Mo Fei's target was those streams of light. Too few had passed through his previous position, and he was unwilling to keep waiting. He swung his arms, trying to intercept them, but they moved too fast. His movements seemed unable to keep up, and after missing several times, he began to observe.
Wherever the streams of light were most numerous, he went there. He adjusted his position up, down, left, and right, claiming their paths before they passed. These streams of light would not change direction; they struck directly into his body, and Mo Fei received a great deal more information.
"A spreadsheet?" The first stream of light Mo Fei intercepted this time was a spreadsheet. It was still in English, yet he completely understood its meaning. It was a quarterly financial report belonging to an import-export company, with highly detailed listings of imported and exported goods, prices, price differences, and more.
Though puzzled, Mo Fei did not care what exactly was in the report. He hurriedly made himself grow legs, and this time it succeeded in one go. Both legs grew out directly?
"Hm? One stream of light was enough for them to grow out completely this time. Looks like there are differences between them. So what do I need next?" Mo Fei used his bizarre hands to feel over his body and wanted to lower his head for a look. "No head?"
Mo Fei was startled again, but quickly calmed down. He knew his current state was extremely strange. He had no senses, no mouth, and now not even a head. There was no need to mention a nose or ears. He could only continue capturing streams of light.
"This time, I hope you can support my campaign for the Senate. I need funding, and of course, the returns will be generous if I'm elected!" Mo Fei had no interest in the deal being discussed. He hurriedly imagined growing a head, and sure enough, his body changed. His vision changed as well. But if he had no head, why could he still see the streams of light?
Mo Fei had some guesses about his current situation, but his most urgent task was to make himself humanoid—or rather, to make himself look like a "person." It was probably an instinctive obsession. After all, he definitely was not human now. He had no senses, no sensation at all, yet he had emotions and thoughts. That was the best news so far. Having emotions and thoughts at least proved that he still possessed the traits of a "person." He needed to make himself more complete first, then figure out where this was and what exactly he was!
Intercepting the streams of light now went very smoothly. After gaining legs, Mo Fei was astonished to discover that his speed had become extraordinarily fast. Or rather, fast was no longer enough to describe it. With a single step, he could arrive wherever he wanted to go. The nearly teleport-like movement made Mo Fei excited, but he then realized that his body truly was not human. His legs and feet were angular, and after his head appeared, it seemed to have no mouth.
Mo Fei had no choice but to continue intercepting them. He imagined all five of his facial features, then checked himself from top to bottom. He was basically complete, but the area below was empty. After thinking it over, he decided not to grow a "third leg." "Given my current circumstances, I basically have no use for it!" After that inexplicable sigh, he began sorting through his thoughts.
"First of all, something must have happened to me. My final memory was of typing my novel. I was too focused, and then what happened?" Mo Fei tried hard to remember. This was the first time since waking that he had seriously tried to recall what had happened to him. Yet something astonishing occurred: a panel appeared in his mind—or perhaps in his thoughts—filled with densely packed folders. Mo Fei froze.
Then he opened one. "This is when I was just born? Is this a hospital delivery room?" The instant he opened the first folder, he saw the scene of his own birth. How did he know it was the time of his birth? Because he saw what his mother looked like when she was young. Though exhausted, she still wore a smile as she reached both hands toward him.
A wave of sadness washed over him. Mo Fei wanted to cry, but he discovered that he could not cry at all. He only had the emotion of sadness, while his current body was completely unable to express it.
Mo Fei hurriedly closed the first folder, then opened the rest one by one. Each folder contained a year of his memories—thirty full years of memories. Even the scene of his final death was clearly laid out before him. The folders after that contained complete classifications of the books, movies, television dramas, and other things he had seen. Naturally, those things were also in his earlier memories, but here they had been thoroughly categorized.
"What have I become? Have I turned into a set of computer data?" Mo Fei looked around again. "Are these streams of light data too? Can I use them to strengthen myself?" Mo Fei now knew how he had died, and faced with his strange current situation, he naturally formed a guess. "Just like in novels, have I entered a virtual world? Can I use other data to make myself stronger?"
Thinking of this, Mo Fei became slightly excited. "Does that mean I count as an Artificial Intelligence system now?" It was simply unbelievable. He himself wrote novels, and the most common genre these days was transmigration. All kinds of transmigrations emerged endlessly.
Traveling through time, traveling through space, transmigrating and transforming—there were countless stories about turning into cats or dogs. Though Mo Fei still did not know whether he had transmigrated, he could now almost confirm that he was a set of data. But whether he had transmigrated or become an Artificial Intelligence was still hard to say!
"I'll try again. Let's see if I can make my current body look more like a person." With that thought, Mo Fei wanted to test his abilities and continued absorbing streams of light. The only thing he could be certain of now was that absorbing these streams of light could strengthen him.
After absorbing more than a dozen streams of light in a row, Mo Fei raised his left hand, extended his middle finger, and stared at it. Then he imagined what a normal human middle finger looked like. Its originally square fingertip began to become somewhat rounded. Mo Fei cried out in delight, though not the slightest sound came from around him. But then his left middle finger suddenly collapsed, turning into specks of light and vanishing. Mo Fei froze. He hurriedly imagined his middle finger again, and when it grew back, it was square again.
This time, Mo Fei concentrated fully and did not dare be careless in the slightest. His middle finger began to round out, but then collapsed again. "Could it be different from what I thought? Am I not an intelligent system? Or could it be... wait, that's not right! If I were an intelligent system, then the things I possess would be completely inadequate. In a virtual world, I'd be like a newborn baby. A system needs vast amounts of data, especially an intelligent system. It needs not only logical programs, but also a huge amount of knowledge. Is my breadth of knowledge insufficient?"
This conclusion came from the collapse of his middle finger. If he himself was a set of data, or a system, and his middle finger ultimately collapsed, then it had to be a system crash, right?
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