Humanity is dying.

If those cellular tissues encapsulated in test tubes, reduced to twisted masses of flesh, could still be considered human.

Even without any instrumental testing, Hao Ren could tell that the lumps of flesh in the containers were gradually losing activity. Something rooted in their genetic code from the very beginning was changing under the First Born's wrath. This change transcended spatial distance, directly affecting these "survivors" who had once escaped their home planet—in fact, they had never survived. Destruction had begun long ago, merely delayed in its completion.

It seemed "lucky ones" like Holetta were ultimately few and far between. The vast majority of civilizations couldn't escape the First Born's slaughter.

"After humanity dies, the entire Executor society is finished," Vivian shook her head. "Their birth was based on serving humanity. All mission systems, all ways of thinking, even their social structure, serve this goal. Once they lose this foundational goal, the entire society will collapse. The mainframe concealed the truth about humanity to prevent this from happening."

Lily's ears drooped a little listlessly. "But the mainframe itself can't escape this framework either—when humanity truly reaches its end, it'll be the first one to malfunction."

Hao Ren didn't interrupt this time, because he was thinking about something else—from the mainframe's series of actions, and from the word "Executor," he seemed to see another aspect of this matter.

"You're not resigned to this outcome, are you?" After thinking for a long time, he suddenly raised his head and spoke to the air.

The mainframe's response was as stiff and monotonous as ever. "I act according to the commands of humanity. In my programming, there is no option for resignation."

"But when you malfunctioned, one of your servers issued an order for n-4 to lead a squad to the surface of the home planet to search for crashed extraterrestrial visitors—although you quickly rescinded this order yourself, it still shows that a part of your program is unwilling to give up. Humans call this phenomenon 'subconsciousness.' In your subconscious, you still hope for a turning point, even if you don't know what that turning point is."

The mainframe was silent for a few seconds, then finally took the initiative to ask a question: "Can you heal humanity?"

Hao Ren glanced at the lumps of flesh in the culture containers. Through the data terminal's scan, he had now confirmed the true state of these lumps: the human parts were actually long gone. Now they were just twisted, piled-up masses of hyperplastic cells, each cell a result of mutation.

In a sense, humanity had already died—even before they entered these culture containers, the humans of this planet had become extinct.

The Executors were only fighting for a ghost of the past.

Hao Ren believed that the mainframe itself was actually very clear about this, but this powerful artificial intelligence was maintaining the survival of these cells that once belonged to humans, day after day for thousands of years, driven by loyalty, or rather, obsession. But in Hao Ren's view, this persistence had long lost its meaning.

"I can't save them," Hao Ren shook his head. "Because they're already dead. In this tube, I don't see humanity, not even a little bit."

Lily twitched her ears and looked over with some confusion. "Landlord?"

Hao Ren waved his hand, indicating that he still had something to say. "Although I can't bring back your 'humanity,' I believe that if they knew they would eventually become like this, they themselves wouldn't want to continue 'living' like this.

"And I'm willing to believe that the reason humans initially gave them the name 'Executor' when they created them wasn't just to have them work and fight in their place.

"The survival of a civilization isn't just as simple as 'people living.' If one day the entire race faces the crisis of extinction, then they will often choose to do everything possible to preserve the civilizational heritage they created—the knowledge, culture, and ways of thinking about the world created by countless generations. These are the most precious legacy of a civilization. You mentioned earlier that humans created Executors only when they realized their race was declining. Then they spent a thousand years teaching Executors how to think freely, and then they spent another thousand years building a great wisdom repository, converting all their knowledge and ways of thinking into data that Executors could download and read. Do you know what this process means among humans?"

The mainframe didn't respond, but Hao Ren continued anyway: "It's inheritance, it's parents educating their children, it's the older generation cultivating the next generation."

"Executors are not human, nor can they become descendants of humans," the mainframe stubbornly said.

"But they can become the descendants of human civilization," Hao Ren pointed to n-6. "This is the Executor, capable of thinking, having emotions, and full of curiosity about the world. When your creators created them, they endowed them with everything that belonged to humans as much as possible. Apart from life forms, they are sufficient to take over the entire civilization created by your creators—I think that should be the ultimate purpose of humans creating Executors."

Vivian had already understood Hao Ren's meaning, and she continued the thought: "Your creators realized very early on that they simply couldn't survive. From the day the fatal mutation began to spiral out of control, they knew their days were numbered. Even if they eliminated the planet devourer, what then? The mutation that happened to them couldn't be reversed. They were destined to perish, sooner or later. So why would a group of people destined to perish still be concerned about reclaiming their home planet? They had no chance to continue living on it."

"They just wanted to find a place for the Executors to settle down," Hao Ren shook his head. "I learned about your technological level from n-4. With your space navigation capabilities and the distribution of celestial bodies in this area, you can't find a second habitable planet at this stage. Even if the Executors' vitality is much stronger than that of carbon-based organisms, you can't survive on a bunch of planets that are too hot or lack metal resources. Therefore, the home planet is the best home you can find right now."

"They gave you the order to reclaim your home planet, just hoping to see you live well while they were still alive," Izhaks added the last sentence in a muffled voice.

n-6 had been silent for a long time, standing blankly in place as if she had crashed, until at this moment she seemed to be awakened by Izhaks' words, and turned her head somewhat sluggishly. "Did we... disappoint the creators?"

Vivian shook her head. "No, as long as you are still alive, you have not disappointed them."

"Mainframe, you can actually think of these things yourself, right?" Hao Ren said to the air. "And I believe that after you realized this, you were also working hard to make the Executors have the ability to break away from program control, but your own logical structure made it difficult for you to do this, so I'm very curious what you have done."

After a long period of silence, the mainframe finally spoke again: "Yes."

Hao Ren didn't say anything, he felt that the mainframe should have more to say. Sure enough, after a moment, another electronic synthesized voice came from around the hall: "The entire Executor system is under my system control, and at the same time, they are also controlled by a series of original instructions. In the early stages, this was a necessary condition for the Executors to develop smoothly—because the original form of self-growing artificial intelligence severely lacked stability, they had to rely on a strict monitoring system and a simple and clear initial instruction to grow and develop."

Hao Ren took over the mainframe's words: "But this system has huge limitations—because one day, the Executors' growth will exceed the capacity of this monitoring system, and they must also face the reality after the complete extinction of humanity. They initially developed and grew with 'serving humanity' as their core instruction, but sooner or later, they have to learn to find a goal for themselves to survive."

"I have updated a piece of code in the logic circuits of every Executor. That piece of code was left by my last programmer a long, long time ago," the mainframe said quietly. "This code can free them from the control of the original instructions. When it takes effect, the Executor will be free. n-6, I have detected that the final code in your body is in an activated state. It is precisely because of this that you can maintain normal operation after witnessing the true state of humanity. Congratulations, little soldier, you are the first to gain freedom in the new era."

Hao Ren looked at n-6 curiously, and the latter also suddenly remembered what happened when she was traveling in the fortress before after a brief moment of doubt: the brief crash and restart process when she witnessed the tragic state of the secondary server room of the mainframe and learned the truth in the fortress.

At that time, she felt a strange code appear in her logic circuit, and then, her system was operating in a completely new way.

Even after witnessing the true posture of humans immersed in culture containers, facing this reality that could theoretically cause the Executor's core to burn out, she was still standing here.

Richer and more stable emotional modules replaced those fatal logical conflicts, and those original instructions that were originally unshakable had disappeared at some point.

n-6 suddenly realized that this was the last gift that humans gave to the Executors.

Hao Ren also realized at the same time why the mainframe refused his help before, and said that the entire Executor society did not need the help of outsiders, and they would complete their mission themselves—

Because they really can complete all of this themselves, at least on their own internal problems, this seasoned civilization does not need any outsider's "rescue."