruction. To use an analogy, one is about strengthening the root and nurturing the core, building a strong body; the other is about turning the body into armor, swords, and blades for destruction and killing. The latter naturally has immediate high efficiency in destructive power, but if one has the strong essence of the former, Battle Qi cultivation can progress by leaps and bounds.
No Battle Qi cultivation method can enhance life essence as simply and efficiently as Sacrifice. This is a very valuable technique to learn. So, after many Legendary experts showed their strength, Joshua sent his students to exchange knowledge and, incidentally, promote the Exchange System and the Restorative Pillar.
The Hualde people gained techniques that allow their life essence to unleash greater destructive power, while the Mycroft people gained a shortcut without side effects, allowing ordinary Battle Qi cultivators to quickly cross the Silver Low-rank and reach the High-rank Battle Qi realm. By first laying a solid foundation through Sacrifice, no matter how weak the body was before, it can absolutely and safely awaken Battle Qi, and the speed of refining Battle Qi will be greatly increased in subsequent cultivation.
Both sides exchanged the knowledge they desired—a win-win situation for all.
The reason Joshua shook his head was mainly because of the photo's content.
In the dim hall, purple flames burned. Black-horned, red-eyed goat-like humanoids were worshipping and offering sacrifices around the Restorative Pillar. In the hazy smoke, ominous runes and lightning swirled... No matter how you look at it, this scene resembles a cult ritual. Whether intentional or not, under Amira's photography, the originally sunny, healthy, and open sacrificial aura of the Hualde people instantly became sinister and eerie!
"Ah, whatever. The mission is done anyway."
Joshua felt that aesthetics were not part of his teaching curriculum. If Amira liked this kind of style, it was none of his business.
Meanwhile, inside the Joshua World.
Around the silver sun, nine layers of floating continents drifted. Civilized Heroic Spirits toiled diligently upon them, occasionally being summoned to the outside world to perform tasks. After completing their tasks and earning points, they would return and use those points to exchange with Joshua for 'Land Expansion' and 'Land Transformation' services, forging their territories to be more suitable for their own race's survival.
In the future, when these Civilized Heroic Spirits reach the standard line set by Joshua, the warrior will resurrect them, or they will create their own races. Then, the reborn seeds of civilization will live on the land they created. Since this concerns the future rebirth and development of their civilization, every Civilized Heroic Spirit will go all out to create the perfect living space. This way, whether they choose to continue reproducing within Joshua's world or apply to live independently in another world, at least their foundation will be incredibly solid.
At this moment, Joshua's humanoid avatar was inside his own main world, using gravity to restrain a 'Psionic Bug', observing it closely and thinking.
Psionic Bug—a strange little thing that looks like a cockroach but actually has no legs. It relies entirely on psionic energy for levitation, movement, and adhesion to certain substances. It spreads to every world with the movement of Void Warships.
Psionic Bugs are rare; a large warship might host no more than ten. But multiplied by the scale of the multiverse, this number is almost an incalculable infinity—at least, calculating the number of Psionic Bugs is as unwise and meaningless as pondering their history.
Holding this bug, which occasionally tried to escape his grasp using 'Psionic Precognition', Joshua frowned slightly.
Because he could be certain that before the Lost Star River came into contact with the Multiverse Star River, this kind of life form did not exist in the entire Lost Star River.
But now, after more than a year of Star Gate connections, traces of this Psionic Bug have appeared even in the Mycroft world. Undoubtedly, as Mycroft civilization's Void Warships race across the stars, the Psionic Bug will spread throughout the entire Lost Star River.
But here's the problem—how did they get there?
Joshua could be certain that no one had observed any such life form passing through the Star Gate. Not to mention a Psionic Bug with psionic fluctuations; even bacteria or viruses not permitted by the Star Gate would never be transported to the other end of the star river by the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground. The Mycroft security personnel, Chu Hao, and the Dominant Will of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground formed a triple defense line. There was simply no life form that could evade their detection.
"But 'you' are the exception."
Joshua murmured softly—the Psionic Bug was an exception.
It had quietly stowed away like this and proliferated in the Lost Star River.
This was completely unreasonable. While Mycroft security personnel might make mistakes, Joshua would unconditionally trust Chu Hao and the Dominant Will of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground. Since they guaranteed 'absolutely not', then it was absolutely not. The Psionic Bug had definitely not passed through the Star Gate in any known 'material or energy form'.
Because Psionic Bugs are harmless and have existed for so long, with research yielding nothing, the various civilizations of the Multiverse Star River have grown accustomed to their existence, viewing them as a natural law or phenomenon. They don't question the strangeness displayed by the Psionic Bug. Among the Mycroft people, probably only Joshua and a few who love to get to the bottom of things would be puzzled by this.
"Then, there's only one possibility."
Eliminating all possibilities and hypotheses, the remaining answer, no matter how bizarre, is one of the candidates for truth.
And among them, the one Joshua spent the most time pondering was this possibility.
The Psionic Bug is not a 'living being' at all. It is merely an 'existence' that can gather 'psionic energy' and manifest in the form of a bug. In other words, the spread of the Psionic Bug likely does not depend on an organism's 'genes' or an energy being's 'core energy structure', but rather on something like 'information' or a 'meme'.
The Psionic Bug is an 'abnormal life form' that reproduces through 'cognition'. This is also why most beings can't even catch a Psionic Bug.
But why?
Joshua was puzzled by this—why does the Psionic Bug have such peculiar characteristics? If it truly is an information life form that reproduces through 'cognition', then why can it manipulate psionic energy? Psionic energy, as the most widespread and longest-lasting transcendent power in this multiverse, has a fundamental condition: 'the possessor must have a soul'.
Does that mean the Psionic Bug also has a soul?
No one in the Multiverse Star River cares about these things. They are all taken-for-granted common sense.
Of course, it's not that no one else finds it strange like Joshua does. It's just that everyone couldn't analyze anything, so they gradually gave up.
And Joshua actually couldn't analyze it either—so for the past couple of days, the warrior has been observing this seemingly ordinary bug, which is entirely condensed from psionic energy, turning it over and over in his mind, trying to find an answer.
He really finds this creature strange and is trying to solve this puzzle.
Of course, while the hardworking Joshua, who was on vacation, stayed inside his own world, holding onto the Psionic Bug and stubbornly trying to find an answer...
Other Legendary experts in the Mycroft civilization were not idle.