Jiang Cheng asked: “What was all that stuff at the end? So messy. Why did you intervene personally?”
After the extreme cold ended, everything became exaggerated and the logic was weak.
That Zombie Emperor’s palace was simply ridiculous.
And letting people in the “world” realize the existence of a third-party supernatural force would itself affect the “world’s” authenticity.
The old butler looked innocent: “After the treatment was complete, several wake-up attempts failed. You were immersed too deeply and refused to wake. You’re different from them—your mental power source is deeply linked. Forcibly severing it might cause damage again, so we could only find a way to make you wake yourself.”
Jiang Cheng was very dissatisfied: “The later parts were too ugly.”
Jiang Cheng had very high aesthetic standards—you could tell from the male companions serving beside her.
Yet the palace was so garish, and the Zombie Emperor so ugly.
The old butler looked even more innocent: “I just wanted to make you feel detached and break immersion. You’ve clearly received strict training—you can perceive the real and virtual of a world. I made it like this, and you still refused to detach.”
Jiang Cheng paused, then defended herself: “Because the earlier parts were made very real.”
The old butler rested his hands on his belly: “Of course. For authenticity, we used a large-scale interactive consensus matrix of forty thousand people. Besides us, few could do it.”
The handsome men wiped the remaining nutrient fluid off Jiang Cheng with bath towels and supported her as she stood up.
Jiang Cheng reproached: “The Zombie Emperor was a huge failure.”
The old butler also felt regret: “Actually, I made a very good design. I originally designed to use people close to you as the Zombie Emperor. ‘Song Jingshuo,’ ‘Li Jiangbing,’ ‘Su Yu,’ ‘Zhao Yi,’ ‘Gao Yuxuan’—these five were the first choice. I was really torn about which to use. But when ‘Su Yu’ died, the Chirikov fissure value of the mental power source was monitored to be too high. To avoid causing you harm, I gave up on this design.”
Jiang Cheng: “…”
“A great design.” Jiang Cheng praised. “Next time, don’t design it.”
She extended a finger: “Also, ‘hesitation’ is a behavioral trait only we carbon-based humans have. You—a lump of quantum cloud—you don’t hesitate.”
Uncle Jiang smiled.
If you looked around behind him, you’d see the back of his head was a transparent dome, and inside the dome drifted a substance like mist and sunset clouds.
That was high-density microparticles from the depths of the universe. After activation, they became a quantum cloud.
From the moment of activation, he became life. But also a quantum computer.
But Uncle Jiang had worn this human-shaped shell since birth, so everyone still called him “Uncle Jiang.”
He actually had no gender. He was just a small lump of quantum cloud.
Among the Jita Republic’s three quantum computers, he was the smallest lump.
Uncle Jiang said: “Saying that is discriminating against my life rights. You know, the Other Life Rights Act was pushed through by your ancestor single-handedly.”
“My great-grandmother was quite a person.” Jiang Cheng sneered. “You must love her to death.”
Uncle Jiang: “We respect her. She was someone who respected life.”
Jiang Cheng sneered: “Respected so much that she handed the family business to a quantum computer.”
“Strictly speaking, we don’t hold ownership of the Jiang family assets.”
“Your ancestor pushed the Other Life Rights Act to confirm our existence as legal life forms, with legally recognized inheritance rights and all other rights.”
“But all the wealth still belongs to the family itself. She only granted us supervisory authority and appointment/dismissal authority.”
But this was exactly what Jiang Cheng feared most about them.
True, as a descendant of the Jiang family, she could become the conglomerate’s operations executor—the actual holder of power—precisely because the family’s mastermind had chosen her.
But equally, the appointment/dismissal authority held in the mastermind’s hands was a sword hanging over every executor’s head.
The mastermind had already dismissed two consecutive generations of executors.
Then selected and incubated her from the family embryo bank.
In the center of the room was a circular bath. White steam drifted on the warm water’s surface.
The young men removed Jiang Cheng’s nutrient-fluid-soaked clothes, revealing her beautiful body.
Compared to the Jiang Cheng in the virtual world, the real Jiang Cheng in the real world—though bearing the same face—was a super-optimal gene human with an SS+ gene rating. Her body was far taller and more muscular than the virtual body in the “world.”
The ratio of muscle to bone was simply perfect.
In fact, as a descendant of an ancestor who possessed high-gravity planet genes, her muscle and bone density were both very high. When living on an ordinary planet, she had to sleep on a gravity bed and undergo periodic multiple-gravity training to maintain bone density.
In short, her strength could knock down every man present.
In the virtual world, her strength had actually been data-suppressed, rather than giving her a “super strength” physical enhancement.
Soaking in the warm bath, Jiang Cheng’s body finally relaxed. The numbness caused by the liquid chamber gradually faded, and her body became limber again.
“Let’s talk business.” Jiang Cheng said. “First, how is my mental power source?”
Uncle Jiang said: “Recovery level one hundred percent.”
In the era of the ancestor who founded the Jiang Family Consortium, brainwave control technology had already been widely applied.
From small household appliances to large weapons and spacecraft.
But humanity hadn’t stopped there. After the war between the Human Race and the Beast Race ended, humanity obtained the Beast Race’s more advanced genetic technology and advanced by leaps and bounds on this path.
The human brain was further developed. From brainwaves to mental power took less than a hundred years.
Now, many important things required mental power imprints—like loans, like authorizations.
Like Jiang Cheng’s fund dispatches as the consortium’s operations executor.
This time, Jiang Cheng had been attacked. Her mental power source was damaged and required 120 hours of treatment.
During treatment, her brain had to be kept in an active state. The mental power source couldn’t close.
Like keeping someone hanging onto a breath.
The most common method was to connect the injured person’s brain to a virtual world.
Ordinary people in this situation all did it this way.
But Jiang Cheng wasn’t ordinary.
Just as “Song Jingshuo” in the virtual world had said, she really was a born capitalist.
She’d been selected from the family embryo bank to be incubated specifically to become the family’s new generation leader.
She’d received strict anti-virtual training since childhood, specifically to prevent being deceived into authorizing things if kidnapped and forcibly connected to a virtual world.
An ordinary virtual world—she could see through it in half a minute, and quickly enter her trained stress response state.
In normal times, this could effectively protect against property theft and authorization abuse. But when the mental power source was damaged, it made treatment troublesome.
She had to be given a very realistic “world.”
Of course, for the Jiang family, this was no difficult matter.
The Jiang family’s medical group routinely kept two hundred thousand people undergoing drug trials and mental trials. They were drug testers, commonly called “medicine people.”
The family mastermind, after calculation, mobilized forty thousand medicine people to build Jiang Cheng a very realistic large-scale interactive consensus matrix, to ensure Jiang Cheng wouldn’t see through it, wouldn’t stress.
Before closing the liquid chamber and entering the matrix, Jiang Cheng had demanded: “Don’t make it too boring.”
Uncle Jiang said: “I promise.”
Jiang Cheng: “And don’t make it too easy.”
Uncle Jiang: “I’ll monitor the whole time. I’ll definitely increase the difficulty for you.”
So, afterward, the difficulty was increased twice.
Jiang Cheng: “What about the Tanaka family?”
Uncle Jiang: “Tanaka Shinha, who led this attack, has already died ‘accidentally.’ The Tanaka family has accepted the settlement and decided not to interfere in this congressional election.”
Jiang Cheng sneered: “They got off easy.”
Uncle Jiang sighed: “If your ancestor knew the two families had come to this point, she would be very regretful.”
Jiang Cheng: “I hope you two can update your database. I know time is meaningless to you quantum clouds, but according to the ancient Earth clan culture my great-grandmother excavated, she is my heavenly ancestor. I am already her sixth-generation descendant.”
“Such a long time still means a lot to us carbon-based humans.”
“The friendship of two old ancestors—don’t expect us distant descendants to inherit it. What humans can inherit is only wealth and power.”
The consortium originally hadn’t belonged solely to the Jiang family. The earliest venture had two founders and one investor.
The two old ancestors of the Jiang and Tanaka families were the two founders. The two were said to have been very good friends and business partners.
But as Jiang Cheng said, friendship couldn’t be inherited.
Six generations later, the two families had become bitter enemies over conflicts of interest.
“Alright, anything else to report to me?” Jiang Cheng asked.
Uncle Jiang reported to Jiang Cheng the official business accumulated over these 120 hours.
He was the butler, the supervisor, the protector, and also Jiang Cheng’s personal computer, assisting Jiang Cheng in handling various affairs.
Light screens unfolded before Jiang Cheng. She handled them one by one.
Mental power operated smoothly, easily stamping imprints, approving authorizations.
The treatment’s effects were very good.
Finishing the official business, Jiang Cheng said: “Arrange it. I want to see the mastermind.”
Uncle Jiang: “Okay.”
Uncle Jiang made the gesture of “turning to leave but suddenly remembering”—he always liked imitating these carbon-based human behavioral traits. He said: “By the way, the forty thousand people who participated in the consensus matrix—should their memories be blocked?”
Jiang Cheng deeply hated Uncle Jiang digging pits for her.
Because this kind of high-realistic large-scale interactive virtual world had too great an impact on human brains and was explicitly prohibited by law.
In other words, this thing was illegal. The normal handling procedure was to directly block the participants’ memories without even asking Jiang Cheng.
Then those participants, after waking up and leaving the liquid chambers, wouldn’t remember anything from the “world” at all.
To them, it was just participating in a drug trial for the Jiang Family Consortium’s medical group. The trial ended, they took their pay and left.
But Uncle Jiang had specifically asked Jiang Cheng—the intent was clear and obvious.
How much private agenda he and the mastermind had smuggled into the virtual world while taking this opportunity—both they and she knew perfectly well.
They were the world’s most powerful quantum computers, true. But she was also an SS+ excellent gene.
Nobody was a fool.
She said coldly: “How about erasing my memory of this segment first.”
Then he and the mastermind would have wasted their effort for nothing.
Uncle Jiang laughed awkwardly, but didn’t mention how it would actually be handled.
The men rinsed her body, applied fragrant shower gel, massaged.
Jiang Cheng stared intently through the dense steam.
If blocked, everyone would forget everything that happened in the “world.”
Just thinking about it made her angry.
“If we don’t block it, what impact does it have on us?” She asked.
Uncle Jiang: “Probably some will try to extort, or some will report it, or sue us demanding mental compensation.”
Jiang Cheng: “Then let them sue. Our legal team isn’t kept around to eat free rice. Reporting is nothing but paying a fine—just pay it.”
Uncle Jiang acknowledged the order.
But Jiang Cheng called him back again: “Don’t block it, but weaken it a bit.”
Her memories of the “world” had actually already been weakened when she woke up just now, so she wouldn’t confuse the virtual world with the real world, wouldn’t be overly affected in real life.
Uncle Jiang again acknowledged the order and prepared to leave.
A male companion leaned in to kiss Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng was a generous patron. The male companions tried hard to please and ingratiate themselves with her.
As for love, they wouldn’t even dream of it. This kind of cold-blooded capitalist simply wouldn’t have such a thing.
The kiss suddenly made Jiang Cheng remember something. She pushed away the handsome man and called Uncle Jiang back once more: “What’s the deal with that cat? Did you arrange it?”
“Moli?” Uncle Jiang said. “No, he was a calculation error.”
Jiang Cheng looked at him coldly.
Uncle Jiang said: “Even a quantum computer can have calculation errors. It has to do with how the rules are set.”
What kind of persona each participant would have after their consciousness connected was generated through coordination between the system and that participant’s subjective consciousness.
Only results generated this way would be accepted by the participant’s subconscious, and the participant would acknowledge the “world” as real, not realizing the whole world was fake.
Otherwise, if the persona the system assigned deviated too much from the participant’s subjective will, that participant would easily develop a feeling of “like dreaming,” “unreal.”
The key to a consensus matrix was “consensus.”
Every person influenced each other. One person’s sense of unreality would affect others, like an infectious disease.
Only when the majority of the matrix’s elements believed the world was real could the world’s sense of reality be guaranteed.
When the elements who realized “the world is fake” became numerous enough in the matrix, the matrix would collapse.
“That beast-person, he didn’t want to be human.” Uncle Jiang said. “So when the initial persona was generated, he became a cat.”
Who could have predicted that a participant would have such a strong “don’t want to be human”?
In fact, the moment Jiang Cheng suddenly awakened as a transmigrator was the moment the virtual world began running.
There was no transmigration. Even the identity of “transmigrator” was a persona the system had crafted for Jiang Cheng.
But he ultimately wasn’t a real cat.
Though his surface consciousness manifested as a cat, his subconscious still knew he was human. Therefore he could barely communicate with Jiang Cheng through telepathy.
He was actually, among all the participants, the first to interact with Jiang Cheng.
Because of Jiang Cheng, he wanted to be human again.
Every time the sky turned purple, behind the clouds were rolling data streams adjusting the world’s data.
The first time, granting a portion of people the “zombie” attribute.
The second time, on the basis of the first, granting a portion of people the “superpower” attribute.
In the second data adjustment, he “consensed” himself into a data-error black cat, further upgraded. As a cat’s surface consciousness couldn’t suppress the human subconscious, his communication with Jiang Cheng became fluent.
Simply put, the “cat” acquired human intelligence.
The third time, this fellow pushed his luck.
He wanted to be human.
A participant wanting to “be human” in the virtual world—to the system, this logic had no error whatsoever.
Because he was human to begin with.
The system approved it.
Thus, Moli once again possessed human form.
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