Chapter 1445: The Truth Closest to "Truth" |
"First, we must establish one thing: if the Slice Experiment originates from a single Experiment Material prototype, why do Slices with entirely different personalities emerge?
Praise Yu Xi!"
The moment the Doctor finished speaking, Galusha, standing behind Cheng Shi, delivered an utterly deadpan, textbook-precise answer:
"The causes of deviation during consciousness formation are many. The Tower of Logic's academic community generally recognizes three:
First — differences in the canned memories fed into the Slice lead to complete deviation during consciousness formation.
Second — defects and fragmentation in the Slice itself naturally cause cognitive deviation during consciousness formation. Put simply, a mutation occurs during the experiment.
Third — if the Experiment Material prototype was still in the consciousness-formation stage itself, then the post-experiment consciousness-growth guidance becomes the decisive factor.
The first case is most widely applied. The second is the most common and the most uncontrollable. The third is rare, since young Experiment Material prototypes offer poor return on investment — few experimenters bother to nurture them until adulthood, unless the initiator has ulterior purposes. Like my grandfather, Lord Keinlaur.
Praise Yu Xi!"
Galusha's "Praise Yu Xi" stunned everyone present into silence. Among them, Long Jing — who knew about the Doctor's quirk — asked in bewilderment:
"Did you eat an Inzagir too?"
All eyes turned to Galusha. The new Folly merely scoffed. "I just found it amusing, so I'm trying to embrace foolish acts."
"Why embrace foolish acts?"
Cheng Shi had developed a certain aversion to "embracing foolish acts" by now. After all, both Folly and Wei Mu had departed because of it — and that was precisely what worried him most.
He feared that Galusha, upon becoming Folly, would grow too wise — so wise that she'd see through the truth of the universe and the world's future, and lose faith in a world with no answer.
So when Galusha uttered those words, Cheng Shi frowned reflexively. But what she said next made every face in the room twist into the same peculiar expression.
"If I don't embrace foolish acts, how can I sit at the same table and debate with fools like you?
My intellect won't permit it. So I can only pollute myself.
Praise Yu Xi!"
"..."
"..."
"..."
There it was.
That familiar Folly seemed to have returned.
Not quite the same, though. The old god Folly had been sharper and colder. Galusha at least retained a trace of human warmth — she was still willing to explain herself to "the fools."
Cheng Shi waved his hand, unwilling to let the farce waste more time, and gestured for the Doctor to continue.
The Doctor nodded eagerly.
"Correct — the majority of discarded Slices result from the second case: mutations during the experiment.
Of course, we can't deny that many miraculous strokes of brilliance also stem from experimental mutations. It's precisely that completely unrestrained, uncontrolled, free Change that creates infinite possibilities for experimental outcomes.
But all along, we've overlooked one question: what causes mutations in the first place? Prai—"
"That question was not overlooked."
Galusha shook her head, cutting off the Doctor's praise. At this moment, she looked less like Folly and more like Truth — for no one present understood that era's Tower of Logic or that period's Truth experiments better than she did. Not even the Doctor.
Many of the experiment records that players had studied were ones that had survived from her era.
If those records were primary sources, then Galusha herself was the creator and firsthand witness of those sources.
"Shortly after I pushed Pe Laya into the Erudition Presidium, I found a proposal among the mountain of funding applications that intrigued me greatly.
A young scholar who had once studied under Selius's faction was investigating the probability of Personality Slice mutations in Slice Experiments. He had already identified several key research directions and discovered that the probability of Personality Slice mutations consistently showed sharp spikes during certain time periods.
I intended to fund this scholar and have him explore how to reliably manufacture more chaotic Personality Slices — thereby causing some trouble for the Tower of Logic.
Unfortunately, Pe Laya's single vote wasn't enough to sway the Erudition Presidium. The project was killed.
I believe this is what the scholar was trying to describe?"
"Exactly!"
The Doctor wasn't offended by the interruption. On the contrary, the way he looked at Galusha brimmed with the hunger of academic discourse. That pure essence of Truth overflowed so intensely that Cheng Shi experienced a fleeting illusion — as if the Authority of Truth was drawing toward the Doctor of its own accord.
"I discovered the same thing in my experiments. Moreover, thanks to 0221's repeated replication, I was able to narrow down a specific time window.
Historical research on this topic has always focused on the temporal correlation of high-mutation-probability points. Each run of a Slice Experiment generates a massive number of Slice individuals — scholars would identify the deviant personalities and attempt to find a logical time-based pattern.
But mutations are inherently uncertain. High probability is still just probability, not certainty — making it extremely difficult to reach definitive conclusions in correlation studies.
So I abandoned that approach. Instead, I focused solely on the temporal mutation mechanism of a single fixed mutation point. In simpler terms, I concentrated exclusively on understanding why, within the first five hundred Slices generated, 0221's mutation probability was significantly higher than that of other individuals. And this time, I not only ran a large number of low-scale Slice Experiments on repeat — I even added the experimenter, myself, to the observation list.
That was inspiration drawn from Time's guidance and 0221's mockery. I wondered whether some change in the Experiment Material prototype, or some change in the observer, was triggering the Personality Slice mutations.
When the results came in, even I was shocked!
Praise Yu Xi — the approach was correct!
I found the likely cause of personality mutation in Slice Experiments!"
The Doctor grew more excited with every word. He strode into the center of the group, pulled a handful of glass balls from his coat pocket, and scattered them casually across the ground. Countless glass balls rolled in every direction, settling everywhere.
After a moment, he pointed to a blank spot on the floor and asked Cheng Shi:
"What happened here?
Praise Yu Xi."
Cheng Shi frowned. Truthfully, from the moment the Doctor had scattered the glass balls, he had been subconsciously tracking their dispersal pattern. He thought he remembered a ball landing there, but he wasn't certain. He hadn't paid close enough attention.
Seeing the puzzled look on Cheng Shi's face, the Doctor revealed the answer.
"There's one glass ball missing here. Just now — someone stole it.
Praise Yu Xi."
"?"
Cheng Shi's pupils contracted. He confirmed that he hadn't seen anyone make a move, yet the people around him — especially the new gods at his side — all wore expressions of dawning understanding. In that instant, he too seemed to grasp what the Doctor was trying to say.
Someone had tampered with the glass balls while he wasn't paying attention.
There was no question that, as a mortal, he couldn't detect a god's actions. But what relevance did this have to escaping the Origin's gaze? They possessed no power that could rival the Origin's.
Cheng Shi was puzzled, but the Doctor quickly clarified. "Someone did indeed make a move, but they didn't use any divine power beyond mortal comprehension. They simply found the right moment. Praise Yu Xi."
With that, the Doctor pointed to Long Jing, who stood amid the group. Long Jing smiled, holding up the glass ball in his hand for Cheng Shi to see.
"When the Doctor gave me this task, I didn't expect it to be so easy.
I simply took the ball as quickly as I could — during the instant you blinked."
"!!!"
In that moment, everything clicked for Cheng Shi.
The Doctor nodded as well, barely restraining the elation on his face. "Precisely! The experimental conclusion is this: when the observer loses observation of the Slice Experiment, the probability of Slice mutation increases dramatically!
Yet because Slice Experiments are enormously costly in time and resources, throughout history, virtually no experimenter has ever let an experiment run unsupervised. They used every means available to ensure they wouldn't overlook a single minor step...
And yet no one ever realized that overlooking was the key cause of deviation!
Praise Yu Xi!"
...