Chapter 1 The State of Affairs

Hao Ren couldn't say for sure that all the maintenance robots had died in this hall, but he could guess that there probably wasn't a single active one left inside or outside the fortress. Scenes like this hall were probably not unique. In the other server rooms and main control device areas, charred remains of maintenance robots were likely densely packed.

Because the main control had clearly, deliberately, and systematically destroyed these loyal workers who were responsible for repairing him on a daily basis.

Hao Ren came to a charred wreck and carefully flipped over the steel beetle, about the size of a washbasin. Its drooping mechanical arm had been jammed by its own joint mechanism. Hao Ren had to cut off its two mechanical arms to remove the metal plate on its abdomen.

"It was destroyed from the inside out. The core circuit board is almost completely burned out, and these coils...they are clearly the initial ignition points," Hao Ren pointed to the chaotic internal structure of the maintenance robot. "Typical result of an electromagnetic pulse attack."

"They must have been working when they were destroyed," N-6 recovered from her initial shock. She looked at the cable connectors and servers with their covers open all around, quickly reconstructing the scene. "Recently wasn't a hardware replacement period, so this large-scale dismantling operation shouldn't have been necessary. So these maintenance robots must have been summoned by the main control."

Lily's ears twitched: "So, the main control summoned its maintenance team on the pretext of needing emergency maintenance, and then 'murdered' them in these computer rooms? Is this the robot world's Hongmen Banquet?"

"Although the maintenance robots usually operate inside the fortress, they belong to the team that can contact the outside world, and the destruction of all of them cannot be hidden from the outside world for long," Hao Ren frowned. "Terminal, can you determine when these robots were burned?"

The data terminal had already completed sampling and analysis of the ablation marks in the hall. Hearing Hao Ren's words, it floated over: "About a month ago. To be honest, according to the information about the maintenance robots provided by N-4, this is enough time to arouse the vigilance of the Executors outside. The main reason why no one questioned it is probably because the main control has always been in an absolute ruling position in the lunar base. The Executors completely follow the main control's orders, and even if they have their own thoughts and feelings, they cannot get rid of this 'thinking lock' set in the program, so all abnormal situations in the fortress are subconsciously ignored by them."

"But the actual abnormalities and the content set in the program will inevitably accumulate a lot of conflicts, and when the conflict accumulates to a certain level, it will be a catastrophe for this kind of artificial intelligence society," Izhaks said in a deep voice. "In my old hometown, there was a magician kingdom called Retitos, and their technology of using artificial souls to create intelligent golems was unparalleled, but in the end, it was because of an unnoticed logical error that all the intelligent golems collectively lost control and destroyed the country in three days."

Hao Ren nodded slightly. This artificial intelligence-dominated society on the moon has huge inherent defects. Before, he only had a vague feeling about this, but now seeing the near-collapsed state inside the fortress, and then thinking about the seemingly normal Executors outside, this inherent defect becomes extremely obvious.

As for N-6, who was standing blankly not far away, she was already caught in a huge contradiction.

Everything she had seen after entering the fortress had greatly impacted this poor robot girl. Everything she had never doubted and regarded as the guiding principle of her "life" had been shaken here. The fortress that should never fall, the main control that should always be correct, the fortress defense system that should have no logical loopholes and security problems... Now they have all become illusions. Inside this solid steel fortress, everything is decaying and collapsing. This collapse process began several years ago, and reached a rather terrible level a month ago: the main control even personally destroyed its own maintenance robots.

But her compatriots outside are completely unaware of this. They can only see that the fortress still stands on the moon, and then faithfully execute the orders coming from the fortress—even if the next order is crazy enough to make them collectively self-destruct on the home planet.

A surge of electricity beyond the limit appeared in her logic circuit. N-6's vision was quickly occupied by error message windows. She felt her thinking become intermittent, and her body uncontrollably fell to the side.

But in the next moment, she felt her unbalanced body being supported, and the once chaotic logic circuit gradually stabilized. Some code that did not belong to her was clearing the system errors that would cause fatal failures.

Vivian quickly supported N-6, who fell down as if she had crashed. Seeing that the latter reopened her eyes after a few seconds with the humming sound of a system restart, she couldn't help but worry: "What's wrong with you?"

"It's nothing serious, just a crash from being too stimulated," the data terminal replied for N-6. "Each Executor's program is set to absolutely obey the main control and absolutely trust the fortress, and the truth she saw in the fortress is enough for these programs to produce fatal bugs. But now it seems... her system seems to have the ability to self-repair? She recovered by herself after fainting like this."

Hao Ren blinked: "Isn't it because Nolan wrote some security software into her system when he repaired her?"

"No, Nolan didn't even touch her core system, he just wrote a bunch of drivers for her. Her system recovery function should be built-in."

N-6 felt her auditory system fluctuate for a while. The conversation between Hao Ren and the data terminal sounded like a distant and roaring noise in her ears. It rumbled for a long time before gradually becoming clear. She heard the word system recovery, but she didn't understand what it meant, because she didn't know when the code that cleared the fatal errors was stored in her chip.

She steadied herself and gave Vivian a grateful expression: "Thank you, I have recovered."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Hao Ren looked at this robot miss with some worry. "Can you continue to move forward?"

Lily reminded her closely: "I'm reminding you, you might see something more stimulating if you go further..."

"I'm fine," N-6 nodded. "The system error has been eliminated. I think I can continue."

Seeing that the other party insisted so much, Hao Ren didn't say much, just looked at this messy place thoughtfully: "To be honest, this is really an act of killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred of your own... These servers seem to have been damaged a lot."

"These are the main control's secondary servers. Their destruction will not cause the main control to completely lose its ability to operate," N-6 immediately explained. "But losing these secondary servers will cause the main control's main server to be under too much pressure and its performance will decline. I think the main control must have been completely crazy when it destroyed these maintenance robots. It doesn't care how much damage its structure will have."

Hao Ren remained noncommittal about this.

At this time, Doudou once again drilled out of Hao Ren's collar, the little guy blinked his bright eyes and looked around curiously.

Izhaks couldn't help but mutter when he saw this situation: "To be honest, don't you feel uncomfortable carrying such a big fish in your arms?"

"You usually have a daughter sitting on your shoulder, but I don't see you feeling awkward."

"That's true..."

At this time, Doudou had looked around, the little guy did not know what he was thinking, and suddenly scratched Hao Ren's chin: "Papa, over there..."

Hao Ren looked up at the direction Doudou was pointing, and found that it was the exit of the computer room.

The group did not linger in this area for too long. After leaving the remains of the maintenance robots behind, they entered the true core area of the fortress.

They entered the corridor leading to the Palace of the End.

What they saw along the way was not much different from what they saw in other parts of the fortress.

Everywhere they could see Titan Guards who had lost their ability to move, and everywhere they could see monitoring equipment and weapon platforms in offline states. In addition, they also saw more computer rooms and subsystems related to the main control—and in these places, without exception, they were filled with the remains of destroyed maintenance robots. Even the main control's own hardware had severe damage due to the release of super-strong pulses.

The scale of the main control was beyond imagination. It was almost the fortress itself. This most powerful artificial intelligence in history occupied nearly two-thirds of the volume of this fortress. Rather than saying that Hao Ren and his party were walking inside the fortress, it was better to say that they were walking inside the main control's body. All they were looking for was the main control's external interface.

This interface was right in front of them.

A heavy black mechanical door stood in front of Hao Ren. The door flickered with faint streamers, and the walls on both sides of the door were equipped with weapon systems that had lost power. A gloomy and depressing atmosphere lingered on this door, making Hao Ren couldn't help but think of the scene he had witnessed many times before when he looked at it—

The end of a civilization, the end of an era.

N-6 told him that behind this door was the main control's central hub, and also the location of the "main interface" that could directly communicate with the main control's deep consciousness.

And the only entrance to the Palace of the End was behind the main control's central hub—for thousands of years, the main control had guarded this only gateway to the human retreat like the most loyal guard. Before today, this checkpoint had never been opened to "Executors" like her.

"Open it." Hao Ren instructed the data terminal.

"We may encounter the main control's resistance," Izhaks said. "The greatest possibility is electromagnetic pulses—the main control used this to destroy those maintenance robots."

Hao Ren nodded: "Be vigilant. Lily, stay back a little. Your electrical resistance is low."

Lily originally wanted to refute, but after thinking about the tragic appearance every time she was hit by Vivian's lightning ball, she obediently tucked her tail between her legs and hid behind Hao Ren.

The black door's energy system had not been disconnected, so the data terminal was able to unlock the access control system by injecting a virus. Soon, with the prompt sound of the locking device opening and a slight mechanical friction sound, the heavy gate in front of everyone slowly retreated to both sides.

A wide circular hall was presented in front of everyone, and in the center of the hall, there stood a black cylinder with flickering lights on the surface, majestic and silent.

This is where the main control's central hub is located.