Resurrection Empire-Chapter 859 - 331: Wild Bloom, Walking a Tightrope

At this moment, a gigantic fork-shaped maze structure had been excavated beneath the biological laboratory.

A large array antenna composed of 3,650 Ghost Particle Communicators was diffusely distributed along the maze's veins.

As for the amplifier, which used 21 tons of alien ore, it was optimized by Ren Zhong's design to become a small house.

At an actual age of 68 days, with a physiological age of nearly two years, Sun Ai could already stand autonomously.

Wen Lei also made her an exceptionally efficient stroller.

In the basement, Sun Ai said to Ren Zhong, "Uncle, if the Net really is on Mercury as you said, then it would be best to wait for a chance when Source Star and Mercury are closest. This way, the signal can be amplified to its strongest. Moreover, although I can immerse my consciousness into the information flow and gradually infiltrate the Net's data center, the Net itself has an extremely powerful firewall."

"A strong attack has some possibility of success. But if we could find something to distract it, or make it encounter its own problems first, the success rate would be higher. Uncle, do you have a way?"

Beside her, Ren Zhong was continually refining the core algorithm of the array antenna on a virtual screen, nodding in thought, "I have a way."

"That's wonderful!"

Sun Ai was overjoyed.

Ren Zhong shook his head slightly, "Let me first explain the principles of the Net to you. It consists of over seven million large modules. Each module…"

After talking to Sun Ai for a long time, Ren Zhong left the biological laboratory.

He did not return home but instead went alone into the dense forest where he initially awoke in the frozen storage.

Something peculiar happened.

Ren Zhong clearly remembered that when he first awoke, moss was growing on his frozen storage unit.

The surface of the other parts of the frozen storage was covered in vines, with human remains inside some sections.

Various signs indicated that this cluster of frozen storages had been placed here for quite some time, but all the alloy structures of the frozen storages remained relatively intact.

But now, just 206 days later, drastic changes have occurred here.

A large number of First Level Ruined Beasts had emerged, completely devouring the metal structures and human remains, leaving only resin and plastic residues to indicate traces of human activity.

Though Ren Zhong felt puzzled, he buried these feelings deep in his heart and sat on the rock that had once bruised him, fully immersed in contemplation.

He spent a full two hours thinking about the next strategy and then left the forest to return to Starfire Town.

From attempts in the last timeline, he already knew a shortcut to lead the Net into a trap, which was to join the Ma family and show off right under its nose.

But this time, he decided to take a different approach, not utilizing Ma Xiaoling to enter Deep Communication Group Ma family.

His main consideration was not due to reluctance to "hurt" Ma Xiaoling again.

Now he really understood, it was likely only him who was conflicted, whether it was Ma Xiaoling or Ju Qingmeng, even Zheng Tian and Chen Hanyu wished for him to have a vast concubine collection.

This is the reality of this society, nothing more to say.

Ren Zhong's real concern was that the Deep Communication Group Ma family's thousand-year heritage was deeply rooted, easy to enter but hard to leave, adding numerous restraints to him that were not conducive to expanding his revolutionary undertakings.

Undoubtedly, even if the Net disappeared, Source Star's social order wouldn't collapse instantly under even stronger military suppression.

It's just that people would no longer be under high-intensity surveillance, and some ideologies previously forbidden would find fertile ground to grow.

A drastic upheaval wouldn't suddenly occur overnight; instead, a protracted war was bound to follow.

The Nine Major Groups would certainly try every means possible to rebuild a new order, standing their ground before the imminent grand migration.

Ren Zhong, then, would become the first to secretly raise a torch amidst that scenario.

Of course, before obtaining sufficiently strong power, he still couldn't expose himself.

Thus, his best strategy for dealing with the Nine Major Groups was to maintain collaboration with some, stay neutral with others, and slightly oppose yet another portion.

This way, he could maneuver between the Nine Major Groups, not genuinely affiliating with anyone, yet leveraging the energy from various forces as much as possible.

He would then continually erode the existing resources of the Source Star Society, causing part of the Nine Major Groups to become dependent on him, even placing the hope of rebuilding order on him, and that's when the real opportunity would come.

This was his core idea of snatching chestnuts from the fire.

That night, Ren Zhong published three articles in one go.

The first article was written for Purple Crystal Mining.

This was his backup move.

He had previously navigated the timeline of days 130–160 multiple times.

During this timeline, though Ren Zhong had never returned to the laboratory at the Chenhui Mine, contact with Purple Crystal Mining did not cease.

On his first passage through this timeline, the new metal refining technology at the Chenhui Mine had veered off track, trapped in a thirty-day-long predicament without success.

On the second pass, Ren Zhong helped Purple Crystal Mining avoid one faulty path, chose another, yet failed again.

On the third pass, Ren Zhong deliberately left it alone, and Purple Crystal Mining fell into a wrong path once more.

In the last timeline, Ren Zhong intervened again, consecutively ruling out two wrong paths. This time, Purple Crystal Mining finally found the right path.

This was one of the halos he added to himself in the last timeline.

Even when suspicion from the Net reached its peak, it didn't easily put him down, besides his stellar performance in the Deep Communication Group, his scientific contributions on the Purple Crystal Mining side also carried significant weight.

Talented combat personnel, while rare, could always be produced in numbers given a large enough population base through systematic cultivation.

Common genius researchers, though valuable like Sun Miao, were somewhat dispensable to the Empire.

Only those as formidable as him, who could fundamentally change an industry or lead an era based merely on intuition, could catch the Empire's eye and make the Net acknowledge the Empire's significant need for him.

This time, Ren Zhong once again chose to stand aside, and until now, Purple Crystal Mining had not only failed to escape the wrong path but went deeper into it.

This was the "luck factor" in scientific research.

No matter how smart a person is, if they start on the wrong track and have poor luck, even if they work themselves to death, it would all be in vain.

A lifetime of endeavor might even be overshadowed by an accidental discovery or a sudden flash of inspiration during an experiment.

Once Ren Zhong published this article, it instantly caused an uproar at Purple Crystal Mining.

Ren Zhong's second article was directly submitted to the executives of the Tanggu Group.

In the article, he explained in layman's terms his strategy for guiding the thinking of wild people, presenting a whole new set of ideas for enslavement against the backdrop of changes in Yangsheng City.

This doesn't belong to the natural science domain but to the social science field.

Ren Zhong could come up with this, not because he was truly smarter than everyone on Source Star combined.

The fundamental reason was his distinct thinking pattern.

Source Star citizens were completely reliant on the Net's assistance.

Under the Net's observation, citizens' enslavement of the wild people was effortless, virtually zero-cost, requiring no mental effort at all.

Most citizens would never ponder the thoughts of wild people, because it didn't matter in the least.

Besides Ren Zhong, those who leaped over the wild people class to become citizens often immediately immersed themselves in citizen thinking.

No one cared what the wild people really wanted, and no one seriously considered what the wild people were thinking, let alone systematically summarizing their problem-solving approach and psychological changes.

Ren Zhong did something quite simple that nobody else had done before. Just like throughout thousands of years of history, humanity always thought light traveled in straight lines, until the early 20th century when they suddenly discovered light had both wave and particle properties, opening a new scientific door.

But on the surface, Ren Zhong's behavior appeared as if he was handing citizens a knife.

The Tanggu Group finally obtained the secret art of success.

This article further enhanced Ren Zhong's value while simultaneously causing the Tanggu Group to halt the expansion of their corporate war.

The guide Ren Zhong provided was too detailed and learnable, so they would certainly pilot it in other areas, with no need to continue expanding the corporate war, placing all township-level resource recycling companies on Source Star under Ren Zhong's control.

The third article was about artificial intelligence.

He summarized all the programming knowledge he had self-taught, launching a new set of algorithms.

The primary function of these algorithms was to enhance artificial intelligence's deduction capability, cleverly catering to the needs of the Deep Communication Group's algorithm support department.

Before personally engaging with Deep Communication Group, Ren Zhong used an alternate method to enter Ma Xiaocheng's line of sight.

He was recklessly releasing his brilliance, showcasing his value.

Next, he would break his image as a "cold-blooded businessman," starting to do good deeds.

He would walk the high wire, dancing around the tolerance limit of the Net.

As the three articles continued to ferment and explode, Sun Ai informed him that the Net's surveillance intensity on him was exponentially increasing.