Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 983 [Individual Reverse Mother Weapon: Alastair Gray] (Published first, to be supplemented later)

Jawbone City - Core Area
This is an area with an extremely rigorous structure, almost desolate.

If other areas of Jawbone City still retain some traces of life, then this place is a completely cold, logical energy hub.

Xia Xiu stood on the floating track, his silver cane lightly touching the ground, trembling slightly. He gazed at the city center around him, which was densely covered with prisms, optical fibers, chitinous frames and metal structures, his eyes calm and still.

The ground is not real land, but is made up of thousands of nested hexagonal chitin rails, each with a mechanical self-aligning structure. In the event of wartime changes, it can be instantly reshaped into a weapon platform or a defensive tower base.

Rising along the orbit are energy centers that pierce the sky like sharp spikes, with blue fire rings composed of compressed microparticles dancing atop the spires.

Energy burns high in the sky, while reason forges the soul deep underground.

Queen Clarity sat atop that floating instrument that resembled a throne of gods.

It was a spinal floating core that incorporated war mothership-class equipment. Its entire body was forged from black and silver machinery and active chitin, with four spider-like structural arms spreading out from its back to support its enormous body, which was comparable to a mobile miniature temple.

Two ant-like individuals stood on either side of her:

One of them was Kirks, an old acquaintance of Xia Xiu, who had met him on the outer battlefield and led him into the Jawbone City's "Leading Ant Guard".

The other was a higher-ranking ant, with a more complex bone structure and crown. His shell was a strange metallic blue-green, covered with faint purple markings, clearly indicating a very high-level mental structure enhancement.

As he bowed to Xia Xiu to convey his spiritual understanding, he introduced himself in standard diplomatic language:
Hive ID 0159-72X-4881-CT65, common name: Seren. His Majesty's direct assistant, 7th-tier data translator.

Xia Xiu looked at the assistant insect and felt that this insect was a little... different.

Queen Clarity seemed to notice the subtle change in Xia Xiu's gaze, and then echoed in a low, humming voice:

"Serren is the most outstanding individual of our people in recent generations."

For the first time, her tone carried a hint of pride; even that mechanical, cold, kingly tone couldn't conceal the admiration within.

"After the loss of the three Archon Queens, he took over their strategic rank and research coordination functions; and presided over the reverse engineering of the core logic of a large number of Fifth Church contaminated technologies, enabling us to extract usable weaponry with an extremely low contamination rate."

"He is the ant colony's treasure, my left limb and the core of my second consciousness."

"...I have granted him privileges equivalent to those of a consul, and he may also independently assume control of the future governing system."

Xia Xiu's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly at the end of her statement.

He felt an indescribable sense of unease.

Just then, the air trembled slightly, and the figure of Armand, formed from fragments of data light, quietly appeared behind him, trailing an incongruous black halo. He squinted at the hunched insect, then whistled lightly.

“Tsk—this is quite an interesting bug.” He circled Seren closely, as if inspecting a sophisticated instrument.

Amund said to Shashua:
“Did you find a problem?”

Xia Xiu silently replied in his mind:
"Hmm, a very simple question. But now is not the time to reveal the answer."

Seren remained with his head bowed, awaiting the king's orders and the distinguished guest's next instructions.

He didn't notice anything unusual.

At least, that's how it appears on the surface.

Xia Xiu didn't say much, but simply turned his gaze to the building in front of him that was completely different from the surrounding buildings.

It was a silent, low-lying, cube-shaped building, yet it was composed of five layers of materials wrapped and stacked together:

The outer layer is an anti-meme chitinous structure, which encapsulates a layer of mental interference. The third layer is a sealed lead pad layer and a mental perception dissipation net. The fourth layer is a plasma signal blackbody layer. And at the deepest part is a deconstructed frame of entropy, which is die-cast using some unknown technique.

The entire cube seems to have been forcibly driven into the real world from the gap between logic and reality, making people instinctively uncomfortable at first glance.

"This is our core facility specifically designed for researching anomalous mothers."

Clarity spoke in a deep voice, "You may call it: Containment Unit One."

The Queen's tone was devoid of any emotion; it was a royal command broadcast that transcended sentiment.
The containment unit has a total area of ​​10 meters × 15 meters × 3 meters. All inner layers of the outer shell are equipped with a lead seal layer and a mind interference layer, ensuring that no language, images, electronic signals, sound vibrations, memetic fragments, or parapsychological projections can be transmitted without being cleared.

The entrance is an airtight lock located at one end, allowing only one person to pass at a time; the airtight lock remains completely closed until the person leaves.

The Queen continued:

Under no circumstances may relevant information leave the containment unit in any form—including but not limited to handwritten, electronic, image, sound, or parapsychological means.

She paused for a moment, a cold rationality flashing in her compound eyes:
"Those who enter must make a decision regarding the contents within three minutes of leaving; after three minutes, I will erase their short-term memory through special intervention. This is a way to avoid contamination—all understanding of the Fifth Church must remain in a state of vague labeling."

Xia Xiu listened without changing his expression, only gently stroking the silver cane in his hand.

He has grasped the core meaning of this mechanism:
Cognition is infection, modeling is calamity, and the decision window is the last line of defense reserved for rational life in this battle.

Undoubtedly, Clarity kept relevant information about the Fifth Church within her unit. Whenever she needed to make decisions or issue instructions regarding matters related to the Fifth Church, she would go in to learn about the relevant information and engage in self-reflection.

After the three-minute wall-facing period, she will come out and use that time to make various strategic decisions against the enemy.

This unique wall-facing coping mechanism is particularly well-suited to the political ecosystem of ant colonies, where the supreme leader's word is law.

Xia Xiu stroked his chin, his eyes fixed on the heavy, closed door, and asked calmly:
"You only have three minutes to make a decision... What kind of decisions have you made in those three minutes?"

Queen Clarity did not respond immediately.

Her enormous compound eyes were as silent as a extinguished starry sea, while the segments of her body trembled slightly, as if she had experienced an extremely low-frequency mental spasm.

She floated her enormous body atop her ethereal throne, and then a low, deep mental fluctuation slowly emanated from her:
"I issued the following command within three minutes—"

Echoes of the soul reverberated through the space, like a series of reflections of memories:

"120,000 infected individuals were introduced into a low-dimensional compressed core, sealed in a self-destructive manner, and the entire nest was used as a barrier layer to prevent the Mother from leaking out through skeletal resonance..."

Xia Xiu raised an eyebrow.

"Burn all historical archives, ethnic origins, queen genealogies... retain only neural tags for re-education. The reason: the Fifth Church might use our own identity memories as a springboard for the Mother's infiltration."

"Change the language module of the Seventh Army Corps, abolishing all pictographic and syllable words, and replacing them with a Mimu encrypted interlaced pulse language."

"All birth festivals in the Nest Zone are prohibited, all anniversaries are cancelled, and any activities involving the number 5 are forbidden. Any individual who unknowingly repeats terms such as 'Fifth World' will be considered a heretic and immediately cremated."

Xia Xiu's gaze turned serious, but he didn't interrupt until the Queen Ant, Clarity, finally made her final decision:
Three months ago, I sat down again in my office, spent three minutes assessing the situation, and made the following decision—to consolidate the authority of the original three governors and completely delegate it to the seventh-level data interpreter: Seren. Reason: His logical consistency and resistance to mimicry are the best, and he is completely trusted. "Complete trust."

Xia Xiu repeated these four words as if he were ruminating on a stone.

His gaze remained fixed on the Queen's face, but his mind was racing. After a few seconds, he suddenly looked up and asked:
"Can I ask you a question, Clarity?"

His tone became casual, as if he were casually posing an academic question.

Why did you delegate the queen ant's authority to her assistant?

The Queen's compound eyes narrowed slightly, as if she did not understand the meaning of the question.

Xia Xiu gently rubbed his fingertips, his expression a mixture of curiosity and sarcasm, and continued:

"Let me ask you another way. You know, in the real-world ant colony ecosystem, the 'queen' is at the top of the racial hierarchy, right? All ant colony behavior revolves around her pheromone dominance, reproductive power, and mental network."

“Worker ants, soldier ants, scout ants… none of them are assistants. The queen ant is the source of the entire hive’s consciousness. In the natural system, no queen ant would delegate power to any so-called assistant.”

"This is the iron law of the symbiotic mechanism."

His tone was unhurried, almost like that of an insect behavior professor lecturing an undergraduate course.

"And you just told me that in a three-minute ordeal based on memory erasure and isolation from Mother—the most important decision you made was to transfer governing power to an assistant who has no reproductive rights and no mental link."

In any ant colony, the only one that possesses the dominant pheromone is the queen ant.

Worker ants behave in a decentralized manner. No single ant other than the queen can dominate the entire colony, and there is no social structure similar to an assistant or a middle-level bureaucrat. The queen is the only one who has the final say.

This is a matter of common sense.

Now, the queen in front of him seemed a little confused, so Xia Xiu directly asked her a question:
"May I ask you another common-sense question?"

"In the myriad realms, and even in non-transcendent ant colonies beyond the myriad realms, do they all have a non-queen ant assistant to govern the entire colony?"

The air suddenly became heavy, like the pressure of sediment at the bottom of an abyss, slowly spreading outwards.

Clarity paused for about two seconds, then responded in a matter-of-fact tone:
"Ant colonies certainly have assistants—that's common sense."

She spoke naturally, fluently, and as if it were perfectly natural.

As soon as he finished speaking, the golden light in Xia Xiu's eyes suddenly narrowed, his pupils tightened like battle lines, and his aura began to become dangerous.

The figure of Sisyphus had already emerged from beside Xia Xiu's body. The moment the transformation appeared, he took a step forward, and his fist struck like a mountain collapsing and a world splitting apart.

boom--! ! !
That punch pierced through Thrall's body in space, the fist silently penetrating Thrall's insect body.

But there was no blood flying everywhere, no flesh exploding.

Rather... it's a process of shedding its shell.

The enormous insect-like body was stripped from reality the instant it made contact with Sisyphus's fist, and a humanoid form emerged from beneath its carapace.

The figure of a middle-aged man, wearing a gray suit, with deep-set eyes and hair neatly combed back.

He slowly emerged from the floating carapace, shedding the disguise of a human form from the inanimate structure.

On his face, a calm smile that contained no hostility appeared.

Queen Clarity, who was standing to the side, suddenly turned her head at that moment, as if she had noticed something, but before she could speak, her body suddenly trembled, and her six compound feet slid on the ground with a screeching sound.

Her voice came through:

"Who...are you? How did you get here?"

blank.

Her compound eyes held no recollection of Xia Xiu, no past, no conversation, no trust, no cooperation—it was as if everything from the past had been completely severed from her memory.

Xia Xiu was stunned, his brows furrowing slightly.

The next instant, the queen let out a twisted roar of anger, stomped her six legs, and the rune circuits on her back flashed, gathering a suppression spell under the consciousness of the earth, and the attack, like the will of the entire city, crashed down on Xia Xiu.

puff~
Before Xia Xiu could think further, the [Möbius strip] flashed around him.

Space is folded, and rules are instantly reversed.

The destructive spell grazed past his image, but failed to pinpoint his true location.

Once he regained his footing, a hint of bewilderment appeared in his golden eyes as he looked at the enraged Queen Clarity.

"...What just happened?"

His voice was low, yet it carried an instinctive confusion.

Xia Xiu subconsciously patted his head.

Something's not right, I think I've forgotten something...

It was as if a chain had broken in his mind; he only remembered that he had just stepped into the facility, but the situation had already become uncontrollable.

Why did Queen Clarity suddenly attack me?

He couldn't piece together the previous sequence of events; he only remembered something very important, but he couldn't say what it was.

At that moment, he saw a middle-aged man slowly step forward and bow slightly to him.

His voice was deep, carrying a strong sense of clarity and authority, yet without any hostility.

“Nice to meet you, Abraham, my name is Alastair Gray.”

After the introduction, Gray suddenly frowned and looked nauseous, as if he were chewing on something hard to swallow.

He then said:

"Your memory is really... stinky and hard. I feel nauseous after just a few minutes of it."

As he spoke, Gray instinctively covered his mouth, as if he were forcibly swallowing something unpalatable.