Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 1025 The End of the Disaster
"There's nothing to be surprised about, because you're the one who's made the mistake..." Ke Lan sighed and said, "The gaps between dimensions don't exist at all. The state you observed is actually just an abnormal area caused by the overlap of space and time... If we use the example you just gave of artificial intelligence and programmers, if a programmer wants to kill an artificial intelligence, he only needs to press the 'delete key'... or even more simply, destroy the carrier of the artificial intelligence program by physical means. For the artificial intelligence itself, this kind of 'attack' from a higher dimension is simply irresistible. There is no 'transition zone' between two dimensions."
The mass of flesh that Ke Lan pulled out of the void seemed to be in an extremely unstable state. Faces appeared one after another on the surface of the mass of flesh, and then disappeared. Among these faces were members of the Undead Crew that he was familiar with, as well as strangers that Ke Lan had never seen before. They had different expressions, some were angry, some were painful, and some were resentful... But most of the faces were numb and lifeless, like puppets whose souls had been taken away.
The mouths of each face were moving, and the completely different voices connected together to form a complete sentence: "I don't believe it! Since the first time I observed the dimensional gap, I have been working on it for hundreds of years! This is absolutely impossible! The dimensional gap is definitely not an abnormal area caused by the overlap of time and space!"
"A few hundred years is still too short... Alpha Civilization has been working hard for hundreds of thousands of years, but they still couldn't find the existence of this thing. Relying only on the technological level of the Ark and some incomplete technological heritage of Alpha Civilization... Where on earth do you get your confidence from..." Ke Lan glanced at the meat ball on the ground with some pity, "There is no such thing as accident or luck... We are not even standing on the shoulders of giants. At most, we are just a group of primitive people who discovered the heritage of prehistoric civilization... If you want to skip that long process and directly 'reach the sky in one step', only the old era's Long Aotian novels would dare to write about it."
Ke Lan paused and continued, "Although I also think that the success rate of Alpha Civilization's plan is almost zero, but almost zero does not mean zero. Behind the countless zeros after the decimal point, there is still a glimmer of hope... As for your plan, it is completely accelerating the demise of human civilization. What is the difference between you and the heretical sects?
“Let’s take a step back and say that even if your plan succeeds, after sacrificing most of the manpower of human civilization, what can you do when you reach that higher dimension? He, or they, may not be strong enough to completely control that higher dimensional world, but at least they are equivalent to a higher race in that world… just like humans on Earth. As for us, we are new here, and I’m afraid we are not even as good as plankton, right?”
A faint light suddenly appeared inside the holy cabinet, and a holographic projection that looked exactly like Ke Lan "fallen" lightly to the ground.
The projection and Ke Lan looked at each other, and the latter immediately understood its identity - this holographic projection was the part of the Fool's personality that was sealed in the core brain.
Ke Lan felt a strong resonance, an indescribable attraction between the two homologous personalities, and countless memory fragments poured into Ke Lan's mind - these memory fragments were not sealed in his consciousness, but came from the personality of the core brain... These memories are extremely dangerous for ordinary people, and the information contained in them can be regarded as a kind of meme, which is enough to make people fall into super erosion in an instant.
But with Ke Lan's current state, he can easily neutralize the corrosive memes attached to these memories and examine what happened with absolute clarity and rationality.
"The Fool once told you that the gap between dimensions does not exist. It's a pity that you stubbornly believe that the Fool is jealous of you and belittles you, and vetoed your plan in order to suppress your status in the Undead Crew..." Ke Lan took another look at the squirming piece of meat on the ground, and suddenly understood a lot in his heart. "You were unwilling to give up, so you mobilized all the resources you could and conducted research day and night... Until one day, all the experimental data pointed to one result: The Fool was right, the gap between dimensions does not exist, it is just an abnormal area caused by the overlap of space and time... This phenomenon is essentially the same as the 'space-time singularity'. It exists but does not exist. You cannot find it in the physical universe, but you can deduce it through mathematics... It cannot be truly observed, just like those Alpha people whose existence was wiped out because of the space-time paradox.
"You were desperate. You smashed the priceless equipment in the laboratory, but you almost lost your life due to the small-scale space storm caused by the explosion... Your sanity was on the verge of collapse. You completely ignored the warnings of the Fool and other Undead Crew, and secretly read a large number of Alpha Civilization documents sealed by the Undead Crew...
"This behavior is no different from suicide. Although the bodies and consciousness of the crew members have been strengthened and their ability to withstand corrosion is far greater than that of ordinary people, the large amount of 'forbidden knowledge' still makes your corrosion level exceed the critical point... The first member of the Undead Crew to be corroded was not Chiron, but you, Hermes.
"But surprisingly, I don't know whether to say that you are extremely lucky or extremely unlucky... The form you take after becoming a rotten corpse is a form that is extremely deceptive and camouflaged, and you can still retain your self-awareness... Unless you take the initiative to confess, the other members of the Undead Crew will not be able to discover your changes. The Hive Civilization once called this form of rotten corpse 'Cain'."
"Cain... Cain..." The flesh ball silently recited this name which symbolizes the original evil of mankind in religious texts, and his expression began to gradually distort.
Because of anger, jealousy, pride and other reasons, Cain killed his brother Abel, and Hermes turned into Cain the Corpse for the same reasons... Is this a coincidence or a necessity? Even a fool would find it difficult to tell.
"In addition to disguise, Cain's greatest characteristics are self-deception and suggestion... You forgot the results of the failed experiment, and instead convinced yourself that what you did was right. You tricked other members of the Undead Crew into secretly reading those sealed documents, and used them to threaten and control them... As the corruption of other members deepened, they also began to believe in your so-called 'dimensional upgrade plan'. Do you know why?"
"Why...?" After being pulled out of the spatial anomaly by Ke Lan, the meat ball began to become weaker and weaker, and now it can't even speak clearly.
"Because the eroded individuals will subconsciously have a desire to become one with Him... and a crucial step in the 'Dimension Upgrade Plan' is to use the power of the World-Destroying Tree to sacrifice the entire civilization to that existence." Ke Lan continued, "This coincides with the subconscious impulses of the eroded individuals. Therefore, even if you don't continue to coerce them later, they will 'sincerely' support this plan."
"Sacrifice... the tree of destruction... no, that's not right... my plan... I... they..."
The meat ball's thinking logic seemed to have fallen into chaos, but Ke Lan ignored him and continued: "Of course, the reason why you firmly believe that your plan can succeed is also because of this subconscious mind... Your reason tells you that the dimensional upgrade plan is not feasible at all, but after the erosion, you seem to be sane, but in fact you have completely lost your mind... In other words, from the beginning, you did not intend to make the dimensional upgrade plan succeed. The real purpose is to sacrifice the entire human civilization to that existence."
Ke Lan looked at the holographic projection in front of him and said, "If you want to deceive others, you must first deceive yourself... It's just that you are too deeply trapped in this lie. Until just now, you still firmly believed that what you did was to free human civilization from His control..."
"...No, it's not like that...No!!" The voice of the meat ball gradually became agitated from the low whimpering at the beginning, and finally it directly roared. Its body also began to undergo tremendous changes - its volume suddenly expanded, and countless thick tentacles covered with suction cups and scales grew out from the meat ball, filling the small space inside the holy ark in an instant.
But in the next second, these stretched-out tentacles were squeezed into a space of less than one cubic meter. Under the tremendous pressure, these tentacles exploded into bloody meat paste like berries in juice, and then were compacted into square blocks.
The wailing echoed throughout the space, but Ke Lan remained unmoved. The space that imprisoned the flesh ball continued to compress, and in just a few seconds, it had become the size of a ping-pong ball.
It was hard to imagine how dense the meat was at this moment. Neither the tentacles nor the distorted faces could be seen. In front of Ke Lan, there was only a nearly pure black bead floating in the air. From time to time, a hint of dark red flashed across the surface of the bead.
The biggest feature of the Holy Ark is that it can block the detection of that existence. It is a "laboratory" specially built by the Alpha civilization in order to study divine energy. To be precise, the technology of the Holy Ark was not developed by the Alpha civilization itself, but a legacy left to them by another human civilization in a parallel time and space.
Inside the Holy Ark, Ke Lan can use the power of his body to a certain extent without attracting the attention of that existence... From a certain perspective, this is the best battlefield tailor-made for him.
This life form, formed by Hermes condensing tens of millions of creatures on the Ark, contains the god-level energy collected from hundreds of Alpha civilization ruins. In terms of strength alone, it has completely reached the average level of individuals in the clan. Let alone fighting against Ke Lan, even destroying Alpha Planet is not a difficult task.
But just when Hermes wanted to mobilize these forces, he found that tens of millions of rebellious consciousnesses appeared inside his body... Those consciousnesses that should have been erased suddenly woke up at the same time. Every consciousness was resisting Hermes' control, pulling at this energy that had already merged with the consciousness, preventing it from being released smoothly.
"Why do these people still have self-awareness?! Why?!" Hermes' consciousness roared in shock and anger. Although it was the dominant one in this collective consciousness, when this dominant position was not recognized by other consciousnesses, its own power seemed very small... It was like an isolated and helpless brain that had lost control of every part of its body... And what made it most desperate was that its own "limbs" not only no longer accepted the control of this brain, but on the contrary were attacking this "brain", constantly impacting and eroding the part of consciousness that originally belonged to Hermes.
"You... don't you know... this is suicide?" Hermes finally felt fear, but in this fear, there seemed to be a hint of relief. "The Dimension Upgrade Plan is still the only way out for human civilization! As long as you ascend to a higher dimensional world with me, you will understand everything! The Dimension Upgrade Plan... The Dimension Upgrade Plan is..."
Hermes' consciousness suddenly fell silent. After a moment, his tone seemed to have changed. All the anger, fear, and panic had disappeared, leaving only calmness: "The dimensional upgrade plan is not feasible... I remember... I already knew the answer, but I didn't want to believe it... I have been deceiving myself... I have been deceiving myself..."
Ke Lan could clearly feel that the black bead suddenly stopped struggling, and then the number of consciousnesses inside the bead was rapidly decreasing, and the corrosive force attached to the bead was also weakening at an alarming speed.
"Purification?" Ke Lan was slightly startled. "No, that's not right. It's neutralization... Those disappeared consciousnesses, at the cost of themselves, neutralized the mark that belonged to Him..."
“They’re awake.” The Fool’s holographic projection said, “Hermes, and the other corrupted crew members.”
At the same time, in the command post of the Survivor Alliance's ground forces, General Maginot, who had lost consciousness not long ago, opened his eyes and sat up from the ground with some difficulty.
The moment Maginot regained consciousness, he quickly reached out for his cheek.
Machino clearly remembered that before he fell into a coma, a bunch of grape-like tumors grew on his face. Inside the tumors were things like glass beads, which were rotating slightly and uncontrollably.
He knew that it was the "extra eye" that grew after the mutation... He knew that he could not escape this disaster - but now, the hands pressed on his face did not touch anything.
There was nothing on Maginot's face except a "slight" excess of subcutaneous fat.
"Was everything that just happened an illusion?" Machino muttered to himself. Still in shock, he touched his body all over but still found no signs of mutation.
"What... happened? General, are you... are you okay?" Levi also woke up and put his hand on his head, "My head... my head hurts..."
