Chapter 385: Flesh, Blood, Weakness (15) (1st update + 2nd update + 0.5 update of Nine Thousand Nine Hundred Thunders) [VIP]
Gu Qiang still wanted to save his life. Under everyone's indescribable gazes, this guy quickly made a phone call and replaced the eye-catching line at the bottom of the billboard.
A few minutes later, a new advertising slogan appeared: [Education changes destiny, learning creates the future, zone 08 Academy of Sciences affiliated institutions of higher learning are recruiting students, famous teachers and helpful friends, looking forward to your arrival, hotline: xx-xxxx]
The slogan couldn't be more serious, but for some reason, it always felt a little out of place when paired with the face in the ad.
"Is it my fault?" Wei Ye muttered softly, "Why do I feel so awkward with these extremely serious words?"
These four words "famous teacher and helpful friend", none of them have anything to do with She Mochu.
"Yeah, I feel weird too," Gu Qiang put his arm around Wei Ye's shoulder as if he had met a soulmate, "I still think the sexy senior is more suitable."
Wei Ye: ...
"Sexy senior is not okay!" He couldn't help but complain, "Your Academy of Sciences put Brother Chu on the advertisement without permission. Why don't you wait until he wakes up and show it to him?"
"I'm a coward," Gu Qiang raised his chin, and said frankly, "Besides, I didn't hang it up without permission. It was Brother Chu who asked us to find someone."
"Looking for someone?" Zhang Lu asked curiously, "Who are you looking for? Why don't you hang up the photo of the person you're looking for?"
How can you post your own missing person notice?
"How should I know..." Gu Qiang said weakly, "The senior said he didn't know the name, appearance or location of the person he was looking for, so he could only post his photo and wait for someone to find him."
"This is the most expensive ad space in zone 08," he glanced cautiously at She Mochu who was lying on his stomach, and whispered, "Every second counts. Every second you stay here, you're burning real Universal Coins."
"It's so expensive," Jia Li said casually, "Then wasn't Dai Dai always on top?"
The little idol with twin ponytails who was selling old-print pendants remembered that on the first day they came here, the person who came to pick them up even took them around the billboard and said that this was the zone 02 star who was very popular recently.
"Daidai..." Gu Qiang's expression was subtle for a moment, with a hint of disdain and sarcasm, "She is from zone 02."
"Oh, I didn't mean you guys," he added after noticing the subtle expressions of the other people, "The senior told me that you guys are from the mobile team, which is different from those guys."
"Who are they?" Si Panxuan blinked and acted curiously. "We have been in the mobile team and rarely come out. Who is Dai Dai?"
Apart from other things, the tall and straight postures of her and Shi Liqun make people feel that they are the elite of an elite team. Others may say this sounds a bit false, but when she said it, it sounded like they were so focused on training that they didn't care about anything else.
Shi Liqun nodded in agreement: "I haven't seen it."
"Who could it be?" Gu Qiang said with a smirk, "It must be someone from zone 02. When they were about to take down her ad, she wouldn't have given in if I hadn't mentioned the professor from the Academy of Sciences."
Everyone looked at each other.
It seems... the invisible conflicts between several areas are still quite serious. But it is understandable. The innermost areas are safer and the better developed they are. It is normal for the outer areas to dislike them.
It's like when Henan test takers meet Beijing test takers. Although the Beijing test takers did nothing wrong, they still have to say a few words to feel comfortable...
"Let's not talk about this kind of thing." Gu Qiang didn't seem to want to talk about zone 02. He muttered a few words and changed the subject, "Why did the senior just sleep here? How about I find him a room?"
"No need," he said, and She Mochu, who was lying on the table, raised his head. He lowered his eyes, and it was impossible to tell what his expression was. "I was a little sleepy, so I lay down for a while. How long has it been? How is Ming Qingrong?"
"I haven't recovered yet," Zhang Lu glanced at his watch, "You probably only slept for about ten minutes, are you okay?"
She remembered that She Mochu wanted to go into the dreamland to take a look. Would just ten minutes be enough?
"No problem," Bai Jinshu stood up from the stool, glanced at the crowd and landed on Gu Qiang, "Can I borrow the information room of your Academy of Sciences? I have something I want to check."
"How about you log in to my account and go to the online library directly..." Gu Qiang said subconsciously, "Is there anything that your zone 02 doesn't have?"
"The information I'm looking for must be in paper version." Bai Jinshu said without even raising his head.
"Then I'll ask the professor?" Gu Qiang thought for a while and muttered in a low voice, "But the professor may not agree even if I tell him in advance. And senior, can't you let the Academy of Sciences in zone 02 negotiate with our professor? Don't point your finger at me alone. I'm a fifth-year student who hasn't graduated yet. I'm really scared to communicate with our professor. I just told him that I need the largest advertising space in zone 08, and the professor looked like he wanted to eat me up. No, no, no, I didn't mean to eat me up. Senior, I can't eat it. I really can't eat it..."
"Gu Qiang," Zhang Lu said with a look at Wei Ye, who quickly stepped forward to interrupt him. The two of them put their hands on Gu Qiang's shoulders like brothers, "What do you mean by eating or not? Are you hungry? We are hungry too. We didn't have lunch. Do you have any good restaurants in this village in the city? Come on, I'll treat you tonight."
There is no problem that can’t be solved by eating. If it can’t be solved, just eat two meals.
Besides, they were indeed hungry.
They hadn't eaten anything at noon and were already very hungry. As soon as Wei Ye mentioned eating, everyone suddenly felt their stomachs, which had been numb from hunger, start moving again.
"Yes, yes, I'll treat you to a meal!" Gu Qiang's attention was diverted at once, "Why didn't you eat lunch? Man is made of iron and rice is made of steel. He will be very hungry if he doesn't eat..."
"I'm busy," Wei Ye said casually, "I was busy investigating the place where the life-saving pills were taken and the mysterious pills, so I didn't have time to eat. Ming Qingrong is still blind, so I have to bring him something to fill his stomach later."
Although his temporary madness symptom only resulted in temporary blindness, we couldn't just ignore him.
"Oh, yes, there is also that little pill. I haven't told you about that thing. It is also something that has been circulating in the urban villages recently. I heard that Bo Jun investigated that thing under the instructions of others." Gu Qiang hurriedly dragged Wei Ye out of the room, "Let's go, let's talk while walking..."
"What kind of cuisine do you like? Here we have Hunan cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, and Cantonese cuisine..." Gu Qiang chattered on and on.
As soon as the other party mentioned Bo Jun, everyone followed him.
There were several other people there, and Zhang Lu was the last one. He asked in a low voice: "Brother Chu, is there a problem with the Dreamland?"
"...No," Bai Jinshu stood at the table without moving, and after a long pause, he replied, "The problem lies with these people. They can't get in."
In order to prevent any accidents, he did not stay in the dreamland for too long. He just took a quick look around to make sure that this place was no different from what She Mochu remembered, and then left.
First, he was worried that something might happen to Ming Qingrong, who went temporarily crazy, when he entered the dreamland. Second, it was She Mochu, not him, who actually had experience in entering the dreamland. Although this problem could be solved by increasing the synchronization rate, the process of descending the spirit after the synchronization rate was increased would be irreversible if Huai Jiamu was not found.
He has no plans to completely transform into a half-human, half-gram creature and no longer be human for the time being.
Gu Qiang said that the Dreamland had disappeared for a long time, so these people had not been able to enter it for a long time.
"Zhang Lu," Zhang Lu heard She Mochu call her, "Under what circumstances do you think will cause the world's people to no longer be able to dream?"
"Two possibilities?" This didn't sound like he was asking for her opinion, but Zhang Lu thought about it and answered, "One is that people all over the world underwent some kind of mutation at the same time and evolved away from sleep in the future."
"There is another possibility," Bai Jinshu tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table and continued, "Is it possible that these people are actually celestial beings whose consciousness has been uploaded?"
Data doesn’t dream.
Since entering here, not only them, but also the six teams before them, none of them have truly seen the so-called "celestial beings".
Even the famous hacker from the previous team failed to successfully hack into the so-called data world, and never even saw the shadow of the man in the sky.
"Do people in heaven really exist?" Zhang Lu took a deep breath and asked softly.
If this news were to get out, and let those underground people who hated the people in heaven know that they were the ones being scolded every day, it would cause a huge sensation...
"I don't know. Just fill in one randomly and try it out." Bai Jinshu motioned Zhang Lu to open the interface for filling in the rules, and roughly organized his words. "All life in this space is in the form of digital life, which is different from carbon-based life and does not belong to humans in the broad sense."
"No." After Zhang Lu filled in the form, a few seconds later, the result appeared quickly.
"All wrong?" Bai Jinshu frowned.
"It should be a partial error," Zhang Lu glanced at the page to be filled out. "The page needs to add a detailed description of [Digital Lifeform], but it shows that this has not been passed. There must be a narrative error in this."
She thought for a moment and said, "There is some truth in this description. It may be that the humans here are indeed different from humans in the normal sense, but they are not digital life forms. That is why we need to add a detailed description to determine whether this is a misunderstanding caused by the brief description."
Different from humans under the normal definition, is Gu Qiang a kind of life different from humans under the normal definition?
Bai Jinshu tapped his fingers on the table rapidly, quickly deleting the equation [underground man = heavenly man with uploaded consciousness] in his mind.
Is it possible that all the underground people are like Gu Qiang, a hybrid of the K-type creatures, but the blood is very shallow, just like a recessive gene in the genes, which will never show up in most people's lifetime. But once the recessive gene becomes dominant, there will be a situation like Gu Qiang and his classmates who need to enter the University of Michigan.
Bai Jinshu: "...I understand."
There is indeed a reason why five or six teams have explored this world but have not come up with any results.
It is not that no one has ever made a rough guess that the underground people are the heavenly people, but just like them, the judgment made by filling in the rules that time was also wrong.
Even errors from beginning to end.
The problems in this world are obviously not that simple, otherwise even those teams that try out random rules and fill in anything would be able to find the answer by searching the database.
"Then there is only one possibility," Zhang Lu scratched his head, "What happened back then that caused the people here to mutate in some way and become unable to enter the Dreamland?"
"Well," Bai Jinshu stepped forward, "there should be clues in the archives of the University of Michigan."
Now let’s see if we can go in and view the relevant information.
Fortunately, in the world of K, there are organizations like the University of Michigan that can be found everywhere, and She Mochu has a face that can intimidate people no matter which University of Michigan he goes to.
Zhang Lu took a deep breath and followed.
The two people on the screen exchanged information, tried out a round of rules, and found some answers from the foundation's judgment, while the barrage was stunned by the sudden ups and downs.
[So what is the progress now? ]
[It is the Lord who determined that the people in this world may not be human, but they should not be digital people. ]
[Does the person in heaven really exist? ]
【As in. 】
[Are all people in this world like Gu Qiang? ]
【So it is.】
[So you still failed after filling in the rules just now? ]
[It's halfway done, and I've gained something. Zhang Lu just tried to add annotations to digital life, but the result was wrong, which means that the underground people are indeed not the heavenly people.]
【At least one wrong answer has been ruled out. 】
[I thought the main purpose was to end the torture that everyone had gone through seven rounds of investment [tears]]
[It's only been a few days since I came here, please be patient. ]
[Besides, I will go to the University of Michigan later, so it should be stable. ]
Like most people on the barrage, Zhang Lu also had a complex mentality towards the information room of the University of Michigan, which was probably similar to pilgrimage and curiosity.
In the information that most exploration team members were able to obtain, the library of the University of Michigan was described as being like the secret caves in novels about cultivating immortals, or the peerless martial arts in novels about chivalrous men. It seemed that as long as one could enter, one would be able to obtain all the answers to this world.
"You're talking about Yug, not the University of Michigan library." Bai Jinshu ruthlessly punctured her fantasy.
Only Yugna knows all the answers to the world. The library of the University of Michigan has more books at best, and most of them are the same books that normal libraries also have, but the ones here are richer or more precious first editions and handwritten manuscripts.
Which student who has just entered the Department of Mysticism has not had a second-year syndrome attack and imagined that the restricted book section of Miskatonic University is just like the restricted book section of Harry Potter's library, with a mysterious door, a space hidden behind the door by layers of mysterious spells, and a guard dog that looks ordinary but is actually of the bloodline of the three-headed dog Cerberus and has bitten a second-generation god to death.
This fantasy was shattered the moment everyone brought their student ID cards and entered the restricted books area without any inspection.
Everyone's expression is so vivid that you can hear the heartbreak in their hearts.
Yes, it is actually that easy to enter the restricted book section in the general sense of the University of Michigan.
As for those real black magic books, collections related to the K-type creatures, and even some K-type creature specimens made by unknown warriors, they would never be displayed for people to see.
"In most cases, the book skill checks that require entering the library are similar to your pile of [Elementary Mastery]," Bai Jinshu dragged his chin and looked at Zhang Lu with a lack of energy, "Yours may even be more useful."
After all, the brain capacity of normal people is limited, and even the most knowledgeable people have blind spots and preferences in knowledge, but the Foundation's [Primary Mastery] miracles are different.
This thing is like an external dictionary. You can search as many words as you buy.
From a certain perspective, after the development of science and technology, there are fewer investigators in libraries who have undergone skill appraisals, which may also be due to this reason.
In the 1990s, when faced with difficult problems, investigator students would return to the school library to search, looking for a possible flash of inspiration in the vast number of books. In the 21st century, when faced with difficult problems, his classmates generally choose Google.
If you can’t find the answer on Google, just go to the digital library sharing website jointly created by several Ivy League schools.
This thing is even open to the public.
It is true that technology makes life more convenient. Even the University of Michigan has embraced technology and set up a digital library system on campus. Someone was hired to scan all the books in the library since the founding of the school and then made a PDF version. Library searches can be carried out anytime and anywhere as long as there is an internet connection.
- If you are willing, and the professor is willing, you can also log in to your MIT student account in front of the cult's altar, call people on the spot, and seek help online about what to do next.
Times have changed, sir. The stereotypical Cthulhu works depict investigators holding large books late at night and trying to glimpse a corner of the world's secrets under the dim light of the library. Now, they only open the University of Michigan Learning Pass to search in their beds late at night.
Moreover, the intranet learning system of the University of Michigan is lifelong. Unlike the mechanism of CNKI, where the account cannot be accessed for free unless the account is a current student, all accounts of University of Michigan students have permanent access to these materials.
Of course, whether the owner of the account can live that long is another question.
Bai Jinshu poked at the fruit on the plate and looked at Gu Qiang: "Have you said hello? When can I go to the archives room?"
"The professor said at first that it was not possible if you were not a student of this school, but later on it became possible for some reason," Gu Qiang put down his chopsticks, "but there are still some areas that you cannot go to, senior. Can I take you there tomorrow morning? It's late tonight and I guess no one will be in the archives room. After I took Garshasibu away, no one is allowed to enter the archives room at night."
"The area that I can't go to, you can't go there either?" Bai Jinshu extracted the key points from his nonsense.
"I don't know what your authority is in zone 02, but we can't do that here either," Gu Qiang thought for a moment, "maybe these places contain things that normal people can't touch."
It seems that it is not the professors at the University of Michigan who treat people differently.
In the 21st century alone, most of the books at the University of Michigan have been digitized, and in the future, the digitalization of libraries will only be more comprehensive. When Gu Qiang said he wanted to go to the archives, his first reaction was to let him log in to his account. It was only when he said he wanted to see the paper version that he said he would ask the professor if it was okay.
But even in She Mochu's era, there were many books that could not be digitized because the content inside would pollute the SAN value with too much information. It was a problem as to who would scan and who would upload. And the most important thing was that one of the purposes of Michigan University in collecting these books was to seal these rare copies in the library.
Regardless of how technology develops, copying this dangerous information back onto the Internet is inherently extremely dangerous.
The Internet can be breached at any time using various technologies. How can it be as safe as the Michigan University Library which only stores one solitary copy?
The joke about the second-generation god who tried to steal the Book of the Dead but was bitten to death by a guard dog has been passed down from generation to generation among investigators for more than a hundred years.
However, She Mochu has actually read a lot of these dark magic books. Bai Jinshu went there mainly to find out the truth about what happened in this world hundreds of years ago.
From the failures of the previous teams, it can be seen that the statement that most people agree with now is that "after the first batch of experimenters in the digital world succeeded in the experiment, C-type creatures suddenly appeared in the sky, causing most of the human race to sc. After people woke up, in order to avoid greater harm caused by the C-type creatures, they began to try to study consciousness uploading, and after the research was successful, the first group of people whose consciousnesses were uploaded stabbed them in the back and tried to make their life a living hell."
But now it seems that there is obviously something hidden behind this matter.
At least what happened hundreds of years ago was not that simple.
There must be part of the truth in the archives of the University of Michigan. The fact that this truth has not been spread means that the University of Michigan is more inclined to conceal this information from the general public, and such fatal information would not be posted on the Internet.
Mostly paper.
This news might be related to why Gu Qiang and his classmates are hybrids of the K-type creatures. Bai Jinshu held his forehead and felt tired when he saw Gu Qiang, who was concentrating on eating noodles with soybean paste in front of him.
Not only was he tired, She Mochu was also tired.
It is hard to believe that such a fool could know such information which would be enough to shock the whole world if it were spread.
After having dinner with my silly junior, we made an appointment to go to the archives room of the zone 08 Academy of Sciences tomorrow morning. After spending a day in the urban village, everyone finally got on the public aircraft again and returned to the place where they started in the morning.
After confirming that this pill was related to the Ke-series creature, Ji Yu simply chose not to investigate further.
After everyone got off public transportation, he asked a colleague to get a round object similar to a USB flash drive from his workstation, told everyone that it contained all the information, and then carried Desmond, who was still a little curious and unwilling to say goodbye, into the police station.
While being dragged by him, Desmond demonstrated the gesture of making a phone call to everyone and mouthed the words: "Come to me if you need anything."
"Hey, hey, hey, Ji Yu, Ji Yu," his voice could still be heard after the two men walked away, "It's so unsafe if you just hand it over to them. They are from Zone 02 and are ostracized by all their colleagues. What if their colleagues don't cooperate with their investigation?"
"What should we do? Just leave it alone," Ji Yu said unceremoniously, "Have you forgotten how you died in your previous life?"
"It was an accident, an accident!" Desmond argued. "I have the brooch now. I'm safe."
"Zhang Wei, don't force me to beat you in this place with strict discipline."
"Hey, fighting in private will be punished."
"This Ji Yu is an interesting person," Wei Ye said as he got on the aircraft. "I thought he would ask us to take him along for the investigation after we told him that the pills and the victims of his three cases were related to the Ke-type creatures."
"What is he doing here? To seek death?" Bai Jinshu said bluntly.
Ji Yu represents the normal thinking of most ordinary people in this world, which is that if you encounter problems related to the killer creatures, then stay away from them first.
Ordinary people would think of calling the police or the mobile squad, but with Ji Yu, even this step is saved, because he himself is the police.
Bai Jinshu sat on the aircraft and casually studied the USB flash drive. He found the place on the vehicle's device to read the round metal block. When he put the thing in to load, he asked casually, "By the way, did Gu Qiang tell you what that pill is today?"
"Oh, that," Si Panxuan continued, "He said that the pill is very likely related to Bo Jun, the woman Pingjing, and she is here to retrieve the pill."
"What do you mean?" Bai Jinshu raised his head and looked at her.
"Gu Qiang said that it's not certain whether that Bo Jun is actually called this name. What we heard that day is the core idea of their sect, which preaches that living in this world is to suffer and pay for one's sins. The people in heaven are the ones who bring down these sins, and the people in the underground are the sinners who have committed sins and can only pay for them through eternal reincarnation."
"Didn't they take action to destroy this sect?" Zhang Lu asked casually while driving.
It sounds like the Academy of Sciences knows quite a bit about this place, so why not just destroy it?
"It can't be defeated," Wei Ye continued, "This sect can't even be called a sect, because they only preach this one statement and do nothing else."
Generally speaking, a cult must at least have a name, a god to be worshipped, and a ritual that is detrimental to social order and even harmful to the health and life safety of believers.
But this sect is very special. The first step is that it has no name.
"No one knows what this sect is called," Si Panxuan frowned, "and no one knows what they worship. Even when it first came out, most people thought it was just a new form of world-weary rhetoric."
After all, just from listening to those few passages that day, the main idea they could extract was "Life is really boring, it's all about suffering, but after you die you will come back to life and continue to suffer, so just try to survive this way, since death can't end everything, so what else can you do?"
It does sound like a world-weary thought.
No one knows who first spread this statement, but it seems to have spread more and more widely as if someone was pushing it from behind. There are not many people living happily in this era, so this statement attracted a lot of approval as soon as it appeared.
By the time someone noticed this statement, many people had already agreed with it.
The person who spread this statement never appeared, but the calm woman who highly praised this statement came into their field of vision.
It seemed like this guy was truly not afraid of death at all. During many city-wide alert incidents, he never showed any panic and always stayed outside and did not enter the civil air defense fortifications.
And fate seemed to favor her especially. In each of these warning events, she was able to survive to the end unscathed.
Her behavior made those who believed in this statement even more determined. According to Gu Qiang, a large number of people did not run away after encountering the red alert, but instead stayed outside like her. In this month alone, they collected a lot of such corpses.
As more and more people died outside, this strange statement did not gradually disappear, but instead spread more and more widely.
It was because of the appearance of these people that they realized the harmfulness of this cult.
They have never actively publicized who they are willing to sacrifice themselves for or die for, but as the word of mouth spreads, more and more people are staying in the outside world without fear of death, and it has even become a trend.
Once someone has safely survived a red alert outside, they will be braver and more inclined to stay outside rather than go to the safety of civil air defense shelters when the next alert comes.
This religion, which has no name and does not worship any gods, has quietly occupied the entire zone 08.
"And they suspect that this religion came from the outside world and entered Zone 08," Jia Li added, "because the peaceful woman had never appeared in Zone 08 before."
If it came in from the outside, it definitely wasn't from zone 02 to zone 07.
Bai Jinshu rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. The six teams had never heard of such a statement before.
This sect is most likely from zone 09 or zone 10.
Of course, it is not ruled out that they came from the first six areas, but they hid well before and were not discovered by the first six exploration teams. However, this behavior of "not running away but being unusually calm when the crisis comes" is too abnormal and should not be ignored by the exploration team members.
"Back to the pills, this is the first time Pingjing has shown her concern for something. She even went to Wen Qinqin's infirmary to be her teacher, just to get into the village in the city through her. But Gu Qiang is not here to investigate this, so he doesn't know the rest of the details," Si Panxuan concluded. "It's just a guess now. It's possible that this pill is also what they are looking for, and it may have even slipped out of their hands. They are looking for the person who stole it."
After all, the side effect of consumption is a drastic change in temperament. Who is not afraid of death? So many people calmly choose to die during the red alert. Is it possible that it is because they were given this drug?
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