frightfiction Chapter 218 Your Brain, My Field
Chapter 218 Your Brain, My Field
The latter half of the night at the party was spent in an eerie calm.
After experiencing a "super storm" of brain activity, the guests all entered a state of post-coital reflection.
They no longer debated or calculated; they simply lay in twos and threes on the lawn, gazing at the starry sky with innocent, blank smiles on their faces.
In Pierre's words, their brain CPUs have all burned out and are now in a "heat dissipation standby" state.
Under the direction of Boss Liu, the resort staff carefully covered these wealthy people, whose combined net worth was enough to buy half of Changsha City, with blankets. The scene was somewhat like a large open-air nursing home.
The real "battlefield" is in the backyard.
"White Owl" and his six men were placed side by side next to the "Spirit Gathering Array" like seven wilted cucumbers.
Their eyes were open, but their pupils were unfocused, and they were muttering incoherently.
"An odd number, it's so lonely..."
"If time is a river, then when I urgently need to urinate, am I polluting the future downstream?"
Guan Shan squatted down to the side, poked "White Owl's" face with a small twig, and asked curiously, "Master, are they... stupid?"
"They're not stupid." Wang Minyu was inspecting the burnt-out microservers without looking up. "Their operating system crashed, and now their underlying code is exposed. The interfaces between the logic module and the emotion module are burned out, and data is running wild in their brains."
He stood up, walked to "White Owl," and gently touched his brow with his finger.
The new skill [Mental Resonance (Beginner)] has been activated.
In an instant, countless chaotic images and sounds flooded into Wang Minyu's mind.
Those were fragments of "White Owl's" thoughts.
There was the S organization's rigorous training and cold, data-driven commands, but more than anything, there were the remnants left behind after being bombarded by that "thought nuclear bomb."
He "saw" a man in a suit drawing a chicken with a compass, and "heard" a two-person comedy routine played in Morse code.
"It's messy enough." Wang Minyu withdrew his finger and frowned. "But it's also pure enough. Like a blackboard that has been thoroughly wiped clean. Although there are some scratches, it's just the right size to write something new on it."
"What are you writing?" Pierre walked over carrying a medical kit, inside which were the various medicines and equipment that Su Qing had just analyzed and looted from these agents.
"Write 'Labor is the most glorious.'" Wang Minyu took out a sedative from the medical kit and skillfully injected it into "White Owl." "Take them to the construction site and have them move bricks with that 'philosopher construction team.' Tell those philosophers that these are seven fellow practitioners who have 'gone mad' and need the purest physical labor to re-establish the connection between body and spirit. Let them give these seven people a good practical lesson in the 'Brick-Moving Divine Song.'"
Guan Shan and Pierre exchanged a glance, both seeing a hint of sympathy in each other's eyes.
Being used as fertilizer by Wang Minyu seems to have a worse fate than being killed outright.
In the temporary computer room on the second floor, Su Qing and Zero also made significant progress in their cracking work.
"Master, we successfully intercepted the last data packet that 'White Owl' failed to upload before the system crashed." Su Qing's expression was somewhat solemn as she handed a report to Wang Minyu. "This contains deeper secrets about the S organization."
Wang Minyu took the tablet and quickly browsed through it.
The report points out that the S organization, or the department to which "White Owl" belongs, is known within the organization as the "Data Harvesters".
Their mission is to search for and capture "logical errors" like Wang Minyu or "energy sources" like "the Matrix" on a global scale. Their ultimate goal is not as simple as creating a "digital god" to rule the world.
"They believe that our universe is itself a huge and ancient 'server'," Su Qing explained. "And all life and all physical rules are just the program code running on this server. However, the aging and collapse of this server is a concrete manifestation of system collapse."
"So, they don't want to be GMs, they want to be... system administrators?" Wang Minyu raised an eyebrow. "They want to replace the CPU and reinstall the operating system for this old, broken server, Universe?"
"You can understand it this way. They are looking for something called 'Source Code,' which is the core code from the very beginning of the universe. They believe that as long as they find 'Source Code,' they can gain the authority to modify everything, prevent the 'heat death' of the universe, and thus achieve immortality. And they believe that the clues to 'Source Code' are hidden in those 'bugs' that cannot be explained by current science. For example... emotions, the soul, and 'qi' in traditional Chinese medicine."
Wang Minyu's fingertips tapped lightly on the tablet.
The S organization's goals were far grander, and also... insane, than he had imagined.
"What is the rank of this 'White Owl' within the organization?"
"Senior programmer and project team leader." Su Qing pulled up another document. "But above him, there's an even higher-level entity. The data package repeatedly mentions a code name—'Liberal Librarian.' All the 'data harvesters' are merely serving this 'Liberal Librarian.' The 'bug' samples they collect will ultimately be aggregated there."
"Librarian..." Wang Minyu pondered the word, his eyes growing deep.
What kind of being could treat the universe as a library and all life as books?
Just then, Tu Jinshan, the resort's general manager, came running up, his face full of terror.
"Chairman Wang! Something terrible has happened!"
"Take your time, the sky isn't going to fall."
"The sky didn't collapse, but...something's growing in the ground!" Tu Jinshan pointed towards the backyard, his voice trembling. "You'd better go take a look! Those precious medicinal herbs you planted...they've all become sentient!"
Wang Minyu and Su Qing exchanged a glance and immediately headed to the backyard.
As soon as you step into the backyard, a rich, almost viscous, aroma of plants hits you.
The scene in the backyard surprised even the well-informed Wang Minyu.
The blue crystal at the center of the "Spirit Gathering Array" was emitting a soft and stable light, clearly indicating that the massive amount of spiritual energy it absorbed last night had completely "satiated" it. But the problem lay in the fact that it was "overfed."
The spiritual energy that is used as fertilizer is too "disorderly" and "advanced".
They seeped into the soil along the ditches, and then... gave the growing medicinal herbs a "magical upgrade".
What should have been a palm-sized He Shou Wu plant has now grown into a chubby baby half the height of a person, with its roots wriggling in the soil and a face on its surface that looks like it is thinking about "who am I".
A patch of mint nearby had pale blue data streams shimmering on its leaves, and if you got closer, you could hear faint electronic sounds, like whispers.
The most outrageous thing is the few "fear mushrooms" that Pierre planted. They no longer emit a fearful smell. Instead, they are arranged in a circle, with their caps rising and falling, and they are actually... singing a song that sounds like a rock version of the Heart Sutra!
The entire backyard has been transformed from an ordinary Chinese herbal medicine garden into a magical botanical garden full of cyberpunk and Cthulhu themes.
"Boss... my chives..." Pierre looked at his small experimental plot of land, on the verge of tears.
The chives there grow straight and tall, each topped with a miniature "Thinker" sculpture made of dewdrops.
"The energy absorbed by the Spirit Gathering Array is impure and of too high an energy level. These ordinary medicinal herbs can't withstand it, causing them to 'mutate'," Wang Minyu quickly analyzed the reason. Last night, he was only focused on "exploding" the herbs, but forgot to consider the capacity of his own "field" to withstand it.
It's like filling a saline-alkali land with a whole truckload of top-grade caviar as fertilizer. The result is that the land doesn't improve; instead, it becomes so bloated that it suffers from indigestion and starts growing monsters.
"Master, this energy pollution is spreading." Su Qing turned on the detector, and the readings on it kept fluctuating. "If it is not controlled, within three days at most, the entire resort will become a 'garden of thoughts'."
Wang Minyu looked at the he shou wu (Polygonum multiflorum) that seemed to be contemplating life and fell into deep thought.
This gardener seems to have inadvertently turned his vegetable garden into a "high-dimensional biological laboratory".
Trouble.
He needs to find a way to give these "overfed" plants a "mental cleansing" or "intestinal cleansing."