Chapter 44: Learning to Parasitize

Chapter 44: Learning to Parasitize

Old Wang watched me steadily and said nothing. He clearly had no intention of getting into it.

I had no choice but to settle down and listen.

“This is called a chakra controller. Ordinary people need it installed in the brain. You don’t. You’re different — you can copy it directly into the composite structure in your brain.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why am I different? Why does everyone else need an installation and I don’t?”

“What, you’re complaining?” Old Wang said. “You get the better end of the deal and you’re still not satisfied? Have you ever had an AI bio-brain–computer interface installed?”

“No,” I said. “That’s exactly why I’ve never been able to figure this out. Where did my abilities come from? Why do I have same-frequency sensing? Why can I replicate brain-computer-interface abilities? Why can ordinary people only do it by installing an AI bio-brain–computer interface?”

“Because,” Old Wang said, “you were never an ordinary person.”

“Then who am I?”

“Why do you have so much to say? Isn’t it enough just to have the abilities? Are you learning this or not?”

What did that mean?

He didn’t want to say, or he couldn’t?

Fine.

Say it or don’t. If someone doesn’t want to tell you, asking gets you nowhere.

Old Wang pointed at the chakra controller. “Copy it now. Then activate it — don’t be afraid. This first step only starts up the control system. I’ve already prepared a biological puppet for you. Activate it and you’ll understand. The second step: if you want to share a body with an ally — what you call parasitizing — switch into connector mode and interact with the other party’s consciousness. Before, when you opened the connector a crack, you thought that was why you could hear conversations between Soul Hunter consciousnesses. It had nothing to do with opening a crack. The connector itself is an allied information interconnection — their consciousness made contact with yours. You were lucky you activated brainwave shielding at the same time. Without that, opening a crack would have meant nothing. They would have sensed your consciousness information regardless.”

Huh.

So that was how it worked.

When I had cracked it open to eavesdrop, I’d assumed that keeping the opening small would keep me safe. Apparently not. The reason I’d been fine was that I’d been afraid of being caught through same-frequency sensing and had shielded my brainwaves.

Caution had saved me, plain and simple.

Following Old Wang’s instructions, I held the chakra controller against my neurons, closed my eyes, and slowly copied its functions into my consciousness composite.

The composite engaged immediately.

Then something began to take shape in front of me.

Or rather — I opened a pair of eyes that weren’t mine.

The world shifted.

I was seated cross-legged in a dark room. Everything around me was silent.

I rose and pushed the door open.

A creak.

This place was actually a temple. I had only taken a few steps outside when someone spoke behind me.

“Senior Brother, have you emerged from seclusion?”

I turned. From his robes, I could tell he was a temple steward. Information about him began surfacing in my mind.

His Dharma name was Danying. He had entered the temple a year after I had.

I nodded. “Danying, I’ve been in seclusion too long. I wanted to come out for a walk.”

I walked toward the Mahavira Hall. Several monks spotted me and pressed their palms together in greeting. My standing here was not low — I was the head Dharma master, second only to the abbot.

Not that being abbot would impress me much. It wasn’t as though I’d never held that title.

I passed by the main hall and the release pond and made my way to the temple gate. The view that opened before me was extraordinary: beyond the stone steps, clouds and rosy mist billowed upward while a thousand peaks lay bowed beneath. Breathtaking.

A mountaintop temple.

I looked back at the inscription above the gate: Yunding Temple.

How had I ended up in Pengshui?

I let my senses settle into this body. The owner’s consciousness information and life experiences kept rising to the surface. This was no mindless puppet — this was a living man.

His secular surname was Zhang. He was from Xiaomian in Hechuan. His Dharma name was Shiqing, and he was the temple’s head Dharma master. He had entered monastic life as a child. Counting from the time he entered monastic life, it should have been nineteen years.

Nineteen years.

If Old Wang was telling the truth and this puppet had been prepared for me, did that mean he had laid the groundwork for today nineteen years in advance?

What kind of nonsense was that?

I had barely been a year old back then.

I withdrew my consciousness from the body.

When I opened my eyes, Old Wang was sitting on the sofa watching me with a small smile. “How was it?”

I was still adjusting. “What… what exactly is going on with Dharma Master Shiqing? He’s clearly a real person. Why are you calling him a puppet? And if I pull my consciousness out, will he die?”

Old Wang laughed. “What are you imagining? Did Xuanhong die before you merged with him?”

Xuanhong. Right — what actually was Xuanhong? Old Wang had to know.

Old Wang seemed to read the question in my expression. “Xuanhong was also a biohuman I made. Not bad, right? I used your cells and genes, of course. So you can probably guess — he was tailor-made for you too. Without all the groundwork I laid, you wouldn’t have developed this fast.”

Really?

He was that capable?

I had serious doubts.

I couldn’t help asking, “I checked Xuanhong’s file at the Sweeper base. He truly had no past — he simply appeared as a grown college student. How did you manage that?”

“In the AI era, it’s not difficult,” Old Wang said. “Just biotechnology. You know our bodies contain thirty-six trillion cells, right? Every cell is, at its core, a holographic living entity. Every one carries the same genes — cells only became specialized through biological evolution. In the AI era, there was reverse engineering: take the holographic genome cells of the human body, reverse them into stem cells, culture them on a medium with directed growth, apply AI bioprocess design, and it’s done.”

That was the simple version?

It sounded like a staggering feat of bioengineering to me.

“If it’s that easy to make people,” I said, puzzled, “then why does anyone bother having children? Just make them.”

“Exactly,” Old Wang said. “Elite people don’t have children. The ones who have children are ordinary people. That’s why Gu Qiutang has a daughter — he’s an ordinary person.”

I found a hole in that immediately. “But you just said my mother was one of the elite people. So where did I come from?”

“Nonsense,” Old Wang said. “Elite people don’t have children — that doesn’t mean they can’t. Most simply don’t want to. If one of them decides to, she still can. AI brought revolutionary technology. Who would willingly put themselves through that suffering?”

Was that right?

I had nothing to say to it.

But then — why had my mother chosen to have me?

“Stop dwelling on things that don’t matter right now,” Old Wang said. “We’re not finished with the experiment. Come here. Now I’ll teach you how to parasitize.”

“Wait,” I said. “Wasn’t Dharma Master Shiqing just now a form of parasitizing?”

“That was a puppet. A biohuman. Same as Xuanhong. Did you parasitize Xuanhong? If Xuanhong hadn’t burned himself to death, you could control him now — make him your puppet. Parasitizing isn’t control. It’s brain-information interconnection between natural people. Is that clear?”

Ah.

So that was the distinction.

“All right then,” I said. “Let’s parasitize. Who?”

“Who do you think you can parasitize right now? Who would allow it? Use me. I’ll open my consciousness. You use that integrated connector to perform same-frequency sensing on me. You’ll receive my consciousness information soon enough. Once you confirm your own consciousness is entering, you’ll understand everything.”

I closed my eyes and used the connector to reach toward Old Wang with same-frequency sensing.

Sure enough, his consciousness opened.

His information flowed in.

He really was my uncle. My mother’s name was Wang Rongyue. His was Wang Rongliang. Wang Chunyan had had only these two children, and had named them Yue and Liang — moon and bright.

Come to think of it, why had Grandma named them after things in the sky?

In Old Wang’s consciousness, my grandmother had indeed died back in 2030. So who was the woman who had raised me? I began searching through my uncle’s mind for an answer.

“What are you doing? Stop poking around. Focus on the experiment.”

Old Wang’s consciousness sent me a sharp warning.

So he didn’t want me to know.

Fine. Deal with what was in front of me first.

I opened Old Wang’s eyes — and got a shock.

This was the first time I had ever seen myself from the outside.

And it was nothing like a mirror.

A mirror gives you a reversed image, and you grow so used to it that you assume that’s what you look like. But seeing myself through Old Wang’s eyes was entirely different. It was the right way around.

I looked good.

I was genuinely struck by my own tall, rich, and handsome appearance.

“What is it now? Drifting off again.”

Another warning from Old Wang.

Right, right. Experiment.

I stood up in his body, walked into the inner room, then came back out to the living room. On impulse, I sprang up with a kick and, in midair, ran through the boxing routine Min Long had once used.

Once I finished, I still wanted to take the opportunity to search for information about Grandma.

Old Wang forced me out.

When I came back to myself, Old Wang was sitting across from me looking insufferably smug. “Now you know. So are you going to call me Uncle, or aren’t you? Call me Old Wang one more time and I’ll knock you on the head.”

I said quietly, “You’re… really my uncle? Then why did Grandma never mention she had a son like you?”

Old Wang shot back, “Here you go again. Is the woman you call Grandma actually your grandmother? Don’t play dumb — you already know.”

“Then tell me who she really is,” I said. “Otherwise I’m not calling you anything.”

“You really want to know?”

“Of course I do. I’ve been going half-mad trying to figure it out. Or just take me to see her. Let her tell me herself.”

Old Wang hesitated visibly.

I pressed while I had the advantage. “Old Uncle, Old Uncle — come on, let’s go find Grandma.”

“Hey, hey,” Old Wang said. “What’s this ‘Old Uncle’? It’s Eldest Uncle.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Your own brain told me I only have one uncle. Where does eldest or youngest come into it?”

“You’re something else,” Old Wang said. “I’ll have her deal with you later.”

“Who?” I said. “Grandma?”

Old Wang looked at me with pure contempt. “Get out. Get out of here. You’re infuriating.”

He was actually annoyed.

Good.

That’s what he got for not telling me anything.

I ran out of the safe house and onto the street.

Not a bad day, all in all. Dharma Master Shiqing — another monk. It seemed the resistance had a particular fondness for monks.

Since I now had a substitute body, why leave him all the way out there? I was thinking about whether to bring him closer — at least give him something to do. What was the point of sitting in seclusion?

Back home, I settled onto the sofa alone and found myself wanting to play around with that substitute body again.

Yunding Mountain.

Yunding Temple.

Right?