In addition to the content conveyed by the auditory signal, more complex and diverse information comes one after another –

First, its name:

“Madam Red”.

Then there was another short and confusing message:

“We were connected. In the past.”

It is difficult for Compassionate Blade to describe the feeling of this kind of communication: the other party does not convey the message with pure voice or text; instead, it uses a lot of slang, jargon, vague concepts (quantifying emotions and giving them a range of maximum and minimum intensity), as well as corresponding, instant rewriting of the cave world.

Rough, clumsy – like a piece of iron that tries hard to open its mouth until it cracks and breaks… This is the only metaphor that Mercy Knife can come up with in his heart.

As a hacker, he couldn’t understand such a conversation – Mercy Blade liked more precise things. Although Madam Red had great magical power and supernatural powers, her way of interaction was contrary to the way people like Mercy Blade should think.

Perhaps, this is the difference between the top hackers and the big demons.

……

“My wisdom was planted by it…?”

Mercy Blade tried hard to find the figure of Madam Red in his childhood memories.

Nothing was gained: but at the same time he felt that there was no need for this fox demon to lie.

Although Compassionate Blade has encountered many opportunities in the vast ocean of the Internet, everything is inseparable from the original “wisdom” in his heart.

It was for this moment today that the fox demon controlled the fate of the young man.

So, what is the purpose of this great demon?

The Mercy Knife remains vigilant: planting a seed can be for viewing – or for harvesting.

“Then…now?”

cluster!

After the faint sound, the bridal chamber was still dark, but the information streams that could be converted into visual signals appeared again.

Madam Red’s two red eyes were like the blazing sun. The pupils, which were wider than disks, flashed with waves of fiery waves, shining through the cover of her head:

“Now, I need love.”

Madam Hong lifted the flaming veil, then stripped off the red wedding dress, revealing her body:

Under her fire-colored fur, there is a missing hole—

It is the position of the heart.

Madame Red has no “heart”: it does not simply refer to the heart.

“He who has no love suffers.”

She said so, even though she was not a human at all.

The message came——

It was like the pain of scorching flames licking the skin and internal organs, being roasted in the flames at the bottom of the prison.

Every twenty-five and a half years – “or 22.5 years. 255 is the maximum value of eight-bit binary…” Mercy Knife thought – Madam Red would need to find a new husband to ease the pain she was experiencing.

“The ones before…”

Mercy Knife is very concerned about the fate of Madam Red’s “ex-husbands” – this is related to her own ending.

“Age/Death/Alive/Disappear/Crazy”

The answer that Madam Red gave herself was beyond Mercy Blade’s expectations:

These endings are a bit too ordinary. Since they have chosen to be a lone hacker as their “career”, then twists and turns and storms are bound to block their way forward.

Therefore, only the top hackers who possessed human souls and could roam in the abyss of data could complete this…contract? Ceremony?

It needs humans to love it, but it cannot escape the torment of not getting love.

“Like those Tamagotchis that were created to provide emotional value… Could it be…?”

Madame Red stretched out her palm: on her palm was a pair of magpies flying, chasing each other, yet relying on each other.

“It’s ‘love’.”

Without the sensitivity brought by the connection, the Mercy Blade could still sense the meaning contained in the wonderful whirling magical power group. Madam Red was right, what she had in her hand was…

True “love”.

Even though its form or expression varies greatly, its inner essence maintains a unified harmony – revolving around oxytocin, norepinephrine, vasopressin and phenylethylamine, as well as the psychological relationships associated with their production and secretion… No matter how complex and ambiguous human emotions are, they cannot be separated from the shackles of the body; or the foundation.

The pair of magpies we see before us are the careful integration of the “program” of “love”: phenylethylamine and norepinephrine are responsible for the heart-pounding feeling of love at first sight, dopamine gives the excitement and joy at the peak, endorphins maintain the stability and comfort after the peak; vasopressin brings the mission and responsibility that will never be abandoned.

These virtual neurotransmitters will stimulate the soul of Mercy Blade in an orderly manner, and will not make him feel the slightest… artificial feeling. In fact, there will be no love in this world that is purer and more real than what is brought before you; humans always add various mysterious virtual titles to many things in order to highlight their uniqueness, but they cannot tell the difference.

Madam Red quietly waited for Mercy Knife’s response.

Mercy Knife realized that the other party was waiting for his choice: Would she reach out her hand again and again in this bridal chamber, hoping to feel the love like a human being in a new attempt?

But she must have failed, which is why she keeps appearing here. It’s like a curse in a distant and ancient myth that can never be solved – perhaps because she is not a real human.

Mercy Knife can also understand the feelings of the guests who walked into the bridal chamber before him: How many people can refuse the destined sincere and pure love? Especially for them, the surfers who wander between the gathering of the crowd and the uniqueness of the soul.

The boy hesitated for a moment and chose an option other than the choice:

“So I can go too?”

Madam Red did not answer immediately. Her large, red eyes revealed confusion – she did not seem to understand the meaning of the Mercy Knife’s question.

Suddenly—

The restrictions on the Compassion Blade were suddenly lifted, and all the surging magic power returned to his body.

The most obvious feeling is: link.

Where do the powers of those souls who were born in the abyss of information or left their bodies to come to the digital space come from? Mercy Blade believes that the power he possesses is not strong – the reason why these hackers have become so outstanding all comes from the outside world.

The digital space is an amplifier: originally there was only one’s own self-consciousness (manas), which is connected to the alaya consciousness in all things.

If we compare the giant beasts of the Javanese group to the “blood scabs” and “shells” that appear after the human soul is injured, they are greedy and grow in size; if we compare the “Nuo Opera” and “Duangong Opera” that specialize in supernatural powers in the big opera troupe to the desires of binding, plundering, collecting and transforming the sea of ​​souls, they can make the fake play real and seem like a dream…

The most advanced magical powers will all start from human consciousness, or even serve as a starting point – the Internet may be filled with endless information, but their real core and entrance and exit are all people.

And the Compassion Blade understood the meaning of compassion: this is the source of his great strength. Guang Guang talked about the ability to touch the delicate wounds of others – whether in the Buddhist temples of Siam or in other areas covered by Theravada Buddhism; he was the most capable of knowing the samadhi of it.

Thus, when the wheel of time was about to turn one centimeter, he understood some of the essence of this great demon from the fragments of information shed from Madam Red.

In the past, Mercy Blade always used his understanding to find and expand the weaknesses and gaps in his opponents – but that didn’t mean he couldn’t turn it around and use the sharp blade as a scalpel that was essential to repairing wounds.

The Compassionate Knife has one hand naturally extended downwards, with the fingertips hanging down and the palm facing outwards, making the “Granting Mudra” to fulfill the wishes of all living beings; the other hand is bent and raised in front of the chest, with the fingers naturally stretched out and the palm facing outwards, making the “Fearlessness Mudra” to put all living beings at peace and free from fear.

Humans have soft, sensitive skin in order to feel the pain of others.

Mercy Blade does not have the hazy mentality that is unique to teenagers, nor does he have the yearning, intimacy, or even the ambiguous but short-lived “love” that comes from hormones mixing with a clear mind. This is a side effect of participating in “spiritual wandering” before his body is fully developed – many of his secretions and physiological functions are suppressed by the spirit that often wanders outside the body.

He even felt that he was far away from feeling or even understanding “love”: both physically and in an emotional sense that was elevated to a higher level.

So he did not choose to follow Madam Red’s plan.

“Have you ever thought that you could solve this problem once and for all?”

Mercy Knife stretched out his “hand” – a concrete representation of a part of his soul, containing part of what he knew, thought, and desired – and placed it to Madam Red’s mouth.

“Eat me.”

……

Chapter 370 In the Abyss (I)

This extra story takes place before the great disaster in Kuala Lumpur, and mainly fills in the parts about Erni leaving Kuala Lumpur, searching for the knife, and being converted.

……

……

The wind in the wasteland always carries the heat of fire and the smell of fresh flesh and blood. The yellow-gray land stretches to the end of the horizon, connecting with the hazy sky, like the shell of a river clam.

Erni rode on a bicycle, with clouds of dust rising behind her. She passed through the badlands between cities and finally arrived at the place she wanted to find:

A tribe of barbarians.

Dozens of rusty, different colored, new or old vehicles were lined up end to end to form a perfect circle; strangely dressed barbarians were busy in the camp. Erni drove in through the entrance left by the camp – the guards recognized the former courier and did not stop her.

The herd of fairy beasts raised their hazy eyes from the dry land and looked at the sudden uninvited guests – they were originally bred from pirated life seeds, and were modified many times by the savage people during breeding; as a result, their lifespan became shorter and shorter with each generation, and their appearance became more and more strange; even ugly and terrifying.

Only the savages still regard them as treasures: these strong and docile animals are their most important source of transportation.

Erni ignored the curious sniffing of the fairy beasts and ran straight to the cargo truck in the center of the camp – this abandoned mining truck was tall and huge, like a three-story building.

The roof of the truck cab has been dug up, revealing the driver’s seat without the seat and steering wheel; tablets and statues of ancestors are erected. The vehicles of the wild people are all towed by fairy beasts, and the decoration and cultural significance of the truck heads far exceed their practicality.

Erni did not stop, but walked around the front of the car and came to the modified rear end. The original container had been modified, destroyed and rebuilt by generations of barbarians, and it had become a huge thing composed of piles of group-level servers and tangled pipelines. Dark green and tea-green transmission signal lights flowed through it, making it look like a banyan tree with strange colors. In the middle of this giant, there was an old woman with wrinkled skin and white hair:

The hemispherical full-face helmet covered the upper half of the old woman’s face, and the exposed nasolabial folds were deeper than those of a Shar Pei dog, and her face skin, which was drooping like a bag, hung over her sagging jaw. She was the only “old woman” in the tribe: originally, there should not be only one elder, and this reflected the weakness of the tribe.

The old woman sat on the “golden throne”, her hunched and thin body blending into a strange mass with the uneven seat – the old woman was the only port in this tribe of barbarians that could communicate with their ancestors.

“Grandma, grandma! Wake up, wake up!”

Erni knocked on the safety frame under the golden seat with the tip of her prosthetic fist, and the sharp ping-pong sound echoed across the wasteland.

The tribes of barbarians wandering in the bad land –

In fact, they call themselves “Keluarga Teknologi”, which means “home of technology” in ancient Malay. Although many of the new blood of the desert people today come from abandoned people, stowaways and fugitives who cannot tolerate urban life; their mission and significance at the beginning were not to accommodate the excrement vomited by the steel jungle.

Click, click——

The rusted eyepiece opened up, revealing the hazy eyes of the old woman. Her pupils were even more vicissitudes than the rest of her body: the wrinkles formed by the radial blood vessels in the iris had disappeared, replaced by tiny and mottled circuits, spreading like spider webs and flashing cold blue light from time to time – this was the visual transformation technology from four or five generations ago, used to adapt to the old-fashioned mind travel system.

This is the only way to communicate with ancestors who have been passed down for countless generations: at this moment, they are stored in the server cluster surrounding the old woman.

“H-ah. Erni-what’s wrong?”

The old woman cleared the phlegm in her throat with a “ha” sound, and then swallowed it hard – “the first mouthful of saliva after getting up should be swallowed into the stomach, so as to fight poison with poison”, this is the custom of some old people in the wilderness – and then she let out a hoarse sigh. Her pronunciation was heavy and hard:

“Nothing has been ordered from home recently… your package was delivered to the wrong place.”

Whoosh!

Erni leaped up suddenly, using her hands and feet to climb up the rugged golden seat, pushed aside the coils of wires, and came close to the old woman’s face:

“I don’t do the delivery job anymore, grandma! I’m here to ask you to help me count some things. Please, please!”

Erni has been walking in the wilderness of New Malaysia for many years. Although the aggressive highwaymen among the wilderness people are one of her main targets while delivering goods, it does not prevent her from becoming friends with some of them – it’s just that the definition of friends is more vague than before.

……

“Hmm, hmm. Hmm.” The old woman chewed her mouth, which had shrunk due to tooth loss, and rubbed her smooth gums against each other; “The knife is lost. Can I help you find it?”

“It’s not lost, it’s been snatched away by those junks!” Erni clenched the handle of the knife and fiercely filed her upper and lower teeth together; “But I can’t find it among the group of travelers outside the city – Grandma, help me find it!”

“If they take it away, it will be very difficult to find it.” The old woman sighed through her nose, and the skin on her cheeks trembled. “What model is the knife?”

Erni turned the handle of the remaining ring-handled sword and described her beloved sword that disappeared in the hands of the travelers:

“The ‘Yamagata’ series of the Twenty-Four Patrolling Gods, Ketu Type III. I asked a craftsman to modify the ‘Sword Soul’ and update the intelligent module…”

click!

With a slight sound, the helmet suddenly covered the upper half of the old woman’s face, isolating her from the world again. Dark blue waves slowly spread across the outer shell of the helmet, one wave higher than the other:

ga-

The old woman uttered a strange dry sound from her throat:

“I have been converted… converted… converted…”

The old woman’s mouth opened wider and wider until it became a narrow oval; her voice became sharper and hoarser than before – with a tremor and fear in it. The same earthy gray words as her words flashed across the mottled and peeling display screen on the helmet shell.

Click!

As suddenly as it had been closed, the helm opened again and flipped upward: the sparkle in the old woman’s irises faded and returned to its dim state.

“It has been converted and cannot be located.”

“Only by asking the ancestors to return to their positions can I catch your knife…but my family can’t afford such computing power consumption.”

……