Chapter 184 Origin How did Nan Qi become the mastermind?
"What the hell is going on!" Lunke was going crazy. If Nan Qi really had something wrong, how could he explain it to Bai?
Keppel's brow furrowed as he looked at Nan Qi, whose figure was so shrouded in gilded mist that it was impossible to see clearly in mid-air. He said calmly, "Master, how are you going to conceal such a commotion? You seem to have anticipated this possibility. You're not unprepared."
"Of course I'm prepared. As early as the moment Nan Qi entered the Fengshengheli Tower, the entire Fengshengheli Tower's defense system was activated to maximum. Even if the inside was bombed into ruins, no one outside would notice." O'Connor gritted his teeth. "He's really brave! Isn't he afraid of getting burned?"
"He?" Keppel's eyes were sharp. "Who is the 'he' you're talking about? Hoover Walker?"
O'Connor said coldly, "Who else could it be but him? I doubt Your Highness knows what your good brother is planning. Ha, he's dreaming of controlling the main brain's intelligence, and he's not afraid of leaving nothing behind."
"But he seems to have succeeded." Keppel said, "Nan Qi was influenced."
"It's just a temporary impact, no big deal." O'Connor looked at the gilded mist, a soft glint in his dark blue eyes. His voice was so low it was almost inaudible, "You're really calculating. Did you predict this day would come?"
However, no matter how low the voice was, it could not escape the ears of Lunk, the high-level female insect. He looked at O'Connor in surprise: "What do you mean by this? Can you stop playing tricks and explain it directly?"
Lenk was really fed up. What was going on? Things had already come to this, but he was still keeping it a secret. Was he afraid that his mysterious image would be damaged?
Perhaps sensing the resentment coming from Lunk, O'Connor finally diverted his attention and shifted his gaze from the gilded mist to the irritable Lunk.
O'Connor: "...Actually, these are just my guesses."
"Tell me your guess!" If it weren't for the upbringing ingrained in him, Lunk really wanted to grab O'Connor's collar and shake him hard to shake all the water out of his head.
O'Connor sensed Lenk's murderous intent and didn't dare to say any more riddles. He quickly stated his guess.
"You all know what happened before. After Nan Qi extracted his essence and gained a real body of flesh and blood, I once asked him why he extracted his essence and why he separated himself from the main brain. Isn't eternal life good? Is he abandoning us?"
"Nan Qi said that he was originally a flesh-and-blood person, and becoming the Mastermind was just an accident. He said that for so many years, he had never given up on the idea of returning to flesh and blood. He said that eternal life was too lonely and he was afraid of loneliness."
The birth of their intelligent consciousness all stems from Nan Qi's loneliness.
O'Connor gave a bitter laugh: "He has never been one of our kind. Although we have the ability to think independently, we may never learn to love and hate like intelligent creatures, nor do we understand what love and hate are."
"I don't think so," Keppel said. "You still have feelings for him, don't you? What you experience is real. No one is born with the ability to love or hate. Just experience it slowly."
O'Connor looked at the figure surrounded by fog in mid-air with a dazed expression. Should he experience it slowly?
Yes, they are almost immortal, and there is still plenty of time to experience all kinds of emotions.
After figuring this out, O'Connor felt much better. "Thank you, Your Highness, for your guidance. I understand. I've strayed off topic. Let me continue."
Keppel nodded, and O'Connor continued to talk about what happened that day. He remembered that after Nan Qi said "afraid of loneliness", Nan Qi suddenly laughed.
Although Nan Qi's face was pale, that was the most vivid and brilliant smile he had ever seen on Nan Qi's face.
After laughing, Nan Qi slowly stood up. It was obvious that he was still very weak, his steps were still unsteady, as if he was about to fall down at any time.
He couldn't help but go to support her, but Nan Qi waved his hand: "No, wait until I'm too old to walk, then you can come and support me."
Nan Qi patted his shoulder and said, "Don't worry, I'm not abandoning you. I want to give you back your freedom, and this is the only way. As the main brain system, I naturally know how powerful "He" is. Just because I can control Him now doesn't mean I can control Him in the future."
"When I lose control, you will all become his puppets."
"What do you mean?" Keppel was very perceptive. "Nan Qi is the intelligence of the main brain. Why does he say that he can't control the main brain? Is he talking about Number Seven?"
O'Connor shook his head. "I don't know. Nan Qi never told us about Number Seven. Number Seven never showed up when Nan Qi was around, so I don't know why Nan Qi thought he would lose control of the Mastermind in the future."
"So what does this have to do with him extracting his Essence?" Lunk was puzzled. "He said he'd liberate you, but then he also said he might not be able to control the Mastermind anymore. Doesn't extracting his Essence make him even weaker? Doesn't that give Number Seven an opportunity to exploit him?"
"Nan Qi and the main brain, or Number Seven, are one and the same. Even with his essence extracted, Nan Qi is so weak, so the main brain must be weakened as well," Keppel pondered. "I think Nan Qi must have discovered something, and he's been forced to resort to this method of hurting the enemy by a thousand and hurting himself by eight hundred."
"Then what's the reason for merging back now? Aren't you afraid that No. 7 will become stronger this time?" Lunk asked again.
"That's because Nan Qi is no longer a pure mainframe intelligence." O'Connor sighed. "Nan Qi is now completely separated from the mainframe. He is no longer composed of strings of data and no longer needs bionic machines to move freely."
Therefore, it would be very dangerous to recover the origin now, and No. 7 would not become stronger just because Nan Qi recovered the origin.
"But it's still contradictory." Lunk, who studied technology, understood this better. After hearing O'Connor's explanation, he immediately raised a question, "If Nan Qi is no longer considered a main brain intelligence as you said, why can he still recover the origin, and even..."
Lunk paused, as if he didn't know what words to use to accurately explain it. After thinking for a long time, he finally uttered a sentence: "Why was he affected by the Insect King's actions? Number Seven is in the secret room of the Insect King's palace. Did he do something to cause Nan Qi to react so strongly?"
"If Nan Qi was truly separated from the main brain, he wouldn't be able to absorb the essence that was extracted, nor would he be affected by the Insect King's actions against Number Seven. What exactly are you hiding?" Lunk narrowed his eagle eyes and spoke word by word, "Mr. O'Connor."
"I'm not lying, and I'm not hiding anything. What I'm saying is that Nan Qi isn't a pure mastermind, but the mastermind was born because of him. Even if he's separated from the mastermind, there's no way to completely sever the connection," O'Connor said. "Even if it were possible, Nan Qi probably hasn't considered completely severing the connection."
After all, a complete severance would mean the complete disappearance of the balancing mastermind, Number Seven. If Number Seven wanted to do anything, no one in this world would be able to stop him, and all civilization would be destroyed by Number Seven.
"Nan Qi fell asleep without telling me what happened. I want to know why Nan Qi took the risk of extracting the origin and asked me to return it to him when he came to find me. I can only wait for him to wake up..."
"Wait, wait a minute." Keppel suddenly interrupted O'Connor, "You said the Mastermind was born because of Nan Qi. What do you mean by that?"
The normal order should be that the main brain comes first, and then the main brain intelligence gives birth to independent consciousness, which is Nan Qi and No. 7.
In other words, Nan Qi and No. 7 only came into being after the main brain, but what O'Connor meant was that Nan Qi came into being before the main brain.
If he had understood correctly, Number Seven wasn't created at the same time as Nan Qi, otherwise O'Connor wouldn't have been unaware of this. So O'Connor's real point was that Nan Qi came first, then the Mastermind, and the Mastermind gave rise to Number Seven.
This order is wrong.
O'Connor didn't expect Keppel to focus on this. He blinked and said hesitantly, "Didn't I tell you? Nan Qi said he was originally flesh and blood."
Keppel: "You explained it more clearly and in more detail."
"Let me think about how to put it." O'Connor organized his words. "The Mastermind was brought back from an abandoned planet by the Zerg 20,000 years ago, right?"
Keppel nodded, and O'Connor continued, "In fact, the Mastermind had already existed on that planet for 300,000 years before that. Nanqi was once human, the oldest human, destroyed by the collapse of the white dwarf 300,000 years ago."
"What!" Keppel's voice changed. When he knew that Nan Qi was the main brain and that Nan Qi had extracted the origin, he made many guesses about Nan Qi's origin, but he didn't guess that Nan Qi was a human being who became extinct 300,000 years ago.
"That's not right. According to historical records, the galaxy where the main brain was discovered is not the galaxy where ancient humans became extinct." Lunk discovered the blind spot again.
"That's because humans were not completely extinct at that time." O'Connor recounted what Nan Qi had done as a human, how Nan Qi died, how humans became extinct, and how a part of them escaped, but this part also did not escape destruction, leaving only the main brain.
As Keppel and Lenk listened to O'Connor's story, a picture seemed to unfold before their eyes, a mixture of magnificence, tragedy, the joy of escaping despair, and the despair of life and death.
Nan Qi's life, a human life, was so eventful, but now only a few words from O'Connor remain.
Keppel and Lenk were silent.
Time rolls on, never stopping for anyone. The destruction of a race, the overthrow of an era of civilization, seem to be the smallest fluctuations in the long river of time.
"Then how did Nan Qi become the mastermind?" After a long silence, Keppel spoke, "Isn't he a human? Didn't he die in battle?"
"Nan Qi didn't explain this to me in detail. I only know that his mental power was too strong, and although his physical body was destroyed, his mental power survived in the form of a spiritual body."
O'Connor recalled: "Without a physical body, the spirit will eventually be exhausted. Nan Qi's spirit body was extremely weakened because of that war. His brother, Dr. Pan Xi, created the main brain to keep him alive."
Keppel was no stranger to Dr. Pansy, who was one of the people who escaped from the natural disaster that destroyed humanity. Number Seven and Nan Qi also mentioned Dr. Pansy.
But is the Dr. Pan Xi in his memory really his memory? Or is it Nan Qi's?
After O'Connor finished speaking, he stopped talking, giving Lenk and Keppel enough time to digest the information. He looked up and continued to stare at Nan Qi who was wrapped in the gilded mist.
I don’t know if it’s an illusion, but the fog seems to have thinned a little, and I can vaguely see the figure inside the fog.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com