Age of Cosmic Exploration

There wasn’t much to be said about the negotiation process other than the fact that it had lasted for about 2 days. The negotiations were led by all manner of politicians, business experts, and some scientists. Their conclusion was that the negotiations were too simple, so much so that they suspected the space merchants were playing another trick on them.

From the start of the negotiation, Speaker Matt argued that the war only started because the space merchants ambushed mankind under the pretext of trade and every bit of damage mankind inflicted was in self-defense. Therefore, the fault of the war fell squarely on the space merchants.

Of course, these were just opening statements; no serious negotiators would take them as facts and conclusions. In affairs of war, winners take all. However, the 10 big-brained aliens that led the negotiations and the other aliens behind them accepted it as the truth. First, they tried to reason by going into how they were first swindled by humanity and then brought up the heartless massacre done by the human military, but those were quickly rebutted by the human negotiators. In the end, the space merchants accepted full culpability for the war.

Things were a lot easier after that. Since the other party had accepted full responsibility for the damage, asking for compensation was no different from direct burglary. Especially after the human negotiators brought up the numbers of human deaths, be it normal civilians, Defense Unit soldiers, and most importantly, 30 Homo Evolutis. The space merchants gave them wounded expressions. They promised to compensate with anything that humanity wanted as long as they were given a chance to live. This was an answer even some of the human negotiators felt sorry for pushing them into.

Therefore, 2 days later, in the report Yao Yuan received, after the peace talks, humanity gained unimaginable victory.

First, the big-brained aliens, as the administrators of the space merchant civilization, hoped to be pardoned and be allowed to lead the rest of their civilization back to their Shelter in an evacuation spaceship. Everything else, such as all the 4th revolution and 5th revolution technologies, cosmos information, star navigation charts, information on the Law of Conservation of Life, and even the mother ship itself would be handed over the mankind.

In other words, this negotiation, which Yao Yuan thought would drag on and on for at least months, was concluded so easily. Humanity got a landslide victory. This was a result greater than what Yao Yuan could have imagined. The space merchants were practically talked into giving up everything they had, and they agreed to it!

This was so uncanny that even Yao Yuan suspected that the space merchants were playing a game. Therefore, his first order was to have all the soldiers be on alert. Simultaneously, he had soldiers stand by the H-bombs. If there was something suspicious, he was going to blow up the mother ship without a second thought.

However, nothing weird happened. A few hours after the peace talks, a big-brained alien approached Yao Yuan to tell him that a group of their clansmen was going to the Hope to unlock the quantum code. The space merchants were giving up their last leverage.

However, as a precaution, Yao Yuan still arranged for many things. First, there was a staff adjustment within the Hope. The Defense Unit soldiers were led by the experts to station themselves at the strategic locations on the Hope. If they discovered that the Hope’s self-destruction sequence was activated, then they would manually cut off the Hope’s main power source, causing another blackout. Furthermore, Yao Yuan only allowed one big-brained alien to go on the Hope to solve the quantum lock.

Even with all these precautions set in place, everyone was still worried. After all, the Hope was the root for all humanity; if the Hope was destroyed, then it would be over for the human civilization, so one couldn’t be too cautious.

Several hours later, full control of the Hope was regained and the quantum virus was fully analyzed. There was no ruse. The big-brained alien returned to its mother ship obediently. It was like they promised, they had surrendered completely.

Yao Yuan couldn’t understand or even imagine just how a race like this had become the administrators of multiple races. Or even called themselves space merchants.

Then again, during mankind’s first contact with these space merchants, the business experts already informed Yao Yuan that the business skills of the space merchants were like those of children, completely no match for the human experts. So it was no wonder they were swindled by the small spaceship full of human politicians so many years ago.

"Theirs is a civilization moving towards racial senescence. While it might be true that they were an incredibly bright civilization when they initially left their home planet, after 20,000 years in space, the intelligence level of the civilization dropped to a frightening low. They have even lost their ability to adapt and create technology. I’m afraid that in several thousand years, the big-brained alien race will probably disappear from space." Xiao Niao sighed beside Yao Yuan.

This was one week after the Hope’s control was regained. The aftermath of the war was still going on. The space merchants suggested the Hope disperse the creator’s particles so they could directly transfer the information mankind needed to the Hope, but that idea was firmly rejected by Yao Yuan.

Yao Yuan wouldn’t let his guard down even at a concluding period like this. He was afraid the trap was set at these last few moments. Therefore, Yao Yuan not only rejected the idea of deactivating the creator’s particles, but also activated the Hope’s ECS system. To facilitate the information transfer from the mother ship to the Hope, 100 Defense Unit soldiers and ten Black Star Troopers were ordered to create a creator’s-particle-free corridor from the room where the big-brained alien executives resided to the bridgehead. Cables would be set up in the corridor to help transfer information.

The project lasted for about a week. Today was going to be the day the big-brained alien sent over information on the 4th revolution and 5th revolution technologies and information about the cosmos. Scientists from multiple fields were on standby to look over the information sent just in case the space merchants played tricks or gave false information.

Inside a rest capsule, Yao Yuan, Ren Tao, and Xiao Niao were sifting through the most important information, the document on the Law of Conservation of Life, and the accompanying information. The creator of the law and the time of creation was unknown, other than the fact that its history was longer than the space merchants and even the Shelter where they hailed from. According to the law, all forms of life were a combination of two elements, soul and material. The so-called soul was also spirit.

Every living thing has a soul because those without one cannot be called living, and this included AI. No matter whether it was low level AI, mid level AI, or high level AI, no AI contained a soul, so they could only survive according to the rules set down by their creators. No matter what, their own technology would not be greater than the civilization that created them, because without a soul, they didn’t have the ability to create and invent.

Every race has its soul, but the moment it leaves its home plant, the soul will become a constant; it will not increase nor decrease unless it finds a new home planet to populate. The soul will not be affected by the death or birth rate. The soul of a dead person will be transferred to a newborn, and that creates an equalizer.

However, this Law of Conservation of Life is limited by reality. Just like the law of conservation of energy, not 100 percent of the energy is transferred, so a large percentage actually dissipates into the surroundings during transference. So with souls, while most are absorbed by newborns, some souls dissipate into space, thus causing racial senescence.

Some technologies in the 5th revolution can prevent soul energy from escaping into the cosmos, and this contributes to the creation of Shelters. Shelters are locales that were built with the cooperation of multiple civilizations. They are pretty much the soul energy recycling centers. Life forms from enemy civilizations or even inmates and retards from one’s own are brought to the Shelter to be sacrificed to increase the amount of soul energy within a civilization. That is the purpose of Shelters.

Cosmic Adapters are so valuable because all types of Cosmic Adapters’ souls have undergone certain changes to adapt to a life in space without the need for the anchor of a home planet. They can absorb soul energy and pass them down safely to their own civilization’s newborns...

In other words, as long as a civilization has Cosmic Adapters, that civilization will never fall into decline!