Chapter 22: Cerebral Mass

"Twenty-one thousand..."

Li Qingsong murmured the number to himself and sighed softly.

Although under his control, the clones experienced no internal friction and incurred no communication costs, allowing them to work and think with maximum efficiency, twenty-one thousand clones could, at best, exert only ten times the productive and developmental capacity of an ordinary human population. By this calculation, his current total output was roughly equivalent to a community of 210,000 people.

While 210,000 might seem like a large number, it was negligible compared to the vast scale of an industrial society. With a mature industrial system, such a small workforce could at most handle the production requirements for a specific sub-sector within a single major industry. For instance, in the automotive sector, having only that many people would be just enough to manage the glass industry, and that would only be possible under the premise of high automation. Currently, his overall technological level was roughly equivalent to that of the Second Industrial Revolution, which made the productivity of these 21,000 clones even lower.

Several years ago, after first sensing the existence of an "upper limit to consciousness," he had been conducting experiments and reflections, attempting to understand and master this special ability more deeply. Although progress was slow, there had been some peripheral gains.

For instance, Li Qingsong had now confirmed that there was a speed limit to the consciousness connection between himself and his clones. The information transmission speed was consistent with the speed of light—300,000 kilometers per second. When the distance increased—for example, with a clone on the other side of Luoshen Planet—he experienced a delay of about 6.7 milliseconds, as the distance was approximately 2,000 kilometers.

However, Li Qingsong did not yet know what the carrier for this information transmission was. At this stage, he could at least confirm it was not electromagnetic waves. If it were, those clones located in special areas, such as underground, should have long since lost their connection to him.

Simultaneously, this special ability seemed closely related to the "quality" of his brain. Even though all were his clones, using the same gene-editing scheme and the same growth tank protocols, there were always minute variations during the cultivation process, leading to slight differences between individual clones. Some clones might have brains that were "smarter"—possessing higher quality, better logical thinking, reasoning, associative capabilities, and data processing skills—while others were slightly inferior.

"Perhaps the higher the quality of the brain, the more clones I can control simultaneously?"

Driven by this hypothesis, even though the number of connections was already near its limit, Li Qingsong did not stop the cultivation of new clones. Six months later, a new batch of 2,000 clones was ready. Upon attempting to reconnect, Li Qingsong found that his connection limit had indeed been reached. Including the original body housing his consciousness, he could control a maximum of 21,155 clones. The remaining thousand or so could not be connected, as if a vehicle could no longer bear any more weight.

Li Qingsong decisively transferred his consciousness into another clone and began testing again. This time, the number of connectable clones changed to 21,159! That was four more than the previous body! Switching to yet another body, he found the number changed to 21,006—153 fewer than the last one!

After a round of testing, Li Qingsong discovered that every clone had a different capacity for connecting to others, with subtle differences among them. The gap between the highest and lowest was over 800!

He selected four representative clones, brought them into a room, and placed a set of extremely complex cognitive tests before them. He first entered the body with the lowest connection capacity and, without using the abilities of any other clones, began the 500-question test. He repeated this for the second body, again without aid.

When all four bodies had completed the tests, the results were presented to him. The body with the lowest connection capacity scored 85 points, while the other three scored 85.2, 85.5, and 85.9, respectively.

As expected! His previous hypothesis had been fully verified.

The path to increasing his connection limit was now clear: cultivate higher-quality clones, and he would be able to control more bodies and brains simultaneously. At the same time, cultivating only one or two "high-quality" clones would likely not be enough.

First, if an accident occurred and a high-quality clone died, he would be forced to transfer to another body. If that body were of lower quality, he might suddenly lose the ability to control the number of clones he previously managed, which would be a significant disaster. Second, the brain of each clone was also his own brain; the higher the quality of every individual clone's brain, the greater his total capacity.

Overall, he needed to improve the brain quality of all cultivated clones as much as possible. This way, not only would his comprehensive ability increase, but if he were forced to transfer due to an accident, he would not suffer a sudden, catastrophic loss of control over his clones.

To cultivate high-quality clones, he needed sufficient biotechnology. And biotechnology was clearly tied to his overall level of technology. Chemistry, medicine, mathematics, physics, and computer science—none of these major disciplines could be neglected. Developing biotechnology in isolation from the broader technological foundation was nearly impossible.

"Fortunately, at this stage, I don't have to rely on overall technological progress to improve my biotechnology. The Deep Space ship has enough theoretical foundations in biology and gene-editing equipment. With these, optimizing my genes and planning a genetic blueprint for higher-quality brains should be possible. As long as the technology for the growth tanks catches up, there will be no problem in truly cultivating high-quality clones. It’s just that, at this stage, I cannot build such precise growth tanks."

Li Qingsong felt a slight headache. He had not forgotten that his first growth tank was a modified facility for cloning livestock, the second through fifth were cobbled together from small animal breeding equipment, and those he built later were even more rudimentary. To cultivate high-quality clones, he could no longer settle for such makeshift solutions.

"If I can't build them, I must find a way. For the next period, I will prioritize breakthroughs in growth tank technology."

He made up his mind.