Waking up from the sudden dizziness, what appeared in Jiang Zhou's sight was still the unfamiliar ceiling.
Well, and both sides.
What "Theseus" saw before his eyes was a broken ceiling covered with lightning-like cracks, and a few pieces of it collapsed, revealing the dreamy purple starry sky outside.
In front of Liao Qi's eyes, there were circles of dirty yellow stains on the ceiling due to water seepage on the floor, and the air was filled with a faint smell of disinfectant.
What happened?
Jiang Zhou, who felt a splitting headache, raised his hand and pressed it on his forehead.
He recalled carefully what had happened.
In his memory, the countdown in the sky of Limbo ended, and he was about to carry out the first abyss darknet dive and salvage with 136, Chinatsu Sakura and others. Their avatars were compressed into data packets and sent together to the deep dive interface and through the Styx Firewall.
Without the external perception provided by the avatar, they should all become deaf, blind and mute on the Internet. However, for some reason, Jiang Zhou was still able to maintain a certain degree of vague feelings about the outside world.
He felt a wall that was difficult to describe in words - if the end of the universe was a wall, this would be how it felt.
Then, he was lifted up by something, and with a whistling sound, he passed through a flaw in the wall and reached the other side.
The other shore is a boundless and infinite abyss, and everything has no end. Just taking one look at Jiang Zhou, he felt as if his consciousness was melting into it.
And at that moment when self-awareness was weak, an indescribably huge shadow slowly emerged from the extremely deep abyss.
The shadow stretched out tens of thousands of incomparable tentacles, connecting to the wall in the sky. The wall that originally seemed unshakable until the heat death of the universe suddenly appeared with countless spiderweb-like lines...
Then, whether it was an illusion or not, he felt that the shadow "noticed" him.
Almost all the tentacles stopped their movements, and only one of the thickest tentacles slowly rolled towards him at a speed that was ten thousand times softer than when it hit the wall previously...
And his consciousness was interrupted before the tentacle touched him.
What exactly is that?
Jiang Zhou thought.
Is that the malicious program that 136 and others mentioned before, wandering in the abyss and dark web?
Is it possible that they want to seize the technological blueprint or transformation authority in the hands of this kind of thing?
besides……
"Where is this again?"
Jiang Zhou muttered to himself as he covered his head, which was still throbbing in pain.
"Haven't you been to the infirmary at Chiron House before?"
A familiar voice answered the question from Liao Qi's mouth.
He raised his head, and the person speaking was Booker who had just opened the door and walked in.
"Why would I..."
Before Jiang Zhou could finish his question, a kid with a tiger head and a tiger brain came out from behind Booker and pounced directly on him.
"Brother Liao! You're awake!"
The conditioned reflex brought about by the hand-to-hand combat tactics memory made Jiang Zhou sit up from the bed like a spring and hugged the child like lightning.
Then he almost gouged out the other person's eyeballs smoothly... Fortunately, he realized who the other person was, and in the end he just lightly patted the other person's face with his extended hand.
"Little shrimp tiger, please pay attention to the occasion! Damn... I'm still in the hospital bed, and you just pounce on me like this."
Jiang Zhou said helplessly.
Xia Hu, nicknamed Xihu, is one of the dozens of orphans of his comrades who were adopted by Chiron House.
Among children of the same age, he has a troublesome personality like the king of children, but for some reason he is particularly attached to Liao Qi. Every time he came to work as a volunteer, he would always bring a large group of people to pester him and ask him to tell more stories about the conflicts between the lower-level gangs in the resettlement area.
"But didn't Brother Liao still catch me? This minor illness is simple for you."
After being lightly slapped a few times, the child showed no unpleasant emotions at all, but giggled and said to Liao Qi.
Then he jumped down from the hospital bed, covered his chest, bent over and raised his head, and said in a heavy tone:
"Oh, it's just a serious injury..."
"A line from the animated Falcon Man?"
Jiang Zhou asked thoughtfully as he looked at the other party's movements.
"Yes, yes! Brother Liao, you have seen it too!"
the boy replied excitedly.
"Xia Hu, you haven't finished your general education class today! Why did you slip here!"
Before the child could say anything more, the door to the health room was pushed open again, and a middle-aged woman with a frown on her face walked in with a ruler. Xia Hu saw her and tried to sneak out from behind Booker at the door, but was grabbed by the arm.
"Still want to run? Today I will punish you to do another set of data architecture exercises!"
After speaking, she raised her head, looked at Booker and smiled:
"Mr. Booker came to see the children today too."
The latter nodded and replied:
"I'm here to do some errands."
The woman's expression suddenly became serious, and she lowered her voice and said:
"Then, I will pay attention to the children's schedule today."
"Sorry to trouble you, Aunt Huo."
"If anything, it's us. I really want to thank you for taking care of me... Hey, why are you here and why are you here?"
The person in charge of the orphanage, who was called Aunt Huo, turned to look at Jiang Zhou, and her tone suddenly changed.
Before Jiang Zhou could answer, she lowered her head and looked at Xia Hu, who was being dragged by her, and said:
"Very good, today I will add a set of data architecture exercises and non-Euclidean structure modeling practice. I haven't finished it yet, and I will only have coccus porridge for dinner tonight."
The expression on Xia Hu's face froze instantly.
Ignoring the child's "Why?", Aunt Huo looked at Liao Qi on the hospital bed again:
"Stop talking about those things at the bottom of the resettlement area to teach bad children. I have already said..."
"Aunt Huo, you misunderstood."
Booker quickly smoothed things over and said:
"Liao Qi, like me, is here to do business. The reason why he is lying here is because he suffered some head injuries due to some things before and just fainted. It was because I met a little shrimp tiger on the road before, by the way I brought him here, I'm sorry..."
"Oh oh..."
Aunt Huo nodded, then turned to Liao Qi, her expression softened:
"Then you should have a good rest first. I will ask if Dr. Liu is here later."
Seeing Aunt Huo disappearing around the corner of the corridor dragging Xia Hu, who was rolling around all the way, Jiang Zhou let out a long sigh.
"What? Do you have any emotions?"
Booker asked jokingly.
"I feel like dealing with Aunt Huo is more stressful than dealing with those street mercenaries."
Jiang Zhou answered by pressing his forehead. Then he looked at Booker and asked:
"How did I faint?"
"I don't know. When I went to the prosthetist to have the brain fillers and artificial leather replaced, nothing happened. But when I arrived at the door of Chiron House, you suddenly fell hard on your back. Give me Terrified."
Are you okay now?
Booker asked.
Jiang Zhou shook his head and immediately rolled down from the bed.
"Maybe it was because I had experienced too many things before, and I was a little mentally tired. When I came to a place where my subconscious felt safe, I just relaxed and passed out."
Jiang Zhou gave a random reason.
Immediately, he put on the coat on the side and walked to Booker, looking a little anxious.
"Without further ado, let's restart that universal printer."
…………
So is this the Abyss Dark Web of Depth 2?
Jiang Zhou looked around.
The deep purple sky was broken, as if some huge thing had cruised by before, splitting the rotating star from the middle, and smashed it into countless fragments.
There are ruins all around - not the kind of ruins that once prospered but were eroded by war, natural disasters or time, but an entire city that rose from the ground and the pause button was pressed in the middle of construction. Only half-finished buildings are left.
And in this half-finished city, Jiang Zhou was alone.
I am separated from 136 and others... No, I don't know if those people are still alive now.
From the communication device he carried, only hissing and chaotic signals could be heard, and occasionally some creepy roaring sounds could be heard.
Taking out the self-sensing climbing equipment through the mandala, Jiang Zhou climbed up to the tallest building nearby: a shaky iron tower that seemed to have been gnawed by countless giant beasts.
He stood at the commanding heights of the tower and saw the city as if the pause button had been pressed.
This entire city seems to be extending infinitely into the distance, never ending, never ending.
What to do next? Where to go?
Jiang Zhou thought.
For some reason, on the platform at the top of this iron tower, there is an exaggerated carved chair - it looks out of place with the surrounding environment, but it gives people a wonderful sense of modern art.
It’s probably the same feeling as when you’re in a store where you’re buying car repair parts and you see donuts being sold in a display case.
Although the substitute didn't really feel tired, Jiang Zhou still sat on it.
In any case, it was too dangerous for a stand-in like him with a combat power of only 9 to run around in a place where malicious programs were roaming everywhere.
It's better to first observe the situation nearby from the commanding heights, and then make plans.
Maybe I can contact 136 them.
Jiang Zhou thought to himself while sitting on a chair overlooking the entire city.
…………
So is this the "universal printer" called a "miracle"?
Booker led the way and brought Jiang Zhou to the secret room under the Chiron House.
He finally got a glimpse of what a multi-purpose printer really looked like.
As he has described in various materials on the World Wide Web in the past, it is a pure, dark, perfect cube floating in mid-air, slowly rotating.
The length, width and height are each 0.77 meters.
"We have done experiments in the past and irradiated it with 100,000 lumens of strong light. As a result, the surface of this thing is like a black hole, without any reflection... Even under that kind of strong light, it did not cause any temperature changes. It’s still cold to the touch.”
The person who controls the multi-function printer is a young man named Winston. He wears a pair of glasses that look like a fly's compound eyes, has messy hair, and is even more unkempt than Jiang Zhou a hundred years ago.
In Liao Qi's memory, this person seemed to be a researcher in the scientific research department of a certain super enterprise. He was fired for taking the blame for his boss and almost lost his life. By chance, he happened upon former team leader Coret passing by by chance and casually saved him. He then stayed with Icarus and became a technician for the organization.
Winston said as he turned on the lights in this underground secret room.
The room was as bright as day in the light, but the cube was still pitch black - as if it were a piece of modeling that had not been loaded.
Winston walked to the console aside and continued while debugging something:
"Brother Liao, I don't know if you have read Clark's novel. This multi-purpose printer is just like the description in the book. When it is not started, no matter how precise the equipment is used to measure, it will always be perfect 1:1: 1 ratio, at least accurate to the atomic scale.
"Of course, this does not mean that it has the so-called atomic structure... It has been almost a hundred years, and no one has figured out what this thing is made of. A restrained field? A stationary photon. ?High-dimensional projection? God knows what it is..."
In the corner of the room, several drill-like things were spinning, and they aimed their tips at the perfect cube.
"But we only know that compared with the super artificial intelligence that can mass-produce this thing, our intelligence is as ridiculous as a paramecium. And that god-like 'Janus' was killed by us paramecia a hundred years ago. Chong Lue Shi was killed by his little plan."
Looking up from the console, Winston looked at Jiang Zhou and smiled sarcastically.
"That's fucking bullshit, right?"
"Uh...what are these things for?"
Jiang Zhou, who didn't want to dwell too much on this issue, pointed to the "drills" around him and asked.
"Energy supply devices, these four are igniters removed from the fusion reactor."
Winston lowered his head and kept tapping something on the touch screen.
"What did it come off of?"
Jiang Zhou suddenly felt outrageous.
"We need to provide the energy required by the multi-purpose printer, or at least the startup energy needs to be provided by us. If we meet this power consumption by connecting to the power grid, then the resettlement area government will find out through the data of the Fusion Bureau that negative two An orphanage with less than 300 people consumes enough energy every month to send each of them to the moon for tourism."
Winston explained patiently:
"So we generate our own electricity."
"You mean there is a small fusion furnace here?"
Regarding Jiang Zhou's question, the other party shook his head.
"It's a small fission furnace. We use the energy of the fission furnace to power the igniter of the fusion furnace to activate the multi-purpose printer."
Jiang Zhou turned his head and looked at Booker, who had been silent.
"In other words, the entire orphanage is built on a fission reactor?
"Am I crazy, or are you crazy?"
In response, Booker slowly said:
"In fact, the reactor was built later...but that's not the point. The point is that it was a helpless move. In fact, it has not been discovered here until now, which shows that this method is very effective and safe."
Now that it is almost certain that there is a traitor in the organization, is it still safe?
Jiang Zhou thought.
But if the traitor was really Booker, this place should have been raided by the company's disciplinary force long ago.
Or is he just using the power of the company to get rid of other senior leaders of the organization, and does not want to destroy the entire organization?
"Brother Liao, I know you have a good relationship with those children and you will be worried about this. But this is really a helpless move. In fact, the leader of the team, Corruit, has been asking on the black market if there is any finished product or technology blueprint of the ultimate energy storage device to buy. .I want to use that thing to replace the fission reactor for energy supply and move the printer to other bases.
"But you can't buy that thing. This kind of civilian equipment at depth 2 is so useless that you can't sell it for a few bucks. And those abyss wanderers are so good at business that they won't risk their lives to dive down. Salvage this thing out."
Winston came up to comfort him.
Jiang Zhou's heart trembled.
Other abyss wanderers will not salvage this kind of technological blueprint, but what about you?
I am still wandering in depth 2.
Seeing the change in the expression on Liao Qi's face, Winston probably felt that he had figured it out, so he walked back and readjusted the equipment.
After a while, he raised his head and gave them an "OK" gesture.
Jiang Zhou inserted the silver-white memory into the slot on his neck.
Booker on the side walked over with two data cables for the brain-computer interface - the other end of the cable was submerged in the universal printer.
Jiang Zhou was stunned for a moment.
Why two?
"The memory contains the last images left by Team Leader Corrett, the kind that will burn after reading. I want to witness it with you, and also to guarantee each other that the final content is true and valid."
Booker replied.
Jiang Zhou thought for a while, and it seemed that there was indeed something similar. It was called "last words" in the organization. So he couldn't find any reason to refute, so he had to lie down on the recliner nearby and plug the data cable into the brain-computer interface on the back of his head.
A line of text immediately appeared in his sight:
[Please imagine your mandala to complete identity verification]
Imagine Liao Qi’s mandala…
Jiang Zhou reconstructed the unique pattern in his mind.
A broken toy.
In the superhero cartoon "Falcon Man", a superhero battles wits with the greedy businessman Boss Crocodile and his vicious men.
Born in a dirty street, but has a sincere heart.
It was a limited edition crystal figure of Falcon Man.
A pair of calloused hands picked it up and smashed it to the ground, shattering it into pieces. This was the most impressive scene for Liao Qi, so he chose this as his mandala.
Now, imagine a broken toy…
[Verification completed]
As this line of text appeared, Jiang Zhou felt that Liao Qi's body was slowly sinking and falling.
Finally fell into the network.
…………
There's something going on.
Sitting on a high tower overlooking the dilapidated city, Jiang Zhou felt a star twinkling in the sky.
Yes, not seeing it, but feeling it.
It was as if the star was a part of his body, connected with flesh and blood.
He raised his head and stared carefully.
Not just one, but two flickered.
One is bright and one is dim.
The one connected to my own feelings is the dim one.
"How is this going……"
Jiang Zhou murmured, without sitting up, but casually reaching out to the stars in the sky.
Then, the dim star turned into a shooting star and quickly fell towards him.
Not only the dim star, but also another bright star seemed to be pulled by the former, and also turned into a shooting star and fell towards him.
"ah?"
Jiang Zhou and the dim meteor saw each other in sight at the same time.
…………
After regaining consciousness again, Booker found himself on a dilapidated iron tower.
Surrounded by a city with no end in sight, even though there are countless broken walls and ruins, it doesn't give people the feeling of lamenting the passage of time.
Probably because those buildings looked like unfinished buildings that were half-finished and then stopped.
It's as if the city's builders stopped all this simply because they lost interest, and one can't help but feel a chilling sense of absurdity.
A pool of purple stars seemed to have been split open by a giant sword in the sky.
Countless fragments overflowed and splashed outside the boundless space.
It looked as if a scar had been opened in the sky by the gods, and blood composed of thousands of stars was flowing.
And reflected in this trace in the sky, reflected in this purple star, there is a person.
Perhaps, it would be more appropriate to call it "existence".
A human figure composed of countless broken color blocks sat on a huge, simple and complicated seat.
Although the other party did not have the eyes that Booker recognized, he still felt that the other party was watching them quietly.
Yes, they.
Liao Qi also came to this strange space with him.
At this moment, he, like himself, widened his eyes and looked up in disbelief at the god-like existence under the broken star.
What's going on? Have you been hacked?
But I am obviously connected to a universal printer. What kind of existence can hack a TM universal printer? !
Are you kidding me about the abyss and dark web?
Booker didn't even dare to move.
The existence that can hack the multi-purpose printer and bring them here can kill them without even a glance.
I can only wait...
After a few seconds, the being finally spoke.
"Good evening……"
