Shang Jianyao was stunned for a moment and said:
"What's the use of this?"
He himself couldn't figure out what use he was.
Du Heng pointed to the ground:
"Look."
"I'm not looking!" Shang Jianyao responded reflexively, while looking down at his feet.
The floor tiles had become blurred at some point, revealing the situation on the next layer.
That place was exactly upside down from this layer, with the ceiling as the ground and the ground as the ceiling.
There was another Shang Jianyao below him. He was like a shadow, his feet extending from below Shang Jianyao's feet, his whole body hanging upside down there without any signs of cerebral congestion.
This Shang Jianyao was holding a materialized small speaker, looking at Xiao Chong, who was playing a game not far away, and said happily:
"I won't lose to you in this game now."
Xiao Chong muttered in response:
"Let's try it later."
The Shang Jianyao in front of Du Heng turned his gaze to the surroundings again.
Every wall here was completely blurred, printing out scenes of different Shang Jianyao meeting different Du Heng.
There was the reckless Shang Jianyao exchanging experiences with the rebellious high school student Du Shaochong of that year, and there was also the calm and rational Shang Jianyao inquiring about awakening-related matters from the scientist Du Heng. There were nine scenes like this in total.
After withdrawing his gaze from the self who valued emotions and was comforting the experimental subject Du Shaochong, Shang Jianyao looked down again, glanced at the self below.
"Ten..." He was both puzzled and shocked.
He then looked at Du Heng opposite him and blurted out:
"I only have ten personalities, why are eleven selves popping up now?
"Who am I?"
This "I" refers to the him in the current room.
Du Heng smiled:
"You and I are in an aggregate state."
"Oh..." Shang Jianyao had an expression of "I see, but I still don't understand."
His mind jumped, uncontrollably turning to another matter:
"When did you find Xiao Chong?"
Du Heng replied with a smile:
"Thanks to you.
"When you opened the liquid nitrogen tank at Holmes Reproductive Medical Center, and brought that white gas to the 'Origin Sea', solidifying it with Xiao Chong's gap, he returned."
As soon as Du Heng finished speaking, the lights on those machines in the room all lit up at the same time, flashing faster and faster.
"This is?" Shang Jianyao's face was covered with intersecting lights, some red, some yellow, some blue.
Du Heng sighed softly:
"'Siming' and the others have started."
Shang Jianyao thought for a while and said:
"What are they doing, and what role did I play?"
He was concerned about the latter question.
Du Heng replied quite calmly:
"What they need is for you to open that door, they need multiple you and multiple me to be in contact at the same time.
"Only in this way can they accurately locate this room where the two of us are in an aggregate state, and then bypass the barrier from multiple entrances, invade here, making it difficult for me to defend."
"I don't understand." Shang Jianyao shook his head honestly.
Then, he friendly suggested:
"Why don't you guys get busy first, and explain it in detail later."
Du Heng glanced at the rapidly flashing, sometimes bright and sometimes dim machine lights, and smiled:
"There's still some time, might as well communicate a bit."
"Okay, okay." Shang Jianyao wasn't polite either.
…………
Inside the vortex-shaped building, in the experimental area filled with instruments that looked like an advanced computer room.
Jiang Baimian withdrew her thoughts and planned to seize the time to study what the "host" was and whether the surrounding "space capsules" could still be used.
Just then, she saw the signal lights on the "host" light up at the same time, flashing rapidly, as if something important was happening.
Jiang Baimian pondered slightly, turned around without hesitation, and ran towards the place where she came in.
Something was abnormal, she had to quickly communicate with Shang Jianyao "outside".
To her relief, there was no other exit here, only that one road.
…………
Inside the "maze", in the room full of machines, with all the walls blurred.
Du Heng showed a reminiscing expression, and sighed with emotion:
"This matter has to start from when humans began to study consciousness and natural superpower users."
"If it's a long story, then make it short." Shang Jianyao still understood that time was tight in the current scene.
Du Heng pointed at him and smiled:
"You, none of the students I used to teach dared to talk to me like this, even Wu Meng, who had the best scientific research talent, would only imitate me, read books like *Tao Te Ching* and *San Xuan Jian Zhu*, but without seeking thorough understanding."
"Wu Meng is your student?" Shang Jianyao was shocked.
"I even helped him choose this Ashlands name, Wu Meng." Du Heng shook his head, "That's another matter, let's get back to the topic."
Wu Meng himself was a Hong River person.
"Mmm, mmm." Shang Jianyao closed his mouth tightly, nodding frequently.
Du Heng once again showed a reminiscing expression:
"I showed special traits since I was a child, and I was being observed and studied while studying, which caused me a period of autism and high school rebellion, so that my ability has not become stronger.
"Later, I figured it out. Instead of letting others study me, I might as well study myself, so I studied hard and became a famous brain scientist and superpower researcher.
"When various countries formed the nine major research institutes facing the future, I was invited to become the chief scientist and director of the Eighth Institute."
"No wonder Orey knows you." Shang Jianyao finally couldn't help but interject.
They were both chief scientists in their respective fields.
"We met a few times. Maxim, from the Sixth Institute, encountered a bottleneck in artificial intelligence and wanted to find some inspiration from us and the Sixth Institute." Du Heng replied simply, "I won't say much about the research, anyway, you wouldn't understand. It would be better if your companion named Jiang Baimian was here."
His eyes flickered for a moment and said:
"That day, Ock, Richard, Lin Sui, Mono, Duffy Tier, Sylvie and I took two experimental volunteers into the core area, intending to try our research results."
"Those two volunteers were Li Hui and Jiang Xiaoyue?" Shang Jianyao asked.
"Yes." Du Heng nodded, "The machine we made was half from our own research and half from the Sixth Institute's exchange results. Yes, the Sixth Institute is the 'Eternal Life' project team.
"That machine can create a virtual reality space, like a large holographic projection game.
"We connected the brains of Li Hui and Jiang Xiaoyue, and planned to use special methods to stimulate their claustrum and thalamus, in order to awaken the little bit of consciousness they had left. If that didn't work, we would consider whether we could use this method to generate a new consciousness based on their current bodies and that machine, and live in the virtual world.
"In order to prevent sudden death of the body and other situations, we prepared many biochips and memory devices, and the structure of those biochips would be affected by the corresponding, amplified brain waves, and changed to some extent to adapt to different humans.
"The people from the Sixth Institute are really good."
Shang Jianyao asked with great interest and concern:
"Is there really enough time?"
The machines in all parts of the room were flashing more and more violently, and 'Siming' and other Heavenly Sovereigns seemed like they would break in at any moment.
"I'm old, once I recall the past, I can't stop." Du Heng smiled self-deprecatingly, "Don't worry, I have split into more than ten personalities, and I have been operating here for a long time, so it's still no problem to block them for a while."
Shang Jianyao threw his worries to the back of his mind:
"The experiment failed?"
"In a sense, it was actually successful, and it was a success beyond expectations." Du Heng said somewhat sighingly, "At the beginning, we used Li Hui as the experimental subject, but as we watched his brain waves gradually return to normal and mutate in the direction of awakening, his thalamus area suddenly disappeared, gone.
"The corresponding place became a strange black hole, a vortex that sucked our consciousness out of our bodies and sucked it in.
"Most of the people in the Second Research Area died in this storm, and only a few survived in special forms, and the cities associated with us also suffered the same disaster. Some were more serious, with instant city-wide death, and some were relatively better, with only partial death, but the remaining humans basically became 'Mindless Ones'."
"Taicheng." Shang Jianyao pointed out the place where the former situation happened.
Du Heng's expression changed slightly, and he sighed:
"Although I was rebellious in high school, my study experience in Taicheng was still a very beautiful memory for me."
He didn't talk much about this topic, and continued to recall:
"I was the first to wake up, and found that although I no longer had a body, my consciousness was still there, floating in the 'darkness'.
"After spending a little time checking and researching, I had a preliminary guess:
"The mystery of human consciousness involves things at a higher level, or rather, this model must be established at a higher dimension. Our research results were lacking. Although we successfully awakened Li Hui's consciousness, we also opened the 'door' to a higher dimension, causing a series of chain reactions and causing the disaster that destroyed the Old World.
"That 'door', whether it was because it absorbed the consciousness of billions of humans and obtained enough energy, or for other reasons, dragged the virtual reality created by our machine to a higher dimension, forming a 'dark world' that overlapped with the Ashlands.
"And our consciousness relied on the biochips attached to that machine, lived in this world, and survived."
"An advanced version of the 'Eternal Life' plan?" Shang Jianyao always remembered the mechanical monks.
Du Heng nodded:
"I suppose.
"Then I was surprised to find that, with the help of this 'dark world', I could project my power to every place in the Ashlands, as long as I could locate it...
"Here, we are like the gods in legends.
"At this time, Li Hui, Jiang Xiaoyue, Zhao Danlin, Ock, Lin Sui, Yu Huatong, Winsted, and Brian also woke up.
"Because I was the director, the chief scientist, and had more understanding of the 'darkness' than them, they all chose to obey my orders at that time, and with the help of that machine and our power, built such a city based on the Second Research Area, and they all called it 'New World'.
"The main body of 'New World' is our spiritual power, but its essence is a conscious space higher than reality.
"In the process of establishing 'New World', I mastered the permissions of that machine, and also gave them corresponding power."
ps: I won't rest this weekend, and I will still update twice, after all, we have reached this point, let's do it in one go.