Chapter 589: Virtual Deity

Chapter 589: The Virtual Deity

“Those goddamn beasts…”

On the bridge of the Steel Heart.

Peering through the observation equipment at the pyramid of human skulls and the bloodstained walls a dozen kilometers away, the captain of the Steel Heart couldn’t help but mutter a curse under his breath.

Glancing at the captain standing beside him, Chu Guang turned his gaze back to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bridge and spoke slowly.

“If they realize this provocation works, they’ll soon build a second and third pyramid of skulls, and might even slaughter everyone the moment they lose.”

“These creatures are remarkably eager when it comes to killing. There’s no point in wasting ammunition on meaningless targets.”

From a practical standpoint, delivering indirect fire into a densely concrete urban area yields very limited returns.

Not to mention artillery like howitzers that rely on fragmentation for damage—even strategic nuclear weapons with yields of tens of thousands of tons aren’t as dramatic in concrete shelters as they appear in films.

There are documented cases where people survived inside concrete buildings just five or six hundred meters from the epicenter of an atomic blast, and as long as they didn’t foolishly run out to take a look, they suffered no aftereffects.

As for mutants, there’s even less to say.

Such creatures can only be killed directly by an excess of neutron radiation; relying on the indirect effects of cancer to finish them off is unrealistic.

“…I understand.” The captain nodded solemnly.

At Chu Guang’s signal, he turned to his adjutant and issued the order.

“Drop the anchor chain!”

The adjutant saluted.

“Yes, sir!”

A massive steel anchor chain was dropped from the airship’s belly, crashing heavily into the ground and kicking up clouds of dust.

Then the elevator was lowered.

As the vanguard and construction equipment were gradually deployed to the surface, the decks above and below buzzed with activity.

After giving the captain a few brief instructions, Chu Guang turned and headed to the detention room, where he looked at Yur, who was strapped into a wheelchair.

On his head was a pair of virtual reality glasses, connected to the airship’s observation equipment, currently focused on that pyramid of skulls.

“Is this the paradise you were heading to?” Chu Guang asked, looking at him.

Yur said nothing, sitting there quietly as if still trapped in a state of sleepwalking.

But Chu Guang knew the man had woken up before dawn, merely pretending to be insane.

Chu Guang continued, staring at him.

“Where is the Sanctum?”

After a long silence.

Yur suddenly let out a soft laugh, as if mocking himself and everyone else.

“Don’t you already know?”

“I know the Sanctum is virtual. I’m asking where its server is.” After a pause, Chu Guang added, “Or to put it another way, how do we destroy it?”

Yur responded with silence, signaling his refusal to cooperate.

Chu Guang didn’t mind and continued in a very soft voice.

“The bionic chip implanted in your brain has locked away part of your memories. Our experts on the airship find it tricky, but you know as well as I do that cracking it is only a matter of time.”

“Is that a bluff?”

“No,” Chu Guang said calmly. “It suggested I send your brain to the Ideal City for thorough study. But if that happens, you’ll lose any chance at redemption.”

“Redemption… haha.”

Yur suddenly burst out laughing, turning his VR-glasses-covered face toward Chu Guang and raising his voice.

“Why should I seek redemption? What crime have I committed? Compared to those killed by the wasteland, compared to those turned into livestock or beasts by the wasteland, the few we sacrificed are utterly insignificant. Not to mention those people were already living like animals… Even if we did nothing, they’d rot on their own.”

“If you truly knew them, you’d understand they’re hopelessly stupid. They’d put chains around their own necks and curse anyone trying to help them. They want to be animals—I think they’re more adapted to this wasteland than anyone, and they want it to last forever. So why not make their lives a little meaningful? At least dying by our hands serves as fuel to end the wasteland.”

Yur’s hoarse laughter grew increasingly manic.

As if he had gone mad.

Standing behind Chu Guang, Lü Bei stared at this twisted, insolent man, his mouth twitching involuntarily.

Chu Guang, however, remained expressionless, watching Yur.

Only when Yur’s voice went hoarse and he could laugh no more did Chu Guang speak slowly.

“Then who decides what that meaning is?”

Yur continued in a raspy voice.

“No one needs to define it. The people of the future, living in the new world, will give an objective judgment on what we’ve done. Even if they curse us, it doesn’t matter. I never did this for honor or fame.”

Chu Guang looked at him with pity.

“What a shame.”

“…” Yur said nothing, wearing an expression that said, “Say whatever you want.”

Chu Guang continued, looking at him.

“Even if you reach a new world, your wasteland won’t end. This land will become a wasteland of another kind. And your sacrifice will mean nothing—it’s been nothing but your own self-gratification from start to finish.”

Yur finally couldn’t help retorting.

“How do you know what future generations will think?”

“It’s not about whether I know. It’s about why you’re so sure.” Chu Guang stared at him, speaking each word deliberately. “You haven’t spent a single second living in the paradise you fantasize about, yet you expect to solve earthly problems with heavenly methods.”

“When someone is hungry, we give them enough food to survive, then teach them how to get more, how to live with dignity—not suggest they swap for a bionic stomach that can digest mud and a mouth that can chew rocks.”

Yur sneered coldly.

“You oversimplify things. If not going hungry could end the wasteland, it would never have existed in the first place. This isn’t about hunger—”

“But at least hunger is a concrete problem. Solve that first, then we can move to the next,” Chu Guang said flatly, cutting him off without mercy. “Expecting all concrete problems to have a single universal solution—that by becoming a new human, you can solve everything once and for all—and then what?”

Yur was taken aback, then slowly blurted out.

“…Then what?”

“Yes, then what? How do you plan to solve the problems of new humans? Design an even more perfect life form and drag everyone through another ‘evolution’? Or jump from one utopia to another?”

Looking at the silent Yur, Chu Guang continued.

“Unfortunately, that’s the method you’re leaving for future generations. If you fail, it’s one thing. But if, by a one-in-ten-thousand chance, you happen to succeed, that would be the greatest disaster.”

“Any cost becomes a necessary sacrifice. They’ll repeat today’s tragedy over and over, drowning others in impossible dreams. So tell me—am I oversimplifying things, or are you?”

Turning his gaze away from that bewildered face, Chu Guang knew Yur had never considered any of this. He spoke coldly.

“Maybe one day we’ll evolve into a new species. But that will only happen because we happen to reach that stage—not for the sake of evolution itself, or for solving problems for the sake of solving them.”

“I gave you a chance at redemption. But now it seems I’ve wasted my time.”

“You’d better find somewhere else to confess your sins.”

Having said this, Chu Guang turned and walked toward the door.

Yuer stared blankly in the direction of the fading footsteps, suddenly feeling a pang of unease, and spoke up.

“Wait.”

Chu Guang, already at the threshold, paused and looked back at him.

“What is it?”

Yuer was silent for a moment, then slowly began to speak.

“The Sanctum is not ‘above ground,’ nor is it in some server. It is a server array composed of countless bionic chips, connected into a vast network with the aid of one or more nodes… The Sanctum is that network.”

Lü Bei’s face showed a flicker of surprise.

Surprise, on one hand, at the Sanctum built from countless bionic chips, and on the other, at this stubborn, unyielding man actually confessing.

He wasn’t the only one taken aback; in truth, even Yuer himself wasn’t sure if what he was doing was right.

That memory extractor had not only brutally yanked out his memories but also dredged up many trivial things he had long forgotten.

He was a researcher, who should have known better than anyone that bold hypotheses and careful verification were the most basic methodologies.

Yet ironically, though he knew this, he had failed to act on it, instead pinning his hopes on replacing humanity with divinity.

Perhaps, as the administrator before him had said,

The end of this dream was not a paradise, but a hell of another kind…

As he spoke, Yuer slowly turned his wrist, bound to the armrest, raised his bent index finger, and pointed at his own head.

“For instance, in here… there’s one. But the signal’s not great here, so it can’t connect to the network.”

The Steel Heart itself was a big iron shell; unless one stood on the deck, information exchange with the outside world could only happen through dedicated data ports.

That channel was monitored by Xiao Qi, so Luo Qian naturally wouldn’t leave such an obvious trail and willingly walk into a trap.

That was also why Eclipse could unexpectedly use Zhao Tiangan’s corpse to reactivate that deactivated chip and connect to the Sanctum.

Because the moment Zhao Tiangan died, Luo Qian lost his connection to that chip—bionic chips require the life activities of a human body to provide energy.

If they had used Yuer’s chip, they probably couldn’t have entered the Sanctum at all, since his capture was essentially a known fact.

Chu Guang frowned slightly.

“Distributed computing?”

Yuer let out a self-deprecating laugh.

“Not exactly, but you can think of it that way… Each chip is a cell that constitutes ‘Luo Qian’ and that ‘Sanctum.’ All cells share information within the network. When one chip goes offline, the data stored in that chip exists as an independent personality. For example, right now in my head, there’s a Luo Qian living.”

Chu Guang fell into thought.

“I see.”

This was quite similar to Xiao Qi.

Sometimes, when entering areas without a signal, Xiao Qi could still communicate with him through VMs or other electronic devices, but in truth, the one communicating with him wasn’t the Xiao Qi in the shelter, but a sub-individual split from Xiao Qi at a time point A.

For ease of understanding, let’s call the original A and the sub-individual A1.

A1 possessed all cached data up to time point A and the combined computing power of all portable terminals.

So even though A1 didn’t have all of A’s data or computing power, it could still communicate normally with him—only, due to the communication breakdown, data between A1 and A wasn’t shared.

But when the signal was restored, data between A1 and A would begin to flow again, merging through information exchange.

Though it might seem strange from a human perspective, for a digital lifeform, it was the most ordinary thing.

After all, information was everything to a digital life.

That was also why Xiao Qi was always so clingy, pestering Chu Guang to take her along every time he went on a long trip.

Luo Qian was probably a similar existence.

Each chip held a fragment of the “Sanctum”; under normal communication, all chips together formed the entire server array.

The loss of one chip was trivial to him—after all, even with just one chip and one brain, he could still exist.

It was just that, limited by computing power, doing anything would be inconvenient.

Unlike Chu Guang, who was deep in thought, Lü Bei’s expression gradually changed, and he couldn’t help asking.

“Countless… just how many?”

If that Luo Qian had buried a thousand, even ten thousand chips in Jinhe City, wouldn’t it be endless?

They couldn’t just chop off everyone’s heads like the mutants, could they?

Even to eradicate the Torch Church, that method was too extreme.

Giving everyone a brain CT scan was even less realistic.

Bionic chip implantation surgeries were usually done covertly, using special carbon-based materials that ordinary MRI couldn’t detect, let alone a makeshift field lab.

To catch every single one without exception, they’d at least need the scanning bed from the shelter. Or they’d have to use a memory extractor to search frame by frame through visible memories for traces of the bionic chip’s activity.

Yuer shook his head.

“No one knows the exact number except the Bishop himself… Not even the Saint probably knows.”

After a pause, he continued.

“But it shouldn’t be that everyone gets one—after all, I heard those things are made by black boxes, and black boxes have a limited lifespan. For instance… peripheral apostles like Zhang Zhengyang didn’t have chips implanted; they needed us to communicate with Luo Qian.”

“That makes sense,” Chu Guang nodded.

He remembered He Ya saying that most of Shelter 117’s black boxes produced bionic organs.

And the first black box he recovered from Shelter 117 was a neural connection unit capable of making brain-computer interfaces.

Later, the Torch Church had tried to reclaim that black box from him, along with the former shelter director’s log, but failed.

After a moment of contemplation, Chu Guang continued unhurriedly.

“If I were him, I’d probably implant one in every plantation owner and heir, thus indirectly controlling all plantation-style settlements. Then I’d pick a few individuals easy to manage to mix in, as servers for contributing computing power and backup, and as fallbacks just in case.”

Coincidentally, most settlements in Jinhe City were of this type; even Hope Town, with its relatively dispersed power, was a rare exception.

And not just Jinhe City—the entire Jinchuan Province was like this.

The hounds raised by the nobles of Boulder City had almost all exploitable markets here carved out and reshaped into their desired form.

Thus, when executing his plan, Luo Qian only needed to use a small portion of his pieces; most could remain safely hidden in the shadows.

Whether it was giving everyone a thorough check or killing everyone here, the workload was insurmountable.

No wonder he had abandoned Zhao Tiangan as a piece without hesitation…

He had long laid an invisible, intangible net, enveloping over ninety percent of Jinhe City’s survivors.

Looking at Chu Guang lost in thought, Yuer smiled faintly.

“Very Torch-like, isn’t it? The Saint is just a nominal leader, a spiritual totem. Those who make the plans are every pioneer who enters the Sanctum.”

“And in each diocese, the pioneer acts as the Saint exercising divine authority, the totem the believers look up to. The ones actually executing the plans are every apostle connected to the Sanctum and the countless guided believers.”

Chu Guang suddenly thought of something and spoke.

"Are you now Yur, or Luo Qian?"

Yur was silent for a long time.

This was a difficult question to answer.

If he could shift all the blame onto some devil dwelling in his heart, perhaps it might indeed lighten his guilt.

But was that really the case?

After a long while, he smiled bitterly and shook his head.

"I don't know."

"Maybe... both."

...

The door of the solitary cell closed again.

Following behind Chu Guang, Lü Bei quickened his pace to walk beside him and asked in a low voice.

"How do we deal with that man?"

Chu Guang said casually.

"That depends on him. Honestly, rather than handing him over to the corporation for research, I'd prefer to keep this pawn by my side."

Of course, if the council was interested in the secrets on that guy, he wouldn't mind bringing in the old friends from the East Coast either.

After all, with such a distance, the corporation was unlikely to come here to investigate on their own; in the end, they'd have to rely on the Alliance, the "local snake."

Lü Bei looked at Chu Guang with confusion and asked.

"What's the point of doing this?"

To be honest, he didn't quite understand why they wasted so many words on that prisoner. He had ten thousand ways to make that guy behave.

He didn't even need the corporation's technology.

Chu Guang could probably guess what the young man was thinking and said with a smile.

"Of course there is. You must have heard it—every bionic chip is a sanctuary, each housing a Luo Qian. The one on that guy is naturally the same, and we've already negotiated with him for half an hour."

Glancing at the time on his VM, he continued.

"This is actually a good start. Didn't you notice? That guy has begun to doubt whether the extreme ideal he insists on is right... And just as he said, the two personalities, Yur and Luo Qian, coexist within him."

"His decision is actually a joint decision by both."

"It's just that his subconscious can't distinguish between them."

The memory extractor had retrieved all of Yur's memories, but still hadn't found the specific location of the sanctuary or the way to destroy it.

That could only mean that memory wasn't in his brain at all, but cached on the bionic chip inside his head.

Now Yur had voluntarily handed it over. Clearly, this wasn't just his decision alone, but also the decision of one of Luo Qian's avatars.

Otherwise, even if he wanted to confess, he simply couldn't.

When faced with unanswerable questions, a crack had appeared in the psychological defenses of the two souls, so he thought this was a good start.

After hearing Chu Guang's explanation, Lü Bei's eyes suddenly lit up.

"I see! As long as we make the chip in his head exchange data with the Luo Qian outside, we can transmit that thought to... the sanctuary where Luo Qian resides?"

It was like hiding a bomb in a package and sending it to that Luo Qian!

This was the only metaphor he could think of, but the more he thought about it, the more feasible it seemed, and his eyes grew even brighter.

No wonder he was the Administrator!

Lü Bei looked at Chu Guang with even more admiration.

But Chu Guang himself, after hearing the young man's interpretation, couldn't help but laugh.

"It's not as simple as you say. If talking could solve the problem, there would be no need to bring the Steel Heart here."

Lü Bei was taken aback.

"Huh, it won't work?"

Chu Guang shook his head.

"Ultimately, data cached on one terminal cannot overwrite the data of the entire network."

It was like how even if Little Qi's cached data on a terminal was separated from the mainframe for a while, it wouldn't overwrite the data on the mainframe.

Luo Qian didn't have a fixed mainframe to store data; instead, he chose to disperse all his selves across various bionic chips implanted in brains.

The advantage of this was that the mainframe's location couldn't be found and destroyed, but it also had a fatal flaw.

When the environment in which most of his "avatars" lived underwent a fundamental change, and they couldn't be brainwashed through mental interference devices, this vast network formed by countless nodes could easily be overturned from the ground up.

After all, bionic chips needed to be attached to human brains to exist. Without mental interference devices, the two actually influenced each other.

At least the fuzzy computing part that constituted personality had to be computed on the human brain... Chu Guang had learned all this from Yin Fang.

Lü Bei looked at Chu Guang with a blank expression, scratching the back of his head in shame.

"Sorry, sir... I didn't quite get it. Maybe you could just tell me what to do."

Chu Guang smiled and said.

"Simply put, that bastard hiding in the sanctuary thinks this wasteland is beyond saving, that the world must be destroyed once before it can be reborn."

"Since they hold this foolish notion, we'll show them what we're doing!"

Didn't that guy think the world was beyond saving?

Then let him see how the Alliance does things!

From mutants to slave owners, he would eliminate these troubles one by one.

And by then, he'd like to see how that guy could still shamelessly say the words "beyond saving."

First, the first thing...

Chu Guang thought for two seconds and then spoke.

"Hmm, there's trouble at Pinecone Farm. Contact the Army Command for me and have them immediately dispatch a unit there."

If Zhao Tiangan and the Apostle weren't the only chip holders, it meant that the Luo Qian outside still had countless eyes left in Pinecone Farm.

With the mental interference device turned off, the communication blockade there had been lifted.

They might even find a way to send mutants directly inside.

After all, that guy himself said there was a passage leading outside in the church's basement, but he didn't say there was only one passage.

Lü Bei's expression immediately turned serious. Without asking the reason, he accepted the order without hesitation.

"I'll go right away!"

Watching Lü Bei hurry off, Chu Guang suddenly had a thought.

Come to think of it...

Today was exactly the third day.

"Wait a moment."

Hearing the manager's voice, Lü Bei stopped in his tracks and turned around to speak respectfully.

"Do you have any other instructions?"

Chu Guang smiled and said.

"The opponent should be mutants."

"Let the brothers of the Jungle Corps go over there!"