Reborn as a tiger, he was chosen by the nation as its guardian beast.

The gunfire and artillery fire finally subsided completely after a full day and night.

This once prosperous city, ravaged by gunfire, has now been reduced to a charred ruin.

During this time, Wang Hu followed Qin Tieshan, constantly moving the command post forward.

Although the old man was quite old, his stubbornness was even stronger than that of a young man.

Wherever the flag of the front-line troops is planted, their temporary command post will inevitably be set up not far behind within an hour.

In his words, the commander's tent must be set up in a place where he can see the front-line artillery fire through binoculars.

This put his bodyguards and security personnel under immense pressure, their nerves constantly on edge, fearing that some strange mutant might suddenly emerge from some hidden corner and launch a surprise attack.

However, Wang Hu did not react in any particular way to this tense atmosphere.

He remained as lazy as ever, spending his days eating and sleeping.

He's actually spending more time sleeping now than he did at the zoo, and the distant gunfire doesn't bother him at all.

The only difference was that the crystal cores in the tray beside him were being consumed at an increasingly faster rate.

In just over a day, he alone had consumed nearly thirty pale blue crystal cores.

When the news reached Gu Xing, who had been busy in the temporary laboratory, the highly respected old dean was so shocked that his jaw almost dropped to the ground.

According to their preliminary calculations, the energy stored inside a pale blue crystal core is enough to dilute and produce about ten basic doses of the extraordinary potion.

Wang Hu ate thirty of them in one day?

Does that mean he consumed the equivalent of three hundred doses of extraordinary potion energy in a single day?

Is this even a carbon-based life form?!

Every time Gu Xing saw Wang Hu crunching away happily with the blue crystal core in his mouth, he felt a shiver run down his spine.

However, when he thought about it again, he realized that Wang Hu was not human, but a tiger that had already entered the realm of the extraordinary, so it didn't seem so hard to accept.

His initial shock quickly transformed into an almost fanatical anticipation.

He secretly made up his mind that once this exploration of another world came to an end, he would do whatever it took, even tie this big cat up, and bring it to his laboratory to give it a thorough, all-around physical examination!

He was determined to figure out exactly how this guy's body structure differed from that of ordinary creatures!

……

Eight o'clock the next evening.

Nearly sixty hours have passed since the spatial rift was opened.

After lying down for a day, Wang Hu finally perked up again and followed Qin Tieshan with a curious expression, stepping into a huge space buried deep underground.

Soon, they should be able to see the true face of that so-called intelligent life from another world.

The huge underground space was now filled with heavily armed soldiers.

The powerful flashlights in their hands, combined with the bright incandescent bulbs overhead, illuminated the pitch-black space as if it were daytime.

After Wang Hu followed Qin Tieshan in, he immediately saw the huge, mountain-like tumor in the very center of this underground space, composed of countless blood-red fleshy tissues.

The surface of the tumor was covered with folds like the grooves of a brain, and it was still wriggling slightly, emitting a nauseating, fishy odor.

The ground surrounding this enormous mountain of flesh was covered with countless corpses of all kinds of zombies and mutants.

Gu Xing was also standing beside Qin Tieshan, explaining the situation to him.

"Sir, our previous guesses may have been slightly off."

His words carried a hint of indescribable complexity.

"We originally thought that a human-like intelligent civilization was hidden underground, but now it seems that the so-called intelligent life is actually... just this huge tumor tissue in front of us."

"Strictly speaking, it is actually an intelligent life form constructed mainly of biomass and incorporating some technological means."

Gu Xing adjusted his glasses and added.

"To put it simply, it's a rather peculiar-looking... artificial intelligence."

Qin Tieshan slowly turned his head and stared into Gu Xing's eyes.

"Since it's called artificial intelligence, that means it's man-made. In other words, this world's catastrophe, these zombies... are actually all man-made disasters?"

"Someone created this thing and ultimately destroyed the entire world?"

His words were calm, but the coldness they conveyed made the surrounding air seem to drop several degrees.

Upon hearing this, Gu Xing also fell silent.

After a long silence, he finally nodded heavily.

In fact, Qin Tieshan had already anticipated this.

From the moment he arrived in this world and saw the statue celebrating the two-hundredth birthday of the CEO of the other world, he had already made this guess.

He had originally wanted to ask if this so-called intelligent entity might have been usurped by the CEO who was pursuing immortality, and turned into a tool for the other party to achieve eternal life.

But in the end, he didn't ask the question in front of so many people.

It's better to discuss some things with Gu Xing in detail when we get back.

He stretched out his hand, pointed to the densely packed zombies and mutants around the mountain of flesh, as well as the obvious bulges on the mountain, and asked again.

"And what's the deal with all this stuff?"

Gu Xing looked in the direction he was pointing, and a hint of regret appeared on his face.

"Commander, these zombies and mutants must have transferred their internal energy into this intelligent body, that is, the crystal core. I have checked, and the crystal cores inside their bodies have indeed disappeared. What remains here is just an empty shell."

"And inside those bulges are also some new mutants that are being conceived. However, most of them have not yet fully formed before the gestation process was forcibly interrupted."

He paused, then continued explaining.

"It must be that this branch of the AI, after realizing that it was no match for us, chose to make a drastic decision."

"It took all the energy it could carry and then escaped the city directly through these pipes."

As Gu Xing spoke, he pointed to the dark, interconnected passageways around him, like a spider web, and the pipes of varying thicknesses inside those passageways.

Qin Tieshan was somewhat surprised upon hearing this.

"Did it really just leave like that?"

"Although we had the upper hand before, they weren't without a fighting chance. Besides, aren't they still breeding even more powerful mutants?"

"If the fighting had continued, even if they ultimately couldn't defeat us, they could have inflicted heavy casualties on us. Why did they retreat so decisively?"

"It might be because..."

Gu Xing pondered for a moment before offering his own speculation.

"This intelligent agent, like the artificial intelligence on our planet, does not have what humans call emotions and feelings."

"All its actions are based on the coldest, most precise calculations."

"After conducting subsequent war simulations and determining that the probability of it losing if it continues fighting exceeds a certain threshold, in order to minimize its losses, it will not hesitate to choose to... retreat in advance."

This is the consistent behavioral logic of artificial intelligence agents.