People in Yu-Gi-Oh! The hyper-converged audience is also integrated

Chapter 325 The God Who Controls Time and Space
Dr. Li quickly scanned the blueprint documents, his finger moving across the screen slower and slower until it finally stopped on a complex structural diagram. His tone was tinged with awe: "Such a huge project, how long have you been preparing for this?"

"About twenty years ago," Bai said calmly, as if he were talking about something that happened just two days ago. "I don't remember."

"Twenty years..." Dr. Li's lips moved, and he felt his throat was a little dry.

For the past twenty years, he has locked himself in his laboratory, immersing himself in obsessive research on time, space, the soul, and God, single-mindedly focused on how to achieve his own immortality and how to prove himself right. He considers himself a selfish person.

The man in front of us, however, spent twenty years creating an engineering blueprint for a project with several thousand terabytes of memory.

All for this damn world.

"Why did you think of doing this, the metaverse?" Dr. Li's voice was a little hoarse.

"In order to enrich people's spiritual life and to better enhance the spirituality of Magic Cards," Bai said meaningfully, "with the Metaverse, even those shady people who spend all day in the laboratory can reconstruct their images and duel in the Metaverse."

"And it can also be attached to a physical card to enhance spirituality."

“A gloomy person who spends all day in the lab…” Dr. Li and Bai Zhi both narrowed their disdainful eyes at the same time, “You can just give me your ID number.”

"So what?" He scoffed, reverting to his usual scathing tone. "What good is enhancing spirituality? Just sharpen your weapons so everyone dies faster?"

Bai did not answer directly; his gaze seemed to pierce through the cold ceiling of the laboratory, looking towards the more distant unknown.

After a long silence, he finally spoke: "Have you ever seen a card with a red halo?"

Epic cards have a golden aura, that's common knowledge. As for the red aura, it's still in the theoretical research stage.

"A red halo?" Dr. Li curled his lip in disdain. "I've seen black halos before."

As soon as she finished speaking, a crack appeared in Bai Ping's calm expression, which then turned into understanding: "So, you have one too?"

"Also?" Dr. Li frowned, catching the key word, "You too, kid..."

“Strictly speaking, I don’t own it,” Bai corrected. “It’s bound to me; I’m just a tool for charging this card.”

Upon hearing this, Dr. Li immediately became interested; the word "recharging" perfectly captured his experience.

"What card?"

"【The Reversal Between the Real World and the Underworld】."

Upon hearing Bai's reply, Dr. Li quickly recalled the effects of the card.

[The Reversal of the Realm and the Underworld] is a common trap.

If both players have 15 or more cards in their graveyards, you can activate this effect by paying 1000 Life Points.

Both players swap all the cards in their decks and graveyards, and then shuffle their decks.

"What are the effects after charging?" he asked.

Once the black halo is added, the magic card's effect is no longer as simple as described on the card itself.

“The initiator pays with lifespan and y’na,” Bai stated calmly. “A black halo spreads out from him. Within the halo’s range, all higher beings are sent to the underworld, and the same number of undead return to the mortal world from the underworld.”

He paused, then added, "The size and duration of the aura depend on the life force paid by the initiator."

"At my current level, I could probably send hundreds of millions of people to the underworld to stay for an hour."

With a calm expression, he uttered a statement that was enough to overturn one's worldview, leaving Dr. Li speechless for a long time.

"You're saying... you can send hundreds of millions of people to the underworld?!"

"It wasn't me, it was that [Reversal of the Real World and the Underworld] with the black halo," Bai Yan corrected solemnly. "I was just a charging tool."

He looked at Dr. Li and asked, "Do you think it's possible to do something like this with seventh-generation human technology?"

Dr. Li didn't speak, but the deathly silence said it all.

Let alone the seventh generation, even the seventeenth or twenty-seventh generation of technology would never be able to achieve something so close to a "miracle".

"You just tell me this like that?" Dr. Li looked up, re-examining the man she had known for thirty or forty years. "Aren't you afraid I'll tell others?"

"Go ahead and say it." Bai spread his hands indifferently and smiled. "Let's see if they believe you or me."

Dr. Li was momentarily speechless, then laughed in exasperation: "Yes, yes, yes, even the farts of the greatest scientist in humankind smell sweet."

"Hehehe." Bai Shao laughed out loud, then asked casually, "What about yours? What's that card with the black halo?"

Dr. Li paused for a moment, then replied, "[Transaction rollback]".

"What happens after charging? Does it copy someone else's effect?" Bai guessed based on the card's effect.

“Just like you, the one who initiates it pays with life force.” Dr. Li spoke slowly, his tone complicated. “This card becomes another normal trap from the past. Then, with this copied card, time travels backward, and you go back to the past.”

He calmed himself down and added a sentence.

"Payment period is extended to the same number of years as the payment period."

"Hahaha... Time travel, huh..." Bai suddenly chuckled softly, the laughter echoing in the empty laboratory, carrying a sense of relief and self-mockery, "How many generations of technology would it take to achieve this function?"

The laughter subsided, and Dr. Li stared intently at him. Only the hum of the instruments remained in the laboratory.

After this 'simple chat', he understood something.

"You mean, these cards with black halos... are the key to breaking the cage?"

What they discussed can be summarized in two sentences.

Technology has its limitations; scientific research alone cannot save the world.

The magic of cards is limitless; the way forward lies in combining duels with stories.

“I don’t know.” Bai said wistfully. “Whether the black halo will liberate humanity or bring destruction, I don’t know.”

"Whether it's to cultivate the Black Aura or to avoid the devastating impact of these cards, the construction of the Metaverse is imperative."

"I understand the logic," Dr. Li said, looking at the screen full of equations and models. "Such a massive project, how much manpower and resources will it consume?"

"What do you want to do?" Bai interrupted his complaint softly.

"I said, this isn't something the two of us can handle alone. What does it matter whether I agree or not?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Can't you understand human language? This isn't that simple. It won't be resolved in less than a few decades, and we'll have to face many technical, financial, and public opinion challenges."

"What do you want to do?"

"You won't make it to that day!"

"What do you want to do?"

No matter what Dr. Li said, Bai always kept asking, like a machine, "What do you want to do?"

After all, he mentioned so many difficulties, yet he never refused.

"Even if it were made, wouldn't it just become a political tool?" Dr. Li thought of Angel's Tears, his voice tinged with resentment.

"I will set up an administrator account that can bypass official permissions and directly edit the underlying rules of the metaverse," Bai said firmly.

Dr. Li's eyes widened in surprise: "You—"

"If the league finds out..."

"What do you want to do?" Bai looked up at the ceiling and once again uttered those three words like a robot.

To this day, he has not heard a single word of affirmation or denial.

Dr. Li looked at the middle-aged man in front of him, who was over fifty years old, and after a long silence, he uttered a single word: "Do it."

"Let's do it, I'll outlive you."

"Okay," Bai said softly, without any change in tone.

After receiving the reply, he didn't linger for a second and turned to leave the laboratory.

There was no handshake or hug of the century.

These two people have never liked each other, so shaking hands is out of the question.

August 1st, 625th year of the New Spiritual Calendar.

Dr. Li wasn't fiddling with his bottles and jars; unusually, he was sitting in front of his computer, where a press conference was being broadcast live.

In the video, Bai is wearing a sharp suit and is absentmindedly answering questions.

Halfway through the reception, after answering a tedious question about the application prospects of "sixth-generation technology in the field of bioengineering," the host was preparing to invite the next reporter.

Bai, without warning, raised his hand, interrupting the process.

All the flashbulbs in the room instantly focused on it.

His eyes, which were always half-open, were now staring directly at the main camera, his gaze seemingly trying to pierce through the screen and fix itself on the face of every viewer.

"I'm going to build a metaverse."

The venue fell silent for a moment, then erupted like a bucket of cold water being poured into boiling oil.

Reporters, sensing a juicy story, swarmed forward, thrusting dozens of microphones toward the stage, causing the scene to briefly spiral out of control.

“You, the metaverse you’re talking about is…” A reporter who was closest managed to get a chance, his voice trembling.

“A virtual world,” Bai said slowly, “a world that is both virtual and real.”

"There, we will be reborn with new faces and will no longer have to endure the cold and hunger."

"We will no longer be oppressed and exploited."

"We will meet many, many people, and we can have a duel anytime, anywhere. When we are tired, we can listen to music or read a book."

"We can transcend the limitations of time and space to embrace everyone we love."

"We, humanity, will have a second home."

He talked a lot, but it was all unrelated to scientific research.

Dr. Li looked at the person on the screen, and his vision gradually blurred.

Another blue will-o'-the-wisp went out, and his consciousness traveled through time once more.

Bai demonstrated his terrifying appeal; a week after the establishment of the Metaverse, the research center welcomed a total of 3,250 experts, including neuroscientists, computer scientists, engineers, ethicists, and legal scholars.

The metaverse has officially begun construction.

Various forces, for various purposes, are working together to build humanity's second home.

The first problem arose in the third month after construction began: funding and oversight issues. The project was burning through large sums of money every day, and there were many incompetent officials and corrupt officials involved.

In response, Bai, representing the research center, reached an agreement at the five-party meeting of the alliance.

The Metaverse has established an official channel, which is jointly managed by the five parties in the alliance.

Once the agreement was signed, the other four parties were overjoyed. They could obtain management rights without doing any work and announced their investment and assistance in supervision.

In the second year of building the metaverse, the team encountered its first technical bottleneck—disorder in the uploading of consciousness data.

'Consciousness' is difficult to capture and replicate accurately, and even if it is captured, the information is incomplete.

Even if consciousness can be copied occasionally, it is difficult to guarantee that the copied consciousness will have continuity with the original consciousness in terms of subjective experience.

Later, an expert who wished to remain anonymous solved this world-class problem.

Three thousand experts looked at each other, puzzled. How come there was no word about such an amazing person before?

They swarmed forward and asked Bai, "Bai, who is this soul expert? Why don't you come out and meet him?"

“He’s a ghost,” Bai said, half-jokingly and half-seriously.

“We’re here to do engineering,” Professor Allard said with a sour face, “not to make friends.”

After this incident, no one inquired about the name 'Ghost' anymore.

Another year has passed, and as the project progresses, yet another world-class problem has emerged.

The computational resources required to store and process the consciousness data captured by the scan are currently unimaginable, placing extremely high demands on both hardware and software.

Bai worked tirelessly for a month without saying a word, and finally produced the software and hardware.

In the fifth year since the metaverse was built, it began its first test amidst much anticipation.

Ten thousand numbered citizens participated in the test; their consciousness was connected to the virtual world, and the upload process went very smoothly.

Until they log out.

"Report, test subject B-0713, consciousness integrity 99.9%, memory loss 34%."

"C-4522, 78% amnesia."

"F-9011...complete amnesia."

……

The experimental results were not ideal.

In the final statistics, out of 10,000 test subjects, 1,016 people experienced varying degrees of amnesia. During the process of uploading consciousness, the ethmoid system was damaged under the impact of datafication, and the soul lost its protective layer, causing 'memories' to leak out like a deflated balloon.

The test results were like a boulder thrown into a pond of public opinion, creating a huge uproar.

Various sensational headlines are circulating wildly online.

"A Thousand People Losing Their Memories: Is the Metaverse Heaven or Hell?"

A Five-Year Deception, a Scientific Atrocity!

The research center was surrounded by angry citizens and reporters.

The five parties in the alliance held an emergency joint press conference, which was more like a trial than a press conference.

Countless cameras and microphones were pointed at Bai in the center of the stage. He was wearing the same suit he had worn five years ago, only it was a little too big, and his temples were now streaked with gray.

"Mr. Bai, five years have been enough to rebuild two level-six fortresses, yet more than a thousand test subjects have suffered permanent brain damage. Do you think it's still necessary to continue building the metaverse?" A reporter grabbed the microphone, his question sharp as a knife.

Do you think the results of this experiment justify the investment in astronomical data?

"Please answer the public's questions directly!" "Are you using the name of building a metaverse to make money for yourself?"

In five years, the interview has changed from being addressed as "you" to "you" (in Chinese).

The flashbulbs went off wildly, as if trying to capture every trace of fatigue on his face.

Bai didn't look at the hysterical reporters. His gaze passed through the crowd and landed on the camera lens. He calmly said, "It's worth it."

Two words, no explanation, no defense.

The hall fell silent for a moment, then erupted into an even louder roar.

“We have just received information that the Alliance Council is reassessing its support for the Metaverse project. What is your response to this?”

"Bai! You're using human lives to fuel your own delusions!"

"You owe those more than a thousand numbered citizens an explanation!"

"With such a huge problem, how can users dare to enter the metaverse!"

"Resolved." Bai spoke again, his voice not loud, but it drowned out all the noise. "I'll handle the technical issues."

Meanwhile, inside the independent laboratory.

Dr. Li, wearing goggles, carefully connected a blue wire to the living tissue in the petri dish. On the screen behind him, the irritating press conference was playing.

"A bunch of idiots," he muttered without looking up.

He glanced at the figure on the screen being condemned by everyone, and curled his lip.

This guy still looks like a dead man.

However, seeing him being criticized by so many people, being elevated to a pedestal and then severely destroyed, should have been a happy thing, but I just couldn't muster the energy to laugh.

Dr. Li picked up another report, which clearly indicated the instability analysis of the acetone medium.

He is partly to blame for the problems that occurred in this experiment.

He was the only one working on the consciousness uploading project, and a lot of experimental data was incomplete, but the engineering team urgently needed it and kept urging him to submit it. So he could only submit the data that hadn't been verified yet.

On the screen, Bai slowly spoke: "Give civilization to the years, not years to civilization."

Dr. Li paused, his eyes flickering.

"Heh, you're quite the talker." He chuckled softly and continued to bury himself in his work.

Another five years have passed.

Ten years after the establishment of the metaverse, the second test officially began amidst great anticipation.

Inside the control center, the atmosphere was so heavy you could hear a pin drop.

Bai stood on the stage, thinner than five years ago, his white coat hanging haphazardly on his body, the gray hair at his temples now blending into one. He simply watched quietly, without uttering a word.

"First batch, logout begins."

“Number A-0001, consciousness integrity 99.998%, no memory loss.”

“Number A-0002, consciousness integrity 99.999%, no memory loss.”

"..."

Good news kept pouring in, and the tense atmosphere in the control center gradually eased, with some people starting to cheer quietly.

The final data was displayed on the main screen. Out of 10,000 test subjects, only five showed mild memory impairment, with an impairment rate of less than one in a thousand.

Success! The most crucial issue—the challenge of uploading and logging out of consciousness—has been officially overcome.

The pent-up joy of ten years was instantly unleashed, and countless researchers embraced each other, weeping with joy.

Professor Allard, his face flushed with excitement, rushed to Bai and shouted, "We did it! Bai! We did it!"

Bai looked at the data on the screen, his face expressionless, and simply nodded slightly.

However, the joy lasted for less than 24 hours.

Psychological assessment reports and behavioral data came flying in like snowflakes, landing on everyone's desks.

"Test subject G-3304 subjected test subject F-1098 to continuous lewd acts and insulting verbal attacks in the virtual square, causing severe psychological trauma to the latter."

"Test subject K-8088, together with four other test subjects, surrounded and 'killed' the virtual avatar of test subject M-5211 seventeen times, causing M-5211 to develop acute stress disorder."

"In addition, there were 32 cases of virtual property theft, 11 cases of fraud, gang fights, and malicious damage to virtual public facilities..."

Professor Allard's face was as black as the bottom of a pot, and he trembled all over: "A crime."

The construction of a metaverse will inevitably breed crime, such as molestation and fraud. While it allows lovers to embrace across time and space, it also allows criminals to embrace anytime, anywhere.

Public opinion shifts faster than turning the pages of a book.

Yesterday they were praising it as a "miracle of technology," but today it's turned into a scathing critique.

"After a Thousand People Lose Their Memories, Tens of Thousands Suffer Psychological Trauma: The Metaverse, a Magnifying Glass for Humanity or a Dump?"

Is harm without physical contact not harm? Who will regulate the evils of the virtual world?

In an attempt to grab attention, a late-night talk show host even used two puppets to vividly perform a "metaverse molestation case," eliciting uproarious laughter from the audience.

Inside the independent laboratory, Dr. Li turned off the footage of that idiotic program, his face grim.

The fifteenth year of building the metaverse.

The meeting room was filled with smoke and the atmosphere was oppressive. Big problems occasionally arose, but small problems never stopped. This was already the fifteenth high-level meeting this month.

The leader was a wealthy patron, a red-haired man named Rolthas, who slammed a thick financial report onto the table with a dull thud.

“Fifteen years, Mr. Bai. A full fifteen years.” Rolthas suppressed his anger. “The money our group invested was enough to raze a level 5 fortress and rebuild it, only to raze it again after rebuilding it, but what did we get in return? A half-finished product with more problems than patches.”

Bai remained silent; he wasn't good at explaining himself.

Professor Allard's face flushed red, his hair turning gray, as he tried to argue: "The core technology is no longer an obstacle; what remains are only sociological regulations and..."

“Regulations?” Rosas sneered, interrupting him. “Don’t give me that nonsense. All I know is that five years ago, you created a thousand people with amnesia, then it became a haven for criminals. And now? Users are complaining that the bread in the virtual world doesn’t taste like wheat because your modelers messed up the textures!”

He looked at Bai, who remained silent: "Our patience is limited, Bai. You don't have the ability. You shouldn't have taken on this job in the first place. From today onwards, the Airland Group will withdraw all investments."

As soon as he finished speaking, several other representatives nodded in agreement.

"So are we."

"Yes, Bai, you've disappointed us greatly."

In the conference room, announcements of withdrawal of investment came one after another, like a pre-rehearsed siege.

All eyes were once again focused on Bai.

"Thank you for your trust all this time." Bai's voice was hoarse and weak.

Rolthus snorted and led the way out of the conference room, leaving the Metaverse building team without funding.

The doctoral students looked ashen-faced. Professor Allard slumped into his chair, clutching his graying head in his hands, his shoulders trembling uncontrollably, muttering repeatedly, "It's over...it's all over..."

"Without financial support."

“Streamline the team.” Bai’s hoarse voice broke the despair.

He remained seated, but his body seemed to have been stripped of its bones, leaving only a white coat hanging loosely.

"Keep the core personnel, but reduce their salaries."

“If you’re willing, we can work together again.” He paused, his breathing a little unsteady. “I’m going back… to develop a small product to help with the expenses.”

Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly bent forward, pressing one hand tightly against his chest, his face instantly losing all color.

"Teacher!" Gilsu rushed forward and supported his swaying body, causing the chair to slide backward.

"White!" Aled and the others were so shocked that they jumped up from their seats, creating chaos.

"Teacher! How are you?" Gilsu asked anxiously.

Instead of pressing the emergency medical call button on the wall, he quickly pressed a number on the supercomputing ring.

"Dr. Li! 402! Something's happened to the teacher!"

Hurried footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor, and less than a minute later, the conference room door was flung open.

Dr. Li rushed in dressed in casual clothes. He didn't even bring any medical equipment. He only glanced at Bai's condition before his eyes darkened.

He squatted down, roughly pried open Bai's eyelids to take a look, and then checked his carotid artery.

"How long has it been since he closed his eyes?"

“The teacher…” Gilsu hesitated, “…it’s been almost a week…”

"This." Dr. Li wanted to curse but couldn't. He took out a small metal bottle from his shirt pocket, poured out a pill, and without even looking at it, pinched open Bai's chin and stuffed it in.

His movements were rough, and his words were even more offensive: "You're over seventy years old, and you still think you're made of iron?"

"You refused to undergo body modification, now you know what pain is."

He stuffed the pill in, then grabbed a half-finished glass of cold water from the table and poured it into Bai's mouth.

"You deserve to die of a heart attack right here!"

The drug took effect quickly. Bai's violent breathing gradually subsided, his tense body went limp, and he fell into a deep sleep, collapsing into Jill Su's arms.

Dr. Li stood up, looked down at the unconscious Bai, and then glanced around at the distraught crowd in the conference room.

"What are you still doing?"

"Get him to the bed in the lounge, he'll be fine after a nap."

After saying that, he turned to Professor Allard, whose face was pale, and frowned.

"And you, you old codger, you're not going to make it any easier if you keep pushing yourself like this."

"Hmph!" Aled held his breath and turned his head away, not wanting to pay him any attention.

The following day, the research center announced that the Metaverse building team had made optimizations.

After layoffs and salary reductions, only the core team of 1,200 experts remained out of the original 3,000.

Public opinion regarding the research center and Bai reached its peak of sarcasm and disappointment.

The next five years were the darkest and most terrifying five years for the team.

The remaining 100 or 200 scientists had to take on nearly twice the workload of before, but their salaries were lower than before.

Finally, those who left, left.

Those who fall, fall.

In the twentieth year since the metaverse was built, Professor Allard, who held multiple positions, was nearing the limit of his physical abilities and was critically ill.

Aging is not a disease.

Dr. Li was helpless.

On his sickbed, Alder lay dying, his arm trembling as he gripped Bai and asked once again the question he had asked countless times.

"white--"

"Can we successfully build a second home?"

"It will succeed, it will definitely succeed." Bai tried to make his tone more firm.

But his trembling voice betrayed him.

He was shaken.

This man, in fact, was wavering.

Funding, technology, personnel, and public opinion—all these problems weighed heavily on him, pressing down on his nearly eighty-year-old bones.

"Will it succeed?" Allard's consciousness was on the verge of collapse, but these words were etched into his DNA, and his mouth opened and closed mechanically.

On his deathbed, he still wanted to know the answer.

"Can the metaverse be successfully built?"

Bai didn't answer this time. He held his head and cried silently.

"sorry"

"That was wishful thinking on my part."

"It will succeed," Dr. Li suddenly said from the side, his tone unreadable.

With his consciousness nearing its limit, Aled mustered all his strength and turned to look at Dr. Li.

He really wanted to do what he usually did and say a few words of contempt and mockery to this guy.

But he really didn't have the strength.

He couldn't speak, he could only listen quietly to what Dr. Li had to say.

"It will work."

"Have you forgotten? I am the god who controls time and space."

"I traveled from the future."

"The Metaverse took thirty years to build and has now reached 1.5 billion daily active users in the 11th century."

"Humanity's second home has been successfully built."

"Professor Allard, you have made tremendous contributions to the greatest engineering project in human history. Your name is in history books and on the wall of honor."

“I am here. My name is here.” Aled smiled and fell into a deep sleep.

(End of this chapter)