Chapter 229 — The Nonhuman
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The Ever-Dream, once shut down, had been set in motion again. After a wave of fluctuation, this vast psychic network gradually stabilized. The grand halls, temples, towers, and floating islands rooted in the mind's illusion were reconstructed. At the same time, countless members of the Long Slumber cult linked their thoughts into this network—they were at once its users, its builders, and its maintainers. They opened their brain's computational power to the entire network, letting it command and draw upon them as needed. Yet unlike those called "brain servants," the near-living-dead "computing power providers" lying in hidden sanctuaries everywhere, they did not have to pay for this process with damage to their lives and souls.
After all, the Sleepers were the masters of the Ever-Dream. Before all the servants had died off, these masters were hardly willing to sacrifice themselves.
And in the deepest part of the Ever-Dream, in the "Dream Hall" beneath the city, the college of bishops and their pope were already prepared.
Twenty-two seats were arranged in a ring, symmetrical about the room's center. Eleven white-robed bishops and eleven black-robed bishops occupied half the seats each, as though dividing day from night. At the center of the ring floated a hazy black phantom. Now and then it condensed into human form, but more often it appeared as various indescribable masses shot through with pale violet starlight. Whether in the real world or in this virtual one, the Pope of Eternal Slumber never showed his true face. In fact, the faithful even firmly believed that their pope had long since completed the sublimation of his life form and become an existence equal to the power of dreams; this shifting, illusory light and shadow was merely the pope's projection in the world, an "interface" set up solely to communicate with followers who were still mortal.
Today, this pope would lead his college of bishops in the eighteenth trial decryption of Gao Yang Cecil's memory fragment.
"The Ever-Dream is stable. The psychic network connection is sound."
"Lower-level computing nodes ready. The 'brain servant' array ready."
"The supervisory team has arrived at position and can respond to emergencies in the real world at any time."
"We are ready, Your Holiness."
The bishops reported one by one on the procedures each was responsible for. When everyone was prepared, the indescribable hazy light and shadow floated slightly, as if in approval, and its voice echoed in every bishop's mind: "Let us begin. Let us see just what lies within that ancient hero's memories."
The information link to the memory fragment was connected. Driven by the vast computational power supplied by the entire Ever-Dream, this terrible memory—one that had already caused hundreds of casualties—finally began to loosen. The truth was that Gao Yang had deliberately left a weak point in the memory fragment, but evidently the Sleepers themselves could not notice such a thing.
They merely rejoiced to see that their long efforts had finally borne fruit. A sliver of dawn appeared deep within that vast fog of information. As time passed, the memory fragment was dismantled bit by bit, and the portions that could be understood and recognized by human minds flowed into the brain of each member of the college of bishops.
At first, they saw a scene of starlight.
A deep, silent universe, an empty, boundless space, countless stars dotting the dark, profound curtain. This scene confused the bishops for a moment, but they soon concluded that this was Gao Yang Cecil's perspective after death: did humans truly return to the heavens after they died?
Before the bishops could conjure up some meaning for that scene of starlight, the vision before their eyes began to change wildly.