Cyber ​​Sword Immortal Iron Rain

But the same thing - there was no pain or discomfort, not even the slightest sign of dizziness after the head left the body; let alone death -

"It really is like a dream."

The lips of the anonymous head moved up and down, but apart from the crisp sound of his teeth hitting each other, there was no other sound: it seemed that after being separated from his trachea and vocal cords, he could no longer speak normally as before.

It seems that the turtle's breathing follows some strange logic and is inconsistent with reality - but the nameless person has not woken up from this dream.

"Okay, okay, you want to see it, right? Then take a good look." The Xihe girl inserted the branch into the severed section of the nameless man's head and fixed it firmly.

"I'm telling you first... I didn't mean to hide it from you. I was just afraid that you would think too much! Got it?"

Then, she lifted the branches vertically; they grew and extended at a speed visible to the naked eye, reaching the sky.

……

The Nameless Man's head rose straight up along with the branches of the West River Girl, until it reached a height where he could overlook the surrounding land.

As expected - the Xihe girl had not presented the entire scene to the anonymous person before: or rather, she had missed the most crucial point.

There were white dots floating in other river channels, solitary and conspicuous in the blood-red. Although Anonymous had previously used the vision of the West River girl to see that they were all humans floating downstream...

It's just that I can't see clearly between the eyebrows and eyes.

But now, Anonymous himself looked down from above and could see their faces clearly, in every detail. Their appearance shocked and overwhelmed Anonymous:

In this crisscrossing river, every person in it... no, it should be said that every person that the Nameless One can see -

They all have similar looks, but differ in subtle ways.

Most of these differences come from age: the round and smooth skin and sparse hair in childhood; the pimples and blackheads caused by hormones in adolescence, and the shaved head; the thin face and darker skin in youth, and the hair that is grown longer.

Apart from that - Anonymous could be sure that they looked exactly the same: if they were not the same person, they were twin brothers.

Just a quick glance -

Although there are children, teenagers and young adults among these wanderers on the vermilion river, there are no middle-aged people or old people with loose skin who are in the last years of their lives.

It’s like all the “slices” in a person’s growth process, but they all come to an abrupt end at a certain point in time - this point in time is around the age of thirty.

There are so many of them, like the grains of sand in the Ganges, scattered in countless slender cinnabar-colored rivers that are not winding; countless crisscrossing red lines are drawn on the pink-gray earth... and these men and children with similar faces are the white dots sliding down in the red lines.

Eventually, they would all converge into that perfectly round, gigantic blood-red waterfall—and crash into that huge, lightless mouth.

But until now, it seems that no one has really fallen into it.

The color of the river water was too bright, and it was a little turbid in its brightness: the anonymous person could not use the water surface as a mirror. And he had no memory of his appearance at all.

But now, Anonymous knew why the girl from Xihe had concealed her appearance from the other castaways, and also knew what she actually looked like.

Because Anonymous is also one of them, with a similar but not identical appearance to them...

But: Who are they?

"Who am I?"

Anonymous asked silently.

……

In the digital space, the sea is rolling. The Luzon network is no longer as peaceful as it used to be: due to the existence of too many mining dojos and their occupation of the band channels, few hackers are willing to come here.

The explosion caused by the Beast Master, Manager Koman and "Crow" a moment ago has passed -

Chaotic, scattered information waves vibrated out from the bottom of the digital abyss; but all the vibrations and ripples finally came to a brief halt.

Compared to what happened in Manila in the real world, what happened suddenly in the digital space did not attract many people's attention - even in the ocean of information, there are countless tsunamis of this magnitude...

……

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Chapter 290: Greed (V)

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……

Chaotic, scattered information waves vibrated out from the bottom of the digital abyss; but all the vibrations and ripples finally came to a brief halt.

Compared to what happened in Manila in the real world, what happened suddenly in the digital space did not attract many people's attention - even in the ocean of information, there are countless tsunamis of this magnitude...

As a result, the people who were still in the digital space thought that this was just a normal daily phenomenon. After all, the excavation sites that were most sensitive to abnormalities had stopped being used because of the war in Luzon at that time.

At this time, one of the "tigers" from the Jawa Group is still wandering in the digital space unconsciously.

This is the only remaining "tiger" that had luckily escaped from the mouth of the "crow": a total of four giant beasts followed Manager Koman and his secretaries to Manila, thousands of miles away, but in a flash, only it was left.

Contrary to what many people believe - although the behemoths have a single mind and are always controlled by the mental defects brought about by their original disease, they still possess extremely high intelligence: even more outstanding than humans.

However, the "tiger" did not have the slightest sorrow - in its heart, there was only the vigilance and hunger of a secondary predator.

At this moment, the tiger still didn't realize that all of its companions were dead or injured. In its eyes, the crow, who could even prey on its own kind, and its host, Ke Man, might have broken through the bottleneck of its giant beast and reached a new realm...

This also represents a new danger. Its host, a secretary accompanying the team, has died; it has become a wild beast, and may be tracked and hunted by the Java Group's recovery team at any time: it has only these two choices: to be destroyed, or to merge with a new host, and have another bondage and chain.

But it doesn't care about that much...

This may be the first time in its history that the "tiger" is free from control and has a hunting ground of its own - even a fertile land like Luzon and Manila, full of twisted people and rotten diseases.

So even if it is in danger, it still pursues its instinctive desire with a glimmer of hope and joy.

That is: eat.

However, of course, we must avoid the previous companion; that is, the "crow" that devoured the other two "tigers". Why can it be so easy for a "tiger" with bipolar disorder to prey on a "crow" with the weakest obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)?

The tiger knew that the crow's power must come from a huge amount of food... If he could eat as much as the crow, he would only become stronger and stronger.

"Find...eat. Keep looking...keep eating."

The tiger murmured silently and moved forward cautiously. It wanted to find the place where it had eaten before: it was full of plump, rotten hearts and diseases; it had no chance to taste them in Sumatra and Jakarta. Now, its former competitors had all vanished into dust composed of 1s and 0s. The tiger had to continue eating, eating more...

This is the meaning of its existence.

Deeper - deeper...

The tiger floats downstream: but unlike what one might imagine, there are not many people connected to the Internet in Manila at this moment. As a pure electronic creature without a downstream entity or host, it knows almost nothing about the changes and battles that have taken place in reality - the "script" of the big troupe connects the souls point-to-point to one place, and then forms a new temporary private network; it has little impact on the public area of ​​the digital space.

So it can only continue to dive; to the sedimentary layers of electronic hearts and souls, until it reaches the place with the most food...

……

……

"A lot—a lot—"

It eats the lost souls passing by on the road, the metabolites of the souls excreted by the wanderers, the humanized pain suffered by the spirits after imitating human emotions, and the solidified substances with a decaying smell of memory products...

It was like a free buffet, a three-day and three-night buffet - Tiger didn't know why there was so much food floating in this sea. When it had left its host to secretly look for food before, it had never seen such a sumptuous banquet.

Just swallow it as you go down.

"Okay... okay, okay."

Unconsciously... due to being overly immersed in the joy and distress of eating, the "Tiger" actually jumped madly without a clear direction, once again passed through the hole dug by the giants, and returned to the deepest part of the Luzon digital space.

The residues released by the explosion: the countless silk threads - the mining protocols that transmitted information - had been shattered by the shock; the various "meals" that the "tiger" had eaten before were the contents that overflowed after the silk threads exploded.

……

When it suddenly realized it was already in the center of this void.

"Here... it's here. I'm back again - Crow, Crow is not here, right...?"

Compared to what the Tiger saw before he escaped, this place is very different. The piece of earth that was simulated by information has disappeared, leaving only a hole of no size but filled with everything;

But the tiger didn't care about that. It just madly swallowed everything around it like a Pac-Man using a cheat code, while carefully searching for the crow's traces so that it could escape at the first opportunity...

Just this search and attention changed the fate of the "tiger" for eternity.

……

"Hole...Hole. Hole?"

It unconsciously stirred the food in its seven mouthparts, and did not stop even if it chewed all the emotions in the soul into scattered information fragments. The Tiger's mind could not help but be captured by the wonder - not instinctive curiosity nor acquired training, but more like a harmony with the pulse in the dark.

The tiger noticed. Its sight passed through the hole and reached the things behind it.

If we want to describe it in a visual language that is easy to understand, it would be:

vortex.

A deep, lightless... vortex.

The Earth that was restored from collecting many copies of the world in the first half of the 21st century has long disappeared; what is revealed is the deeper and farther inside. It is a vortex that exceeds the scale of the senses and is higher than the mountains; the sea of ​​information pours into it, but cannot return.

If we look at it from this perspective, it is understandable to call it a black hole.

The tiger shrank back.

Even in the past when it was overly excited, it had never been so bold; let alone now after it was almost eaten by the "crow".

but……

Even if it is no longer driven by curiosity, the object of exploration will come to it on its own initiative.

So - "Tiger" saw the "corpse" floating up from the bottom of the vortex in the deep sea of ​​data.

……

Saying "looked" is actually a bit subjective and not accurate enough: the tiger did not really "look" at the corpse.

It is impossible to describe the appearance of this "corpse" through words and language - this is not because the behemoth does not have real visual senses: the "tiger" can easily convert any digital form into pictures and video information that can be understood by humans.

The problem lies in the form of existence of the "corpse" -

……

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Chapter 291: Greed (VI)

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……

Does anyone understand that "language" is the master of all things in this era?

It is not just a tool for people to communicate with each other about boring things like food, sex, and the desire for survival; nor is it a way for humans to pass on knowledge and satisfy the reproductive instinct in their innate qi; nor is it even a way for humans to weave everything using language.

Language is the framework, content and container of digital space - and digital space and the ocean of information that fills it are more deeply entangled with reality than any other human creation.

Since Suiren struck sparks on stones, used dry grass as a carrier of fire, and gained power from the universe: humans have finally created a world that truly belongs to them.

As the inscriptions on the rock face show, this will outlive human existence:

They call it the Internet.

……

From the moment Tiger saw the corpse in the depths of the digital abyss, its existence began to evolve and change - something that happened instantly, yet gradually.

Initially, the "tiger" lost its distractions, thoughts, and emotions - it could no longer find words in its own vocabulary to describe these; nor could it construct a cognition at the thinking level that would allow itself to understand the strong and complex emotions in its chest after seeing the "corpse".

The tiger opened its seven parallel mouthparts and instinctively roared from its body:

"At first I am not yours, it's all my eyes? The real eyes are who you are. Chances are your eyes don't know what you said-"

Was this what the tiger originally wanted to say? It didn't know: perhaps it was originally meant to express its surprise after seeing the corpse.

But now, the thoughts in its soul and the words it spoke have become fragmented and tattered; chaotic and meaningless; leaving only a pile of random words that the author himself does not understand.

If the normal, expected development of a language is to "expand"—more new words, slang, new meanings—then the language Tiger speaks is "collapsed"... For a brief moment, Tiger is like someone who has mastered a dead language:

Many words can no longer represent concrete concepts, and grammar and sentence structures no longer exist.

"Before I said I was a person who didn't know who I was. The intention was that I was mine and not yours - finally it worked, there would be someone who was yours..."

Although the "Tiger" is still humming almost unconsciously: However, the changes will not stagnate at all.

……