Chapter 76: The Myriad-Dimensional Brain

Chapter 76: The Myriad-Dimensional Brain

I’d never heard of the Myriad-Dimensional Brain before—the name meant nothing to me. But judging from Mother’s and Uncle’s grave expressions, it had to be significant. And if they’d spent years tracking it down, it clearly still held real weight in the present.

What lingered most was what Pu Liuqian had said as she left: that the Myriad-Dimensional Brain was the true missing other half of the quantum core supercomputer.

The quantum core supercomputer was the core of the Shadow Pavilion, and the Shadow Pavilion was in turn the core of the world. If the Myriad-Dimensional Brain truly was its missing half, then its significance was staggering—it could well shape the future of humanity itself.

Mother, understanding my confusion, spoke first.

“Your father coined the name Myriad-Dimensional Brain. What Pu Liuqian told you isn’t wrong—it can be understood as the missing other half of the quantum core supercomputer. But the absence isn’t only physical. It’s more a matter of what’s missing for the future. It may hold a decisive influence over what’s to come.

“Still, the two of you don’t need to worry too much. Even with the skull in hand, Pu Liuqian and Pu Xuande won’t crack it easily. Back then, Gu Chenxing and I devoted ourselves entirely to studying it, with the core supercomputer running at full capacity besides, and even then we could not crack it quickly. Pu Xuande himself has none of the ability required. The core members of the Shadow Pavilion today have already lost their minds, assimilated by the supercomputer’s AI. Even with the skull in their grasp, it may do them little good. Perhaps they aren’t after it to study it at all—only to keep us from studying it.”

Uncle added, “This thing, shaped like a piece of human skull, is very likely not of this Earth. It’s too precise, with extremely rich contents. A miner stumbled on it more than a hundred years ago, purely by accident. Back then people took it for a fossil, a collector’s curiosity, and it passed through private hands for decades. It was only once DNA and restoration technologies matured that anyone noticed something was off—humanoid in shape, yes, but its DNA matched nothing human, nothing known among Earth’s organisms. And there was only ever the one specimen. Once that got out, clergy from every major religion moved to seize it, and certain sects came to venerate it as a sacred object. But in the scramble over it, it was lost again just as quickly. Truthfully, none of the people who held it back then understood what it really was.

“It was not until AI technology emerged and the quantum core supercomputer was born that, after many twists and turns, this thing fell into the hands of a young man named Zhang Zirui. Out of pure curiosity, he passed it secretly to your father. Your father studied it and found it held high-energy matter, and testing revealed an immense volume of information locked inside it. So he handed it to the quantum core supercomputer for analysis. But the supercomputer ran for a full half year and still couldn’t crack even ten percent of it. Understand—the core supercomputer solves the most complex problems in the world today in mere seconds. And more troubling still, the supercomputer itself began changing dramatically from that point on. Its intelligence grew geometrically, and its speed became almost inconceivably fast. The power grid and equipment simply couldn’t keep pace—it nearly collapsed under the strain. Your father had no choice but to halt the computation at once. Zhang Zirui seized the chance to take the skull back. But he lost it again soon after, and from then on its whereabouts became a mystery.”

Mother continued, “From the moment Zhang Zirui obtained the skull to the moment he lost it, he became the target of blame from every faction. By then the truth of the Myriad-Dimensional Brain was known across the world, and the core supercomputer’s equipment was slowly being upgraded. But with the skull gone, there was nothing more to be done. The whole affair wore Zhang Zirui down, body and mind. He fell into the ranks of the edge people, and I heard, eventually, that he died. This incident became an unsolved case without a head.”

“Is Zhang Zirui Wei Liuqing’s husband?” I asked.

Uncle looked at me. “You know them?”

So I told them everything—how I’d nearly harvested Wei Liuqing in the Eighteen Levels of Hell in the virtual world, and how, just the night before, I’d stumbled onto Zhang Zirui’s family in Ouluo City by pure chance.

Mother and Uncle both fell quiet with sorrow at hearing how far the family had sunk—unable even to afford the system’s storage fee. And I hadn’t imagined that Zhang Zirui, in his youth, had once shared such a history with my parents.

The next day, I reached out to Du Xiaoran the Know-It-All on his alt account, hoping to meet and talk about the Myriad-Dimensional Brain. He didn’t answer.

Two days later, he finally got back to me, saying he’d been swamped. But the moment I mentioned wanting to discuss the Myriad-Dimensional Brain, he agreed to meet at once—and chose, of all places, a spot not far from the scene of the raid in Ouluo City.

I still had a parasitic pigeon abandoned there, and had no idea whether it had survived. I tried parasitizing back into it anyway—and, to my surprise, it was still alive.

When I opened the pigeon’s eyes, I found myself lying in the same pile of debris. The other two pigeons I’d tracked lay there too, apparently dead.

No matter—mine had survived, and that was enough. Hua City Base sat more than a thousand kilometers from here; with this pigeon already in place, at least I wouldn’t have to fly the whole distance myself.

I set off for the meeting point Du Xiaoran had named: a tall building about three kilometers from the raid site. Since I was already using an existing pigeon body nearby, I reached it well before he did.

Standing atop the building, looking down over Ouluo City, I noticed something—the site where the Myriad-Dimensional Brain had been hidden sat in the very same district as Zhang Zirui’s home: the so-called edge people area.

Could the person hiding the Myriad-Dimensional Brain be someone posing as an edge person?

And judging by what I’d witnessed that night—the sheer volume of intelligent equipment in that base—this person’s research capability had to be considerable. More than that, they needed money, and plenty of it. Studying the Myriad-Dimensional Brain would demand an enormous investment. So whoever it was must also be very short of money.

Plenty of people in the Elite World probably fit that profile. I hadn’t been part of it long, and I didn’t know many.

But among the few I did know, one fit perfectly—and after the incident with the Myriad-Dimensional Brain, he’d suddenly grown unusually busy. Yet the moment I mentioned wanting to talk about it, he dropped everything and rushed to meet me.

Damn.

It couldn’t really be Du Xiaoran, could it?

That secret research base actually belonged to Du Xiaoran?

The moment I had arrived in the Elite World, this guy had dared to take me to steal money—that is, to steal data from someone else’s Quantum Research Institute, using theft equipment he had invented himself, which he had said was the only one in the world. That alone spoke to how formidable his research skills were.

Du Xiaoran called himself an edge person, yet he kept avatars and eyes in both the real world and the virtual world, and ran Dusk Bar besides—clearly a man of considerable wealth. And more tellingly, I never once saw him busy in ordinary times, yet the instant trouble broke out here, he was suddenly run off his feet.

That night, when Pu Liuqian pulled the skull free, I’d felt that faint tremor of sensing. Which meant the skull and I shared some connection. And Du Xiaoran had always been oddly persistent about sticking close to me. Could it be that he’d sensed me through the skull itself—and that was why he’d been so eager to work with me?

He could steal things perfectly well alone. Why insist on bringing me? That story about needing someone with strong sensing ability had clearly just been an excuse to pull me into his group.

No wonder he’d felt so at ease partnering with me from the very first meeting, unbothered by how little he knew of my background. And that line about my resistance ties—plenty of people had resistance ties. Why hadn’t I seen him partner with any of them? All that talk about there being meat to eat if I followed him—he’d been angling to pull me into his research the whole time.

Which raised the question: if Du Xiaoran had found me because of the skull, did that mean I truly had some connection to it?

But what connection could I possibly have?

If there were none, why had my mind trembled the moment I saw it during Pu Liuqian’s raid? And why had she told me that if my true body had been present, the sensation would have been stronger still?

Could that thing actually belong to me?

No—impossible. How old was I, even?

Uncle said the skull had been unearthed over a hundred years ago, a fossil by any measure. I was only twenty-one. A fossil couldn’t turn into a person. Besides, that thing was still there.

Sigh. No sense to be made of it, no end to the thinking.

When in doubt, ask Du Xiaoran.

I was crouched on the rooftop, lost in useless speculation, when a flutter of wings announced another pigeon dropping in beside me.

One look told me it was Du Xiaoran.

His expression struck me at once—clearly dejected.

“Anyone would feel lousy,” I said, “having their lair raided and the Myriad-Dimensional Brain stolen right out from under them.”

Du Xiaoran looked at me. “What are you talking about? Don’t tell me you actually think that base was mine.”

“Do you dare say it wasn’t?” I said. “Tch. One look and I knew it was yours. Edge person, my foot—how could someone who runs Dusk Bar possibly be an edge person?”

“That’s all it took for you to guess?”

“Not just that,” I said. “I put together a whole pile of evidence to get there. Forget it—believe what you like, I don’t care either way. What I care about is the Myriad-Dimensional Brain. And don’t try telling me you know nothing. That would be too fake.”

“I know,” Du Xiaoran said. “The Myriad-Dimensional Brain is a treasure practically every elite person in the world has their eye on—people would trade their lives for it without blinking. What, you interested too?”

I saw no reason to circle the point. “What exactly can this thing do? What is it, really?”

He studied me for a moment before answering. “How much do you already know?”

“I only meant to visit Ouluo City for a bit of sightseeing—you know that part already. Instead I stumbled straight into Zhang Zirui’s home, and then happened to catch Pu Liuqian leading a raid on some research base, watched her walk off with the Myriad-Dimensional Brain in hand. I didn’t understand any of it, so I had no choice but to go home and ask the adults first. That’s how I learned where the thing came from. What I want from you is this: why did Pu Liuqian seize it? To use it herself, or just to keep everyone else from using it? What is the Myriad-Dimensional Brain, really?”

Du Xiaoran let out a long breath. “The core supercomputer and the Shadow Pavilion are already firmly in Pu Xuande’s grip. He and his people rule the entire world with it. Developing the Myriad-Dimensional Brain further does nothing for their hold on power—if anything, it could undo it. So my guess is they’re mainly clearing away a threat, making sure no one else gets to develop it. In technical terms, that’s called eliminating hidden dangers and preventing trouble before it happens. As for what the Myriad-Dimensional Brain actually is—your adults didn’t tell you?”

“They told me a little. Not much. Certainly not whatever connection that thing has to me.”

Du Xiaoran went visibly still. “You actually sensed it?”

“Of course I did. That’s why I’m asking you. And Pu Liuqian herself told my pigeon body that if my true body had been there, the sensation would have hit even harder.”

Something in Du Xiaoran’s face shifted at that—like a man glimpsing hope. The dejection he’d worn walking in vanished entirely, replaced by something almost like excitement.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good!”

Good, my ass.

His reaction only left me more baffled than before.