Accompanied by cold words, the figure that Gao Gong had seen before, that indistinct-faced woman appeared.
Her expression was sinister and violent, with eyes seemingly dripping âillegally obtained instructionsâ as venom. Her nails disappeared, fingers elongated, skin wrinkled, like a fusion of a Western Old Witch and Black Mountain Demon. When she moved, it was the sound of her claws trampling on the data net, a dense âdidaâ sound.
"Boss, my wife, sheâ" Black Python felt his jaws trembling.
"Yeah, your wife is taking a big dump," Gao Gong said calmly.
"Is this her, her previous personality?"
"If I guessed correctly, your wifeâs previous personality has already been wiped out by her."
"Cyber hackers are different from other professions; split personalities are the taboo of taboos. I donât know why Scorpion entered Puppet City, but ever since she developed a second personality, it means that two personalities absolutely cannot coexist. The first to act is strong, the second to act suffers."
"That canât be right, Boss, my wife and I, we both take a âPersonality Balancerâ every month. If she only has one personality, why take meds?"
"Come on, your wifeâs main persona is the worldâs 11th-ranked Super Hacker; itâs not that easy to completely erase."
"Think positively; maybe she just went crazy."
"Hiss~~"
Scorpion, logged into her hacker account, didnât care about the babbling of the two idiots. She put in a lot of effort just to hack into Douâs brain.
Indeed, the scene before them, which resembled a starry sky seen through a space telescope, was Douâs brain. The smarter the brain, the brighter its radiance.
And Douâs data brain was resplendent like the stars.
The venom in Scorpionâs eyes flowed faster, running down her cheeks, dropping onto the nerve bundles, falling into brain grooves as deep as the Mariana Trench, burning the gyri, paracentral lobule, and cuneiform lobe with smoke bubbling out more intensely than seen before.
Then, a thick, formless scorpion tail stabbed harshly into the mist, sending user codes flying chaotically, almost overwhelming this world, swapping countless faces, brain-machines smoking, and as the code spewed recklessly, a small gap slowly opened.
Scorpion grasped her husband and stuffed him into the gap, with Gao Gong leisurely strolling in the middle, and finally Mr. Brainstem pulling the Host Brain, all jumping in together.
The four seemed to fall into a bottomless abyss.
The old saying goes, when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
When you drop your pants to pee into the abyss, the abyss will spit you out.
Then, with lights and shadows flickering, visuals swirling, the five of them regained their senses to find themselves spat out onto the streets of Hive City.
Scorpion once again resumed her female Programmerâs appearance, looking quite displeased.
Black Python instinctively stomped on the ground, hard and unillusioned, yet he felt his brainpower wasnât enough; he needed a smart brain, so he poked Gao Gong.
"Boss, whatâs the situation now?"
"Donât you think your wifeâs expression now is akin to when she found out you had 13 wives and 26 mistresses before?"
"Itâs very similar."
"Then the situation is quite dire."
Gao Gong turned, glanced at the Host Brain, who had words on the tip of his tongue and a conflicted expression, and he smiled.
"So let me lay out the current situation for you."
"First, high-end business wars often need only the simplest cooking methods, so I planned to start by kidnapping our overbearing President and genius Scientist, forcing him to surrender to me.
Obviously, the plan failed.
The President not only wasnât caught but also opened the company firewall, that virtual space just now, trapping us.
Then, to save our skins, our Sister Poison acted decisively, trying to hack the enemyâs brain to break us out of the virtual space and back into the real world.
But now it seems the hacking plan also failed."
"But didnât we escape?" Black Python said.
"Look at this street, then look at this Hive City. Donât you think somethingâs missing?"
"Whatâs missing?" Black Python vaguely remembered this was the road they had taken before, called âCentral Street,â and as he walked along itâ
"Hive, no, that Hive is gone!" exclaimed Black Python.
"Indeed, how could an intact Mechanical Main Brain just disappear like that?" Gao Gong seemed to be talking to someone else or just muttering to himself, "It seems the personality has indeed changed, the skills have gotten rusty, we havenât escaped the virtual space yet."
Scorpionâs face darkened further.
Mr. Brainstem frowned, "Mr. G, can you tell us where we are now!"
"A good question," Gao Gong looked at the Host Brain: "How about you, the chief scientist, explain?"
A screen lit up on the Head Brain, with a line vertically bisecting it, the top a digital space composed of countless code signals, the bottom a reality composed of countless individuals.
"Originally, Cyber Space and the real world were distinctly separated, but the âElectronic Brain Planâ severed this line."
The line was severed, signals and people mingled, like a digital hell soup boiling over.
"This doesnât mean the physical parameters in reality will be broken, theyâre only being influenced.
The real trouble is us, humans ourselves.
When Cyber Space sinks, all external human sensations, like hearing, touch, taste, etc., can be manipulated.
Your vision could be simulated, touch could be overcharged, taste could be modified.
You could indulge in debauchery in the Other Shore of Freedomâs pleasure dens, but your real body might be asleep in some trash heap, waiting to die.
Your perceived physique might feel as strong as Superman, but your actual body could be limbless.
Virtual Machines, online devices, Access Chambers, body implants, in the past, required any of these devices to accomplish even one of these manipulations.
But now, that is no longer needed.
You might just walk down the street routinely, and your visual could be switched thousand miles away, your taste placed into a cesspool, hearing in the worldâs top symphonic opera house, while your tactile sensation might be in bed with some woman.
This isnât scaremongering, but an inevitable event.
So, back to the point, you ask where we are now, our physical bodies are probably inside the Mechanical Main Brain, but with each switch by âDou,â I can responsibly tell you.
Roughly within planetary range."
Gao Gong squinted slightly and suddenly laughed: "Host Brain, it seems you understand too, if your boss really wanted to save you, you wouldnât be with us now, right."
"Thatâs right, but I must clarify that no company has done large-scale Brain-Machine transformations beforehand, and to manipulate such a massive amount of data in a short time and distinguish individual data is extremely difficult."
"I have a question," Mr. Brainstem suddenly said: "If, in the Electronic Brain Plan, our senses can be split, then, if senses are destroyed in reality, the physical shellâ"
"As you guessed, the destruction of sensory data will likewise impart catastrophic damage to the reality organs."
Mr. Brainstemâs face turned pale.
âBuzzingâ sounds suddenly arose, and next moment, a black line appeared in the sky, opened up, eventually becoming mechanical bees, wicked clawed with pulsing knives ejecting.
And in this city, the ones to be transformed were only these four.
"It seems this is an even more dangerous virtual space," Gao Gong clenched his hand, feeling very unfamiliar, and opened the system panel again, at Level 12 (space sealed).
Glancing at the attributes again,
Weak to the core.
âSo, itâs knocked me back to pre-transmigration levels.â
"Run, what are you standing there for!" Black Python was the first to react, hugging his wife, starting to bolt hurriedly.
"I have a question for you!" Scorpion finally woke from a trance, staring intently at the Host Brain: "Why didnât my hack break through that personâs brain defense? I clearly deleted his brain data completely."
âHost Brainâ hesitated for a moment, finally lighting up words on the face screen.
"Because of Consciousness Package Technology."