Free Web NovelChapter 1839: Chapter 86: Control (Part 2)
A lot of drones also flew past Zhang Xiaoman, but they didn’t attack him. Instead, they completely ignored him and threw themselves into a brawl with the Insects.
"Weird, why aren’t they attacking us?"
Zi Kuang looked puzzled. Based on his understanding of the Beller drones, these brainless hunks of metal wouldn’t care in the slightest that he was an Extraordinary Level True God. Every time they saw him, they’d launch an attack without the slightest fear.
Yeluo didn’t even think about it. She tilted her chin up and said proudly: frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
"Of course they don’t dare attack. Lord Jixing is still here. If they dare make a move, isn’t that just asking to die?"
Zi Kuang opened his mouth, wanting to say something but swallowing the words back down. He kept feeling like there were a lot of holes in this girl’s explanation, but the moment it involved Ji Xing, he couldn’t be so sure anymore.
Maybe it really was like she said—the drones were scared. After all, those deployed drones might not have much in the way of thought, but the Mother Nest did. Maybe the drone Mother Nest had seen Ji Xing’s terrifying strength and didn’t dare make a move against him.
This thought had just appeared when a beam suddenly shot over from the distance and nailed him right in the forehead.
"Who was that! Who the hell had the guts to hit me!?"
Zi Kuang immediately rolled up his sleeves and started looking around for the culprit.
He’d just been thinking too hard and zoned out, and in that instant of inattention he got hit by a stray shot.
After searching a while and not finding the instigator, Zi Kuang’s eyes bulged. He directly rubbed together a giant purple Light Ball and hurled it toward the direction the attack had come from.
Right after that, a violent explosion bloomed in that area. Since he couldn’t find who attacked him, Zi Kuang simply went for an indiscriminate AoE, wiping out all the Insects and drones in that region in one go.
Seeing the old man’s explosive temper, Zhang Xiaoman couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat. For some reason he thought of Ziwei again. He didn’t know if all members of the Purple Charm Clan were like this, or if it was just this father and daughter.
But judging from that sudden attack just now, Zhang Xiaoman rejected his previous guess. The drones weren’t staying away because they were afraid of his and the others’ strength, but because of some other reason.
"Could it be we’re just lucky? That shouldn’t be it... There’s no way all these drones would ignore us..."
He was still puzzling over it when a drone was suddenly tackled by a Desert Worm and came howling straight at him.
Zhang Xiaoman casually waved his hand, unleashing a Dark Energy Shock, and easily froze the oncoming drone in front of him.
This was a drone of Reconnaissance Level. It might be the lowest-level unit, but its size far surpassed that of a normal member of the Spiritual Wisdom Clan.
This drone was about as big as a fighter jet from Water Blue Star, but its shape was quite strange. It looked like a giant oval hunk of iron, with a bunch of mechanical tentacles extending out of its body, completely not in line with Human aesthetics for ships.
"Hm? This feeling..."
At the same time, a strange sensation suddenly rose in Zhang Xiaoman’s heart.
He fixed his gaze on the drone in front of him. The latter seemed to be struggling to escape, but ever since he’d locked it down, that struggle had grown weaker and weaker, until eventually it stopped completely.
"It didn’t attack me... and I feel like it’s resisting something..."
Zhang Xiaoman recalled the way the drone had been right when he first caught it. Even if its body couldn’t move, its gun ports could still fire. But the other side hadn’t taken the opportunity to attack at all, which was extremely baffling.
He closed his eyes slightly, then snapped them open again as if suddenly realizing something. He tossed away the drone in his hand and grabbed another one from a distance with a telekinetic yank.
"Same reaction! They all seem unwilling to attack me, but because of some command, there’s a faint intent to attack..."
Zhang Xiaoman felt it more and more bizarre. The drones gave him the feeling of playing a game where two people were controlling the same character at once—one wanted to go east, and the other wanted to shoot hoops.
"They’re resisting..."
Zhang Xiaoman pressed his palm against the drone’s Armor, quietly sensing.
"What exactly are you resisting?"
"This is a kind of... affinity... Why would there be affinity? Is it mine, or its...?"
Suddenly, he snapped his eyes open. At the same time, the Star Pattern of the Eye of the Starry Sky lit up on his arm.
Star Pattern Talent activated: Life Stripping!
In an instant, the drone went completely still, and the light of Spiritual Power inside it began to dim.
Yet at this moment, a gleam flashed through Zhang Xiaoman’s eyes, and his Star Pattern Talent activated once again.
Life Granting!
The next second, the already motionless drone suddenly came back to life. A buzzing sounded as it started to tremble violently.
Zhang Xiaoman relaxed his restraint on it. The drone immediately slipped free of his Control, but it didn’t flee. Instead, it started circling around him, looking for all the world like a little dog trying to please its owner.
"So that’s how it is!"
Zhang Xiaoman’s pupils contracted, then his face abruptly broke into delight, and his body couldn’t help but tremble slightly.
From that little test just now, he’d finally figured out what was going on.
Looking at the drone swarm in the distance, a mixture of shock and joy surged up in his heart, as if he were staring at a massive treasure hoard.
"These drones... are actually treating me as the Mother Nest!"
Zhang Xiaoman exclaimed inwardly.
From the moment he came into contact with the drones, he’d felt that something was off. It was a sense of closeness. At first he couldn’t quite tell whether it was something he felt toward them, or they felt toward him.
Logically speaking, he and the drones were on opposing sides. Neither he nor they should be experiencing that sort of feeling.
But Zhang Xiaoman was certain he couldn’t be hallucinating, nor could any external factor influence him to create such an emotion. Which meant things were already obvious: he hadn’t sensed wrong, something fishy was definitely going on!
Later, after a more careful examination, Zhang Xiaoman discovered the truth—this drone in front of him was actually feeling that affinity toward him, to the point it was disobeying the Mother Nest’s orders and refusing to attack him.
Zhang Xiaoman didn’t know why this was happening, but when it came to similar situations, this wasn’t the first time he’d seen one. When facing creations that had been granted life by his Star Pattern Talent, those creations would give him the same kind of feeling.
Because of that, he almost didn’t hesitate. He instinctively activated his Star Pattern and unleashed his Talent Ability, first using Life Stripping on the drone, severing its connection to the Mother Nest—essentially erasing the Mother Nest’s Control imprint on it.
Immediately after, Zhang Xiaoman branded it with his own imprint, Bestowing this hunk of metal with new life, which led to everything that followed.
Essentially speaking, whether drones should count as sapient life was a hotly debated question even within the Dark Star Alliance. They didn’t have much self-thought, relying entirely on the Mother Nest’s Hive consciousness to control them, and in that sense they were even more thoroughly dominated than the Desert Worm Clan.
After all, the Desert Worm Clan might be commanded by the Insect Queen through Spiritual Power and Spiritual Connection, but even without the Insect Queen around, the Insects were still independent individuals capable of acting on their own.
Drones, however, were different. Without the Mother Nest’s command, they really were just piles of scrap iron that couldn’t move. So people felt that compared to sapient life, they were more like cells without self-awareness, relying entirely on the Mother Nest as the "central brain" to direct their activities.
