Chapter 1419 — Making Good Use of It

"Indeed, I have given that some thought," Gao Yang admitted candidly, to Amber's surprise. "With the computing power of Ophelia's Matrix and the Empire's neural network, the leading role in this work will certainly be ours. The participation of Typhon, Silver, and the dragons will not shake the controllability of the matter; on the contrary, it will ensure that the most influential members of the Alliance stand with us and preempt mutual suspicion. And should something unforeseen truly occur—say, the project leaking..."

"That's what I said—when there's blame, everyone shares it," Amber waved a hand before Gao Dai could finish. "If a thunderclap from a clear sky falls on the Alliance and the three permanent members of the Council plus the most battle-worthy member states are all involved, then no matter how big the thing is, it can only amount to 'nothing happened.'"

Gao Yang spread his hands with a wordless smile—a dirty but reasonable, a sordid but necessary international order. Such were the "quills" on the porcupines huddling together for warmth.

"Then let this matter be tentatively settled for now," Gao Yun said, drawing a soft breath in the cool night wind, then turned his gaze to Tyr beside him, who seemed on the verge of beginning to yawn. "But before we formally begin, we still need to hear the sirens' view—after all, Ophelia's 'decryption' work will require more rune stone samples."

Studying those rune stones would inevitably mean going through the sirens; this was, after all, a wondrous race that had successfully salvaged vast numbers of rune stones and was capable of butterfly-stroking through the Deep Blue Well itself. So Gao Yang's talk with Ophelia just now had not been conducted out of Tyr's hearing, and now that the focus of the conversation had suddenly fallen upon the latter, it jolted the "Deep Sea Ambassador," who had been starting to nod off, wide awake. She shook her head, which was full of water, and after finally coming back to herself gave a slight nod: "That's no problem at all—I can give you an answer right now. We'll send over all the scan data for the rune stones afterward; it was taken with the analyzers aboard Antavien, and the precision is more than sufficient.

"Also, if you need, I can speak to the Queen and have her arrange for people to deliver those rune stones straight to you—though that will take some time. There's a good chance the things can't go through the elemental leap channels and will have to be shipped over by boat. Afterward, whether you want to slice the stones or smash them up for study is up to you; they're only taking up space on Antavien anyway, and they're not good to eat, not good to eat at all..."

"Then I thank you in advance for your support," Gao Yan nodded, speaking with utter sincerity. "We need the scan data, and we need the physical samples—and the more physical samples, the better."

"No problem at all," Tyr agreed with uncommon readiness. These "requests" were plainly trifling matters to a siren blessed with an endlessly long lifespan, things done in passing. "In any case, I hear the sisters over on Antavien are also studying the techniques of synchronized swimming in the Deep Blue Well. I'll send word over there and have them haul up any rune stones they come across... as intact as possible. We can't fish them all out, of course, but even salvaging a portion seems useful."

At this point, the "Deep Sea Ambassador" had plainly reached the very edge of her resistance to drowsiness. She gave a great, forceful yawn, her whole body swaying left and right: "I can't—I'm far too sleepy. You go on talking among yourselves; I'm going to get some sleep—anything else can wait until I wake up."

The words had scarcely left her mouth when Gao Yang saw this deep-sea saltfish simply topple straight backward on the spot, slapping onto the deck with a "splat"—a going-to-sleep process as crisp and decisive as it was jaw-dropping. And the shadow clones she had brought along were still standing there with eyes wide open, though they had plainly all lost the control of the primary consciousness, standing motionless in a ring around the already-dead-to-the-world Tyr like a group of mourners paying their last respects...

This bizarre spectacle made every hair on Amber's body stand on end: "Mother of god, it's like a bunch of standing corpses paying respects to one lying-down corpse..."

"She just dropped off like that..." Gao Yang was likewise dumbstruck. He had seen Tyr suddenly fall asleep in all sorts of circumstances, and he knew that when this deep-sea saltfish slept she often looked like she had died on the spot—but this was still the first time he had witnessed so eerie a scene of falling asleep, especially with those six split bodies ringed around the main body in the dark night; anyone who saw it without knowing the circumstances would probably suspect that the clones had turned on their host and sacrificed her. "How do we even deal with this..."

"I'll find someone to carry her back afterward, and cart off these 'split bodies' while we're at it," Amber said, rubbing her brow in exasperation. "If word got out that the ambassador spent the very first day of the Deep Sea Kingdom's Xuanqi Pact asleep on the deck, it would look bad."

"...Once the sirens begin large-scale exchanges with the nations of the land, I'm afraid everyone will soon realize that this school of deep-sea saltfish couldn't care less about 'looking bad,'" Gao Yang sighed. "But you're right—at this stage it looks bad, and if anyone happened to pass by and see this, they'd probably be frightened out of their wits on the spot."

"All right, the serious matters are discussed; let's talk about something lighter," Amber said, letting out a soft breath and turning her gaze to Ophelia in the holographic projection. Now that the subject of the Sentinel and the rune stones was closed, the wind on the deck seemed to have grown fresh again. "So you finally decided to make yourself this 'public-facing image' after all—I thought you'd just display that whole swarm of 'nodes' of yours right out in the meeting hall."

"An excessively severe 'difference' breeds estrangement in people's hearts," Ophelia said mildly. "The iron-man soldiers are designed with a friendly human form; the dragons use human shape to converse with others and show goodwill—people can accept an interlocutor whose essence differs from their own but whose appearance is close to theirs, yet they find it very hard to accept an individual whose essence is close to theirs but whose appearance is alien. And besides... our world has only just narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of an ancient artificial intelligence gone out of control; the nations of the Alliance today are hardly prepared to face a 'machine' of similar nature."

"That is certainly true," Gao Yang said with a smile, looking at the figure seated upon the pale-gold throne in the projection, exquisite as a doll. "But beyond that, you seem to have finally accepted the self-recognition of 'Ophelia Norton'—you chose this body."

"I thought carefully about what you said, and there is indeed some truth in it," Ophelia's voice carried a note of ease and gratitude. "I may have been too fixated on clarifying exactly 'what I am,' but that was a question that should never have required fixation... My mind was copied from Ophelia Norton herself, and she has passed her fate to me to inherit. I can be anyone—and of course I can be her. There is no need to shy away from the 'intuition' within my own mind. I am very fond of this 'vessel'; it is how I appear in my own memory."