Volume 10 Bugs Chapter 76: Soul, No Soul
"It seems that I have been wrong all along..." Watching me freely shuttle between the "surface world" and the "source world", the troll witch doctor old Carlson sighed and said to himself. His expression seemed to be somewhat enlightened, but more of it was loss. The wrinkles between his eyebrows seemed to be deeper, and his whole spirit showed a bit of old age than usual.
"Are...are you okay?" Seeing that he seemed to be deeply shocked, I regretted telling him my discovery so hastily.
"Oh, don't worry about me..." Seeing my concerned look, old Carlson's frown relaxed a little, and his two pointed ears moved twice. He grinned at me with his big mouth showing two fangs, "...You have to understand that if some ideas that you have believed in since you can remember are suddenly proven to be completely wrong, and these ideas happen to be the discoveries you are most proud of, then you will not feel very good."
The more open-hearted Carlson was, the more guilty I felt. You know, it was this old troll in front of me who opened a new window for me and helped me with all his might, which gave me the opportunity to get in touch with the more wonderful realm outside this concrete world. And how did I repay him? It completely overturned his worldview!
"I'm sorry..." I really wanted to do something more to make it up to him, but in the end, all I could do was just utter these three words softly.
“Oh, hahaha…” Seeing my embarrassment, old Carlson smiled generously and tried to enlighten me, “…You have nothing to apologize for, my friend. In fact, I should apologize and be grateful to you for not following a wrong path to the end of my life. If that’s the case, it’s fine. But if my life is even longer than I thought, I don’t know how long I will keep making this mistake. This is the worst thing.”
"Now I feel a little regretful..." Seeing that old Carlson was more open-minded than I thought, I felt much better and joked with him, "...I shouldn't have told you this truth and let you live your whole life in confusion."
"Don't get too carried away, you little brat!" Old Carlson swung his staff and hit me hard on the head. As usual, no matter how I dodged and blocked, I couldn't stop this attack. "Don't think that you have grasped some bullshit 'truth' just because you happened to find something I got wrong! In fact, I doubt whether the so-called 'truth' really exists. I am more inclined to believe that you have only temporarily discovered a way to better explain the world, and whether the world will ultimately be like this is still difficult to determine."
"But..." He looked at me gently, and suddenly couldn't help but smiled generously, with two long fangs trembling at the corners of his mouth, "...Since your discovery is closer to the facts, I'm afraid I need to get to know this world again as soon as possible."
"As for you, Jeff, I still have a lot of things to teach you. Maybe my understanding of the origin of this world is a little biased, but I think my understanding of the digital symbols of the source world is still better than yours." As he said that, old Carlson waved his hand, and without giving me a moment to struggle, he dragged me back into the digital space composed of overwhelming simple characters.
After that, my life was full and busy. Old Carlson did not put me in the state between "existence" and "non-existence" like last time, isolating me from the outside world, but asked me to come here every time the sky walkers dispersed and the world returned to silence, to learn from him how to interpret those digital characters composed of "0" and "1" that were as vast and boundless as the sky.
At first, I thought it was not complicated: you know, I seemed to have the ability to recognize these characters naturally. Even in the vast source world, I could easily recognize the characters that represent a leaf, a strand of hair, or a grain of sand. I could even see how the light was projected and how the wind blew from these characters. For me, it was like an instinct, without the need for learning or training.
But I soon realized that I was wrong. What old Carlson wanted to teach me was not to understand the appearance of the world through characters, but the rules that make up the world and the principles that make the world work. He told me that in that concrete environment, we can only see the appearance of the world forever. Only by converting everything into symbols can we truly see how the world works. What I need is not only to see the wind, but also to understand where the wind comes from and where it ends; which fields control its speed, and which guide its direction; when it brushes a thin leaf from the branch, and how it sends it into the pond; how the pond water is disturbed by the thin leaves, and how it creates layers of ripples...
The more I learn, the more I marvel at the wisdom of the gods. "0" and "1", these two seemingly extremely simple symbols, carry the true divinity: they can be endlessly added and changed to form everything the gods want to form. This way of expression may seem cumbersome and stupid, but its basic rules are simple and stable, without confusion or shakes. Yes, the more complex the world is, the more it should be described and expressed in the simplest way - the reason why gods are gods is because they deeply understand this and know how to do it.
In this flat world of boundless darkness and infinite digital piles , my previous conjecture was gradually proven: this is indeed a world that keeps running in a cycle, and all seemingly accidental situations are actually written into inevitable programs, flowing silently and irresistibly in this source world. A butterfly flutters its wings on the east coast of the continent, and gradually turns into a breeze when crossing the ocean, blowing the sand on an isolated island on the sea surface to turn 65 degrees. This is not accidental or coincidental, but the destiny woven by the gods that is destined and cannot be disobeyed.
Many people have marveled at the mysterious providence of God, but now, this mysterious providence of God is unfolding before my eyes in an extremely clear way.
When I first gained self-awareness, I was amazed by the size and grandeur of this world. The towering cliffs, the vast ocean, the countless rare animals, plants and creatures... Darmos, our Lord of the Gods who lives in the sky, has such great power that he can create such a world with so many changes that it is unimaginable.
However, compared to what I see now, all that is as small as a blade of grass on nine high mountains. Only when you understand the meaning hidden behind the boundless characters can you truly appreciate what is truly "vast". In fact, in comparison, creating all things in the world does not require too many characters. The real difficulty lies in setting the rules for their existence: how they act, what they can see, how they react when they find this situation, how they act when they find another object... These settings are often dozens or even hundreds of times more difficult than their own existence, and all of this, no matter how big or small, has been done one by one by the gods in the sky.
In my past adventures, I couldn't help laughing at my enemies. They were stupid and dull, and sometimes they wouldn't attack you even when you showed obvious hostility. If you have enough adventure experience, you can even predict every reaction of these enemies in advance. Sometimes I even had some ridiculous thoughts, such as: Are they lifeless puppets, who appear there just to add some fun to the adventurers who come here?
However, now I know that maybe each of them can only make a few reactions, but what if there are dozens? Hundreds? Hundreds of thousands? Tens of millions? Such an unimaginable heavy task, even for the gods, it is probably not an easy task to supervise and control this world. The gods can create this world to such an extent, I don't know what other words can describe such a great project, for this world, we can't ask for more.
Although it sounds very simple to me now, and I can't help but feel excited when I read it, please believe me, the process of learning all this is not as fun as you think. In fact, I would say that this is probably the most boring and difficult time I have ever had in this world since I gained my own sanity. Facing a vast ocean of characters, watching old Carlson dial a string of hundreds of thousands or even millions of characters all day long, remembering the meaning of each character - I believe that even when I was a muddle-headed city gate guard, I would probably go crazy if I lived like this every day. Fortunately, such a time only occurs every three or four days, so I am lucky enough to have kept my sanity.
But to be honest, old Carlson was not a qualified teacher. He never showed me how to use these characters, let alone "guided me step by step". The only thing he could do was to put the meaning of each character into my mind and asked me to remember them firmly.
Note that what I said about "stuffing it into my head" is not a rhetoric, but the truth! You know, if I were to explain the meaning of these billions of characters one by one, I'm afraid that even if the last king Darendil came to kill me, I would not have learned the simplest symbol. But old Carlson has a special method: every time he points to a character, he will form a translation of these characters in his mind - of course, in the source world, his mind is also made up of characters - and then he will use a powerful mental magic called "copying" - he also calls this magic "copying" - to force all these translation results into my mind.
Every time this huge amount of information poured into my brain, I would feel a sharp pain in my head, as if a huge rock had suddenly penetrated my skull and rolled in my brain. However, a moment later, this knowledge would be added to my memory, and this knowledge was so familiar to me that it seemed as if I had known it since birth.
Carlson's teaching method is not only simple and crude, sometimes I even feel that he is unusually urgent, and he wants to teach me all the knowledge at once. That kind of deadly sense of urgency is as if if I can't learn all this today, the end of the world will come tomorrow - in this regard, I can only use a sentence that Xian Ge Yayi once said: cramming teaching method is the most annoying. If it weren't for the strong desire for knowledge driving me - of course, all this is really interesting - I'm afraid I would have given up long ago.
"You might as well just copy your brain and give it to me!" I once ridiculed his teaching method to his face.
"Do you think I haven't thought about it? If I hadn't figured out how the soul works and was worried that copying all my memories to you would interfere with your soul's independence, I would have done it a long time ago! Even now, if you weren't worried about having an extra troll consciousness in your head, I could satisfy your request right away!"
To be honest, I'm not too worried about having an extra troll consciousness in my head, but what if it's the aesthetic part... When I thought of Marian Santa's gentle face, I immediately declined old Carlson's kindness.
In addition to understanding the origin rules of this world, I also experienced another magical feeling. I still remember the first time I came to see old Carlson, as soon as I stepped into the fortress gate, he sensed my presence and instantly took me to his magical hut. At that time, I was amazed at his rapid reaction, but now, when I am immersed in the source world, I also feel the slowness of this world. Although I can't make time "slowly flow in microseconds" as described by old Carlson, I can turn countless thoughts , perform very complex memory calculations, and feel the slightest changes around me in milliseconds - if not, even with old Carlson's magical copy magic, I can't learn such a complex and vast world rules.
However, as old Carlson half-truthfully lamented, we carefully analyzed the symbol samples of every creature in the Stone Fortress, but we still couldn't figure out how our souls work. But we made some special discoveries about those space travelers who sneaked into the Stone Fortress:
In every digital field belonging to the sky-goers, there is a strange and mysterious symbol hidden. These symbols not only run in the sky-goers' bodies, but also extend to the distant sky, and they run all the time without interruption. Other digital symbols that symbolize their bodies, functions, and even clothing and equipment are all closely related to this string of mysterious characters.
In fact, we speculate that these strange characters are the foundation of the space-related people in this world. All other numbers related to them are activated in this world from the unreachable unknown place through this segment of characters. The reason why we speculate this is that we have witnessed the death of several space-related people. When they died, their bodies and equipment turned into a pile of dead objects, not much different from those killed fortress guards, but the special symbol disappeared in an instant. When they were resurrected by their teammates, or reappeared in the fortress as souls, at the moment when the soul and the body overlapped with each other, all the symbols were reconnected with the segment of characters, and they could act.
Are these special characters their souls?
We can only assume this for now.
However, I once had another conjecture about this issue: the Skywalkers are very different from the ordinary natives. Although they follow the various rules set by the gods in this world, they do not have to mechanically execute the routes and actions prescribed by the gods without deviation. This may mean that they are not the product of the gods in this world, but come from another plane world, created by other gods. Those special characters may be just a channel, a permission, or a compromise and restriction, which is an agreement reached between the Supreme God Darmos and the gods of their plane world, allowing them to enter the plane world where we are, but they must obey the rules of this world.
But this idea is too scary: the engineering required to create the world we live in is so vast, and if we create some life that can think and act freely with its own consciousness, how long and complex characters should be used to describe and express it? I am afraid that this command is more complicated than the characters needed to create this world, and there are so many people involved in the sky. If so, the gods of that plane world are probably billions of times more powerful than the Supreme God Darimos - this idea is too blasphemous!!!
In comparison, I prefer to believe that those who travel through space are sons of God or servants of God who were demoted from heaven to this world, so they have freedom and transcendence granted by God. When they leave this world, it is naturally time to return to heaven and serve God again. And those special fields are the connection between the divine world and them.
Whether it is the soul itself or the channel for soul transmission, those magical characters are the most fundamental difference between the space-related people and the natives. There is no doubt about this. However, according to our observation, even among the space-related people, these characters are never repeated. I'm sorry that I can't use those original "0" and "1" to describe those characters - although it's just a very small program, if I list them all, I'm afraid it will be longer than the number of words I have ever written in this world - but it's not too difficult to translate them into the common language of the mainland: the symbols on some people should be translated as "192.168.1.99", while others are "192.168.0.18"... They are always numbers similar to them.
But no matter what amazing discoveries we made on the space travelers, it could not explain our own situation - apart from the differences in equipment, level, race and all skills, from the form of characters, there is no essential difference between us and the other people in this rubble fortress, and no traces related to "soul" can be found.
"Do you have any other ideas?" I asked old Carlson, puzzled.
"It seems that to figure out this problem, we should perhaps look for the answer from soul magic." Old Carlson frowned and thought hard.
"I remember there are several necromancers in your fortress. They should know some soul magic, right?" I had an idea.
"Don't count on those zombies ..." Old Carlson smiled bitterly and waved his hand. He found the symbol representing the highest-level undead lich wizard in the fortress, Vesalius, from the digital characters in the sky. "...This guy doesn't even have a soul himself. Do you expect his soul magic to help us?"
I thought about it and gave up the idea.
"So what should we do now?" I asked old Carlson at a loss.
"What should we do?" The kind and generous old troll suddenly sneered, revealing the violent and cruel nature hidden deep in his blood. He grabbed my neck and looked at a bunch of numbers. The meaning of this string of numbers immediately emerged in his mind, and then he stuffed them into my head fiercely, "Hehe, you haven't finished your homework for today!"
"Can't you be gentler? It hurts!" The sky full of green digital images picked up my wails and spread them far away...
