Space Odyssey from Abandoned Mining Space Station

That was when the transformation facility reached the brain.

The Insect Queen’s consciousness, residing in a surrogate body, felt a sense of extraction.

The Insect Queen did not permit the consciousness to be extracted, but the transformation process caused the consciousness to automatically detach, resulting in this situation.

Then Chen Ming understood.

It should be during the transformation that a part of the brain’s consciousness is preserved by the nanorobots, and after the brain is fully transformed into a personality sub-core, that preserved part of the consciousness is inserted.

And the consciousness in the surrogate body is temporarily filled by the Insect Queen, without a separable consciousness, leading to such a situation.

Chen Ming immediately conducted the replication experiment again to verify his hypothesis.

This time, the surrogate body was filled with the consciousness of a normal Insect Race unit.

This Insect Race individual expressed no objection.

And just as the transformation process of the device was carried out once more, the surrogate body was transformed into a mechanical state, and the consciousness of the Insect Race individual inside the surrogate body was completely transformed into the consciousness within the personality core.

This time the sub-core did not malfunction, and it began to operate normally.

And the consciousness within the surrogate body still existed, though it did not belong to Chen Ming’s Mechanical Race hive mind network but remained with the Insect Race hive mind network to which it originally belonged.

It’s quite absurd.

This situation means that as long as Chen Ming installs this sub-core onto any Demon King, that Demon King would essentially become part of the Insect Race hive mind network instead of the Mechanical Race hive mind network.

This situation subconsciously gave Chen Ming several more ideas.

And he immediately went to try it out.

Using spiritual energy to tune the consciousness within the sub-core, leveraging the unique characteristics of the Mechanical Race hive mind network, he balanced the individual’s thought waves with the mechanical network.

He attempted to connect this individual, originally belonging to the Insect Race, to the Mechanical Race’s hive mind network.

The result... it actually worked.

In fact, this individual could simultaneously share the consciousness exchanges from both networks and benefit from the hive mind network.

However, Chen Ming immediately terminated this connection.

Because he was worried that some undesirable things might occur.

Not that the two hive networks would conflict or anything; he would sense any risk of conflict right away.

He meant other aspects.

The Mechanical Race hive mind network is a capability that the Mechanical Race naturally possesses, and after Chen Ming captured the Mechanical Race, he could present it with a reasonable justification.

Several people had already suggested ideas for developing spiritual energy in this regard to Chen Ming, but he had yet to demonstrate it.

He intended to treat this capability as a hidden card to reveal when necessary.

Meanwhile, the Insect Race is another hidden card that must be revealed through An Wuping, and he couldn’t let these two be connected together.

Otherwise, a significant part of the effort he put into creating An Wuping would lose its intended significance.

Moreover, mixing the Mechanical Race and the Insect Race together poses difficulties in the allocation of control rights and the interference of functions between the two hive mind networks.

While Chen Ming needs an individual with enough autonomy and loyalty to him to manage the Mechanical Race hive mind network, not a Mechanical Queen with no independent thought, the Insect Queen happens to meet these conditions.

But the Insect Queen has little understanding of mechanics.

The Insect Queen just understands the principles of mechanical operation, knowing how to reproduce it, but innovation or management of purely mechanical areas of colonization would be impossible.

So, Chen Ming does not plan to delve deeper into the situation where mechanics and biology transform each other and even link two hive mind networks for now.

There might be an opportunity in the future.

But it will have to wait until the Mechanical Race in his hands fully develops, and he thoroughly researches the existence of semi-biological, semi-mechanical individuals.

At least he understands what the personality sub-core is all about.

Though the result is somewhat frightening.

The current personality sub-core can be said to be the transformation of dying humans by the Mechanical Race, but what about the past? The Shimmering Civilization?

What is the true nature of the Shimmering Civilization? What kind of existence are they?

It seems necessary to visit the Shimmering Civilization Research Institute.

Chen Ming thought as much.

But for now, let’s set aside this situation that doesn’t temporarily affect his work.

Regarding the personality transformed by the Insect Race consciousness...No, it’s the Insect Personality Sub-Core.

In terms of capability, it seems somewhat inferior to the personality.

But it’s still better than transforming actual humans.

Some top Mechanical Race units inherently require such sub-cores, and Chen Ming cannot demand death row inmates from the Empire’s prisons for transformation...

Wait, maybe it’s not impossible.

But at any rate, having an additional method is not a loss.

Moreover, Chen Ming had another intriguing idea.

He extracted this personality sub-core separately and sent it to the Insect Queen.

The Insect Queen was preparing to migrate after consuming a wave of resources from the Insect Hive Planet.

Yet there was still time to help Chen Ming with some minor tasks.

For example, converting this mechanical Insect Personality Sub-Core back into a biological state.

Although the sub-core is small, the difficulty of conversion still exists, and it is even greater than transforming a Teleportation Engine.