Chapter 1 Brain Death

Brain death.

A term not unfamiliar to Hao Ren – this terrible situation was usually seen in humans who had suffered all kinds of fatal organic injuries. The brain lost its function, but sometimes the vegetative nervous system could linger for a while, and the limbs would retain some conditioned reflexes. However, simple conditioned reflexes could not maintain a complex life system. Therefore, brain-dead humans needed a lot of tubes, wires, and air pumps to maintain their existence – in short, it was a very miserable state.

But he never thought the First Born would experience brain death.

And it was clear that this brain-dead First Born on this planet did not need anyone to plug a bunch of tubes, wires, and air pumps into it.

Its tentacles were still living very happily, even happily enough to take down the aerospace bombers and robot ladies who were throwing bombs at its head.

"Are you sure?" Hao Ren asked cautiously, but Nolan showed strong dissatisfaction with being questioned: "Boss, you have to trust my current deduction and calculation abilities – I use a shipboard mainframe that can deduce the evolution of the stars to think, and I also have a super-huge database. My judgment is based on massive data and real-time updated detection results, not just random guesses."

Then she added, "Of course, I'm not very sure... After all, we haven't seen with our own eyes what the First Born's brain core is like now."

If you're not sure, why say so much nonsense! Showing off your specs?

Hao Ren rubbed his temples, feeling that this ship girl was becoming increasingly troublesome lately, and then carefully considered what a brain-dead First Born meant.

The First Born's vitality was unimaginable to ordinary people. Its body could almost resist all the damage created by planetary-scale civilizations, and even if it was slightly injured, it could heal completely in a very short time. And these were just the basics. Its vitality was even more reflected in the fact that this powerful god-created creature had no clear weaknesses: it was a giant lifeform composed of a large number of indescribable biological tissues and countless tentacles, veins, and sacs. All of its organs (if those functional tissue groups could be called organs) had multiple backups, and none of them were irreplaceable. A mature First Born had at least several brain cores and a larger number of secondary thinking units. Each brain core could independently undertake the task of storing memories and thinking. Even if it lost some brain cores, it would only temporarily reduce its control over its body – and it wouldn't take long for the brain cores to regrow from those secondary nerve ganglia.

And even if all of its brain cores were destroyed, it would be useless: the First Born would only lose its ability to think and act for a short time, but soon the disaster emergency program in its body would start. This process of saving itself would stimulate some nerve ganglia, which would take on the function of thinking and mutate a new batch of brain cores in a short time… This process would of course cause some losses, such as memory loss, but brain death? That was impossible.

As long as a little bit of tissue cells survived, plus a little time to breathe and recover, the First Born could recover to a 100% healthy state.

This was all firsthand information learned from the honest and simple Zhuom when communicating with him, and Hao Ren believed it quite a bit – because he felt that with Zhuom's mentality, it was difficult to do something like "bragging"...

"Indeed, according to the information we currently have about the First Born, 'brain death' is unlikely, but there are always exceptions, and the First Born's body is not invincible," Nolan's holographic image jumped onto the bar and sat on the edge of Hao Ren's cup. "Yggdrasil's brain core differentiated into two consciousnesses due to infection, and the struggle between the two consciousnesses caused Yggdrasil's body to show signs of stiffness and decline; super-high doses of neurotoxins and powerful lullaby programs can put the First Born of Holleta into a deep sleep, with nerve activity reduced to almost zero; direct orders from the Goddess of Creation can simply and neatly take over the First Born's thinking function, and problems with this part of the function will also present a state similar to brain death. Many factors can affect the First Born's activity, and we have to make bold assumptions."

"Making bold assumptions is no problem, but I'm thinking about another thing," Hao Ren glanced at Nolan, "Even if brain death is real – why would this planet's First Born be like this?"

Nolan blinked, seemingly not understanding.

"You saw the attack teams sent to the surface of the planet by those surviving resistance forces. With their technical strength, it's okay to deal with the First Born's tentacles, but to blow up a mature First Born so that it can't take care of itself is a bit of a fantasy."

At this time, Vivian woke up and showed a thoughtful expression: "In other words… you think the First Born was driven crazy by something else, and then the surviving resistance forces in space just happened to find a loophole so they could fight the First Born back and forth like today?"

"That's one possibility. Anyway, no matter what, the fact that this planet's First Born has become like this, half-dead, can't be explained by the survivors in space dropping a few bombs every now and then."

"And there's more," Nangong Sanba also chimed in at this time, "We all know about the First Born's recovery ability. As long as there's a little bit of dregs left, it can be resurrected with full health in no time. So even if some powerful guy really cut off all the brain cores of this planet's First Born, it should have recovered after so many years – after all, no one on this planet was playing a 'lullaby' before we came here, and its activity is not suppressed."

"So there must be something preventing the First Born's brain core from recovering," Vivian pinched her chin, a gesture that Hao Ren was most used to doing, but now it had become her habit, "We probably can only take a look at the Earth's core to figure out what's going on..."

Nangong Wuyue covered her face and slowly coiled her tail: "I think this is even more suicidal than going to heaven..."

Hao Ren glared at her: "I didn't say we're going now."

Nangong Wuyue's tail was almost wrapping herself up: "I don't want to go anytime..."

This coward.

However, given the current situation of his party, Hao Ren really didn't intend to go to the Earth's core to do a neurological examination for the First Born. If he didn't do it well, it would really be courting death. He hadn't even figured out what was going on with the "resistance forces" in the sky who were throwing bombs on the ground for no reason, and if he distracted himself by starting a second task line, he felt like he would die with a special sense of rhythm.

As Lily liked to say most: you have to eat one bite at a time, ribs have to be eaten one bite at a time, noodles have to be eaten one bite at a time, fragrant chicken has to… anyway, being too ambitious is not right.

Hao Ren decided to first establish contact with the people in the sky, or at least find some useful information from their information network before considering dealing with the First Born in the depths of the Earth.

Nolan turned a set of antennas that had just been repaired towards the sky, constantly monitoring the communication signals that occasionally leaked from the giant space station and the moon. Most of the signals were encrypted, but this kind of encryption was nothing to a shipboard mainframe.

However, short-term monitoring could not obtain too many clues.

From the signals collected by the antenna, Nolan sorted out a large number of action reports and material transfer lists, about half of which were related to operations on the planet's surface, and the rest were mostly related to industrial production – the departure and recovery of warplanes, the battle damage and replenishment applications for bombing missions on the surface, the production situation of factories, the mining progress of the lunar base, and some accident problems that needed to be dealt with. Daily reports like this accounted for 80% of the total information. In addition to this, of course, some less official communication signals were also collected, which should be communications between individuals within the resistance forces, but the amount of information in this part was pitifully small.

The signal strength and transmission priority of personal communications were definitely the lowest. They were covered and drowned by the massive signals from the giant space station and the lunar base. Nolan's antenna was not working very well, so the things that could be captured could hardly be pieced together into complete data.

But from these communications, Hao Ren still drew two preliminary conclusions:

First, there was a very busy survivor society on the giant space station and the lunar base – although they had been driven out of their planet, they had still developed powerful forces in space and on natural satellites. Perhaps not as powerful as the First Born, but the situation of these resistance forces was definitely not desperate.

Second, the actions of the survivor resistance forces had a high degree of logic and no obvious signs of crazy violence or blind destruction. They should be approachable.

On the evening of the next day, Nolan once again observed a bomber formation from the resistance forces appearing in the sky.

It was a bomber formation larger than the last one – twelve warplanes flew in from the southeast and carried out a more violent strike against the tentacles on the edge of the forest. Like last time, the bombing process was efficient, precise, and fearless, and this time the battle damage ratio looked much better. Perhaps the damage caused by the last bombing had not yet healed, and the First Born's tentacles seemed powerless when counterattacking. Only half of the twelve warplanes were damaged, and the remaining six withdrew from the battlefield with heavy scars.

Compared to the last time's 2/3 attrition rate, this time was indeed an ideal result.

And the tentacle on the edge of the forest suffered a second attack before it could fully recover. It was finally severely damaged. Nolan detected that the physiological activity of the tentacle continued to decline after the bombing, and a large number of underground nerve structures also disconnected from it: this tentacle had been destroyed.

But new tentacles would soon grow out, growing out from the roots of the destroyed tentacles, using those blasted wreckage as nutrients. Its growth would be particularly rapid.

"This is a war that has lost its meaning," Watching the surviving six warplanes disappear from the monitor screen, Vivian couldn't help but sigh, "This planet's First Born is already brain-dead. Those living in the sky will neither be threatened by the First Born, nor will they be able to truly eliminate the latter. They are just filling in lives and resources wave after wave... like crabs charging against the endless ocean again and again. Is taking back the mother planet really that important?"

To this, Hao Ren could only shake his head: "Perhaps it's very important to them."