Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 1008 Quarter
"Fool?!"
Ke Lan's eyebrows couldn't help but twitch, and her thumb moved to the answer button and pressed it lightly.
"Hello?"
"Long time no see." A male voice that seemed to be synthesized by software came from the receiver.
"It seems like we have never met before? How can you say it's been a long time since we last met?" Ke Lan asked back in a cold voice.
"What about now?" The other party changed to a voice that Ke Lan was very familiar with. This voice made Ke Lan's body tremble involuntarily - this was exactly the voice that the information dealer with the forum ID "ACMS_0420" most often used when calling Ke Lan.
Although both are voices synthesized by software, this voice has obviously been specially tuned, and that kind of mean and cheeky tone is not something that everyone can imitate.
After the battle at the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City, the intelligence dealer mysteriously disappeared. Not only did Ke Lan investigate his identity, but even the Undead Crew spent a lot of resources to track down the intelligence dealer, but all to no avail - this person was like an electronic ghost active on the Internet. Ke Lan even doubted whether he was a real person.
"You are... the Fool?" Ke Lan couldn't help but ask.
"Do you think I'm the kind of person who likes to joke with others?" The other party's tone was very frivolous. It was obviously the intelligence dealer that Ke Lan had known for a long time... Unless someone stole all the chat and call records between the intelligence dealer and Ke Lan, and let AI learn and imitate, it would give Ke Lan such a familiar feeling.
"Aren't you?"
"Forget it, I won't tease you. I am indeed the Fool, but to be precise, I am just a part of the Fool, just like you." said the information dealer.
"I know this. In order to avoid the consequences of the erosion exceeding the critical point, the Fool sealed his split personality into different 'containers'. And for safety, he also 'sealed' the memory of each part of the personality..." Ke Lan said, "I am most likely such a 'container', but unfortunately I seem to be the one with the most sealed memories. Before these things happened, I knew nothing about my identity and the Fool's affairs."
"Bingo! Absolutely correct." The information dealer snapped his fingers, but the sound was still synthesized by software. Ke Lan couldn't even be sure whether the other party had a real body. "It seems that in the past few years, you have collected a lot of secret information through your own efforts."
"No, I still know nothing about the Fool's core plan." Ke Lan sighed, "I don't know why you contacted me, but since you are also one of the containers, you should be on my side, right?"
“First, I want to correct a grammatical error of yours. When referring to ‘The Fool’, you should not use the third person pronoun ‘he’ but the first person pronoun ‘I’.” The information dealer said, “Second, although you know nothing about ‘my’ plan, you have been following the route preset in the plan… Don’t worry, you have done well so far, impeccably.”
"You're still talking so much nonsense at this time..." Ke Lan's mouth twitched twice, "If you insist on telling me something wrong with your words, then you shouldn't use the second person pronoun 'you' when you address me, right?"
"No, it's different. You and I are different. We are two completely different personalities of The Fool. The Fool is me, and The Fool is also you, but I am not you... This may sound a bit confusing, but I think you should understand." The information dealer said, "Besides, aren't you curious about how many parts The Fool has divided his personality into?"
"How many?"
"Four." The information dealer told Ke Lan directly without keeping her in suspense, "Personality No. 1 is me, but my body is just a failed experiment... Although I have been trying to delay the progress of the erosion, the time left for me now will not exceed twelve hours at most... Let's not talk about this for now. You should be able to guess that personality No. 2 is the one implanted in the living armor. His degree of erosion is the heaviest among the four personalities, so he is in a deep sleep most of the time. His only role is to accept the gaze of that existence on your behalf when you need to use the Holy Word... I would like to call him the strongest tool man. It's a pity that the ultimate move can only be used once. If there were more such tool men , the current situation would not be so rigid."
"Where are number three and number four?" Ke Lan asked.
"Personality No. 3 has been implanted into the core brain, serving as the center of the entire plan. It is this personality No. 3 who represents the Fool during the vote of the Undead Crew... But now the core brain is controlled by Zeus and his gang. In order to protect itself, personality No. 3 can only hide temporarily and cannot provide any help."
“As for you,” the information dealer, or the Fool’s Personality One, said, “It’s naturally Personality Four, the ordinary relic hunter Ke Lan. How about it? Are you satisfied with this answer?”
"Not satisfied." Ke Lan replied indifferently, "The situation is urgent now. If you want to find someone to chat with, you can write an anthropomorphic intelligent program yourself. I know it's not difficult for you, but I have important things to do and don't have time to waste with you."
" How be considered a waste of time? Besides, you have important things to do... What are important things? Do you mean the Fool's Plan?"
"You called me, what on earth do you want to say?"
"I haven't finished talking about the topic just now, let's continue." The information dealer said, "The four separated personalities were implanted into different containers, but the Fool's body was completely preserved and placed in the 'Black Coffin' on Yaguna Kator. The 'body' you merged with is actually the physical body of the Fool himself."
"Isn't the Fool's body on the verge of over-erosion?" Ke Lan raised his hand and took a look, a hint of doubt arose in his heart.
"Yes, the physical body is over-corrupted, and it has nothing to do with consciousness... Don't you think you can still be considered a human now?" The information dealer laughed dumbly, "Don't you think that, in terms of the physical body alone , you are even more corroded than a corpse?"
"…Then why was my consciousness not affected after the shell merged with me?"
"That's all thanks to the powerful function of the 'Black Coffin'. The Alpha Civilization has collected a large amount of ownerless alien god energy. After being purified by the Black Coffin, this energy is transferred into the Fool's body, just like the 'cleansing of tendons and marrow' in martial arts novels. The imprint left by that existence will be worn away bit by bit, leaving only the purest power." The information dealer said, "So, you have obtained a body comparable to an eroded corpse, but your thinking and cognition will not be affected in any way."
"Is this also arranged by the Fool?"
"That's right. Not only that, the Fool had already calculated that the erosion of the other members of the Undead Crew would exceed the critical point... The Coffin of Eternal Life can suppress the speed of erosion, but it is only suppression. In order to prevent the other members of the Undead Crew from becoming the pawns of that existence, he had already prepared a countermeasure. And the key to this countermeasure is you."
"I?"
"You have watched the combat video saved on Yaguna Tor. When reviewing it, you should be able to realize that the Black Fleet attacked Yaguna Tor in order to force you to activate the 'Emergency Procedure Zero'... Don't you think it's strange that the Undead Crew went to such great lengths, only to find a father who destroyed the entire Black Fleet in one move, and then this body fell into your control again. It's a modern version of 'losing both the wife and the army'. Do you think they would do such a stupid thing?"
"I am indeed confused about this. Perhaps the undead crew members don't know enough about the Black Coffin?"
"No, they know the Black Coffin very well. They even saw the Fool's body being placed into the Black Coffin with their own eyes...but they didn't know at the time that it was the Fool's real body that was placed in there. They always thought it was just a clone used for experiments."
"And then? The body in the Black Coffin has no self-awareness. What difference does it make whether it's the original or a clone?"
"There is no more, because at that time, the undead crew will want to awaken not the Black Coffin, but the White Coffin." The information dealer laughed and said, "These fools have all been tricked by the Fool."
"What is stored in the White Coffin?"
“You.” The information dealer said something shocking. “The Undead Crew only knew that the Fool’s erosion was on the verge of a critical point, but they didn’t know that he had secretly divided his personality into four parts and sealed his memories. The Undead Crew would always think that what was placed in the White Coffin was the Fool’s body and his complete personality… The function of the White Coffin is actually an enhanced version of the Eternal Life Coffin. In other words, the Eternal Life Coffin on the Ark is actually a poor imitation of the White Coffin.”
"But in fact, what was placed in the White Coffin..."
"It's a clone that is almost identical to the Fool, plus one-fourth of the Fool's personality, which is you, Ke Lan." The information dealer continued, "The White Coffin uses the energy of Yaguna Kator to directly connect to the core brain remotely, so during the short period of time when the Fool is awake, he can also participate in the decision-making meeting of the Undead Crew... But what others can't imagine is that the 'Fool' who attended the meeting has always been the number three personality sealed in the core brain."
"Then why did the Undead Crew want to awaken the Fool himself in the White Coffin?" Ke Lan asked.
"Because fifteen years after you were sealed in the White Coffin, some members of the Undead Crew secretly stole the White Coffin and rewrote its operating program, reversing all its functions... The protective measure originally used to suppress the progress of erosion instantly became a weapon that accelerated erosion... According to their assumptions, the one who finally came out of the White Coffin would not be the Fool, but a semi-deified body with its self-consciousness completely erased.
"At first, they just wanted to create a 'god' that they could command, but as the erosion of these people deepened, even they themselves did not realize that their original goal had changed from creating a man-made god to sacrificing the entire civilization to that existence... and as their cognition became distorted and their inner obsession gradually spread, they gradually forgot the existence of the Black Coffin. Of course, this was also because of the backup plan left by the Fool in advance. Through various means, he constantly guided them and repeatedly weakened the presence of the Black Coffin in their hearts.
"Otherwise, after a while, someone will definitely notice something is wrong. Once someone finds out that the Fool himself is inside the Black Coffin, it will be a lot of fun."
"If the body in the White Coffin is really 'semi-deified', what will happen after it is awakened?" Ke Lan forced himself to suppress his curiosity about his own life experience and continued to ask about the 'main storyline'.
"The disaster is coming immediately, and all surviving humans will be corroded within a day." said the intelligence dealer, "But they could never have imagined that the body in the white coffin was secretly taken out a year later. Since then, the white coffin has been empty...hahahaha!" The intelligence dealer suddenly laughed.
"Where was the body in the White Coffin placed after it was taken out?" Ke Lan said, "That time seems to be several decades away from the beginning of my memory, right?"
"It has been sealed in an underground ice storage until the time was right. The other personalities worked together to mix this body, that is, you, into a group of symbiotes... Most of your memories were implanted later, and your real memories are only in recent years. This is true... But in fact, you have been born in this world for more than 40 years, but you have been sleeping for 40 of them." said the information dealer.
"Why would you do this, Fool? What's the point of putting me in the White Coffin, other than to trick the other members of the Undead Crew?"
"It means a lot. You are now so immune to erosion, all thanks to the White Coffin. The White Coffin only takes one year to transform an individual, provided that there is enough EsGod energy. Of course, the requirements for clones are also very high. In order to select a suitable clone for you, the number of scrapped bodies was as high as five figures."
"Five figures of abandoned clones... How could the undead crew not have noticed?"
"They discovered it, but they only knew that it was a scrapped mass-produced symbiote and didn't think about it in that direction," said the intelligence dealer.
"I have another question. I look exactly like the Fool. Can't the Undead Crew see that? Will they still think of me as an ordinary symbiote?"
"The face of a god is something that mortals cannot look directly at... Although this is just an exaggeration from the charlatans, when the body of the Fool is successfully 'semi-deified', many of their memories of the Fool will be erased, including the Fool's appearance."
