"It's amazing," Jules said. There was sincere approval in her tone, and she seemed to be asking a question, but Ji Xun was contemplating other questions and did not respond to her words. Juul had to repeat: "The invention of this device is really crucial."
At this time, Ji Xun interrupted his thought wandering on other threads. He glanced quickly at Jing Huang, who showed no expression.
"Actually," he pointed out, "we didn't use that device you know, Jules. I unfortunately damaged it on my last exploration. That was my mistake."
"But now we have another one," Juul said, "and from what you say they are similar in effect. Perhaps you can tell me how it works."
"You mean the one I damaged?"
"I also want to know how it differs from what we're using."
Ji Xun smiled silently into the void. He doesn't need to use his eyes to see, because tiny light sensors attached to his skin will show him the picture from any angle around him. When Zhu Er said the request in the tone of her discussing tools, he knew that Jing Huang gave him an emotionless glance, but said nothing. The attitude of the mountain people undoubtedly gave Zhu Er a lot of misunderstandings, Ji Xun thought about it in his heart. Although he did not make a formal introduction to the Immortal, another of her alliance partners may have introduced her to the "Jade of the Mysterious Rainbow" - but how clearly? Jules apparently got some important basic facts wrong.
"Generally speaking," he explained, "the aether shield is composed of two parts: the expression structure and the primordium. The primordium comes from other wish machine environments, or fragments of lower spiritual areas. The expression structure will be responsible for manifesting them. This is intuitive in principle, Jules, imagine that the aether shield is another small wish-granting machine that is fully oriented, but it can only grant a specified wish: replace the surrounding environment with The environment represented by the primordia.”
"Is this the one we're using? Or the one you damaged."
"What I damaged was the spiritual field shield." Ji Xun said, cleverly avoiding the first question, "The old shield I always use is made according to a completely different theory. Usually, It does not need to be added to the primordial - what you can buy on the market is often the primordial provided by the White Tower, which will guide you to the star path of the White Tower - but the spiritual field shielder will not do this. It needs is a quite complex calculation structure, so you cannot buy a universal spiritual field shielder on the market. It requires debugging of the spiritual field characteristic values in a specific environment. It is difficult for me to do it without an instance and equipment. Its theoretical basis will be explained to you in the environment, but there is a very simple metaphor to help you understand its operating principle: two people make requests to the wishing machine, the first person asks for whatever it wants, and the second person asks for whatever it wants. Two people only wish to make the first person's wish invalid. The spiritual field shield is always the last person to wish. As soon as it detects any change in characteristic value, it will immediately put things back to the original state through a reverse description."
"It sounds confusing," Juul said. "It's like your wishing machine obeys the instructions of any one person, without any requirements or identification methods."
"Yes." Ji Xun replied, "This is indeed a characteristic of the wishing machine. Some people also suspect that it is some essential attribute of infinity. This proposition is still under discussion, but as you can see, when it comes to When the divider activates, it doesn't actually ignore any of you."
"I'm skeptical. It only listens to the needs of a few."
"Is this true?" Ji Xun asked, "Have you set a strict enough scope for expressing your wishes? What about those who were the first to have their wishes fulfilled by it now?"
"An interesting statement, Mr. Ji Xun." Zhu Er said indifferently, "But this does not explain how your jammer makes the wishing machine obey."
"Through eigenvalue analysis and universal symbols - let's put it simply, it's like deciphering a code. Most known wish machines have a specific set of expression rules that can be analyzed."
"So what if you happen to encounter a brand new wishing machine? For those who can't decipher the code, you have to surrender?"
"That's rare." Ji Xun said, "Generally speaking, the key to unlocking the code is hidden inside the wishing machine environment, unless it was not made for people to use from the beginning. But it does exist , we will also surrender. But before that, we will try one last emergency solution, which is what I just called a 'universal symbol', sometimes we also call it a zero-value language - to put it bluntly, Zhu Well, that is already chanting a spell."
Jules stared at him steadily.
"You used a very unusual word, Mr. Ji Xun." She reminded, "From the information I have, this word is related to the worship of spiritual beings and primitive superstition."
Ji Xun answered her happily with gestures, completely confirming what she said.
"Didn't your furry friend ever mention it to you?" he said. "We are in a very chaotic situation, Jules. Where I come from, gods like your name fill the abyss of the universe. , in addition to mages and spirits, as well as psychedelic realms beyond life and death. These are within our reach and are with us day and night. And if we cannot find a more reasonable explanation, we can only admit that they exist .”
"You have an explanation."
"We have many explanations. However, they all need to be demonstrated. And before we can prove anything, we need to make sure that the 'argument' itself is indeed feasible."
They all suddenly fell silent.
"I have an explanation, Mr. Ji Xun." Zhu Er said, "It may seem very arbitrary. At this stage, I can only say that I believe it may be the case."
When she said this, Ji Xun already understood what she was referring to. This seemed to strangely bring them closer. Past or future, ignorance or progress, in fact they are all on this lonely narrow road under their feet that passes through countless worlds of possibility. They are all bubbles in an infinite ocean, bursting at different stages of their ascent.
"Perhaps you're dealing with a very powerful slicer," Jules said. "A slicer or a wish machine. I'm just making a rough sketch of it right now, but you should get the gist of the idea. A slicer can make We have seen the resurrection of the dead, so there is reason to believe that if there is a wishing machine with a wider range of effects, it can also enable you to see longer-term and more extensive hallucinations. If you find it and shut it down, everything will be fine. It will return to what it should be.”
"What should it be?" Ji Xun asked, "When faced with a wide-area wishing machine that may exist, how do we determine which ones should exist and which ones are additional additions?"
"When we turn off the slicer, the real part will remain by itself. Mr. Ji Xun, truth has its own power. In the words we discussed, that is the 'self-evident' part."
"This is a matter of position." Ji Xun said, "Let me explain our dilemma this way, Zhuer. We are on the way to shutting down the slicer because we believe we know which part will be eliminated after the shutdown. But what if, when we deal with a machine of unknown origin, a device whose intention and structure are unknown to us, what disappears is not the part of us that we perceive as an illusion, but ourselves?”
"The idea is more like a thriller, Mr. Ji Xun. You know that every day we are at risk of death, but in reality it doesn't happen most of the time."
"This is not appropriate." Ji Xun said, "Death is still an inevitable event, Zhuer. And if our axioms are constructed by a selected model, it means that probability is also an illusion. This is not a simple image. Hallucinations, we are not used to using natural language to describe this kind of risk. In short, verifying whether the axioms are reliable is the prerequisite for everything, but it is also a very costly task."
"I can't imagine the cost."
"I was hunted for this," Ji Xun said. "In the past, people like me believed that verifying answers was more important than anything else. But most people in the base - I think it should be said that most people now - think this This cost is fundamentally unacceptable."
"According to what you said, this answer is of course more important than anything else."
"Really?" Ji Xun said softly. His strange tone seemed to be confirming to himself.
Jing Huang suddenly stopped. The other three looked at him. He frowned, but didn't look at Ji Xun.
"We're here," he said.
