A Colossus rushes in at the start

Chapter 64 The Swarm Mastermind Project Fails

"It failed."

Lu Shang stared speechlessly at the shuttle-shaped spaceship. Inside the spaceship, it was filled with psionic slimes of varying levels, but the highest level was only level twelve, and there were no psionic slimes above that.

Just a day earlier, Lu Shang announced that he would use psionic time acceleration to 1:100 million for planetary life forms. Only one day would pass outside, but about 270,000 years would have passed inside the closed-loop spacetime.

These psionic slimes initially multiplied and expanded as Lu Shang had predicted. However, as their size increased and resources became limited, they began to compete with each other.

At first, slimes simply used psychic energy to move their own kind away and claim territory. Later, as competition intensified, they began to use psychic energy to kill their own kind.

Later, some slimes discovered that they did not actually need to absorb geothermal heat to produce organic matter to sustain life; they could sustain themselves by devouring their own kind and obtaining organic matter from the corpses of their kin.

Thus, consumers emerged from among the producers. These consumers focused on enhancing their psionic abilities and then periodically hunted their fellow producers to obtain far more organic matter at once than by absorbing geothermal heat...

Gradually, over the long years, producers and consumers became two species, and territoriality gradually developed among consumers. Every consumer wanted their territory to be larger, because only a larger territory could provide enough food to feed more consumers of the same species.

There is competition between consumer groups; one consumer group can eliminate another. In this struggle for survival, producers are gradually marginalized.

Because the number of producers is always controlled by consumers, and there is no higher level of control over consumers, competition among consumers is inevitable, and mutual extinction is also inevitable.

In this protracted struggle for survival, the strength of psychic energy has become a key factor. A consumer with strong psychic energy is more likely to attract the opposite sex and thus has a better chance of reproduction. With each generation, the psychic energy level of the consumer population on the planet has been raised step by step.

Those who cannot keep up with the pace of improvement will be wiped out.

It could be because the biological template used by the rabbi was a certain alien species in the Vorsotis galaxy, or it could be due to a coincidence that a certain group of consumers developed intelligence.

With wisdom, they know how to form alliances and entice other species to continuously attack species with stronger psychic abilities, ultimately reaping the benefits and expanding their territory.

After expanding their territory, they increase the number of their own species, and then use their numbers to use psychic energy to defeat species with higher levels of psychic energy.

Ultimately, a psionic slime population hovering around level 4 or 5 defeated the psionic slime populations at level 7 or 8 on the planet, achieving global unification.

However, this little incident was not a big problem. After the unification, the issue of distribution arose, and the population began to split, thus returning to the original inter-population competition.

The emergence of wisdom merely made competition more diverse and complex. This complexity led to the emergence of nations, the accumulation of knowledge shaped different cultural spheres, and these cultural spheres created different civilizations.

The planet thus entered an era of multiple civilizations.

Later on, these psionic slimes developed in a way similar to humans, with wars, cooperation, and competition between nations, love, hate, joy, sorrow, and all walks of life between individuals, and exploration of the material world.

At this point, the psychic slimes' criteria for choosing a mate became less stable; previously, whoever had stronger psychic powers was considered more "beautiful".

Now, it can be that those who use psionic energy more flexibly are more 'beautiful,' those with weaker psionic energy are more 'beautiful,' or even those with more vibrant skin color are more 'beautiful.'

It took nearly 100,000 years after their deployment to allow these psionic slimes to unify their culture and ideology, building a vast planetary civilization.

At this time, the heat death theory began to spread in this psionic slime civilization. Their hypothesis was not complicated; it directly and clearly stated that the source of all energy came from nuclear fusion in the planet's core.

When all matter in the world falls into the Earth's core and undergoes nuclear fusion, the entire world will fall into absolute silence and darkness.

The only chance for civilization to continue is through that tunnel on the edge of the world, outside the planet.

However, the tunnel has a very strong gravitational pressure, and ordinary matter is torn into ion clouds as soon as it enters that area.

After numerous tests, it was confirmed that gravitational pressure can directly penetrate matter and affect individuals inside the spaceship. Even if the spaceship is strong enough, the life forms inside must have sufficiently powerful psionic energy to pass through that area.

The entire psionic slime civilization changed at this time, and aesthetic concepts gradually returned to the point that whoever had stronger psionic power was more 'beautiful'.

Of course, there are also those who advocate physical modification, advocating for modifying the body to increase its strength, and then passing through the tunnel.

Later, the conflict between the physicalists and the psionicists intensified, leading to a world war and establishing the psionicists as the dominant force, with the physicalists playing a secondary role.

After developing for some time, this psionic slime civilization gathered a group of slimes with the strongest psionic abilities, the strongest physical bodies, and those who excelled in both physical and psionic abilities. They set off as an advance team, aboard their newly developed shuttle-shaped spaceship, to explore the depths of the tunnel.

The powerful gravitational pressure is no longer a problem; as long as we cooperate and use psionic energy, quantity can make up for the lack of quality.

then……

After waiting a day, Lu Shang found that all that came out were a batch of psionic slimes with a maximum psionic level of only 12.

"I admit I miscalculated. Laugh if you want, I can take it," Lu Shang said to Rabbi, clearly annoyed.

Unfortunately, he had made a boastful promise, but the result was not as expected, which was quite embarrassing. As a human, Lu Shang felt somewhat awkward.

"Actually, this is somewhat useful. Although they are both at level twelve psionic energy, the brains of these creatures are significantly smaller than those currently used by the swarm. A planetary creature can carry more psionic brains."

Rabi didn't quite agree with Lu Shang's words. He felt that the initial test was quite successful, at least the swarm hadn't come up empty-handed.

"What's the use of having more?"

"What the swarm wants now is a higher-level psionic brain," Lu Shang said unhappily.

He now wants to kill the slime civilization in the closed-loop spacetime directly. It would be better to maintain fierce competition. Why did he have to develop a civilization and engage in some kind of psionic cooperation?

Rabi ignored Lu Shang's complaints and expressed his own thoughts: "I don't think there's a big problem with the direction we've chosen. I've mutated my level 12 psionic brain genes for over a thousand years, but all I've gotten are a bunch of brains with psionic energy below level 12. At best, I've only reached level 11."

"You only tried it once, and you obtained a level twelve psionic brain that is smaller than the brain that the swarm currently uses. The result is much better than what I did before."

Compared to the previous efforts of over a thousand years with little progress, the rabbi felt that this method, which at least showed some progress, was acceptable.

Rabbi continued, "The reason why no psionic beings above level twelve appeared this time is simply because we did not consider cooperation between psionic beings, nor did we consider that they might give rise to intelligence and civilization."

"Perhaps we can try to improve the screening mechanism. If the tunnel only allows psionic energy of level 12 and above to pass through and does not allow cooperation, then maybe we can really nurture psionic brains of level 12 and above."

Lu Shang fell into thought and murmured, "In that case... it would require an individual capable of enduring a long period of time."

"Set up a monitoring organism to oversee the tunnel within the experimental area. If the test subjects in the closed-loop spacetime choose to cooperate, the gravitational pressure will be increased progressively based on the number of them cooperating, forcing them to stop cooperating. In the end, only those with psionic energy of level 12 or higher can pass through the tunnel..."

While Lu Shang was lost in thought, Rabbi, watching the psionic slimes struggling inside the shuttle-shaped spaceship, couldn't help but ask Lu Shang, "What should we do with these individuals?"

"Them?" Lu Shang was taken aback. He glanced at the shuttle-shaped spaceship calmly through the Behemoth's sensory organs, then replied, "Just collect the genes of those level 12 psionic beings. Don't leave everything behind, otherwise how will we survive in the Fusotis system?"

(End of this chapter)