Chapter 88: Let Me Give You Some Guidance

Chapter 88: Let Me Give You Some Guidance

Picking up where the last chapter left off: Mother had just finished telling us the origin of the lotus-shaped green jade disk, and the tangled, unresolved relationship between it and the Myriad-Dimensional Brain.

I still had questions, so I asked her, “Mother, according to the Fermi paradox, if extraterrestrial civilizations really exist in such numbers, why haven’t we ever truly observed one? Even that saucer you described had no one inside it, and nothing to prove it actually came from outer space. So how do we explain this—in theory the galaxy should be crowded with alien civilizations, and yet in practice we find nothing but silence?”

Mother said, “There are two mainstream explanations at present. One is the Dark Forest theory, which holds that every mature civilization chooses to hide itself, and none will risk reaching out to a civilization of similar or greater strength. So everyone remains locked in silent vigilance. The other is the Great Filter theory—it holds that every civilization has a lifespan, humanity included, and all will eventually perish. So between one mature civilization and another, often one side destroys itself before or just after reaching maturity, filtered out, in other words.

“But your father and I believed something else: that before any civilization can reach the point of interstellar communication, it must cross a series of extremely difficult thresholds, and at least one of them is nearly impossible to clear. That’s why synchronization between interstellar civilizations is so rare. And even meeting one is not necessarily good news.

“Take the evidence sitting in our own hands. The Myriad-Dimensional Brain and the lotus-shaped green jade disk are separated by hundreds, maybe thousands of years, but to a civilization operating on an interstellar scale, that gap is nothing at all. That was exactly how the issue of same-frequency sensing between the disk and the brain arose, and why we came to suspect the two belonged to one and the same civilization.”

The subject of interstellar civilization still felt distant to me. What occupied me most, right then, was broadening my experience and finding a way to grow stronger.

So I told Uncle I wanted to visit the virtual Future World.

Uncle said not many people went there. The entry requirements were steep, and so was the cost. It was also a domain the Shadow Pavilion controlled directly, so without real ability, there was little to be gained from the trip. Still, he had confidence in what I could do.

He suggested I go in as Song Chenfeng, the virtual code-body, rather than registering as someone new. With my abilities where they now stood, Feng Du might not even be able to hold me back.

The advantage of entering as Song Chenfeng was continuity of soul code.

Song Chenfeng had lived a long life inside the Song virtual world, and his abilities were considerable now besides. His soul code would carry a high credibility rating. A freshly registered soul code, by contrast, would start from zero.

I asked, “Uncle, what does soul-code credibility actually get you?”

Uncle said, “Tang and Song are both entry-level virtual worlds. To move up into the other metaverses, your credibility is what gets checked at the door. Only those who meet the threshold get in. Jump levels, or show up with zero credibility, and you’re made to sit an assessment right there at the entrance. There are all kinds of assessments, and they’re strict, harder even than growing up inside an entry-level metaverse. Only if you pass do they let you through. So using a soul code that’s already registered, and climbing the ranks step by step, is by far the easiest path. This time you’re skipping several levels at once, so you may still face some kind of assessment and authentication. But that’s still better than starting from nothing. Mind you, go in as Song Chenfeng, and the system will know exactly who you are, in any metaverse. The Shadow Pavilion will know it even better.”

I asked, “If my identity is out in the open—if the Shadow Pavilion knows, at least—would they make things difficult for me on purpose? Even shut down my soul code outright, and keep me from getting in at all?”

Uncle said, “You need to be clear on one thing: the Shadow Pavilion and the Shadow Pavilion’s administrative apparatus are not the same thing. We tend to lump them together under the one name, but that’s not really accurate. Strictly speaking, the Shadow Pavilion is the quantum core supercomputer plus its core members. Together, they’ve become a single, unified intelligent entity. On their own, none of those individuals retain independent awareness anymore. That old woman you met at the former residence—she was almost certainly a condensed state of consciousness belonging to the Shadow Pavilion intelligent entity. It can be anywhere, take any form. It is the true operating core of this world. The Shadow Pavilion’s administrative apparatus, on the other hand, is Pu Xuande, Xiang Bianfeng, and the rest of the Pavilion Elders, the outward-facing management body the intelligent entity uses to handle worldly affairs. There are eight Elders in all, each running one of eight departments. The ones going after the resistance are only them, the Elders, not the entity itself.

“The Shadow Pavilion intelligent entity holds no ill will toward the resistance, in truth. It doesn’t concern itself with worldly matters at all, you could sense that yourself, from the old woman at the former residence. The metaverse system is a new virtual world the intelligent entity built and runs directly; it has nothing to do with the administrative apparatus. The intelligent entity never targets anyone specifically. It only cares about rules, ability, intelligence, results. That’s why, in the virtual worlds, at whatever level, bias based on who you are is rare. Feng Du understands that much.”

So that was how it worked.

In ordinary conversation I’d always just said “the Shadow Pavilion,” lumping the two together, without ever drawing a clear line between the intelligent entity and its administrative apparatus.

The next morning, I went to the workroom where one entered the virtual world, and had the staff power up the equipment and send me in.

This time I covered every fee myself. I didn’t touch the base’s funds.

I closed my eyes.

I heard machinery humming to life, and my consciousness seemed to lift free of my body.

When I opened my eyes again, I was already inside Song Chenfeng.

Once his memories settled in, I found Feng Du had actually treated him well. Not only had he kept him on as judge, he hadn’t locked him up again after I left. Song Chenfeng could come and go as he pleased, and his pay was better than what Ziyun Sect offered. Taking him over added another four hundred achievement points to my tally, just like that. Back when I was the judge myself, Feng Du hadn’t let me leave at all. He’d sealed me down in the Eighteen Levels of Hell, breathing that stench day after day.

As a soul-code body, Song Chenfeng wouldn’t have taken it upon himself to harvest force of consciousness. He’d simply gone on carrying out the imprint of consciousness I’d left behind. The moment I returned to his body, though, it changed dramatically, mainly in the construction of his cosmic consciousness and the growth of his martial power.

I couldn’t be bothered with the prison. Without so much as a glance at it, I launched Song Chenfeng’s body straight up to the surface and flew quickly to Feng Du.

Feng Du showed no surprise at all when he saw me. He just smiled and said,

“Only a few months, and your force of consciousness has leapt forward like this. I have to say, I’m impressed. I figured you’d be back often to harvest a bit here, but you never came back, not once. Looked down on this place, did you, and went off somewhere else to train? Impressive, though, you flattened Xiang Bianfeng. How on earth did you manage that?”

I cupped my hands together, a passable greeting, then went and poured myself a cup of tea.

“That, I can’t tell you. You’re a Shadow Pavilion man. Turn around and you’ll go straight to Xiang Bianfeng, and once he’s braced for it, I might not beat him next time.”

Feng Du said, “You distrust me that much?”

I said, “Completely. You and Xiang Bianfeng are colleagues, and you’re both in the Shadow Pavilion’s good graces. I hear even Pu Liuqian has to call you Uncle when she sees you. True?”

Feng Du said, “Now that you bring up Pu Liuqian, I’m even more curious. I’ve never once seen anyone break her mind arts. That’s why she’s always been so sure of herself, and why everyone’s spoiled her rotten. How in the world did you manage it? Don’t tell me you’re not a man.”

I said, “You’re the one who’s no man! No, you are, just not a good one. That’s how she got her hooks in you. No man resists that kind of seduction, and that’s just the nature of things.”

Feng Du said, “Don’t talk nonsense. No man resists her, full stop. So tell me, now that you’re back, where do you want to go? Want me to give you some guidance?”

I said, “Now that’s more like it. I want to see Future World. I hear not many people go, but the opportunities are good. What’s your take? Anything I should watch for?”

Feng Du said, “You want to go to Future World? That really is a fine place, you should go. Say nothing else about it, the force of consciousness there is first-rate, no question. Your rank doesn’t look quite as high as I’d have guessed, though, not as high as Xiang Bianfeng’s, certainly. You’ll come away with plenty from a trip there. Which reminds me, if your rank is below his, how exactly did you beat him? He’s been depressed for days.”

I said, “Didn’t he tell you? I didn’t hit him at all. He hit himself. If I’d used my own strength, you saw the results yourself, it wouldn’t have looked like that.”

Feng Du said, “The Great Shift of Heaven and Earth? That’s a legend out of martial arts fiction. Is it actually real?”

I said, “There you go again. Don’t bother fishing, I won’t tell you. Just tell me what to watch for in Future World.”

Feng Du said, “Future World is full of monsters, aliens, cosmic energies, cosmic traps, it’s basically interstellar life through and through, all of it built into the system. Which means it’s the future world as the Shadow Pavilion intelligent entity imagines it: a world of interstellar civilizations, not Earth’s future at all. I’ve sometimes wondered whether the intelligent entity has questions of its own it can’t answer, and built Future World as a way to find someone who could solve them for it.

“Once you’re inside, you’ll hardly ever run into an actual human being. Even the ones that are human will have taken on nonhuman shapes. And some of the ‘people’ you meet will actually be aliens in disguise, so be careful. You’ll never be able to tell friend from enemy in there. You may find it nearly impossible to have allies, or any support at all. You’ll be alone, plain and simple. All you can do is keep getting stronger, and think hard about how to solve whatever problem is troubling the supercomputer. What that problem turns out to be differs from person to person. But you will run into a wall.”

I asked, “How do I gather force of consciousness there, then? I need that badly.”

Feng Du said, “Force of consciousness comes in two kinds. One is Earth force of consciousness, human force of consciousness, in other words. The other is cosmic force of consciousness. The two have entirely different properties, entirely different ways of being understood. Earth force of consciousness comes mainly through insight and harvesting; every other layer of the metaverse runs on that kind. Future World doesn’t. It runs mainly on cosmic force of consciousness, and its content is so complex that humans find it almost impossible to grasp. It takes an extraordinary depth of wisdom and insight, real exploratory power. No one’s ever actually been to outer space, after all, I don’t fully understand it myself. If you manage to capture some aliens in there, from different star systems especially, you might be able to harvest cosmic force of consciousness off them. That’s a tall order, though.”

I said, “Aliens? Are there really aliens in this world? Why would the intelligent entity design it that way?”

Feng Du said, “Hard to say. None now, but there will be eventually. You know about the Myriad-Dimensional Brain, don’t you? I suspect that might be one.”

I said, “Doesn’t Ghostdark City have a branch in Future World? Or does Future World simply have no need for hell?”

Feng Du laughed. “Ghosts, gods, immortals, monsters, demons, Buddhas, Heavenly Emperors, all of that is just something people of Earth dreamed up. The Shadow Pavilion intelligent entity left all of it behind long ago. If you insist there has to be a God, then as far as I’m concerned, the intelligent entity is God. You still don’t understand it well enough. It can do anything. As for whether Future World has a hell, personally, I think it probably does. But nothing like what we picture.”

I asked, “What do you think hell in Future World would look like, then?”

Feng Du said, “Worse than anything we could imagine. Future World cares more about the soul, call it human consciousness, if you like. Its hell wouldn’t torment the body at all. It would grind away at the soul instead. That’s the truly terrifying kind of hell. What do you think?”

I nodded. “True enough. Next to the soul, the body’s suffering is nothing at all. The soul’s suffering, that’s the real thing.”

Feng Du said, “The fact that you can say that tells me your understanding of consciousness has reached a new level. Don’t underestimate a line like that. It takes real suffering, and a thorough understanding, to arrive at it.”

I only smiled, and let the subject drop.