Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Zhang Jie gently rubbed his temples, exploring the complex memory regions of the brain worm while testing his own mind to avoid a backlash from the brain worm's defenses.

He wasn't actually worried about being countered by the insects, because he knew the extent to which he had enhanced his mental power—he had used the points he gained from the Guide cheat to enhance all the mental power enhancements below AA level in the God's exchange list that wouldn't conflict with each other. Under these circumstances, as long as no extraordinary creature unlocked the fourth stage of the gene lock appeared, his mental defenses would be impregnable.

He was just worried that his search might trigger some self-destruct mechanism.

It's only natural that confidential memories would be encrypted. Finding this confidential part would also take a considerable amount of time—after all, Zhang Jie isn't a worm; he can understand a worm's thoughts but can't directly extract keywords from its language for precise retrieval—therefore, this search will be a lengthy process, and he'll have time to do other things while searching for memories.

For example, thinking.

Reflect on the many irrational aspects of this world.

Unlike Zheng Zha or Ba Wang, who had only seen the Starship Troopers movies or hadn't even seen them and only had a superficial understanding of the world, Zhang Jie had read many world-renowned literary works in real life. Naturally, the original Starship Troopers text was also within his reading scope.

He knew how powerful the humans were in the original work, and he also knew the unique characteristics of the insects. Although the original work was written quite early, resulting in some oversights in areas involving specialized knowledge, there was no doubt that a work that could be passed down through generations must have something extraordinary about it; at the very least, the integrity of its logic was absolutely unquestionable.

After reading the original work, it's understandable that the Starship Troopers movie would be adapted in that style. The original author was an anti-war figure, and the original text contains far fewer war-related plot points than politically charged anti-war content. The director of this film skillfully inherited the author's anti-war sentiment, so it's only natural that the humans in the story would fight these insects to a standstill.

Because the film's director never intended to make a recruitment propaganda film. He didn't want to glorify national strength, soldier unity, the glory of victory, and abundant spoils of war, lest young people rush to join the army after watching it—he wanted to expose what lay hidden behind the war: the fanaticism, the chaos, the darkness and filth obscured by the glory of victory, and many, many other things that should have been expressed in that era.

Therefore, despite possessing a massive and powerful fleet, advanced and convenient equipment, and a technological advantage that seemed to span countless generations, humanity in the film was still utterly humiliated by a group of essentially weak insects. Even after realizing their mistake and turning the tide, they still paid a heavy price beforehand.

However, movies are movies, and reality is reality.

Having once been a guide, Zhang Jie knew very well what the Supreme God was like. He knew the Supreme God's methods and knew that once the film transformed into a cycle of reincarnation, the plot holes in the original film would inevitably be explained, or simply erased altogether. Not like it is now... in this limbo!

Alice had said that the human technology here didn't resemble a normal technological development path for colonizing interstellar space. Although she hadn't detected any abnormal nodes indicating external interference, in her understanding, a human federation that had reached this stage wouldn't consider these weaklings—those lacking even the most basic biological weapons like 'infection' and 'assimilation'—as enemies!

Zhang Jie pondered, carefully searching the memory regions within the brain worm. He knew the witches wouldn't be idly engaging in pointless virtual reality battles. He also knew that a profound crisis, beyond his comprehension, was hidden within this world.

But what could that be?

He thought to himself, his gaze seemingly looking through the starship's porthole towards the Tango Ghost Star, tens of thousands of kilometers away. He knew Patchouli was taking Zheng Zha to farm points on the planet's surface, and he knew they must be reaping a rich reward—the Supreme God rarely provides such a team-wide quest list, where the number of monsters killed determines the amount of reward points and side quests awarded. This was essentially a point-farming opportunity for teams with even a little combat strength.

Given that there are at least tens of billions of insects on this planet, he has no doubt that Zheng Zha's score this time is enough for him to revive many team members and also upgrade his own enhancement to double A level - after all, Zhang Jie himself did just that.

[This is a score-farming content, and it's the ten-player difficulty level where our Zhongzhou team is considered the weakest in team battles.]

Theoretically speaking, we shouldn't need to worry about any changes in the plot. The only potential threat to us is the long-awaited third reincarnation team. But why...?

His gaze swept over the sleeping Alice, the busy Patchouli, and the missing Chu Xuan.

[Even if the Morizu team is strong, they couldn't possibly push you to this point... What exactly are you preparing?]

......................................................

“The fish has taken the bait, now all that’s left is the final verification…” Patchouli floated, gazing at the sky as she murmured to herself. Beneath her feet, a gray tide churned like an ocean—after devouring those pathetic worms and the open-pit mines on Tango Ghost Star, the swarm of nanobots she controlled had now reached the limit of her control.

What is the limit?

The limit is a gray cloud covering six square kilometers. Within this cloud, all living organisms on this planet are nothing more than fragile dust to her. She can easily touch them, envelop them, and devour them, turning them into side quests and reward points in her pocket.

She'd lost count of how many reward points she'd earned or how many side quests she'd unlocked during this score-farming spree. All she knew was that once she returned to the Main God Space, over 90% of the research projects on her to-do list would be transformed from plans on paper into achievable, time-consuming tasks. Until then, the only remaining issue was getting back safely.

Go home safely.

Patchouli shook her head and casually swiped away the last red dot on the screen that appeared beside her—for the past dozen or so hours, she and her companions had been busy moving between each red dot on the map that might be hiding a brain worm. And with their actions came both war and rewards.

Seven brain worms were found in total. Zheng Zha killed three of them, Patchouli dealt with two, and the remaining two were split between Ming Yanwei and Lingdian, one each. Lingdian was fine; a single shot with a sniper rifle was all it took. Ming Yanwei, however, was nearly controlled by the brain worm's mental interference. If she hadn't reacted in time and fired an arrow that sent the brain worm exploding on the spot, she probably wouldn't have gotten the reward.

However, she persevered, and her unwavering will impressed everyone else. At least Zheng Zha now considered her to be on par with Zhang Heng, or even surpassing him in combat ability. While assigning her more fire support missions, he secretly mourned for Zhang Heng.

This was the harvest from the cerebrate, and besides the cerebrate, countless other insects of various kinds were also killed. Each warrior insect and flying insect, except for Zero, had at least tens of thousands of lives lost—Patrick had hundreds of thousands. The group also eliminated thousands of advanced units such as tank insects, plasma insects, and laser insects. Now, apart from the land beneath Patrick's feet, there was no dense cluster of insect swarms on the entire Ghost Tango planet.

—This is the last stop on this planet.

And as long as this problem is solved...

"Noreiki! How many insects are left? Where's the support fleet?!" A deep, booming shout pierced through the nanite cloud and reached the girl's ears. She raised an eyebrow slightly, her fingers twitching, and the gray clouds beneath her feet dispersed before her eyes. The battlefield, previously obscured by the metallic clouds, became visible through the dispersing mist. Accompanied by countless explosions and roars, the scene of veterans frantically reaping insect lives unfolded before her!

There were hundreds of thousands of warrior insects, layer upon layer, densely packed, pressing down almost to the high cliffs guarded by the veterans! Zheng Zha stood at the forefront, wielding the Destruction Blade. With each strike, hundreds of square meters of insects were instantly reduced to biological waste, their corpses still floating in the air. More warrior insects filled their previous positions, screeching and howling as they surged towards the veterans!

"We need orbital artillery fire!" someone roared.

Behind Zheng Zha, Ming Yanwei used a scattering barrage of arrows to clear out the slightly more threatening flying insects. She was responsible for the air, Zheng Zha for the ground, and the larger units hiding underground or in the insect swarm were sniped one by one by Ling Dian. In addition, there were the nano-swarm clouds that descended from a hundred meters in the air, like tornadoes crawling across the wilderness, devouring the densest points of the insect swarm!

The reincarnators resisted resolutely.

The insects' attack became even more ferocious.

During this clash between human and insect, Patchouli's eye twitched slightly.

what……

I forgot by accident.

Patchouli stuck out her tongue where no one else could see. When she received the 'bugs bit the hook' message, the enemy's attack was not yet very fierce, so she switched the nanobot swarm to automatic defense and counterattack mode, and then ran up to the clouds to think about the next countermeasure. However, she did not expect the bugs' final counterattack to be so fierce. She had only retreated for a little over a minute without paying attention, and the situation had fallen to this point.

—Perhaps she did think of that.

"Sorry, I thought you could handle it." The girl raised an eyebrow, gracefully descending from the hundred-meter-high nanite cloud and landing on the top of the isolated island within the nanites. As she descended, the metallic cloud covering six square kilometers also descended. A gray wave surged forth, transforming into a destructive storm that crashed down upon the dense swarm of nanites.

Soon after the ring of insects closest to the reincarnators was dealt with, a barrage of orbital artillery fire followed.

Zheng Zha breathed a sigh of relief.

Ming Yanwei and Lingdian collapsed to the ground, clearly exhausted.

Just as they relaxed slightly, countless red meteors from the sky swept across this final battlefield—the earth was ripped apart, and ancient matrix rock and underground insect nest structures were blasted hundreds of meters into the air before crumbling and shattering. The massive shockwave and incinerating clouds spread everywhere, only to abruptly cease before the protective layers and shock-absorbing structures constructed by the nanobot swarm.

The earth and all living things on it met their end.

And this apocalypse came to a halt before SilverAsh's barrier.

"...Is this the last time?" Zheng Zha asked softly.

“Well, after that, it’s a relatively simple war,” Patchouli replied.

[...if Alice's verification yields a result that refutes Chu Xuan's conjecture.]

Chapter Thirty-Two: I'll Die Without a Floating Fortress

Alice had no idea whether she would come to a conclusion that refuted Chu Xuan's conjecture—she wasn't even aware that she was conducting some kind of verification. All she knew was that her head was throbbing terribly, and that the pain was intensifying as time went on, and as the handsome-faced, Cheng Xiao-like leader of the Anning Dao Sect kept flashing before her eyes.

Two days had passed since the night Cheng Xiao defeated the leader of the Pingning Dao sect and won the battle for consciousness. After she revealed her identity and demonstrated her power—the latter being more important—Cheng Xiao trusted her and followed her instructions to arrange various matters in the city.

Clearly, living people are more valuable than crudely made dead people, because the former are raw materials and the latter are finished products. As for Alice, there is not much difference between fanatical cult followers and the undead—they are all puppets who have lost their sense of self. Compared to the latter, which has a short lifespan and is troublesome to maintain, the former are more convenient to use, and in peacetime, one can expect their occasional bursts of efficiency.

All she needed was a factory, and there was one here.

She needs factory workers, and there are many idle workers here.

Then, things become quite simple.

After the battle that night concluded, the undead guarding the outer side of the Great Temple were quickly reduced to mere mummies or skeletons as Alice withdrew her magic. The poisonous mist they released was also quickly neutralized by the neutralizer Alice had prepared beforehand. Immediately afterward, Cheng Xiaopai, the leader of the Anning Dao, appeared from the Great Temple, gathered his followers, and declared that he had received a divine revelation, that the end of the world was imminent, and that these undead were omens of the apocalypse.

—In short, it was the same old cult stuff. Leveraging the previous prestige of the leader of the Anning Path, Alice had specially prepared a highly inflammatory speech for Cheng Xiao, and the witch had secretly set up a mild mental interference magic circle. With these three elements combined, after the speech, the Anning Path, this potential cult, immediately showed signs of developing into the Yellow Turban Army.

They became excited, even fanatical, and this fanaticism was quickly channeled by Alice into abundant productivity. Once the factory was operational, and the systems and the most basic industrial machinery were built from scratch, whether they still wanted to continue working became less important.

Because the machine has already been built, although in this world where the metallurgical level is basically equivalent to that of World War I, and there is a severe shortage of fuel, heavy metals, and radioactive minerals, Alice cannot directly climb the technology tree to her usual fusion or even annihilation stage in the usual way, this does not mean that she has no way.

She rewrote the framework of the undead, slightly altering their characteristic of being "powered by curses and hatred" to being "powered by prayer and faith," and transferred this control framework to the puppets she manipulated with strings. The end result was that she acquired a massive workforce in a short time through mass production of puppets. The fanatical followers of the Path of Tranquility, after completing the first batch of puppets she needed, withdrew and went back to their usual work to avoid a mutiny if they worked too long.

All they need to do is what they do best and enjoy doing most—prayer.

These prayers would then transform into energy, becoming a constantly growing source of productivity in Alice's hands. In compensation, the witch allocated a portion of her productivity to provide them with ample food and a peaceful space. And as the doctrines of the Way of Peace were revealed in such a realistic way for the first time, the industries under her command expanded outwards like a swarm of ants.

It was merely a simulated divine ritual, which wouldn't be difficult for Alice. The Path of Tranquility was a religion that worshipped a tangible, existing leader, not some unorthodox clay or wooden figure. Once she controlled the leader, the faith would naturally fall into Alice's hands. While this faith wouldn't be enough to elevate her life level, it would be more than sufficient to supply her with energy.

What began as an ordinary machine factory doubled its productivity within two hours, and its technology leaped half a generation. Two hours later, its scale doubled again, and its processes advanced slightly. By the end of the day, this large city, originally controlled by the informal religion of Anningdao, had transformed from an old-fashioned city that was useless except for drainage and street cleaning into a mechanical fortress.

—Puppets manipulate puppets, puppets create puppets. Apart from the fact that the puppets are not as effective as real robots made of steel, this city has completely become a cyberpunk city that is ahead of its time!

Alice had to carefully suppress her witch-like habits to avoid installing anti-gravity wells and floating mechanisms in the city, transforming it from a magical production base into a floating fortress capable of launching swarms of laser missiles and massive cannons. While she didn't do this, her ethereal golems still managed to create several large squadrons of flying machines and walking annihilation golems in their spare time. Once she programmed them into the appropriate main control system, these whimsical gadgets would be ready to be put to use immediately!

however.

Alice looked up at Cheng Xiao, the version of the Anning Dao leader, who had 'inadvertently' passed by her for the fifteenth time in the past hour—this guy was the core of the faith purification ritual in the divine kingdom, and Alice had to pay attention to him at all times—she felt that her work efficiency had dropped by ten percent as a result!

Ten percent!

Converting this hour into the context of this puppet city, that's 160 tons of steel! 95 tons of refined copper! 20 tons of composite alloys! And 1,300 newly manufactured tethered puppets!

She had no choice but to turn away, stopping the massive strings of puppets and the early computing mechanisms she was manipulating—this wretched place couldn't even produce transistors, they could only make do with high-precision vacuum tubes!—Then, she forcibly suppressed the intense surge of murderous intent surging within her, and gently asked Cheng Xiao, the guy who hadn't been given any work from the beginning, whose only job was to fulfill his duties as the mascot of the Anning Dao Sect and purify his prayer power in this simulated divine kingdom ritual.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" the girl asked with a smile. If Zheng, or anyone else in the group who knew her except for Chu and Patchouli, had seen that smile, they would have run away without a second thought.

However, Cheng Xiao is not Zheng Zha.

So he didn't realize the seriousness of the problem, nor did he immediately run away. Instead, he put on a carefree smile that was completely out of place with his aloof face, which looked like it came straight out of a BL comic, and made his request to Alice in a slightly relaxed tone.

"Actually, it's nothing much~" Alice noted it down.

"I mainly came to check on you because I saw how hard you've been working~" Alice noted down two sentences.

"And then I thought I'd see if there's anything I can do to help?"—Alice looked at him as if she were examining a corpse.

The girl gently rubbed her temples, suppressing the urge to waste the little magic power she had painstakingly accumulated by blasting a seven-colored magic cannon at the face of this large, unrecyclable object in front of her. She then calmed herself and told him in as peaceful a tone as possible.

You wasted all my time just to come here and tell me this?!

"If you want to help, sitting properly in the seats at the very front of the main hall would be the best assistance you can give me. Of course, if you'd like, you could also give a few impromptu speeches to enhance the publicity effect; I would be even more grateful then." The girl spoke softly, gently, and calmly, looking into his eyes as she spoke slowly.

Then she got the real answer she wanted to hear.

"...But I think everyone is very tired." Cheng Xiao put away his playful smile, which was out of character for him.

Which "big names"?

“Everyone in this city.” Cheng Xiao suddenly stretched out his hand, waving it behind him and emphasizing his words. “Everyone! You’ve pushed them too far! Don’t you know that many people with weak constitutions have already died! They prayed and worshipped, and then died of heart failure!”

“If I remember correctly,” Alice glanced at him coldly, “I provided everyone with plenty of food that was both tasty and nutritious, and I arranged a comfortable environment for everyone. I even arranged treatment for those who were sick or injured. And all I asked of them was that they prayed fervently.”

"The doctrines of the Way of Peace are similar to those of Buddhism, except that 'enduring suffering and waiting will surely bring peace and tranquility.' And now I have given them peace, tranquility, health, and sustenance. The ideal kingdom they longed for is right here, in this place, in the covenant between God and man, the part belonging to God has been fulfilled—are they not even willing to make the most basic sacrifice?"

“It’s not that everyone is unwilling! It’s just…” He waved his hand forcefully, as if trying to express something, but got stuck at some unknown point.

“Just what?” Alice tilted her head slightly. “Cheng Xiao, I remember you should be a soldier, you should have joined the Party, and you should have sworn an oath under your national flag to protect your country and its people. But I think those guys praying in the Great Temple now can’t be considered the people you’re supposed to protect… I’ve told you all this is just a dream, those things outside are just data, just fictional images, and you don’t need to think about all this nonsense.”

Cheng Xiao suddenly choked. Undoubtedly, Alice's words had achieved the effect she hoped for. The creature before him had lost his previous arrogant and exuberant demeanor. He immediately slumped down.

"I can't just stand by and watch..."

Alice raised an eyebrow.

Watching helplessly as... that phrase sounds slightly familiar.