Chapter 844 — The Computation Center

The first thing they saw was a giant pillar at the center of the hall—the pillar was a rectangular prism, thicker than the main beam of any castle, its surface seemingly assembled from great quantities of silver-white metal plates; its precise joining and the distribution of its seams, which seemed to imply some geometric law, conveyed an intoxicating "beauty" that was difficult to put into words, because no one had ever seen anything like it anywhere else.

And between the seams of those metal plates, on the surfaces of certain special panels, threads of pale blue magical radiance flowed quietly, and scattered points of light flickered as if breathing.

It even gave Yuri a kind of illusion—he actually felt that this pillar was alive, that it even had a mind of its own; that it was the heart and brain of this building, that the Cecil workers and technicians were waking it bit by bit, and that this thing now gradually stirring to life... was waiting to commune with other minds...

Suddenly, Yuri realized that what he felt was no illusion.

He truly did sense something familiar from that pillar—magical fluctuations similar to certain facilities at the Sleepers' headquarters!

"This is the Hall of Thought. The pillar before you is called the 'Mind Hub'—at present the Empire's first and only Mind Hub," Gao Yang said, having noticed the changes in Yuri's and the others' expressions; he deliberately waited a few seconds before explaining. "You may find it somewhat familiar, and that is only natural, because this thing... makes use of your mental network technology.

"The 'Mind Hub' runs more or less through the entire building—four levels above ground, two below—connecting the computation levels at every tier, the Hall of Thought, the redundancy center, and the magic net medium layer at the very bottom. Did you notice those rooms around the hall? There are more rooms above and below ground; in those rooms are thousands upon thousands of immersion pods in total—and there will be more in future. More computation centers will appear in every province of the Empire, and near each computation center there will be more 'distribution stations' to bear more computing tasks.

"The immersion pods in every room will connect to the Mind Hub, and through the Mind Hub into the magic net—passing through an additional layer of magic net conversion and a new secure medium. It's far safer than your old practice of directly 'bare-connecting' your brains to the network.

"By the way, some of you may not know what an immersion pod is—on that point you can consult Selina; she has seen one."

Semler, however, was no longer much concerned with what Gao Yang's last sentence had been saying.

He, and every one of the other Daystar Cultists present, stared dumbstruck at all of this, listened to all of this, and pictured all of this in their minds.

This magnificent building, and the vast, advanced, and precise array of equipment within it, were in essence all extensions of the Sleepers' mental network technology; yet their sheer scale and manner of application utterly exceeded every Sleeper's understanding. Even without glimpsing the whole of the building, even with a single glance at what lay within sight, Semler and Yuri and the others could judge that this thing was absolutely not meant solely for the Sleeper priests currently present—the "users" it was to accommodate were certainly far, far more numerous than they could imagine!

And what moved them even more deeply was that similar "computation centers" would in future be more than one—every province would have one, and there would even be facilities like "distribution stations" for additional expansion. What an immense scale that would be!

The Longnight Order of old had also had so-called "external nodes"; besides the headquarters at Orlandell, they had set up computing facilities elsewhere as well. Yet those nodes had been pitifully small in scale, their function amounting to no more than auxiliary facilities of the headquarters—roughly equivalent to what Gao Yang called "distribution stations"—and even so, that had already been the fruit of the Longnight Order's centuries of accumulation...

What Gao Yang described was a future that seemed almost impossible for them to imagine.

So vast in scale that it struck them as beyond necessity, even somewhat fantastical.

"So many, and such large-scale computation centers..." Yuri finally could not hold back and spoke. "Are you planning to have everyone establish a connection with them?"

"Why not?" Gao Yang countered. "The immersion pod is a safer means of connection, and ordinary people can use it as well. In fact, Cecil has already completed research in this area; at present, what limits the scale of the computation centers is nothing more than the production capacity of the immersion pods.

"As you said, Yuri, I intend to have this network cover the entire Empire—in my view, this is a remarkably useful technology."

The followers of the Radiant Doctrine exchanged glances.

This was a path they had never conceived of—because the direction it represented had once seemed to them impossible!

Yet merely thinking of the prospects Gao Yang had depicted, thinking of the power that could burst forth once the mind network was rebuilt upon the soil of the Cecil Empire, they could not help but feel dazzled and entranced.

"So it can be done this way too..." Magnum could not help muttering as well. "We never even imagined such a thing..."

Gao Yi smiled, and Pingxi glanced at Magnum.

"Because the Long Twilight Order is merely an order, whereas Cecil is an empire," he said unhurriedly. "What you are seeing are two forces—the force of industry, and... the force of the state apparatus.

"And that original path of yours, 'salvation in solitude,' was destined to run counter to these two forces.

"Finally, let me say it once more—welcome to Cecil, welcome to the future."