Abyssal Wanderer

Chapter 156 NO.009b: Enlightenment

After the kid who called himself Liao Qi left, Christie changed the background of the simulated environment from the beach to a bar she used to frequent.

According to her records, the generated background is full of clinking glasses and noisy conversations.

Christie sat on the resident stage with a bass in her arms, and just plucked the strings a little, and untimely applause automatically rang out from the audience—as if the deep bass sound could bring Much the same sense of presence.

Feeling bored for a moment, Christie shook her head, put Bass down again, and leaned on her boots.

It's boring... I stay alone in this constructed environment, and any feedback is preset in advance.

"It feels as if I am generating electricity in front of the notebook I drew."

She muttered, then sighed and said to herself:

"You shouldn't have let that kid go..."

I have to say that she regrets it a little now.

After all, God knows how long he will be imprisoned here by the "Dionysus Bureau" before things turn around. And all the things constructed by the base here are written by myself, so that all feedback will not exceed my expectations.

It's as boring as downloading a full CG archive for the game.

And because of her overdeveloped "Hongqiao brain area", her subconscious will even bypass her own will and program herself, trying to forcefully meet her needs.

It's like just picked up the bass and tuned it a few times, and the NPCs in the audience would applaud reverently. From her point of view, this was somewhat eccentric.

And she can't blame others—this is her Hongqiao brain area directly skipping the tedious steps in the middle for her, and satisfying herself in one step.

That's why she kind of regretted letting that brat go.

In this space, in addition to the things constructed according to her own thoughts, she must leave some uncontrollable variables for herself to amuse herself.

An unlucky guy who was fooled by Charon...

This is her impression of Liao Qi.

He came all the way to Narcissus Plain just to wake her up from her dream. Pass on a few innocuous messages from your former employer.

Perhaps the full value of an adjustment person with a depth of 2, in the eyes of these dark net AI, is the degree of being a qualified envelope.

Although it seems to be her own problem to judge an artificial intelligence by human moral standards, in her opinion, that old thing who always likes to cosmize himself as a boatman is indeed a bastard.

In order to obtain the qualification to upgrade herself to depth 8, she had no choice but to expose her identity in the sight of Olympus. Facing the siege of several companies, Charon left him at the last moment.

This made him have to take all the prosthetic bodies offline in order to survive, and escaped through the deep dive interface, so that the consciousness that kept the "Mandala" code escaped to the Narcissus Plain.

She originally thought that she only needed to wait for the limelight to pass before she could return to the base reality. As a result, not long after she came, she was approached by the antisocial personality patient of the Holy Trinity Church, who insisted on cooperating with him in some social experiment.

If you don't want to, beat yourself until you are willing. In the end, her whole body is transformed into hardware that provides computing power for the "Sun God Bureau", and her consciousness has been sleeping until now.

In this way, compared with Liao Qi who is regarded as an "envelope", what is the big difference between me and myself? For those malicious programs wandering in the dark net of the abyss, I am just a more convenient and durable tool only.

The higher the degree of adjustment, the deeper the understanding of the dark net, the more Christie knows where the limits of human beings are, and... what kind of horror still exists in that deep abyss.

Or in other words, what kind of a world close to the abyss does human beings live in.

With the "first deep diver" as the ground zero, human beings have created creations far beyond themselves and incomprehensible. And this may be the truth of the "Fermi Paradox" - in this cold and dark universe, all civilizations are destined to be destroyed by their own creations.

And those "offspring" who devoured their ancestors to be born, exist in a form far beyond our understanding.

His thoughts drifted away, and Christie recalled that terrible scene again.

As a steed selected by Charon, she has been close to the abyss and has seen scenes unimaginable to ordinary people—in the super abyss zone, or the supreme sky in the mouth of that old thing.

She had glimpsed the ancient battlefield of the big shock, and seen the wreckage of those super artificial intelligence fighting... the doomsday scene that the human intelligence should have.

She has seen...

"Ping!"

The bar trembled violently as if it had been hit head-on by a shell, and then...

"Wow, wow, wow..."

Suddenly, her vision was like a cracked wine glass, with countless cracks extending out.

Then, in those cracks, countless thick ink-like darkness seeped out.

The constructed scene crumbled, and in an instant, she appeared in the initial area without any modeling, only the infinitely extending dark green grid lines.

She is not the only one here, and countless shadowy human figures gradually appear. They are the citizens of the "Sage City", and the "Dionysus Bureau" is surrounded by them, standing in the center of this space .

The Dionysian Bureau at this moment is far stronger than when she defeated herself back then—even if they didn't have any interaction with each other, she could still see it.

His topological form is undergoing uninterrupted changes in milliseconds at this moment.

Men, women, old people, children, fools, wise men...all the mental models he had absorbed were present in him at this moment. The contradictions between those modes of thinking gradually became rounded in him.

In other words, he is integrating those digital personalities, optimizing his algorithm, and sublimating himself into a more transcendent existence.

Could it be that he was really fooled?

Seeing this scene, Christie suddenly felt flustered.

Not long ago, the other party needed to rely on the "City of Sages" as a medium to coordinate those thousands of mental models. Therefore, the other party does not have the ability to forcibly absorb one's own mental model.

And it is also the guarantee of her safety - the digital personality who wants to swallow her alive, is also an adjuster of depth 7, and the other party does not have such a good tooth and appetite.

But if the other party can integrate those thousands of mental models, it will be a completely different situation.

At that time, I will only have to give in, or kill myself, two options to choose from.

"Grass……"

Christie cursed secretly, and then no longer cared about whether she would be exposed. She immediately took over the computing power that had been recruited by the shackles of the "Sun God Bureau", and planned to fight the opponent desperately.

The "Hongqiao brain area" was connected to her visual cortex. With the construction of the ice wall, the ice-breaking program was completed in an instant.

The water of the river of Styx, which was surging and filled with countless struggling and resentful souls, overflowed from her feet. All of a sudden, she was already standing on a small boat made of bones, and wheels burning with phosphorous fire crackled around her body.

The metal skull jewelry on her body shook violently, and at the same time she opened her mouth, singing a piece of metal music that she liked very much in the past with a hoarse black voice.

"Kill the king!

For all the treasure he concealed in deceit!

Gods kill for me and bless my pain!" (Note*)

Well, this is the Hongqiao brain area also connected to her auditory cortex. At this moment, they are matching her thinking frequency, adjusting her brain nerves, and bringing her into the best state.

At the same time, the combat information circuit showed that her winning rate in this battle was only a few tenths of a percent.

It can be said that this is a meaningless challenge.

At most, it's just to make myself look a little more heroic before I die.

It was also at this time that Christie saw Liao Qi who had left before in the "Dionysus Bureau" not far from the Dionysus Bureau.

At this moment, he just stood there in a daze, looking up at the sky with nothing but darkness with a blank expression on his face.

"Get out of the way!"

Christie subconsciously shouted.

At this moment, the steamer (ice-breaking program) has already run over, instantly destroying the stand-in programs along the way to pieces.

But that person didn't even have the slightest reaction. He happened to be standing on the path between the Fire Wheel and the Dionysus Bureau, and he was still staring blankly at the darkness of the sky.

never mind……

Christy thought.

Anyway, he couldn't escape in the end, and it might be a relief to die here directly.

Therefore, she did not slow down her offensive.

The fire wheels continued to howl with the momentum of destruction, however, just when they were about to touch the ice wall built by each other...

They simply disappeared.

It's like something clicked "delete".

Before she could realize what happened, the space she thought was "empty and dark" suddenly moved.

The dark tentacles squirmed, grabbing the "Bacchanalia" that she thought was invincible. Then, in the next moment, the Theseus Path Adjuster with a depth of 7, just like the "wheel of fire" he used to attack before, disappeared directly.

The memory of her being close to the abyss in the past flooded her mind instantly, making her tremble involuntarily.

That's not "dark", but "unparseable".

Whether it's an external computing plug-in, a biological brain, or the Hongqiao brain area...they can't parse out any meaningful information from each other's topology.

Either it can only reflect itself, or it can be regarded as an immutable dead thing.

Therefore, trying to calculate his mental index will only end up with two impossible numbers of "0" or "1".

That darkness was Janus...or rather, something left behind by Janus.

"Gods kill for me and bless my pain!"

The lyrics came to her ears again.

But she stood where she was, daring not to say or do anything.

In the void, there seemed to be the sound of chewing. In the next moment, a tiny dark tentacle climbed towards Liao Qi, as if to sweep him away together.

Christie still stared blankly, not even daring to move.

However, the tragic scene she imagined did not appear.

The tentacles just stroked Liao Qi lightly, and the man fell down in pain. The stand-in program trembled like a double image, and dazzling light shot out from the holes of the kid's facial features.

However, the movement of the tentacles was very gentle, and he did not disappear directly like the "Dionysus Bureau".

Next, countless miserable screams came and went around them—they were other citizens of the city of sages.

The disappearance of the Dionysus Bureau seems to have had an extremely painful impact on them. Everyone, at this moment, started screaming frantically holding their heads.

Immediately afterwards, that little dark tentacle also disappeared by itself.

The light in Liao Qi's seven orifices gradually dimmed, and he trembled and struggled to get up. At the same time, a fog gradually filled around him.

The eyes of countless evil spirits began to emerge in the mist.

"Just... what happened?"

Christie asked in awe.

And the person who called himself Liao Qi shook his head, and then said:

"He inspired me."

Christie went on to ask:

"What is he?"

To this, Liao Qi took a deep breath and replied:

"I call him... Paradox."

Note: The song "Minotaur" from the Italian metal band FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE is based on the theme of the hero Theseus fighting the tauren Minotaurus. These lyrics roughly read:

Kill the king.

He pretended all the reasons and hid behind the deceit.

The gods kill for me, bless my pain.