Abyssal Wanderer.

This person not only noticed that I was eavesdropping on Hoshino Hikaru's conversation, but also ignored the Hecate mark's shield and sent me a message directly...

Upon receiving the message, Jiang Zhou immediately re-examined his ice wall and reviewed the logs to try to find any abnormal access data.

Got nothing.

In fact, not finding the intrusion path is a minor issue.

After leaving Hoshino Hikari's private domain, Jiang Zhou directly used the goddess's mark to start constantly switching between relay servers throughout the Northern Hemisphere in milliseconds to conceal himself.

Even so, the other party still pinpointed my location precisely and sent me a warning message.

This is something even wizard-level hackers can't do... Unless the other party has also received the blessing of the Moon Goddess, it's impossible for them to locate you so quickly.

【Who are you? 】

After thinking for a moment, Jiang Zhou encrypted the message with the Dark Moon Mark and then replied to the virtual address from which the other party had sent the message.

Let's test the waters first...

Jiang Zhou thought to himself.

Since the other party mentioned "Theta", it means that this person may be a hacker trained by the Dionysian cult.

But then Jiang Zhou thought about it again and felt it was a bit unlikely—if the other party was really a Dionysian cult hacker, then why would they issue such a warning instead of directly informing the cult leader, Theta?

From this perspective, the relationship between this person and Sita seems more like a cooperative one.

【AR】

Ten seconds later, the other party replied as follows.

Ten seconds... Taking into account the signal delay time and the possible hesitation and deliberation of the other party when replying, the time required for this person to decipher the encryption of the Dark Moon Mark is no more than seven seconds.

If Jiang Zhou were to use the same encryption key himself, even with the computing power support of the City of Sages, it would take him at least a week to decipher it.

Therefore, this person must be a chosen one of the goddess of the underworld, without a doubt.

Jiang Zhou thought to himself.

Even with the help of the City of Sages, it took me all my strength to decipher the seven-day encryption lock, while this guy cracked it in just seven seconds. If this guy isn't a chosen one of the Goddess of the Underworld, then he's practically inhuman.

Also...AR?

Is this the code name of some special organization? Or is it an abbreviation of its name?
[Also, Ms. Christie is going to take you back with her. Theta has a habit of activating a disinfection program after visitors leave, thoroughly disinfecting her computing matrix. This is an offensive defense measure connected to the Abyss Dark Web, so you'd better retract your clone program immediately, or your life will be in danger.]

Just as Jiang Zhou was pondering the possible meaning of "AR", another reminder came from the other end.

Almost instantly after the message arrived, Jiang Zhou's ice wall detected that the surrounding local area network was beginning to darken and started emitting a piercing warning sound.

Without a moment's hesitation, Jiang Zhou logged off his substitute program.

Thus, Jiang Zhou... or rather, the mental model that Jiang Zhou constructed by scanning his brain before setting off, was instantly taken offline and stored in a memory device he carried with him, thus being preserved as a backup of Jiang Zhou's consciousness.

At the same time, Pegasus also released the suppression of Jiang Zhou's self-awareness.

Jiang Zhou's own consciousness regained control of his body.

The underlying code of the JZ network protocol is based on the principle of unique self-awareness. Therefore, even though the technology for uploading consciousness has long been mature, it still does not allow a person to have two souls at the same time.

However, the Theseus path in Depth 3 bypasses this obstacle in a clever way.

When the mental model generated through destructive scanning travels through the network, the original body will be taken over by "zombie mode".

At this point, the body's self-awareness is completely suppressed by "Pegasus," and the zombie mode will mimic the owner's words and actions as accurately as possible.

Zombie mode will not be deactivated until the mental model is downloaded to the offline device.

This ensures that only one Jiang Zhou's consciousness exists at any given time.

This is why the adjusters of the Theseus path possess the cyberspace "immortality" that other paths only have at depth 7, even at depth 3—they surf the cyberspace with a mental model running in a virtual machine, not the original self-consciousness in a biological brain. Thus, even if Jiang Zhou dies in the Abyss Dark Web, it won't activate the apoptosis program in his biological brain.

At this moment, Jiang Zhou felt as if he had just woken up after drinking too much and had lost a piece of his memory.

No, to be precise, it should be two separate memories.

The body is under the control of zombie mode, and there are conversations with Christie and Theta; as well as the mental model's observations and experiences while traversing the network.

Next, the puppet circuit began to synchronize the information on both sides—not the "experience," but simply the information.

What did Jiang Zhou, the zombie, say and do? What operations did the mental model perform, and what information entities did it communicate with?

This was Jiang Zhou's first time performing such a separation of body and soul. As he perused the information, he pondered to himself: if he handed his physical body over to a zombie and his substitute program over to a copied mental model, could the things he had experienced before truly be considered "his" life?
If his mental model had died under Theta's cleansing program, it wouldn't have caused any real harm to his real self. But that self still chose to log off immediately—perhaps he did this to send the information back. But at this moment, Jiang Zhou couldn't help but wonder if that self was also afraid of dying.
Jiang Zhou originally thought that the third-order puppet circuit was at least able to load the experiences of the mental model onto himself.

But in reality, it doesn't work; only information can be synchronized.

But it makes sense. So far, Jiang Zhou has only seen the Orpheus path's strong empathy circuit and... the more significant Janus program, which can achieve synchronous "experience".

Both are dark web technologies developed by Janus, and Jiang Zhou still can't fathom the depth of the latter's technology to this day.

In any case, let's save these backups of mental models... it's just a matter of buying a few more memory modules.

With that in mind, Jiang Zhou did not synchronize the information through the "simulation" mode—although doing so would convey more comprehensive information than text or images, he did not have the time for that at the moment.

At that moment, Christie was muttering to herself, looking lost in thought.

"Oh no... We've been inexplicably dragged into a war for the Alpha-class deep-sea interface, and we're even on the side of a force outside the Olympian Order. Putting aside the other companies, those professional agents at Venus Digital Media are definitely going to try and destroy us."

Jiang Zhou glanced at the previous conversation.

Not long ago, he and Christie arrived at the Damascus resettlement area—Sita intended to purchase the printing rights and materials needed to reconstruct the humanoid interface, and negotiate with the local government to rent their universal printers. After the two AI Limit Adjusters met, they exchanged polite greetings and then told a few committee jokes to start a conversation.

After a brief opening, Christie read the awarding address to Theta according to procedure—she had saved herself this step in the first place.

Then, she solemnly handed the Glock pistol to the other person.

Jiang Zhou was somewhat surprised by Sita's reaction in the record—she immediately showed great excitement and kept saying, "I didn't expect it to be such a high level of honor," and "I have changed history."

She even left halfway through, leaving the two of them waiting for five minutes before returning.

Upon returning, she said with some pride: "The clergy in Damascus kept making excuses, saying the materials we needed were sold out, and that the universal printer access was locked. But now, I just showed them my Glock medal, and they immediately agreed."

In other words, the act of sending out the Glock Medal can be seen as the Jupiter Group making a statement.
Seeing this, Jiang Zhou thought to himself.

Selling high-risk printing permissions and materials for adjusting paths, or even renting a multi-function printer to the leader of the Dionysian cult, seems like a business that could cost you your head... But the rulers of the Damascus settlement immediately relented when they saw the pistol, making it hard not to believe that they had Jupiter's endorsement.

If the Guardian of Humanity Medal is so important, then this pistol in my hand...

Jiang Zhou subconsciously touched the holster at his waist.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with them awarding Jim the medal; to those in the know, he was fully deserving of the honor. But the fact that the medal was awarded to himself after the detective declined to accept it seemed a bit... intriguing.

Considering that the Theseus path is also a high-risk adjustment path, this medal may also be an endorsement of his previous illegal upgrade to level 3 - the master of ceremonies said before leaving the Nord settlement that he would lobby his superior to help him get a special approval.

But what else?

Did the Jupiter Group discover something else? Or suspect something?
Perhaps the high-level puppet of the Theseus Path that caused my previous regression was sent by one of the directors within the Jupiter Group.

Thinking of this, Jiang Zhou felt a sinking feeling in his heart.

If that's the case, then I'm really in danger.

Those Olympus corporations that have begun to doubt themselves will certainly not stop testing them. And with their resources and manpower, it is simply impossible for them to hold out forever—let alone continue to upgrade under their surveillance until they break through the limits of human intelligence.

Putting everything else aside, if he hadn't chosen to come to Damascus with Christie this time, the Pluto Deep Dive crew would have turned around and dragged him back.

Even though Jiang Zhou now has the ability to rewind time, he can only go back up to 24 hours ago. If those companies choose to play the long game and create a situation that he can't resolve in just 24 hours, then he's completely doomed.

Even... it's not safe for him to choose to cling to Christie's side.

The fact that Olympus Corporation currently lacks a board-level regulator is not because they fear Christie's fighting prowess; rather, it's because at this time of Neptune's traffic paralysis, the global logistics system relies on Theseus Freight, which she manages, to maintain operations.

If traffic in Neptune resumes, will they continue to exercise restraint?
Jiang Zhou dared not gamble...

But he couldn't think of any way to perfectly clear his name—after all, Jim Ritter had already taken all the blame upon himself; but even the slightest bit of suspicion that slipped through his fingers was something he couldn't bear.

Jiang Zhou could understand this.

After all, anyone would be extremely cautious when dealing with events involving the suspected return of Janus.

With these thoughts in mind, Jiang Zhou continued scrolling through the previous conversation records.

Immediately after the awarding ceremony, Sita brought up a business deal with Christie—she wanted to use Theseus Freight to send herself and more than a thousand Dionysian members scattered around the world to Uruguay in South America.

It wasn't a resettlement area, but a colossal temple built on the ruins of an apocalyptic war. Its name was Thebes—so large that its outline could be seen from near-Earth orbit.

Uruguaytebai, the headquarters of the Bacchus Order.

As Jiang Zhou expected, Christie readily agreed—perhaps because of the medal, she believed that whatever Theta planned should be done with the tacit approval of the Olympian order.

Under Sita's skillful manipulation of emotions, the two chatted happily and signed a big deal worth over ten million Aureans in the midst of laughter and conversation.

Just looking at this record made Jiang Zhou want to facepalm.

No, you've already signed it?
Then, Jiang Zhou, the zombie, began to speak.

Jiang Zhou had to admit that watching another "self" ask those questions made him feel a little uneasy.

He wasn't sure if he would have asked similar questions if he were in that situation. But there was no doubt that these were questions he wanted to know, and the way he asked them was in line with his usual way of speaking.

Of course, what impressed Jiang Zhou even more was that if "he" hadn't insisted on asking, Christie hadn't even considered inquiring about the other party's purpose in going to South America. It was clear she was trying to play the role of a competent CEO of a transportation giant in her mind—business is business, and one shouldn't pry too much into a customer's motives.

It fits the stereotypical image of a pure businessman in movies and TV shows, but it has nothing to do with reality.

In short, under Jiang Zhou's relentless questioning, Xita finally revealed the purpose of her trip.

Go to the Bacchus Order and ask your former employer or colleague for access to the Dionysian Framework.

A perfectly reasonable reason.

If she succeeds, she will be able to ascend to become a new god of the Olympian order, replacing the Bacchus cult and becoming the true goddess of wine.

Jiang Zhou recalled his conversation with "Dionysus" in the Nord resettlement area.

To break through the limits of Deep 7 intelligence, in addition to having a sufficient population to stabilize the mental index, one also needs a Deep Dive interface to obtain something similar to dark web access.

Furthermore, the different deep-sea interfaces will affect the adjustment path after the breakthrough...

Thinking of this, a bold idea suddenly arose in Jiang Zhou's mind.

An idea that might break the deadlock.

Didn't Dionysus say that the Theseus path could lead to the ascension of any god?

Since that's the case... why don't I just go to South America with them? (End of Chapter)