Chapter 464: A World Based on Numbers (Second Update)

"This virtual world was created by that Matrix," Gu Tingyun analyzed. "As enforcers, these individuals have been endowed with the ability to manipulate various rules, making them nigh invincible."

"Then how do we break the deadlock?"

"This strength is just too absurd to counter..." Song Qingfeng said, staring intently at the scene before him.

At that moment, Neo had already been caught by Smith, two bullets striking his vitals!

Then, a succession of gunshots.

In reality, the electrocardiogram had stopped.

This practically signified that the man was dead, for in the virtual world, Neo’s consciousness was gradually fading away.

Once his consciousness was completely extinguished, this so-called Savior would cease to exist entirely.

Evidently, the Savior was not omnipotent, or else the existence that once led them would not have perished either.

Yet perhaps, on occasion, miracles do happen in this world.

Even more so for a man who inherently possessed talents far beyond ordinary people.

"Ah—!" A sharp scream suddenly erupted from the crowd of onlookers.

"He's not dead yet!" Yue Yan cried out in pleasant surprise, pointing straight ahead.

"What the hell?!" Song Qingfeng’s eyes widened.

"Resurrected from the dead?!" Nalan Hongwu also stared fixedly at the scene.

"This kid has clearly penetrated the laws of this world," a certain great demon floated lazily in midair. "What's so special about rising from the dead?"

Tang Yu remarked, "A set of virtualized laws, nothing to be surprised about, right?"

"Virtualized laws?" Gu Tingyun stroked his beard, his gaze profound as he pointed ahead. "This is a complete and real world!"

Even if it was virtual.

At this moment, three SWAT officers noticed Neo’s revival, turned back, and fired several shots in rapid succession.

But this time, it was not a matter of dodging the bullets; instead—all the bullets hung suspended right in front of him, unlike a time-stop, because the front bullets had stopped while the ones behind continued forward.

Nor was there any barrier of power.

The sensation was as if the original dynamic scenery of this entire area had, in that single instant, turned into a static painting.

This bizarre phenomenon manifested itself vividly before everyone’s eyes.

In the next instant, the camera shifted to Neo’s perspective.

Everyone saw that everything before them had transformed into cascading streams of flowing data.

Whether it was the ceiling, the ground, the walls, or—the three SWAT officers.

Ruan Ning: "Is this the true essence of this virtual world?!"

Su Tianji exclaimed, "This virtual world is composed entirely of these numbers?!"

A group of cultivators from Half-City who had banded together to watch the show also arrived at this realization, their faces filled with horror: "It's simply unimaginable!"

As everyone knew, the most fundamental composition of the real world was the dual Qi of Yin and Yang.

But they had never considered that numbers could compose a world?!

And such a realistic one at that?!

Next, they witnessed Neo blocking the opponent’s attacks as easily as drinking water or eating food, shifting from fighting casually with two hands to fighting blindly with a single hand, his strength existing on an entirely different level.

At this point, the SWAT officers could no longer be called invincible.

Lan Mo burst into hearty laughter: "I get it! They use electricity to display and constitute numbers, use numbers to form graphics and text, planar graphics to form spatial structures, and then use these to build a complete world, and a world like this..."

As a member of the Wuwei Daoist Alliance, he had clearly come into contact with these electronic "artifacts" extensively and was already familiar with them.

He had even attempted to research these things before.

"It is entirely fictional, which is why only consciousness can enter it."

"To think what others cannot think, to imagine what others cannot imagine," Gu Tingyun marveled. "It is simply ghostly and divine in its unfathomability!"

Tang Yu shook his head: "Pity, what is fictional will always remain fictional."

Li Haoran recalled, "It seems the intelligence of the Red Queen AI was also constructed from these numbers."

"Could it be... that the wisdom of these machines is also composed of these numbers?"

Everyone present: "!!??"

They glared over with expressions that screamed, "My math is terrible, don't you dare lie to me!"

One must know that these artifacts possessing spiritual intelligence, aside from a few terrifying spiritual treasures that had survived countless ages, mostly possessed the wisdom of mere children.

You could compose such wisdom using nothing but numbers?!

At this juncture, the entirety of The Matrix was stepping into its finale, the Savior had finally reclaimed his talent, and mere SWAT officers were, naturally...

Completely no match for him.

And the SWAT’s immortality became a complete joke after Neo rewrote the program, causing Smith to explode into a pile of data fragments.

The other two SWAT officers fled instantly.

"Hahaha! Badass!"

"This protagonist is invincible!"

"666, too cool!"

"Neo can definitely save the world, too strong!"

Song Qingfeng: "I need to learn this bullet-dodging technique, I'll dodge like this next time."

Lin Shao: "...Then you might get blasted to pieces, Young Master Song."

...

Even though the movie had finished playing, everyone remained immersed in this magical world.

It was too unbelievable that such humans and such a world could exist.

It was hard to imagine that the story would develop in this manner.

Yet what left the deepest impression on them was still Neo waking up from the illusory world, and that final battle.

For the younger generation of cultivators and warriors, the final scene, stopping all the bullets before him and fighting the SWAT officer with a single hand—those displays of inconceivable ability and speed were simply cool to the point of exploding.

While for these grandmasters of cultivation, martial arts, and artifact forging, watching the entire movie also brought profound reflection.

Perhaps... it was not merely reflection.

Created worlds were not something they had never seen; in fact, some ancient ruins and mystic realms were essentially similar minor worlds.

But in the movie, it was clearly a world with an extremely complete architecture, containing everything reality ought to have.

And the foundation for creating this world was actually strings of numbers.

This was truly a bit too unbelievable.

So much so that the moment it concluded, the three shops erupted into lively chatter almost simultaneously.

Given the modesty of their current achievements, even for the Wuwei Daoist Alliance, any attempt to parse technology of such an order...

Could yield nothing more than a rudimentary reference.

As for the artificial intelligence and the Matrix within, it remained a phantom beyond their reach.

They could do little but watch; perhaps, if they ever deciphered the Red Queen of Resident Evil, a glimmer of opportunity might arise.

Yet the terror of artificial intelligence was something they had now come to intimately comprehend.

For the cultivators and martial grandmasters, however, the most profound revelation lay in the laws of the universe—the very essence of what a "law" truly was had finally crystallized in their minds, for the film had utilized a simulated world to lay it all bare, even unveiling the fundamental architecture of reality before their eyes.

This would bestow immeasurable benefit upon their future ascension, whether they had yet to breach this threshold or were already standing upon its precipice.

The secrets of how minor worlds were fashioned within those mystical realms and ancient ruins were truths that should have been far beyond their station, but now, it seemed, they might just grasp a fleeting thread.