Humanity Is Gone, but I Have Billions of Clones

The live-fire combat exercises Li Qingsong was currently conducting had already incorporated every weapon he had ever conceived.

In addition to conventional Warships, a wide variety of unmanned weapons had also begun to play a role. They were controlled by the Wukong AI to execute different offensive tactics, testing the methods and effectiveness of each one.

Sometimes, a fleet from A Fleet would advance stealthily, thinking it was completely undetected, and attempt a surprise attack on a B Fleet base.

A Fleet's detection assets had scanned this region of space many times, confirming that no B Fleet forces were deployed there.

But in the vast emptiness of space, a cluster of Nuclear Missiles was suddenly activated. Propelled by fission-fragment rockets, they launched a ferocious assault from an extremely great distance. Their velocity peaked at over one hundred kilometers per second, catching the fleet's Interception System completely off guard.

In the end, some of the Nuclear Missiles broke through to the A Fleet formation and detonated violently. The searing light and incinerating heat instantly vaporized a portion of the A Fleet Warships, dealing a heavy blow to the would-be ambushers.

At other times, a B Fleet fleet would be in a desperate retreat, its engines running at maximum power in an attempt to disengage from the battlefield. But just as they were about to break through, a cluster of Interstellar Mines was automatically triggered.

These Interstellar Mines were small, each weighing less than one kilogram in total. They didn't use two-stage pressurized propulsion or any other advanced thrust technology, employing only the simplest and most primitive chemical propulsion.

Each Interstellar Mine carried about 500 grams of fuel. At this moment, the fuel was ejected with reckless abandon, accelerating the mines with all its might.

Although chemical fuel has a low specific impulse, it has one major advantage: high instantaneous thrust, which can provide immense acceleration in an instant.

The next moment, the Interstellar Mines reached speeds of several hundred meters per second, swarming toward the fleeing B Fleet ships like a school of piranhas.

Because they were too close, too numerous, and had remained well-hidden until now, B Fleet's Interception System was caught off guard and failed to perform effectively.

One by one, the Interstellar Mines—each packed with 200 grams of all-nitrogen anionic salt and packing a punch equivalent to a high-power Electromagnetic Cannon Projectile—detonated at close range. They either directly damaged the Warships' armor or released shrapnel and pellets with equally high kinetic energy, throwing the entire fleet into chaos.

Interstellar Cannon Platforms deployed throughout space roared to life, delivering their deadly payloads from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

Countless spy satellites crisscrossed space, doing their utmost to gather intelligence on the enemy's movements and deployments. When conditions were right, these spy satellites would even moonlight as armed satellites, taking out a few of the enemy's communication nodes or sabotaging their facilities.

Swarms of unmanned spacecraft roamed through space like schools of sharks, converging on any suitable target they encountered.

Numerous Supercomputer Ships lay hidden in every corner of the starscape. Each one housed a strategic version of Wukong, remotely commanding all unmanned forces within a radius of millions, or even tens of millions, of kilometers, while also assisting the Manned Warships in combat...

In these live-fire combat exercises, Li Qingsong strictly adhered to one principle: the policy of intelligence segregation.

Although he was essentially commanding both A Fleet and B Fleet and knew everything about both sides, in practice, intelligence about A Fleet never influenced his decisions for B Fleet.

Even when Li Qingsong clearly knew that A Fleet had dispatched an ambush fleet, when making decisions for B Fleet, he would still proceed as if B Fleet was unaware of the ambush.

This was unless he had previously ordered B Fleet to conduct a large-scale search and it had already discovered the ambush fleet.

In that case, B Fleet would then make its own counter-ambush arrangements, turning the tables on them. When commanding A Fleet, he would likewise not alter A Fleet's battle plan based on intelligence about B Fleet.

This was because, under normal circumstances, A Fleet would have no way of knowing B Fleet's plans.

The same applied to the strategic version of Wukong. The two Wukong systems were kept strictly isolated from each other, with no commingling of intelligence.

Under these conditions, all sorts of weapons were brought to bear, and an endless variety of tactics emerged. The nearly infinite stream of data from a realistic battlefield allowed the Wukong AI to evolve at a tremendous pace.

By now, Li Qingsong was becoming increasingly aware that a war AI would be indispensable in future interstellar warfare and would hold an extremely important position.

But at the same time, Li Qingsong also realized with even greater clarity that an AI was, in the end, still just an AI.

Until the birth of a true strong AI—one that could possess creativity, wisdom, and genuine life like a biological organism—no matter how powerful an AI became, it would always remain a support tool.

No matter the circumstances, humans were always the most important factor.

Just like now, even though the Wukong AI had become so powerful, it still couldn't do without the on-the-spot decision-making and maintenance provided by the Clones.

Similarly, on the battlefield, the manned fleets were the most crucial element, as well as the most elite and powerful in terms of combat strength.

Many difficult combat missions could still only be handled by manned fleets. The Wukong AI could provide a great deal of support, but it could never ultimately replace real people.

'It doesn't matter, though. If my AI can't replace real people, then other civilizations' AIs can't either. And my AI is stronger than theirs.'

With this thought, Li Qingsong once again mobilized the entire resource supply of the Solar System and poured it into the seemingly endless live-fire drills.

Countless factories rumbled day and night, hundreds of millions of Clones stood fast at their posts, and innumerable spacecraft shuttled back and forth. This endless stream of materials was ultimately transformed into components, engines, armor plates, and projectiles. In the end, all of it either vanished silently or exploded violently on the battlefields of space, becoming space junk or interstellar dust in a myriad of ways.

Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, several decades had passed. At this moment, Li Qingsong finally brought the live-fire combat exercises to a halt.

In a Solar System that had thundered with cannon fire, the two fleets, which just a moment before had been locked in a fight to the death, simultaneously ceased their attacks, as if the brutal war had been nothing but an illusion.

All surviving fleets formed up and converged on their various bases.

At this point, based on intelligence gathered from his own large-scale Deep Space probes, Li Qingsong estimated that the main fleet of the Blutuk Civilization would arrive in approximately 40 to 60 years.

The long period of wargaming had allowed Li Qingsong to accumulate a sufficient wealth of knowledge about warfare.

The Wukong AI had also evolved to an extremely high level.

Now, it was time to use this final period to accomplish another, most crucial task.

Build the Solar System's defensive line!