“Vichy, what is wrong, Vichy? Master, Master, please, save Vichy!”

Only after the student named Vichy had fallen for a moment did the other students notice the anomaly here. Their relationships seemed very harmonious. Upon seeing Vichy collapse to the ground, life or death unknown, they were not even afraid of the combat robots bristling with guns. They all gathered around. One student propped up Vichy’s upper body and pleaded to Xiao Yu in a voice full of supplication.

“How did he just die? How did he just die?” Xiao Yu murmured, as a vast tide of computational power surged toward this place. In that instant, alarms blared across the entire moon.

Both the Military Academy of Science and the Life Academy of Science had research institutes on this moon. In addition to those forces, there were at least nine hundred mining bases and five hundred smelting factories. In space, there were at least thirty thousand various ships. At the moment Vichy died, Xiao Yu’s vast computational power took complete control of all of the above. This was total control, not the previous approach of handing many modules to automated programs to save his own computational power.

Total control meant that from this moment on, within the scope of this moon, everything that touched on computers was entirely under Xiao Yu’s command. These things included a ship’s internal air circulation system, potable water purification system, even a mining robot’s automatic ore-sorting system, or the personal life-support systems of workers operating on the planet. All of these systems were occupied by Xiao Yu’s computational power.

In today’s world of extensively using automated programs to share his data load, doing this consumed an enormous amount of computational power. It was essentially unimaginable. Doing this would neither improve efficiency nor speed up work. It was purely a waste of computational power. For example, on the machines in a forging factory, a total of five million monitoring sensors were installed to monitor machine status so that the intelligent program could allocate tasks to those machines in real time. The data produced by those five million sensors did not need to be computed personally by Xiao Yu; it could be handed over to automated programs. Even if Xiao Yu did it himself, he would not necessarily do better than the automated programs. Doing so had no benefit other than wasting computational power.

But now, Xiao Yu did exactly that. He took over all the computing modules within this range, causing his computational load to rise by three percentage points in an instant.

An increase in computational power occupied here meant a decrease elsewhere. Thus, in some part of this star system, a roaring factory paused, and countless robots, as if struck by a paralysis spell, temporarily stopped their actions.

Xiao Yu could no longer care about those things. At this moment, he was frantically searching, carefully searching. Xiao Yu was searching for the soul of the student named Vichy.

This phenomenon was exactly the same as what he himself had experienced, which made Xiao Yu vigilant. Back then, before Earth’s destruction, when Xiao Yu separated his soul from his body and merged it with a computer, the same thing happened. After merging with the computer, Xiao Yu saw very clearly through optical detection equipment his own ‘corpse’ collapse powerlessly to the ground and very clearly saw the special changes produced by that black stone.

At that time, when he experienced this, his soul entered the computer and merged with it. Then what about now? This student named Vichy, did his soul also merge with a computer? Where is he? Does he also possess the ability to switch his existence at will within computer systems, does he also possess the ability to command vast computational power?

Does he have the ability to seize my control authority over the fleet? In what form does he exist?

Countless questions lingered in Xiao Yu’s mind. But no matter what the final answer was, Xiao Yu absolutely could not accept the existence within his own fleet of something whose form was similar to his own. Even if it were well intentioned, it would not do. This was unacceptable.

Just like an emperor of ancient Earth, an emperor could not accept a person who might at any time pose a threat to himself remaining alive, even if that person were his most loyal subordinate or closest friend or relative. Xiao Yu was the same. So his computational power instantly took control of everything here. What Xiao Yu needed to do was very simple, namely, to determine whether Vichy’s soul had in fact merged with a computer. If it had, then find it and eliminate it.

At this moment, Xiao Yu even had the presence of mind to attend to the few students nearby.

“What happened today is classified as top secret. I will carry out irregular monitoring on you. I require that you do not disclose today’s events to anyone. Any abnormal behavior will be deemed by me as the crime of rebelling against the civilization, and I will execute you without hesitation. As compensation, ten years from now, when you graduate from university, you may, according to your interests, enter different research institutes under the Central Research Academy of Science and become scientists.” Xiao Yu said very solemnly. “As for Vichy, I need him to cooperate with me in carrying out an operation. In the future, you may yet have a chance to meet again.”

After saying this, Xiao Yu led several combat robots to take Vichy’s corpse and that black stone onto the spaceship and quickly leave, leaving only those few students who were still badly shaken.

Under such circumstances, killing these few students who knew nothing of the inside story of the incident was not appropriate for Xiao Yu. Moreover, Xiao Yu had another thought. He knew that these students had an excellent relationship with Vichy. If Vichy had indeed merged his soul with a computer, he might come back to find these people. So these students were fortunate enough to keep their lives. They had become the bait Xiao Yu would use to lure Vichy.

Xiao Yu’s computational power was still conducting a rigorous search within the scope of this moon. At the instant his computational power completely occupied this place, countless intelligent beings received Xiao Yu’s broadcast message.

Countless workers who were busily working, or scientists conducting various experiments, all at that moment simultaneously heard Xiao Yu’s stern voice.

“From now on, Moon Number Three is entering an emergency state. Everyone obey orders. Immediately stop all current actions. Maintain a stationary state. You are not permitted to perform anything on any instruments. Anyone who violates the order will be shot on the spot.”

Everyone looked around in confusion, not understanding what had happened here. But Xiao Yu’s good education of them still made them almost instinctively choose to obey the order.

Xiao Yu sealed all data channels between this moon and other places, leaving only a very small number of channels for the ingress and egress of his computational power, and he also placed the strictest monitoring on these few data channels. Xiao Yu believed that if Vichy’s soul truly chose to break out from here, he would certainly be discovered by him.

Xiao Yu knew his own mode of existence very well. He believed that if Vichy had indeed merged his soul with a computer, he would share the same mode of existence as himself. As for how to eliminate such an enemy within computer systems, Xiao Yu had many methods.

Xiao Yu carried out particularly strict and meticulous searches on Vichy’s personal life-support device, on the personal life-support devices of the other students, on the computing modules of the combat robots, and on the computing modules aboard the three Village-Class ships. Because in Xiao Yu’s estimation, if Vichy had merged his soul with a computer, these computing modules closest to him ought to be his best targets. Back on Earth, when Xiao Yu combined his soul with a computer, he had also chosen the computer closest to himself.

Xiao Yu was confident that if he really existed within these devices, he would definitely be able to find him. But he did not. Within the computing modules of these devices, Xiao Yu found no clues whatsoever. Only after ensuring absolute safety did Xiao Yu allow these computing modules to leave this moon.

Xiao Yu then launched a large-scale search of the remaining equipment. He did not spare any corner, any place that possessed basic computation units.

There were many devices here that possessed basic computation units. A single robot might have hundreds or thousands of computation units, and a vehicle used inside a base might also have several thousand computation units.

The number of computation units on this moon was virtually countless. Xiao Yu’s vast computational power conducted a dragnet investigation here.

Xiao Yu’s search proceeded simultaneously, so there was no need to worry that when searching sector a he would be hiding in sector b, and when searching sector b he would run to sector a. Such a search method meant an enormous consumption of computational power, but now Xiao Yu could no longer care about that.

The search finally made a bit of progress. Inside the braking control module’s computation unit of an internal-use vehicle within the base, Xiao Yu discovered a slight clue.

The program here had been altered slightly, and Xiao Yu very quickly ruled out the possibility of this change forming naturally. If it was not a natural change, then it could only have been altered by an existence like himself. This was not something Xiao Yu had done. That left only one possibility.

“Vichy has been here, and then left.” Xiao Yu thought, somewhat heavily.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep