Chapter 123 - 122: Brutal
BOOM!
In the midst of an invisible shockwave, with Jupiter—appearing even larger than the moon does from Earth—as a backdrop, a massive fireball suddenly blossomed in the vastness of Deep Space.
That was a Venus-class Warship.
Just now, due to an external attack, some of its internal control components were damaged. The rate of its fission reactor spiraled out of control, ultimately causing it to detonate like an atomic bomb.
All the advanced equipment that made up this Venus-class Warship—components that Li Qingsong had expended immense effort to create—was completely vaporized. At the same time, the 80 Clone soldiers aboard the Warship all perished.
But even a loss this great was merely a single detail on this vast battlefield.
Beyond this specific conflict, in the even more immense expanse of space, countless more Warships were locked in a desperate struggle.
The battleground Li Qingsong had planned was centered around Sinope and Carme, two of Jupiter’s more distant moons.
One of these moons has a diameter of about 46 kilometers, the other about 36.
A size like that was large enough for them to hold considerable mineral reserves.
Li Qingsong had built massive logistics bases on these two moons, dedicated to producing war materiel locally.
Anything they lacked was shipped directly from the main base cluster.
A total of about 3,000 Warships, split into two forces anchored by these two moons, began a fight to the death.
Li Qingsong permitted the two fleets to use any and all despicable, brutal, and vicious combat tactics.
As long as it could annihilate the enemy, any means were acceptable! There would be no holding back, no pulling punches.
This was a true, genuine war!
The only difference was that he was the one controlling both sides.
And so, with each side possessing a strategic version of Wukong, its own base, and Warships of identical performance and number, the great war truly began.
The two fleets experimented with all sorts of tactics. Ambushes, surprise attacks, focused fire, direct confrontations, planetary defense and offense, electromagnetic interference and counter-interference, espionage, reconnaissance... one after another, every possible method was deployed.
At this moment, after paying a heavy price, Fleet One finally managed to get a squadron to a position just ten thousand kilometers from Sinope.
In an interstellar battlefield, this distance was considered extremely close.
And if they could destroy the logistics bases and factories on Sinope, Fleet Two’s supply lines would be severely hampered, potentially deciding the outcome of the war.
Seizing this rare opportunity, Fleet One unleashed its full firepower. A tide of Interstellar Missiles, Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles, and more rained down on Sinope.
Fleet Two hastily dispatched only a few dozen Warships to intercept.
Amid the chaos, the large-scale Deep Space search network built on Sinope activated.
The ground-based high-speed radar, with greater power and performance than the radar equipped on Earth-class Warships, began a full-sky scan.
Among the anti-air Electromagnetic Cannon and Laser Cannon arrays built across the surface of Sinope like fields of wheat, hundreds of thousands of cannons fired ceaselessly into the sky, supporting their own fleet while desperately intercepting incoming enemy projectiles.
Meanwhile, hundreds of large factories continued production without a moment’s pause, right in the midst of the fierce bombardment.
Hundreds of thousands of Clones hurried about, seeming completely oblivious to the events unfolding in space.
Even when a stray round flew in and killed a comrade beside them, the nearby maintenance teams would simply dispose of the body as quickly as possible to prevent it from disrupting production.
A replacement Clone would immediately take over the vacant work station. Even the Clones right next to the deceased wouldn’t so much as pause in their work.
Wartime production determines the course of the battlefield. This was something Li Qingsong had long understood completely.
Both moons were producing at full capacity. Anti-air and offensive fire crisscrossed. Fleets clashed in space. Farther out, two Earth-class Warships began maneuvering at full power, each supporting its own fleet...
The bloodshed, cruelty, and intensity of this battle probably surpassed even that of a real war.
On a real battlefield, the enemy’s attacks would never be as efficient as Li Qingsong’s!
This kind of live-fire, no-holds-barred exercise would be unacceptable to any normal, sentient civilization.
Those were real Warships, one after another! And those were real people!
Who could accept them dying not at the hands of an enemy, but senselessly at the hands of their own comrades?
But there was one undeniable point: neither supercomputer simulations nor conventional live-fire exercises could ever truly reflect the reality of a battlefield.
The data gathered from them would be full of errors and omissions, preventing Li Qingsong from truly growing and the Wukong AI from being truly perfected.
The only way to capture the true conditions of a battlefield was to fight a real, no-holds-barred war!
So, he would fight a real war!
It was based on this line of thinking that Li Qingsong had brazenly thrown his newly produced Warships, the product of immense effort, into a genuine battlefield.
Cannons roared. One by one, Warships were blown to pieces, and Clones died without leaving a whole corpse behind.
In the end, their deaths were converted into streams of data, flowing into the supercomputers that housed the strategic versions of Wukong and triggering another evolution.
As Wukong began to evolve, Li Qingsong’s own understanding of warfare grew ever more profound. His decisions became more precise, his predictions of the future more accurate.
At such a brutal, meat-grinder-like intensity, a mere 3,000 Warships wouldn’t last long at all.
But it didn’t matter. From the rear, a continuous stream of newly produced ships was sent to join the battlefield.
Despite the rapid rate of casualties, the total number of Warships participating in the battle did not decrease. In fact, it was constantly rising!
Li Qingsong was only limited by the maximum number of consciousness connections he could maintain, which prevented him from controlling so many Warships simultaneously. But when it came to production, as long as he had enough resources and time, his supply was limitless.
In just two years, the number of Warships in the battle had surpassed five thousand. The war itself grew more complex, more brutal, and the tactics employed became ever more cunning and unpredictable.
And amid this unceasing, brutal slaughter, Li Qingsong’s mastery of war grew at an unprecedented rate.
And so, surveying the entire state of the war, Li Qingsong made his first major judgment since the live-fire exercise began.
’My current weapon systems are still insufficient. I only have Laser Cannons and Electromagnetic Cannons, supplemented by a few Interstellar Missiles. My offensive options aren’t diverse enough, and they lack variability. I’m powerless against tough targets.’
’The weapon systems must be enhanced!’