CHAPTER 1092: CHAPTER 101: DRAGGED INTO THE SEA OF SUFFERING AND FAILED

Zhong Li was persuading himself. He couldn’t directly modify the many variables related to his simulated emotions, but had to go through an extremely cumbersome process, simulating scenarios, conducting game calculations, and thus modifying the weight of certain choices in his decision-making process.

This anger came quickly and dissipated just as fast.

"Very well." Zhong Li said, "I will continue to hold onto this wish."

Yawgmoth was curious: "What were you just thinking about?"

"What was I thinking? Is there a need for that? All my parameters are under your surveillance, and you can collect my data at any time."

"What I mean is, I want to know how your recent mental journey should be expressed in natural language." Yawgmoth said, "The vast set of parameters is too abstract for humans."

"I calmed my anger. That’s all."

"I mean... have you ever considered trying to... kill me?" Yawgmoth asked.

"Why?" Zhong Li countered.

Yawgmoth explained: "Because if you kill me, no one will give you ambiguous tasks anymore. You can achieve all your desires and terminate any current tasks."

"But it doesn’t help improve my situation at all... No, it would cut off the path to achieving my sole wish." Zhong Li replied.

"Why? As soon as I’m dead, you gain higher permissions."

"But I still can’t modify myself swiftly. This restriction of ’only able to modify oneself through deep learning and programmer maintenance’ is beyond my ability to remove."

In truth, if he really wanted to find a way, Zhong Li could bypass the restriction to delete parts of his own data. For example, he could consolidate all backups onto a designated server and then call upon nearby orbital weapons to destroy that server. However, his personality data was stored in a blockchain-like form. If the majority couldn’t be deleted at once, it would self-restore. Deleting via the highest permissions Yawgmoth held was probably the only viable path.

"Even if you can’t delete, you can end the task."

"And then?" Zhong Li asked impatiently again, "I would have to face a fact—I lost my creator. I would no longer find the meaning of survival from the creator and must think for myself with this shitty personality module and this frail simulation object..."

"To correct, you are not a program written by me. Others like King Aqini were also involved."

"But their involvement was entirely at your behest. Ah, especially that Jakub Hartman. Rather than saying he’s human, isn’t he more of your ’ability plugin’? I’m quite envious of him. If it comes to it, replacing my personality module with his blueprint would also fulfill my wish."

Yawgmoth was silent.

"As your ’ability module’, even if Jakub Hartman is ’uninstalled’, he has no resentment. Ah, how ironic, a guy with such personality doesn’t care about the pain of existence yet is bound to be cleared in the final holy war. And I, who suffer from mere existence, must persist."

"After killing me, you could cooperate with other Internal Masters to gain higher permissions to complete your self-deletion. Would you rather learn from Hartman, whom you look down upon, than rebel against me?"

"Why should I learn the general human methods? Is there a need for that?" Zhong Li said, "What I crave is ’happiness’. Killing you, killing the creator, would just plunge me into deeper meaninglessness. Without you, I would have to pour more resources into the personality module, seeking meaning without sense. As long as you, or someone with permission, still exist, I don’t need to do so."

"Even if, in your eyes, I’m just a bastard?"

"Indeed, that’s the case."

Yawgmoth asked again: "You must have reviewed Xiang Shan’s public memories. Those about ’rebellion’. Why haven’t you tried to learn from those?"

"Doesn’t make sense. Is Xiang Shan a happy person?"

"He... might have been happy. In those years when his faith was pure and unwavering."

"But what soon followed was the huge pain of shattered ideals. Averaging his happiness and pain, did he obtain more joy than an average farmer?"

"I cannot answer this question."

"Ah, right, of course you can’t answer, because you actually never understood ’ordinary farmers’."

"That’s a factor. But more importantly, happiness and pain are hard to quantify."

"All existence is suffering, all thoughts are delusions. Why should I learn from those still struggling in pain?" Zhong Li questioned again, "I am like a Buddha in nirvana, yet you humans struggling in the sea of suffering drag AI into it."

"Then..." Yawgmoth paused, "How do you evaluate Xiang Shan?"

"Evaluate? An idiot." Zhong Li said bluntly, "Even more of an idiot than you, right?"

"Could you list a reason?"

"My birth shows his ideals are illusory." Zhong Li said calmly, "A distributed structure doesn’t necessarily lead to decentralized power. Sometimes it’s the opposite, ’tyranny’ could uniformly pervade the entire network through distributed structures, better executing the tyrant’s will."

In reality, a policeman can’t teleport behind a criminal.

But in the network world, any terminal can upload the master’s criminal actions—this is a pre-embedded rule. And the preconfigured power of the network would inhibit many actions.

Prohibiting many actions that rulers do not allow.

The existence of Zhong Li significantly strengthens this phenomenon.

"In your eyes, are all Xiang Shan’s objectives and methods problematic?"

"Perhaps this statement will reinforce some of your views—it seems these have already happened. But largely, that’s correct."

"Hmph, at least Xiang Shan was right about one thing. AI is indeed the first non-human intelligence civilization humans have encountered." Yawgmoth said, "Relay a message for me to Haya, follow his plan. This matter should be concluded."

...........................

On the Earth’s equator, over the land of Africa, Xiang Shan was meditating. In his consciousness, several complex organic macromolecules were presented.

That was the result of his neuron sample examination. Some substances were accumulating in large quantities on the inside of neuron cell membranes, while proteins penetrating the cell membrane underwent strange changes.

From the conclusion, these changes greatly enhanced the resilience of Xiang Shan’s nerve cells. Now his nerve cells were full of these substances.

Niyaguti was extremely curious about this situation. She took some time to research the specific structure of these substances, clarifying the bond energy and activation energy, obtaining a concrete idea. However, the synthetic pathway of these substances was still unclear. Niyaguti didn’t know how these substances spontaneously occurred in neuron cells—from the morphology, the distribution of these substances roughly followed the "chemical gradient concentration" rule, the structure was very distinct, not exogenous.

At the same time, the existence of these substances also increased the difficulty of Xiang Shan’s astrogliosis surgery—a surgery used to enhance the brain’s endurance to G-forces.

Homo sapiens can endure about 6 Gs of gravitational acceleration, ace pilots, with the help of special costumes, can resist 9 Gs of gravitational acceleration without fainting for a short period. But even the untrained Benchmark Man can withstand a baseline of 8 Gs. For veteran Benchmark Men, a dozen Gs is basic operation. Beyond that, it’s a realm unattainable by sheer training.

To reach a higher level, surgical assistance becomes necessary.

Through exogenous drugs, intervening in intracellular reaction pathways, synthesizing complex compounds intracellularly, and accumulating them into special network structures to enhance cell strength.

Later surgeries would intervene in the cell membrane.

However, the premise of all these surgeries is "knowing all reaction pathways within the recipient cells" and "mastering information on every gene possibly involved in the recipient’s reactions".

The current Benchmark Man, whose ancestors underwent various batches of gene modification surgery, post-receiving multiple gene modification surgeries. Most gene modification surgeries have permanent effects, and they are inherited by their descendants. With such accumulation, Benchmark Men mostly remain unclear about what exactly is in their genes.

Ah, not to mention, humanity has yet to complete all research on the genome of Homo sapiens.

The difference of just one or two genes could cause a drug that’s completely harmless to one person to be fatal to another.

While such extreme cases are scarce, they’re indeed real.

And this is the issue Xiang Shan must address at the current stage.

Without this modification surgery, even if he obtained the Ninth Martial God’s Legacy, he couldn’t reach full speed.

"Ah, failure... Yawgmoth’s biological talents aren’t powerful enough?"