owlsbooks Chapter 104 Fusion
Chapter 104 Fusion
Chapter 104 Fusion
Xin An put away his spear, walked over, and picked up Jane from the ground.
She carefully wiped away the remaining dark red slime on the metal casing with her sleeve, her movements becoming slightly gentler.
"Since Xinwu possesses such power, and can even transmit information to you," she looked at the iron box in her arms, somewhat puzzled, "why don't you simply arrange a time with him, coordinate from within and without, and deliver a fatal blow to the enemy?"
Jane was startled awake; the cursor on the screen had stopped.
It quickly looked at the worms on the ground, trying to salvage the situation, but most of the worms were already dying, their bodies turning grayish and unable to convey any complex messages.
It seems I've wasted my precious communication window arguing!
I hope Liang Jiu won't be angry if he finds out.
"Xinwu must be very busy too—" Jane looked away, her voice weak. "He probably can't help us. After all, that's a cluster network. Although we don't know how he seized control, it must be extremely difficult to do it under the nose of the other party's god."
"It's better if we don't trouble him, haha, let's go help the city walls instead."
Xin'an stared at it and asked, "Really?"
Jane turned away guiltily, her back to her, leaving only a bald iron back of her head in the view.
"It's probably true. (▽；)"
And deep underground.
The mine tunnels were pitch black, but the interior was far from peaceful.
Within the collective sea of thought, the control that Xinwu had painstakingly seized was forcibly reclaimed. An invisible sense of oppression surged from all directions, and the massive consciousness's rejection reaction arrived belatedly.
He ran wildly through the rugged mine tunnels. Sure enough, the places he had just stopped were gradually obliterated and turned into nothingness.
"That was close!"
Xinwu stopped and hid in a secluded crevice in the rock.
However, the virus he had implanted in the mind network soon began to spread again. One after another, identical phantoms appeared deep within the mine. These shadows roamed the intricate underground, gradually encroaching on the territory that originally belonged to the worms.
The viral crystals belonging to him on the ground were gradually expanding outwards.
Having lost the direct control of the gods, Gestalt life forms, when faced with external invasion, can only rely on primal instincts to cleanse the lesions. Wherever abnormalities appear, they are surgically removed.
This is never a fundamental solution and gives Xinwu an opportunity to exploit the situation.
As Xinwu watched the phantoms spreading in the darkness, he gradually realized the fatal flaw of the Gestalt system.
One is all, and all is one.
What appears to be a perfect unity, when integrated too deeply, becomes a burden to each other.
Tens of thousands of individuals relinquish their right to independent thought in exchange for absolute loyalty and execution, but this also completely locks away the possibility of self-correction. Once the established logic is bypassed, the entire group becomes like a giant without an immune system.
It's like the relationship between gods and their followers. Once they lose the guidance of the gods, followers who can only obey and not create for themselves will eventually destroy themselves with limited resources.
But doubts also arose in his heart.
Since Gestalt has such a flaw, why doesn't the worm god connect to the network himself? As long as it is separated from the form of a life form and the unnecessary physical burdens are removed, it can be refined into something similar to a divine artifact.
Although the power of the Firewood is insufficient to accomplish this, given the unique nature of divine power, it should be a simple matter.
The mission of these worms was taken over by a supreme god.
"Because God cannot lose himself, right?"
Su Cheng across from him looked rather grim.
"When did you find out?"
"I had a suspicion from the moment you lost control in front of me." Liang Jiu looked at the god opposite him. "What exactly happened that would cause a god to lose control of his divine transformation and even have his physical body mutated? It turns out that your attempt to merge with the cluster failed."
The convergence of complex consciousnesses is, to the gods, a deadly poison.
The computational power of gods is limited, which is why different gods use different divine power assistance systems to help them.
When one exceeds the limits of their control to invoke divine power, unexpected events are bound to occur.
"That's your definition of failure," Su Cheng retorted. "In my estimation, this is actually a success. As long as the consciousness can withstand that level of impact, it can gain unimaginable power. It's just that I'm not ready to become that kind of person yet."
Liang Jiu remained noncommittal, simply pushing his cards forward to determine the course of the game.
"It's time for you to turn your card over. If you don't act now, this game will be over."
"It's too early to be happy. There will naturally be its own error correction mechanism. Mistakes will be corrected, and life will always move in a better direction."
Thousands of meters away, deep within the ruins.
The Black Wolf King opened his eyes. Within the insectoid network, several nodes simultaneously went out.
Those were the wolf packs that carried out the decapitation mission; now we've completely lost contact with them.
The wolf king remained silent for a moment, then sank his consciousness into the insect hive.
The senses of countless worms converged along the network, attempting to examine the last records left by the white wolf before its death.
However, what came into view was not the battle scene he had expected. There was no fighting or traps, and no trace of the divine messengers.
Instead, a strange and mundane life unfolds.
A young boy from the Xin tribe squatted by the campfire, his face blackened by smoke. He had been chased all over the tribe by his elder sister after secretly stuffing sacrificial offerings into his mouth. There were also many complaints lying on the animal skin blanket late at night, all grumbling about his elder sister's strict discipline, the arduous training, and the annoying divine messenger.
The Black Wolf King's pupils contracted.
These memories had nothing to do with war and shouldn't have appeared on the internet at all. As it continued to scroll through, what it found was still not intelligence, but a series of meaningless experiences filled with emotions such as joy, anger, and shame, even including trivial matters that the people involved might not even remember.
It was as if the entire insect hive was being forced to watch someone's entire life.
For the first time, the Black Wolf King was bewildered. It immediately mobilized more nodes to conduct a self-examination, and then encountered an even stranger situation. Within its body, some worms were actively sharing these memories. They went beyond the scope of receiving and executing; they began to think.
"Why is that human named Xinwu happy because he was praised?"
"What exactly is an elder sister?"
"If being protected is a blessing, why don't wolves have that?"
Why must we obey the gods?
"If leaving a host means death, then what is the meaning of living?"
Thoughts surfaced one after another online.
A jumble of thoughts surged through the network, quickly escalating from scattered noises into a dense tidal wave. The Black Wolf King felt a chill; the hive had never encountered anything like this before. Gestalt life needs no questions; the entire colony originally shared only one shared understanding, and they were supposed to be eternally loyal.
This was the price the wolf pack paid for accepting these vulnerable lives.