by <unknown>
…
An hour passed.
In the core town at the center of the hundreds of silver ball-shaped space stations that made up Hundred Flowers City, the crowds and shuttles were moving among the skyscrapers that looked like primitive forests.
Because every downtown area was a ball that developed inwardly, there was actually no distinction between up and down, left and right. The high-rises could extend all the way to the 'sky' from the ground that was at a slight slant before it poured down from the 'sky' to the other side of the ball.
Naturally, for the people who were living on the 'dome', they were actually walking on the ground, and above their head was the 'dome' for them.
Sometimes, two particularly high and splendid skyscrapers could even be established right next to each other with a lot of transparent tubes that looked like rainbows between them, making it convenient for people to jump from one of the buildings to the other.
The complicated gravity rune arrays distributed gravity on the surface of the ball-shaped town evenly and attracted people who were living in them. That was why such an amazing scene could be created and how a hundred million people could be accommodated in minimal space.
For Li Yao and Long Yangjun who were adept at disguising their traces and faces, after they blended into the downtown area of a super enormous city of a population of a hundred million, they were like two leaves that did not belong to the forest but had fallen to the carpet of dry leaves in the forest's depths. Unless the city was completely shut down and the soldiers searched for them for half a month, it would be absolutely impossible to locate them.
Li Yao's assault on the garbage processing center was not entirely futile.
At least he had received the distribution map and processing information of the garbage tubes throughout Hundred Flowers City.
Through the information, he could easily locate the most prosperous downtown area. The place that outputted the most garbage every day had to be the downtown area with the largest population!
Also, when Li Yao searched on the mainframe crystal processor in the garbage processing center, he left a lot of traces that indicated his interest in the Tinder Base, having conducted multiple queries on the tube distribution in the base.
It was meant to mislead Professor Mo Xuan into thinking that the Tinder Base would be the focus of Li Yao's attack. That way, he might concentrate most of the available forces in the base and prepare a dragnet for the intruders.
Therefore, at least in the past half hour, on the way to the downtown area, few soldiers of the federal army or Secret Sword Agents could be seen. They were able to reach the place without running into any danger.
Li Yao and Long Yangjun were completely different from an hour earlier.
From the moment they arrived in the Dragon Snake Space Zone, with the help of Long Yangjun as the founder of Ghost Character, an assassination organization, the twelve experts from the Ancient Sages Sector had all changed their appearances and presented themselves with false faces.
Li Yao had been pretending to be a plain-looking middle-aged man. That was why the fox girl Ling Xiaole had called him 'uncle'.
At this time, he tore off the previous camouflage and added another few strokes. Then, he loosened his facial muscles, turning himself into an unattractive young man.
He was wearing sportswear that he had just stolen and even intentionally decorated his face with a series of red pimples, which made him even more look like a vigorous college student whose desires could not be met.
It was even easier for Long Yangjun. She had restored the appearance of Lead Eunuch Wang Xi. On the surface, she was a graceful gentleman who was as warm as jade. Naturally, her other self was purely natural without the slightest incongruence. Even the most advanced test magical equipment would not be able to identify any flaws.
The targets of the searchers were a man and a woman, but now, they were two men. The camouflage was enough to give them one to two hours to catch their breath and allow them to summon all their computation and deduction abilities to find out Professor Mo Xuan's real nest!
When all the roads from the edge of Hundred Flowers City to the Tinder Base were on high alert, Li Yao and Long Yangjun were in a plain-looking restaurant in downtown Hundred Flowers City.
It was noon at this moment. The white-collar workers who worked in the offices nearby all went to the restaurants on the street for lunch. It was the busiest and most chaotic moment for the restaurants.
Li Yao and Long Yangjun were each holding a bowl of hot noodles, pretending that they did not know each other but were forced to have food at a small table in the corner of the restaurant. While watching the news displayed on the light beam, they communicated with each other in private.
"Your analysis does have a point," Long Yangjun said. "The Tinder Plan has been open and frank since the very beginning. The military, the Secret Sword Bureau, the relevant agencies in the government, and the researchers in the major universities are all involved. It is a half-official project. It's unlikely that Professor Mo Xuan has deployed a secret nest in the Tinder Base while lying to everyone. It is both dangerous and unnecessary.
"If it were me, the Tinder Base would only serve as a base on the surface, and it is only necessary that I set up a secret base somewhere else that is entirely under my control!
"However, Hundred Flowers City is a large place made of hundreds of ball-shaped space towns, each of which is as complicated as a maze. How can we know where Professor Mo Xuan's secret nest is in only half a day?"
Li Yao sipped the delicious soup and pretended to smack his lips in satisfaction, but actually, he was speaking in private. "While we were on our way here, I gave it a lot of thought. If my professor really has a secret nest, it must meet the following requirements.
"Firstly, the place must be spacious enough and equipped with a lot of super crystal processors. Even if they are not the 'Gai'-level crystal processors, they must be at least powerful 'Jing'-level processors!
"Both the Spiriters and the Spiriters' Realm sound quite ideal and insubstantial, but they cannot run without material support. Crystal processors and spiritual energy are to the Spiriters what land, air, and water are to the regular humans. They can't live without them.
"Secondly, there is no way that my professor could accomplish such an enormous plan by himself. Therefore, he must have a bunch of professional researchers. Those researchers may be unaware of my professor's real scheme. They may still be fooled right now. But they must be specialists in crystal processors, the Spiritual Nexus, and the training of the soul!
"Such an enormous space and so many powerful crystal processors will consume astronomical spiritual energy every day, not to mention that so many specialists are also gathered in the place. It is impossible to hide it from the authorities. Therefore, the secret nest must have an ostensible disguise on the surface, such as a research institute.
"However, whatever the disguise actually is, the organization must be on private property, whose owner is free to construct, modify, or conceal certain things inside as they please.
"Thirdly, the owner of the organization naturally can't be Professor Mo Xuan himself, but they must be deeply associated with each other.
"Their relationship might not be very good on the surface, but a long time ago, let me think about it, decades ago, when my professor first started to push forward the Tinder Plan, they must have been connected to each other in a certain way.
"As long as we find a place that meets all three requirements, it will most likely be my professor's real nest! We will search for the distribution of the 'Jing'-level super crystal processors in Hundred Flowers City first through the public files. Then, we will screen them out through elimination!"
Long Yangjun picked up a piece of red beef with her chopsticks, but instead of eating it, she was deep in thought for a long time. Then she said, "Perhaps, the trouble is unnecessary. The three requirements that you mentioned remind me of a certain
person—Lei Yuqin."
"Lei Yuqin?" Li Yao was slightly dazed. Then he remembered who the person was. "My professor's mistress?"
"As for exactly whether or not she is your professor's mistress, I am not very sure, but I'm quite certain that she is much more complicated that an algorithm specialist in the data processing center of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus.
"When you mentioned the woman at the beginning, I already felt that it was a thorn in my heart. While you and Professor Mo Xuan were in the Spiriters' Realm together, I searched for the woman's files in my spare time when I was not chatting with Wei Qingqing. I discovered that there was quite a lot of news about her on the Spiritual Nexus.
"At that time, I did not think much of it, but now that you mention it, I think that the woman and Professor Mo Xuan must be more than a 'couple'. They are more like some sort of 'partners' or even in a chain of command!"
Chapter 1730: Specialist of Super Brains! |
Li Yao bulged his eyes and added some vinegar into his bowl. "How so?"
"Lei Yuqin is not just a random specialist of crystal processors and algorithms. Her main study field is artificial intelligence, or to be more precise, 'simulated artificial intelligence'," Long Yangjun said. "It is better to call her a dual specialist in human brains and crystal processors than to call her a simple algorithm specialist. The 'algorithms' that she studied were to perfectly simulate the mind of human beings through crystal chips, synthesized neurons, and spiritual energy circuits.
"To be more straightforward, the purpose of her studies is to replace a human brain with a crystal processor!"
Li Yao added more and more vinegar into his bowl. "I didn't know much about her. At that time, my main target was Professor Mo Xuan. I only noticed her as his 'mistress' from gossip, which mentioned that she was a worker of the 'control center of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus'."
"Her work is indeed related to the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus," Long Yangjun explained. "Replacing a human being with a crystal processor has a lot of applications in the federation today.
"First of all, regarding the patients whose brains are seriously damaged due to epilepsy, schizophrenia, dementia, bipolar disorder, and various kinds of accidents or battles, the main treatment in the federation right now is either to inject active materials to make the brain cells to proliferate and repair themselves based on the biochemical technology of the Blood Demon Sector, or to implant a chip or part of a crystal processor to fill in the damaged area as an 'artificial brain'.
"How to combine the original brain of a human that is made of flesh and blood and an artificial brain that is made of metals and crystals perfectly, making them serve as a 'fortress' and 'home' for the soul without altering the previous character, memory, habit, and soul of the patient—that is what the 'algorithms' that Lei Yuqin studied were for!
"Therefore, you may consider Lei Yuqin a specialist to treat brain damage. She is a brain doctor!"
Li Yao frowned.
Although he knew that replacing part of the brain was essentially the same as replacing limbs or internal organs, he still felt that it was a little bit repulsive.
"Her studies have another application field that is more important, which is to build crystal processors for the ghosts," Long Yangjun said. "If we get to the bottom of it, a 'ghost' is just a cluster of highly-condensed spiritual waves. Their mind and self-awareness are compressed to the minimum, and they are manipulated by their persistence from when they are still alive. In the end, they risk turning into devastating poltergeists who have no thinking ability but only natural instincts to feed on the brainwaves of living people.
"If their memory and self-awareness are maintained when they are in such a state, their longevity will be even shorter. In only a few hours, they will completely collapse, unable to maintain the condensed state anymore. At least, for most people whose level is not high, that will be their outcome.
"Even Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators such as Wu Suiyun and Meng Chixin greatly lost their Cultivation after losing their physical bodies. It took them decades before they finally regained their memories and self-awareness, but still, they had to hide inside war puppets and carry out their thinking ability with the computational ability of the puppets.
"It was quite fortunate that their souls left their bodies in the Nuwa warship deep underground. The shell of the warship resisted most of the radiation and interference for them. If they were on the ground, the remaining souls of the two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators would've been obliterated in the storm and sunlight after only a couple of years."
Li Yao nodded. "The brain is like an ocean, and the self-awareness and soul are like the ship on it. Without the ocean, the ship will not be able to set sail at all no matter how big and firm it is."
"Exactly," Long Yangjun said. "The soul can live inside a tiny storage chip, but such a status of living is nothing more than 'storage'. It is not real self-awareness but more like a program that is not activated yet."
"Precisely," Li Yao said. "To regain the memories and computational ability that they had when they were alive, they require the help of special crystal processors. I once studied some artificial bodies before. The greatest difference between artificial bodies and crystal suits lies in their crystal processors. The crystal processors of artificial bodies are specially designed for ghosts. The precision of a lot of key units is sometimes ten times higher than the ancillary crystal processors on the crystal suits. It is safe to say that the most advanced small crystal processors of the federation are basically developed for ghosts."
"But nothing can be done if you only have crystal processors and not algorithms," Long Yangjun said. "That's exactly what Lei Yuqin studies. The art of integrating the soul and the crystal processor!
"Her job in the 'control base of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus' was a doctor who treats the brain damage resulting from going online for too long.
"You know that the last thing that the base was short of was specialists of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus. They are the people who spend the longest time online and are most mired in the entire federation. Some of them suffered brain injuries after their brain vessels exploded because they spent too much time in cyberspace and used too much of their computational ability. Lei Yuqin was supposed to treat that.
"Years ago, after Professor Mo Xuan's Virtual Spirits Sector project failed, Su Changfa's self-awareness vanished in the shattered Virtual Spirits Sector, and his real body degenerated into a level-5 vegetative patient. He was diagnosed with brain death, true death in the legal sense.
"Professor Mo Xuan and Lu Qingchen luckily survived the disaster, but they suffered brain damage of different levels, too, and were delivered to Lei Yuqin for treatment.
"According to the information that I found earlier, Professor Mo Xuan gradually fell in love with Lei Yuqin during the procedures. Then, the affair somehow leaked, causing the divorce of him and his wife.
"I didn't think much of it when I first read the information because it is quite common for doctors and patients to develop feelings for each other after spending a long time together. Besides, your professor was 'liquid metal'. The functioning mechanism of his soul must be very different from that of the normal people and normal spectral Cultivators. Since Lei Yuqin was passionate about the brain, mind, and self-awareness, it was perfectly normal for her to grow interested in your professor.
"But now that I think about it… something must be greatly wrong with the woman!"
Li Yao narrowed his eyes, with cold brilliance beaming out of his eyes. He was deep in thought while he moaned, "Wu…"
"This is your oiled tofu. Sorry for the long wait. There are too many customers at noon!"
The waiter delivered a dish that was soaked in red oil and placed it right in front of Li Yao.
Long Yangjun stared at Li Yao in silence without blinking.
"As infiltrators in the darkness, we must take the tiniest details into consideration
," Li Yao said. "The oiled tofu in this restaurant is their most famous specialty. Many people come to the restaurant not for the noodles but for a dish of tofu! Look around. Most customers here have ordered the food. Wouldn't it be too odd if neither of the two customers on the same table ordered it?
"Don't look at me. Turn around and focus on your noodles!
"Don't bother about such details. Let's continue. Now that you put it in such a way, my professor's lover Lei Yuqin is indeed somewhat suspicious.
"However, if she works in the 'control center of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus', it should be a strategic location of national significance. My professor couldn't have pulled any tricks inside such a place, could he?"
"Lei Yuqin has the 'control center of the Spiritual Nexus' a long time ago, probably decades ago," Long Yangjun said. "She is now operating a hospital."
Li Yao was slightly dazed. "A hospital?"
"Exactly," Long Yangjun said. "The Deep Blue Super Brain Hospital, which specializes in brain injuries, mental diseases, and sustenance of vegetative people. It is right in Hundred Flowers City and a private hospital solely funded by her. She can do whatever she wants inside. That's everything I know about her."
Deep Blue Super Brain Hospital… Li Yao and Long Yangjun looked at each other. Highly anxious telepathic thoughts almost surged out of their brains at the same time. "Search now! Collect their public files online! I'll investigate Lei Yuqin, and you will investigate Deep Blue Super Brain Hospital. Let's see if we can find any more problems!"
Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!
The two of them sat in a corner of the restaurant where they could block the surveillance cameras above and the eyes of other people with their backs. Also, the customers in the restaurant were mostly browsing the light beams of their crystal processors, too. Nobody noticed how astonishingly fast they were reading the pages that they needed at all.
A moment later, the two of them finished the collection and analysis of the public files.
