Southern Hemisphere, Drug Zone, Hive Mechanic City

The streets were bustling with people, yet whether it was the rich district, the poor district, the gang district, or the business district, it was all dead silent.

The entire city was eerily quiet, as if there were no living persons around.

Pedestrians on the road did not speak.

Commuters on the subway did not speak.

Office workers in their workplaces did not speak.

It was as if everyone’s tongues had been cut out.

However, upon closer inspection, people of each status had their own ways of communicating.

White-collar workers exchanged a glance, a stream of data flashed through their eyes at the same time, and the contents and directions to be handed over in their work were completely exchanged.

Among pedestrians, the pheromones emitted from their bodies displayed their moods—anxious, calm, angry, sad. People naturally gravitated towards those with a calm demeanor, while keeping their distance from the irritable, and when two individuals emitting ’mating’ pheromones caught each other’s eye, they easily hooked up.

There were many similar scenes, and the means of communication were equally varied.

This is the reason why the Mechanical City is called a ’Hive’.

In the universe, Hive Civilization is an excellent form of Carbon-Based Civilization, where one is a billion, and a billion is one, with individuals and the community being completely inseparable.

For this reason, individual wisdom in this civilization can be superimposed to an extreme degree.

A technology tree that takes a normal civilization a hundred years to surpass can be surpassed by a Hive Civilization in just one year.

So, many civilizations are searching for ways to become a ’Hive’.

Some use technology, like the ’Brain-Machine Plan’.

Some use drugs, like here and now.

Although not reaching the level of a ’Hive’, basic ’barrier-free communication’ has been achieved.

If you casually opened the mouth of a citizen of a Hive City, you would find that their tongues are shorter than those of normal people.

This is a form of regression,

Or rather, another form of evolution.

’Boom’

’Boom’

’Boom’

’Boom’

Accompanied by loud sounds, on this day, the city stopped.

All components of the Mechanical City, including intelligent voice elevators, fully automated car tracks, and neon advertisements shut down.

And with the shutdown of the last large piece of machinery, the Mechanical Main Brain of this city,

Everyone knew the Corporate War had begun.

Each person’s expression was different—nervous, scared, excited, fervent. The various types of information streams emitted from the human body even induced some Cyber Space fluctuations.

An illusory human face appeared in the sky.

Then, a black line descended from the sky, ripping the face apart; the buzzing sound grew louder, and subsequently, the black line burst into countless dog-sized Mechanical Bee Robots, their wings equipped with claw-like fasteners, and on their tails, a strange surgical needle.

A bee robot, like a ’facehugger’, immediately clung to the back of a person’s head, and then, the surgical needle quickly inserted into his occipital region, causing the pedestrian’s eyes to turn white, his whole body to tremble, and stand motionless on the spot.

Then, the bee deployed a mechanical leg blade, with lasers shimmering on the leg blade, slicing along the occipital region with a buzz, causing a monkey-butt-sized bloody skull to drop to the ground.

Next, several other bee feet popped out, with their tips carrying electric controllers, brain plugins, neural wiring, brain skull chips, and circuit boards...

With the surgical transformation, the entire left brain was cleanly shaved off.

Clearly, this ’brain-machine access’ technology route is right-brain transformation in the brain modification process, directly transforming the brain into a signal access hub.

There is no good or bad technology route, only suitable or unsuitable. Race, resources, social environment, and technological ethics must all be included. Generally, the choice of a significant technological route requires a lengthy game, often lasting ten years or more, before it sinks into society.

Take for example, the most straightforward, the transition of gasoline cars to electric cars.

However, in the Cyber Test Field, just one large-scale, immensely intense social experiment can solve the problem.

On the walls of the Hive Mechanic City, three Black Shadows watched this scene silently.

Human modification can be deadly, especially in the most sensitive brain area, as the thick stench of blood rushed in. In the view of one of the Black Shadows, on an entire street, two-thirds of the people completed the transformation successfully, while one-third died directly during the process.

With all the city’s sanitation robots at a halt, these bodies lay cold on the ground, allowing blood to flow and solidify.

The considerable loss of ’artificial data’ during the Corporate War is something that can be accepted.

Moreover, it is not even considerable.

"66.5% transformation success rate. As expected, this hive-type drug Transformer is very suitable for achieving this stage of Brain-Machine Transformation, increasing the success rate by 21.3%. Fantastic."

A Black Shadow stepped out of the darkness, revealing a square-shaped metal head. As his voice box rang, the sound of fan rotation even emanated from his ’head’.

This person’s head was a ’computer mainframe’.

"Doctor, check the network, see the signal strength of the Neural Network," another voice sounded.

"Alright, Boss."

The ’Host Brain’ shook its head slightly, and soon, the four metal surfaces flipped over, turning into display screens. Numerous bar graphs appeared on the pages, with each ’bar’ representing the signal strength of an area, and now, all the ’signal bars’ were rising wildly.

"Over ten thousand linked Virtual Machines have been built, enabling the artificial creation of 100 artificial network nodes, with computational power comparable to that of a Large Data Processing Center, and this is just the first stage."

The middle Black Shadow revealed a look of intoxication, with the surrounding Black Shadows constantly expanding outward, emitting ’gurgle’ sounds.

"I can feel the pleasure of Corporate Will, the overlap between machinery and life forms makes it feel ample, the further expansion of the system organization allows it to evolve, and the feedback it gives me is huge. I can confirm that in less than three days my Human Brain Processor could reach another level, reaching the top tier of AI!"

"No wonder all Entrepreneurs are impatient to join this feast; the societal transformation brings such a strong increase to Corporate Will—which is an auxiliary AI!"

The last Black Shadow opened his mouth, his voice coarse yet hoarse.

"But I must remind you, this is the territory of Biological Pharma. In every person’s body, following the ingestion of the ’Hive-shaped Drug’, various types of Biological Viruses are generated, and after Brain-Machine Transformation and uploading to the network, these viruses are bound to evolve into Human Brain Viruses."

"If these viruses are not cleared, they will be even more troublesome than data monsters in Cyber Space, and they will turn your Brain-Machine Firewall into a sieve."

"You don’t need to worry about that, we actually prepared before we came," the Doctor replied, and looked into the distance: "However, there is some trouble that requires you, the Supervisor, to clear."

"No problem," the Supervisor said coldly.

He could feel, in this Mechanical City, there were some strong presences.

...

The Corporate War is a feast of technological evolution, but for some people, it’s a disaster.

The street district of Hive City, Dragon Head Street.

A two-meter-tall biochemical woman stood in place with a sinister expression.

Her skin was suffused with the baby-like pinkness, with brain matter seemingly swimming beneath her skin, and her hair, like that of the mythical Medusa, could exude nerve hormones 20 to 100 times more potent than normal humans, allowing her to even alter one’s perception, communication, and secretly influence one’s personality.

This ability made her one of the top gang leaders in the street district.

She herself existed in Hive Society similarly to a parasite.

The more tightly knit the collective consciousness, the easier it is for such ’collective consciousness parasites’ to emerge.

The ground around her was littered with Broken Mechanical Bees, all split in half with a neat cut.

Her existence was similar to that of Lady Red Dream in the Nightless City, a special product of a particular social structure.

In short, a local bully.

Every social transformation brought about by Corporate War was a disaster for local bullies like her.

The sky suddenly darkened, and then the ground shook violently as a huge Black Shadow slowly stood up, revealing its true form: a Super Mechanical Warrior with a Transformation Rate exceeding 100%, with hundreds of small to large gears furiously spinning as it rose.

Its eyes were more like hundreds of thin gear slices, fitted together and spinning crazily.

"Allow me to introduce myself, Battle Supervisor of Editorial Tech’s Security Department, Single God!"

"I’ve come to purge social scum like you!"