Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 929 - 164: Where Do We Go Together?

Chapter 929: Chapter 164: Where Do We Go Together?

Xiang Shan temporarily put down this topic and turned to ask, "How are our dolphin friends doing now? Have they stabilized?"

Even after the benchmark enhancement, the performance of dolphin biological brains in "thinking" is still weaker than that of humans. They rely more on artificial systems for thinking. However, the initial setting of this system is "programs must give way to thinking and instinct." For dolphins, this means their primitive instincts have too high a level of authority. They appear more impulsive and naive—the emotional behavior logic is troublesome, even to themselves.

Due to the mismatch between the brain and the central chip, they tend to make mistakes in handling certain application scenarios.

For example, when emotions are too intense.

When Sissy found out that the spear squids she had preyed on in the past were intelligent creatures, she couldn’t accept it at all.

This is also the result of two hundred years of cultural reinforcement within the whales.

Whales can prey on each other. For toothed whales, baleen whales are the best prey. Killer whales prey on nearly all marine mammals from blue whales to seals. And when these remaining whales gather, the toothed whales must restrain their predatory instincts. "Absolutely cannot treat intelligent life as prey" is a culture constructed by the whales themselves.

Every whale instinctively believes that this is absolutely wrong.

And for whales, it’s not at the level of "killing is illegal."

In human society, there are still several situations where "killing" is permissible—such as when the other party is a bad person or poses a threat to one’s life, and so on. Even "whether cannibalism in extreme environments should be considered a crime" is a topic open for discussion.

The recognition that "intelligent life absolutely cannot be predated" is so prioritized in whale culture that it is the premise and core of the whales’ ethical view, without a bit of room for discussion.

In other words, without establishing such a culture, perhaps they could not form a harmonious collective.

Without establishing such a culture, baleen whales would always harbor misgivings against toothed whales.

"Also..." Xiang Shan sighed, "I was still worried about it over at the squid’s side. He doesn’t know the situation here, and he’s been thinking, ’What if the whales are in such bad shape that they really need this protein, and there’s no choice but to eat squid?’ He has even been negotiating with the squids. The bottom line offered by the squids is that they can provide the bodies of their dead companions to the whales and even periodically sever some of their arms... They hope they can gain technological support from the whales this way. They really didn’t expect the whales to have this kind of culture."

"Strictly speaking, whales would also regard the bodies of their companions as food. But they would absolutely not prey on intelligent lives." The Martial Artist thought carefully, "I’m not very familiar with old-time culture, and I really can’t find a suitable analogy at the moment..."

"I get it, I get it. It’s kind of like something that makes you feel sick just imagining it," Xiang Shan sighed, "So, how are they doing now?"

Sissy broke down on the spot, falling into a delirious state, rushing out incoherently.

And Kledec, who was next to him, should have stopped her. But he is also a dolphin and cannot overcome this innate defect.

The great whale Hopetman hurriedly sang a whale song to alert distant companions.

But such an act is undoubtedly dangerous. This area is already close to the Protector’s monitoring region. It’s very dangerous to lose one’s mind and wander around here.

"Ah, this. I guess the Protectors are too occupied to defend now." The Nameless Swordsman laughed, "A First Heavenly Layer officer easily disappeared. For the Protectors, this is already big news. Especially under the premise of ’a Martial God’ hiding on Earth. They will gather the surrounding navy at the shortest notice and then retract mightily. If you go to the next outpost nearby now, you might only find a place that’s been emptied out. Even if it’s inconvenient to move some large equipment, they’ll surely take apart the critical modules."

"Ah, this," Xiang Shan pondered for a moment, "I thought this place was quite important. It was the starting point of human meeting with an extraterrestrial civilization in the beginning, and then David... that Conquest Heavenly King guy later took it over and opened a personal museum!"

"Extraterrestrial... ah." This Hero, being the legitimate line of the Sixth Martial God, knows a bit about those events: "Argon, huh... but that thing is just a relic. Swordsmen won’t randomly blow up relics. Are there Protectors specifically sending numerous experts to protect its value? Besides, haven’t heard of any deployment by Conquest Heavenly King here?"

"How could there be?" Xiang Shan waved his hand, "Apart from research achievements, his proudest accomplishment in the first half of his life was taking over the Rama Project District and setting up a personal museum on the spot."

"Museum..." The Hero read through his mental dictionary several times to confirm the meaning of the word: "A place to store certain things... which also hold no significance beyond historical value. Swordsmen wouldn’t destroy this kind of thing deliberately. Maybe it’s just unnecessary to station soldiers there? According to what I know, this place doesn’t have much martial power. Other than this matter, those Protectors would prioritize gathering together to avoid being defeated one by one, exploiting mobility advantage. Sissy will be fine."

"That’s good." Xiang Shan sighed, "This matter is also really... sigh."

Because of the overwhelming dominance of dinosaurs, the ancestors of mammals were marginalized for millions of years, forced to a nocturnal, burrow-dwelling lifestyle. In such an environment, vision wasn’t very useful. The ancestors of mammals permanently regressed their color vision during this period, and their overall vision was quite lax. But the auditory system of mammals turned out to be excellent.

Even after the extinction of dinosaurs, as mammals took over the new land, the regression that had occurred couldn’t be reversed. Only mammals and a few other groups acquired multicolor vision through mutation. Later, whales opted to rely on ultrasound, and vision became auxiliary.

Yet, the color vision of cephalopods is quite strong. Their eyes are highly adaptive to the ocean. Spear squid developed their language based on their own color-changing system.

Whales truly cannot see the intelligence exhibited by the spear squids.

Xiang Shan looked at the dolphins and found them quite free and happy. If not for Ola Freeman’s reminder, he probably wouldn’t realize that these dolphins are always in a state of "unable to speak properly." They have never spoken a sentence in their own language at a normal volume with normal tone in their lives.

Whales looking at spear squids, it’s probably even further from the truth than this.

Spear squids are the same. The hearing system of squids is quite average. Aside from low sensitivity, they can only receive sounds between 400 and 1,500 hertz. While humans can hear between 20 to 20,000 hertz.

Humans can only understand a small part of whale songs. The portion squids can hear is even less.

Can these two groups truly coexist in the long term?