"I don't see any misunderstanding in this! Just sit tight, and I'll settle the score with you when we get back!"
Sun Jack hung up the Poet's communication, utterly exasperated with him. He still regretted bringing this idiot into the fold.
But no sooner had he cut off the communication than he noticed something amiss around him.
After pondering for a moment, Sun Jack realized the explosive and trembling noises from before had vanished without a trace.
It was a bit too quiet around him, as if he wasn't in the midst of a battlefield at all—and his heart started to hang in suspense.
"What's going on?" As Sun Jack turned to look out the window, he then saw the huge space station's attack had stopped, the energy shield was deactivated, and even the sensor lights no longer flashed.
"What's going on? Are AI's two-dimensional lot really that powerful? Did they just take care of it all at once?" The scene in front of Sun Jack filled him with shock, making him feel as if he were in a dream.
Could it be that Lan Meng's last stronghold had been so easily neutralized? Was that even possible?
Tapai shook his head, "No, they did have some use, but more importantly, from the very beginning, the space station's reactions seemed only self-defensive, as if uncontrolled by anyone—not even the self-destruct program was initiated. It's quite abnormal."
Hearing this, Sun Jack visibly shuddered, linking it to the Poet's intel—a terrifying conjecture emerged in his mind.
"Impossible, you're not saying it's true, are you?" Sun Jack scratched his head irritably and turned to the robot beside him. "Tapai, under normal circumstances, I shouldn't like to show off, right?"
Tapai crossed his arms and nodded emphatically as if in agreement, "Right, right, right, you don't like to show off. You like small, I like big."
Looking at the now completely undefended space station, Sun Jack struggled for a moment before gritting his teeth. "Come what may, fortune or disaster, let's go in and see what's going on!"
At that moment, the space station's door slowly opened under Tapai's control. The pitch-black portal, like the gaping maw of a steel beast floating in space, made Sun Jack's heart feel oppressively heavy.
Sun Jack proceeded with extreme caution, leading his team inside.
"Be careful, as Boss of FFP, Lan Meng will surely, like you, use all technology to enhance his own combat capabilities." Tapai sent the Nanoworms ahead to scout as the vanguard.
"Don't worry, I know." As Sun Jack spoke, he activated all his Combat Prosthesis and rapidly adjusted his hormones to stay in peak condition.
And as they moved further in, the weightlessness gradually shifted to gravity.
The pitch-black metal walls were exceptionally cold. Sun Jack felt everything around him; he seemed very familiar with the place.
After a careful touch, he realized it was similar to when he first emerged from the cryopod, with one corridor leading to another.
This sense of familiarity made the unease in his heart intensify, and despite it, Sun Jack continued to move deeper.
Meanwhile, Tapai started to relax gradually, realizing that the place's systems had no admins at all—it was as if they were waiting for him to take control. He was slowly taking over the entire space station.
He kept walking like this and finally arrived at a main control room based on the coordinates. Normally, Lan Meng should be inside.
When Sun Jack stood at the doorway, he still couldn't shake off the surreal feeling. Could it be this easy? Was it really that simple?
Yet, having reached this point, Sun Jack still hadn't faced any form of attack. The possibility he conjectured in his mind was steadily increasing. "Damn it, is it really going to turn out that the stuff I said offhand is actually true?"
Sun Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, he pushed the door with all his might.
As Sun Jack charged through the pitch-black door, which seemed to swallow all light, and braced himself for an attack, the scene before him instantly froze him in place.
The control room was filled with a faint scent of air freshener, accompanied by the soft hum of mechanical operations and the low drone of electronic equipment.
The silvery-gray metallic walls glistened with a cold, mysterious sheen under the gentle blue LED lights from the ceiling.
At the center of the ceiling, a massive holographic screen slowly rotated, displaying a cosmic star map, the space station's operational status, and real-time communication data—a colorful stream of data interwoven into a dynamic tapestry.
Surrounding this tapestry, an assortment of control stations were arranged, each equipped with highly integrated touch interfaces and holographic displays. These screens also flickered with complex and precise charts and data.
Standing dumbfounded, Sun Jack's gaze swept over it all. And there, at the central control station's ergonomically designed chair, he finally saw his enemy of so many years, the mastermind behind everything—Lan Meng. To be exact, it was Lan Meng's corpse.
He wasn't Lan Meng, and Lan Meng, unknown to when, had already died here.
All that remained was a skeleton dressed in clothes, lying in the chair, with a cartoon ghost holographically projected beside him—the once-auxiliary AI Youyou.
He remembered that AA had one as well, and the interrogation AIs that Xiao Ding mentioned were of this model too.
Lan Meng was dead? Lan Meng had already died a long time ago? Then, what was controlling the capitalist behemoth FFP now?
Sun Jack's first thought was to focus on the floating auxiliary AI beside him.
"AI?! AI has awakened? Could it be that humans have always been controlled by AIs from the very beginning?!" Sun Jack's mind raced to that possibility first.
However, as Tapai quickly entered and connected to the system, he said, "It's not that; its intelligence level is not high, only at N2. Its intelligence level isn't sufficient to support AI awakening. It is merely a basic auxiliary AI, capable of learning from its owner's habits, to assist in simple, repetitive tasks."
"There are no loopholes here, no AI awakening, nothing. Beyond some automated elements, this place is just a shell."
"Lan Meng has long been dead, and his auxiliary AI is just an artificial dummy. So what has been opposing me all these years? What is it that has been wanting to kill me?!"
Sun Jack watched everything before him with disbelief, as if he were trapped in an absurdly surreal dream. It was all so unreal, even more so than the possibility that he himself was Lan Meng.
"Are you asking me?" Hearing the question, the floating Youyou AI automatically activated its response mode upon being addressed.
"It's capital, the very essence of capitalism itself."