vncnus Page 447
Page 447
"So what do we do now? Just watch Earth's civilization be destroyed?"
He Xi asked.
"There's nothing we can do."
Keisha's answer was calm to the point of being cruel.
"The exam room is now closed, and the rules have been announced. Any outside assistance will only be considered cheating. And that proctor clearly doesn't like anyone cheating in his exam room."
She looked at He Xi.
"The only thing you can do is use your most brilliant brain in the universe and do your best to solve that test. Because, after Earth finishes its test, the next one... might be us."
He Xi closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
When she opened her eyes again, there was no longer any confusion or fear, only the pure desire and madness of a scientist facing the unknown.
"understood."
She turned and walked towards her laboratory.
"Give me top-level access and mobilize all the computing power of the space-based system. I want to... preview the material!"
----split line----
Demon wings.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Something terrible has happened!"
Ato scrambled into Morgana's bedroom.
"What are you yelling about! Is the sky falling down?"
Morgana, who was angrily painting her nails with black nail polish, snapped at him.
"The sky... the sky is really falling!"
Atto projected the intelligence from the front lines: "The Honkai Beasts on Earth have all gone berserk! They are attacking everything indiscriminately! That new Emperor-level monster has issued a purge order!"
Morgana's hand trembled, and nail polish got on her fingers.
As she watched the scene unfold, a Temple-class Honkai Beast easily tore apart a Taotie's main battleship. The devastating scene sent chills down her spine.
"Damn it... this is a homework test? This is a final exam!" Morgana suddenly stood up and paced back and forth in the room.
She knew better than anyone that those little guys on Earth couldn't withstand an attack of that intensity. Dukao and his gang were doomed.
If Earth is finished, who's next?
Is it Karl from the Styx Galaxy? Or is it this wandering demon? Or perhaps that high and mighty bitch from the Angel Nebula?
No, we can’t sit still and wait for death!
A flash of madness crossed Morgana's eyes.
"Ato!"
"Yes, Queen!"
"Get me that textbook! I want to see it myself!"
"But Your Majesty, that thing is too dangerous. Our analysis system overloaded the moment it made contact..."
"Stop talking nonsense!" Morgana kicked Ato away. "Back in my day, I was a top student at the Super God Academy! What that bitch Keisha can think of, I can do too! She's definitely making He Xi work herself to the bone to crack it, and I can't fall behind!"
She rushed to the control panel, looked at the insanely complex data stream, and took a deep breath.
"It's just an exam, right? Who's afraid of who! What I'm best at is... open-book exams, taking shortcuts!"
Instead of trying to understand the complex theories, she used her best approach—data intrusion and decoding—to try to find exploitable vulnerabilities in the underlying code of this "textbook".
This is an extremely dangerous act, akin to dancing in a minefield.
But for Morgana, this was the only option.
Rather than sitting and waiting to die, it's better to set others on fire before the explosion.
----split line----
Dead Song Academy.
Karl's fanaticism reached its peak as he looked at the newly appeared Emperor-class Honkai Beast.
"Purge...eliminate...select...it's perfect! This is the true essence of civilization's evolution!" He laughed like a madman.
"Teacher, you are so generous! You not only gave us the textbooks, but also personally demonstrated to us what the art of collapse is!"
The projection of the Devouring Beast had shrunk into a ball and dared not speak.
He felt that Karl had completely gone mad.
“Shizi, what do you think we should do to prepare for this exam?” Karl suddenly turned around and asked him with a smile.
"I...my God...should we...retreat?"
Shizhu answered cautiously.
"madness."
Karl's smile vanished. "Retreating is cowardly. A good student should actively answer the teacher's questions."
He reached out his hand and gently tapped it in the air.
He began to forcibly extract, distort, and reorganize that massive stream of "textbook" data.
"Since the teacher's topic is 'purification,' let's help him make this 'purification' even more thorough."
Karl's voice was like the whisper of a demon king from hell.
"Connect all the Taotie legions near the solar system, including those under attack. Link their energy cores to my Great Clock. I will offer their existence as a sacrifice, leveraging one ten-thousandth of that knowledge, to present a... tiny firework to the teacher's classroom."
"My God! No!" the Devourer cried out in terror.
"That would cost us our last remaining main fleet!"
"I have said that sacrifice is necessary."
An inhuman light gleamed in Karl's eyes.
"Besides, do you think they have any other choice right now?"
As he finished speaking, the Taotie warships that were being chased and fleeing for their lives by Honkai Beasts on the battlefield of the solar system suddenly stopped.
Strange dark red patterns lit up on their hulls.
The next second, these massive warships, like kindling that had been set ablaze, began to disintegrate, transforming into the purest form of dark energy, which converged into a torrent that pierced through space and surged toward Death Song Academy.
Carl, the most insane student, didn't hesitate to overturn his desk and tear up his exam paper the very first minute of the exam, and then began... "previewing" Li in the most extreme way.
He wanted to use the blood of his own civilization to imitate that devil's knowledge.
He wanted to prove to that high and mighty "teacher" who truly deserved the most attention in this classroom... the best student.
Chapter 426 The Tacit Understanding of 'Good Students'
Death Song Academy, the center of the data deluge.
Karl spread his arms wide, his expression one of frenzy and ecstasy. Before him, a small, highly unstable cluster of dark purple energy pulsated like a heart. With each beat, a visible crease appeared in the surrounding space, as if an invisible hand were crumpling a piece of paper.
This is the result of his "preparation".
Using the "existence" of several Taotie legions as fuel and the Great Clock as leverage, they forcibly pried a small brick from that "heavenly book" titled "Preliminary Conjectures on Honkai Energy Erosion and Reality Distortion".
He succeeded. He replicated one trillionth of "Honkai energy" in his own way.
Although crude and full of errors, it does possess the characteristics of "negation" and "erasure".
“My God…” The projection of the Devourer trembled like a leaf in the wind. He saw with his own eyes that Karl, in order to gather this insignificant bit of energy, sacrificed three complete Taotie main fleets, along with their warships, lives, and even traces of their past existence, to the Great Clock.
That wasn't death; it was ten thousand times more terrifying. It was a complete evaporation at the conceptual level, as if they had never existed in this universe.
“Shut up, you monstrous beast.” Karl didn’t turn around, his eyes fixed on the dangerous energy. “You don’t understand. This is art, the only path to the void. That teacher was right, sacrifice… was necessary. And look, I’ve submitted a decent preparatory assignment, haven’t I?”
He smiled, but that smile made the Devourer feel like its data link was about to freeze.
Suddenly, as if he had thought of something, Karl's fanaticism subsided slightly, replaced by a deeper calculation.
“However, previewing is just previewing. To truly understand the teacher’s intentions, simply burying yourself in reading isn’t enough,” he muttered to himself. “We also need… classroom interaction. We need a brave student to stand up and ask the proctor a question on behalf of everyone.”
"A question?" Shizhu asked, puzzled.
“Yes, for example, ask how strong that silenced Benares really is? And where is the bottom line of that new Emperor-level being?” Karl’s gaze pierced through endless space, as if he could see the Angel Nebula and the wings of a demon. “I think my classmates think the same way I do.”
----split line----
Angel Nebula, Celestial Palace.
Before He Xi were tens of thousands of holographic screens, each displaying a small section of data from the "textbook" being frantically analyzed using the full computing power of the space-based system.
However, progress was frustratingly slow.
“No.” He Xi rubbed her temples, even her brain felt a long-lost fatigue. “This knowledge is too high-dimensional. We are like a group of two-dimensional beings studying a three-dimensional Rubik’s Cube. We can see one face of it, but we can never understand its overall structure.”
"So, what's your conclusion?" Keisha's voice came from the throne, calm and undisturbed.
"The conclusion is that we need a hammer." He Xi's eyes sharpened. "A hammer that is hard enough to strike this Rubik's Cube for us and see how it reacts when it is subjected to external force, and what internal structures we cannot see will be exposed."
"hammer?"
“Yes, a hammer that is stupid enough, arrogant enough, and heavy enough.” A cold smile curved at the corner of He Xi’s mouth. “A piece of cosmic junk that we are all familiar with.”
Keisha fell silent. Of course she knew who He Xi was referring to.
The deposed king, Hua Ye, whom she personally overthrew and banished to the edge of the universe, who still dreams of restoration to this day.
“He’s not qualified.” Keisha’s voice turned colder. “He’s not even as good as Taotie. If you throw him into the exam room, he’ll be torn to shreds in an instant, and you won’t get any valuable data.”
“What if we upgrade him?” He Xi countered. “What if Karl was willing to equip him with the latest engine, Morgana was willing to clear obstacles in his path, and we happened to be busy maintaining the Skyblade system during that time, unable to monitor every corner of the known universe?”
A barely perceptible ripple flashed in Keisha's golden pupils.
She understood. This wasn't just He Xi's thought; it was a tacit understanding shared by all the "top students."
Faced with a capricious, devilish teacher who treats the universe as his classroom, no one dares to be the first to raise their hand to answer a question. Therefore, the best solution is to find the dumbest student in the class, push them to the front of the class, and draw all the teacher's attention.
“He will destroy the earth,” Keisha said.