Chapter 186 The Doctor's Secret Chamber 2
"You mean that's a computer?" I asked.
"Yes, you... wait..."
Just as the young girl Lu Chan was about to continue speaking, she suddenly realized what she was talking about and asked with a strange expression, "What do you think that is?"
I truthfully described what I saw.
"You..." She seemed to have no energy left to even complain, "You..."
She took a deep breath and then said, "...You wouldn't be able to see the secret files on the computer directly through those folders, would you?"
“It’s possible,” I said. “Perhaps there are clues we need inside. I’ll go take a look first.”
I walked to the bookshelf, pulled out a folder, and looked down to open it.
I was initially wondering if what Lu Chan saw as "encrypted computer data" would become "data written in ciphers" from my perspective, but my worries were unnecessary. I could understand all the data here.
Unfortunately, this "understanding" refers to "I understand every single word," but "I can't understand them when they're put together." Simply put, these materials are indeed Dr. Silver Mask's secret research data, filled with technical jargon and data incomprehensible to laypeople like myself. I felt like I was opening an extremely high-end, cutting-edge medical paper, completely bewildered.
At the same time, I also asked the girl Lu Chan, "What do you think I'm doing?" In her view, I seemed to be just randomly typing on the computer keyboard, while the monitor displayed a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish.
I put the materials I couldn't understand back on the shelf, then took out new ones; after finding I still couldn't understand them, I put them back again, and took out new ones once more. I repeated this process repeatedly, and eventually found some materials that I could understand.
These secret research materials also contained things that resembled researchers' memos and reflections, occasionally interspersed with their random musings, allowing me to glimpse fragments of the Humanitarian Affairs Department's internal workings once again. However, these were all old wine in new bottles; some expressed concerns that the Humanitarian Affairs Department's higher-ups and backers had trampled on ethics, while others questioned whether the Humanitarian Affairs Department's backers were indeed official forces.
Among them was a document "applying to introduce pregnant women and children as experimental subjects," which may have been submitted by the senior researcher I killed earlier. Not all researchers are like the young researcher hypnotized by the girl Lu Chan, rejecting unethical experimental methods; some researchers accept inhumane human experiments as "extraordinary means for extraordinary times."
I vaguely sensed that their place was similar to the transcendental mountain peaks where they had searched for Ma Zao in the past.
They weren't unaware of a more righteous path, but the pressure from all sides made them incredibly impatient. Impatience breeds madness, and madness breeds evil.
The evil leadership is probably one of the reasons why they became so ruthless. I saw claw marks on Ying Lingyun's hands when he was the highest authority in some records. In the past, he was not only the manager of this base, but also a leading scientist who shone brightly on the front lines.
"Where did Ying Lingyun's research ability come from? A 'possibility clone'?" I wondered. "He summoned 'himself as a scientist' and then allowed his main body to receive that research knowledge... Is that even possible?"
As the source of the 'possibility clone' ability, Lu Youxun never seemed to have demonstrated that kind of multi-talented quality.
Since he can summon himself, who symbolizes countless possibilities, and inherit knowledge from those selves, Lu Youxun, as the original body, should become quite omnipotent. And this omnipotence should not be completely rendered ineffective simply because he has lost the power to fight.
“It’s possible, but I’ve hardly ever done that in the past,” the young girl Lu Chan replied.
"Why?" I asked.
“Even different possibilities of yourself are ultimately different personalities. Randomly absorbing those memories will cause the collapse of your own personality,” she said.
"If it's just about inheriting knowledge, it shouldn't be like that, right?" I asked probingly.
"Yes, it will. No matter how objective knowledge is, we humans still perceive and digest it from our own subjective perspective, and in this process, our own subjective biases will inevitably creep in," she said. "Even scientific knowledge is like this—if you only learn it in fragmented pieces, this subjective bias may not be obvious. But once you integrate a large amount of knowledge into a system, this system itself has a strong personal consciousness underpinning it, and if someone other than you were to absorb it rashly, they would become mentally confused."
"In the past, I did summon the 'self that became a scientist,' and I even synchronized with it through the consciousness network, but I didn't choose to absorb that version of myself's scientific knowledge system. Because I consciously avoided it."
I said, "Then, Ying Lingyun, he..."
“He’s gone mad,” she asserted.
In other words, Ying Lingyun had already lost his mind?
I struggled to process the information while continuing to search for materials on the bookshelf.
Perhaps there are records related to Chang'an here, or clues related to the end of the world.
How did they transform humans into monsters? Where did Ying Lingyun obtain this technology with its futuristic, apocalyptic feel? Since it's a secret document kept in the director's office, it might contain secrets that even the researchers don't know.
As I searched, I realized I had actually found an important document.
However, that wasn't about the origin of the monster's technology, but rather a document called the "Super Cyborg Project".
The "Super Cyborg Project" was an experimental project devised by the Humanitarian Division to develop extraordinary warriors capable of fighting against the "Super Demon Hunters of Luoshan" (i.e., those at the Great Perfection level). Since its inception, it has consumed the most organizational resources.
This experimental project involved twelve test subjects, one of whom was Chenlong. It seems that the higher-ups in the Humanitarian Affairs Bureau got their inspiration from the code name "Chenlong," so the other eleven test subjects were also given code names corresponding to the Earthly Branches and the Chinese Zodiac, and the project thus got the nickname "Project Twelve Gods."
The plan ultimately created two "super-cyborgs," but was declared a failure.
Because one of the "super-cyborgs," Chenlong, was already an outstanding individual among the cyborgs, his transformation into a super-cyborg with the help of the Twelve Gods Project did not provide the Humanitarian Division with any valuable experimental data to support its goal of "granting ordinary people extraordinary powers." His initial selection for the Twelve Gods Project was merely to serve as a safety net for the project, preventing a complete failure.
The other "super cyborg" was codenamed "Dog Dog". He was supposed to be a failure like the other test subjects, but Ying Lingyun implanted some unknown substance into him in the final stage of the experiment, which produced a miraculous result.
The document only describes this "unknown substance" as "an object that looks like black jade."
No matter how you look at it, it's a fragment of the divine seal.
The Dog, who was implanted with a fragment of the divine seal, gained power that even the Dragon could not resist. The Humanity Department even believed that he had become a "qualified person of the Great Impermanence". However, since the miracle of this case relied on the fragment of the divine seal, it is not of reference value.
Moreover, the Dog (戌狗) has an extremely serious flaw—it must rely on a large amount of medicine and external life support equipment to maintain its life activities, and its lifespan is less than a year.
Even more critically, he defected from the Humanitarian Affairs Department not long afterward, and his fate remains unknown.
When I saw the part where the Dog was implanted with a fragment of the divine seal, I was wondering if he was the current Silver Mask Doctor. Now it seems that I can rule out that suspicion.
Furthermore, the contents of this document also indicate that Ying Lingyun collected more than one fragment of the Divine Seal.
The young girl, Lu Chan, asked curiously, "So, are there any clues?"
"Wait, I'm still looking..."
Records related to Chang'an may not have been entered into the archives yet, or Ying Lingyun may not have intended to leave any records at all. And clues related to the apocalypse don't seem likely to be left here either. The more I investigate, the more I feel that these secret documents belong less to Ying Lingyun and more to Dr. Silver Mask.
Dr. Silver Mask clearly hadn't synchronized with all of Ying Lingyun's memories; he seemed to be exploring the secrets of his own body.
For example, he didn't know what the original form of all the monsters was, only that it should be a human still alive today. Luo Shan speculated that the original form should be "at least at the Great Perfection level", while Dr. Silver Mask's speculation was more radical - he believed that the original form was "a human being above the Great Impermanence level".
Above the Great Impermanence? The Great Impermanence has already reached its limit, so is there such a thing as "above"?
Dr. Silver Mask had previously tried to subtly inquire about the original entity from Ying Lingyun, but to little avail. The only piece of information of any value was that Ying Lingyun seemed to have once referred to the "Seed of the Heart" as the "Mengzhang Original Seed".
Meng Zhang... Based on my knowledge, that should be another name for the Azure Dragon, one of the Four Symbols...
I put the folder back and then took out another folder. It was then that I noticed something was wrong.
It wasn't that the folder I took out was unusual, but rather that I noticed the wall behind the bookshelf had taken on a strange color.
I immediately put the folder back in its place, then pulled hard on the bookshelf against the wall, dragging it aside. Then, I saw what was hidden behind the bookshelf.
“Lu Chan, have you been inside this manager’s office before?” I asked.
The young girl, Lu Chan, replied, "I sneaked in during the prison break."
"Did this thing exist back then?" I asked.
"What did you see again?" she asked in surprise.
It seems she can't see.
But I could see it all clearly.
There is a wooden door on the wall behind the bookshelf.
(End of this chapter)
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