Chapter 119: Internal Disintegration
Yan Xia noticed a flaw in Chu's statement.
"If the Olive Branch Civilization truly has other Star Cities and a leader, as you said, how can you determine to wage war against other civilizations within a year?"
This was one of the reasons why Yan Xia initially believed that the Star City was the entirety of the Olive Branch Civilization.
Chu replied, "The structure of the Civilization Federation is indeed hard to imagine."
"The Olive Branch Civilization has no classes, and there is no so-called affiliation between the Star Cities. Any Star City can make decisions and develop independently."
"The leader is the rule-maker, but that doesn't mean they can fully control the entire civilization. You can think of the leader as a priest or a prophet. They have authority, but it's still different from being a king."
Yan Xia could roughly imagine that in the rules established by Gauss Glory, the Olive Branch Civilization had no classes. The true controllers of the Olive Branch Civilization were still the Shared Consciousness Clusters, and the so-called leader was just the manager of the entire Olive Branch Civilization.
Therefore, the Star City didn't need to consult the leader, and only needed the approval of the Shared Consciousness Clusters to proceed.
In other words, the Olive Branch Civilization was a completely democratic civilization, which was indeed very different from Yan Xia's initial thoughts.
"Such a civilization's manager and leader possess great existential necessity. Without Chu, the Star City is too fragile."
"Ella should be able to resolve this more quickly."
Yan Xia hoped so because he was genuinely hungry. He looked emaciated, weighing less than 90 kilograms.
He had to move away from the center of mass.
The pressure at the center of mass was too high, with temperatures reaching tens of thousands of degrees. The small machines inside his body couldn't maintain the state of isolation from the high temperatures and the induced state for long.
"Alright, I'm leaving too. I don't know if we'll meet again."
Chu watched as Yan Xia walked towards the outside, and it spoke, "If you leave, you won't be able to come back. They will kill you."
Yan Xia didn't turn back, but his voice carried back to Chu.
"I'm not that stupid."
"I'm just leaving this prison. There's no need for me to go to the surface of the Star City."
"The temperature here is too high. I can't enter a low-temperature hibernation state in this environment. Hunger will kill me. As long as I hibernate, I can live longer."
Yan Xia had decided to leave the prison to find a colder place.
Fortunately, the universe itself was cold enough. He only needed to move 20,000 kilometers away from the prison, and the interior of the Star City was empty, making it convenient for him to move.
"..."
Chu was speechless. It felt a bit foolish to worry about a human as intelligent as Yan Xia going to his death.
Perhaps it shouldn't have kept Yan Xia in the first place!
...
At that moment, outside.
After Chu's removal, the Star City quickly elected a new manager.
This new manager made many significant decisions in just one day.
1. Following Chu's idea, it decided to attack the Civilization Federation using induced weapons, but changed the primary target from the Civilization Federation to a closer civilization federation.
2. It initiated a comprehensive defense to prevent a repeat of the incident thousands of years ago when the Civilization Federation was caught unprepared and lost tens of billions of individuals in an attack.
3. It dispatched fleets to wage war against the Civilization Federation, aiming to resolve the battle within 5,000 years and completely annihilate the Civilization Federation.
4. It returned the authority of the core to the Shared Consciousness Clusters and maintained the Gauss Glory.
5. It nurtured the lives of the Civilization Federation, accelerating the technological development of the Olive Branch Civilization according to Chu's previous plan, but downgraded this plan, making it a secondary standard and focusing on scientific research instead.
In addition to these five major decisions, there were numerous other regulations, totaling over a hundred.
Fundamentally, the Shared Consciousness Clusters wanted to continue Chu's plans because these plans were already mature. Although Chu had made many mistakes, there weren't any significant issues with his plans.
Over the past few thousand years, the Star City had gradually begun to seek change.
However, this change wasn't a spontaneous one but rather a forced transformation.
For thousands of years, Yan Xia and Chu had been working on changing the Star City, both externally and internally. Chu's intention was to free the Star City from the constraints of Gauss Glory, while Yan Xia aimed to weaken and disrupt the Star City.
This transformation fundamentally altered the thinking mode of the original Shared Consciousness Clusters. The large number of 'Changers' influenced the Shared Consciousness Clusters to pursue change.
The current Star City was evidently in a state of chaos.
It had transitioned from its original stability to an unstable state.
...
In a star system just five light-years away from the Star City, a massive battleship, approximately 50,000 meters long, was hidden behind a star.
Ella stood in the control room.
"Everything is ready. Let's begin the plan."
She sent a message through the tachyon communication device.
The general content of the message was, "Yan Xia, we have been attacked by the Olive Branch Civilization. You must resolve this from within and gain victory to delay the progress of the Olive Branch Civilization."
Then, Ella controlled the lives of the Civilization Federation within the Star City, making them live a life of being nurtured and completely catering to the Shared Consciousness Clusters of the Star City.
Ella didn't insert any personal agenda into this.
When the Olive Branch Civilization provided some technologies to the nurtured lives, Ella also used calculations to help research and upgrade these technologies.
The performance of the Civilization Federation within the Star City was almost flawless.
This surprised the Shared Consciousness Clusters that had taken over the control of the Civilization Federation's region.
They observed the social model of the Civilization Federation and learned from its beneficial aspects. To their surprise, everything they observed was advantageous.
"But only such a perfect social structure could have allowed for such rapid and explosive development."
The Shared Consciousness Clusters conducted extensive research and found that this social model was extremely well-designed and perfect. Even internally, it only required entertainment to control, and no significant internal problems would arise.
The Star City began to allocate an area for imitation.
The results of the imitation were highly effective, and the existence of the Shared Consciousness Clusters could more perfectly suppress internal conflicts.
"This social structure doesn't reject the Shared Consciousness Clusters."
"Civilization Federation! Perhaps it's because they are a collection of multiple civilizations, and their social structure has strong adaptability."
"Perfect, too perfect."
Given the current Shared Consciousness Clusters' tendency towards change, this structure began to spread rapidly within the Star City.
However, this wasn't a perfect structure.
If it were Chu, he would have immediately spotted the flaws because it was too perfect, too fake. How could living beings possibly achieve such harmony and stable relationships among every individual?
However, the current Star City was managed by the Shared Consciousness Clusters.
The flaw of the Shared Consciousness Clusters was that they would rationalize many mistakes, which only made the perfect structure simulated by Ella even more perfect.
The Shared Consciousness Clusters easily accepted the new social model.
Amidst the constant changes, the Olive Branch Civilization didn't forget to target the Civilization Federation.
They had deciphered the message from the tachyon communication device.
The Civilization Federation had been hit, and it took less time than it would have taken them to observe the impact using light.
Since the target had been confirmed, they began to attack other main-sequence stars in the Civilization Federation's star domain, and the battleships were also deployed.
In the following ten years, the Star City launched induced weapons thirteen times, consuming about one-twentieth of the entire Star City's energy. They estimated that the Civilization Federation was on the verge of collapse.
"As expected, after the original manager left, our development has become smoother."
"It's a failure, a waste."
In the next forty-one years, the Star City developed extremely smoothly, and a new social model was popularized throughout the entire Star City.
As the scale of application grew, minor issues gradually emerged.
These issues all stemmed from one thing.
- Class!
The social structure of the Civilization Federation, as programmed by Ella, was more like a genuine Shared Consciousness Cluster, with over six million lives controlled by a single machine.
Therefore, even if there were classes, no one would fight over the uneven distribution of benefits.
However, the Shared Consciousness Cluster of the Olive Branch Civilization was actually modified. Each individual had rich emotions; they were both the terminals of the Shared Consciousness Cluster and individuals.
They had a "self," and they could respond to benefits.
The Shared Consciousness Clusters were unaware of this because they inherently believed that there would be no internal conflicts. It was like two brothers who had lived together and shared the same thoughts, never imagining that they would eventually face each other in battle.
What's more, the most ingenious part was that this conflict wouldn't cause any problems during the early expansion of the social model. "Expansion" brought infinite possibilities to society and diluted the conflict.
But when this model spread throughout the entire Star City, and the social expansion ended, it would transform into maintaining society, and maintaining society was the incubator of social conflicts.
In the forty-second year, the class conflict within the Star City finally erupted.
The lives of the Olive Branch Civilization discovered that some individuals had obtained more benefits, and they demanded that these individuals surrender their additional benefits.
However, the individuals who had obtained more benefits naturally wouldn't give them up because, over the past forty-one years, they had already experienced the convenience brought by these benefits.
The Shared Consciousness Cluster became divided.
In another seventy-seven years, the original Shared Consciousness Cluster of the Star City split into two: one composed of high-level individuals and the other of low-level individuals.
The conflict became more pronounced.
Meanwhile, in the region of the Civilization Federation, the structure under Ella's control remained extremely stable, creating a stark contrast. It seemed as if the Shared Consciousness Clusters were engaging in a ridiculous farce.