by <unknown>
This was a VIP room of the highest level in Manjusaka that only the big shots on Li Lingfeng's level were qualified to enjoy.
Through the one-way mirror, Li Jialing looked at the young people of the Li family who were still baffled and suspicious.
He was as ignorant of the situation as them.
"Look at that guy." Li Lingfeng pointed at a middle-aged man at the front of the hall who was as impeccable as a marmoreal statue. The man was talking with a few influential generals and politicians and brimming with the confidence that everything was under his control. Li Lingfeng asked, "Do you know him?"
"I do," Li Jialing replied dutifully. "He is Wuying Lan, the owner of this place. He is also the man who has been providing you with all kinds of technology and secret arts to modify me all these years."
"Exactly. I have been cooperating with him profoundly since decades ago and received a lot of cutting-edge technology from him. Most of the abilities inside your body originated from his laboratory." Li Lingfeng smiled. "From that point of view, you are the 'son of Manjusaka'. This place is your real home!"
Li Jialing trembled again. He said softly, "I get it. You personally came to Manjusaka this time not for the trial quests of the new generation of the Li family but for me to receive new modifications."
"You are truly unbelievably smart, but it is only one of my purposes," Li Lingfeng said casually. "Now, I'm more interested in talking about the story of Wuying Lan with you because he is really very similar to you."
Li Jialing was slightly dazed. He simply listened in silence.
"Although Wuying Lan is from the royal family, like you, he is from a branch of the branches," Li Lingfeng said unhurriedly. "Besides, you should know the awkward situation of the royal family in the Imperium very well. Everybody was so intimidated by the dominance of 'Blackstar the Great' Wuying Qi that they worked together to limit the royal prerogatives after his death. Now, even the high and mighty Emperor himself, although not anybody's puppet, has a lot of restraints and cannot do whatever he wants. The branch that Wuying Lan is from is not worth mentioning at all. He was even less important than the offspring of the four Kurfürst families.
"Besides, the man had congenital deficiencies. He was an abnormal dwarf when he was born."
"What?" Li Jialing immediately bulged his eyes.
"To appear as he does right now, he has been modified after countless painstaking procedures with the cutting-edge technology of 'Manjusaka' after he arrived here." Li Lingfeng smiled. "You didn't see this coming, did you? An abnormal curse that should've been suffocated the moment he was born survived stubbornly and somehow became the governor of the Martial Meritocrats Sector after killing countless competitors!
"However, when he first took the duty, the Martial Meritocrats Sector was only one of the dozens test bases for large magical equipment and techniques. There was nothing special about it.
"Also, because of hundreds of years of excessive experiments, the place was already murky and messy after all the destruction. The few sinners were all cockroaches and rats drawing their last breath. Those vermin were incapable of testing the quality of the most advanced magical equipment and techniques of the Imperium.
"Therefore, everybody thought that the base would be shut down very soon. The arrival of a 'dwarf governor' was the best evidence.
"But little did they know that Wuying Lan really had the capabilities to change the world. He came up with the idea of 'slaughter streaming' first. By attracting the most dour and repressed hominoids at the bottom level of the Imperium with the most bloody and exciting videos, he collected the first bucket of gold from them.
"Then, he invested the first bucket of gold into the renovation of the Land of Sins, transforming the place into a top-tier base of trials with adequate facilities, both dangerous and thrilling. With a low price, he attracted the major families, academies, sects, and groups of the Imperium to hold their trials here.
"At that time, many people did not understand the arrangement. You know that the cost of 'trials' can be very high. The consumptions during the trials, the timely refilling of the prey after they are butchered, the safety and surveillance… The incessant investment was astronomical. According to the price that Wuying Lan offered, he would not earn any profit at all, and his first bucket of gold would soon be wasted.
"At that time, nobody knew that the focus of Wuying Lan was not profit but connections!
"The trial teams that came there incessantly were all from the most powerful families, sects, and groups of the Imperium. They were certainly led by the big shots of various fields, too.
"Of the new people who participated in the trials, a lot were talented geniuses who would grow into the pillars of their families.
"After gathering those people, Wuying Lan made friends with them and naturally weaved a broad and tensile web of connections.
"If you have connections, you have everything. Wuying Lan received the appreciation of a lot of people, including myself. We invested tremendous resources to help him revive the test base of magical equipment and techniques that was on the brink of bankruptcy. Then, a virtue cycle began. The levels of the trials became higher and higher, and more and more teams came for trials.
"With the freshest ingredients, the laboratory was also able to present the most cutting-edge results in experiments. The influence of 'slaughter streaming' grew after each day. Later, he established his own lottery group, which has expanded into a behemoth that covers media, lottery, cutting-edge studies, and many other fields! The dwarf that nobody had any hope in or even knew in the past has become one of the most popular big ghosts in the royal family. Nobody does not know him today. Remarkable. It is truly remarkable!"
After a brief silence, Li Jialing asked in confusion, "Why are you telling me this?"
Li Lingfeng smiled. "It's simple. Since Wuying Lan is capable of establishing an enormous empire in the media industry from scratch, why can't you?"
Li Jialing opened his mouth, meaning to ask why Li Lingfeng thought so highly of him.
But he did not ask in the end because he knew that he would not get an answer even if he did.
He was just a chess piece in the guy's hand, and he was not qualified to know what was on the player's mind.
"Furthermore," Li Lingfeng said, "I want you to know that most of the approaches that I modified you through were used by Wuying Lan on himself before. It is even safe to say that, in terms of physical bodies, you are an 'upgraded version' of Wuying Lan. As for exactly how much the upgrade is, you will have to ask yourself.
"So, I think that the two of you should try to bond with each other. Chances are that he can answer some of your questions, right?"
Li Jialing's eyes opened wider and wider. Looking at Wuying Lan not far away and then at his pale, dry hands, he was completely lost in the swirl of confusion.
Li Lingfeng smiled and raised his wrist, planning to call Wuying Lan.
However, a deafening explosion suddenly echoed from the broadcast rune arrays. Hundreds of light beams displayed the horrifying picture of Great Iron City floating and extending eight arms at the same time.
The intimidating aura of 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie was almost burning through the light beams!
"Huh?" Li Lingfeng was slightly dazed. "Wuying Le is truly hard to predict sometimes. I did not know that he had crafted such a magnificent monster. The game is finally getting interesting."
In the hall, 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie's ultimate form attracted the attention of a lot of attendees.
Some were whispering to each other, some exclaimed in amazement, and some danced in ecstasy because they had wagered on the Fist King's side.
Wuying Lan, the owner of Manjusaka, smiled casually while holding a wine glass, as if every transformation of 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie was under his control and part of the game.
Even Li Lingfeng, the greatest endorser of Manjusaka, did not know the shock in Wuying Lan's mind right now.
He spoke t
o two honorable guests for a while with a pleasant smile, asking them to enjoy themselves as much as possible. Then, he left the hall unhurriedly, passed a narrow corridor, and came to the planning and control room of the entire trial.
It was an ocean of crystal processors and light beams. The overwhelming pictures and data were a hundred times more complicated than in the hall. Twelve super crystal processors together with a thousand Immortal Cultivators with amazing computational abilities analyzed and processed without any rest in order to monitor and maintain the most crucial areas in the Land of Sins, including the Battle of Liberty City that was underway.
At this moment, all the cameras had locked onto 'Great Iron City'.
'Fist King' Lei Zonglie had revealed his true appearance and was on a killing spree. He had penetrated seven defense lines of Liberty City and butchered more than fifty Immortal Cultivator players. The control center in the City in the Sky was in an utter mess because of the disruption.
"What's going on?"
Frowning, Wuying Lan asked coldly, "What do you mean by 'the Fist King has gone out of control'?"
Chapter 2016: The Uncontrollable Iron Fists! |
"My lord!"
An old man in a white gown who was short, slender, and looked like a weasel hurried to walk forward.
A metal ring had been embedded into the old man's brow and around his head. More than ten ports were distributed on the metal ring evenly. Most of the ports had some weird magical equipment that was either blinking or humming. The information streams that they triggered around his head were chaotic.
He was Luo Tiansheng, the supervisor of the laboratory of high-end magical equipment and techniques in Manjusaka, and a renowned scholar who was adept at everything from flying swords and crystal suits to biochemical modifications.
Staring at 'Great Iron City' that was on a rampage on the light beams, Wuying Lan asked, "Dr. Luo, you said that the Fist King went out of control, but didn't we know that something was wrong with his Great Iron City? All the procedures of his modification on Great Iron City were closely monitored and recorded by us. What tricks could he possibly pull?"
"There is nothing wrong with 'Great Iron City'. The problematic part is the way to control 'Great Iron City', or rather, the Fist King himself," Luo Tiansheng said. "Please look at the battle parameters that the Fist King has demonstrated right now."
Shua!
A light beam where the Fist King was butchering his enemies was enlarged. Detailed analyses were run on his every attack. Every subtle change, from speed to angle to strength, was displayed after quantification. The thousands of data points were calculated through complicated formulas, and the value of the comprehensive combat ability was presented.
"How interesting." Wuying Lan narrowed his eyes. The skin around his eyes was still frozen in frost, but his lips curled into a smile of interest. "His movement should be somewhat clumsy when he is steering a 'Great Iron City' almost a hundred meters tall, but his speed and agility are more than twice what we anticipated. He is almost as fast as a Colossus. What kind of secret arts has his remaining soul been practicing to enable him to make use of such an enormous iron fortress as if it were part of his body?"
"You're quite right, my lord," Luo Tiansheng said drily. "The Fist King's comprehensive combat ability is 275% higher than our expectation, and the value is still rising. Based on all the techniques that he has ever trained, it is absolutely impossible.
"Therefore, we went back and studied all the files of the Fist King in the past. Overturning a lot of our preconceived hypotheses, we have reached the most astonishing conclusion!"
"Oh?" Wuying Lan looked at the light beam, where 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie had grabbed a player of Immortal Cultivators in his giant hand.
The player struggled hard and screamed desperately. He seemed to be shouting something like, "I'm done. I'm done playing. Come on and save me. Get me out of this place!"
But it was useless. In the very next second, the player was crushed by the Fist King into a cluster of sparks and blood.
Wuying Lan's cold smile was even more intense. "What is your conclusion?"
"No spectral Cultivators can achieve what the Fist King has achieved—hacking Xiahou Wuxin's automatic flying sword system, changing four spiritual puppets in an instant, and eventually controlling a gargantuan spiritual puppet almost a hundred meters tall in such a deft and accurate way. Absolute none!" Luo Tiansheng said affirmatively. "Therefore, 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie can't be a ghost. The whole group of specialists can vouch for that!"
"Not a ghost?" Weird brilliance beamed out of Wuying Lan's eyes. "What is he then?"
"An artificial intelligence," Luo Tiansheng said. "Or, you may understand him as a very unique spiritual puppet, my lord."
"interesting." On the light beam, 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie was shouldering the intense barrage from Liberty City. The colorful fireballs seemed to have covered him in an armor of flames. He, or it, uttered metal and mechanical roars at Liberty City, the tower leading into the sky beyond Liberty City, the Heavenly Rails above the tower, and Manjusaka at the center of the Heavenly Rails.
As if he were observing the most fabulous toy, Wuying Lan said, "Explain yourself."
"This whole time, we have been fooled by 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie. It has been acting outwardly and straightforwardly and did not bother to disguise his ambition to unite the entire Land of Sins, misleading us into thinking that he was just a simple-headed warrior.
"Now, we can tell that he only declared such appalling ambitions in order to cover a greater secret. He disguised himself as a living human being, a remaining soul who had lost the fleshly body, and a spectral Cultivator who had crawled into an artificial body.
"It was not until today when he exerted all his strength that we managed to catch a glimpse at the truth. He is not a human being but a spiritual puppet that boasts automatic learning and upgrading abilities, and a super artificial intelligence that can vividly simulate the feelings and demeanors of human beings."
"I know that there was an increased trend of super artificial intelligence in the Imperium about three hundred years ago," Wuying Lan said unhurriedly. "A lot of specialists believed that spiritual puppets with the ability to automatically learn and upgrade themselves could replace soldiers to a very large extent. At least, they could replace the bottom-level soldiers—the cannon fodder.
"If the goal proved to be a success, we wouldn't need to feed so many filthy hominoids.
"At that time, the specialists ran a lot of experiments on this planet, right?"
"Yes," Luo Tiansheng said. "Two hundred years ago, we sent forty-seven models of spiritual puppets that could automatically learn and upgrade to the Land of Sins. Each of them had a unique logic circuit and means of upgrade. At that time, our main approach was still competition. We hoped that the forty-seven spiritual puppets would fight, swallow, and merge with each other like forty-seven different insects. Then, the last survivor would be the king of them, and its logic circuit, mind database, and upgrade forms would have the greatest value to be studied and manufactured.
"Therefore, when the spiritual puppets were sent to the Land of Sins, they were not set with any specific targets. Only a fuzzy instruction was set deep into their mind database."
"What was the instruction?" Wuying Lan asked.
"Upgrade to the strongest whatever the cost and method!" Luo Tiansheng said.
Wuying Lan asked, unmoved, "What happened later?"
"Later, the project ended in a natural course." Luo Tiansheng sighed. "It was supposed to be the project with the hugest investment in the laboratory of the Land of Sins two hundred years ago, but everybody underestimated the difficulty in creating real artificial intelligence. The so-called 'automatic learning and upgrading' was just an impractical illusion. In the end, the spiritual puppets can still only carry out mechanical and definitive tasks but cannot understand fuzzy, chaotic, and unpredictable targets.
"A spiritual puppet can d
estroy everything in a pair of fixed coordinates, but it cannot understand what 'upgrade to the strongest' means.
"What does 'strongest' mean? Is it the strongest in the Land of Sins, the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy, the Imperium of True Human Beings, or the entire universe? Does it mean to be strong enough to blow up the three-dimensional universe, the four-dimensional universe, or even everything beyond?
"At that time, the specialists did not take the question into consideration but simply inputted such a ridiculous instruction for the artificial intelligences.
"Also, because of the vulnerability and instability of the new crystal processors, the fault rate of the batch of automatic-learning spiritual puppets was very high. Even if no faults happened, ninety-nine percent of them would be mired in absurd logic traps.
"If the regular spiritual puppets could be compared to lifeless slaughter machines, the automatic-learning spiritual puppets were like three-year-old children. They were unpredictable and uncontrollable.
"The automatic-learning spiritual puppets project became a bottomless hole that absorbed tremendous resources. The sects, families, and corporations that were involved in the project all suffered heavy losses. It even led to the decline of the laboratory in the Land of Sins and even its doom, if you had not come here to bring it back to life again, my lord."
Wuying Lan nodded. "Then, what was the ending of the spiritual puppets that boasted the automatic learning and upgrading abilities?"
"Most of them were destroyed in wars," Luo Tiansheng said. "They were dismantled into the most fundamental components in the ceaseless battles in the Land of Sins or buried in the deepest part of the city ruins.
"Only some of them fell to the hands of the sinners. But their performance was very unstable in battles and got a lot of people killed. Later, they were mostly used for civil purposes and worked as 'machine servants', 'waiters', or 'porters'.
"You know that the resources for our surveillance are very limited, and the analysis abilities of humans and crystal processors are seriously inadequate. Therefore, after the success of dozens of projects since you came here, most of the resources have been distributed elsewhere, and we gradually lost track of the remaining automatic-learning spiritual puppets."
