Chapter 219: Mandela's World

It took a while for the two of them to calm down.

After so many head-butts, they finally couldn't be cruel enough to do things to hurt each other anymore because of what the other had suffered, because of the other's vulnerability.

Although none of them dared to mention what had happened before, fearing that one wrong step would ruin the peace and quiet, so Chen Man, Anthony, and all the misunderstandings between them, those thorns in their flesh and blood had not yet been pulled out.

But everything between them, whether it is separation or reunion, resentment or infatuation, quarrel or peace, in fact, ultimately only depends on the two of them, and not decided by others. Those people and those things, can give and their knots, fallacies, wear and tear ...... but like a star that has deviated from its orbit will eventually come back - Xie Qingcheng's collapse will allow He Yu to dismantle the mask, He Yu's help will let Xie Qingcheng put down the alienation.

Even in the most ordinary capacity, even when you're scarred and bewildered.

As soon as He Yu heard Xie Qingcheng say it hurt.

As soon as Xie Qingcheng saw He Yu reaching out to him for help.

Eventually, they stop their lonely march and turn their heads to the sound of their own kind's wailing.

"Then, what about Duan Wen?" After calming down, Xie Qingcheng asked He Yu softly.

He wants to know how He Yu has spent these three years on both sides of the fence, he wants to know how He Yu has spent these three years.

After the Dream Breaker, it's time for Mandela.

"The Dreambreakers are on your defense, and Mandela can't help but be wary of you... Duan Wen suffered a loss from you three years ago. Three years ago he thought you had defected to him, only for you to expose his island location. I don't even trust him to take you in a second time. Is it because of the Loyalty Chip?"

His voice still rippled as he spoke.

"The kind of chip he once implanted in your heart?"

"No." He Yu whispered, "If that chip still counted, I'd be dead a hundred times over by now. I found out later that the loyalty chip doesn't work for me. Duan Wen and the others found out too."

Xie Qingcheng was stunned, "...... Why wouldn't it work."

"It's a matter of constitution." He Yu said, "Maybe because I'm a Blood Compass, when I'm unwilling, the Blood Compass physique even interferes with their chip, and Duan Wen can't monitor if I'm loyal to him through that thing. But ......"

He paused, "There was something that made Duan Wen choose once again to believe that he could hold me."

Xie Qingcheng had a vague premonition, "What?"

He Yu stopped again, this time the silence was longer than before.

It was a long time before he opened his mouth, and the content of his answer completely confirmed Xie Qingcheng's thoughts.

He Yu said, "My mother."

"......"

"Vivian. The real Lv Zhishu."

He Yu moved in the bedding, adjusting his position and pulling the covers higher, allowing him and Xie Qingcheng to sink more completely into the darkness. He and Xie Qingcheng leaned closer, but not completely.

Although he knew it was not so suitable and appropriate, Xie Qingcheng suddenly thought of himself in this moment when he was studying, and the girl at his table had a week-long conflict, and then he couldn't stand it anymore, although the conflict was still unresolved, but he opened a bag of snacks, handed it to her, and asked her if she wanted to eat it.

The table also intends to make up, so took the snacks, that a while the two people will suddenly become extra cautious, not only to the former incident never mention, speak also polite ridiculous, look at each other smile with embarrassment, for fear of not paying attention to step on each other's pain.

Now, the relationship between him and He Yu is very close to this state, just like a partially mended porcelain, the clay that binds the pieces is not yet dry, and it is fragile everywhere, so we have to be extra careful.

He Yu closed his eyes, not daring to come any closer, only letting the faint scent that belonged to Xie Qingcheng's body penetrate his lungs, that cold and almost bitter smell would not be too good in anyone's eyes, but He Yu's heart was soothed, the knots in his throat rolled up and down, and his voice hoarsely opened and began to narrate.

"My mother's body is still preserved in their lab."

"!!!"

"It was the remains, which had been frozen sharply in liquid nitrogen, but at the time they told me that they could bring my mother back to life."

Xie Qingcheng was stunned, "How can that be?"

"Physiologically it's impossible, but if it can be combined with virtual reality, it's completely doable." He Yu said, "The Mandela organization has a great interest in the human brain, you see, they have achieved a truly perfect virtual reality projection on this island in advance through VR, 5D effects, magnetic field interference, hearing interference, smell interference, visual effects projection - and all of this is inspired by the Mandela effect produced by the human brain. They believe that the study of the human mind is currently the only key that can truly break the constraints of life and death."

"To use the simplest analogy, Li Bai is a thousand years old, and in terms of normal concepts of space and time, it is completely impossible for us to have a conversation with him. But in fact, because he recorded some of his experiences and thoughts in writing, which has been circulating for a thousand years, we can thus hear what a person who died a thousand years ago said and know some of the things he did. His physical body could not escape the limitations of time and space, but the mind did, and this is the most basic idea of the seemingly complex Mandela meta-universe."

"But words are only the most basic carrier, just like photographs, which are temporary and fixed. Let's still take Li Bai as an example, what breaks through the limitation of time and space is only a part of Li Bai's thoughts, he can't possibly preserve all his thoughts in words, and the words that remain are frozen, they can no longer think for themselves, they can't regenerate his own intention - but what if, there is a technology that can extract all the consciousness of the human brain out and preserve it?"

He Yu said, raising his hand and pointing to the side of Xie Qingcheng's forehead: "What is here is the human soul, if it leaves the physical body and is in another system, still able to have self-consciousness, able to keep generating self-consciousness, is it not the same as the person is still alive? It's like the soul transference spells in religions that people once thought were whimsical, and the fact is that as long as this is done, even if the physical body falls away, as long as the mind is preserved, in the view of the Mandela organization, the person is still alive."

"As long as a person's consciousness can be continually perpetuated through technology, tucked away in a computer cloud, tucked away in a robot, or even controlled by a chip and implanted into another living person's body." He Yu softly said, "The so-called 'resurrection' or 'immortality' will also be realized."

Xie Qingcheng : "They want ...... eternal life!?"

"Far from it. In the final conception of the meta-universe organized by Mandela, eventually humans may not need to live at all with the aid of a physical body; after all, there is a finite saturation of the world's population, and if everyone lives forever, there will come a time when there will be no place for new life to stand. But once the meta-universe is constructed the way they want, it will be a different story."

"Human consciousness can be saved to the cloud as two-dimensional data that lives on in computer systems. The three-dimensional to two-dimensional barrier breaks down. At that point, everyone can be 'alive' but everyone doesn't have to be 'alive'. Humans survive, move around, and become laborers in databases ...... Only data people who have achieved extremely high levels of accomplishment or who have seized great wealth in the two-dimensional world can obtain a physical body of our current, normal human beings."

Such a creepy scene, along with He Yu's description, in front of Xie Qingcheng's eyes as if a scroll unfolded.

"In their conception of the future, the real world will become very desirable - because the number of human beings surviving on Earth in corporeal form is strictly controlled, ecological resources will be slowly restored, and this will not affect the development of human society in any way - after all, there are a large number of two-dimensional people as data, in the cloud of the 'meta-universe' worlds to complete their productive lives, continuously contributing their labor force - perhaps the place inhabited by billions, trillions of people would end up being just a small data disk. Two-dimensional people must always be working, actively struggling to get a physical ticket to come to the three-dimensional world. And this power of whether or not to allow people to come to the real world can then be firmly in the hands of the rulers and owners of capital."

Xie Qingcheng listened with a chill running down his back. What was scary was not such an idea, but the fact that such an idea, according to the crazy trajectory of technology, could be realized.

Three-dimensional sociopaths will be turned into two-dimensional sociopaths by their own compatriots, their innate flesh and blood will be compressed into thought data, and the ability to come to a three-dimensional society will all depend on whether or not the controller needs you, and whether or not you have considerable wealth.

What is even more frightening is that the people in the data will get used to being a set of data, after all, if a three-dimensional society wants to delete the data and manipulate the mind, it may only need to program a program, even the capital brainwashing of the modern society is eliminated, and all of this will become quite normal in that environment, and no one will resist any more, or else it will be a "virus".

"This is ridiculous ......" Xie Qingcheng muttered.

He Yu said, "It's not ridiculous at all. If it really develops without constraints, I'm afraid this will be within a few hundred years. In fact, have you ever felt that in society now, a lot of things have become more and more data-driven and flattened?"

"What do you mean?"

"When the Internet was not widespread, the tone, accent, and content of people's speech were often very different and distinctive. However, the rapid spreading nature of the Internet has made 'repetition' a normal, allowing the 'individual' to assimilate into the 'collective'. Let's say ......" He Yu whispered to Xie Qingcheng, "When you were a kid, if the class watched a movie, and the teacher asked everyone in the group to start a train and say a few words to evaluate the movie, everyone's speeches should be different. Everyone would have said something different. But nowadays, when the public comments on a movie, you open the pop-up screen, and what you see are often repeated statements, such as one person wrote 'tearful eyes', and in the next long section of the pop-up screen, almost everyone repeats the word tearful eyes."

"And then, for example, for those very complicated works, people's patience is also becoming less and less, many people only want to see the rough and simple justice and evil, love and no love, but forget that human nature itself is very contradictory, rather than a simple label. But labeling and simplicity will make people feel comfortable, good understanding, no controversy, this sense of comfort and security will be accustomed to people become more and more do not want to think, but also more and more accustomed to not thinking, when not thinking has become a habit, people need to express their thoughts, open their mouths to repeat can only be some of the words and phrases that have appeared over and over again on the Internet. The end result is that the same remarks you can see on this thing can also be seen on another thing. Whether it's a compliment, a criticism, an insult, or a creation, it starts to become the same thing, just like ......"

He Yu paused, "It's like an assembly line production of ideas."

Xie Qingcheng narrowed his eyes.

The assembly line used to produce only physical objects, but on careful reflection, when more and more people will only carry out simple repetitions, and give up the ability to think for themselves under the nipple entertainment and information brainwashing, then the words they say and the things they do have become a kind of invisible "assembly line products"?

This is a very horrible result; people who become products of the assembly line have often lost the power to struggle out of mediocrity because they have been assimilated. And as the force of this assimilation grows, more and more people are swept up into this flood.

"Think about it, Xie Qingcheng," He Yu said, "what repeats itself over and over again, following direct commands or invisible guidance?"

An answer broke ground.

Xie Qingcheng muttered, "...... artificial intelligence."

"Right. So in the Mandela organization's conception, artificial intelligence is not just created." He Yu said, "It can be entirely living human beings that have been brainwashed into 'artificial intelligence'."

"The typical manifestations of artificial intelligence are 'repetition', 'assimilation', and 'obedience'. As long as they are successfully brainwashed, the 'kindness,' 'rationality,' and 'discernment' that humans themselves possess will fade or even disappear, and they will become as cold and brutal as machines and have no guilt about what They will become as cold and brutal as machines, and will feel no guilt for what they have done. Because 'guilt', 'gratitude' and 'compassion' are some higher emotions that belong to living things, not to AIs. It's a degradation of the human heart, and in fact, such an omen you can glimpse in some people in modern society."

"......"

"The meta-universe is not a castle in the sky." He Yu says, "It can be realized. At that point, the people who wield the power of technology are the creators of the metaverse, and they can make the world change the way they want it to. It may take five or ten years to get people to accept a new idea now, but in the metaverse, it may be the second a keyboard is pressed-"

He paused for a few seconds and went on:

"So, Mandela is going to have state-of-the-art technology in this 'industrial revolution' and then, become the absolute god of creation."

"That's the ultimate goal they want to spend decades and centuries to achieve."

When He Yu finished speaking, there was dead silence in the bedroom.

Xie Qingcheng's limbs became even colder than before, and he kept thinking about what He Yu had said.

These ideas may seem far-fetched, but working backwards from the history line, could the people writing letters home in 1900 have imagined the day when friends and relatives miles away would only need a machine like a small mirror to see each other and talk as if face-to-face?

It's only been a little over a hundred years, and who knows what the world will become in another hundred years.

And since Mandela was made up of scientific research radicals, it was not unusual for them to be a couple hundred years ahead of their time.

Xie Qingcheng: "So the people on the island who are being manipulated are weapons made by Mandela's brainwashing and mind control?"

"Uh-huh. Like your parents, they've passed on, what Mandela did was collect tons of footage, notations, battle data from their lives, then mimicked their thought patterns and brainwashed them into the minds of other living people. That's why they do things like the real your parents after they're out of Zhuo Ya's control. But they're fake, and their own brains have been brain-damaged, and there's nothing left to think about, and they can't be saved." He Yu said, "I hope you don't feel guilty about that."

Xie Qingcheng was silent.

It was as if there had originally been a light in his heart, albeit an impractical one, which shone faintly after having seen Stormkill.

That's when the light then finally went out without a sound.

"Then in that case, it really is just virtual reality, and like everything on the island, it's been vaporized, like a phantom."

He Yu: "Yes."

"......" Xie Qingcheng asked, "Then if I now encounter those robots again ...... "

"What you see will be what they were meant to be." He Yu said, "Some reformed people."

After a pause, he added, "But if you still want to see Mandela Island through the lens of a machine if you want to see it through the eyes of a normal person. Because the effects on the island are done through all sorts of interference, masking is done on all five senses, and the visual part is like a vr projection, did you just see the drones on the island?"

"Uh-huh."

"Those drones are one of the devices that help produce the projections and are responsible for part of the visual blinding. It's like the projections in Spider-Man."

Xie Qingcheng : "I haven't seen Spider-Man."

"What about the Teresa's Resurrection concert?"

"Neither."

"...... doesn't matter. I'm just saying that your eyes aren't going to be deceived anymore, but what the camera lens captures is what the vr imaging will look like afterward, the same effect as a TV station filming a Teresa Teng resurrection concert."

Xie Qingcheng suddenly thought of something when he heard this, "If that's the case, and we destroy those drones responsible for visual projection, won't normal people be able to see the real scene on the island?"

He Yu shook his head, "Creating a fake image is actually the simplest requirement for VR, while Mandela also fakes in hearing, smell, and magnetic field response at the same time. So simply destroying the drones won't do much good, they'll activate the emergency devices, which will also fool them. And these drones are monitored in real time, once they are attacked, Duan Wen will know that someone on the island has leaked the information because normal people can't see them, and everyone on the island except me has a loyalty chip to control them, so that leaker would have to be me."

"The most radical thing to do to break the illusion, and the only thing to do, is to find that total virtual reality jamming device on this island, and once you find it and destroy it, all projections on the island stop immediately. Hyenas will be hyenas, humans will be humans, helicopters will be helicopters, concrete fortresses will be concrete fortresses, and normal people will be able to see the truth unaffected."

He Yu looked grim as he said this.

"I've been trying all these years to find the master valve that shuts down the jamming device on Mandela, and I think there must be such a master valve on this island, but I can't do it alone. No one else believes me. They'd rather come to this island hard and fast and get killed. Only to be met by a truly terrifying weapon that had just been invented, the Radical Cold Light."

He paused for a moment, more than a little sarcasm in his eyes.

"After that weapon appeared, the Dreambreakers trusted me even less, and I know some of them thought I was hiding it from them, which is why they had to send their own people to the island to scout it out first ......"

He Yu closed his eyes.

"So Team Jung became a victim and was taken to the dungeon."

Xie Qingcheng heard this and asked, "Are Lao Zheng, Chen Man, and those who were the first to board the island, all inside the dungeon?"

When Chen Man's name entered his ears, He Yu's face stiffened slightly, but he still gave a hmm.

Xie Qingcheng: "Mandela hasn't done any tests on them yet has she."

"Not yet." He Yu said, "Living samples are hard to come by, and they don't usually do it right away."

Xie Qingcheng sniffing slightly relieved, and said, "Now there is no other way, that I and Lao Zheng collected the data of Radical Speed Cold Light, passed to ninety-seven percent was terminated by you in front of Zhuo Ya's face, but these data must be handed over to the headquarters immediately."

"Knowing that, I'll find an opportunity to re-transmit it in the morning." He Yu says, "Not hard for me, I've passed back a lot of Mandela Island's secrets to the Dreambreakers over the years, and the maps HQ has were drawn up with my cooperation. However, that said this matter ......"

He Yu paused for a moment, gazing into Xie Qingcheng's eyes in the darkness.

"Did you take some information from my study and bring it back to the Commander-in-Chief during those days when you were stuck in my home recuperating."

Not expecting him to suddenly ask about this, Xie Qingcheng paused for a moment, then still answered, "...... Well."

And again, "How did you find out."

He Yu : "After you left, I checked the surveillance. I found the problem, and then I confirmed with the commander-in-chief on the phone that it was you who took it."

"......" Xie Qingcheng still had a slight doubt in his mind at the time, not understanding why He Yu didn't transmit the final data to the commander-in-chief in time, even though he clearly had it.

But after speaking with He Yu so much, he had guessed why.

"Before you gave him the data, did you want to remind him one last time that Mandela Island is an island based on the concept of meta-universe transport, and that it's actually quite ordinary and not that scary when you remove the virtual projections, as long as you cut off the master valve that caused the illusion to intervene?"

He Yu was silent for a moment and admitted, "Yes. Whether he believed it or not, I wanted to try one last time. But then the data was taken away from you and given to him in advance."

Xie Qingcheng was momentarily speechless, "...... I'm sorry."

He Yu shook his head and asked again, "What about you? Why did you pass the information I gathered to the Commander ahead of me when you had clearly guessed that I was an undercover agent of the Dream Breakers at that time?"

"I was only guessing about your identity at that time, and there has been no proof that you were one of us. I don't think there would be many people who would know about this if you were undercover, but the Commander-in-Chief would definitely be one of them."

"I need to confirm my thoughts with him." Xie Qingcheng said, "Before I go to the island, I want a clear answer. Confirmation that I didn't guess wrong."

He Yu realized, "That's why you were so sure when I told you that I was an informant, because you weren't just guessing, you had confirmed it with him ......"

Xie Qingcheng gave a soft "hmm".

He Yu couldn't help but say, "But since he told you about my undercover identity, he should have warned me at the time ......"

But at this point he paused.

He realized why the Commander-in-Chief hadn't warned him - because the Dreambreakers didn't trust him after all, and the information they had given him had been tattered. Everything was left with a handful of cards.

Xie Qingcheng saw his expression and knew what he was thinking, in order to make him feel better, so he comforted him, "At that time, the situation was urgent, he had too many things to control, the great war was approaching, and he wished to minimize the variables, so in order to be safe, he did not want to explain more to you in the middle of the call, which is normal."

After a pause, he added, "And he should think it's a small matter, and that the problem will naturally be solved when we meet."

"......"

But after those words, both of them recalled the chaotic scene when they first met on the island, and both fell silent again.

Xie Qingcheng, conscious of his embarrassment, digressed, "By the way, have you ...... ever wondered why the layout of this island is so much like HU's Neverland?"

He Yu came back to his senses, "This may be related to something I just recently investigated, something that I haven't even had time to tell the commander-in-chief about, which concerns the true identity of that 'boy' on the island, who is supposed to be ...... "

Before the words were finished, there was a sudden, clear knock on the door outside the covers.

He Yu and Xie Qingcheng were startled and held their breath in the darkness.

He Yu was still calm, he raised his hand and pointed on Xie Qingcheng's lips, meaning to pretend to be asleep and keep quiet for the time being.

The knocking stopped after three or four knocks.

"He Yu."

"............"

It's actually Duan Wen!

Duan Wen was right in the doorway, his voice faint and inaudible, and without saying anything about his purpose, he simply said, "Please open the door."