Chapter 1060 — Breaking the Limit

The "synthetic brains" that Bei Yila had produced... To be honest, even Gao Yang himself had been startled the first time he saw the things. After all, they had a strong whiff of the Church of the End of All Things about them—in both principle and appearance they were uncannily sinister, so much so that if one of them ever drifted onto a battlefield, both sides would readily assume it had been sent by the enemy...

Yet once he had grown used to the "style" of the synthetic brains, Gao Yang quickly began to consider their practical value.

Dark flesh-regeneration arts could also be used to heal the wounded; horrific nightmare spells could also be used to build neural networks. Technology has no inherent good or evil, and still less should one judge good and evil by its "style." Since Bei Yila had succeeded in creating something safe and reliable, it was worth considering whether it had a place in the present-day Cecil industrial system—and clearly, it did.

After carefully analyzing the nature of the "synthetic brain," Gao Yang soon discovered this: the technology could fill the largest remaining gap in Cecil's arcanotechnical tree—the fields of automation and intelligence.

In these fields Gao Yang had never found a breakthrough. He knew what earth-shaking changes automation and intelligence could bring to an industrial society, and he knew they would be indispensable to the future development of arcanotechnical industry; yet neither he himself nor the scholars of the Department of Magical Energy Technology had the faintest idea how to proceed.

The technicians had once considered the traditional mages' golems or tower-spirit technology, but that was even more of a black box than the early message spells had been, fiendishly difficult to crack, and the relevant projects had made no progress whatsoever to this day. What no one had expected was that the breakthrough would come from an entirely different direction—wetware mainframes.

Regarding those inconceivable "synthetic brains," Gao Yang's mind teemed with thrilling ideas. In his conception, the applications of those brains went far beyond controlling machines and directing factories.

His thinking was in fact quite simple: having accepted the wondrous style of those synthetic brains, he felt their essence was not so very different from the computers of Earth. True, the material basis of a "brain" was organic, but that did not mean it was more dangerous than a silicon-based chip. To assume broadly that data devices built from biomass must be more prone to running out of control than "chips" was a transmigrator's mental habit—and the Gao Yang of today could easily keep such habitual thinking in check.

Of course, getting ordinary people to accept those artificially synthesized "brains" was another difficulty, though perhaps not as hard as one might imagine: this was a world with supernatural forces, and the general public's capacity to accept certain things was likely greater than Gao Yang's own. In a sense, the "synthetic brains" from the Solin region were, to the common folk, on the same order as those water pumps that could draw water by themselves. Since they had already accepted the common knowledge that "there are no little devils inside machines" and "mana-net devices do not devour souls," they would likewise understand that the wetware mainframes in the factories were merely a part of the machinery.

Gao Yang shook his head and pulled his somewhat wandering thoughts back. He looked at Virodai, unable to keep a look of curiosity from showing: "I hear you've been shut away in the Defiance Laboratory lately, keeping company with those War God remains. Have you made some new discovery?"

"No new discoveries, actually," Virodai said with a gentle smile, shaking his head slightly. "It's just that I've been pondering a question lately..."

"Pondering a question?" Gao Yang raised an eyebrow. "In what area?"

"Do you recall how Amon once described the concept of the 'deep sea' to you?" Virodai said softly. "The deep sea is the cornerstone and foundation of the entire world. All tendencies of all things are reflected in the deep sea, interacting with and mapping onto the world's foundational rules... The activity of mortal thought-currents within the deep sea ultimately gave rise to the gods. But before the gods were born—even before mortals began to think—this 'tendentiousness' belonging to the gods had in fact long existed."

Gao Yang lifted his brow and looked into Virodai's eyes. "You mean..."

"We destroyed a god. The War God's true body was annihilated on the Winterhold battlefield. But if Amon's theory holds, what we destroyed was... in truth only a very insignificant projection within this 'deep sea'—a projection that was merely the small portion interacting with the mortal thought-currents of our season... Is the true 'War God' still slumbering in the deep sea? Or even... has He never been aware of our actions at all?"

"Perhaps so. But for us, the shackles of the War God have truly been released," Gao Yang said. "Reports are coming in from all over, and at least from the information channels available to us, the War God's influence has vanished both within and beyond the Empire's borders, among elves, dwarves, and every other race. The corresponding mental brands no longer exist. Perhaps, after paying such a price, we truly only destroyed 'our god'—but what of it? Mortals can only think about what they can comprehend, and things that cannot be comprehended, cannot be touched, cannot be proven and cannot be disproven—for us, they simply do not exist."

"Things that cannot be touched or comprehended are, to mortals, equivalent to nonexistence? That is indeed a profound and yet wise insight," Virodai said with some feeling, and sighed. "Everything is just as you say... And I have merely suddenly realized how insignificant I am, as a 'mortal.'"

Gao Yang laughed and was about to say something more, but just as he opened his mouth, a tremendous noise—as if some extremely heavy sphere were crashing wildly down the corridor—came suddenly from beyond the door. It was followed by a "bang," and the study door was shoved open from outside with great force. Tyr appeared in the doorway, his entire lower body coiled into a gigantic snake-ball; no sooner had he entered than he glared and bellowed: "Dead, dead, dead! Some damn thing rammed me and I died just like that! I say, this is supposed to be the imperial capital—do you people even believe in the rule of law anymore?!"

The spectacular entrance of this deep-sea saltwater creature startled both Gao Yang and Virodai so badly that for a moment neither reacted. Only when Tyr had shouted a second time did Gao Yang come to his senses, and he stared at the sea-monster rolling about the study in utter bewilderment: "Explain yourself clearly. How did you die? Who rammed you?"

Tyr struggled to untangle his knotted tails while shouting: "How should I know! I just took advantage of the slightly warmer weather to go sleep by the river, and while I was sleeping I heard a huge bang, and then I was dead and back here! I tell you, in that instant I even felt like something had rammed me straight into the elemental plane..."

"You..." Gao Yang opened his mouth, but before he managed a single word, the mana-net terminal beside the desk suddenly began to buzz urgently, accompanied by a conspicuous red flash—the signal for an emergency communication. Gao Yang instinctively connected the terminal first, and the next second the image of Suo Jilin appeared above it, along with his urgent voice:

"Someone just observed a huge flash and a tremendous noise near Test Site No. 1 on the south bank of the Whitewater River. There's an anomaly in the low-altitude area there now—something may have happened at Rebecca's laboratory."