Chapter 263: The First Crisis

“In these fifty years, you must come up with a practical and feasible way to escape your current peril. Otherwise, we will all die… Whether you die first or I do, our death will inevitably bring about the other’s. This is a fate that cannot be avoided.”

“To help you better allocate your combat strength, I will now tell you our current level of power. I have now reached the peak of the Tier-Two Specter stage. At present, I have mastered both positive matter and antimatter, and I am on the verge of mastering a third type of matter: dark matter. Under these conditions, my combat strength is roughly equivalent to that of an early Level 5 Civilization. To be precise, I’m slightly weaker than the Level 5 Civilization fleet lingering nearby, refusing to leave. If I go all out, I can reduce that fleet’s combat effectiveness to less than one percent of its current level. Of course, that would come at the cost of my own life.”

“If you need to contact us, then think of a way that won’t expose our existence yet still allows you to reach us. We believe in your intelligence, which is why we took the risk to send this message. Our part is done. Whether we survive or perish in the end is now up to you.”

“Good luck to us all.”

The decoded message ended there.

Xiao Yu stared at the message in silence for a long time before letting out a faint sigh in his heart.

“How… how did things end up like this? Am I cursed by fate, or did I provoke some cosmic reaper?” Xiao Yu was deeply frustrated. “I finally encounter a powerful being who shares a similar origin with me. I thought that after wandering for so long, I had finally met a benevolent civilization, but… is it still malevolent after all? Was it only because of some unspeakable scheme that it reached out to help me? Were its generosity and assistance all fake?”

“What do you mean by ‘our ultimate fate lies in your hands’? Isn’t that a bit too ridiculous? You’re all stronger than I am, and yet, as comrades who live and die together, you’re shifting this responsibility onto me? Do I look like the kind of person who can leap seven or eight levels to slay the boss?”

“You trust my intelligence? You trust my intelligence? Fine, I’ll admit my intelligence may be just a little higher than yours, but still, can such a massive power gap really be overcome with intelligence alone? Specter, you’re being unreasonable!”

Right now, Xiao Yu was both agitated and furious. These irrational emotions were something he deliberately indulged in, because he feared that if his mind weren’t overwhelmed by anger and agitation, it would be crushed by fear and pressure.

He raged and vented inside his mind for a long while before finally forcing himself to cast away the turmoil in his thoughts and regain calm.

“No matter what, the situation has already turned out like this. So… the first step is to verify the authenticity of this message,” Xiao Yu thought coolly. “If the universe is truly as dark, darker than I ever imagined, then I can’t afford to trust this message lightly. I can’t be sure if this message was truly sent by the Specter born with me, or if it was sent by some other malicious entity trying to deceive me. Of course… if I can be sure, I’ll choose to trust you unconditionally, my comrade.”

Silently, Xiao Yu began logically analyzing the message.

“My earlier assumptions were flawed. Morse code isn’t something only I and the Specter know. Based on previous intelligence, I’ve already confirmed that many aliens visited Earth during the Earth era, abducting humans and monitoring Earth’s technological progress, so it’s entirely possible that they know Morse code too. In other words, this message could very well be a trap, a false message deliberately sent in Morse code to trick me into trusting it. But no… that doesn’t make sense logically. I’m so weak compared to this aging Specter, if they were a malevolent civilization, they wouldn’t bother targeting me. Would they really count on me to take down this aging Specter?”

“Even so, this possibility cannot be completely ruled out. Just like before, whether by logic or intelligence analysis, this aging Specter seemed unlikely to be malevolent, yet it turned out to be just that. However, based on a comprehensive analysis of all factors, the likelihood that this message was sent by my Specter companion is as high as ninety-five percent. Ninety-five percent… that’s enough. Enough for me to make a decision.”

Between truth and falsehood, Xiao Yu chose truth. He chose to believe in the message. This choice wasn’t made out of some trust in the Specter companion, but simply because, according to his logical analysis, that possibility was more likely. By choosing it, his chances of survival would be slightly higher.

Given the current situation, Xiao Yu could not afford even the slightest hesitation. He also possessed the kind of resolve that, while he might hesitate and weigh every option in detail before making a decision, once a choice was made, he would follow it resolutely, without any more doubt, no matter what.

Since he had chosen to believe, then he would believe completely and without reservation, unless stronger evidence later proved him wrong.

“All right. I’ve decided to believe that this message is genuine. Now… what should I do?” Xiao Yu thought silently as he once again cast his gaze toward a point over one hundred million kilometers away, where only half of a star remained. A deep sense of helplessness welled up in his heart.

Xiao Yu still remembered that feeling, the moment before he arrived in this stellar system. Back then, he had still been ten light-years away from here. Yet even at such a distance, under the aging Specter’s power, the Yanjing’s four-dimensional shield was instantly shattered. It even forcibly separated him from his computer systems and cast him directly into space.

What a towering, irresistible force that was! Just as he had thought at the very beginning, “If it meant me harm, even knowing that wouldn’t help. What could I possibly do to stop it?”

They weren’t even on the same level of existence. It was like an ant and an elephant. What method could an ant possibly have to kill an elephant?

In the chaos of his thoughts, Xiao Yu turned his attention back to the message once more.

“It seems that, aside from the underlying purpose of deceiving me, everything else the aging Specter said was true. Maybe… maybe it included those truths just to make its words seem more convincing. To make me stay willingly at its side and serve as bait, sparing it the effort of having to restrain me directly. Hmph, what a well-crafted scheme.”

“It truly has less than a hundred years left to live. That’s why it didn’t choose to kill me outright. Because… even though there’s a life-and-death link between the Specter Race and the Main Civilization, where if one dies, the other dies, the death of the other side always comes with a time delay. That much, the aging Specter has already proven, long after the Micron Civilization perished, it’s still lingering on, desperately clinging to life. And it’s probably because of that delay that it didn’t directly kill me. Because if it did, due to that delay, my Specter companion might still survive more than a hundred years. And once I die, it would never risk coming close again. The aging Specter might end up dying before my Specter companion does.”

“This is the meaning of my existence, only a living bait is useful bait. Only then can the big fish be lured in. Dead bait loses all value. As long as I’m alive, the Specter companion will exhaust everything it has to save me. But if I do die, it will decisively flee and go into hiding to preserve itself.”

In truth, it wasn’t just the Specter Race, if Xiao Yu were in the same situation, he would make the same choice.

Xiao Yu let out a long sigh, finally understanding why the aging Specter, though fully capable of killing him, never did, instead, it kept him restrained by its side.

And at that realization, a sudden chill swept through Xiao Yu’s heart.

“Has the aging Specter already guessed that the flickering of the red dwarf star was caused by the arrival of my Specter companion? If it were me… if I were in its shoes, what would I do?”

Xiao Yu began to think rapidly. As his immense computational power gradually processed the situation, the fog clouding his mind slowly cleared.

“Obviously, if I sensed that the big fish had arrived, I would begin making threats or intimidation moves toward the bait. Because I’d know, the big fish wouldn’t abandon it. Through threats and intimidation, I could disrupt its thinking, throw off its plans, and force it to risk revealing itself in a desperate rescue. That way, I wouldn’t even need to waste effort hunting it down…”

“In other words, once the aging Specter confirms that my Specter companion has indeed arrived nearby, it will take action against me. The only reason it hasn’t yet is because it still hasn’t confirmed the big fish’s presence. But once it does, its actions could disrupt my follow-up plans. I can’t let that happen, definitely not. My chances of survival are already razor-thin. If it starts interfering with me too, then I’ll have no hope left.”

Xiao Yu realized, this would be the first true crisis he had to face.