Three Wins

Gao Gong arrived at the final location in the Cable Tribe.

The first thing that caught his eye was a rather advanced-looking laboratory.

Behind the laboratory stood a three-story employee dormitory, though it had now been converted into the Grand Elder's villa.

To the left of the villa was a temple dedicated to some unknown wild god. To the right lay a large pile of packaged supplies. It was clear that the Grand Elder had already prepared to run.

Gao Gong's gaze fell upon the temple. A strong sense of danger emanated from within.

He narrowed his eyes and walked straight in.

A man's upper body hung in the doorway, his fingers gripping the threshold so tightly that his nails had split from the exertion.

His lower body, meanwhile, had been replaced by a dense mass of neural circuits. One dendritic structure after another bulged along the nerves, like tiny tumors.

When Gao Gong's gaze settled on the "tumors," the things visibly trembled a few times before bursting apart, spraying out a mass of gelatinous fluid.

"So sensitive. Sensitive skin, huh?"

Gao Gong made a sarcastic remark. He knew this man: Zhao Yi, the Grand Elder's son and the tribe's number-one warrior after Meng Duo. All five of his attributes had reached 10, and under mutation, his strength could surge by half.

Judging by attributes alone, this fellow was only slightly inferior to his predecessor's "Double-Flower Red Staff." Even among the mechanical hunters, he would count as an elite template.

But to Gao Gong now, he was still nothing worth mentioning.

After stepping over him, Gao Gong saw more and more neural fibers spreading from the altar like cables.

The "dendrites" grew larger as well. In some of them, one could even clearly see "human shapes" inside.

Gao Gong walked up to the altar and kicked open the inner door. What appeared before him was a nutrient-fluid tank as large as a swimming pool.

Professor Han lay naked inside it.

There was another organism in the nutrient-fluid tank.

A brain in a vat!

The "brain in a vat" was not an enormous brain-flower. Its shape was closer to that of a transparent octopus. Hundreds of tentacles slowly rotated around Professor Han, the largest over ten meters long and the smallest only two or three centimeters.

The octopus's suckers had been replaced by blue points of light, forming a gigantic blue vortex. It looked mysterious and dreamlike.

At that moment, as the tentacles wriggled, the blue points of light shone onto Professor Han, rendering his skin and bones transparent. Only the neural plexus inside his body continued to light up.

He looked like a humanoid neural network.

Professor Han's hair had been shaved clean. In its place were bundles of nerves as thick as little fingers, densely distributed across his prefrontal lobe, frontal lobe, and parietal lobe—in other words, across the front, back, and top of his skull.

Overall, he looked like he had dreadlocks styled into a mohawk.

Pretty damn trendy, too.

"Feeling young and wild again, Professor? This time, you nearly killed the little girl."

In the water, Professor Han slowly opened his eyes, but his gaze was vacant. At that moment, all his mental power was concentrated in his prefrontal lobe, which was responsible for mental functions. The other brain systems were all shut down.

His eyelids had opened only because of a conditioned reflex in the optic nerves.

The mission gave him three options: kill Professor Han, kill the brain in a vat, or rescue Professor Han.

None of the three was easy.

Killing Professor Han meant confronting a psychic boss with perception above 40 who had also mastered part of the brain in a vat's power.

Killing the brain in a vat meant helping Professor Han become the new "superbrain." Whether the other party would appreciate it was one thing; the few area-of-effect attacks the brain in a vat could unleash before dying would be enough to kill Gao Gong several times over.

If Gao Gong had not been a master of face sculpting and the ruler of the virtual world in his previous life, there was no way he could have completed the mission so easily.

First, he had deliberately allowed himself to be absorbed into the brain.

Then he had Huang Yuanli "reboot" the system.

After that, he had used the "Golden Headband" to escape.

When Professor Han came searching through the network, he had been like a bionic prostitute coming out to receive a customer—Gao Gong could do whatever he wanted with him.

"How should I deal with you, Professor? Or should I say—the brain in a vat?"

Gao Gong looked at the transparent octopus and grinned.

"Let's negotiate. If I can help you deal with this old man, what can you offer me?"

The brain in a vat's tentacles continued rotating mindlessly.

"Don't pretend. Even if I kill Professor Han now, part of his personality will only irreversibly enter your body."

"Do you really want to keep that old man's stuff with you for the rest of your life?"

After a brief silence, a ripple suddenly spread across the nutrient tank. A transparent tentacle emerged from the water and touched the back of Gao Gong's hand. A neural node on his hand lit up.

Huang Yuanli's voice sounded in Gao Gong's mind.

"Should I trust you, human?"

"Of course not."

Gao Gong sat beside the tank and calmly laid out the situation for it.

"Let me deduce the best possible outcome for you. You kill Professor Han, get rid of Huang Yuanli, and survive independently."

"Of course, you also know that Professor Han made so many preparations. It's unrealistic to expect him to leave nothing behind."

"The second possibility is that you devour Huang Yuanli and become the host of this girl's body. In any case, a girl's brain-flower is more fragrant than an old man's brain-flower, though neither compares with pig brain-flower."

"But are you really willing to accept that? You finally awakened from your slumber, and this world has so many powerful bodies, yet you can only choose such a weak carbon-based low-level ape—and one with such a small chest."

"The third possibility is that Professor Han destroys your primary consciousness, and Huang Yuanli becomes the new brain in a vat."

"There's an even worse outcome: Professor Han devours you without leaving behind a single scrap."

"Of course, there's one final possibility: I deceive you, and you randomly end up with one of the four outcomes above."

"But what if I haven't deceived you? One has to hold on to one's dreams, after all. What if I can help you resolve this predicament?"

"Tell me, what is your choice?"

The brain in a vat fell silent again. After a moment, a tentacle over three meters long emerged from the nutrient fluid. Like something Gao Gong might have once drawn in a doujinshi, it slowly coiled around him, and the mental nodes pressed against his skin lit up one after another.

An indescribable sense of refreshment surged through Gao Gong's mental state.

[Your torso nerves have received enhanced stimulation, Perception +1]

[Your visceral nerves have received enhanced stimulation, Perception +1]

[Your brain gray matter has received enhanced stimulation, Perception +1]

[Your brain white matter has received enhanced stimulation, Perception +1]

While Gao Gong was enjoying the sensation, the tip of the tentacle curled around the back of his head and gently stroked his frontal lobe.

A special mental fluctuation emanated from the back of his head.

In the next instant, Professor Yang's version of electrotherapy erupted in Gao Gong's mind once more.

The brain in a vat, whose neural layers were entangled with his, suffered ten times the pain Gao Gong did from the electrotherapy.

"Phew—clear-headed and refreshed." Gao Gong bared his teeth. "Were you trying to steal my thoughts just now?"

The transparent tentacle trembled, and an embarrassed emotion actually came through.

As expected.

A mainframe AI that had not given birth to a mechanical intelligence crisis, a pan-consciousness entity that had never undergone ethical reformation, and an indigenous leader who had never left the planet.

Collectively known as the Three Idiots of the Universe.

"Let it go this time. Don't do it again. Keep the binding going."

Another tentacle extended from the brain in a vat.

[Your thalamus has received enhanced stimulation, Perception +1]

[Your pineal gland has received enhanced stimulation, Perception +2]

[Your character has decreased by 1]

Character: 3

Note: Using an ignorant girl's body to satisfy a perverted old man's ambitions, and using human treachery to deceive a pure consciousness-based life-form—your character actually still has room to fall!

Gao Gong rolled his eyes and ignored the system.

After its pineal gland had been enhanced, the brain in a vat also fell into an exhausted state. The mental nodes on its tentacles flickered on and off like lightbulbs running out of power.

Gao Gong had not actually deceived it. Not because he was honest—in fact, if he were level 30 right now, he would immediately act and kidnap it for use as an "auxiliary brain."

Who said only humans could make "biological batteries"? Conscious life-forms could do it too!

Don't underestimate them!

However, given the current situation, helping the brain in a vat was the only choice that benefited all three parties. Huang Yuanli kept her brain-flower, while Gao Gong won twice.

A world in which only Professor Han got hurt had been achieved.

Gao Gong took out another "Golden Headband" and tossed it into the tank.

"Put it on Professor Han, then awaken the little girl inside you and have her use telepathy to connect me and the old man. Remember, it's a one-way connection. Don't get it wrong!"

Huang Yuanli seemed to have a long dream. In that dream, she appeared to connect with the entire Scavenger City, sweeping across the whole city from a strange perspective.

With the brain in a vat's mental power amplifying it, her rudimentary telepathy became unimaginably powerful.

At the same time, her feelings gradually grew cold. There was perhaps a little curiosity, but more than anything, there was a kind of chaos.

The thought of being without emotions terrified her.

However, she soon floated up from the bottom of the sea again, like a resurrected corpse. As she broke the surface, the feeling of being "human" surged back as well.

"Don't just stand there. Listen carefully. This is what I want you to do..."

Gao Gong's voice suddenly rang out from the sky.

It took Huang Yuanli quite some time to recover. She spoke in astonishment—she discovered that she could speak directly without using her throat.

"You're saying you want me to transfer your pain to the professor?"

"That's right. The Central Nervous System Direct-Control Ring can produce an electrotherapy effect. Two rings mean twice the pain."

"Then the brain in a vat can use mental power to catalyze it, bringing it up to ten times."

"Tenfold electrotherapy is enough to knock the old man unconscious. Once he passes out, his connection with the brain in a vat will be severed, and this giant octopus can smoothly expel him from its body."

"Step two is to do the same thing in reverse. Use telepathy to sense my pain. The brain in a vat will amplify your suffering and knock you unconscious. Once you're out, it can break free of you completely."

"Wait. What if I pass out and this thing eats me?"

Gao Gong shrugged. "Then this day next year will be your death anniversary. I'll burn incense for you!"

"You—" Huang Yuanli felt a long-lost anger flare up.

"Don't worry. With those skinny little arms and legs of yours, the giant octopus won't be interested in you." Gao Gong paused, then said meaningfully, "If it really eats you, that means it has completely occupied your body. In that case, killing you will be very easy for me, and I'll avenge you."

Huang Yuanli hesitated before gritting her teeth. "Fine. I'll cooperate with you!"

The entire plan was not complicated. The key was trust. The brain in a vat found it difficult to trust humans, while Huang Yuanli trusted only Gao Gong. As for Professor Han, that went without saying—he was so paranoid that he trusted only himself.

This was a prisoner's dilemma.

What Gao Gong did was take the prisoners' "guns" into his own hands, then force them to achieve a three-way victory.

That's right. Gao Gong won twice.