Chapter 566: We
Countless strands of hair shimmered with the chaotic radiance of Spirit Energy, flying both inside and outside White Month, with some even directly rooting themselves into the walls.
Compared to his human-sized body, the hair behind him, after expanding, took on a volume a hundred times greater, nearly filling all visible space.
At this moment, Bai Mo looked as if his hair was his true body.
«Alright.»
Not long after, the mountain-like mass of hair collapsed and vanished in an instant, leaving only a head of neither long nor short dark hair. Simultaneously, a heart-shaped, basketball-sized, sky-blue translucent substance appeared, floating in mid-air.
This jelly-like substance involuntarily squirmed, or rather trembled, in mid-air, while also aimlessly deforming at will.
«Those, my, body.» The unknown entity spoke again, manifesting as a mouth.
Lin tried to explain to Bai Mo that it had only “fished out” and aggregated a very small part of itself, with the vast majority of its remaining body still existing as microorganisms throughout various corners of White Month.
«Truly belonging to you, there is only this much.»
These pan-consciousnesses, which could effortlessly span continents, possessed bodies that, in his view, were utterly vast and unwieldy; the portion they could truly precisely control was less than one-thousandth of their total volume.
Excluding a small core, the rest of their peripheral bodies, he felt, were less like a part of themselves and more akin to the wearable exoskeleton armor designed by the Human Federation.
......
After losing the vast majority of its body, Lin felt itself in an unprecedentedly weak state; any “compatriot” glaring covetously around it could swallow it whole in one gulp.
Yet, at the same time, for some unknown reason, it also felt a sense of having shed a heavy burden, a notion of being reborn anew.
«Thank, you.» It recalled that humans seemed to like hearing this, a memory from the neural cells it had consumed.
However, the crisis it faced had not yet been resolved, and Lin was unsure whether or not it should say such a thing.
«An excellent idea, but unfortunately the base body is too weak.» Bai Mo paid no mind to the other's thanks, simply digging out a piece of the White Month's wall at random, allowing the first-generation nano-worm swarm inside to be compared with the microorganisms forming Lin's peripheral body.
He felt that his designed nano-worms could gain some inspiration from these Spirit Energy-infused microorganisms, pushing forward the research for the second generation of nano-worms.
«You, too, are, us?» Lin asked curiously, watching the nano-worms, under Bai Mo's control, perform rotations and jumps, masterfully manipulated into dazzling displays.
«Possibly.»
At this point, Bai Mo suddenly recalled his Fourth Tier days, when he still possessed his original physical body.
Before undergoing the first life sublimation at the Fifth Tier, from an anatomical perspective, it was still faintly discernible that a Spirit Energy cultivator was something akin to an ordinary human.
But upon reaching the Fifth Tier Xuanhua Stage, the cultivator's concept of self-existence expanded to include the external Xuanhua, and their physical body completely moved towards a non-human form.
«Humans, or rather, various multicellular organisms, can perhaps also be seen as pan-conscious entities that evolved from countless microorganisms (cells) abandoning their independent consciousness?»
He did not know the answer to this question.
«Is it possible for the 'rebirth from a drop of blood' that might exist at the Martial Path's Seventh Stage to be realized through a similar method?» Even before setting foot in the Manghuang Realm, Bai Mo had already begun exploring the possibilities of the Seventh Stage in other paths.
It was just that at that time, he hadn't yet formulated the more complex Five Immortal Paths theory of Heaven, Earth, Human, Divine, and Ghost.
......
«Eat...» Lin didn't understand what Bai Mo was thinking, but it knew very well that if it left White Month, or even moved ten steps away from Bai Mo's figure, it could be devoured like a snack by its greedy kin.
«Try this.» Bai Mo, without warning, conjured a ball of light and then pressed it into the sky-blue translucent gelatinous mass.
«Destiny System initialization complete, now commencing activation...» A cold voice, known to everyone in the Land of White, suddenly rang out.
«Please enter your name.» This was the first sentence the system spoke after activation.
«Ni Lu.» Lin mused that perhaps it should adopt a new name to embrace its new beginning.
It remembered that a part of its current body had once participated in the decomposition of a female human named Ni Lu's brain after her death, so Lin decided to name itself this, as it couldn't recall anything else.
After accepting the inexplicably appearing system, Ni Lu gently jumped from mid-air to the ground. It didn't know what that orb of light had done, but it noticed that its formerly covetously glaring compatriots now ignored its existence and began to scatter.
Seeing that only Bai Mo was left, it didn't know what to do, so it instinctively tried to mimic his facial features and physique with its gelatinous body.
After some adjustments, the limbs and torso were mimicked with uncanny accuracy, but when it came to molding Bai Mo's face, something unexpected happened!
«Bang!» The entire gelatinous person instantly exploded, scattering fragments everywhere.
Only then did Bai Mo realize what the silly creature had done.
«Don't transform into my face; you cannot bear that burden yet.»
The sky-blue fragments scattered across the ground slowly squirmed and gathered, quickly reforming into a single mass. This time, it learned its lesson, decisively leaving its face blank and only mimicking the long hair behind Bai Mo. It bounced and hopped around, immensely pleased with itself.
......
«Analysis complete. Name: Ni Lu. Processing method: Currently equivalent to a kindergarten student. Arrange for nearby enrollment. After completing basic logic and general life knowledge, can proceed to the next stage of learning earlier.»
The system's voice chimed in just in time, reminding Bai Mo that no matter how intelligent this creature was, it had lived like a wild beast before this, possessing virtually no common sense of human society. The best approach was to first send it to kindergarten to learn things like "red light stop, green light go."
As the central operating hub for everything in the Land of White, the Destiny System had by now developed into a super-gigantic network covering over a billion people.
Ordinarily, it primarily "thought" by calling upon idle resources within the network – that is, the temporarily unoccupied portions of the system's "players'" brains – in conjunction with a large number of photonic computers deployed in White Month.
The wetware processing of human brains handled specific non-linear problems, while the photonic computer hardware provided linear computation support.
Many of the conclusions derived from this were less Bai Mo's own thoughts and more the answers the majority of people in the network would unconsciously choose first.
However, the obtained answers first needed to pass Bai Mo's central mind check. If he rejected an answer, the system would re-verify it.
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