In front of me stood a girl whose appearance was completely unfamiliar to me. She was tall and slender, probably about the same height as that female hoodlum Bryndis. She had a head full of flaxen hair. Her face didn't have any special features, but it was still very pretty. She had a pair of slightly energetic eyes. She was wearing the uniform of the Empire Army, but I was sure that this was the first time her face had appeared in the military area. At first, I was stunned by the unfamiliar girl, but she quickly greeted me with familiarity. Then, I noticed a small sign hanging on her chest. On it was a line of worn-out words that looked like a dog's scrawl. "Xi Ling, if you find this, please contact the military. Thank you."
"You're Schilling?" I looked at the unfamiliar girl in front of me in astonishment. I felt that my worldview wasn't enough. "How did you change into this form?"
"Oh, I spaced out for a while during the test. Then, I forgot what I looked like the last time." Schilling giggled. She seemed to be very happy. She didn't seem to realize that there was anything wrong with her constantly changing appearance. I was dumbfounded by her reply. I finally understood the concept of an unchanging lifeform for the first time … As expected of a person who recorded the information of all known species and could even change her form at will. Her usual playfulness was just too advanced. I wonder if Shallow Shallow tried to make her change into a bicycle?
Anyway, the unlucky Slime at home was really about to learn how to change into a bicycle.
My gaze fell on the small tag hanging on her chest. It was the size of a palm and looked like a work pass from a large company. Schilling hung it on her neck with a red string. Shallow Shallow was really a whimsical person …
"This was given to me by the Matriarch. She said that I was always running around and always changing my appearance. She was afraid that I would get lost." Schilling waved the small white metal tag happily as though she was using it as a necklace. "But I don't think this is useful. As long as your soul doesn't change, you will be able to recognize others, right? Oh, of course, I'll take it with me. I'll take it with me when I run to other places. "
It seemed that Schilling already knew many of the characteristics of the Shiring Apostles, such as how to identify people by the unique identification code of the soul. However, she was not quite aware that the upper echelons of the Empire were not normal Shiring Apostles at all. We were still used to identifying people by their faces. Shallow Shallow must have been the same as me a few days ago, running into a Schilling that she "didn't know," so she decided to create such a brand for her. It looked silly, but why did Schilling look so funny when he hung it around his neck?
Although this was an unexpected encounter, since they had met, they naturally had to chat. Moreover, he didn't have anything urgent to do right now. I had been accompanying Anurili for the past two days, so I didn't have the time to meet this "big shot" who had just returned to the Empire. Now was the perfect opportunity to understand the current situation of this muddle-headed super consciousness.
The most relaxing and suitable place to rest and chat was naturally Sylvia's shop. The shop was next to the wall of the military zone, less than two hundred meters away from the assembly square. When I pulled Xi Ling over, it was just the time when the shop was sending off the few customers of the day. At this time, there would be a few mass-produced Bubbles coming to buy desserts. Basically, the customers that Sylvia could only look forward to were the few of them. The students from the Military Academy were considered to be elites. Usually, other than on rest days, they would rarely spawn within half a kilometer of the military zone. After all, if they were to be caught by their instructors shopping here outside of rest days, it would not be a fun thing to do.
A few nervous yet excited mass-produced Bubbles disappeared at the end of the street under my gaze. Only then did I pull Xi Ling and push open the glass door of the store. I called out to the store manager who was probably in a daze waiting for lunch. "Sylvia! We have customers! "
"What are you shouting for? I saw you two a long time ago. Aren't I preparing drinks for you two?!" A series of rapid sounds came from behind the counter. I gaped at the silver-haired mole as she swiftly tidied up the packaging and other items on the counter. Behind her was the floating coffee bean that was tearing open its packaging. The creature that I suspected to be Sylvia looked up at me and pouted. "Let's make this clear first. There's only coffee and black tea. 001 drank all the orange juice, 036 ionized the cola, and helium-3 … You definitely won't drink helium-3. Speaking of which, I really don't know if those fellows are here to help or to make things worse. They ate more than anyone else and even took a packet before they left … "
Needless to say, this was definitely not Sylvia …
"Belavilla? How come you have time to come out? Doesn't it usually take a lot of energy for you to come out? " I chuckled as I looked at the Raven King, who was complaining incessantly about her 'daughters' being useless. The current her wasn't the slow and slow-witted Sylvia, nor was she the sinister and cold Belavilla. After living in the City of Shadows for a period of time, especially after interacting with us, Belavilla had already become very familiar with everyone. Perhaps in front of outsiders, she was still the terrifying Evoker. But in private, she was a nice person. It was just that her mouth was a little venomous.
"If I don't come out to help, am I supposed to let that silly fellow continue to receive subsistence allowances and receive relief rations every month?" Belavilla summoned a huge water ball and snapped her fingers. In an instant, the floating water ball began to boil. At the same time, the coffee beans floating in the air ground themselves into powder. The way she brewed coffee was really amazing. "I share a body with her. She leads a muddle-headed life, and I suffer along with her. Every time I wake up and recall the days I spent in this body while I was asleep, my heart feels heavy. That fellow doesn't even know how to buy a new set of clothes …"
I didn't expect Belavilla to be hiding such deep resentment. However, it wasn't as if I couldn't understand her resentment. The City of Shadows had the famous three poorest people. The two at the top were, of course, the sisters Asida and Asidora. Following closely behind them was Sylvia … Belavilla, who shared a body with Sylvia, was destined to be dragged down to death by her useless teammates.
"Hehe … The way you grind coffee is quite interesting." I laughed dryly. I didn't comment on Sylvia's daily life and changed the topic. A huge boiling water ball floated in front of Belavilla. She took a set of filters and prepared to collect the water underneath. Mages were different from ordinary people. They could go through a lot of trouble just to drink coffee.
"Do you think I want to go through so much trouble?" Belavilla sighed faintly. "The coffee machine was dismantled and played with by 001 …"
I was now very sure that the mass-produced ravens were more of a hindrance than a help.
"Here, this is a work of confidence." Belavilla placed two cups of coffee in front of me and Schilling. Then, she hooked her finger at the counter and a large pile of pastries was directly sent to the round table. "I made it myself. Alright, you guys eat and chat. I'm going back to sleep. I'm tired after coming out for an hour. In the afternoon, I still have to go to Heaven to help out. Oh yeah, remember to pay the bill later. "
I thanked her. Schilling, who was sitting across from me, had already started stuffing pastries into her mouth. However, after a few seconds, Belavilla was still standing by the table without moving. I lifted my head and looked at her curiously. "Aren't you going back to sleep?"
The silver-haired lady lowered her head and looked at me blankly. She said slowly, "Yeah, she's already asleep."
I was speechless. Why can't I get to know a few normal people?!
"I like the pastries here!" Schilling didn't seem to care about her surroundings. Her mouth was bulging but her words were as clear as usual. "The first time I ate was here."
Then, I found out that Schilling's first stop in the real world wasn't Monster Town, but the dessert shop at the edge of the Shadow Fortress. It was easy to understand. Even though Schilling could ignore distance and teleport herself everywhere, it was her first time coming into contact with the outside world. She wouldn't have wandered too far away from the crystal that she had been residing in. Sylvia's shop was much closer than Monster Town, which was in another dimension. Schilling knew nothing about life in the real world at first. She had simply changed her appearance based on the clothes of the base personnel and wandered here. At that time, she didn't even know that there was such a thing as' eating 'in this world.
Then, she was served by Sylvia. The silver-haired mole, whose mind was always disconnected from the real world, unquestioningly served the consciousness of a race whose mind was in sync with the real world for the first time (fake). A lifeform like Schilling didn't need to eat at all. However, she remembered this first time and treated eating as something important. She also treated Sylvia as her first friend, even though she still didn't have a clear concept of what a friend was.
If that was the case, if Belavilla had woken up once during those few days, we wouldn't have had to put the entire city under lockdown.
"How are you getting used to it these few days?" I looked at Schilling, who was eating happily. I felt like I was looking at a younger sister. Of course, this younger sister was a little bigger.
Schilling nodded and continued to speak clearly with her mouth completely stuffed. "Well, the outside world is quite interesting. The same things at home and outside look different. I've also finished reading the things that Tawil gave me and memorized them, even though I don't really understand them. "
Schilling seemed a little embarrassed as she said this. She felt sorry for her low ability to understand. However, she quickly pulled herself together and smiled confidently. "But even if I don't understand, I'll still work hard! Tawil said that it's fine as long as you know what you should do. As for why you do it, you don't have to worry about it for now. After all, the emperor's order is the truth. That's what the bottom layer of the agreement says. "
My expression was a little subtle, but Schilling couldn't see it. I wasn't sure if this young super consciousness could take on such a big responsibility, but she definitely had the basic principles of the Shiring Apostles: obedience to orders, execution, efficiency, and loyalty.
I talked to her about the spiritual network. It could be considered as understanding the massive data network from another perspective. As the topic continued to expand, we finally talked about the other half of the spiritual network that had been lost for a long time.
To be precise, it was the other half. During the Old Empire, there were 135 Celestial Zones. The scale of the spiritual network was unprecedented. After the cataclysm, only the network of 15 Celestial Zones was spared due to isolation. Schilling was the remnant consciousness of the network of 135 Celestial Zones. She was just a small, insignificant part of the network when it was at its peak, and the backbone of the network was now in the hands of the Fallen Apostles.
The huge casualties caused by the cataclysm might have caused serious damage to the backbone, but I believed that even so, the spiritual network controlled by the Fallen Apostles was several times stronger than the one in the Empire.
"The other half … that was lost?" Even though Schilling appeared to be overly optimistic, her expression turned serious when we talked about this topic. "I don't have any impression of it. I can't remember what happened back then, but I really have this feeling. My body is very weak now, and I strangely feel that … my home is very … very …"
"Very narrow?" I recalled the word that Xi Ling had mentioned when I'd first met him.
"Yes, it's very narrow. The place to live is much smaller, and so my body has become weak. I can't remember what I was like back then, but I subconsciously feel that … the current network isn't normal. At the edge of the network, there is a huge rift valley. The place that was originally accessible has now become a void. "
Schilling's way of describing it sounded strange to me, but this was her perception of the spiritual network from her own point of view. For outsiders, this was extremely valuable as a reference. We knew that Schilling was everything. Her memories, thoughts, and soul were all rooted in the spiritual network. The loss of this network would cause her performance to decline, and at the same time, it would also cause her place to 'shrink'. One of the reasons why she couldn't remember what happened back then was because of this. Her processing capabilities were greatly damaged when the network split back then, to the extent where the remaining system resources weren't enough to maintain her original enormous consciousness. As such, she could only give up, or passively lose a lot of her memories.
The other reason was related to her hiding in the crystal back then. A mere memory crystal, no matter how large its capacity was, couldn't possibly completely preserve a super consciousness like Schilling. When she uploaded herself into the crystal, she should have given up a lot of her memories. In addition to the tens of thousands of years of wear and tear, it was already quite good that she could still remember that her name was Schilling.
"Do you still remember hiding in the crystal back then?" I brought up a question that no one could figure out. "Back then, you seemed to have planned your own escape route. You jumped out of the Fifteenth Sky Zone, avoided the polluted zone at that time, and drifted all the way to the distant frontier. Then, you were even picked up by the Mellowans … The last one might have been an accident, but other than that, it seemed to have been planned."
"I don't remember." Schilling shook her head angrily. "Was I that smart back then?"
"Err, maybe …" I said noncommittally. Now that it was confirmed that there was a consciousness hidden in the crystal, Sandora's original judgment instantly had a higher degree of credibility: the crystal had deliberately planned its own escape route. However, even if this hypothesis was true, we still couldn't be sure if Schilling had really planned everything back then. She didn't communicate with anyone at that time, and no one in the entire Empire knew of Schilling's existence. How did she complete such an intricate plan by herself?
Or … at a certain earlier time, the consciousness that was produced in the spiritual network was subtly influencing the apostles of the Fifteenth Sky Zone through her own power to prepare for her future escape?
Things were still confusing, and it seemed that it was impossible to get an answer from Schilling. So, I gave up looking for an answer in her messy memories and changed the topic. "Just now, you mentioned that from your perspective, the spiritual network has an obvious' edge '? There's also a rift or something? "
When Schilling mentioned these two terms just now, I didn't pay much attention because I felt that it was a rather high-tech thing. But now that I recalled it, I suddenly felt that it was probably not an ordinary event. In the end, what Schilling said next was indeed unsettling.
"Well, it's quite an obvious fracture zone." Schilling stirred the coffee in front of her. "At home … I mean, on the spiritual network, the connection between each node should be smooth. Even if it's the edge of the network, where the connection ends, there should be a complete termination signal. This is determined by the underlying protocol. But I still feel that … there is an abnormal edge at the end of the network. The spiritual network doesn't end normally there, but the thing on the other side suddenly disappears. It's like it's cut open, and there's no edge … Well, I found this metaphor on the spot, and it's exactly this feeling. Beyond the edge is a great rift that I don't dare to set foot in. It also seems like a big hole. There's nothing there. Once I cross it, I feel that I will lose my node forever. "
It was difficult to understand Schilling's unique perspective, but I still tried my best to understand her words because I had already realized that this was probably a very serious matter.
The spiritual network of the Empire … It's a fundamental thing. Any slight problem with it must be magnified dozens of times!
The spiritual network had a break, which immediately reminded me of the conceptual separation back then. However, of course, it was true that the spiritual network of the fifteenth Heaven was isolated from the backbone network, but this isolation was also based on the underlying protocol. As Schilling said, on the normal boundary of the network, every limit node should have a normal termination signal. This signal was probably the kind of footnote like "the number of available forwarding here is zero", used to indicate that this node had no subsequent nodes.
And the abnormal edge that Schilling mentioned did not have such a termination signal.
People in the real world would not be threatened by this abnormal situation, but Schilling, who lived on the network, regarded this kind of rift as a scourge.
"Because there's no termination signal, if I'm not careful, I might slip into the rift valley," Xi Ling said worriedly. "It's equivalent to sending all the data to a memory that can't feed back information. I'll fall into the void … Not long ago, I carefully glanced at the edge and was scared to death."
Xi Ling finished his sentence with a lingering fear in his heart. He gulped down all the coffee in his mouth, as if trying to suppress his fear.
No one had ever discovered this abnormal network termination situation. Even Bubble, who had always monitored the entire network, had never reported similar situations.
"You haven't told anyone about this?"
"Well, because I just discovered it two days ago, I don't know what the edge is, so I want to figure it out before reporting it … Hey, Your Majesty, did I do something wrong?"
"Not wrong, but it's a bit risky. Don't step on that edge alone for the time being." I frowned. "I have to discuss with Bubble and Sandora … We have to find a way to translate your perspective into the language of the real world, and then we have to locate the location of the edge from the real world. It's too dangerous for you to go alone. "
I didn't say the rest of my words clearly.
But my intuition told me that this edge probably came from the Fallen Apostle, or even … from "that lord."
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