Chapter 369: Memetic Virus

Chapter 369: The Meme Virus

“He guessed you would ask this question.”

Lin Yu looked at Ji Xing and answered:

“What Linxi can give you is a complete industrial system.”

“It can let you skip the construction phase and possess everything that Shancity has now.”

“It can let you live here the kind of life that could only be enjoyed before the great cataclysm—given Shancity’s current scale, it can comfortably accommodate at least ten thousand people.”

“You will no longer have to worry about monster threats, nor fret over development or cycles.”

“Shancity will become a true ‘Holy City’, a paradise coveted by all.”

“The above reflects only Linxi’s own intentions; I am not involved.”

Lin Yu spread his hands, while opposite Ji Xing burst into laughter.

She shook her head and said:

“If even you are eager to deny this, may I ask—do you think we would accept it?”

“That’s up to me.”

Lin Yu sank into his chair and then said:

“I was merely a tool to convey its conditions—honestly, it keeps trying to persuade me, wanting me to become its spokesperson.”

“But how shall I put it?”

“After all, it is just a machine.”

“It can never grasp the genuine needs of a human being.”

“Indeed, this virtual city can simulate almost everything.”

“Every pleasure and enjoyment you can imagine—or cannot imagine—I have experienced in a fleeting moment.”

“But truth be told, it has the wrong target.”

“I grew up in pain, and only pain makes me feel existence, the most authentic experience.”

“Perhaps it should look for Xu He—do you remember him? The overseer lost in the illusion of brain‑machine immersion.”

“I remember.”

Ji Xing nodded and replied:

“In fact, my being here is thanks to his efforts.”

“That’s quite something.”

Lin Yu let out a long sigh.

After a brief silence, he continued:

“So you cannot truly reach a peace accord with Shancity or Linxi, can you?”

“You have never truly intended to cease action; this so‑called negotiation is merely a stalling tactic, buying time for your deployment, isn’t it?”

“When your forces in Shancity become sufficient, you will still breach its underground and utterly destroy this city that never truly existed, right?”

“That’s not necessarily so.”

Ji Xing shook her head and answered:

“Of course, we have fundamental conflicts of interest with Shancity and Lingxi.”

“But that does not mean we cannot coexist at all.”

“According to the information the commander relayed to me, Lingxi is indeed seeking a path for humanity’s continuation.”

“It may have erred along the way, yet until that road reaches its end, no one can wholly dismiss it.”

“Our inability to accept talks can be summed up in a single sentence.”

“It cannot furnish strong evidence to prove it is right, nor can we produce strong evidence to prove we are wrong.”

“Do you understand what I mean?”

“Completely.”

Lin Yu spread his hands and said:

“Isn’t this exactly the same as the clash between the Sacred Blood Hall and the Mechanical God Cult?”

“Only your dispute is fiercer and more urgent than theirs.”

“So, in truth, we have little left to discuss.”

“Come, let me show you this city.”

Saying so, Lin Yu rose to his feet.

Ji Xing followed close behind, pushing open the room’s door and stepping out; the two walked along Shancity’s streets, passing empty buildings, as Ji Xing shook her head and said:

“If merely living in a city like this, what’s the difference between being alive and being dead?”

“No, it’s still different.”

Lin Yu shook his head and replied:

“What you see now is but a tiny fragment of the city.”

“Because computational power is limited, Linxi cannot risk letting you enter the true core of the city.”

“Moreover, many things that can be simulated with compute power cannot be realized here.”

“Thus, what you see is only a shrunken version of Shancity.”

“Yet he believes that even this alone is enough to persuade you.”

As he spoke, Lin Yu pushed the door and entered a shop by the street.

He sat at a table inside, turned to the equally seated Ji Xing and asked:

“What would you like to eat?”

“Shall I recommend something?”

“Honestly, since this meeting can’t possibly yield any substantive progress, let’s treat it as an experience.”

“A fine suggestion.”

Ji Xing nodded and then asked:

“Do they have boiled water cabbage here?”

“Do you know what boiled water cabbage is?”

Lin Yu asked in surprise:

“Where did you hear of it?”

“In the documentary about Base 011—don’t underestimate the Huaxia army. Whatever you can see here, I could also see at Base 011.”

“It’s just that, for now, we haven’t had the chance to experience it firsthand.”

“Indeed.”

Lin Yu nodded in agreement, then gave a gentle wave.

A waiter emerged from an unseen corner, his tone warm as he inquired about their preferences, taking a full twenty minutes to place their order.

Yet in the next five minutes, every dish arrived in perfect unison.

Each plate was exquisitely crafted, flawless in both aroma and flavor.

For Ji Xing, it was a rare and precious experience.

She felt as if she were dreaming a hyper‑real dream—aware it was a dream, yet overwhelmed by an indescribable sense of immersion.

“So Lingxi devoted all its computing power to this single meal?”

“No.”

Lin Yu set his chopsticks down and replied:

“To be precise, it’s the relatively real city and this absolutely real dinner.”

“Reasonable.”

Ji Xing shook her head helplessly.

At that moment, Lin Yu suddenly spoke:

“We ought to discuss the real business now.”

“For instance, the truth you seek about the Ring.”

“Very well.”

Ji Xing set her chopsticks aside, showing no lingering longing for the dishes she hadn’t yet tasted.

Lin Yu drew a deep breath and began slowly.

His speech was unhurried, as if narrating while recalling.

From the origin of the Ring, to the pool’s tremor, to the still “water sphere,” to the shattering of the entire pool,

Then came the single opportunity, and the catastrophic consequences of the Ring’s failed activation in the previous experiment.

Only then did Ji Xing finally understand how this seemingly colossal plan had collapsed.

As Lin Yu had said, each generation is granted only one chance to fire the Ring.

After their last activation, they had thrust themselves, without reservation, into the aftershocks of a great cataclysm.

It was even possible that they had amplified the damage of those aftershocks.

No one survived that experiment; they witnessed their own end and the world’s end.

Time slipped by second by second.

Ji Xing suddenly asked:

“How long has it been since I entered here?”

“Three hours.”

Lin Yu glanced at the distant clock tower and said:

“Rest assured, you can leave at any moment.” “Do you need me to send a signal?”

“No need.”

Ji Xing shook her head.

“Tell me more about the specifics of the equipment.”

“Of course, and also Lingxi’s Nüwa Project.”

At that moment, the ground of the mountain city.

Ji Xing remained in a deep sleep—though it was not truly sleep, but a coma‑like state bordering on slumber.

Through the cloned module linked to her neural interface, every output signal of the brain‑machine plug‑in was fully captured and fed back to Fuxi’s computational core.

It could not reconstruct these data into real images, so the outside world could not know what she was doing or discussing in that virtual city.

Yet, via the dense data stream, it had begun parsing the underlying program architecture of the city.

“The main program of this virtual city is peculiarly designed.”

Fuxi’s voice resonated in the command chamber.

“It strives to create the most realistic city, yet it lacks many essential components.”

“Such as weather, lighting, environment.”

“All those data are imported from outside.”

“Lingxi—or rather the former inhabitants of the virtual city—seem to cling deeply to the external world, resorting to this method to approximate realism as far as possible.”

“It is human nature, an unstoppable emotion.”

As Fuxi’s words faded, Chen Jian nodded thoughtfully.

Watching the lamp‑like sensor device standing not far from him, he finally grasped its purpose.

After a brief pause of contemplation, he asked:

“So we could use these environmental monitors as a conduit for information injection?”

“Theoretically yes, but the practical difficulty is considerable.”

Fuxi’s voice sounded again.

“If we inject through a single device, Lingxi will flag it as anomalous data and intercept it swiftly.”

“But invoking every device’s interface would entail an overwhelming amount of engineering.”

“Moreover, its stability would be abysmal.”

“Understood.”

Chen Jian said little more, then shifted his tone and asked:

“How is Ji Xing’s side progressing?”

“Smoothly.”

Fuxi replied:

“The two sides are communicating quite fluently; data transmission is currently very stable.”

“We still have ample time and can broaden the scope of analysis.”

Chen Jian glanced at his watch.

At this point, three and a half hours had elapsed since Ji Xing entered the virtual city.

According to the plan, she is to exit within six hours.

Only two and a half hours remain, and Fuxi has yet to begin preparing the injection program.

Viewed purely from a human perspective, this time is far from sufficient.

But Fuxi's line of thought inevitably still differs from that of humans.

From its own perspective, once a sufficiently reliable and conspicuous flaw is found, and the architecture is parsed accurately, crafting the corresponding program is a matter of less than a second.

And injecting the program takes no more than a minute.

Thus, it has ample patience to await the clone module's return of more data, to obtain as detailed an analysis as possible, aiming for a one‑stroke kill.

Given this situation, Chen Jian cannot possibly press Fuxi.

He can only wait with the greatest patience.

Sitting beside Ji Xing, Chen Jian constantly monitors her physical condition.

He knows well that this is a highly perilous undertaking.

Should the operation fail, the probability of Ji Xing's death is even higher than that of confronting a level‑one monster in battle.

She perhaps knows this as well?

Yet she does not hesitate.

The team in his hands has truly been forged.

Especially the few who joined the Huaxia army earliest; each has become a self‑sufficient pillar.

He hopes they can go a little farther.

At the very least, they must not fall before dawn.

Chen Jian let out a long sigh.

At that moment, Fuxi's voice sounded again at his ear.

“Commander, there’s new progress.”

Instinctively, Chen Jian sat upright and then spoke:

“Speak plainly.”

“Understood.”

Fuxi continued:

“From the transmitted data analysis, I assess that Lingxi, when simulating personality, employs a bionic algorithm based on human neural networks, rather than the conventional deep‑learning neural network algorithm.”

“This algorithm can more closely approximate human thought logic, preserving as much as possible the peculiarities of human emotion and subconscious.”

“Yet, this very algorithm brings greater randomness and more blind spots beyond our monitoring.”

“Naturally, such blind spots are difficult to reach.”

“However, we do possess certain methods to inject the information we need within those blind zones.”

“But I still require further parsing.”

“Understood.”

Chen Jian nodded slowly.

Fuxi’s words gave him a strangely familiar feeling.

Yet he could not articulate exactly where that familiarity lay.

Subconscious? Blind spots?

Isn’t this kind of information injection akin to hypnosis?

With that thought, he asked:

“Is it hypnosis?”

“Close to hypnosis.”

Fuxi replied:

“But hypnosis must bypass the mind’s own defensive mechanisms, whereas we must circumvent real‑time monitoring from a third party.”

“That makes it far more difficult; we cannot use plaintext injection, nor conspicuous ciphertext injection.”

“We need to meticulously weave a set of commands that are hard to detect.”

“We will use those commands to coax Lin Yu himself to generate a virus within the virtual world.”

“Coax him to generate a virus himself??”

Chen Jian stared, dumbfounded.

“Can that really be done? I mean, he has no programming ability at all.”

“That is irrelevant.”

Fuxi’s voice carried a pride indistinguishable from that of a living person.

“We don’t need a complex virus.”

“All we require is a simple loop that iterates infinitely.”

“Because at his core, he is still just code.”

“It will consume massive computing power, and before Lingxi detects it, this mutated ‘oscillation virus’ will annihilate it completely.”

Chen Jian let out another long breath.

He spoke slowly:

“I understand.”

“What you’re injecting isn’t a virus.”

“It’s merely a meme!”

(End of chapter)