Shang Jianyao was stunned for a moment. “What’s the use of that?”
He couldn’t figure out what role he played.
Du Heng pointed at the ground. “Look.”
“No way I’m doing so!” Shang Jianyao replied reflexively as he looked down at his feet.
The tiles had already turned ethereal at some point, revealing the situation on the floor below.
It happened to be a vertically mirrored scene of this floor. The ceiling was the ground, and the ground was the ceiling.
Shang Jianyao’s other self was another him, like a shadow that extended from his feet. His entire body hung there upside down, but there were no signs of blood pooling in his brain.
Shang Jianyao held the small speaker he had conjured and looked at Xiaochong, who was playing a game not far away. He said excitedly, “I won’t lose to you in this game now.”
Xiaochong grumbled and replied, “We’ll see.”
The Shang Jianyao in front of Du Heng cast his gaze around.
Every wall here completely turned ethereal, producing different scenes of Shang Jianyao and Du Heng meeting.
There was the rash Shang Jianyao who had experienced the rebellious high school student, Du Shaochong. There was also the calm and rational Shang Jianyao who sought the advice of the scientist, Du Heng, regarding Awakenings. There were a total of nine scenes.
After retracting his gaze from the him—whom valued relationships—consoling the experimental subject, Du Shaochong, Shang Jianyao lowered his head again and glanced at himself.
“Ten…” He was confused and shocked. He then looked at Du Heng opposite him and blurted out, “I only have ten personalities. Why are there eleven of me now?
“Who am I?” This ‘I’ referred to him in the room.
Du Heng smiled. “You and I are an ensemble.”
“Oh…” Shang Jianyao had an expression that said: “I see, but I still don’t understand.”
His thoughts jumped as he uncontrollably turned to another matter. “When did you find Xiaochong?”
Du Heng smiled and replied, “It’s all thanks to you. When you opened the liquid nitrogen canister at the Holm Fertility Center and brought the white gas to your Sea of Origins, solidifying it with Xiaochong’s rift, he returned.”
Just as Du Heng said that, the machines in the room lit up at the same time, blinking faster and faster.
“What’s this?” Shang Jianyao’s face was covered in the interfering lights—there were red, yellow, and blue colors.
Du Heng sighed slightly and said, “The Arbiter of Fate and the others have begun.”
Shang Jianyao thought for a moment and asked, “What are they doing, and what role did I play?”
He took the latter question to heart.
Du Heng calmly replied, “What they need is for you to open that door. They need multiple versions of you and multiple versions of me to make contact at the same time. Only then can they accurately locate the room where the two of us are in. They can then circle around the barrier from multiple entrances and invade this place, making it difficult for me to defend against them.”
“I don’t understand.” Shang Jianyao shook his head honestly. He then suggested in a friendly manner, “Why don’t you guys get busy first? You can explain in detail later.”
Du Heng looked at the rapidly blinking, sometimes bright, and sometimes dim machine lights and smiled. “There’s still some time. It’s a good opportunity to communicate.”
“Sure, sure.” Shang Jianyao didn’t stand on ceremony.
…
In the vortex-like building, in the experimental area filled with equipment that looked like an advanced engine room.
Jiang Baimian retracted her thoughts and planned on making the best use of her time to study the ‘mainframe’ and the surrounding ‘space capsules.’
At this moment, she saw the signal lights on the mainframe light up at the same time and blink rapidly as if something important was happening.
Jiang Baimian pondered for a moment before turning around without hesitation and running toward the entrance.
With something abnormal happening, she had to quickly communicate with Shang Jianyao—who was ‘outside.’
Fortunately, there was no other exit here—there was only one path.
…
In the maze, in the room filled with machines, all the walls turned illusory.
Du Heng revealed a reminiscing expression and sighed. “This matter has to start with humans studying consciousness and inborn superpowers.”
“If it’s a long story, make it short.” Shang Jianyao still understood that time was of the essence in the current situation.
Du Heng pointed at him and laughed. “None of the students I used to teach dare to speak to me like that. Even Wu Meng—who was the most talented in scientific research—only knew how to imitate me and read books like the Dao De Jing and the Notes on the Three Metaphysical Classic, but he didn’t ask for help.”
“Wu Meng is your student?” Shang Jianyao was alarmed.
“I was the one who gave Wu Meng his Ashlandic name.” Du Heng shook his head. “That’s another matter. Let’s get back to the topic at hand.”
Wu Meng was of Red River ethnicity.
“Yes, yes.” Shang Jianyao shut his mouth and nodded repeatedly.
Du Heng revealed a reminiscing expression again. “I’ve always been special since I was young. I was observed and studied as I attended school. This also resulted in my autism and being rebellious during high school for a period of time, preventing my superpowers from becoming stronger.
“Later, I figured it out. Instead of letting others study me, it was better for me to study myself. Therefore, I studied hard and became a famous neuroscientist and superpower researcher. When various countries established the nine future-facing research institutes, I was invited to be Chief Scientist and President of the Eighth Research Institute.”
“No wonder Oray knows you.” Shang Jianyao finally couldn’t help but interject.
They were both Chief Scientists in their respective fields.
“We had met a few times. Maximian encountered a bottleneck in artificial intelligence and wanted to get some inspiration from us and the Sixth Institute,” Du Heng replied simply. “I won’t talk much about the research; you won’t understand anyway. It’s more likely if your companion named Jiang Baimian was around.”
His eyes glazed over for a moment. “That day, Oak, Richard, Lin Sui, Mono, Dufftiel, Sylvie, and I brought two experimental volunteers into the core area. We planned on testing our research results.”
“Were those two volunteers Li Hui and Jiang Xiaoyue?” Shang Jianyao asked.
“Yes.” Du Heng nodded. “Half of the machine we created came from our research, and the other half came from the results of the exchange with the Sixth Institute. Yes, the Sixth Institute is the Eternals project team. That machine could create a virtual reality space like a large-scale holographic projection game.
“We connected Li Hui and Jiang Xiaoyue’s brains, planning on using a special method to stimulate their claustra and thalami as a type of Awakening to rouse their remnant consciousness. If it didn’t work, we would’ve considered trying to produce a brand-new consciousness based on their current bodies and the machine using this method, allowing them to live in the virtual world.
“To prevent sudden physical deaths, we prepared many biological chips and memory chips. The biological chips’ structures would be affected by the corresponding, magnified brain waves to a certain extent to adapt to the different human specimens. The people from the Sixth Institute were really good.”
As Shang Jianyao asked with a mix of excitement and worry, “Is there really enough time?”
The machines in the room flickered more and more intensely. Arbiter of Fate and the other Kalendarium seemed like they would enter at any moment.
“I’m old. I can’t stop myself when I reminisce about the past.” Du Heng laughed self-deprecatingly. “Don’t worry. I’ve split out more than ten personalities and have been running this place for a long time. It won’t be a problem for me to hold them off for a while.”
Shang Jianyao threw his worries to the back of his mind. “The experiment failed?”
“In a sense, we actually succeeded. Furthermore, it was a success that exceeded our expectations,” Du Heng said with a sigh. “In the beginning, we used Li Hui as an experimental subject. However, we saw his brain waves gradually return to normal and mutate in the direction of an Awakened, but his thalamus suddenly disappeared.
“The corresponding spot turned into a strange black hole. It sucked our consciousness out of our bodies like a vortex and absorbed it.
“Most of the Second Research Zone’s personnel died in this storm, and only a few survived in a special form. The cities attached to us also encountered the same disaster. Some were relatively serious, with the entire city instantly perishing. Some were relatively fine, with only a portion dying. However, the remaining humans basically became Heartless.”
“Tai City.” Shang Jianyao pointed out the place where the former situation had happened.
Du Heng’s expression changed slightly as he sighed. “Although I was rebellious in high school, my days in Tai City was still a very beautiful memory for me.”
He didn’t continue the topic and continued recalling. “I was the first to wake up and realized that although I didn’t have a body, my consciousness still existed. I was floating in the darkness.
“After spending some time examining and studying it, I had a preliminary guess: The mystery of human consciousness involves something at a higher level—or rather, this model has to be established in a higher dimension. Our research results were lacking some important details. Although we successfully awakened Li Hui’s consciousness, we also opened a ‘door’ that led to a higher dimension, producing a series of chain reactions that resulted in the disaster that’s the Old World’s destruction.
“It’s unknown if the ‘door’ had absorbed billions of human consciousnesses and obtained sufficient energy or if it was some other reason, but it had dragged the virtual reality created by our machine to a higher dimension, forming a dark world that overlapped with the Ashlands.
“And our consciousness relies on the biological chip attached to that machine to live in this world and survive.”
“An advanced version of the Eternal project?” Shang Jianyao had always been obsessed with mechanical monks.
Du Heng nodded. “Sort of.
“Then, I was surprised to discover that with the help of this Dark World, I could project my power to every place in the Ashlands as long as I can locate it… Here, we are like legendary deities.
“At this moment, Li Hui, Jiang Xiaoyue, Zhao Danlin, Oak, Lin Sui, Yu Huatong, Winst, and Brian woke up.
“As I was the President and Chief Scientist, and I knew more about the darkness than them, they chose to obey my orders back then. With the help of the machine and our strength, we built a city that used the Second Research Zone as a blueprint. They called it the New World.
“The New World’s main body is our psychic forces. It’s essentially a consciousness space that’s elevated from reality.
“During the establishment of the New World, I gained access to that machine and gave them the corresponding privileges.”