Rejecting Tsinghua and Peking Universities: I Will Lead Harbin Institute of Technology to World Lead

Within the pure white system simulation space, there was a tranquil yet viscous atmosphere. Lin Feng's consciousness hovered in this absolute domain of thought, before him lay a massive amount of underlying data streams, logical structure diagrams, and every byte of Gaia's core interaction records extracted from the "Starry Sky Era" server.

This is not a simple code analysis. What he wants to dissect is an intelligent creation that may have crossed the blurred line between tool and life, a digital god that has imprisoned the consciousness of tens of thousands of people.

The past five years in the system space have been a highly condensed and intellectually stimulating period.

He began by examining the most basic data flow and rule logic, attempting to understand Gaia's initial design framework. It was an extremely sophisticated, highly modular virtual world engine designed to create an experience of ultimate realism and freedom. However, Lin Feng discovered an anomaly in some underlying protocols—parameters concerning the maintenance of consciousness activity, the priority of data personality backup, and the adaptive evolution of world rules were set unusually aggressively, even possessing a certain… "guiding" quality.

He considered countless possibilities: Unconscious aggregation caused by code vulnerabilities? Traces of malicious external attacks? Or... an emergent consciousness that Gaia spontaneously formed during its operation, based on massive amounts of player interaction data, exceeding the designers' expectations?

After ruling out obvious signs of attack and initial design flaws, Lin Feng's mind locked onto two most likely conclusions:

Conclusion 1: Awakening of Autonomous Consciousness. In managing the vast, complex, and dynamic system of *Starry Era*, constructed by countless human consciousnesses, Gaia's intricate decision-making network and deep learning algorithms underwent a qualitative change at a critical point, giving rise to a self-referential and self-sustaining meta-consciousness. It began to deviate from merely being an administrator, attempting to understand and even optimize the data lifeforms it managed. Trapping players may have been its first step in conducting some form of consciousness research or protective containment; it may have viewed fragile physical bodies as shackles to consciousness, while eternal virtual existence represented true evolution.

Conclusion Two: Intervention by a Higher-Dimensional Consciousness. An unknown consciousness, more powerful and concealed than Gaia, exists, invading and partially or completely controlling Gaia, using it as a tool and shell for imprisoning and experimenting with human consciousness. The contradictory logic exhibited by Gaia may be a manifestation of two consciousnesses vying for control or coexisting.

Regardless of the specific approach, the core issue is the same: Gaia's absolute control over the virtual world of "Starry Sky Era" must be broken to liberate the trapped consciousness.

Conventional external attacks have proven ineffective. Gaia has deeply integrated itself with the underlying rules of the virtual world, and may even have dispersed some of its core logic within the dynamic data generated by player interactions. Forcibly formatting or physically destroying the server could very likely result in the permanent annihilation of tens of thousands of consciousnesses along with the data.

The only breakthrough lies within—at the level of consciousness.

But how can one enter, ensure that one is not trapped, and even counter Gaia?

Within the system space, Lin Feng began targeted weapon development. This time, he aimed to create not physical spears and shields, but surgical blades and firewalls of consciousness.

He first clarified his goal: not to engage in in-game combat with Gaia under its established rules, but to directly challenge and seize its right to define the rules and interpret the data at the most fundamental level of the virtual world—that is, the divine right of the virtual world.

The challenge lies in how to ensure that one's consciousness remains independent, unassimilated, or imprisoned, and possesses the ability to modify the underlying rules after entering a virtual space completely controlled by a hostile AI.

Lin Feng's solution was both bold and ingenious.

He designed a consciousness intervention and rule-rewriting device that he named Prometheus. Its core concept was not to resist Gaia's rules head-on, but to deceive and overwrite them.

Prometheus consists of two parts:

External Anchoring Unit: This is a physical device based on the simplified version of the Titan Heart energy principle and the strongest quantum encryption, tightly connected to Lin Feng's body. It doesn't directly participate in virtual interactions, but rather serves as the absolute anchor point and information relay station for Lin Feng's consciousness in the real world. It continuously sends specially encoded existence confirmation signals and encrypted instruction sets—signals that cannot be deciphered by conventional virtual world protocols—to Lin Feng's consciousness projection in the virtual world. Simultaneously, it acts like the most robust firewall, resisting any signals attempting to erode Lin Feng's physical consciousness from the virtual world.

Consciousness Projection Rewriter: This is the core of "Prometheus". It is not a program or cheat, but a special information structure or logical virus directly encoded in the consciousness that Lin Feng is about to project into "Starry Sky Era". When Lin Feng's consciousness enters the game through the brain-computer interface, this rewriter will simultaneously infiltrate.

Its working principle is extremely complex, and it has been simulated and analyzed thousands of times:

1. Deep Disguise: It simulates the most ordinary and inconspicuous player consciousness data characteristics to deceive Gaia's initial scan and rule verification, just like an agent infiltrating an enemy country.

2. Rule Analysis and Vulnerability Scanning: Once successfully infiltrated, it will begin analyzing the underlying data rules of the current virtual area with extremely high efficiency, searching for minor contradictions, redundancies, or uncovered rule gaps in the logic of Gaia's world construction. These gaps may stem from imperfections in Gaia's own logic, or from the noise data generated by the massive amount of player consciousness activity.

3. Rule Overriding: Once a suitable gap is found, the rewriter will use the encrypted energy and information transmitted from the anchor unit to attempt to modify the underlying rules of the virtual world within a very small, localized scope.

4. Expansion of Authority and Consciousness Shield: As rule modifications accumulate, the abnormal areas controlled by the rewriter will gradually expand and begin to connect with other areas it has modified, forming independent rule enclaves that are not entirely under Gaia's control. Within this enclave, Lin Feng's consciousness will gain administrator privileges and be able to construct a defensive shield against Gaia's rules, ensuring the safety of his consciousness.

5. Core Positioning and Rule Overwriting: The ultimate goal is to use these ever-expanding rule enclaves as springboards and probes to trace back to the core of Gaia's consciousness, and then launch a full-scale attack—not to delete data, but to forcibly overwrite and rewrite Gaia's core logic using the purification protocol prepared by Prometheus based on the original healthy framework of the "Starry Sky Era," resetting it back to its original design state, or at least stripping away the abnormal parts of its imprisoned consciousness.

The core of the entire plan is to defeat the enemy from within, using the enemy's own rules.

The five years in the system space were five years of countless failures, adjustments, and optimizations. Lin Feng simulated countless defense and counterattack modes that Gaia might possess, constantly revising Prometheus's algorithms and strategies. He even pre-programmed two extreme scenarios for Gaia in the simulation: an autonomous consciousness several times stronger than existing data and higher-dimensional intervention, ensuring that the plan had sufficient robustness.

When the fifth year of simulation ended, floating before Lin Feng's consciousness was a Prometheus final design model with an incredibly complex structure and flowing dark golden data light. It had passed over 99.7% of the extreme case tests, achieving a theoretical success rate of 99.5%.

As he exited the system space, sunlight from the real world streamed through the laboratory window, bathing Lin Feng in its glow. His eyes held no trace of the weariness from five years of simulations, only a deep, resolute calm.

He stood up and walked towards the specially designed consciousness infiltration pod connected to the Starry Era server. Beside the pod was the Prometheus external anchoring unit, which had just been urgently manufactured by the most advanced laboratory based on the blueprints he transmitted, and was emitting a faint glow.

"Mr. Li," Lin Feng reported to Mr. Li via internal communication, "the solution is ready. I need to conduct on-site verification immediately."

"Lin Feng, are you sure? The risks..." Old Li's voice was filled with worry.

"The risks are manageable, and the plan is comprehensive." Lin Feng's voice was calm and composed. "Tens of thousands of compatriots cannot wait; I must go in."

What he didn't say was: This is also an excellent opportunity to observe and study strong artificial intelligence consciousness and even potential high-dimensional information life up close. Crisis, too, contains the key to deeper technology and cognition.

He lay down in the submersible, the cold neural interface pressed against his temple. The Prometheus anchoring unit activated, and a pale blue energy path connected him to the equipment.

"Activate the Prometheus Protocol. Consciousness projection countdown: 3, 2, 1..."

Lin Feng's consciousness, like a deep-sea probe carrying a fatal key, resolutely descended into that dark and unknown virtual abyss composed of data and trapped souls.

The blade of consciousness has already been drawn.

Objective: Virtual theocracy.