Embers Ad Infinitum

"That's it..." Shang Jianyao suddenly realized, "I always thought that there was a person of destiny in our team, but it turned out to be just a product of probability."

Not only was he not disappointed, but he was relieved. He didn't know how his brain was turning.

Without waiting for "Truth" to respond, he asked again:

“Since most of us want to change the status quo, why do we have to make friends with one of the personalities of ‘Zhuang Sheng’?

"I understand that he should be the boss of the status quo faction, but you have the strength in numbers, so you can solve the problem on your own."

As he said this, Shang Jianyao thought of a certain possibility and said with "shock":

"Can it be that all of you, together, are not Zhuang Sheng's opponents? Well, those who support him are in the minority!"

"Truth", wearing a colorful shirt and beach shorts, chuckled:

“It’s not that we can’t swarm them, but once it develops to that point, the ‘New World’ will inevitably be completely torn apart, and the human race on the dust will once again suffer annihilation.

"The simplest point is that 'Zhuang Sheng', as the representative of the whole year, is the most special and powerful one. Moreover, he has several supporters. We really have to completely break up and do our best. , the result is naturally that we will win the final victory, but in the process of fighting hard, every Zhi Sui will definitely draw on the human consciousness attached to him crazily, so that his own state will always be maintained at the peak.

"The vast majority of Zhi Sui are kind and compassionate. They are unwilling to overly harm the human groups that are attached to them. They do not want to pay such a high price to change the status quo. Just like 'Si Ming', they will definitely not sacrifice unless they have to. Employees of 'Pangaea'."

"Truth" glanced at Shang Jianyao and added:

"When we leave here and have a suitable body, we will no longer need to control some humans to prevent hunger.

"At that time, mankind will achieve final liberation and freedom."

Bang bang bang, Shang Jianyao’s applause is never late.

He asked sincerely:

"How will establishing a friendship with a certain personality of 'Zhuang Sheng' help the subsequent development?"

"Truth" smiled and nodded:

"I will show you the way later. If you keep walking, you will see a blood-red door at the end. Behind the door are all the personalities of 'Zhuang Sheng'.

“When you get behind the door, repeat what I just said, and you will naturally be supported by the ‘Zhuang Sheng’ personality who hopes to change the status quo.

"As you know, 'Zhuang Sheng' has split into countless independent personalities. Each personality has its own position and judgment. This is our opportunity.

"With the cooperation of some 'Zhuang Sheng' and the fact that we are the majority, the problem can be easily solved."

Shang Jianyao looked puzzled when he heard this:

"During this process, the friendship between me and Xiao Chong, no, 'Zhuang Sheng', a certain personality, didn't play any role. What's the point of the big boss working so hard to send so many old teams?"

"Truth" shook his head and retorted:

"very meaningful.

"If you haven't established a friendship with a certain personality of 'Zhuang Sheng', then you won't be able to see the blood-red door at all. Even if you see it, you can't push it open. If you push it open, you will only become 'Zhuang Sheng'. 'food.

"To put it simply, the personality of 'Zhuang Sheng' will provide you with protection."

"I understand!" Shang Jianyao said while holding his right fist and left palm, "Just like I want to visit a certain family and ask for help, if I can establish a good relationship with their children in advance and become friends in games, then I can If you can easily get the address of their home and get an excuse to come to your door, the probability of their home agreeing to help will be higher.”

"Yes." "Truth" nodded.

Shang Jianyao immediately frowned:

"But if you take other people's children to play video games, will they really not be beaten by their parents?"

"..." "Truth" said dumbly for a second, "This is just an analogy. There will be no such problem with your next actions."

"Okay." Shang Jianyao didn't insist.

He turned to other questions:

"Then why did you just say you couldn't lie to me?

"Anyway, I have become friends with a certain personality of 'Zhuang Sheng'. You can directly 'hypnotize' me, or modify my memory, so that I will completely believe you and convey your words to 'Zhuang Sheng'. them."

"Truth" smiled and said:

"We can't treat 'Zhuang Sheng' as a fool. Can't he see whether you are under control and whether what you say comes from the heart?

"It's like asking your friend to ask you for help. Whether you persuade him with reason and favor, or point a gun to his head to force him to agree, has a completely different impact on the outcome."

"Yes." Shang Jianyao imagined the scene, "For the latter, I will only find a way to rescue my friend and use the same gun to blow the threater's head off."

"Truth" was silent for a moment, and then said after a few seconds:

"It also depends on whether you have that ability."

His voice immediately became deeper:

"Go ahead and use our sincerity and friendliness to convince that part of 'Zhuang Sheng'."

Shang Jianyao remained motionless.

He still has unanswered questions:

"Is it really a good thing to let executives go to dust?"

When asked about "truth", he couldn't help but ask:

"you ask me?

"I would definitely answer yes."

"Why is it a good thing?" Shang Jianyao, who values ​​emotions, said with a serious face, "I'm not someone you can believe just because you say it. You have to convince me."

"Truth" on the sofa changed his sitting position:

"Didn't I just say it? When we leave here and have a suitable body, we will no longer need to feed on humans and can be self-sufficient. At the same time, we do not want to live in a desolate world where supplies are scarce and humanity is precarious. Here, the awakened ones will inevitably be suppressed, allowing them to truly integrate into human society and use their specialties."

"But don't humans still have to obey your orders in the end?" Shang Jianyao said with a frown.

"Truth" laughed:

“In the old world, humans once had emperors, presidents, actual controllers of financial groups and other rulers. Couldn’t they also have corresponding order, live and work in peace and contentment, and promote the development of civilization?

"Now that the emperor, president, and consuls are replaced by zhisui, you can't accept it?

"Furthermore, the senior executives are not of the same mind. They all have their own ideas. After a period of competition, a balance similar to the separation of powers and mutual constraints will inevitably be formed. No one will go too far."

"It seems to make sense." Shang Jianyao first agreed, then muttered, "But a dozen jackals said to a group of lambs, don't be afraid, we will separate powers and restrict each other to ensure your safety and freedom. Let's work together Work hard and build a wonderful new world, I always feel weird."

"Truth" slowly exhaled and said:

"It can't be compared like this. Most of them are kind and compassionate. After having corresponding bodies, they no longer desire human consciousness. Instead, they prefer the civilization created by humans. It will do no harm to you."

Shang Jianyao nodded:

"What about the other awakened ones, can you really control them?

"They will definitely climb the ladder, try to enter the 'gods' forbidden area', and become the new Zhi Sui.

"And the birth of an executive will inevitably be accompanied by huge chaos, and huge chaos will bring terrible disasters."

"Truth" laughed:

"You can rest assured on this. Zhi Sui is a god. There are only thirteen positions. People like me can only call themselves quasi Zhi Sui. We must wait until the 'new world' order has fundamentally changed. We must win enough Only with the support of Zhi Sui can we have a chance to replace the weakling "The Last Man".

"In the future, there will be no new ones, and with our rank, we are enough to suppress the awakened ones in the 'New World' and below."

Shang Jianyao breathed a sigh of relief:

"I can rest assured that."

"Truth" sitting on the sofa smiled back, pointed at the door and said:

"Now that the problem has been clarified, you can turn around and walk to the right. When you go all the way to the end, you can see the blood-red door.

"Go, go there and have a chat with 'Zhuang Sheng', and talk about how to let the haze shrouding the dust dissipate peacefully.

"I hope we don't get to the point where the executives absorb a large amount of human consciousness and fight desperately."

Shang Jianyao nodded solemnly:

"OK."

He immediately turned around and walked towards the aisle on his right.

Just as he lifted his left foot, Shang Jianyao suddenly stopped and turned around to look at "Truth" sitting on the sofa.

He stabilized his body, raised his hand and said:

"I have another question."

"Truth"'s expression did not change much, but it took several seconds before he spoke slowly:

"what is the problem?"

"I want to know which ones are reformers and which ones want to maintain the status quo." Shang Jianyao said sincerely, "If I encounter those behind me later, I will have to run away quickly without saying hello."

Without waiting for "Truth" to respond, he added a few more words:

"Can you tell us what areas each executive controls? It would be great if you could point out the costs or weaknesses!

"Don't you want me to arrive at the door of 'Zhuang Sheng' smoothly? Those who want to maintain the status quo may come to intercept me. Although you are outnumbered, each of you has his or her own special features. Maybe Someone has bypassed the defense line you built."

Shang Jianyao's request is very reasonable.

"Truth" was silent for a while and said:

"At present, those who have made it clear that they want to change the current situation and have contributed to this include: the 'Si Ming' who holds the year in December, the 'Mandala' who holds the year in September, the 'Golden Balance' in June, the 'Golden Balance' in February, "Dawn" of the month, "Yougu" of October, "double day" of July, and me."

Shang Jianyao began to count:

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... only half, where is the majority?"

Thirteen Zhi Sui plus "truth" make a total of fourteen.

"Truth" smiled and said:

"Of the seven who hope to maintain the status quo, several have secretly changed their stance this time, but I cannot say specifically which ones they are."

"Oh..." Shang Jianyao suddenly realized, "No wonder Jiang Xiaoyue didn't stop me!"

The suspected "supervisor" in May.

After a second thought, Shang Jianyao had a new question:

"Why don't you list the names in order of the month? Even if they are not listed in order, it is too irregular now, isn't it?"

"Truth" laughed and said:

"I will talk about whoever comes to mind. For example, the first thing I thought of was 'Si Ming', and the reason is that you are standing in front of me.

"Do you hope that things have progressed to this point and I still need to count the months to recall which alliances are?"

"Yes, this is too unreliable!" Shang Jianyao agreed.

"Truth" didn't want to continue this topic and introduced the leaders who maintain the status quo:

“The year-round ‘Zhuang Sheng’ is the ‘Lord of Thought’ and the ‘Natural Enemy of Will’, and exists in the form of splitting into multiple personalities...

"The 'Last Man' of March is the 'Master of Memory', and it can also cause obstacles to the human body, at the cost of weakness..."

"November's 'Broken Mirror' is the 'God of Illusions' and manages cognitive and stimulating abilities. Her price is very hidden. I only noticed one phenomenon: she has never appeared in person..." …

"August's 'Scorching Gate' dominates the muscles, and also has areas that can affect the mind and spirit in some ways. Her problem is that she is afraid of cold...

"The 'Bodhi' of the first month of the year is the 'root of consciousness'. I don't know its price..."

"April's 'Twisted Shadow' is the 'Balancer' and the 'King of War', mastering balance, judgment and other sports-related abilities. His price is the fear of twisted creatures..."

"Truth" makes no mention of the May "watchdog."

Shang Jianyao nodded repeatedly after hearing this, and finally said proactively:

"Thank you, thank you, I'm going to open that blood-red door now!"

He left the doorway with high morale and passion and walked toward the end of the road where "Truth" spoke of.

…………

In the whirlpool-shaped building, Jiang Baimian arrived at the end of the conference area.

In this regard, she felt very lucky, because after walking along the road, she saw a sign in front of her that said in two characters: Huitu and Honghe:

"General Research Area"

There is also a warning in two words below the "General Research Area":

"No one without permission is allowed to enter without authorization. There are intelligent robots in the area that will automatically identify and attack those without data."

After so many years, I don’t know if the intelligent robots here can still move... Jiang Baimian increased his vigilance and carefully entered the "general research area" through the opened partition door.

At a glance, she saw two robots standing here at the corner of the corridor. She didn't dare to neglect and rolled lightly into the nearest room.

Before Jiang Baimian could get up and just finished rolling, he saw large "petri dishes" or similar devices placed here, with gray-white human brains floating in them one after another.

The human brain... Jiang Baimian frowned slightly and looked elsewhere.

There are glass column containers filled with liquid deep in the room, and human corpses with exposed brains are floating in them.

There were sticky notes of various colors on the surrounding walls and tables, making it very messy.

The first thing Jiang Baimian noticed was the one on the side of the door.

It has a bunch of gray writing written on it:

"Frontal lobe: Responsible for thinking, calculation, and quantitative concepts, related to individual needs, emotions, and will. Some patients have symptoms such as agraphia and motor aphasia..."

"Uh..." Jiang Baimian was stunned for a moment, and some thoughts suddenly appeared in his mind and grew wildly.

She hurriedly looked at other notes, one after another:

"Occipital lobe: Responsible for processing language, movement sensation, abstract concepts and visual information, affecting the establishment of conditioned reflexes, which will cause obvious obstacles to the experimenter's learning and memory ability. Damage to this part is prone to retrograde amnesia..."

"Temporal lobe: with hippocampus, related to human emotions, mental and memory activities. Temporal lobe lesions often cause hazy consciousness, disorganized speech, emotional disturbance or memory impairment...

“Memory impairment is a common basic symptom, including impairment of recent memory, far memory or current memory, with obvious memory deficits of time and place;

"Automatism is also a common manifestation. During an attack, the activities are not controlled by consciousness, and may include destruction of objects, injury to others, impulsiveness, self-injury, nudity, panic, anger and other mental excitement manifestations;

“Memory impairment may occur when the hippocampal gyrus of the temporal lobe is damaged, and memory impairment may be accompanied by disorientation;

“The superior temporal gyrus is also the cortical center of the vestibule, so temporal lobe lesions can cause balance disorders and vertigo;

"Damage to the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus may cause sensory aphasia. The patient can hear speech sounds but cannot understand their meaning, nor can he understand his own speech. The posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus and the supramarginal gyrus of the dominant hemisphere are displaced. When the area is damaged, naming aphasia may occur;

“Homotropic upper quarter quadrant blindness may occur when the temporal lobe is damaged;

“Oculomotor nerve palsy may occur when there is large-area lesions in the temporal lobe;

"The hippocampus plays a role in memory and spatial orientation. Symptoms of damage to the hippocampus include memory loss and loss of directional awareness..."

"Parietal lobe: sensory center, including many other important areas. Damage to the parietal lobe may lead to symptoms such as abnormal cerebral cortical sensation or sensory impairment, apraxia (apraxia), spatial orientation disorder, and body atrophy. In addition, the following may occur: Performance:

"Limbagnosia: The patient denies paralysis of the affected limb and believes that the left paralyzed limb does not belong to him. It is a negative body image disorder.

"Phantom multiple limbs: Phantom multiple limbs refers to the appearance of a third phantom limb, which is a positive body image disorder.

"Algesia agnosia: Pain agnosia refers to the inability to recognize painful stimuli. In fact, pain exists. For example, there is no pain response when a cigarette burns the finger, and there is no protective reflex to discard the cigarette butt. The lesion is in the left supramarginal gyrus and involves some corners. gyrus and superior temporal gyrus, less common.

"Prosopagnosia: Prosopagnosia refers to the inability to recognize acquaintances or even one's own face in the mirror. It is often accompanied by agnosia for colors, objects, and directions. It is a rare symptom of damage to the parietal and occipital areas.

"..."

“The insula: receives information about the physiological state of the body, and then produces subjective experiences, such as using hunger to drive people to eat, such as driving people to get more cigarettes and cocaine.

“The insula receives signals from visceral and cutaneous receptors, including hot and cold sensations, itching, pain, taste, hunger, thirst, muscle pain, visceral sensations, and air sensations…

"The insula is very important in processing events that have not happened. When you decide to go out in cold weather, your body is prepared before you are exposed to the cold weather, such as increasing blood pressure to increase metabolism. This is your insula. role.

"Suppression of insula activity must be done with caution, because after people lose their desire to smoke, drink, and take drugs, they may also lose interest in sex, eating, and work..."

"Striatum: It affects muscle tone and is related to attention, mental state, and thinking. It can lead to chorea and tremor paralysis, increased muscle tension throughout the body, slow movement, delirium, mania, erratic crying and laughing, etc. The emergence of..."

“Amygdala: It is the brain tissue that produces, recognizes, and regulates emotions.

"Autism in young children also appears to be associated with an enlarged amygdala. When the amygdala is stimulated in awake animals, the animals appear confused, anxious, fearful, withdrawn, or react with anger or aggression.

“Stimulating the head end of the amygdala induces escape and fear, and stimulating the tail end of the amygdala induces defense and attack responses. It can be seen that one of the main functions of the amygdala is to generate appropriate emotions based on various external information transmitted to the neocortex of the brain.

“Humans with damaged amygdala on both sides lack the ability to recognize and respond to fearful events.

“One of the functions of the amygdala is to process facial muscles and expressions. When a person faces a face, the amygdala scans it to determine whether it is friendly or hostile to decide whether to face that person. Or escape.

"The amygdala is also the center of the autonomic nerves. It can regulate the body's respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, etc. functions. In particular, the autonomic nerve responses accompanying emotional stimulation are directly regulated by the amygdala. It is also involved in regulating the body's sexual activities and food intake. Regulates the function of the hypothalamus, thereby participating in controlling and regulating the secretion of pituitary hormones, and regulating the functions of the neuroendocrine system..."

"The claustrum: The suspected switch of consciousness. When the claustrum is stimulated by high frequency, the patient can be found to be unconscious and in a coma, which means that he is unable to respond to external commands, his eyes are straight, and his breathing slows down. Once the claustrum is exposed to high-frequency stimulation, When the high-frequency stimulation of the nucleus stops, the patient will regain consciousness and be completely unaware of what just happened..."

"White Matter: Trihemias Caused by Hemiplegia, Hemiplegia, and Hemisomatic Loss of Sensation..."

“Thalamus: It is the core organ that produces consciousness and synthesizes thalamus.

"Although the thalamus can synthesize and release the thalamus to produce consciousness, the thalamus is not the place for conscious activities, and consciousness does not exist in the thalamus. The thalamus can make the brain aware of things, which refers to "knowing" and "understanding." In clinical cases, damage or disease to the thalamus will lead to impairment or loss of consciousness.

"The thalamus is also responsible for relaying sensations and controlling movement. It is worth mentioning that among all sensory information, only olfactory information does not need to pass through the nuclei on the thalamus and is directly transmitted to the cerebral cortex..."

“Hypothalamic: Maintains body homeostasis, controls the autonomic nervous system, emotions, etc.

“In addition to the function of sample analysis and output, the hypothalamus also has the function of secreting hormones.

"The hypothalamus analyzes and produces feeling samples, activates the anterior nucleus of the thalamus to synthesize thalamus, produces feelings, and produces preferences, hobbies, preferences, desires, beauty, motivations, pleasure, fear, excitement, frustration, etc. for people and things..."

"Cerebellar: Coordinates the movement of skeletal muscles, maintains and regulates muscle tension, and maintains body balance..."

"Brainstem: There are many important nerve centers in the brainstem, including the cardiovascular motor center, respiratory center, swallowing center, as well as reflex centers such as vision, hearing and balance..." (Note 1)

After quickly browsing through the contents related to various parts of the human brain on the sticky notes, Jiang Baimian's expression under the mask changed several times in succession.

She gritted her teeth and said:

"There is no incarnation of Zhi Sui at all!

"That's not the case at all!

"The Eighth Research Institute was not studying awakening, but the mystery of the human brain!"

Speaking of this, she was suddenly shocked:

"No! If we go by our previous assumptions, there will be errors in judgment.

"I have to remind him quickly!"

Note 1: Quoted from many medical books, journals and Baidu Encyclopedia

PS: Because there will be a lot of quotations in this part, so according to everyone’s previous request, an additional chapter will be added, and the two chapters will be combined into one.