This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 588: The Virtual God

Chapter 588: Chapter 588: The Virtual God

"These damn beasts..."

The bridge of the Iron Heart.

Peering through the sighting device, the captain of Iron Heart cursed under his breath as he gazed at the pyramid made of human heads, ten kilometers away, and the bloodstains covering the walls.

After glancing at the captain next to him, Chu Guang turned his gaze back toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bridge and began to speak slowly.

"If they realized that this kind of provocation works, they would quickly build a second, a third Beacon Tower, and might even slaughter everyone at the moment they lose."

"These guys are quite enthusiastic when it comes to killing; we don’t need to waste ammunition meaninglessly on something so futile."

From a practical standpoint, delivering indirect firepower to a densely concrete urban area has limited benefits.

Not to mention artillery that relies on shrapnel for its lethality, even strategic nuclear weapons with thousands of tons of yield are not as exaggerated against concrete bunkers as they appear in movies and TV shows.

There’s a recorded instance where, during an atomic bomb explosion, people inside concrete buildings within five to six hundred meters of the blast center survived. And as long as they didn’t foolishly go out to take a look, they didn’t even suffer from any side effects.

As for mutants, it goes without saying.

The creatures could only be killed by a massive dose of neutron radiation; it is unrealistic to expect them to die indirectly from cancerous mutations.

"I understand," the captain nodded gravely.

At Chu Guang’s signal, he turned to his adjutant and issued an order.

"Drop the anchor chain!"

The adjutant saluted.

"Yes, sir!"

The massive iron anchor chain was thrown from the belly of the airship, crashing heavily into the ground and stirring up billowing dust.

Then the lift was lowered.

As the vanguard troops and construction equipment began to be deployed to the surface, activity bustled above and below deck.

Chu Guang gave the captain a few brief orders before turning and heading to the brig to see Eure, who was strapped into a wheelchair.

He wore a pair of virtual reality glasses, connected to the airship’s sighting device, now aimed at the head-piled Beacon Tower.

"Is this the heaven you were going to?" Chu Guang asked him.

Eure didn’t speak, sitting there silently, as if he hadn’t woken up from his "sleepwalking" state yet.

But Chu Guang knew that the guy had been awake since before dawn; he was just playing dumb.

Chu Guang looked at him and continued.

"Where is the Holy Land?"

After a long silence,

Eure suddenly chuckled, sounding like he was mocking himself as well as everyone else.

"Don’t you already know?"

"I know that Holy Land is virtual; what I’m asking is where its server is," Chu Guang paused before continuing, "or, to put it another way, how to destroy it."

Eure responded with silence, showing his unwillingness to cooperate.

Chu Guang continued in a soft voice, not minding the silence.

"The bionic chip implanted in your brain has locked away some memories; our experts on the airship indeed find it tricky, but you should be aware that even so, cracking it is only a matter of time for us."

"Is this a bluff?"

"Not at all," Chu Guang said calmly, "It suggested to me that I should send your brain to Ideal City for a slow study, but then you would have no chance of redemption at all."

"Redemption... haha."

Eure suddenly burst into laughter, turning his VR glasses-covered face toward Chu Guang and raising his voice.

"Why should I seek redemption? What sin have I committed? Compared to those killed by the Wasteland, compared to those turned into cattle or beasts by the Wasteland, the few we sacrificed are insignificant, not to mention those people already living like animals... Even if we did nothing, they would rot away on their own."

"If you truly understood them, you’d know they’re irredeemably stupid. They’d put chains on their own necks and curse at anyone trying to help them. They want to be animals; I think they fit this Wasteland better than anyone, and they want the Wasteland to last forever. It might be better to let their lives have some meaning; at least dying by our hands, they could serve as fuel to end the Wasteland."

Eure laughed hoarsely, his laughter gradually turning manic.

As if he had gone mad.

Lu Bei, standing behind Chu Guang, stared intently at this twisted and impudent man, his lips involuntarily twitched.

Chu Guang, however, watched Eure expressionlessly.

Until his voice went hoarse, and he could laugh no more, Chu Guang finally spoke slowly.

"And who decides what this so-called ’meaning’ is?"

Eure continued in a hoarse voice.

"No one needs to define it. The descendants living in the new world will give an objective evaluation of what we’ve done. Even if they curse us, it doesn’t matter. I never did this for honor or fame."

Chu Guang looked at him with pity.

"What a pity."

"..." Eure said nothing, showing an indifferent expression as if nothing mattered.

Chu Guang continued looking at him.

"Even if you went to the new world, your Wasteland wouldn’t end; this land would become another kind of Wasteland. And your sacrifice is meaningless; it’s been just a self-indulgence from start to finish."

Eure finally couldn’t resist retorting.

"And how do you know what future generations will think?"

"It’s not a matter of what I know or don’t know, but why are you so certain?" Chu Guang gazed at him and spoke deliberately, "You haven’t even lived a second in your fantasized Heaven, yet you expect to solve earthly problems with heavenly methods."

"When someone is hungry, we give them enough food to survive and then tell them how to obtain more, how to live with dignity, rather than suggesting they get a bionic stomach that can digest mud and a mouth capable of chewing stone."

Eure smirked coldly.

"You’re thinking too simply. Just because people aren’t starving doesn’t mean the Wasteland will end. If that were the case, the Wasteland wouldn’t exist to begin with. This isn’t just an issue of hunger—"

"But at least hunger is a concrete problem. Once we solve that, we can move on to the next," Chu Guang, expressionless, stared back at him without mincing words, "Expecting there to be a universal optimal solution for all specific problems, that simply by becoming New Humans, all issues can be solved forever, what then?"

Eure was stunned for a moment, then slowly blurted out.

"...Then what?"

"Yes, what then? How do you plan to solve the problems of the New Humans? Create an even more perfect life form to lead everyone through ’evolution’ once more? Or perhaps jump from one Utopia to another?"

Watching Eure who remained silent, Chu Guang continued.

"Unfortunately, this is the method you’ve left for posterity to solve their problems. If you fail, that’s also fine, but if by a one in ten-thousand chance you luckily succeed, that will be the greatest disaster."

"Any cost will become a necessary sacrifice, they will repeat today’s tragedy over and over, drowning others in the impossibility of dreams. So, is it me who’s thinking too simply, or is it you?"

Turning his gaze away from that blank face, Chu Guang knew he had never considered these issues. He continued indifferently.

"Perhaps one day we will evolve into a new species, but that will happen only because we have naturally reached that stage, not simply for the sake of evolution, nor to solve problems just for the sake of solving them."

"I offered you a chance for redemption, but it seems I’ve wasted my time."

"You should find somewhere else to confess."

Leaving these words behind, Chu Guang turned and walked towards the door.

Eure stared blankly in the direction of the retreating footsteps, suddenly feeling a rush of panic and unexpectedly spoke out.

"Wait a second."

Chu Guang, already at the door, stopped and turned to look at him.

"What is it?"

Eure was silent for a moment, then slowly began.

"The Holy Land isn’t ’on the earth,’ nor in some server, but a network formed by an array of bionic chips and one or more nodes coming together... The Holy Land is this network."

A hint of surprise showed on Lu Bei’s face.

Part of it was surprise at the Holy Land formed by countless bionic chips, and another part was surprise that this stubborn individual was actually confessing.

Not only was Lu Bei taken aback. In fact, even Eure himself wasn’t sure if what he was doing was right.

That Memory Extractor had not only violently pulled out his memories, but it had also reminded him of many trivial matters he had long forgotten.

He was a researcher, and should know better than anyone that bold hypotheses and careful verification were fundamental methodologies.

Yet ironically, even though he knew this, he hadn’t done it. Instead, he had placed his hope on replacing humanity with divinity.

Perhaps, as the Manager before him said,

The end of this dream wouldn’t be Heaven, but another kind of Hell...

While speaking, Eure slowly turned his wrist, which was tied to the armrest, and lifted his bent index finger to point at his head.

"For example, right here... I have one. It’s just that the signal isn’t great here, so it can’t connect to the network," he explained.

The Steel Heart itself was a big metal shell. Unless standing on deck, any data exchange with the outside world had to go through a dedicated information interface.

That channel was monitored by Xiao Qi, and Luo Gan naturally wouldn’t leave such an obvious handle for others to grasp by coming in voluntarily.

And that’s why Solar Eclipse could unexpectedly reactivate that shut-off chip in Zhao Tiangan’s body and connect to the Holy Land out of the blue.

Because the moment Zhao Tiangan died, Luo Gan lost the connection to that chip, since biological chips require bodily life functions for energy.

And if it were through Eure’s chip, he most likely wouldn’t be able to enter the Holy Land at all, as his capture was basically a known fact.

Chu Guang slightly furrowed his brows.

"Distributed computing?"

Eure smiled self-deprecatingly.

"Although not exactly the same, you could understand it that way... Each chip is a cell that constitutes ’Luo Gan’ and that ’Holy Land,’ and all cells share information in a shared network. When one chip goes offline, the data stored in that chip exists as an independent personality, for instance, there’s a Luo Gan living in my head right now."

Chu Guang fell into thought.

"I see."

This was somewhat similar to Xiao Qi.

Sometimes when entering an area with no signal, Xiao Qi could still use VM or other electronic devices to communicate with him, but in reality, it wasn’t the Xiao Qi from the Shelter that was interacting with him, but a sub-individual split from Xiao Qi at a certain time point A.

To make it easier to understand, let’s hypothetically call the original entity A and the sub-individual A1.

A1 possessed all the cached data prior to time point A and the combined computing power of all portable terminals.

Therefore, even though A1 didn’t have all the data and computing power of A, it could still communicate normally with him, simply because the data from A1 and A was not shared due to the communication disruption.

However, once the signal was restored, data between A1 and A would resume flow, and they would merge by exchanging information.

Although it might seem strange from a human perspective, for digital life, it’s a common occurrence.

After all, information is the entirety of digital life.

That’s also why Xiao Qi was always clingy, always pestering Chu Guang to take her along whenever he went far away.

Luo Gan was probably a similar existence.

Each chip held a fragment of the "Holy Land," and under normal communication conditions, all the chips together formed the entire server array.

The loss of one of the chips was inconsequential to him; after all, even with just one chip and a brain, he could still exist.

It’s just that in such a case, limited by computing power, doing anything would be rather inconvenient.

Unlike Chu Guang, who fell into thought, Lu Bei’s expression gradually changed, and he couldn’t help but ask,

"Countless chips... precisely how many are we talking about?"

If that Luo Gan had planted a thousand, or even ten thousand chips in Brocade River City, wouldn’t this be endless?

They surely couldn’t, like the Mutants, chop off everyone’s heads, could they?

Even as a measure to exterminate the Torch Church, this approach was too extreme.

Performing a CT scan on everyone’s brain was even less realistic.

Bionic chip implant surgeries were usually conducted very secretly, and the materials used were special carbon-based materials, undetectable by standard magnetic resonance imaging; much less could be expected from the rudimentary labs at the front lines.

To carry out a thorough and faultless search, they would need to use the scanning bed at the Shelter or resort to the Memory Extractor, frame by frame sifting through visible memories for traces of a bionic chip at work.

Eure shook his head.

"Apart from the Bishop himself, no one knows the exact number... I’m afraid not even the Saint Heir knows."

He paused, then continued,

"However, it’s unlikely that they would implant one in everyone; after all, those things are said to be made by the Black Box, and black boxes have a limited working life. For example... apostles on the periphery like Zhang Zhengyang don’t have implanted chips, they need us to communicate with Luo Gan."

"That makes sense," Chu Guang nodded.

He remembered Heya had mentioned that most of the black boxes in Shelter No.117 were bionic organs.

And the first black box he retrieved from Shelter No.117 was a neural connection unit capable of creating brain-computer interfaces.

The Torch Church later attempted to recover that black box from him, as well as the Administrator’s Log left by the former Manager of the Shelter, but they failed.

After some contemplation, Chu Guang continued slowly and methodically,

"If I were him, I’d probably implant one in each Farm Owner and their heir at the Planting Farms; in this way, I would indirectly control all settlements of that kind. Then choose a few manageable individuals to blend in, to serve as servers for computing power and backup purposes, as well as alternates in case of emergency."

Ironically, most settlements in Brocade River City were of this type, with even places like Town Of Hope, where power was relatively dispersed, being very scarce.

It was not just in Brocade River City, but the entire Brocade River Province was like this.

The Noble’s hounds in Giant Stone City had developed just about every market available, and had reshaped them into the forms they desired.

In this way, when Luo Gan executed his plans, he only needed to use a very small fraction of his pawns; the majority could stay safely hidden in the shadows.

Whether it was conducting a comprehensive check on everyone or killing all the people here, both tasks were impractical in terms of workload.

No wonder he didn’t hesitate to abandon the pawn Zhao Tiangan...

He had already laid out an invisible and untouchable large net, ensnaring over ninety percent of the survivors in Brocade River City.

Watching Chu Guang now lost in thought, Eure smiled faintly.

"Quite the Torch style, isn’t it? The Saint Heir is only a nominal leader, a spiritual totem; the Pioneers entering the Holy Land outline the plans.

"And in each Church district, the Pioneers are the acting Saints, totems revered by Believers, while the real execution of plans is left to every Apostle connected to the Holy Land and countless guided Believers."

Chu Guang suddenly thought of something and asked,

"Are you Eure now, or Luo Gan?’

Eure was silent for a long time.

It was a difficult question to answer.

If he could push all the blame onto some Devil living in his heart, perhaps his sins might feel lighter.

But was it really so?

After a long while, he shook his head with a bitter smile.

"I don’t know."

"Perhaps... it’s a bit of both."

...

The door to the confinement room closed again.

Following behind Chu Guang, Lu Bei quickened his pace to catch up, and asked in a low voice,

"How shall we deal with that man?"

Chu Guang replied offhandedly,

"That depends on him. Actually, rather than handing him over to the corporation for research, I’m more inclined to keep this pawn close at hand."

Of course, if the committee was interested in the secrets within the man, he wouldn’t mind involving the old friends from the East Coast.

After all, so far away, the corporation was unlikely to come here to investigate on their own; they would ultimately have to rely on the Local Tyrant, the Alliance.

Lu Bei looked at Chu Guang, perplexed, and asked,

"What’s the point of doing that?"

Honestly, he couldn’t understand why waste so much breath on that captive, when he had a thousand ways to make the man comply.

Enterprise technology wasn’t even necessary.

Chu Guang could roughly guess what the young man was thinking and said with a smile,

"Of course, there’s a reason. You must have heard, every bionic chip is a Holy Land, each inhabited by Luo Gan. The one in that guy is naturally the same, and we have just negotiated with him for half an hour."

Glancing at the time on the VM, he continued,

"This is actually a good start. Haven’t you noticed? The guy is already starting to doubt whether the extreme ideal he insists on is right... And just like he said, ’Eure’ and ’Luo Gan’, these two personalities, exist simultaneously inside him."

"His decision is actually the joint decision of two people."

"It’s just that his subconscious can’t distinguish between them."

The memory extractor had scanned all of Eure’s memories, but still had not found the specific location of the Holy Land or a way to destroy it.

It could only mean that those memories were not in his brain at all, but cached on the bionic chip in his brain.

Now that Eure had taken the initiative to hand it over, it was clear that this wasn’t just his decision alone; it must also have been a decision of one of Luo Gan’s alters.

Otherwise, even if he wanted to be honest, he couldn’t have managed it.

When faced with questions he couldn’t answer, a crack had appeared in the psychological defenses of the two souls; thus, he felt this was a good beginning.

After hearing Chu Guang’s explanation, Lu Bei’s eyes suddenly lit up.

"I get it! If we let the chip in his head exchange data with Luo Gan on the outside, can we transmit that idea into... the Holy Land where Luo Gan is?"

Just like hiding a bomb in a package and sending it directly into the hands of that Luo Gan!

The only analogy he could think of was this, but the more he thought about it, the more feasible it seemed, and his eyes sparkled with excitement.

As expected of the Manager!

Lu Bei looked at Chu Guang with even more admiration.

However, Chu Guang himself, upon hearing the young man’s interpretation, chuckled and said,

"It’s not as simple as you say. If bluster could solve the problem, there would have been no need to bring the Steel Heart here."

Lu Bei was stunned for a moment.

"Ah, it won’t work?"

Chu Guang shook his head.

"After all, data cached on one terminal cannot possibly overwrite the data on the entire network."

It’s like the data Xiao Qi cached on a terminal, even if disconnected from the mainframe for a while, would not overwrite the data on the mainframe.

Luo Gan did not have a fixed mainframe to save data, but chose to disperse all of ’himself’ on various bionic chips implanted in brains.

The advantage of doing so is that it prevents the location of the mainframe from being found and destroyed, but it also has a fatal flaw.

When most of his ’alters’ living environments undergo fundamental changes, and if they cannot be brainwashed by the mind interference device, this vast network formed of countless nodes could easily be subverted from its roots.

After all, a bionic chip needs to be attached to a human brain to exist; without the mind interference device, they actually influence each other.

At least the fuzzy operation part that constitutes personality has to be computed on the human brain... These were all things Chu Guang had learned from Yin Fang.

With a perplexed face, Lu Bei looked at Chu Guang and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Sorry, my lord... I didn’t quite understand. Maybe you could just tell me what to do."

Chu Guang smiled and said,

"Simply put, that scumbag hiding in the Holy Land thinks this Wasteland is beyond saving, and the world must be destroyed once to be reborn."

"If they’re clinging to this foolish notion, let’s show them how it’s done!"

The guy thinks the world is beyond saving, right?

Then let him witness the Alliance’s methods!

From Mutants to Slave Owners, he will eradicate the troubles here one by one.

And when that time comes, he’d like to see that fellow spout that "beyond saving" nonsense again.

First things first...

Chu Guang pondered for two seconds and began.

"Hmm, there’s trouble at the Pinecone Wood Farm; contact the Army Command for me and have them dispatch a force there immediately."

If Zhao Tiangan and the Apostles are not the only chip carriers, it also means that there are countless eyes of that Luo Gan in Pinecone Wood Farm.

With the mind interference device shut down, the communications blockade there has been lifted.

They might try to send the Mutants straight in.

After all, he had said it himself; the basement of the Church had a passage to the outside world, but he had not stated that there was only one.

Lu Bei’s expression became serious immediately and without asking the reason, promptly accepted the order.

"I’ll go right away!"

Watching Lu Bei leave quickly, Chu Guang suddenly had a thought, recalling something.

Speaking of which...

Today just happens to be the third day.

"Hold on a second."

Upon hearing the Manager’s voice, Lu Bei stopped in his tracks, turned around, and asked respectfully,

"Do you have any more orders?"

Chu Guang smiled and said,

"The opponents should be Mutants."

"Let the brothers of Jungle Corps handle it!"

—

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