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Chapter 526 Heat Death (4K)

"I've been wondering since we entered this town why we all feel increasingly tired and our energy levels are rapidly depleting."

Later, from the shop owner Robinson, we learned how to use the high-pressure gas cylinder and that our bodies had also been replaced by machines, linking the gas cylinder, lungs, and physical fitness together.

But this also brings new problems: air composition.

Li Sheng casually said, adjusted his lying position, and reached out to pull the supports around the operating table toward himself.

Some of the supports hold prisms, some hold microscopes, and some hold medical robotic arms.

"The composition of the atmosphere in this world, from highest to lowest, is nitrogen, helium, argon, hydrogen, oxygen, and ozone. The proportion of oxygen on Earth has been replaced by helium."

This is easy to understand. For silicon-based mechanical life, oxygen, which can oxidize metals, is highly toxic, and water, which can corrode metals, is also poisonous.

"Oxygen and water are highly toxic."

Wanli Fengdao's pupils contracted as he immediately thought of the dried-up moat in front of the castle.

At the bottom of the riverbed, there was a pale yellow residue that emitted a pungent odor. It was not river water, but an acidic liquid such as sulfuric acid.

"Helium is chemically extremely stable, which is why it is used as the primary breathing gas by mechanical lifeforms. Interestingly, although the high-pressure cylinders contain pure helium, the residents of this town do not seem to have made any effort to circulate the gas."

Li Sheng said to himself, adjusting the prism on the stand into place. Through the reflection of several mirrors, he could clearly see the back of his head.

Claudia's heart skipped a beat upon hearing this. Helium atoms have only two electrons in their outermost shell, making them extremely inert chemically. They can only react with a few elements under extremely high pressure and low temperature conditions.

Town residents, as well as players assimilated by the Dreamland, inhale helium and exhale helium.

Given that the town has already developed a series of technologies such as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, gas wells, and electricity, it is entirely possible to modify its own body to recover the helium it exhales or to purify helium from the atmosphere.

Their failure to do so only proves one thing—

"The important thing about high-pressure pure helium cylinders is not the pure helium, but the high pressure."

After saying this, Li Sheng grasped the control levers on the support with both hands, remotely controlled the medical robotic arm, and gently pried open the back of his skull.

Mianyue gasped, and Claudia instinctively exclaimed in surprise. Inside Li Sheng's skull, instead of the wrinkled gray matter of the brain, there was a sophisticated mechanical structure that was millions of times more complex than a watch dial or a difference engine.

really.

Li Sheng showed no surprise. He controlled the robotic arm and gently separated the outer layer of the mechanical brain to reveal the core structure inside.

The structure is a grid woven from metal wires, with dense gold wires hanging above it like brushes. Under a microscope, one can see that each wire has tiny, oval leaves growing on it.

High-pressure helium gas expelled from the bottled lungs is slowed down through the trachea and flows into the brain's "blood vessels," or capillaries.

The capillary tubes continuously deliver airflow to the metal mesh, causing the gold threads to sway and guide hundreds of millions of micro-blades to open and close at ultra-high speeds invisible to the naked eye.

Like a bolt of lightning striking his mind, Wanli Fengdao trembled and exclaimed in astonishment, "Logic Gate?!"

"Exactly."

Li Sheng said lightly, "The players' bodies have been assimilated by the Land of Dreams, becoming the same structure as the town's residents."

Their brains are incredibly sophisticated mechanical calculators; airflow drives threads, threads drive blades, and blades, driven by airflow, expand and close at extremely high frequencies.
Each switch generates a vortex, causing the surrounding blades to rotate, switching back and forth between three states: AND, OR, and NOT.

Hundreds of millions of golden blades are in operation every second. The state of the next second depends on the calculations of the previous second, thus forming stable memories, emotions, and even personality.

"."

At this moment, Claudia was as shocked as when she read about Qin Shi Huang's human-computer array in "The Three-Body Problem". She took a deep breath, as if she could feel the trembling of countless blades in her brain.

Li Sheng admired the spectacular scene reflected in the mirror and said unhurriedly, "Gold has extremely strong ductility and flexibility, which can withstand the high-frequency oscillation of the blades. The gold fragments that the priest in the church sprayed out when he died were actually his core processor."

“Wait a minute,” Mianyue remembered something and asked seriously, “When Reyes was injured before, he also spat out golden fragments. But you gave him a bottle of life potion, right?”

"That's right. The laws of the Killing Field System can penetrate the Land of Dreams. Theoretically, that potion of life did indeed heal Reyes's brain."

He remains in a vegetative state because, after the injury, no more gas is flowing into his brain.

All the gold leaves in the grid stopped swinging, clearing their state from countless 0s and 1s to zero.

At this point, repairing the core processor will only fix the processor itself; it will not restore the computing state.

Li Sheng rotated the knob on the microscope and carefully observed the swaying of the leaves. "This is what the shop owner Robinson said: town residents must change their gas cylinders regularly and cannot stop breathing for even a moment, otherwise they will die immediately and become a vegetable."

"."

With most of the mystery lingering in the players' minds solved, Mianyue remained silent for a moment before asking in a hoarse voice, "But there's a problem: why is the stamina being consumed faster and faster?"

"The correct question is, why do we feel like our energy is being depleted faster and faster?"

Li Sheng said calmly, pointing to his bottled lung with the robotic arm, "I used to think that the fatigue in my body came from the consumption of high-pressure gas in the cylinder."

However, the autopsy revealed that the gas cylinder provided power only to the brain, and not to the limbs.

We feel tired because of pressure differences—when there is a pressure difference between two areas, the high-pressure area exerts pressure on the adjacent low-pressure area. This pressure pushes fluids from the high-pressure area to the low-pressure area until the pressure in both places tends to equalize.

The gold leaf in the brain is extremely delicate and cannot withstand strong airflow. Therefore, the high-pressure gas in the cylinder is depressurized through both the trachea and capillaries before being delivered to the brain.
The metal dome acts like a sealed iron sphere. Every breath taken by the town's residents inside the sphere slows down the high-pressure gas extracted from the gas wells, transforming it into low-pressure gas.

Gas gradually accumulated under the metal dome, and the ambient air pressure slowly and steadily increased.

When the pressure difference decreases, but the pressure inside a resident's brain remains constant, the ultimate consequence is a slowdown in thinking speed.

Li Sheng took out a high-speed camera and filmed the swaying of the gold leaf. The footage clearly showed that the swaying speed of the leaf was subtly slowing down.

He said calmly, "For the inhabitants of this world, air is not the source of life; it is the pressure difference. The pressure difference drives thought, sparks reflection, and sustains life."

Ironically, every nod from the gas well, every breath taken by the residents, every thought in their minds...
All of this is shrinking the pressure difference between underground gas fields and the surface atmosphere, pushing this world towards inevitable death.

Mianyue muttered to herself, "Reset to zero and restart... so 'reset to zero' refers to the air pressure difference."

“Wait a minute,” Claudia couldn’t help but ask, “Aside from those gargoyles, the technology here is at least equivalent to Earth in the mid-20th century. Didn’t they ever think about saving themselves?”
For example, a machine could be used to recompress atmospheric air and reinject the high-pressure gas into the underground chamber, restoring the pressure difference.

"It's difficult, or rather, it's meaningless."

Li Sheng said, "This place has no solar energy, no fossil fuels."

All energy, including the hydrogen in a hydrogen fuel cell engine, comes from geothermal energy supplied by underground gas chambers. In other words, if there is a machine that can compress air, its energy source is itself an underground gas chamber.

Compressing one cubic meter of air requires a pressure difference greater than that of one cubic meter of air.

"The second law of thermodynamics, the principle of entropy increase,"

Wanli Fengdao spat out the words through gritted teeth, “In irreversible thermodynamic processes, the minute increase in entropy is always greater than zero. In natural processes, the total disorder of an isolated system, i.e., its entropy, will not decrease.”

"That's it."

Li Sheng snapped his fingers. "In a closed environment, entropy will only increase, not decrease."

The pressure difference will only decrease, not increase.

Therefore, the inhabitants of this world inevitably face death; their thinking speed slows down, while their perception of the movement of other objects accelerates.

For example, an object falling rapidly, or a clock spinning rapidly.

They knew this clearly, and that's why they made the choice.

Mianyue took a deep breath and suddenly realized, "The shop owner, Robinson, mentioned the 'Return of the Church,' saying that they were keen on launching terrorist attacks against any residents who refused to stay in their rooms."

As its name suggests, the doctrine of this "Return to Nature" sect likely involves all residents reducing outdoor activities and energy consumption to slow down the narrowing of the pressure difference.

Wanli Fengdao pondered for a moment and said, "There are so many corpses of town residents laid out in the castle hall."

They chose to use hoses to connect themselves directly to the castle's gas well—as long as there was even a tiny pressure difference between the well and the atmosphere, they could continue thinking until the very last second.

"Just keep dragging it out. I know I'm basically invincible right now, but I'm going to hold on."

Li Sheng shrugged and continued, "Our physical energy consumption rate has remained the same, but our thinking has continued to slow down, causing us to feel increasingly tired."

Getting back to the main point, this operating table is fully equipped, allowing observation of the back of the head of the person lying on it, and the use of robotic arms to disassemble the skull.

Considering that the entire process could be completed independently, the designer of the operating table initially envisioned dissecting himself.

He succeeded, becoming the first person to discover the workings of the mechanical inhabitants' brains and the ultimate secret of this world.

Knowing that the world itself is heading towards heat death, what choice will he make?

Aside from despair and suicide, the only other option would be to move the operating table to the city hall, make the discovery public, and hope to pool everyone's wisdom and efforts to find a way out of the predicament.

The emergence of the Return of the Church and the fate of the town's inhabitants reveal that...

All hopes for a breakthrough have been dashed.

Will Smith, the astronaut who invented the operating table, still couldn't save everyone, including his sister and friend Robinson.

Mianyue couldn't help but ask, "What about the fusion engine? Under the premise of sufficient raw materials, the nuclear fusion engine is theoretically close to an inexhaustible energy source."

If, as the little girl who jumped rope said, the gargoyles were invented by astronaut Will, he could have used this technology to restore the pressure difference, at least postponing the heat death apocalypse to tens of millions of years from now.

"Will did invent nuclear fusion technology, but not at this time or in this place. It was long after he left his homeland."

Li Sheng said, "The Land of Dreams has both real and fake aspects. The story of the church priest being possessed by a mechanical python is most likely a lie."

And the fact that Will was wearing a spacesuit and using an ice axe to chisel at the metal dome is highly likely true.

In the final moments of his life, when all the residents had suffered brain death, Will, all alone, continued digging the tunnel.

He had long since given up hope and was just digging numbly, but then, the tunnel was completed.

The moment the metal dome was pierced, the pressure difference between the inside and outside suddenly increased, and airflow continuously blew into the area beneath the dome, causing the brains of all the vegetative state residents to begin functioning once again.

However, the gold leaf that has been reset to zero can no longer carry any useful information.

Will, the sole survivor, left the metal dome and wandered the killing field. By chance, he became a player and grew stronger, reaching Lv10, Lv20, and Lv40.

But the regret and pain I felt back then were so intense that even after countless years, I still cannot let go of it.

He chose, at the end of his life, to come to the land of his dreams, attempting to make amends for his regrets.

The word Lv40 evoked memories for everyone. Claudia exclaimed in surprise, "The Ancient Battlefield of the Star Ring!"

The headless reindeer mentioned on the green train that tens of thousands of years ago, a superhuman equivalent to level 40 in humans fought an interstellar war with his adversary in that place. The two sides tore through space, melted rock layers, and hurled land into space.

That Lv40 superhuman was Will.

"To be precise, Will is that superhuman's former self."

Li Sheng corrected, "The Alpha Python dwells in the ancient battlefield of the Star Ring and once fought against Michael. It shares the same origin as the Gargoyles."

Based on the above information, it is not difficult to deduce that the Alpha Python and the astronaut Will are two sides of the same coin, both being part of that Lv40.

The former inherited extraordinary physical qualities, while the latter inherited thought and personality.

That's why Alpha is so fixated on astronauts.
That's why it was able to follow the astronauts into the same dream.

Li Sheng operated the medical robotic arm, facing the mirror, and reassembled the skull he had disassembled. He calmly said, "The task name is 'Reset and Reboot.' The 'Reset' task has been completed. Only the reboot remains."

He jumped off the operating table, and Mianyue instinctively took out the ice axe and asked, "What are you going to do?"

Li Sheng said calmly, "Find Will and work with him to carve through the dome."

"Your gas cylinder is almost empty."

Wanli Fengdao remained silent for a moment, then his gaze sharpened. "Take it."

He took out the mission item, the four-dimensional cube, and along with it, handed Li Sheng Wanli Fengdao his own left-side bottled lung.

"It's up to you now. Don't let me die in vain."

As soon as he finished speaking, Wanli Fengdao, who had cut off the gas supply, lost all his luster in his eyes and slowly collapsed to the ground against the wall.

(End of this chapter)