Chapter 461: The Third Day’s Conversation (1) |
Fahe, Liruo'an City.
Scarface glanced sideways at the Prophet who had entered the hall, his eyes filled with unmistakable wariness.
"Your Holiness, I didn't expect you'd invite a parasitized form," he said.
"You say he is a parasitized form, have you actually seen one?" Your Holiness asked, curious.
Scarface flared his nostrils, smiling without quite smiling. "A bear's nose is very sensitive."
The Prophet spoke slowly, "Indeed. Bears can scent potential prey from eight kilometers away. As the leader of the Three Beasts Army, you naturally possess that ability, sir."
"I'm not surprised at all that you know who I am," Scarface said. "But all the parasitized forms in the Three Beasts Army have been wiped out already, haven't they? I've personally cleaned them out several times."
Your Holiness said, "Parasitized forms are everywhere, slipping through every crack. They're powerful at gathering intelligence. However, our friend here is no ordinary parasitized form... He is the leader of the parasitized forms, the Prophet."
Scarface narrowed his eyes and stared at the Prophet. "So you're the head of those parasitized forms. I'm curious—if I tore you apart right here, would all those parasitized forms perish with you?"
"The Prophet is right," Your Holiness said, looking at Scarface. "After the rules end, the Human Consortium will come after you. After all, you took their Ascension Coins."
Scarface laughed. "The world's huge and full of no-man's-lands. Where would they find me? Are they going to turn the whole world upside down for a few million Ascension Coins? Even if some death-seeking fools show up, they'll only be a snack for me."
Scarface's arrogance was plain to see; he clearly did not take the Human Consortium seriously. Your Holiness and the Prophet, who vaguely understood where his confidence came from, did not show contempt.
"In any case, the Human Consortium is our common enemy," Your Holiness said. "The reason I invited both of you here is to unite all forces opposing the Human Consortium."
As Your Holiness finished, a tall, burly man entered from outside the hall. He was the only remaining one among the four bishops, the Khan who had represented the Fire Thief Cult when coordinating attacks on Joint Force camps with the parasitized forms.
"Your Holiness, we're here," he said.
"Let him in," Your Holiness replied.
Scarface frowned slightly at the arrival of another person.
The Prophet remained composed, not turning his head toward the door, as if he had expected the newcomer.
Soon, the Khan led in another man.
This man had a refined, scholarly look, with an obvious bookish air about him.
"Hello, everyone," the young man greeted the three with a smile.
Scarface looked him over sharply, taking in his black hair and dark eyes. "A Beixing native..."
"Technically speaking, I am now a Suroman," the young man corrected. "I recently became a Suroman citizen."
"Heh heh heh."
Scarface gave a dry chuckle. In a time when hundreds of nations had disappeared in just two years, the phrase "changed nationality" struck him as oddly amusing.
"Apparently Suroma hasn't given you enough incentives," Scarface mocked after his laugh. "First you betray Beixing, then you betray Suroma. I'm curious what price Your Holiness offered you."
Your Holiness said, "You misunderstand. He contacted me on his own."
"Oh?" Scarface grew more interested.
The Prophet then spoke, "You used to be affiliated with Beixing's Countermeasures Research Office, didn't you?"
"As expected of the Prophet, you've even planted a mole inside the Countermeasures Research Office. That's right, I used to be affiliated there, but now... ah, I just realized I haven't introduced myself, how rude of me."
The young man smiled. "My name is Han Qiu. I am currently with Suroma's Second Research Institute."
"Han Qiu," the Prophet nodded.
"Beixing's Countermeasures Research Office is quite a place. It seems Suroma offered you a lot," Scarface said, then glanced at the Prophet. "You're impressive yourself, placing a parasitized form inside there."
The Prophet said, "My mole inside the Countermeasures Research Office was eliminated long ago."
"Oh—so that report was true," Scarface smirked with schadenfreude. "Humans have found a way to identify parasitized forms. That's not good news for you."
The Prophet remained silent.
Your Holiness said, "Now that everyone is present, let's get to the main topic."
....
Guan Tong lay on his bed, resting with closed eyes.
It was the Dialoguer's break time. Once the break ended, it would be Suroma's delegation's turn to speak—the final day of the rules.
This rule period had been brief, but the useful information humanity had received far exceeded what had come from some longer rules. Yet you could not compare them crudely; without the groundwork those longer rules provided, humans would not have understood this information as well.
From the Beixing delegation's intelligence, the existence of "faith power" and the special particle "magnetic substrate" were the most important findings.
If humanity could fully comprehend and properly utilize the former, there might be a chance to create "man-made strongmen." In other words, governments or the entire Human Consortium could manufacture public figures, build up spectacle, place them in the spotlight, and harness mass attention to capture faith power.
But given that the public would already know this information, whether such a system could actually work was dubious—if people know the "god" before them is manufactured, how many would genuinely worship from the heart?
Guan Tong personally cared more about the latter—this special particle, magnetic substrate.
From what the Dialoguer implied, this particle could help humans break materials science limitations. That would mean breakthroughs across cutting-edge technologies, dramatically accelerating humanity's technological explosion.
But the premise was that humans would need to obtain such particles from Meltstar. At present, sending real astronauts or robotic probes was impossible. If they tried to concentrate resources on such a mission and failed, an enormous amount of resources would be wasted.
There was also a hidden premise: humanity would have to trust the Dialoguer and believe its claims.
What if it lied?
After all, this was a Doomsday Rule—one of forty-nine disasters.
Humans were not so foolish as to trust the Dialoguer simply because its pseudo-human face showed a sorrowful expression and spoke of trivialities like "getting wet in the rain" in a seemingly kind tone.
Smart people understood that, even if this rule had no penalty for failure, if the Dialoguer misled people with false information and they made poor decisions, the losses they suffered later could be just as catastrophic as past disastrous rules.
"You can't not believe it, but you also can't trust it completely," Guan Tong thought.
He'd watched the whole thing these past two days and had some doubts about certain things the Dialoguer said.
For example, it claimed to be a "passer" that had passed the test. Passing the test could not be equated with a civilization having passed all forty-nine Doomsday Rules. Back when the Kimos Star civilization had been destroyed, those few giant beasts depicted in the murals became part of the rule; had they "passed" the test?
Guan Tong clearly remembered the mural's account: Kimos Star was destroyed by mist, and those giant beasts survived because they hid in deep caverns untouched by the mist. The Fire Thief later appeared in a bizarre form and took them away.
At the time humans guessed that those beasts survived not because they passed a test, but because they were the few remaining intelligent beings of Kimos Star, and the Fire Thief "collected" them.
Indeed, from the full mural's exposure until now, mainstream human opinion held that when a civilization is destroyed by a Doomsday Rule—or "test"—the Fire Thief pretends to be fierce and takes away the last survivors, probably as collectibles or for use in other rules.
Given that, Guan Tong distrusted the Dialoguer's claim of being a passer. It might simply be like those beasts from Kimos Star, a surviving entity of a destroyed civilization.
Another issue was the Dialoguer's description of Mind Power as a "catalyst" for individual awakening, which differed greatly from humanity's understanding. Humans regarded Mind Power as the source of power itself—the result of consciousness warping reality and being converted into data.
In chemistry, a catalyst can’t decide whether a reaction will occur; it merely accelerates or inhibits an existing reaction. A positive catalyst speeds a reaction; a negative one slows it.
If the Dialoguer were right, humanity's previous understanding of Mind Power would be fundamentally wrong and would require deep reevaluation.
All this made Guan Tong feel he couldn't fully trust the Dialoguer. At the very least, its information needed to be verified—for example, by testing faith power or measuring the energy consumption in a successful memory-digitization experiment.
Hours passed quickly. Though it was supposed to be break time, Guan Tong hadn't slept; he kept turning over various questions in his head.
He guessed he wasn't the only one. Everyone worldwide who followed these events likely slept poorly during these three days, not wanting to miss any live moment.
When the break ended, he sat up and went to the screen to watch the final day's conversation.
On site.
Compared with the previous two days, when it was Suroma’s turn on the third day, the guard presence had been significantly increased.
Suroma worried that they might be harassed by members of the Three Beasts Army as had happened during the latter half of the first day's Xisiya delegation, so they deployed another batch of soldiers, forming an escort numbering over three hundred.
If the Three Beasts Army dared to harass them again, Suroma would immediately order an attack and would not compromise as before.
After the conversation started, people were surprised that Suroma’s delegation focused its questions mainly on the memory-digitization issue.
Suroma delegation: "We want to know how to resolve the mechanical rejection effect of memory digitization technology?"
Dialoguer: "I am merely an ordinary individual of our civilization, not an encyclopedia. Detailed technical questions are difficult for me to answer."
"What about the memory overlap issue?" the delegation pressed. "If digitized memory storage results in duplicated storage, will that cause degradation or loss?"
Dialoguer: "I have already said I cannot answer detailed technical questions."
Suroma's delegation asked a few more questions related to memory-digitization technology, but whether they were direct or indirect, the Dialoguer did not provide satisfactory answers.
Viewers watching the conversation were baffled. Why were Suroma's delegates wasting time on such technical minutiae when there were larger issues people cared about? Yet some recognized the subtext behind those questions.
"It seems Suroma's research has reached a critical point and hit a bottleneck," Gao Liangwei of the Countermeasures Research Office said.
Zhang Minglu nodded. "I think so too."
Gao Liangwei asked the person in the research office responsible for this technology, who replied that their team's progress hadn't reached that stage yet—not close, in fact.
Li Meng guessed, "Suroma may be much further ahead on this technology; they might be ready for field trials within months."
"Suroma invested heavily in intelligence research before the Doomsday Rules arrived, and poured even more resources afterward. It's not surprising they've gained a big lead," Gao Liangwei added.
The technical lead protested, "We are not short on talent compared to them, it's just that their resource input is on a different scale. If they hadn't invested massive resources into building so many..."
Gao Liangwei looked at him. "You mean, if we hadn't built so many shelters and had invested those resources into research instead, we wouldn't be this far behind?"
The lead hesitated, then shook his head.
Indeed, after entering the Doomsday Rule era, Beixing built tens of thousands of professional shelters for people to live in. That consumed immense manpower and resources. Without an "infinite resources" cheat, investing heavily in one area necessarily limited investment in others.
By contrast, Suroma did not build large numbers of shelters; they invested resources into research, winning a commanding lead in intelligence and creating major intelligent war machines like the Annihilators and the Red Demon. The cost was catastrophic population decline—where nearly a billion people lived before the rules, now only about eighty million remained.
"Don't be impatient," Zhang Minglu said. "Falling behind a bit isn't the end of the world. Take it steady and build up; moreover, even if this technology succeeds, it will be hard to popularize in the short term."
"True."
"Anyway, aren't the Suroma delegates going to change the subject?"
On site, Suroma's time had stretched past an hour, still interrogating the Dialoguer about memory digitization. After dozens of questions with no answers, the Dialoguer refused to continue and took a break, saying it felt "disrespected."
This prompted a wave of criticism from the audience. The Suroma delegates offered wry smiles, seeming unwilling participants compelled by orders to ask everything regardless of outcome.
With the Dialoguer pushed to rest, Suroma's higher-ups apparently accepted the situation. Knowing they wouldn't get useful answers on that front, they moved on to other topics.
Three hours later, when the Dialoguer resumed, Suroma finally changed tack and asked a question many had been curious about but no one had previously posed.
"We want to know, since you passed the test, you should have encountered the Fire Thief, the 'God's Decree' your civilization speaks of. What exactly is it? Is it like a preset operating program, or is it a civilization intelligence with emotions like us?"