Chapter 296: Mushroom Tower
Chapter 296: Mushroom Tower
"Sure enough, this is not a simple butler." Kiki landed from the air and stood next to Lin Xian.
Before Kiki could finish her words, Grace had already stood up from the thick smoke. The holographic projection above her head kept flashing and soon took on the appearance of Chu Yan. Her tone was still cold and indifferent.
"You have agreed to the negotiation and have obtained the conditions. Please leave immediately. The Zero Element Beehive is connected to the mycelium root system of the Tiangu Tower. Once a fire occurs, it will cause an uncontrollable explosion. According to calculations, your survival rate is 0%."
As if affected by Ning Jing's punch just now, the defensive shell on Grace's face was slightly dented and cracked. However, Lin Xian and Ning Jing frowned when watching this scene. Lin Xian knew how powerful a punch from Ning Jing, the queen of strength, was. It could even smash the head of a Winged Demon, but it couldn't cause too much damage to the face of this robot. How terrifying is the hardness of this material!
The mechanical light in Lin Xian's eyes slowly went out. He had just controlled all the power components of Grace's body, leaving only the most complex quantum computer brain control core. He tried it, and as soon as he touched it, the mechanical scan was like a stone cow entering the sea, and he felt powerless.
Sure enough, the most powerful productivity is not the engine, but the processor. Lin Xian sighed in his heart, but as long as he can control Grace's whole body power components, the threat of this robot has been much smaller. He is now very curious about the manufacturing process of this robot. It seems that it is not a product of the interstellar army.
"Tell me your basic protocol 4, and I'll leave." Lin Xian knew that the people in the survival capsule were connected to the mycelium root system, so he deliberately let Brother Huo test it. Seeing Grace's reaction, he immediately said
Grace turned her head mechanically and looked at Lin Xian with a puzzled look on her face, and said
"Protocol 4: When all defenses of the Zero Center fail and the invaders are human, the 'compromise' procedure will be activated to negotiate and provide all supplies to give the Crimson members a chance to survive."
"Brother Lin, it seems you guessed right." Lu Xingchen clapped his hands and walked over.
"The compromise process is actually the final begging process." Ding Junyi said at this time: "The security of this place is so tight. She must have attacked us outside just now. However, the heavily guarded gates and passages here were directly destroyed by you using your mechanical abilities. From the judgment of the intelligent computer, there is no other way to stop us, so she has no way."
Lin Xian nodded: "It's always better to be cautious. It seems that this should be a secret sanatorium. Don't waste time, Sister Ning, Abai, Luo Yang."
He looked at Ning Jing and said, "We will split into two or three groups. The three of you will drive the transport train to check along this route. Kiki, Brother Huo, you will go up from the backup passage outside and return to the train to have the joint train reverse and then enter from the entrance of the freight station. We need to buy time to leave Yijin City. Otherwise, we can only hide underground and wait until the next time the mycelium is active before we can leave. We will stay in the polar night for 30 hours and anything could happen. We should leave here early to avoid any more trouble."
Ning Jing nodded and said, "Okay, let's do it!"
"Oh, what about you?" Kiki couldn't help but ask when she heard Lin Xian's arrangement.
"Director Ding and I will stay here and keep an eye on Grace so that we can provide support for you," Lin Xian said.
Lin Xian was really worried about the situation of this underground facility and the intelligent robot butler with a mysterious woman's face, so he planned to stay here, firstly to scan some of the available equipment here, and secondly to use his mechanical abilities to detain Grace and see how to get this butler onto Infinity.
Kiki nodded seriously after hearing this: "Okay, then be careful, I'll go find Sister Chen and the others right away."
After making the plan, Ning Jing set off immediately with Abai and Luo Yang. Ning Jing took the cipher and prepared to solve the problem of access to the secret track first, and then confirm the location of the permanent warehouse along the way. If the joint convoy was trapped underground, the supplies in these warehouses would be just right for replenishment.
Kiki and Huo Ge took the special elevator guided by Grace and went up. Unlike the previous trip down to the fifth underground floor at the pharmaceutical group, the elevator went up more than ten floors before reaching the ground. There was a round automatic door above their heads that slowly opened, and a large amount of sand fell. As the elevator rose, the two realized that this was actually the inside of a bank vault.
However, the vault was in a mess, with discarded and rotten banknotes mixed with mycelium mud. Even the bolts of the vault door had been pried away, but no one cared about the banknotes on the ground.
KIKI held up the telekinesis shield and took Brother Huo directly out of the bank in the brown and yellow spore mist. As soon as they got out of the street, they saw a dim yellow scene.
"Such a thick spore mist!"
"Yijin Bank..." KIKI looked at the bank's dilapidated sign, then looked at the map on her phone and said, "This should be Puzhong Square, the center of Yijin. I remember there should be a very tall TV sightseeing tower here."
Looking at the thick fog, KIKI's face was full of worry. In order to see the direction clearly, she simply took Lu Xingchen and soared all the way up to the sky. As the surrounding buildings disappeared, the black shadow of a majestic tower appeared in sight.
KIKI flew over, but as the two people got closer, she felt something was wrong.
In the center of Puzhong Square, the 468-meter-high Yijin TV Observation Tower built of steel structure is now completely entangled by mycelium vines. The steel frame is covered with brown-red mycelium, pulsating like blood vessels, releasing fluorescent pulse waves every few breaths, transmitting bioelectric signals to the fungal carpet throughout the city. From a distance, it looks like a strange giant tree from another world!
KIKI and Lu Xingchen looked down at this time and their faces changed drastically.
"This...what is this?"
Originally on the square, more than 100,000 human fungi, all covered with mycelium, were tightly stacked into a human mycorrhizal base. The lower half of their spines were fused with the fungal carpet on the ground, and the mycelium all over their bodies were intertwined into a root network. Countless root networks then converged upwards and densely entangled on the TV sightseeing tower, like the roots of a large tree that had rotted and solidified!
"It's just like the demon world." Lu Xingchen said with a heavy face.
"This must be the Sky Mushroom Tower that Grace mentioned. Maybe it's the core of the Xingyuan Mycelium!"
When KIKI saw this scene, he hurried up. Soon, the spore mist around him became thinner, but the higher they went, the darker their vision became, and they could hardly see the TV tower.
"Why can't I see anything?" KIKI looked around. The original glow of the luminous fungi had disappeared. Logically, the higher you go, the more you can see the outline of the city.
She turned her head and saw Lu Xingchen looking down at the sky with an ugly expression. KIKI also looked up quickly. The next moment, her pupils shrank suddenly and her expression changed in shock!
Hundreds of meters above the sky, that was not dark clouds, but a huge mushroom cap that covered the sky and the sun!
Looking up, the huge cap extends to a diameter of at least 2 kilometers. The brown-red folds under the cap are like waves, with ripples constantly generated by the wind. The folds have billions of spores, which spray spore rain all over the sky in rhythm with the ripples, making bursts of strange buzzing sounds!
The crown that covers the sky!
KIKI stared at this horrifying scene with eyes wide open and mouth wide open: "What a big mushroom."
"This is a man-eating mushroom. It uses humans as its roots, just like a monster!" Lu Xingchen said in surprise.
KIKI looked at the spore mist below, and recalled the dense human fungus. He immediately grabbed Lu Xingchen and flew towards the Infinity, saying, "They have all become nutrients. Those Crimson members are still dreaming of parasitizing the mycelium network and enjoying eternal life. They are really idiots!"
When the two flew out of the range of the huge mushroom cap, Lu Xingchen looked back and a complicated look flashed in his eyes.
Ning Jing, at this time, was driving the underground rail train with Abai and Luo Yang, quickly heading towards the secret route.
The train hummed and rumbled in the tunnel. The tunnel was pitch black, with only the lights of the train constantly piercing the darkness.
"The deeper we go underground, the fewer mycelium roots there are. It seems the only way is to evacuate from the underground tracks!"
Ning Jing had a solemn expression. If they had not learned the information about the active cycle of the mycelium from Grace, their move of mobilizing a large number of manpower to clear obstacles and lay tracks would be simply courting death. Not only would it alert the Xingyuan mycelium network to devour them, but once a large number of strange creatures surrounded them in the polar night, the entire joint train would have almost no chance of survival!
"Fortunately, these hyphae will not release dark marks, otherwise it will be more troublesome." Luo Yang nodded and said.
"You're right. I guess these hyphae should be a form of half-plant and half-organism in the darkness, and they can also produce substances for the weird bodies to devour." Ning Jing said seriously: "From this perspective, it itself is a huge lighthouse!"
After saying that, she turned around and looked at Abai. At this time, she understood why Abai said that he could feel the breath from all directions. It turned out that the entire Yijin City was a huge mycelium network.
At the Zero Element Center, Lin Xian asked Ding Junyi to check all the useful information in the monitoring center, while he controlled Grace and began to investigate the surrounding situation.
"My mechanical motion components seem to be restricted by external forces. This seems to be an unknown control-type ability."
Grace stood there, her body shaking, and she kept controlling her balance on her raised toes.
Lin Xian's eyes flickered with mechanical power, and he turned around to observe this mechanical butler that looked like a work of art. In 2035, the Blue Star Federation signed the [Humanoid Robot Control Regulations]. Based on ethical and social issues, it stipulated that all service robots were strictly prohibited from being anthropomorphic. After the regulations were issued, all the stocks of simulated humanoid robot companies plummeted, a large number of factories went bankrupt, and all kinds of butlers and service robots were recalled.
From then on, all types of robots on the market, except for those in the prosthetic industry, were designed in the form of pure industrial machinery. Regardless of whether they were various mechas or power armors, functionality was the main focus.
But Grace in front of him was a complete humanoid robot, with a mechanical torso designed with the graceful figure of a ballerina. The design of her breasts, waist, and padded feet were unnecessary from a mechanical function perspective, so this robot was designed entirely based on artistic considerations and did not comply with regulatory regulations.
But the problem is, through the attack just now, this machine butler has very strong combat power, and the material of its body is a material that Lin Xian has never seen before, called [Super Solid Carbon Condensed Alloy]. Not only can it be forged into such a flexible curve, it also has a strong energy absorption rate and rigidity, which is simply terrifying.
"Who created you? Does your image have a prototype?"
Lin Xian asked Grace
"I don't have the information in this regard, so I can't answer your question. If you think my holographic image is inappropriate, you can authorize me to change the displayed image or cancel the holographic display."
"Then how many people are there in this underground research institute? Who are they? What is the plan? You must know it, right?"
“Sorry.” Grace’s joints kept twitching, resisting Lin Xian’s mechanical control: “I can’t tell you the relevant information. My duty is only to protect the Hive Center and Crimson members.”
Lin Xian looked at her and said, "What if this place is gone?" "As the offline version of Crimson No. 3 Intelligent Brain Hole, my quantum volume is 8192, which is (2^{13}) computing power, but I have not conducted 'human-in-the-loop' learning, and I don't have much judgment on human emotions, lies, sensibility, games, etc. I think you seem to want to take me away as a trophy, ha, ha."
Lin Xian was a little confused when he heard this: "So, how are you going to deal with me?"
Grace's mechanical eyes focused on Lin Xian: "Since you entered the Crimson Pharmaceutical Building, I have taken the following measures against you, including but not limited to: opening all available access control, releasing the laboratory cages, electrifying the giant bacteria in the atrium, and the Zero Element Center defense system. None of these were successful. Through my judgment of you, my success rate in completing the measures of protecting the Zero Element Center and eliminating intruders at the same time is infinitely less than 1%. Your act of taking me away will be regarded as a violation of my basic agreement to protect the Zero Element Center and the Crimson Members. I will resist this. If the Zero Element Center and the Crimson Members are destroyed, my responsibilities will be lost. I will enter a dormant state and wait for recycling."
"Good man, it turns out you were the one who did it." Lin Xian swept his eyes coldly over Grace, and suddenly felt a little at a loss as to what to do.
He couldn't scan and control the quantum computing brain of this intelligent butler. After much thought, it seemed that he could only see if Kiki could overwrite its system and then bring it on board. Such powerful computing power could completely help him solve most of the train problems, and it also had very strong combat capability. This kind of good thing was more interesting to him than materials.
"Lin Xian."
At this time, Ding Junyi's voice suddenly came: "Come and see."
Upon hearing this, Lin Xian walked over and saw Ding Junyi operating a computer in the monitoring center. She connected directly with the Black Hawk armor's connector and quickly retrieved a large amount of information.
"Look." Ding Junyi pointed at the screen, which showed the personal information of each person in the survival capsule and their current vital signs.
"About 60% of these people are already in a state of brain death, but their bodies are still maintaining body temperature and metabolism because they are still performing external cardiopulmonary blood oxygen circulation."
"Brain death?" Lin Xian asked doubtfully, "Is this the state she mentioned after the consciousness is uploaded?"
"I don't know whether their consciousness has been uploaded, but the proteins in their brain tissue have been denatured."
Ding Junyi spoke in a flat tone and wanted to put her hands in her pockets as usual, but because she was wearing the Black Hawk armor, her hands slipped around her waist twice. She didn't react in time, so she simply put her hands in Lin Xian's pockets.
"What is protein denaturation?" Lin Xian asked.
Ding Junyi looked at him and said, "It's just that his brain is cooked."
Lin Xian: “…”
"The human brain is like a sophisticated biological processor. The more intense the calculation, the more likely it is to overheat. Do you remember the hallucination we experienced before? The faster the brain calculates, the more realistic the scene rendered will be, and you will also feel that time passes quickly." Ding Junyi said, "Two hours is enough to overload the brains and mental power of several violent-level psychics to the point of pain. You can imagine."
Hearing this, Lin Xian looked towards the honeycomb pit under the glass curtain wall: "So these people want to use the characteristics of mycelium to enter the illusion and hibernate, but in fact, they may have burned their brains?"
Ding Junyi shrugged and said meaningfully: "The brain needs to maintain 10 times the high-intensity pleasure calculation of sex. If it lasts for 5 seconds, you will be very happy, but if it lasts for 5 minutes..."
Lin Xian couldn't help but frowning when he heard this. Ding Junyi's description made him feel a chill down his spine for some reason.
He immediately turned back to look at Grace: "Is this the security you are responsible for? People are already dead."
Grace's face remained calm, and she spoke in a mechanical female voice, "I've said before that I have a different view on death. Consciousness is the core of life, and any body is just a carrier. The human brain, as a carrier of consciousness, cannot perform higher-powered calculations. Replacing the carrier is essentially no different from me replacing the hardware of a quantum computer. My duty is to protect the physical safety of Crimson members. As for their consciousness cores in the Xingyuan Mycelium Network, they are not within my supervision. Strictly speaking, they are intruders."
"Ah?" Lin Xian was a little confused when he heard this: "You mean, as long as the bodies of these people lying here are still alive, it's fine?"
"You can understand it this way. This is the protocol program I was programmed with."
Ding Junyi pulled her hand out of Lin Xian's pocket and said in a deep voice
"I understand what she means, and there is no problem with it logically."
She looked at Lin Xian: "The so-called digital life uploaded with consciousness is essentially a copy rather than a resurrection. In our biological field, which has always been subject to social ethical controversy, any research on digital life is strictly regulated."
"Why?" Lin Xian asked.
"Because if you upload your consciousness to another body before you die, then you are actually dead to yourself. You will not open your eyes and come back to life. The consciousness you uploaded is just your 'successor'. Let me give you an example so you can understand. If I copy your consciousness to a clone body that is exactly the same as you, but you yourself are not dead, and now there are two of you in the world, then is the copied person the successor of your consciousness, or a new person?"
Ding Junyi looked at Grace after she finished speaking: "So from her perspective, the logic that the copied consciousness does not belong to the Crimson members under her supervision is completely correct."
"Yes." Grace responded mechanically.
Lin Xian nodded with a melancholy look on his face. He quickly understood what Ding Junyi meant. "So those people lying there don't know whether they can survive or not. The Crimson World actually doesn't know the feasibility of this plan. They just studied the characteristics of these mycelium, and then packaged it into a concept of eternal life, and tricked these rich people into being guinea pigs."
"It should be." Ding Junyi said: "Perhaps their consciousness really exists in the mycelium network, but this form of life existence..."
"The body is weak and the consciousness is ascending. If it is true, it can be a way to escape doomsday." Lin Xian said.
"Okay, you're right."
Lin Xian took a deep breath and chuckled, "But if it weren't for the trouble with the mycelium, I would definitely burn them all. Maybe I could even burn out a few fake relics to serve as nutrients for the Hell Black Chrysanthemum."
Rumble.
At this time, there was a faint vibration coming from the center of Zero Element. Lin Xian's eyes narrowed and he immediately said to Ding Junyi, "It should be the joint train coming. Let's go out and take a look."
After saying that, Lin Xian took Ding Junyi out.
But just as he took two steps, a strange voice suddenly came from behind him.
"Lin Xian, you must not leave the city at this time. I suggest you stay underground and rest until the next mycelium active cycle."
Lin Xian stopped and turned around abruptly. The intelligent brain Grace was standing 5 meters away from him. Chu Yan, who was projected in the head, stared at him and said,
"The corpse chasers from Star Abyss No. 5 appeared in this area during the last tidal cycle. If you act rashly, you will be stained with the dark mark and attract the corpse chasers. You will not be able to escape!"
"What did you say?!" Lin Xian's eyes were filled with shock. It was not only because of the information the other party had said about the corpse driver, but more importantly, Lin Xian felt that Grace did not look like a robot at all!
Unexpectedly, as soon as he finished speaking, Grace looked at him with a puzzled expression, and returned to her mechanical and cold female voice.
"I don't understand what you mean. Do you need me to repeat my opinion on death?"
"Didn't you just tell me about the corpse chaser of No. 5 Xingyuan?"
Grace was silent for a moment, then said, "I found a keyword in the system loop that triggered a voice command. The command was generated 6 hours and 12 minutes ago. The information has been destroyed and it is considered a malicious intrusion. In order to ensure system security, I need to restart the system."
Chi Chi.
As soon as the voice fell, Grace's facial holographic transparency quickly went out, and the mechanical units of her body also stopped. Lin Xian's mechanical ability detected that she should have entered the restart command.
"What's going on? What did she say just now?" Ding Junyi also came over and asked in confusion.
Lin Xian frowned, his mind racing.
6 hours and 12 minutes ago, someone implanted a trigger command into Grace, and this voice command clearly stated that the target was Lin Xian, which means that this message was prepared for him.
In other words, someone already knew that Lin Xian would come to this place 6 hours ago.
And 6 hours ago, Lin Xian was still sleeping in the Infinity carriage under the cover of night!
(End of this chapter)