Chapter 565: Who Are You?
Bai Mo quietly observed the eyeball that had appeared within the White Month without any warning, now staring intently at him. For a moment, he didn't know what to say.
"Whose prank could reach here?" His first thought at the time was retaliation from Earth's dissidents.
Ever since he had used absolute force to compel everyone to make a choice within five years—either join the Land of White's faction or leave Earth—the dissenting voices and acts of resistance had never ceased.
Countless attacks, like moths drawn to a flame, occurred daily.
Curses, viruses... the overt war had failed, but covert retaliatory strikes, exhausting the limits of human imagination, continued to rain down upon him.
Yet, not once had their attacks managed to penetrate into the White Month!
He tried to use the Skynet to uncover the mastermind behind it, but discovered that this "eye" had actually grown naturally, rather than being controlled by anyone.
"Who are you?" Bai Mo asked, using mental fluctuations.
"Ah!" The bizarre "eyeball" merely emitted a strange sound.
"Ah!"
"An eyeball with self-awareness, or one composed of countless microorganisms?" Bai Mo felt that the other party was responding, but perhaps couldn't comprehend the meaning conveyed by his mental fluctuations, so he simply took action.
Countless filaments, too fine for the naked eye to perceive, extended from the tip of one of his hairs, flying towards the eye that simply continued to stare at him.
Unlike ordinary eyes, this "eye" seemed to "see" these filaments, formed by atoms lined up one by one. In the next instant, it responded.
Hundreds of thousands of eyes appeared without warning in the air and on the surface of the walls!
Some dripped pus, some were incomplete, and others had no pupils, with only a vast whiteness in the center of their eyeballs.
Such a disgusting and terrifying scene, combined with the empty environment inside the White Month, would make anyone suspect it was a horror film set if a chilling BGM were added.
"..."
Unfortunately, Bai Mo remained completely unmoved by this sight.
He merely multiplied the hundreds of thousands of atomic filaments that had extended from the tip of a single hair by a thousand, causing them to extend from a whole strand of hair instead, so that each filament corresponded to an eye.
...
"Gah-woah-oh-woah-wah-me!" From the overwhelming expanse of eyes, a mouth suddenly emerged. That toothless mouth spoke with great difficulty.
Distorted sounds, countless rotting eyeballs, and a gaping, toothless maw together composed a symphony of terror and crumbling sanity.
Unfortunately, they faced Bai Mo, a person who had grown accustomed to unique perspectives decades ago, and whose emotions had been severely eroded by Daoization. Fear, for him, was a feeling far too distant.
"Who are you?" The atomic filaments, following intricate patterns, precisely sliced open nearly all the eyeballs, splitting them back into their individual microbial states.
The only things remaining were the original eye that had first appeared, and the speaking mouth.
"L-l-l-l-l... R-r-r-r-r... Rin!" The toothless mouth lacked vocal cords and a tongue, producing sounds in a strange, almost mechanical, grinding fashion.
"Rin?" Bai Mo understood its meaning. "You need a vocal cord."
Then, with a sweep of his psionic power, he casually picked some components from the shattered eyeballs and provided the creature with temporary "vocal cords" and a "tongue."
"Save me." This time, it spoke with noticeably more ease, but its words were anything but reassuring.
"Who are you?" Bai Mo persisted with the same question. Until he fully understood the creature's existence, he had no intention of offering assistance.
The other party was clearly not a normal species, and he wasn't so kind-hearted.
Bai Mo could confirm that this unknown creature, calling itself Rin, possessed the ability to construct its body from various microorganisms, but he couldn't determine whether it was an indigenous Earth life form or yet another extraterrestrial visitor.
He had encountered far too many black-hearted aliens over the years. If he saved a malevolent individual, it would just lead to a whole new heap of trouble.
"Rin!"
"..."
After similar dialogue was repeated once more, Rin finally understood that the dangerous place harbored a communicative self-awareness, but due to language barriers, normal communication was impossible.
The reason it could comprehend human language syllables was that the microorganisms comprising its body had previously been involved in the decomposition of a large number of fresh human corpses.
From a small number of neural cells that hadn't completely died, it had gleaned some extremely fragmented and difficult-to-understand information.
"Power... destruction... everything..."
From the power fluctuations that had just erupted from the dangerous place, Rin understood that the dangerous place possessed the ability to completely annihilate all pan-consciousness. It seemed to have attracted an even more formidable anomaly.
At this point, however, it was already riding a tiger, unable to dismount. The other pan-consciousnesses were eyeing it covetously; the mere prestige of the dangerous place couldn't hold back their desire to devour it. In just a few more light-dark transitions, it would be consumed until nothing remained.
In desperation, it conceived of a non-solution to maintain this communication.
Rin transmitted all of its memories to Bai Mo, in their most raw, sensory form.
Every image it had "seen" and every piece of information it had "heard" since the dawn of its self-awareness was transmitted, completely unaltered.
The pan-consciousness of microorganisms lacked complete language, unable to describe most things verbally. Thus, it could only resort to the clumsy method of making the other party experience it firsthand.
...
"Your luck is good." Bai Mo suddenly said after a moment of silence.
If an ordinary person were to receive all the raw information contained within a pan-consciousness's memories, the only probable outcome would be neural cell collapse, followed by an instantaneous head explosion.
Even a Fifth Tier cultivator attempting to withstand such an information onslaught would very likely end up as a madman.
How could a normal person possibly witness the countless lives and deaths of billions of microorganisms?
After perusing this lengthy "epic," Bai Mo couldn't help but marvel at the uncanny craftsmanship of Spirit Qi, which could allow originally independent microorganisms to give birth to such a miracle as pan-consciousness.
"I can save you."
Bai Mo fully immersed his attention in the microscopic world, and the filaments formed from his hair began to dance wildly, attempting to locate Rin's true form.
Normally, he could actually see these microorganisms within his divine sense, but he subconsciously ignored them all because they were simply too inconspicuous.
Or rather, they were too common, like air. Everyone knew air existed, but in most situations, they wouldn't think much about it.
PS: I can't believe my book has reached 50,000 favorites. ORZ.
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