Chapter 184 The Sky Falls (19) (1st + 2nd) [VIP]
The front desk was eerily quiet for a moment; Ren Zhiling could only hear her own breathing.
The interface on the computer is extremely simple, with just simple white text on a black background. There is a small time mark above each message line. The first message was posted at [17:00:00] 5 o'clock, and the second message was sent at [17:05:00].
Now only these two pieces of information appeared on the entire computer screen.
"Does a new message appear every five minutes?" Xu Zichen squinted his eyes and looked at the time sign, then lowered his head to look at the time in the lower right corner of the computer, "It's five o'clock nine now. If there is a new message, it should be..."
【17:10:00】
The moment the time ticked below the computer, new information flashed on the screen.
Bai Jinshu narrowed his eyes slightly: "The message is longer."
Ren Zhiling read aloud word by word: "Knowing that disasters may happen in the future, you are committed to changing the disaster from another aspect. In the following years as a network administrator, you met a group of students who were studying brain neural consciousness through the Internet."
It is visible to the naked eye that the information transmitted this time is longer.
So far, there have been three messages transmitted. The first message was only two short lines, while the next two messages were longer than the previous one.
The two members of the exploration team standing behind her looked at each other and saw similar expressions in each other's eyes.
This time, Liu Yi actually chose to communicate with them through the screen.
"Brain nerve consciousness..." Ren Zhiling murmured, "What's going on here?"
"Wait for the next sentence in five minutes," Xu Zichen leaned back slightly, "I'll send a message to a few other people."
Bai Jinshu tapped his watch, Xu Zichen nodded knowingly, and the two walked a few steps toward the door. After Xu Zichen posted those photos in the group, he raised his head and said directly: "There is something wrong with Liu YiG this time."
Just from these four messages and the interface he used to transmit the information, it can be seen that, unlike all previous Liu Yis, the one Liu YiG chose this time was actually a mandatory one-way transmission.
"A message is sent every five minutes. The length of the message increases as the connection deepens. There is no window on the entire interface that can input information. The keyboard and mouse are all inoperable." Bai Jinshu crossed his arms and pulled the corners of his mouth. "This is a unilateral compulsory summons that does not give us any chance to ask questions."
One message every five minutes. According to Liu Yi F, they can stay here for a maximum of about half an hour. That is to say, the clues of this communication were limited from the beginning. They can only receive six messages from Liu Yi G at most, and these six even include the first short and useless greeting message.
There was only this line of words on the entire interface, without even a text input box. They could only passively receive Liu Yi G's messages but could not make any responses or ask any questions.
Liu Yi G said, "Since Ren Zhiling knew that a disaster might happen in the future, she was committed to changing the disaster from another aspect." If this statement is true, it means that in this future, the people of this future may know the coming of the disaster earlier than the people of the previous futures.
Could it be that because of Ren Zhiling's change, people in the future discovered that Ren Zhiling had learned more information about the future, so they forcibly restricted Ren Zhiling's intake of information during Liu Yi G's summons this time?
"What are they afraid of?" Xu Zichen crushed the cigarette butt on the ground and threw it into the trash can. "He found out that we noticed something was wrong with him, so he was afraid that we would find out more. So he chose this communication method that reveals the least information and can be completely controlled by himself?"
He didn't believe that everyone in the future would really become digital consciousness. After going through the loopholes of Liu Yi E and F, Xu Zichen was now extremely sure that all the futures described by Liu Yi who went back to the past must have been processed in some way.
"Because Ren Zhiling made changes to the future, people in the future discovered that Ren Zhiling learned information that they did not tell him. So in order to ensure that this communication can successfully mislead Ren Zhiling, and at the same time prevent us from analyzing the real clues they want to hide through body movements and other reactions, Liu YiG chose this method?" Xu Zichen leaned against the door, subconsciously trying to find something to write down and organize this logic. After realizing that there was no paper and pen at hand, he had to give up regretfully.
"It's possible, but unlikely," Bai Jinshu opened his phone and tapped a few times. "Don't you think the method Liu YiG used this time was too obvious? Once Ren Zhiling had doubts about his motives, she would have quickly discovered that his purpose of summoning was essentially to prevent communication and cut off other channels for obtaining information, leaving only the clues he needed to summon."
"If their purpose of returning to the past is to mislead Ren Zhiling, then the way they summoned her this time is to write "I am here to mislead you" on their faces. Isn't that a counter-effect?"
"Yes..." Xu Zichen frowned. "The two of us were able to react, so it's impossible for Ren Zhiling not to react. The first two times Liu Yi EF came back, it was Ren Zhiling who questioned the future destruction methods they described on the spot."
So why did Liu YiG use such an obvious approach this time?
"Unless..." Bai Jinshu dialed a number, "Unless Liu Yi G is anxious."
Something happened that caused him to prevent her from obtaining more information or lead her in the wrong direction even at the risk of being discovered by Ren Zhiling.
"What you mean is..." Xu Zichen raised his eyes.
Bai Jinshu raised his phone and glanced at him: "Xi Enze."
The only person who could make Liu Yi suddenly anxious could be one of Ren Zhiling or Xi Enze. Since there was no problem with Ren Zhiling, whom they had been following, there must be a problem with Xi Enze.
"Tsk," he glanced at the phone in his hand and said with a light click of the tongue, "I can't get through to Song Jirou."
Song Jirou is definitely not in danger of life at the moment, otherwise her name in the temporary group chat should have disappeared immediately.
No matter what, the telephone is a communication tool within the world. There is internal communication between the exploration team members. If Song Jirou encounters danger, knowing that this is a business order and Lu Changfeng, Xu Zichen and Bai Jinshu are here to ensure her safety, she will definitely ask them for help.
Since she hadn’t sent any messages in the temporary group chat, her life was definitely safe.
Bai Jinshu opened the temporary group chat and tagged Song Jirou: [@Song Jirou, call me back when you have time and send a message to confirm your safety. ]
Song Jirou still didn't reply.
"It seems that there is a problem with Xi Enze," Xu Zichen thought, "Hey, it's five twenty!"
The next clue about Liu YiG should appear.
Sure enough, when they walked into the Internet cafe again, there were already several people gathered at the front desk. Ren Zhiling was surrounded by Yin Liantao, Lu Changfeng and Ning Xiao, and the four of them all had their eyes fixed on the computer screen.
"What did he send in this message?" Xu Zichen asked as he walked over.
"Faced with these talented but frustrated researchers, you used your connections to help them connect with the current top research institutes and related scholars, and single-handedly promoted the research progress of consciousness uploading," Yin Liantao whispered. "In the near future, consciousness uploading technology will gradually mature. Between [a world with scarce and uneven distribution of resources] and [an eternally happy and peaceful Garden of Eden], humans will choose the latter. Three hundred years later, the consciousness of all humans will be uploaded to the server, and humans will live forever in an absolutely beautiful and absolutely fair world."
With so many people gathered around the front desk of the Internet cafe, it was inevitable that some curious customers came over to ask what was going on. Ning Xiao fooled them all by using the excuse that they were here to open a card.
Ren Zhiling sat in front of the computer, her brows furrowed so tightly that they could pinch a fly to death.
She could almost imagine what was going to happen next.
"This logic is wrong, isn't it? If all humans upload their data... where should the server be placed?" Lu Changfeng twitched his lips. "As long as the server is still on Earth, when the disaster occurs in five hundred years, won't everyone just have to wait for death?"
Sure enough, at exactly 5:25, a longer fifth message appeared.
"I come from the post-Skyfall Era, where the disaster has gradually become more serious, five hundred years later. A few decades ago, humans discovered that the outside sky began to gradually fall. Due to the overly comfortable life, human technology almost stagnated after the emergence of cloud uploads. By the time the disaster occurred, compared to hundreds of years ago, human technology had flourished except for computers, while other basic disciplines and other derivative schools had completely stopped developing. At this time, humans had no effective means to interfere with the outside world and officially fell into the countdown to extinction."
Barrage:
[The reason this time...I actually think it's reasonable. 】
[I think it's reasonable.]
[Compared to the cat hair and grilled sausage teachings of the previous two days, the logic this time is more logical. ]
[Indeed, this is bad. Could this really be the future? ]
[The reason why the future people are screwed is really because of Ren Zhiling. 】
[If Ren Zhiling hadn't helped the team, the team wouldn't have developed the technology, and if they hadn't developed the technology, all of humanity wouldn't have been uploaded, and if all of humanity hadn't been uploaded, all digital people wouldn't have been helpless when the disaster occurred five hundred years later. Is that the logic?]
[That's right...but why don't you go find a team? ]
[Maybe the team hasn't been formed yet, so we can only look for Ren Zhiling. ]
…
"That is to say, because all the consciousness of the human beings five hundred years later was uploaded to the Internet, they were helpless when they found the sky falling," Ning Xiao twitched his lips on the screen, "Isn't this just asking for trouble?"
If the previous Liu Yi's worlds still had room for struggle, at least they could still find ways to solve the problem, then the human beings in this future are simply waiting to die.
"The point is that basic disciplines have stopped developing, right?" Yin Liantao thought for a moment. "The point he wants to make is that all human beings live in the cloud, and those basic disciplines need experiments to assist in development and research, such as physics and chemistry. Living in the cloud means that the virtual world can never simulate the physical engines and chemical elements of the real world, so all disciplines except computers have stagnated in development."
"So Liu Yi believes that since the human technology tree has hardly touched any direction other than computers in the past five hundred years, they were unable to do anything when the sky fell and could only wait for death," Ren Zhiling frowned. "If that's the case, why not put the server on the spacecraft? If you knew the disaster would happen, why did you stay on Earth?"
"Maybe the disaster is universal," Ning Xiao shook his head, "so no matter where we hide, it won't work. The excessive equality and beauty of society and the uploading of consciousness have suppressed the development of science, which is equivalent to directly strangling the possibility of struggle."
"So his main point this time is to make me give up being a network administrator and not help the consciousness uploading team?" Ren Zhiling crossed his arms and looked at the computer. "Since the consciousness has been uploaded, the genes naturally don't exist, right? Why did Liu Yi come back?"
"So..." Yin Liantao lowered his voice, "Is it possible that Liu Yi is not the code name of an artificial human created using your genes, but that all people who can go back to the past will be called Liu Yi, but in the previous future, only people who used your genes could go back to the past."
The person that [Liu Yi] is actually equivalent to is [the person who traveled through time into the future], not [Ren Zhiling's artificial human].
Ren Zhiling rubbed his temples: "It's possible..."
According to the current rules, the next message to appear will be the last one of this time.
At five thirty, Liu Yi will transmit back the last message.
Ren Zhiling leaned back and rubbed her hair irritably: "Anyway, this means that it's all my fault."
Yin Liantao patted her shoulder and said, "It's okay. Relax. At worst, you won't be able to do any work in the future."
"I think so too," Ren Zhiling said sadly, "Tomorrow I will just lie at home and become a useless person. I want to see how this world can destroy me."
In such an atmosphere, five-thirty arrived quietly.
"It's here," Ning Xiao said with more energy. "In this process of waiting to die, many citizens have chosen to escape. People have begun to petition the government to change the code and start an extreme time algorithm that makes one second in the outside world equal to 100 million years in the cloud world, thereby extending their lives indefinitely and allowing themselves to die before the disaster strikes. Under such pressure, we, whose technology is not enough to interfere with the outside world, have found another solution, which is to transmit signals to the world five hundred years ago, to prevent the development of consciousness uploading technology and to cut off the occurrence of such situations from the root. However, due to technical problems, we can only transmit fixed information to the past but cannot communicate. At the same time, considering the carrying capacity of old computers, we cannot transmit too much information at one time. The capacity and frequency are greatly limited. After careful consideration, we chose the first day you become a network administrator. If you see..."
Before he could finish his words, the computer screen suddenly flickered.
Then, there was an ominous "crackling" sound, and then the computer that was running suddenly stopped running and the entire screen went dark.
Complaints were heard one after another in the Internet cafe: "What's going on?"
"Why did the internet suddenly go down?"
"Network administrator? There's a problem with the network!"
"Wozhi, what a ranking I am in!"
Ren Zhiling sat up nervously: "Could this have anything to do with Liu Yi? Is this affected by the future?!"
Liu Yi affected the computers in the entire Internet cafe?
"Hiss..." Ning Xiao took a breath and said sincerely, "This has nothing to do with Liu Yi, but it probably has a lot to do with us."
"The computer in front of the counter..." Lu Changfeng also fell silent for a moment, "Could it be the server of this Internet cafe?"
"Maybe... maybe," Fu Yandong ran over from behind and heard this. "Now the Internet in the entire Internet cafe is down. If it's not a problem with the local network, then it must be a problem with the server. What happened?"
"The server... seems to be broken," Yin Liantao said with a complicated expression. "Liu Yi from the future just communicated with us through this computer, and the last message might have been too long, which directly caused the computer to have problems. The screen went black and the computer shut down."
"Shut down?" The customers behind only heard the last few words, "Girl, are you the new network administrator? Didn't the boss tell you not to mess with the server? This server is connected to the entire Internet cafe. If you shut it down, we won't be able to connect to the Internet. The time you're offline is money. Turn it on quickly."
"Sorry, sorry, we don't know why the server suddenly went black," Yin Liantao quickly went up to explain and comfort the customer, "We will restart the computer now. The power cord may have been loose just now. We don't know what happened. Let's find the problem now."
"Okay, hurry up and find it," the man said worriedly, "I'm playing a game right now. Fortunately, it's not a ranked match."
Several exploration team members behind them quickly tried to start the computer. The boss's niece who was cooking in the residential area behind also ran out. After listening to the explanation of the exploration team members, she quickly called her uncle.
No one in the entire Internet cafe had a computer to play with. Most of them sat at their seats and checked their phones. Some people came up to ask for an explanation, but were quickly refunded by the boss's niece, who then walked away mumbling.
A few customers came out of the smoking area at the back, holding half-burned cigarettes in their mouths. "Girl, please get up and let us have a look. It must not be a small problem of kicking the power cord if it hasn't been opened for a long time. We know a little bit about this."
"Brother Xu?" The boss's niece looked up, then quickly made way for the customers. She watched them put out their cigarettes, then walked forward and began to disassemble the phones skillfully.
"What's going on?" After she made way, she looked in the direction of Ren Zhiling and the others.
"We don't know either," Yin Liantao shook his head. "We were just chatting in front of the counter, and then there was a crackling sound, and then the screen went black."
"Didn't you download any software? Did you click on any web pages, or install any games?" the boss's niece asked.
"No," Ren Zhiling shook her head, "We didn't use the computer much."
This is the truth. After Liu Yi's handwriting appeared, there was no space for operation on the computer screen. Even if they wanted to use the mouse and keyboard to interact with Liu Yi, there were no related options on the interface.
It is impossible that the computer screen went black due to a loose power cord or something like that. After several customers spent a long time trying to rule out hardware problems, as time went on, many customers could not wait for the computer to repair the problem and left with their money back.
The Internet cafe owner came late, followed by professional repairmen. After checking for a long time, one of the repairmen in blue overalls took the cigarette handed to him by the owner, shook his head and said, "The system is overloaded."
"Liu Yi's information?" Xu Zichen lowered his voice and looked at Bai Jinshu.
"Not necessarily," Bai Jinshu tilted his head slightly, "I'm more inclined to believe that he did it on purpose, deliberately creating a situation where the message was forced to stop before it was fully delivered."
Xu Zichen: "I think so too."
"But in this case..." He looked at the maintenance personnel coming in and out of the Internet cafe, "What kind of metaphorical information does his story reveal this time?"
"Is it that humans are powerless to prevent future disasters?" he guessed, "or is it that in the future world, some technologies will develop rapidly while other basic sciences will almost come to a standstill?"
"By the way, did Song Jirou call you back?" he suddenly thought of it and turned to ask.
"No, she didn't reply to the message in the group either," Bai Jinshu shook his head. "If she doesn't reply to the message before 8 o'clock tonight, it is very likely that she has encountered a difficult problem and cannot reply. We need Lu Changfeng to go find her."
Song Jirou has been staying away from all the exploration team members. He was confident in letting her act alone before because all the attention was drawn to Ren Zhiling.
And now, if what made Liu Yi G anxious was some information related to Xi Enze, then it is very likely that Song Jirou would have big problems.
"Let's go," Ren Zhiling walked over with a helpless look on her face. "The boss said it's too late now, and he'll have someone come over to fix it tomorrow. If I don't resign yet, I won't have to continue doing this job."
"Is it a big problem?" Xu Zichen asked, looking up.
"I don't understand what's going on, but it sounds like the old server can't handle the information from the future," Ren Zhiling sighed helplessly, "After all, there's no such thing as a server overload."
"The boss did suspect us and checked the surveillance, but from that angle we could only see Liu Yi's simple screen interface and couldn't make out the words on it," Ning Xiao added, "From the surveillance, it seemed that we didn't touch the computer at all. We just chatted in front of it for a while, and then the server suddenly had problems."
"What should we do now?" Ren Zhiling shrugged. "It's impossible for me to go home. I'm afraid my dad is waiting for me at home. How about I go back to the hotel with you guys to spend the night?"
"That's fine," Fu Yandong thought for a moment, "Then will you change your job tomorrow?"
Ren Zhiling let out a long sigh: "Huh... let's talk about it later."
She really couldn't stand it anymore. Every time she changed her career, there were problems. If it weren't for the fact that Liu Yi would show different changes every time, she would almost doubt that the destruction of the world actually had nothing to do with her.
This time, Liu Yi did not even appear as a physical entity, and he also vaguely revealed the information that [Liu Yi = the code name of the time traveler, not Liu Yi = Ren Zhiling's android]. This undoubtedly made the genetic problem they wanted to continue investigating yesterday completely pointless.
"I'm going to visit my mom tomorrow to see if I can get any clues from her about this gene and whether they know about the future," Ren Zhiling took a deep breath, "Why don't you go meet that junior's roommate tomorrow."
"We have no problem," Ning Xiao nodded, "but is that student free tomorrow? Should we contact him?"
Speak of the devil, and here he comes. Not long after Ren Zhiling finished speaking, a message from his junior fellow student came over.
[Sister Ren, an elderly person in my roommate's family suddenly passed away. I have to take a plane home tonight to attend the funeral. I may not be able to see you for a few days.]
[So we discussed it and decided that if you want him to meet someone, you can just send a photo or video. Although it’s not as clear as meeting in person, it’s also a solution.]
Ren Zhiling looked up and asked for everyone's opinions, then replied with an "OK".
Ren Zhiling: [You are right next to me now, is it convenient for a video call? ]
Within a few minutes, a video call came from my junior classmate.
"Senior!" Across the video was a boys' dormitory. The junior who had come to the Internet cafe during the day was standing in the front, and behind him were three boys who looked like his roommates.
"Third brother, take a look." The junior handed the phone to his roommate who was wearing a T-shirt next to him.
Ren Zhiling cooperated by switching the rear camera and took pictures of Ning Xiao, Yin Liantao, Ye Dian and Xu Zichen who had met Liu Yi that day.
The roommate demanded, “Let me see the side.”
Ren Zhiling took another photo from the side.
"Are they these four?" the junior asked with concern.
"Hmm... not like that," the roommate pondered for a moment, "I feel like the people I saw that day were not these four people."
"No?" Ren Zhiling widened his eyes in surprise.
These four people were the only ones who met Liu Yi who came to rescue her that day, and they were there the whole time, from the time Liu Yi appeared to the time he disappeared.
If the junior’s roommate did not see these four people, then it can only mean that he saw another Liu Yi.
"Liu Yi C..." Xu Zichen said softly, "He met other people before and after he assassinated Ren Zhiling."
If there are still people who support killing Ren Zhiling and are supporters of Liu Yi and others, then it can only be...
"The extremist organization that warned the conference and issued death threats??!"
The author has something to say:
I don't know why, but recently Jinjiang seems to swallow punctuation marks. If you find that there are no commas or question marks in some places when you watch, it may be swallowed, because you can see them in the background. You must find the corresponding position where the punctuation is swallowed in the background after sending it out, and type two identical punctuation marks to spit out one.
So strange...
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