Chapter 291 — Theft

"Otherworld Drifter": nature unknown, purpose unknown, life-form unknown—an utterly mysterious and unidentified entity. It is conjectured to possess such peculiar abilities as world-crossing, resurrection, and the inhabiting of corporeal shells, though none of this has yet been confirmed.

According to the intelligence presently in our possession, there exist multiple individuals of the Otherworld Drifters; yet within any single given time, only one individual will enter a particular material world.

The aims and behavioral patterns of the Otherworld Drifters are difficult to comprehend. At times they will save a world; at other times they will do the exact opposite. In nearly all cases, however, they display formidable power and capacity for growth. They are all but destined to influence the trajectory of a world's development, even to utterly transform the course of that development—yet the reason they do so remains difficult to determine.

The mental structure of the Otherworld Drifters is unknown. We cannot ascertain whether they possess emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight after the manner of humans, nor whether they experience emotional fluctuations in the course of crossing worlds and saving or destroying them. From the intelligence already gathered, however, it may be inferred that they at least possess the capacity to "simulate" such emotional responses, and thereby to conceal themselves completely within a crowd.

In view of the aforesaid abilities, and their capacity to lurk within human shells, it is all but impossible for anyone confronting an Otherworld Drifter to see through the disguise by the naked eye, by psychological analysis, or by any such means...

We have now determined with certainty that the resurrected Duke Gaoyang Cecil is an "Otherworld Drifter" who has occupied a human shell. In view of the peculiar nature of the Otherworld Drifters, however, all persons are for the present forbidden to make rash contact with him; he is nonetheless to be kept under long-term observation...

It is recommended that brethren of the Church, in those unavoidable circumstances in which they come into contact with the target, adopt the following measures to ensure their own safety...

Gaoyang felt that he had rarely been in such a state of utter bewilderment since he first crossed over. The last time he had been this bewildered was when he had crawled out of a coffin, with a great-great-granddaughter of plus-one generation standing beside him who had just given him a whack with a stick...

"What sort of nonsense is this..." Gaoyang stared at the intelligence openly published in the Psychic Net, and it took his mind quite some time to finally match it up with that mashup montage he had left for the cultists last time. "So this is the brain-supplementing that comes of a different worldview..."

After a brief spell of astonishment, however, he had to admit that this turn of events was in fact entirely reasonable.

In this world, he was the only one who had been brainwashed by the information explosion. An Earth transmigrator, upon seeing such bizarre scenes, would think of Hollywood, of theatrical stage shows, of prank programs—but what would a local with a normal set of values think upon seeing such things?

Naturally, they would fill in the blanks according to their own worldview. And what was more, the Evernight Slumberers were a pack of cultists—was there any creature in the world better at deceiving itself through brain-supplementing than a cultist?

Well, yes, there was—the Twenty-Fifth Production and Construction Brigade, established just the other day, for instance...

"This is fine too... the effect has actually turned out better than expected," Gaoyang said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, as he closed that portion of the information, though he felt somewhat consoled at heart. "This way, I shouldn't have to worry about the Evernight Slumberers for a while."

Thereupon he released his mind and began to search more broadly for information within the Psychic Net.

Unlike the last time he had entered this world, the Evernight Slumberers had this time plainly opened the dream world only after thorough preparation. This was no longer a "trial-run" space, but one of far higher completeness. Gaoyang discovered this after only a slight search of the surface layers of the Psychic Net.

A vast quantity of information circulated through the Psychic Net; in those places invisible to the naked eye, an exchange of data enormous to the point of astonishment was ceaselessly underway. Many unencrypted things were being computed and evolved within this network; new nodes joined at every moment, and at every moment nodes were deregistered and departed from the network.

If the dream world he had seen last time was merely an internally running "test server," running only a handful of lines of test code, then this network had now entered the stage of formal use—the Evernight Slumberers had begun to employ it to process genuine instances.

Of course, this "magic network," founded upon psychomantic arts, was a thing utterly distinct from the World Wide Web that Gaoyang knew; the data circulating within it, whether in structure or in principle, were likewise entirely new. Be that as it may, it was a fact that this network had entered into a working state.

It was only that Gaoyang could not discern much from those immense data exchanges. Though he held authority, and though that data was unencrypted, the sheer vastness and chaotic disorder of the data were themselves the finest encryption. Just as humans could not directly discern a computer bitmap from a heap of zeros and ones, so too could Gaoyang not tell what on earth was being churned out behind those immense computations—likely only the originators of those computations themselves could "see" what the results looked like.

But that did not matter. Gaoyang had never intended to see through all the secrets of the Evernight Slumberers in this manner; he was merely searching in the process for the data access points, and for an understanding of the patterns governing these data exchanges.

It seemed... something could be done here?

After a little preparation, he shifted himself from the surface layer of the network down to the data-exchange layer, and then sank wholly into it.

His senses were turned upside down in an instant, only to be reassembled the next. When the scene before his eyes had settled somewhat, he found that his surroundings had completely changed.

He stood upon a flat, broad expanse of water that yet rippled with faint, ceaseless waves. This water was immeasurably vast, stretching without bound; above it was a deep blue sky, bright and clear, though no celestial source of light could be seen within it.

He lowered his head and saw that the water beneath his feet was like a layer of transparent glass. Beneath that surface lay a world of whirling, dancing sand, where countless minute things surged, recombined, perished, and were reborn in the space below the water. It was as though an unending storm raged there, a storm ready at any moment to tear to shreds whoever strayed into it.

"...So that is the underlying data environment of the Psychic Net... a fine mess it is..."

Gaoyang knitted his brows and muttered to himself, then raised his head and set his gaze upon that boundless expanse of water.

What lay before his eyes was not a true scene (though, of course, in this mental world, no scene was true either), but a "virtual environment" that Gaoyang had constructed in his own mind using the knowledge he had devoured. This environment resembled the imagined space that the Changming cultist had created when he had dragged Gaoyang into the dream—though, of course, this place was for the moment still a blank, for it had only just been created by Gaoyang.