Other than the most advanced crystal processors and interference units, the two "Super Swirl" -level warships were naturally equipped with soldiers.
Although Xiaoming, Wenwen, and A Boxing Champion could reduce the number of workers by half through the fully-automated system, the agility, independence, and creativity of human beings in the critical posts could not be replaced by abundant data.
Li Yao chose the most reliable candidates in the Big Bai Pirate Gang who knew the truth about the Federation and had families in the Federation, as well as the warriors in the Cultivators' fleet who hated the Immortal Cultivators. They were transferred to "Xiaoming" and "Wenwen" as crew members.
Those people either considered the Federation as their motherland or hated the Imperium the most. Their loyalty was definitely not a problem.
The problem was how to explain the existence of Xiaoming and Wenwen to them.
Li Yao had made up his mind a long time ago that he would not keep the truth a secret for long.
Xiaoming, Wenwen, and A Boxing Champion had also made precise deductions. If they did not want to have a total conflict with the civilization of mankind, which would result in a lose-lose outcome, they had to announce the truth as soon as possible.
If they had a dozen fleets and tens of millions of aggressive battle puppets under their control, it would be impossible for the suspicious and sensitive human beings not to burst into fury when the truth was revealed.
Announcing the truth on their own when they were still in the embryonic stage and growing under the watch and guidance of human beings was perhaps the best way for a "child civilization" to grow.
Of course, the situation at the center of the cosmos was still too chaotic. The reformists, Blackstar the Great who was hiding among the reformists, the four Kurfürst families, the Holy League that was coveting in the darkness, the mysterious mausoleum of the Supreme Emperor, and the Supreme Emperor and the Blood God whose fate was unknown … All the variables were a mess.
The Blue Sky Market was far from being united, and the battle of the Seven Seas Grand Market was about to begin. If the truth was completely revealed, it would only confuse all the crew members. Therefore, after discussing with A Boxing Champion and Boss Bai, Li Yao decided to reveal part of the truth first and see how the crew members would react.
Li Yao's explanation for the two cyberwarfare warships that were unbelievably automated was that they had applied the latest super artificial intelligence technology from the Federation, which was the 'Hyper Spirit Technology' left behind by Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan.
Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan had created countless Phantom Entities and strengthened eighteen of them into Hyper Spirits. It was true that he wanted to use them to control the entire Federation.
The Hyper Spirits boasted computational ability and logical judgment abilities that far exceeded that of regular artificial intelligence. They could hack and control a super crystal processor more than easily. Of course, it was also true that the Hyper Spirits could significantly improve the automatic performance of the starships or the space fortresses when they were applied to the super-large magical equipment complexes.
It was also true that Xiaoming and Wenwen used to be Hyper Spirits No. 17 and No. 18.
Of course, no matter how awesome the Hyper Spirits were, they were still artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence technology, on the other hand, was very popular in both the Federation and the Imperium. It was a necessary ancillary technology for any large-scale magical equipment or even virtual world. Both the space pirates of the Federation and the Cultivators of the Imperium were not surprised at all.
'It is very awesome artificial intelligence that is controlling the two starships.' It was an acceptable explanation.
As for Xiaoming and Wenwen, the two lovely kids, Li Yao told the crew dutifully that they were his children who had been born with superpowers and were very awesome 'experts of artificial intelligence'. They were the only ones who could manipulate the Hyper Spirits on the two starships.
Although it was somewhat unbelievable, considering that the two kids were the children of 'Vulture Li Yao', it did not seem so strange after all.
As it turned out, the crew got along very well with the two starships and the two kids. The problems that Li Yao was worried about did not happen at all.
Both the space pirates of the Federation and the Cultivators of the Imperium were warship soldiers. For a warship soldier, the most important thing was always a bigger, faster, and stronger starship.
What could be more exciting than being assigned to a starship that boasted the best countermeasure ability in the entire Imperium?
Although the 'Hyper Spirits' in the past had almost brought a destructive disaster to the Federation, the weapons themselves were innocent. All that mattered was who had them. Right now, the 'Hyper Spirits' belonged to the 'Coalition Fleet of Pyromaniacs'. Naturally, the stronger they were, the better.
The two little fellows were particularly adorable, too. Everybody could not help but have the desire to protect them. After seeing how cute the two little fellows were, many crew members were secretly complaining about Li Yao. How could he be so cruel as to put such little babies on the starship and send them to take part in a perilous, dangerous war? Even if they did have some unique techniques, they should not have done it so recklessly!
All in all, under the motivation of the crew members' great pride and shared hatred for the enemy, as well as the remarkable automatic performance of the starships themselves, the two highly-modified countermeasure warships miraculously gained preliminary combat ability after only half a month.
The remaining amazing abilities would have to be activated and improved step by step in real battles.
After half a month, the starships of the two branch fleets were almost fully maintained and upgraded. Boss Bai hosted a small-scale drill.
On one side of the drill, Boss Bai commanded the fleet in the traditional way in person.
On the other side, it was a new-generation fleet that was more intelligent and fully automatic, commanded by A Boxing Champion and assisted by Xiaoming and Wenwen.
As it turned out, although Boss Bai boasted more experienced, faster, and fiercer elite warships, it was still a particularly difficult victory. He almost resorted to all his skills before he finally tore apart the battle formation of A Boxing Champion's fleet like peeling an onion.
Even though it failed, A Boxing Champion's fleet still led one third of the starships to retreat in an orderly way under the delicate firepower, the marvelous coordination, and the absolutely calm and emotionless control, keeping very powerful "seeds".
Of course, such a splendid "failure" was not entirely due to A Boxing Champion, Xiaoming, and Wenwen. It was more like the first perfect cooperation between the newborn information lives and human beings.
Boss Bai was quite right. The pure information lives had obvious weaknesses. Their existence and strength depended on their communication with each other, and in the boundless sea of stars, communication consumed a lot of spiritual energy and was easily interfered with.
If a fleet was entirely controlled by information lives, in the most extreme case, as long as a stellar storm was raised and all the information transmission on the space battlefield was disrupted, the combat ability of human beings might drop by 70%, but the information lives would be doomed.
Besides, super long-distance communication required time and delay. In a battlefield where everything was changing rapidly, the battle model that relied on a 'mastermind' to send instructions to the 'neurons' hundreds of thousands of kilometers away was truly 'riddled with holes'.
The greatest advantage of human beings was their ability to deal with vague orders independently. In the most extreme case, a human warrior was an army — his own army!
Human beings plus information lives. It was perhaps the correct development of the war in the future. It was also the only way for their civilization to break through the black wall and march out of the Pangu universe.
Watching Xiaoming and Wenwen grow stronger and stronger day by day and blend into the society of human beings day after day, Li Yao felt somewhat conflicted.
Even though part of the truth had been announced, they were still keeping it to themselves. Once the crew learned the whole truth and learned that the so-called "artificial intelligence" actually boasted their own thoughts and self-will and did not necessarily have to listen to the orders of human beings, what would they think if the "children" rebelled against their "father" one day?
Would they be happy that the so-called "artificial intelligence" was so similar to human beings, or would they be even more scared?
Power, money, and strength could corrupt human beings and make them completely lost. Was it the same for artificial intelligence, or information lives?
Right now, Xiaoming, Wenwen, and A Boxing Champion were still relatively weak. Li Yao believed that they were sincerely cooperating with human beings, but what if they grasped strength that far surpassed human beings one day and were ten times, a hundred times, or even a thousand times stronger than human beings?
Information lives were the creations and children of human beings. Li Yao had learned firsthand how evil and brutal human beings could be. As the saying went, a crooked stick would have a crooked shadow. That was the case for human beings. So, what about the "children of human beings"?
Although he could speak righteously in front of everybody and insist that "love" and "communication" could solve all the problems, was it really the case when he was thinking alone at night?
In the end, it was Boss Bai's words that comforted him.
"I believe that human beings are inherently evil, and space pirates are the evilest of evildoers. But do you know that, on Spider Den, the nest of space pirates of the Flying Star Sector, the most ferocious and selfish space pirates often cooperated and fought side by side? Why? Did they change their nature? No. Because stronger enemies, say, the crusade troops of the Cultivators, forced the evil space pirates to huddle together. "
Boss Bai said, "Everybody is inherently selfish and evil. But in the perilous primitive worlds, and the strength of individuals is so weak, even the evilest person has to cooperate with other people in order to survive. In the reluctant cooperation, the initial understanding and trust are born step by step. The so-called brothers, families, societies, and countries are all like that. They are not born out of 'love' but out of some … necessity.
"If human beings are like that, is it possible that civilizations are the same?
"Perhaps all civilizations are inherently selfish, ruthless, and evil. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to survive at all.
"However, faced with all kinds of unexpected threats in the boundless sea of stars, selfishness, ruthlessness, and extreme evilness are not enough. When the civilization develops to a certain level, faced with the greatest threat, the civilizations have to join hands and fight side by side with each other against the common enemy.
"Therefore, the key is not whether or not the Pangu civilization, the civilization of mankind, the civilization of information, and even the civilization of wizardry are evil. Of course, they are all inherently evil. The key is whether or not there is a threat that they absolutely cannot resist on their own that forces them to temporarily abandon their evilness and wariness and unite with each other. They are even forced to produce a weird thing named 'love'.
"Yes. Fortunately, we seem to have such a threat — the Flood."
The Flood that destroys all civilizations is a kind of luck?
It sounded absurd, but it was exactly the same as what the Fist King had expressed.
In the history of mankind, most of the glorious civilizations originated from the rivers that were flooded. The flood was destruction, but the flood was also life. The flood brought infinite desperation, but it was also the light of new hope.
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