156: Chapter 160: A dose of engine oil poison for rationality

The gates of Mars closed.

There was no fleet formation standoff in space, nor the long-drawn-out negotiation battle that had been expected.

From the moment Kolosius knelt, this Origin-level deduction instance, marked by the system as [Extremely High Risk], entered a fast-forward phase.

A golden beam of light shot straight from the surface of Mars into near-Earth orbit.

That was a massive stream of data performing a physical, one-way transmission back to Terra.

On the cockpit screen, the deduced scene began to peel away like melting wax paintings, replaced by an ever-rising waterfall of blue code.

The system notification sounded.

But this time, the voice carried a distinct sense of sluggishness, like old gears failing to mesh properly.

[Deduction complete.]

[Evaluation: S+.]

[Civilization contribution points are being calculated. Detected deep restructuring of faith logic. Extracting ultimate creation blueprints.]

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the increasingly bright progress bar in the center of the screen.

The Archpriest had laid all his cards on the table; the lowest-level industrial codes of the Adeptus Mechanicus were about to drop in the form of physical cards.

But his expression was not relaxed.

That sense of sluggishness grew stronger, the temperature in the cockpit even began to drop inexplicably, and the air was filled with the smell of scorched motor oil.

[Extraction successful.]

[Obtained Blueprint Set: Standard Forge World Startup Package, Basic Servitor Mass Production Array Core.]

Two cards emitting a dark red glow emerged in the holographic projection.

Li Cang reached out, just about to click on the card attributes.

A ring of crimson warning boxes suddenly popped up around the cards, the color as red as dripping blood.

[Warning: Intense residual logical repulsion detected within the blueprints.]

[Due to the forced fusion of the 'Imperial Truth' and the 'Adeptus Mechanicus' during the deduction, this series of blueprints has undergone severe mutation.]

[Additional negative affix: machine spirit Zealotry/Displeasure (Red-letter Extreme Danger).]

[Trait Description: Any non-Warhammer system attempting to use these blueprints and their outputs will trigger a sixty percent probability of mechanical self-awareness awakening. They will instinctively reject rational commands and only obey fanatical physical sacrifices to the omnissiah.]

Li Cang's finger stopped in mid-air.

This was essentially a poisoned industrial motherboard.

To balance the fact that he had used a shortcut to obtain the foundation of the Adeptus Mechanicus—which should have been extremely difficult to crack—the system had forcibly stuffed a religious zealotry virus into the manual.

If he directly deployed these blueprints on Mining Planet No. 3, the thousands of Servitors produced might, on a day they were in a bad mood, dismantle his defense lines or reactors at any time for some metal sacrifice.

To solve this problem, he would have to run another deduction to produce "Tech-Priests" specifically meant to soothe The Machines.

But he was currently being pushed into a corner by that damn "The Chess Player" on the great map, with his credit score stuck at D-, so where would he find the time for another deduction?

The cockpit was very quiet.

Only the red light of the alarm flashed.

Li Cang withdrew his hand. He didn't rub his temples, nor did he let out any sigh of frustration.

He suddenly twitched the corner of his mouth, and an extremely cold smile flashed across his face, which was slightly pale from staying up late for a long time.

This smile wasn't because he had found a solution, but because he didn't intend to solve it at all.

"Why fix it?"

He dragged the two poisoned red-letter blueprints to the right side of the desktop and then called up the [Universal Trading Hub].

His fingers tapped quickly in the search bar, pulling up a list of the most sought-after low-level industrial goods on the current great map market.

Ranked first was: High-energy consumption low-level mining drill core.

Almost every template-style civilization in an expansion phase on the great map needed a massive number of low-level mining machines to chew through those high-risk abyss mining stars.

This item had huge demand and was consumed very quickly.

Li Cang called up the civilization forge and threw in a large pile of extremely poor-quality scrap metal left over from the Battle Royale.

Then, he took the Servitor Mass Production Array Core blueprint carrying the [machine spirit Zealotry] virus, extracted the lowest-level excavation power code, and pressed it directly onto the pile of scrap metal.

The dark gold flames burned for only ten minutes.

The crucible spat out a hundred grey cylinders; these were the crudest drill cores.

But within their internal logic circuits throbbed an extremely violent mechanical religious code with a morbid craving for physical destruction.

If he listed them for sale directly, a detection spectrum would see at a glance that something was wrong.

Li Cang switched to another keyboard in the operation area, his fingers starting to fly across it.

Using the residual inverse algorithm of that cyber ai virus from the Battle Royale, he wrote an extremely simple "camouflage shell."

He packaged that red-letter [machine spirit Zealotry] directly, forcibly disguising it as a set of "High-energy Overload Optimization Protocols."

From the spectrum scanned by the system, this batch of drill cores was not only non-toxic but actually thirty percent more efficient in armor penetration than similar products on the market.

This was a batch of potent arsenic disguised as high-end health supplements.

Listed.

Product Name: [Abyss-class Demolition Drill Core (Special Edition)].

Price: Seventy percent below the market average guided price.

Quantity: Pack of one hundred, no individual sales.

Shipping Location: Still that anonymous springboard IP.

He even wrote the restrictions very clearly: [Due to special underlying logic, only recommended for pure-rational, high-computing-power template-style civilizations. Use with caution.]

This reminder wasn't out of kindness.

It was the most sinister psychological suggestion, loudly telling those civilizations that considered themselves smart: This item has a high threshold; you ordinary people can't handle it.

The goods were barely listed.

The indicator light on the trading panel didn't even finish flashing for three seconds before it jumped directly to the golden color of a completed transaction.

In the buyer information column, although it was a string of extremely complex garbled code...

Li Cang only glanced at the node routing prefix of the buyer's account transfer before closing the interface.

A commercial node in the jurisdiction of the Eternal Star Crown Federation.

That "The Chess Player" representing extreme rationality and order indeed wouldn't even let go of the wool from the peripheral markets, immediately using a sockpuppet account to snap up this batch of cheap and "efficient" industrial waste.

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, looking at the negligible amount of points that had come in, not even touching them.

His eyes stared at the invisible opponent on the other side of the trading system, as if looking at a dead man.

Fifteen hours later.

The public channel of the interstellar great map was completely detonated by a continuously pinned crimson urgent report.

This urgent report wasn't a challenge issued by anyone, but a regional disaster notification automatically generated by the system.

[Emergency Event: An uncharacterized mechanical riot has occurred in the peripheral star systems (K-99 to K-101 resource belts) under the Eternal Star Crown Federation.]

[Incident Rating: Severe.]

[Field Brief: On three core high-density mining stars, newly deployed mining equipment has undergone extremely bizarre logical aberrations.]

[They ignored the shutdown commands from the high command, actively tore apart supervisory mechs, and are currently dismantling the mining stars' main reactors into an unanalyzable religious totem, while performing indiscriminate physical sacrifices on all nearby rational life forms.]

[Currently, the production capacity of the mining areas in this star system is completely paralyzed, and the pollution is spreading to surrounding starports.]

In the cockpit.

Li Cang looked at that system notification, which was red to the point of turning black. On the desktop, the credit rating panel—which had been greyed out due to being detained—suddenly let out an extremely crisp unlocking sound.

[Detected that the civilization has completed a large-scale export trade of high-level technical base packages.]

[Civilization contribution has risen significantly.]

[Credit rating correction: D- upgraded to C+.]

[Dangerous civilization marking restrictions have been lifted; the warp blockade net is closed.]

Li Cang didn't smile.

He coldly scrolled through the interface, maxing out all the newly unlocked construction permissions.

The other party thought they could stall him at the start of the "Newbie Village" with a bunch of data tables and a marking application.

As a result, not only did he not fire a single shot back, but he also directly stuffed a cult code that could drive machines insane into the industrial veins of that perfect civilization.

Li Cang placed his hand on the two red-letter Warhammer blueprints that had been cleaned of their camouflage, revealing their ferocious true faces once again.

"Number One, go to the bottom deck."

His voice was transmitted down through the ship-wide broadcast, carrying a calmness that suggested he was about to go on a killing spree.

"Cut open the main cores of all three of these mining stars for me. Regardless of any machine spirit displeasure, smash out two thousand Servitors to fill the production lines."

"There's a fire in their backyard; we now have workers to smash their main board."