Beside He Ao, illuminated by the faint glow of the surveillance screens, a somewhat lean, unshaven man stared intently at the displays.
He sat in a wheeled ergonomic chair, leaning forward, the flickering screens reflected in his pupils.
His brow was tightly furrowed, as though something troubled him.
He Ao turned around and looked behind him.
What came into view was row after row of densely packed, numbered bookshelves illuminated by a faint glow, each shelf filled with file folders.
This seemed to be some kind of archives within the building.
He Ao withdrew his gaze and looked at the lean man beside him, who was staring fixedly at the surveillance screens.
He Ao currently had no "physical body." Though he appeared able to pass freely through different spaces, he was actually moving within the sea of consciousness formed by a vast collective of intelligent life.
The spaces he could reach had to be spaces someone was "watching."
The limits of where he could go were the limits of what human consciousness observed.
Even if that person was not paying attention to the place and only happened to sweep their peripheral vision across it.
He Ao could neither reach nor "touch" places without people or intelligent life, such as the depths of an uninhabited desert.
Because fundamentally, he was not in physical reality, but within the sea of human consciousness.
Likewise, He Ao could not directly see things. Everything he saw was seen through someone else's "eyes," using that person's consciousness as a medium.
Of course, it did not necessarily have to be seen with the naked eye.
Technological advancement allowed people to use cameras as a medium to observe areas they could not previously watch. Those areas were also extensions of the sea of consciousness, though somewhat unstable ones.