Chapter 1096: Chapter 563: The Azure Dragon Is Nothing—What’s Truly Frightening Is Li Ming
When absorbing genetic essence, he casually chatted with the three people in front of him.
To Li Ming’s surprise, the three held their tongues firmly and did not directly disclose that Adam was behind the mischief.
It wasn’t until Li Ming spoke of it that the three’s expressions fell.
"You can guess it yourself, but we can’t say." Night Owl shook his head with a bit of self-mockery, "We... depend on the Empire to exist."
The "we" he referred to included not only himself but also the civilization behind him.
According to the data Li Ming had just collected, this guy’s real name was Nu’er, and he came from an advanced civilization.
All three of them held deep love for their respective civilizations, and even in the end, they pleaded with Li Ming not to take out his anger on their civilization.
Li Ming did not promise them anything and sent them away casually.
Beside him, Zorro looked at the bodies on the ground, unable to help but feel complex: "I didn’t expect a person like this to be so devoted to their civilization."
He found it hard to understand this emotion and thought that life forms at this level should have long stopped caring about civilizations and only cared about themselves.
Li Ming had the Mechanical Guard deal with the bodies and shook his head, saying, "These people were carefully selected by the Empire. If they didn’t have a strong connection to their civilization, they would never have been elevated to X-level."
"Elevated to X-level?" Zorro was slightly stunned; even S-level seemed like an unattainable dream to him, not to mention X-level standing at the pinnacle of evolution.
Li Ming received the scarlet compass handed over by the Mechanical Guard and was surprised. This thing had no control prompts but could absorb special energy.
He explained casually, "In fact, given the potential development of these people, it’s difficult for them to become X-level life forms."
"However, due to the need to expand influence, the Three Great Civilizations will select suitable individuals from certain appropriate civilizations and forcibly elevate them to X-level through special methods."
"This is undoubtedly beneficial for those civilizations, while for the Three Great Civilizations, they gain X-level life forms that can be freely dispatched, greatly restraining the civilizations behind them."
Zorro swallowed his saliva, X-level life forms... feel... like toys.
But immediately, he realized this was about differences in perspective; Li Ming was an Azure Dragon master’s student with high development potential, naturally dismissing these people.
While those commanding them, being the Empire’s highest rulers, naturally saw them as tools.
But in reality, these people are still the pinnacle of the interstellar, an existence most people can only aspire to achieve.
"Let’s wait here for a while; the Royal Court has already sent ships." Li Ming frowned slightly, the blood-red hue on the compass in his hand had almost faded.
The Blood of the World within it wasn’t even half complete; part of it had fused with some kind of substance and couldn’t be absorbed.
He shook his head and let more mechanical bodies out to search the remaining materials throughout the ship.
Meanwhile, he recorded everyone’s traits and employed mimicry to prepare for Adam’s contact at any moment.
He didn’t want the Holy Emperor to think his plan had already fallen through.
The Mechanical Court was not far away, in just half a day, several ships arrived, picking them up in batches.
On returning to the Mechanical Court, they traveled through a specially constructed hidden pathway.
Their departure was too brief for the Mechanical Court to notice anything amiss, and Li Ming had no intention of pursuing responsibility.
This was already within the realm of force majeure, so blame could not be given.
Following the established plan, he notified Ulrich and prepared to head to the Dimension World.
The ship was ready, and it was the most advanced model the Mechanical Court could present at the moment.
"Shadow Shuttle..." In the shipyard, Ulrich pointed to the ship in front.
It was slender and spindle-shaped, each face etched with dark golden patterns resembling neural networks, and its thruster arrays comprised twenty hexagonal nozzles.
The portholes used liquid metal film technology, displaying as jagged cracks running through the ship when not in combat.
The Deep Dimension World, situated in the third layer of Universal Space Theory, was not about horizontal distance but more depth.
"Wishing you the best..." Ulrich nodded, watching the ship disappear into the tunnel.
The other end of the tunnel led to the Mechanical Court’s dimensional base, located in a small dimensional world, which aside from the desolate surface, had nothing else.
Li Ming seldom came here, taking a cursory glance, and the metallic base stretched to the horizon, with numerous mechanical bodies traversing in Dimensional Ships constantly.
Meanwhile, the Shadow Shuttle’s twenty thruster nozzles simultaneously contracted to pinhole size, and dark red particle streams seeped from each aperture.
These high-density propulsion materials formed perpetually rotating gravitational lens rings, and each golden line on the ship’s surface transformed into an energy conduit.
The pressure on the bow was diverted to the rear buffer layer, with silver-blue spatial folds being ejected from the heart of the ring, which during their extension continually consumed the ship itself.
Suddenly, the entire ship abruptly vanished, having sailed through a bizarre trajectory, arrived in the Deep Dimension World.
For Li Ming, it was his first venture here; he stood by the porthole, gazing at the outside, seeing no tangible matter.
Only rampant energy turbulence, gnawing at each other in the void, clashing and forming enormous liquid energy peaks, which vaporized into trillions of mutually repulsive energy particles upon reaching their summit, coiling into unknowably grand energy vortices.
The center constantly secreted bituminous substances; these black fluids, upon contact with other energy bodies, corroded out vacuum zones with honeycomb structures.