Abyssal Wanderer.

Thinking about this, Jiang Zhou felt his mind suddenly opened up.

Following the Second Legacy Crisis, the Olympian Order's probing will not cease. Rather than hiding by Christie's side and waiting to die, it's better to seize this opportunity and take a gamble, breaking through the limits of human intelligence to reach Depth 8!

At that time, I will at least have some leverage to negotiate with the Olympian gods.

Planning to jump from Depth 3 to Depth 8 in one step is wishful thinking for anyone else.

Leaving aside the printing permissions and material costs required for the upgrade, each upgrade requires a significant amount of time to adapt to the new adjustments and maintain mental stability. Furthermore, breaking through the limits of human intelligence requires controlling a large population to help share the mental burden and maintain the awareness that one is still human.

More importantly, to break through the limits of human intelligence, it is necessary to use a deep-diving interface that matches the ascension path to completely merge with a part of the dark web.

Each of these conditions, if listed individually, would be enough to shut down 99% of people.

But for Jiang Zhou, most of these conditions could be resolved by finding a way.

With the help of the vast underground industry maintained by 400,000 superhumans, and the financial resources and connections of Theseus Freight, it's only a matter of time before he can collect all the printing permissions and materials.

As for the stable mental index and the large population that helps maintain human cognition after the breakthrough—Jiang Zhou couldn't guarantee that his extremely stable mental index would continue to be maintained after reaching Depth 8, at least for now, after connecting with Jim Ritter and Sybil, both at Depth 7, there was nothing too abnormal about him.

Probably not.

Moreover, after his promotion, the Janus program seems to unlock new controllable element slots. In this way, he might not need to rely on company employees or residents of the resettlement area to help share the burden of mental burden like the "Fire Stealers" or the directors of those Olympus corporations—controllable elements alone would be enough.

Therefore, the only real obstacles preventing him from reaching depth 8 are the two limitations: the watchful eyes of the Olympian Order and a suitable deep-diving interface.

The former needs no further explanation; as for the latter, according to Dionysus, breaking through the limits of human intelligence requires a deep dive into the interface. And different interfaces lead to different paths to the gods.

It's likely that the powerful paths of those Olympian gods all require an alpha-level deep-diving interface.

Jiang Zhou had no intention of swaggering over to the headquarters of those Olympus companies, knocking on their doors, and asking the board members if they would be willing to borrow his α-level interface to upgrade him.

It's worth noting that even when the Jupiter Group's headquarters was swallowed up by an unspeakable entity from the Abyss Dark Web, the Great Thunder still struck, blasting it directly into an atomic state.

This suggests that the relationship between the Olympian Order and the First Deep Ones was likely not very friendly.

However, within the Olympian order, the Bacchus Order was an anomaly.

According to Christie and Theta, this deity did not appear to have entered the ranks of the Olympian gods through the Alpha Deep-Sea Interface.

On the contrary, His presence suppressed the upward movement of the Dionysian structure.

This statement aligns with what Jiang Zhou said to the "Little God of Wine": according to that AI, no Dionysian path adjuster has yet been born in human society today.

There are no restrictions on the path of Theseus; as long as there is a corresponding deep-diving interface, one can break through and become the corresponding god.

The other main god paths are probably all occupied by those giant companies. Even if there is spare deep-sea interface bandwidth, it is impossible for them to give it to me...

Jiang Zhou thought to himself.

In this way, the Dionysian path becomes the only divine path that can be used to break through the limits of human intelligence.

Theta's trip to South America was also to retrieve the deep-sea interface from Bacchus; in other words, although the reason is unknown, it seems that the Bacchus Order's suppression of the Dionysian structure is coming to an end...

If that's the case, then this might be my only chance to advance to the path of the main god.

He has to seize this opportunity!
Thinking of this, Jiang Zhou turned to Christie, who was standing to the side with a worried expression, and said:
"It's alright, Sister Ke. Let's just consider this an investment in the leader of the Dionysian Cult. In any case, the Dionysian structure will eventually have a winner, and given the relationship between the Dionysian Cult and the Bacchus Order, she might have the last laugh."

But this attempt at comforting her wasn't very effective—she didn't even complain about the nickname "Sister Ke".

"Those guys from the Bacchus Order won't show any mercy... At most, they'll just give Theta face and let her participate in the competition. But compared to them, the other forces or individuals who will participate in the struggle for the Dionysian framework are all formidable opponents."

Christie sighed.

Having experienced the battle for Hades' architecture back then, she knew all too well the dangers involved.

"And... this is the Dionysian framework. Just counting the forces that He is determined to possess sends chills down my spine."

"Venus Digital Media's current top-tier status is largely due to the benefits of the vacancy left by the God of Dionysus, so they would never allow other forces to obtain it; and the God-King sees the God of Dionysus as a challenger to the current order, so they would not allow an entity they cannot control to obtain the God of Dionysus's authority."
"Besides Juno, Mars, Minerva... they all have ample reason to get involved. And apart from the Olympian Order, many other civilian forces stuck at Depth 7 who are coordinators will probably try their luck if they know this information."

Christie counted on her fingers, her face growing increasingly grim as she spoke.

In her view, if Sita were to fight for the power of Dionysus now, she would be nothing more than cannon fodder.

The order he had previously signed was tantamount to publicly endorsing Theta. Regardless of which faction ultimately seizes the power of Dionysus, a reckoning afterward is inevitable.

Suddenly, Christie's eyes lit up, as if a good idea had flashed through her mind.

She turned to look at Jiang Zhou beside her, and then said:

"Hey! Do you think Jim Ritter might be interested in the Dionysian Framework? After all, he's someone who's received... enlightenment. If he were to compete for the Dionysian Framework, wouldn't it be a piece of cake for him?"

Although Jiang Zhou had anticipated what she was going to say, he still almost couldn't hold back when he actually heard it.

Good idea...maybe it will really work if he can leave the Nord resettlement area.

Jiang Zhou silently complained to himself.

Of course, given Jim's personality, even if he could leave the Nord resettlement area, he wouldn't want to get involved in this mess—at most, he would act as an assistant to help Jiang Zhou obtain the Dionysian authority; if asked to take the lead himself, he would shake his head vigorously.

“I think… when you go to the Nord resettlement area later, you can try to talk to him about it.” Jiang Zhou carefully considered his words before speaking.

Jim, who was lost in thought at the moment, gave him a thumbs up in his mind.

I will close my doors to visitors at that time.

He thought this, and then continued to hint:
"Even if Ms. Theta's chances of winning are dismal, with our help, she might succeed. The Dionysus architecture's alpha-level deep-diving interface certainly has more than the bandwidth of a single Depth 8 adjuster. At that time, Sister K could also use it to break through the limits of human intelligence."

Although Jiang Zhou didn't know exactly what adjustment path Christie was taking, he could roughly guess that she needed the Alpha-level deep-sea interface of the Pluto Deep Dive to break through. He was only saying this now to try and guide her to think about sending him to South America with her.

"I can't do it... The Dionysian architecture doesn't align with my path. The upgraded Deep Dive interface needs to match the corresponding adjustment path. And as far as I know, the Dionysian architecture can match paths like Orpheus, Narcissus, Amprous, Ariadne, Theseus, Aeneas, Jason, and..."

At this point, Christie took a deep breath.

"Hercules".

When Jiang Zhou, who was following behind Christie, heard the last name, his legs inexplicably went weak, and he almost couldn't walk.

"Hercules?"

Jiang Zhou repeated the name to make sure he hadn't misheard.

“That’s right, Hercules.”

Christie nodded.

What's the point of fighting then?

If a Hercules with a Depth 7 rank is involved in the competition, then no one else should bother competing.

As the undisputed top adjustment path in various debate forums, even if those people pieced together the legend from fragments and removed nonsensical claims such as "able to resurrect twelve times" or "able to steal other people's cybernetic bodies for his own use," even if only half of those records match Hercules' true strength, it is not something Jiang Zhou can fabricate.

If even half of the rumors are true, then even if Jiang Zhou brought Jim from the Nord resettlement area and upgraded himself to Depth 7, along with Ms. Christie, he probably still wouldn't be able to defeat a Depth 7 Hercules head-on.

Of course, this could also be because the descriptions of Hercules in those debate forums are far too exaggerated, such as being able to single-handedly destroy a Chimera Pathfinder at Depth 3 at Depth 1; being able to jump from the moon to Earth at Depth 5 and break through the atmosphere unscathed; and at Depth 7 being able to take a kinetic sniper shot from a peak Diana in space, then tear apart Luna's Stag-class battleship to break out of the encirclement, and even if he is shot down into the sea, he can single-handedly sink Poseidon's floating island...

Jiang Zhou, in any case, didn't think it was very credible.

Even if you eliminate half of the outrageous descriptions, the score is still not high!
Jiang Zhou comforted himself with these words.

"However, I guess there probably won't be any Hercules path adjusters involved in the struggle for the Dionysian authority."

Christie suddenly spoke up from the side.

Upon hearing this good news, Jiang Zhou immediately asked:
"why?"

"Well, adjusting the matching between the path and the deep-sea interface isn't simply a matter of 'can or cannot,' but rather there's a degree of matching. The path that best matches the Dionysian architecture is Orpheus, which is at level A; followed by Amprous and Ariadne, which are at level B; then Narcissus and Aeneas, which are at level C... while Heracles is at the very bottom of the matching range, and can only be rated at level F."

"And for Hercules, they have better options than the Dionysian architecture. You see, the adjustment and modification of the Hercules path is extremely rare, and its impact on the mind is also among the greatest—almost comparable to some monster lineage paths—large corporations are happy to recruit adjusters who can master the Hercules path... Even a third-rate company like Pluto Deep Dive hasn't been able to recruit a single one yet."

Christie said so.

Not long ago, after learning that she could only upgrade to depth 8 through the Alpha deep-sea interface of the Pluto Deep Dive, she asked the old man to tell her more about the adjustment, modification and deep-sea interface, citing her near-death experience in the face of paradox.

Normally, this old man would probably just laugh it off and spout some riddles to get rid of her. But this time, for some reason, He told her a lot of relevant information—especially about the Dionysian path, which was the very example He had used at the time.

Not only that, but He also revealed another crucial piece of information to me for the first time ever…

Now, he was truly caught in a major trouble related to the Dionysian path, and it was hard not to suspect that the old man was plotting something again.

Thinking about this, Christie suddenly felt a surge of inexplicable irritation.

Could it be true, as Theseus said, that he was destined to be involved in this struggle for the power of Dionysus, and that betting on Theta was the best option?

As she was pondering this, Theseus suddenly asked:
"What about the Theseus path? You haven't mentioned how well this path matches the Dionysian interface."

Coming to her senses, Christie looked at Jiang Zhou, trying to discern the reason behind his question from his expression.

But at this moment, Jiang Zhou's face only showed pure curiosity, as clear as a college intern who might be tricked into signing his name as the project leader.

"Grade A".

Christie put it succinctly.

Then she sighed and continued:
"Aside from bizarre paths like Typhon's, Theseus is A-level compatible with almost all mainstream divine paths."

Then, before Jiang Zhou could ask anything else, she said:

"Furthermore, I must remind you... this struggle for the authority of Dionysus is far more complex than you imagine. Think about it, since the Bacchus Order itself hasn't utilized Dionysus's authority, what makes them one of the Olympian gods?"

As she spoke, she couldn't help but recall the crucial piece of information that Charon had previously shared with her within her thought matrix.

"The 'paradise' of the Bacchus Order is the product of the last wishes left behind by the super artificial intelligence Eros."

"The Fifth Last Wish." (End of Chapter)