CHAPTER 491: CHAPTER 156: A BASEMENT UNDETECTABLE BY ANY DETECTION INSTRUMENT_3

"How’s the task I handed to you going? I’m going to need it in a couple of days."

"Oh, that."

Lucy woke up and shook her head, throwing Lin Miao’s hand off her head.

"The foundational framework for W’s system is set up, but to achieve the standard you want, a massive amount of physical equipment is required to complete the full process control. But... does this thing really have any use?"

The primary computing center established in the small town of Stone Ridge Mountain is responsible for planning, managing, and coordinating. Next, the secondary core computing centers at each branch manage accounting and then issue instructions to grassroots computing centers.

Monitoring the entire process of production, transport, and sales channels for all materials, accurately calculating material needs for each region and scientifically pooling and distributing them. Controlling each drone and production line machine for precise production needs, calculating employee salaries based on current prices... How feasible does this sound? It’s hard to imagine anyone accepting such a concept.

After all, people have their private desires. From the grassroots purchaser to the materials manager to the shareholders, if you calculate everything down to the last detail and expose all discrepancies, from where do they profit?

Without their cooperation, how do you carry out work and develop the enterprise?

At least that’s what Lucy thinks.

"How will you know if it’s useful without trying? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Some paths you won’t know if they lead anywhere unless you take them, but regardless, it’s better than being stuck in a dead end."

Lin Miao chuckled. There were even more extreme ideas he hadn’t shared with Lucy. He thought about real-time monitoring of everyone’s emotions through a brain-machine interface and quantifying emotions. There were already companies doing this.

By embedding monitoring programs on the brain prosthesis, illegally uploading daily travel habits, usage frequency of different prostheses, and other information, then building databases to analyze their behavioral logic for selling personal information to needed companies or targeting different product promotions and loans.

Privacy is a thing that doesn’t exist in this age.

Some things are best started from the beginning. Otherwise, once it’s public, trying to take action later would face infinitely increased resistance.

He patted the table and stood up, addressing the two:

"I’ll leave matters here to both of you. I need to go back and meet our guest; after all, they’ve been locked up for a night, and it’s not right to leave them waiting any longer."

――――

In Santo Domingo, Night City, in a basement where no detecting device could find, was the detention area for the captive caught by the players.

In the dim basement, a peculiarly shaped woman was suspended by iron chains, her limbs tightly bound, unable to move, glaring with blood-red eyes at the outsider.

Lin Miao stretched out his hand to remove the gag from her mouth.

This wasn’t something he specifically bought; mostly, this kind of thing was found all over Night City, so to prevent this creature from screaming out, he casually put one in her mouth.

Lin Miao sat on a worn-out sofa, only an inch away from the dangling creature.

"Speak up, miss. Who’s your boss? What brings you to Night City? How many of your people are in the Vortex Gang? Tell me everything."

When Lin Miao learned players caught a monster born from a cult ritual in the Watson District, he was startled, thinking there might be supernatural entities in this world unknown to him, but upon securing it and taking a closer look...

Ha, this is nothing but a rogue AI?

No wonder Blue Eyes hurried to dissociate from her during the fire incident, probably fearing Lin Miao would misunderstand, thinking he was ready to turn against Lin Miao.

But what Lin Miao found peculiar was, if Night City had another AI entity, why wouldn’t Blue Eyes explain this to him?

Or was it just a failed attempt at double-dealing Razzmatazz?

"....."

The woman said nothing, just stared at him with a blank expression.

"....."

For over ten minutes, the two simply stared at each other in the basement.

Eventually, Lin Miao couldn’t hold back, reaching out to grab her face, instantly refining... no, connecting to the base of the neck.

Despite lacking hacking skills, using the submersion equipment multiple times following Lucy, leveraging the ports to enter Cyberspace gave Lin Miao experience.

Bold and skillful, let me ruthlessly apply the techniques learned from Lucy onto this woman!

Heh-heh-heh...

What the heck...

As Lin Miao accessed Cyberspace through her interface, he discovered this place was entirely different from where he previously entered with Lucy.

The space was filled with chaos and disorder....

Compared to the calm seas previously seen, the scene before him resembled Jesus’s world-ending floods, with towering tsunamis sweeping every corner of the sea, and even the seabed was stirred by countless undercurrents, with endless turbulent information streams rapidly crisscrossing every corner.

The whole world was a shattered, chaotic mirror.

Where the heck is this?

Where the heck have you brought me?

Is this still the network?

Lin Miao sought to find the woman’s silhouette, but now by his side was a bloated information patchwork monster.

This thing had the appearance of both male and female, young and old... what was it?

Lin Miao leaned closer to scrutinize a while before understanding that this wasn’t one person... it was several people.

Standing still for a long time organizing his thoughts, he finally understood the essence of this monstrosity.

According to reports uploaded by Brother Ni and other players, a group of Vortex Gang cultists committed suicide in sacrifice, awakening this woman, and at that time they were all connected to hacker equipment, with the information patchwork monster before him manifesting multiple people’s features, was it suggesting....

Lin Miao remembered Lucy saying if hackers suffered any physical damage while diving in Cyberspace, their consciousness would be affected, ultimately leaving an incomplete consciousness wandering in cyberspace for a long time, eventually becoming a rogue AI.

They often exhibit extreme emotions.

Pessimism, anger, hatred, cowardice....

The fragments of consciousness left by those who committed suicide merged into this creature...

Wait, why are they all negative emotions?

Can’t there be some positive ones?

Also, why do I feel like this damned rogue AI has brought me to the dark web?