Chapter 1164: Chapter 163: Request for Aid
Exploration of the Star Gate is an extremely important matter concerning the survival of all humanity; caution cannot be overstated.
Personnel from Gru, the Global Occult Coalition, and the Special Affairs Bureau waited for a long time outside the Star Gate, but it remained inactive, so everyone moved to the conference room to discuss strategies for handling the Star Gate.
Sending personnel over is definitely not feasible.
We’re no longer in the 1970s when Voyager Golden Records were sent into space,
as all countries have long realized the dangers of sending human information to unknown civilizations.
An unknown civilization (assuming they have intelligence comparable to humans) could analyze samples of human genes to develop biological weapons targeting the human species,
and only a few missiles would be needed to easily wipe out humanity.
Deploying powerful Transcendents is also not feasible.
Firstly, any attempt by Earthly objects to pass through the Star Gate requires Earth’s payment of a "toll," which is the energy needed to traverse the planet.
The higher the level of the Transcendent, the higher the toll required.
A small number of Transcendents going over would be meaningless,
but a large army of Transcendents would require an astronomical amount of energy reserves.
Moreover, the situation on the other side is completely unknown; if a Transcendent army is transported over, and can control the heads of the opposing civilization, or destroy the opposing civilization, then fine.
If the Transcendent army is transported over only to be controlled by the other side,
it would spell disaster.
Li Ang was in the conference room, listening as senior strategic personnel and think tanks repeatedly discussed the situation,
and eventually everyone reached the same conclusion as numerous previous meetings—seal off the site, and send non-Transcendent scientific researchers in a closed environment,
using the most rudimentary unmanned robots to observe the Star Gate.
This approach ensures that human civilization does not suffer a significant disadvantage in information warfare.
There are dozens of Star Gates on Earth leading to unknown worlds; the other side can fail countless times, but humanity only needs to fail once to lose it all.
"In a sense, this strategy has a bit of an ostrich-like style,"
Li Ang grinned at Xing Hechou and said, "Phase one: we claim nothing is happening,
Phase two: we say maybe something is happening, but action is not warranted,
Phase three: maybe we should act, but we can’t do anything,
Phase four: perhaps we could have done something but now it’s too late."
"It’s the best option we have."
Xing Hechou shrugged helplessly and said, "Earth is a singular entity.
Though all parties now possess the Portal to move some people to the Portal World,
the core base of industrial facilities still remains on Earth.
If overly aggressive actions lead to Earth being simultaneously attacked by multiple Star Gate Worlds, we are likely to be dragged into a protracted civilization war,
ultimately, I don’t know which civilization would win, but for most Earth people unable to migrate to the Portal World, they would certainly lose."
"Hmm,"
Li Ang casually nodded, "Do you think this phenomenon of dozens of Star Gates simultaneously connecting to Earth could have occurred in history?
For example, the Cambrian explosion, could it have been species from multiple planets arriving on Earth at the same time, competing for dominion,
with marine invertebrates, the trilobites, ultimately prevailing,
occupying Earth and beginning a lengthy rule.
What’s happening now has happened in the past,
but Earth’s human civilization has shifted from the challenger’s position to the one being challenged.
If humanity can triumph in challenge after challenge, it can continue to maintain dominance over Earth,
but if lost, human civilization would have to migrate to various Portal Worlds,
breaking ties with the United States, Russia, and the European Union, and over long ages forgetting each other’s existence, ultimately regressing into primitive civilizations within the Portal Worlds,
awaiting the next Portal contention."
"Huh?!"
Xing Hechou was shocked, "Li, are these thoughts yours, or did you find some key, verifiable evidence?"
Xing Hechou’s astonishment was understandable,
Li Ang holds absolute sovereignty over the Star Gate and by his performance in the Portal contention,
the quality of his Star Gate is undoubtedly high.
He might genuinely find some vital evidence in his Portal World proving Earth’s current situation is one of being challenged,
and only by defeating all civilizations beyond the Star Gates can Earth be retained as home.
If true, all arrangements by the Global Occult Coalition, country officials, and guild organizations would be rewritten.
"Don’t be tense, I’m just casually speaking."
Li Ang casually waved his hand, glancing at Xing Hechou’s relieved expression, feeling no emotional stir.
The Special Affairs Bureau and Heterodox Academy surely hold more information than he does,
perhaps they’ve thought of Li Ang’s conjecture, but to avoid widespread panic, it hasn’t been disclosed to the public, let alone Xing Hechou as a senior member.
"Don’t scare me, Li,"
Xing Hechou breathed a sigh of relief, slapped his thigh helplessly, and said, "I’m getting old, with a weak heart."
"Will remember next time."
Li Ang grinned, turning back to the holographic projection at the front of the conference room.
Siberia’s Star Gate is, next to the Mayotte Archipelago, the second most frequently active Star Gate,
Gru intends to establish a higher-level fortress here,
and at the Star Gate exit, position an always-on stasis field,
so whatever is sent from the other side, the stasis field can capture it,
preventing missiles from exploding swiftly and inhibiting Transcended biological powers.
The full-band stasis field is one of Gru’s trump cards; they haven’t clarified if it’s a technological creation or a transcendent tool,
but undoubtedly, keeping a full-band stasis field on constantly consumes vast resources,
thus, Gru will cooperate with the Global Occult Coalition and the Special Affairs Bureau to jointly manage the Siberian Star Gate exit.
Significant events that can impact the global dynamic were quickly decided in this hastily arranged conference room,
and Li Ang and others began preparing to leave.
However, at that moment, an ear-piercing alarm sounded in the camp.
"What’s happening?"
Li Ang frowned, releasing a surge of Divine Power, covering half the camp.
The Siberian Star Gate was activated again, and this time, something was sent from the other side.
A book made of stone.
Everyone promptly rushed to the Star Gate location,
the Stone Dictionary had already been strictly secured,
and after detailed, cautious testing, analysis, and observation, it was finally confirmed as a stone creation devoid of any technological or transcendent elements.
The stone is shaped like a book, made of gneiss material, divided into thousands of pages,
each page inscribed with dense, orderly text, next to which are illustrations.
The illustrations depict stars, planets, liquid oceans, soil, rocks, mountains, plants, animals, and more.
In short, this is a dictionary with illustrative pictures.
"What... is this situation?"
Among the think tank participants at the seminar, someone couldn’t help but exclaim with astonishment, "Why would they send a dictionary? Isn’t this... self-destruction?"
In the study of civilization, dictionaries are one of the best tools for understanding a civilization,
with a plethora of words that outsiders can analyze and research,
even if they don’t know the exact meaning of the words, they can slowly decipher them.
The illustrations beside the text significantly reduce the difficulty of decoding, improving accuracy, and minimizing errors and misunderstandings.
Theoretically, even if Britain and Europe were completely destroyed now,
as long as a copy of the Britannica Encyclopedia is left to later generations,
future civilizations can understand all aspects of Britain.
Giving a dictionary to an unknown civilization is akin to handing over crucial information of your civilization,
which is an extremely grave, fatal mistake in the rules of civilized warfare.
"The dictionary is given to us, the pictures in the dictionary are to reduce decoding difficulty, minimizing potential misunderstandings,
meaning the dictionary itself is a gift, signifying the civilization behind the Star Gate wishes to establish communication with us,"
someone quickly spoke in the think tank, "The choice of a stone dictionary is because the material is hard enough to resist the elements,
and using natural stone minimizes the leakage of their technology.
If I’m not mistaken, this should be a small part of the entire civilization’s dictionary, primarily introducing basic concepts like the sun, moon, and stars,
requiring us to also release similar goodwill for them to send more dictionaries."
Everyone present was invigorated,
this was the first time a Star Gate World proactively expressed goodwill towards Earth,
after careful consideration and discussion,
Gru, the Global Occult Coalition, and the Special Affairs Bureau decided to also send a stone dictionary to the Star Gate.
It would also contain basic concepts like the sun, moon, and stars,
of course, the dictionary itself would be written in the world’s rarest language, Badeshi, from Bishigram village in the northern mountains of Pakistan.
This Badeshi language is a branch of the Indo-Aryan language family, has long been encroached upon by Torwali and Pashto,
to this day, only three elderly individuals in the village can speak it, it’s on the verge of extinction.
Using this language helps avoid exposing information about human civilization,
even if the other side possesses meme-level weapons, capable of launching attacks through the power of words, the damage would be extremely limited.
Since Badeshi language only has spoken words and no script, the text is also randomly generated patterns by a computer program,
once the patterns are generated, the computer and program are destroyed, minimizing meme infiltration.
Quickly, this dictionary of Earth civilization, which 99.99% of Earth’s population couldn’t comprehend, was delivered into the Star Gate,
according to the think tank’s prediction,
if the civilization behind the Star Gate is intelligent enough and as advanced as human society,
then they should quickly decode Earth’s civilization dictionary and understand Earth’s attempt to express goodwill.
Li Ang was about to leave, but seeing this situation, he decided to stay, curious about the civilization’s intentions behind the Star Gate.
"Last time in the deep sea giant beast’s script task,
I originally thought the deep-sea civilization with space transmission technology might possess a portal, allowing them to reach Earth within the script task.
Turns out the deep-sea civilization didn’t possess a Star Gate, remaining under the absolute control of the battleground game,"
Li Ang murmured, "If these worlds are classified by mystery degree, Earth might have the highest mysterious degree.
Here, there have been numerous instances of transcendent resurgence, birthing many players.
The Desolated Lion’s world might be on the same level as Earth.
Below Earth, should be the Portal World and Star Gate World.
They only have one pathway to Earth, and haven’t birthed many players themselves.
Further down are worlds belonging to script tasks.
None of them ever had players who could traverse time and space freely.
But why do these distinctions exist?
Could it be humanity has been special throughout history?
No, probably not.
In the script task’s world, there are also many humans, speaking the same language, sharing the same world background, with no genetic differences nor reproductive isolation.
More likely, Earth is, within the battleground game system, rather special..."
Li Ang’s contemplation was interrupted by the next alarm,
the civilization behind the Star Gate quickly delivered another dictionary,
this time, the dictionary was even more comprehensive,
detailed like the Britannica Encyclopedia, introducing the situation of that world.
They call themselves "Alskalisan" people, from a remote and desolate stellar system.
The stellar system has a dim red dwarf star at its center, surrounded by three planets,
the Alskalisan people reside on the second planet.
Their species can be traced back to vertebrates two million years ago, evolving through long periods, forming civilization, constructing cities, and developing technology.
From the dictionary’s illustrations, the appearance of Alskalisan people resembles humans, but they have no hair, and their skin is paler (possibly due to insufficient sunlight).
They claim they once had a formidable civilization but were invaded by external civilizations 500 years ago, leading to the destruction of cities,
survivors barely scraped by underground, civilization declined,
during this process, they encountered the battleground game, birthing a small group of players,
however, due to genetic defects, adult individuals of this civilization are extremely weak and slow, with a relatively slow perception of time, very few can become high-level players with powerful transcendent abilities.
Most perish in tasks,
player qualification is more of a curse rather than a blessing for them.
(To unify measurement standards, the Alskalisan people explained in the dictionary how they once mastered knowledge of atomic energy comparable to Earth’s civilization, using atomic vibration frequencies to define the unit "second," and based on this established definitions similar to Earth’s for minutes, hours, months, and years. Thus, there would be no misunderstandings between both sides regarding time concepts.)
Currently, the Alskalisan people number less than five thousand, all residing in underground ruins,
the planet’s oceans were evaporated by space-based weapons during ancient civilization wars,
leaving only a few powerful mechanical creatures on the planet’s surface preying on one another.
The entire civilization is on the brink of collapse.
Their expedition team discovered an active Star Gate placed by ancient scientists in laboratories within surface cities of the ancient civilization,
due to lack of water sources, the tribe is about to perish,
the elders of the tribe, after careful consideration, decided to send dictionaries to Earth to explain their situation and ask for Earth’s help.
