The Serpent Nebula, the space station of the Citadel, the seat of the Citadel Council, and the political center of the entire galaxy.

The Citadel space station, weighing 7.1 billion tons (almost the size of Dawn), resembles a five-petaled begonia flower. Once the Citadel Station is shut down, it becomes an impregnable fortress. When the Citadel space station opened, it reached a length of 43 kilometers and a diameter at breast height of 13 kilometers, relying on a combination of rotation and mass effect fields to generate artificial gravity, and inside each blade, there was a corresponding living area - the entire Citadel, living 13.2 million people!

As the busiest space station in the entire galaxy, there are thousands of docks in and out of the port on the five long, narrow blades of the Citadel.

In Area C, a small and inconspicuous boat flew into the harbor. When the hatch of the small passenger ship opened, dozens of passengers from the Osha field left the cabin one by one. These people have already checked all the formalities remotely on the spaceship, and they can leave directly after disembarking. Therefore, no one noticed that there was an extra woman in the marching queue, a woman who had never been on a spaceship, and of course could not be on the flight list.

The woman looked around a little, and walked in the direction of the stairs with feeling. The dock was on the top floor of the building, and she was going to the 37th floor, about the middle of the building. Despite the fifteen-story difference between the two sides, she didn't choose the elevator, but walked down the zigzag staircase.

When she walked into the private clubhouse on the 37th floor, she stood in the doorway and looked around for her target. No waiter came over and asked if she needed help, and no one even noticed her deposit. The woman looked around. And quickly targeted a young man with headphones on his ears and a hood on his head.

As she walked over, the boy stood up. Although the two of them did not make an appointment. But they all seem to know each other. The boy first looked her up and down curiously, and then invited, "Please sit down...... The main god Xing Yan. ”

"Thank you," Xing Yan, the main god who had appeared here not long after leaving the Dawn, breathed a sigh of relief as she sat down next to the young man. But then Xing Yan said with some embarrassment. "Lord God...... What should I call you? ”

"In this world," the teenager's finger tapped to the table, "you can call me." Catalyst. ”

******

"Catalyst" is a chemical term. But in the world of Mass Effect, it's also an exclusive noun, representing a special kind of life.

According to the syllogism that runs through the entire world of mass effects, organic life must be born in the universe. When organic life reaches a certain stage of development, it will inevitably create a synthetic life. Synthetic life is bound to destroy organic civilization.

(It is said that there are all kinds of lofty entropy theories, galactic destruction theories, dark galactic theories, etc., so we can ignore them.) The reason is very simple - we TMD only live for 500 years in 10 lifetimes, and you are discussing with me the question of the galaxy being "about to be destroyed" in tens of billions of years?! So…… ）

When the Leviathans, the dominant race of the galaxy, were in pain, they tried to solve this ultimate problem (the dead don't give us tribute). So Leviathan created an AI and gave it the responsibility to solve the problem. The name of this AI is called "Catalyst"!

"Catalyst" is super neat and naturally action-oriented! -- It took him about a second. I thought of a very brain-dead plan -- and then began to solve the problem according to the plan for thousands of years!

He first created a synthetic life called the Reaper, and then neatly harmonized their master, the Leviathan (when the Leviathan asked me to solve the problem, they didn't realize that they were part of the problem. ）。

And the Leviathan's corpse was turned into the most powerful reaper, the "Pioneer" battleship.

After each cycle of harvesting civilization, the corpses of organic life are made into Reaper battleships - "Catalyst" calls this "interrupting the process of organic civilization and preserving it in a specific form before it destroys itself" - the large races become the "Overlord-class" dreadnoughts (2,000 meters long), and the smaller races become the "Mièrea"-class frigates (160 meters long).

Of all the process of making zuò, only 50,000 years ago in the last cycle, the construction of zuò battleships from the corpses of Protheus failed.

One thing to be clear here is that the "catalyst" is a synthetic life, an AI. He created the reaper, but the "catalyst" itself is not the reaper, the reaper is only his tool. After creating the Citadel Space Station and Mass Effect Repeater in one cycle, Catalyst broke away from the Reaper fleet and began a long career in the Citadel - which is why Lu Yuan has traveled all over the galaxy but has never set foot in the Citadel.

*****

"I knew it!"

As soon as he heard the name of the main god in front of him, Xing Yan became extremely depressed and seemed to understand everything. "It's a trap! You've been hiding in the depths of the world without leaving - and I don't think anyone can imagine - that you've been replaced by a catalyst! That's your plan, right? Xing Yan chattered a little nervously, "Let's promote the growth of this world, and then you stand at the end of the initial plot and harvest all the results!?" It's despicable......"

The end of the Mass Effect trilogy is that the Star Alliance has created the ultimate weapon, the Optimus Furnace, based on the information of the Optimus Furnace (which was probably actively spread by the catalyst). When the Furnace and the Citadel (under the control of the Catalyst) and the "Catalyst" himself, the three are combined. Whether organic or synthetic, they will stand on the altar and accept the final judgment of fate - and the button of choice is in Shepard's hand.

"No," the young man was expressionless, but he denied Xing Yan's speculation, "It's not a trap, and I haven't given up on this world - you can't find me, just because I took the initiative to go deep into the source of the world to find the secret of Element Zero - it took tens of millions of years. ”

"So...... According to you...... Is this a misunderstanding?! So why are we able to compete in this world? In any world where there is a main god, it is impossible for people to qualify for competition! Xing Yan asked indignantly.

"It's not a misunderstanding, when I left, I didn't label the world as 'don't touch it'...... It's because I think everyone should know about it. The young man flattened his mouth and said very sincerely. As one of the most powerful gods in the neighborhood, no one should dare to grab something from my plate. I'm also helpless that such a thing would happen. ”

Xing Yan was speechless...... At the beginning, it seemed that she found out that there was something to take advantage of, and then poked Alona to act together.

"But when you begin to come into contact with this world, I find that I am eager to acquire your abilities," Catalyst continued, and although these words were not good, there were no lies in the communication between the Lord God and the Lord God. "Your 'absolute physical' ability, and that little Lord God's ability to manipulate time, will be very helpful to my research. So I've divided some of the world's control to attract you to join - in the end you will gain something, and as for the struggle for ownership of the whole world - you think too much. ”

Xing Yan opened his mouth, but he couldn't say his reason - Lu Yuan has a unique quality that can "achieve the world". Therefore, when he lives in a certain world long enough, he can indeed grab a considerable part of the world's ownership.

Xing Yan's appearance here today is only a "necessary action" taken to "recover losses", not a betrayal. Because the two parties have not made any agreement on this, both Xing Yan and Alona are allowed to change sides freely.

But those things that have been agreed upon, like the sacred contract signed by pointing to the source sea, restrict the actions of the main god. Regarding Lu Yuan's identity secret, it is this type of agreement. She had to convince "Catalyst" to believe her on other grounds.

――――

PS: Second update. (To be continued......)