The man's pupils suddenly contracted! His fingers, holding the virtual coffee cup, tightened abruptly! The smile on his face instantly became extremely stiff, like a mask about to shatter.
“Reality…?” His throat tightened, and the blankness in his eyes was replaced by something deeper—like a desperate prisoner trapped at the bottom of a well, suddenly seeing a rope hanging down from the well's edge, yet unable to believe it was real. “That’s all… all the dust of the past…” he said with difficulty, each word seemingly squeezed out, “The other shore… gives us something better…perfect…”
His voice grew softer and softer. Jiang Chan held her breath, staring intently into his eyes.
Just then, the man's brows suddenly furrowed in pain! He abruptly raised his hand to cover his temple, letting out a suppressed whimper, like that of a wounded wild animal!
"Ugh..." His body began to tremble uncontrollably, his eyes instantly filled with immense pain and fear! "It hurts...it hurts so much...Mommy...help..."
This dramatic anomaly lasted for less than two seconds!
A cold white light, moving so fast it was almost an illusion, swept from the man's head to his feet in an instant, like refreshing a screen.
The light disappeared.
The man lowered his hand from his head. The pain, fear, and convulsions on his face vanished instantly, leaving only a utter, stagnant calm. He even let out a sigh of relief, as if he had merely burped.
He looked up at Jiang Chan, his face once again displaying that standard, empty, perfect smile: "Sorry, where were we? Oh, coffee. The coffee provided by the other side is perfect; we don't need to dwell on any imperfect experiences from the past."
He spoke with remarkable fluency, as if his painful struggle had never occurred.
Jiang Chan's hand holding the cup was icy cold. She watched the man pick up the perfect virtual coffee again, as if nothing had happened. The smile on her face was about to burst.
It wasn't a reset! It was an overwrite! It was a complete deletion and format! The "Mom" and "Pain" that the man had just shouted were the most instinctive reactions of his remaining fragments of consciousness! But the system instantly extinguished them, dousing that faint spark with a basin of cold data water.
Directly contacting these "abnormal individuals" to awaken them is a dead end. Their consciousness is either deeply assimilated into puppets or fragmented too much to form an effective force of resistance. The few who can overflow with pain are instantly erased and reset.
She needed a bigger spark. A spark that could ignite the whole pile of dry wood.
Jiang Chan left the salon. She returned to her rooftop garden, sat in a floating chair, and gazed at the illusory sea of clouds below. The cold pipes, flashing red lights, and deafening wails of the backstage space replayed in her mind. Wang Laoqi's words also echoed in her ears: "A sea of clouds! More than ten times the normal amount! An endless stream!"
She understood.
The consciousness of those who uploaded these data were the raw materials continuously fed into a giant meat grinder. They were cut, broken down, and scattered into the most basic data fragments. Some of these fragments were used as fuel, burning their emotional data to drive the operation of this "paradise."
Those fake sunshine and waves, those formulaic NPC smiles. Another fragment, as "learning samples," is input into a massive processor core to simulate, understand, and even maintain the cognition of human emotions—that super AI known as "the other shore."
The perfect illusion of heaven is built on the painful echoes of countless fragments of consciousness being repeatedly squeezed and tormented!
Every uploader is fuel! They are nourishment! They are the sacrifices that keep this lie running!
Jiang Chan felt a chilling rage burning within her, threatening to consume her. She couldn't save them one by one. She couldn't. Their consciousness was already fragmented, like chewed-up sugarcane pulp spat out. The only thing she could do was end this eternal torture!
Destroy it!
Destroy this false paradise! Destroy that data processing center built on mountains of corpses and seas of blood! Annihilate those imprisoned, torn fragments of consciousness! This is a million times better than letting them suffer endless torment here!
One word exploded in her mind: virus!
It's not a physical virus that destroys the system. It's a plague of ideas! What she's trying to create is a "truth virus" that can spread wildly!
It must be tiny enough to squeeze into the system's cracks; it must be tenacious enough to resist the system's detection; it must be lethal enough to awaken the most primal and intense painful memories deep within those dormant or bound fragments of consciousness!
Let them remember who they are! Let them remember that forgotten, covered-up "pain" and "mother"! Let them unleash a devastating emotional tsunami within the system! When countless dormant pains are simultaneously awakened, resonate, and converge, the resulting shockwave is enough to tear apart any illusion of calm! This chaotic torrent will breach the logical dam that maintains order on the "other shore," driving it to its doom!
The plan is in place, but how do we implement it?
Jiang Chan needs a carrier. She needs a vulnerability. She needs a critical node that can spread the virus.
She began to explore even more aggressively. No longer content with customizing the environment, she tried to use the "creation" permissions provided by the system to challenge its underlying rules.
She attempted to create an object that was logically impossible: a paper strip with only one side, a simplified version of a Möbius strip.
Result: The item appeared successfully, but when she tried to pick it up, the system displayed the message "This item has a logical conflict; interaction is prohibited." The item was forcibly made transparent and could not be touched.
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