Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 800 Between the Mirrors
Thirty-Three took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
"Bang!"
Deafening gunshots rang out, but there was not a single echo - the diameter of this Tower of Babel is several kilometers, and combined with the dim light, it perfectly creates a sense of vastness that is almost boundless. Coupled with the "mirror" underfoot, even the sense of vertical distance is stretched to the extreme.
Ten centimeters away from Thirty-Three's eyebrows, a 0.5-inch caliber tungsten core armor-piercing bullet produced by "Nile Military Industry" was quietly hovering in the air, and at the intersection of the extension line of Thirty-Three's muzzle and the ground, there was also an identical bullet.
The bullet fired by Thirty-Three neither ricocheted nor penetrated the mirror-like ground. It didn't even leave any traces of cracks, craters or scratches - it was as if the kinetic energy of the bullet was completely absorbed the moment it touched the mirror surface.
Ke Lan walked over and picked up the bullet and the shell that fell beside it, and then "took off" the bullet that was floating in front of Sanshisan.
"The serial numbers of the two warheads are the same. Judging from the material, they should be the same one." After observing them carefully, Ke Lan threw the two warheads to Thirty-Three, who took a look and nodded in agreement.
"It's just like a copy." said Thirty-Three.
"I think this is probably the first test. The ground on this level is a huge mirror, and it is a mirror that can materialize the images in the mirror." Ke Lan said, "But what makes me a little strange is that its materialization seems to be selective..."
"Hmm? What do you mean?" Sanshisan looked at Ke Lan with a questioning look.
"Not everything you throw at a mirror will produce something exactly like it." Ke Lan pinched the shell with two fingers. "I only found one shell on the ground - your saliva and bullet both got feedback when they touched the mirror, but the shell didn't. Moreover, I used time-stopping to break the whole process down into hundreds of frames and checked them one by one, and found something very interesting."
Ke Lan took a breath and continued, "When the bullet touched the mirror, it stopped instantly, just like Ze Luo used the power of space to 'pinch' the second bullet that was fired at you, but the shell flew out of the ejection window, bounced a few times on the ground, and then rolled away for a distance."
"Hiss... Now that you mention it, I find it strange. Even a mouthful of spit can 'bounce back', so there is no reason why the bullet shell would not react?" Sanshisan squatted down and reached out his hand to touch the ground under his feet... or rather, the mirror.
The mirror surface was very smooth, with a very small friction coefficient, and it exuded a strange chill... Thirty-three tapped it lightly with his knuckles, and the sound was extremely dull, which meant that there was not nothing behind the mirror. If the mirror and the ground were one, the thickness would be at least half a meter.
"Could it be because of insufficient strength or speed?" Thirty-three raised his head and looked at Ke Lan. "The spit and bullet are flying at a relatively fast speed. Perhaps this mirror will identify them as attacks from the outside, triggering a series of feedback mechanisms... and the impact force of the freely falling bullet shell on the mirror surface has not reached the threshold to trigger this feedback mechanism?"
"Then what do you think, if we jump down and land heavily on the ground, will there be a second self popping out in the mirror?" Ke Lan tilted his head, staring at himself in the mirror and asked.
Ke Lan in the mirror also tilted her head and stared at him, her lips moving up and down - although no sound came from the mirror, judging from the shape of her lips, what the "other person" said was exactly the same as what she said.
Under normal circumstances, this is nonsense. The movements made by the reflection in the mirror are of course exactly the same as those of the person in front of the mirror... But the question is, can the self in the mirror in front of Ke Lan really be considered a reflection?
"Don't try. If you have to try, I'll be the one to try." Sanshisan quickly reached out and grabbed Ke Lan. "It would be fine if the second you that popped out of the mirror had no hostility towards us, but if 'he' regards us as enemies, then we'll be in big trouble. But if it's me, with your and Ze Luo's abilities, you should be able to easily kill my 'copy', right?"
"Do you think...if your clone is killed, will your original body be affected?" Ke Lan suddenly asked.
"Why do you think so?" Thirty-three was slightly stunned.
"Since there is a 'real world' on the other side of the mirror, then to the people in that world, are we just reflections?" Ke Lan muttered to himself.
"What did you say? Your thoughts are so out of line that I can't follow your train of thought. You mean... the things in the mirror are also real?" Sanshisan's brows furrowed even more. "If both sides of the mirror are real, then who is the shadow?"
"They are reflections of each other..." Ke Lan spread out his palm towards Thirty-Three, "Give me the two bullets just now."
"What are you going to do?" Sanshisan asked, but still placed the bullet on Ke Lan's palm, "This one was just fired by me, and this one just popped out of the mirror."
"If they are reflections of each other, then the things on both sides of the world must be highly unified... But this mirror has a mechanism that we don't understand yet, which allows certain things to break through this interface and pass through to the other side of the mirror... But if this thing passes through to the other side of the mirror, multiple reflections will appear in the original world. Look, now including the reflection in the mirror, isn't there a total of four warheads?"
"Yes... but what do you want to say? I'm a little confused by you." Sanshisan looked at the mirror under his feet, then looked at Ke Lan, "Don't keep me in suspense, just say whatever you want to say."
"This is the bullet that was shot from the other side of the mirror." Ke Lan pinched the bullet with his index finger and thumb, and began to exert force with both fingers at the same time - although the strength of a high-level enhanced person was not enough to bend a tungsten steel alloy bullet, it was different with Ze Luo's assistance. The bullet was quickly pinched into a flat round shape, and the other bullet lying in Ke Lan's palm also turned into this shape without any pressure.
"Ah, this..." Sanshisan was stunned.
"Look in the mirror, the two bullets have also deformed." Ke Lan said, "If you on the other side of the mirror pass through the mirror and come to this side, and we kill you, you on this side may also die."
"This... this is too weird." Sanshisan smacked his lips. "I've explored quite a few ruins, but this is the first time I've seen such a weird place. By the way, are we in a dream? Old Dog told me that when you were exploring the ruins of the Bottomless Sinkhole, you encountered a rare double dream... If this is a dream, then all the weird things can be explained."
"I don't think so." Ke Lan shook his head, looking at the automatically deformed bullet in his palm. "Logically speaking, if it has successfully passed through the mirror, then this bullet should not be affected anymore... Both bullets have 'new reflections'. Even if they need to maintain consistency, they should maintain consistency with the new reflection..."
"I suddenly wondered, using this mechanism, can we replicate something infinitely?" Thirty-Three suddenly said, "Although I know it's stupid to talk about the law of conservation of matter in the ruins of Alpha civilization, this... is too..."
Thirty-three racked his brains for a long time but couldn't find a suitable adjective, and finally could only use the word "outrageous".
"Thirty-three, try stomping on the mirror hard." Ke Lan said.
"Oh..." Sanshisan nodded, lifted his right foot about twenty centimeters away from the mirror, and then stomped down hard.
A muffled "bang" sound came from the mirror. At the same time, Sanshisan bent down and covered his knees, with a look of pain on his face.
"Damn it... There was a sudden strong recoil from the mirror, just like... just like..."
"It's like someone on the other side of the mirror kicked you with the same force." Ke Lan helped him finish the second half of the sentence.
Thirty-three nodded, rubbing his numbed knees and knees.
Ke Lan thought for a moment, then threw the backpack behind him down and threw it high into the air.
The backpack carried most of his equipment and supplies, and the weight of the backpack itself was nearly 100 kilograms. Add on the impact of the free fall from such a high altitude, and the force would not be much less than that of Thirty-Three's stomping of his feet... At least, it was definitely much stronger than that mouthful of spit.
“Bang!!”
The backpack fell heavily to the ground, but nothing happened.
It was like falling onto a very ordinary flat surface.
The backpack itself was not affected by the impact from the other side of the mirror, and the backpack that fell from the other side of the mirror did not pass through the mirror surface and run into Ke Lan and their "world".
"Strange..." Ke Lan held his chin and looked at the backpack. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration came to his mind, "Wait a minute, I think I know what's going on!"
"What's going on?" Sanshisan, hugging his knees, raised his head and looked at Ke Lan.
"What were you thinking about when you stomped your foot on the ground just now?" Ke Lan asked Sanshisan.
"What were you thinking about?" Thirty-three recalled, "I was thinking... what would happen if there was a foot stomping towards me from the other side of the mirror."
"What else?" Ke Lan continued to ask.
"And...oh, I was thinking, it would be nice if I could crush this weird mirror with one foot."
"What about when you spit before?"
"Well... at that time, I seemed to think that this mirror-like floor was too clean, and I always felt uncomfortable in my heart. In addition, the extremely clear reflection in it made me feel a little creepy. I thought that if I made the mirror a little dirty, would I feel less disgusted..." Sanshisan's speech speed became slower and slower, and it was obvious that he had realized something.
"That should be correct. Whether it's stamping your feet or spitting, when you do these actions, there is 'malice' or 'aggression' in your heart. As for shooting, it goes without saying... But the falling of the shell and my throwing the backpack out to let it fall freely, these two actions do not contain 'malice' or 'aggression', so the mirror did not give the corresponding feedback."
"So, this mirror is a bit like some kind of defense facility created by the Alpha Civilization." Thirty-Three pondered, "All things and forces that are detected to be 'malicious' or 'aggressive' will be retaliated in the same way, and those without 'malicious' will be ignored... Then what is the criterion for this judgment? Our thinking?"
"I don't know." Ke Lan shook her head.
"By the way, since you said this is the first of the eight trials, have you figured out what to do to pass this trial?" Thirty-three looked up at the "moon" "hanging" in the sky, then looked down at the mirror under his feet, "Does the trial require us to pass through this mirror? Or... break it?"
"Let's explore the surroundings first." Ke Lan also raised his head and glanced at the "moon", but for some reason, he always had a feeling that this moon seemed to be a little blurrier than the one in the mirror?
The three of them chose a direction and walked straight forward. After walking about two kilometers, they finally arrived at the border.
At the border is a high black wall, made of the same material as the exterior of the Tower of Babel.
"This should be the wall of the tower, right? It seems that the strength of this material is not very high... If we drill through it, maybe we can get out?" Sanshisan said.
"Let's give it a try?" Ke Lan took out an engineer shovel, inserted the shovel head into the wall with force, and then pried it hard. A black piece of debris fell from the wall and fell to the ground.
But just as Ke Lan looked down at the ground along the collapsed debris, he was stunned.
The self in the mirror was doing the same thing, but the wall in front of the other Ke Lan was intact.
"What's going on?!"
Ke Lan looked up and found that the small hole he had just dug had disappeared!
At the same time, Thirty-three's exclamation also rang out: "Strange! The place you just dug has automatically recovered!"
"Not only has the excavated area been restored, but even the fragments that fell on the ground have disappeared instantly." Ze Luo, who had been silent, said, "I didn't feel any abnormal fluctuations in space, so I can be sure that the fragments were not teleported away."
"Hiss... Why do I feel like all the hairs on my back are standing up..." Sanshisan took two deep breaths and confirmed with Ke Lan, "Are we really not in a dream?"
