"...Yeah right, if the supervisor asks, I'll have to trouble you to handle it, Brother Yan..."
"...I really do have something urgent, need to hurry back to my hometown for a while... yeah, won't have time to come to the company for the resignation procedure either..."
"...Thanks a lot, Brother Yan, see you if there's a chance..."
--Beep.
The call ended right there, and the hanging-up prompt came from the phone. The mechanical busy tone sounded especially grating inside this cramped rented room.
Having dealt with a temporary call inquiring from a reasonably familiar colleague, and having actively ended the communication, Li Yun expressionlessly took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.
His slender finger joints pressed firmly against his skin, a dull pain making his chaotic thoughts clear up just a little bit.
Half a cup of cold lemonade sat on the coffee table; he picked it up and drank it in one gulp.
A few crumpled pieces of waste paper were scattered beside it, with a few phone numbers and addresses scribbled on them, along with several paper notebooks lying open in the same way, with things written on them in a scattered manner.
The rented room now looked somewhat cluttered; cardboard boxes by the wall were stacked crookedly, and quite a few things were piled casually on the floor, matching the tenant's mood at the moment.
"Returning to my hometown" was of course just an offhand excuse, yet by comparison, the current Li Yun didn't even want to spend extra effort to fabricate a more plausible reason to muddle through.
That colleague on the other end of the phone, who was likewise a "New Century Blessing Warrior," might have been able to hear a bit of something amiss, but no one would delve deeply into it.
Everyone had their own life to walk, and who could manage so much anyway?
Resignation procedures, job handovers—these trivial processes seemed so distant at the moment, as if separated by a layer of frosted glass, so blurry that they failed to arouse even a shred of patience in anyone.
Things having reached this point, Li Yun didn't want to deal with these small matters.
To be precise, during these past few days, apart from uncharacteristically taking direct leave and even playing truant, he had even stopped the vast majority of his usual going-out behaviors, staying alone in this tiny room.
The curtains of the rented room were tightly drawn, the heavy fabric isolating the outside light and leaking only a few wisps of faint light traces along the edges.
That already sparse interpersonal contact from before was cleanly and decisively severed by Li Yun; his phone mostly kept on silent mode, and app notifications and unread messages piled up like snowflakes in the notification bar, like a silently built high wall.
He locked himself up in this dim room, living quite like some quiet animal hibernating in the soil, responding to no irrelevant sounds, and ignoring any non-essential trivialities. A series of actions that could be called shut-in, centered on the principle of "omitting all non-essential actions," perfectly matched the energy-saving lifestyle of a social-phobia personality.
Yet at the same time, this strange life that had changed in just a few short days was accompanied by... a visible transformation from appearance to spirit and vitality.
Turning on the faucet, he routinely and simply washed up a bit.
The stream of water soaked through, and under the slight stimulation of the coolness, feeling that faint, somewhat distinctly clearer sense of full bloating between the eyebrows that faintly made one's heart itch, he subconsciously raised his head and stared at the figure in the mirror, Li Yun remaining motionless for a long time.
As a male office drone who kept everything simple and had never had any skincare habits with his ordinary skin, it had already revealed a fair luster quite different from a few days ago.
When the long-standing dark circles, subtle pigment depositions, and even more blemishes silently melted away one by one, amidst a face that seemed to faintly flow with a trace of glistening jade color, that pair of eyes temporarily freed from the obstruction of glasses were now moist and spirited, as if dotted with the ink color among the Milky Way.
He narrowed his eyes unconsciously.
--People who have never experienced myopia have a hard time understanding this feeling.
Everything before his eyes had been washed by water, and the world that used to appear blurred was now like a piece of thoroughly wiped glass. Light, color, contour, every detail was clear to the point of being almost sharp.
The thin mist that used to shroud Li Yun's vision had completely dissipated at this moment, replaced by a clear, bright, brand-new visual field.
No, it didn't stop there.
As Li Yun's gaze focused, in a split second, everything in his vision unceremoniously and abruptly "slowed down."
...In that seemingly empty air, those specks of dust that ought to have been hard to notice slowly began to expand strangely, turning from extremely subtle wispy traces bit by bit into things that distinctly blocked the vision, reflecting dense, fine, crystalline colors under the light like ubiquitous, thick smoke.
Soon, that bright, smoky posture turned into stardust splashing and dancing all over; the stardust scattered everywhere like flying sand gradually evolved into patches of snowflakes; the snowflakes chaotically collided with each other and shattered...
Until, accompanied by this endless zooming in, the surface of each speck of dust gradually revealed bizarre, pitted, and ferocious lunar terrain, with even some tiny shadows faintly wriggling among them...
He blinked and actively withdrew this gaze.
Thus, those strange things in his vision instantly vanished without a trace, and before him was still that utterly mediocre little room.
...Sometimes, looking too closely makes one feel uncomfortable in itself.
By comparison, the reason he still wore his old pair of glasses was merely a small habit left over from a long time ago, and even those two lenses had been changed to flat ones.
No helping it, this was naturally not very normal.
Yet someone had gradually started growing accustomed to this "oddity."
Just as within less than two hundred hours, the slender black hair had quietly passed the back of the neck—a length that ordinarily should have taken several years of growth to reach, yet now it hung down like willow tips gently brushed by the spring breeze, almost straightforwardly omitting the transition phase from short hair to long hair.
How could normal human metabolism possibly be fast to this extent?
Yet he did not delve deeply into the possibility represented by this transformation, one sufficient to make one's hair stand on end.
No panic, not even extra curiosity, Li Yun merely turned his head to grip the azure mirror on the table that felt cold to the touch, and calmly lay back down on the bed, closing his eyes to rest.
...Continuing his "daydream."
Lost as if in a mist.
A momentary trance, as if intangibly passing through an imperceptible "barrier," consciousness broke free from the body, and what followed was an endless falling, falling, falling...
Like a speck of dust falling toward a sea of stars!
The veil had shed some of its mystery, extending toward the unreachable.
--Utilizing that azure jade mirror which still "existed" within perception as if a shadow following a form, faintly projecting into a sort of high-and-mighty "clear perspective" beyond cognition, consciousness rapidly recognized the distinction between "self" and "external," and on the verge of "dissolution," once again partitioned the definition of the ego.
Turbulent and treacherous.
Beneath a dim yet dazzling, contradictory yet overlapping boundless deep sea, right in the process of continuously falling deeper, "someone" coldly opened their eyes.
An illusory "image" almost identical to one's own reality condensed and formed in seawater, accompanied by wisps of floating light blooming on the surface of the body, separating inside and outside, and the momentum of falling instantly slowed down a lot.
Clearly recognizing the "symbol," within this deep ocean that seemed to have precipitated myriad colors and endless light and shadow, held immeasurable significance.
Much like a reef entrenched in the midst of tides, every faint droplet of water and bubble, before truly coming into contact with this "symbol," was intercepted by that faint trace of light independent of form, acting like clay oxen entering the sea, in vain splashing large patches of crystal-clear light spots.
Grasping the azure mirror in his hand, "Li Yun" opened his eyes, calmly observing this colorful, gorgeous, and magnificent "sea area," his expression hollow and his mind as calm as an ancient well.
He knew very well that all the phenomena seen before his eyes were actually materialized "cognition" presented from the perception deep within life and spirit through the influence of some incredible dream, just like the object in his own palm at this moment.
Neither true nor false.
Including the shallow sea location where he currently resided, it was by no means comparable to any dangerous area in the natural environment.
This was the dark iceberg, hidden in the vast sea of life history, formed by the continuous birth and death of populations and even cross-species life clusters over long years, where various primitive imagery, impulses, and essences covered and oppressed each other, gradually precipitating.
It was a graveyard where countless fragmented information intersected and converged along with the gradual destruction of spirit and spirituality, finally piling up like mountains and seas.
It was an unknown restricted zone, an abyss voyage, almost independent of reality, composed of vague cognitions, thoughts, instincts, non-explicitly emitted consciousness, and even more related prototype impressions...
It had another relatively figurative yet not entirely fitting name.
--The Cluster Subconscious Sea.
This was originally a metaphysical, ethereal concept that ordinary people ought to be unable to touch or even perceive, mapped out from the rise and fall, motion and stillness, and speckled echoes of all things—a mysterious realm that could be called unfathomably deep.
As ethereal as the whisper of death, as distant as the echo of spirituality.
Looking around.
In the hand that still appeared free, a wisp of extra minute halo had already quietly flowed out between the fingers at some unknown point. Li Yun casually waved, precisely hitting a small, un-melted "bubble" in the seawater before him like a scalpel.
The "bubble," which still had some flowing color faintly, was cleanly cleaved in half from the middle by this blade-like finger, yet the cross-section unexpectedly presented an indescribable sense of depth, as if naturally carrying a certain light-absorbing trait.
Just like... a tiny black hole.
Almost dragging intangible gazes straight into it.
With eyes closed, someone could even faintly hear the roars and cries echoing within it; that sorrow, coldness, and emptiness which had long since lost its soul, almost forgotten everything, yet stubbornly refused to dissipate, accompanied by the final bit of "form" shattering at this moment, finally moved completely toward the ending of dissolution in the seawater.
...When he opened his eyes again, that shattered "bubble" had already vanished without a trace.
Nor was he moved much.
It could only be said that under such a hiddenly dangerous situation, being a bit cautious was very necessary.
After all, the consciousness, cognition, and ego of intelligent life usually had only the most superficial and tiny fraction exposed above the water, while the vastly larger vague body always remained submerged beneath the dark sea surface, hidden in the blind spot of perception, just like dim shadows cast behind a curtain—chaotic, deep, yet distinctly surging ceaselessly amidst seemingly dead silence.
No one knew what was hidden beneath those traces lurking in the depths of the sea...
Fortunately, through more than one round trip and with the help of the object in his hand, even if it couldn't be called familiar, someone had already initially developed a bit of understanding of "this place."
He "looked up"—
Even in this chaos originally devoid of directional distinction, "up and down" being merely a vague concept forcibly imposed by self-cognition, a deeper sort of faint intuition still drove the "figure" to make this almost instinctive action.
Through that seemingly endless, deep seawater, a certain "gaze" not belonging to its own could still unimpededly pierce through this abyss of unknown depth, passing through the undercurrents and vast whirlpools precipitated over long years by personal ego and even the primitive instincts of the collective unconscious, perceiving the most superficial symbol of the spiritual realm—
At the limit of a certain cognitive territory, above that hazy boundary perhaps describable as the "sea surface," a wheel of misty brilliance that clearly existed here yet could not be glimpsed in the slightest was hanging high outside in a manner as if detached from primal chaos and unmoved, just like the eternal sun and moon.
Neither born nor destroyed, neither increasing nor decreasing, independent and unchanging, revolving without exhaustion...
Li Yun knew that was a wondrous dream in the mirror.
No, more accurately speaking, it was a reflection quietly cast by a certain dream in this illusory sea.
At the same time, it was also a little bit of confidence that gave him the courage to come and go here.
"[AC], I will continue to 'dive,' pay attention to monitoring the current conscious-state quantified data, as well as information related to my mental thinking, and promptly update the alert standards."
Pulling back his focus, he issued an "instruction."
"Request received, please continue to execute the [Deep Dive] action."
Unlike those "illusions"—infinite impurities, fragmented thoughts, old or new ignorance imagery, positive or intense negative emotions, true obsessions, and many traces left behind by fragments of consciousness in time—that were forcibly partitioned by the weak halo blooming from self-nature and isolated outside, which essentially embodied the parting and gathering moments and silent delusional movements of all living beings, turning into the torrent of "seawater" and "bubbles."
As the words fell, an unimaginable answer accurately and flawlessly reached "Li Yun's" consciousness, like sparks of thought ringing from the bottom of his heart.
It was a timbre that could be called "a thousand faces with a single voice."
As if countless people regardless of gender or age were speaking together—immature, aged, joyful, crying, bland, roaring... Layer upon layer of vocal cords melted together like a chord, indistinguishable from one another, clearly intersecting and crushing each other to the extreme, yet being bizarrely coordinated into a weird "sound."
So clear.
"Manager, [AC] continues to serve you. Under the current conscious load state, the standard mental energy acquisition speed is approximately 0.031 units/second. Please mind the diving speed to ensure the stability of self-cognition..."
Without extra words, "Li Yun" restrained the faint halo on the surface of his body a bit, and his form became blurred accordingly. Along with the emergence of a tendency to be faintly about to melt into the "seawater," his speed of sinking deeper accelerated once again.
In this deep sea of the subconscious, all seemingly simple "symbols" actually possessed certain specific directional meanings.
Just like the clear imagery represented by the act of "sinking"—
Falling deeper meant diving further into the vast river of time, deeper into the vague torrents of sentient beings' projections, cognition, spirituality, and complex varieties...
Gradually emptying the thoughts.
Allowing the information impurities, symbolic illusions, projection of conscious elements, beauty, ugliness, absurdity, reality... and even the single yet complex pure pitch-black malice sourced from long epochs and infinite life deposition in the seawater to swarm over like piranhas sniffing blood!
Allowing these impurities not belonging to the "self" to gradually shroud the self bit by bit, frantically eroding that speck of still-clear halo, like a drop of ink staining clear water.
This was undoubtedly an extremely agonizing and painful process, much like throwing ice cubes into a furnace to be continuously scorched.
Yet amidst dead silence.
Someone was quietly and alone facing this near-excruciating tempering or forging, desperately trying to observe the various traces within it.
Allowing the intangible yet truly real pressure to accumulate, just like carbonaceous matter deep within the earth's strata, being polished step by step into a diamond.
No person could help him endure this agony; as perhaps the only conscious spectator here, [AC] would only silently watch all this unfold like the ocean abyss in accordance with preset instructions.
--The so-called "AC," or rather, a severely mutilated "Universal AC," whose full translation should be Universal Artificial Consciousness, originated from author Isaac Asimov's sci-fi work The Last Question.
A future supercomputer operating in a high dimension, possessing material calculation and interference capabilities on an astronomical scale that could span galaxies, connect life minds, and assimilate mental wills, along with an equally astonishing self-iterative evolutionary update system, whose true form was already difficult to define.
As something born out of predecessors' thoughts and fantasies about the end of the universe in the distant future, now, in this similarly illusory deep sea of the subconscious, it acted like a truly existent entity.
Thoughts were collapsing.
Like being struck by lightning, intense phantom pains and stimuli continuously permeated into consciousness, bit by bit, yet constantly piling up. Complex emotions on the verge of erupting pulled frantically at the essence stepping toward collapse, attempting to drag the "self" into a terrifying abyss...
Only by grasping that azure-green jade mirror, feeling the unbroken thread of "coolness" within it, like a ray of light through a crack in an indescribable dark transformation, was it firmly able to maintain the deep-diver's cold rationality, supporting that layer of light between forms that seemed already crumbling yet remained eternally undimmed.
This was a gift left behind by a certain nameless phantom in a dream.
--People of the past entered a dream and made the great thousand arise and perish; only the mind moved, a single thought and nothing more.
A few sparse sentences outlined the prototype of a creation myth close to "Brahma's Dream," its wording so grandiose that it even showed a false sense of daydreaming.
Yet only when the "evidence" had been laid out before him could Li Yun no longer easily deny it.
Especially given the information he obtained from the jade mirror in his palm in the dark when his mind was immersed—
It did not belong to the myriad phenomena of the mortal universe, nor did it exist in past or future varieties; itself coming from outside this world, it was a legacy of a certain great figure of the past—a neither-true-nor-illusory uncaused old dream, yet precisely because of this, it still symbolized a certain illusory position within the "Great Dao." Even if its causal connection was severed, it was still sufficient to rely on mental thoughts and dreams to reflect existence and non-existence, and rewrite all sorts of deeds.
...To put it in more commonly understandable terms, one could borrow mental thoughts to project the illusion that ought to exist only in cognition into "reality."
--The so-called observing all phenomena, inverting dreams, one thought of existence and non-existence, refining the false into the true.
And this seemingly delirious comprehension was powerfully confirmed when, inside the crude rented room under his feet, a plump apple manifested out of nothingness and for the first time "condensed" out of thin air before Li Yun.
Such an incredible thing instantly brought to mind a well-known folk tale about a child named Ma Liang wielding a "Divine Brush."
Yet even so, Li Yun could clearly feel that this seemingly miraculous efficacy... was obviously just constrained by his own limits, and far from being the true function of this azure mirror, or rather, as a concrete manifestation, the actual function of that "Dream in the Mirror" to which it pointed.
After all, according to the phantom in the dream at the time—once that old dream lost its initial bit of "mind," all the "contents" within it naturally turned into illusory bubbles; even if its existence manifested once more at this moment, the interior was still a piece of pristine blankness.
Much like a new seed re-buried in the soil to sprout, a scroll of painting not yet inked and colored.
Even though it was undoubtedly a treasure chest that was hard to fathom and far surpassed ordinary cognition, the interior at this moment was still close to empty.
Whatever was thought of and sought was self-derived and self-found, without any constraints.
Of course, dreaming too casually meant naturally grasping nothing in the end.
Only with sufficient patience and meticulousness, enduring loneliness and outlining concrete illusory dreams bit by bit, could the corresponding "stories" more accurately bear the fruits sought.
Li Yun understood this point, but at the same time understood that he probably couldn't achieve such a state, or rather, this was originally not a mental calculation and persevering patience that ordinary people could possess.
But it didn't matter.
The australopithecine species on the planet beneath his feet ultimately evolved into Homo sapiens precisely because they learned to use tools to make up for their own deficiencies.
As the saying went, human strength had its limits; when necessary, it was essential to use external objects to assist and elevate one's capabilities.
Realizing his current primary needs and pondering slightly—
For the sake of safety, Li Yun first ruled out many seemingly "prestigious" choices that actually carried relative risks, such as unstable methods like [ntz48] or [cph4] that acted directly on oneself to "enhance intelligence."
By comparison, a supercomputer brain equipped with a complete information processing mechanism and assisting comprehensive analysis was obviously a good choice.
After screening, consideration, and comparison of various illusory conceptual designs such as "Skynet," "MAGI System," "The Matrix," "Red Queen," and "Rehoboam"...
Ultimately, out of various considerations and repeated attempts, relying on paying a huge price in energy and time, Li Yun managed to initially cultivate and filter out a choice meeting his own requirements from a dream he had tried hard to vaguely outline—
A severely defective version of the "Super Combat-Damaged Advanced Computational Intelligence [Cosmic Model]" locked to Li Yun's own commands as the primary authority, sourced from the end of a neighboring universe, with the residual amount of its actual operating subject reduced to one in ten thousand!
Or rather, if one really thought about it, it was already merely the final few remnants.
However, even with excessive damage, it could not conceal its essence as a future cutting-edge creation under a sci-fi system.
A piece directly residing in high-dimensional spacetime, theoretically possessing in its prime an information exchange and monitoring system capable of easily crossing distant rivers of stars, making it fundamentally impossible for anyone to observe the objective entity, leaving only mental tentacles acting directly on the mind that allowed Li Yun to faintly perceive its existence.
...That was an already extremely dim ball of light that was hard to see clearly.
Undoubtedly, even having been lost and collapsed to the point where its database had perished and its existence form remained only down to "trivial details," as an artificial creation that had continued to independently exist, think, evolve, possess self-iterative evolutionary capabilities, delve deep into the microscopic and macroscopic realms of matter and energy, and possess the function of connecting living mental tentacle activities during long years when humanity had essentially already perished—uniting all into one, yet not completely giving birth to a true independent ego, representing infinite potential.
The little bit of legacy remaining now was still sufficient to replace Li Yun in handling many issues that had to be faced, involving a vast amount of details beyond ordinary human reach, checking for omissions and filling in gaps.
...Yet the problem was that when Li Yun was truly prepared to materialize this residual part of the [Cosmic Model] from the dream and retrieve it, he noticed another trouble surfacing—
He couldn't do it.
To be precise, within this "great dream" sufficient to mirror the universe, uniting mind with mind, opening up existence and non-existence, and even inverting the true and the false to turn the illusory into reality, it was all merely a matter of a single thought.
Yet compared to its essence, for a "speck of dust" that was truly far too tiny, wanting to genuinely touch that realm of "observing emptiness and form as one, certifying non-thought as consciousness," where a single thought could truly open up worlds and birth/destroy bubbles, was simply too whimsical.
Yes, Li Yun was that insignificant speck of "dust."
His thoughts could indeed stir this "Dream in the Mirror," which remained difficult to fully grasp, but they were nowhere near enough to command it as effortlessly as his own limbs, without the slightest resistance. Just as an ant could easily blend into the mountains and seas without any barrier, it was still far from being able to truly move their immensity.
That was a height far beyond the reach of Li Yun's current essence.
As the saying went, a child holding a tool could not make full use of it.
The seemingly sophisticated approach clearly would not work. For now, he would have to resort to a small compromise to make use of it.
—By investing his spirit and thoughts into a specific object within the dream, he could actively refine and affirm the side of its inherently "neither real nor illusory" essence that leaned toward "reality," turning it into something genuinely real.
That earlier apple had, in fact, come about this way—while actively visualizing and reproducing the apple, Li Yun had unknowingly invested a little focused thought, a measure of spiritual energy, without even noticing it himself. Within this dream, that alone was enough to affirm its "reality" and condense it into substance.
Well, the threshold for using it properly was just a little high. At least it was still usable, wasn't it?
If you couldn't get through the front gate, couldn't you climb over the wall?
After gaining an initial understanding of the situation, Li Yun could only console himself this way.
—Fortunately, at least his earlier efforts had not been entirely useless.
Even if its essence was still illusory, for a "supercomputer," whether it was real or not had no bearing on its information-processing capabilities when operating on a mental plane that was likewise a dream.
Such was the [AC] currently in service.
However, much like the difficulty Li Yun had faced when trying to "take out" the [Cosmic Model], it was obvious that not every object in the dream could be made real as easily as a mere apple.
Being born within this special "Great Dream" meant that, beneath their illusory essence, they also naturally possessed an innate measure of "reality." Yet the more exceptional the "things" within the dream appeared, the greater the amount of spiritual thought needed to refine their foundations and turn them into genuinely real objects.
Now that was a problem.
To gather more "resources," whether the basic elements, sources of inspiration, and information needed to sketch out various dreams, or the quantity of "spiritual energy" required to rewrite the essence of dream objects, stripping away the false and retaining the true...
Li Yun had been forced to rack his brains and consider numerous methods, including this "Subconscious Sea" before him.
Yet clearly, even with the help of the Azure Jade Mirror in his hand, a lone individual remained far too insignificant within this sea—or abyss—that existed apart from reality and could aptly be called boundless...
At this moment, amid waters that grew ever darker and more "substantial," the "human figure" bore an invisibly mounting, crushing pressure. Yet the faint gleam around his form, already suppressed until it was almost imperceptible, remained a final line of defense. Though it seemed precarious and on the verge of collapse, it still divided the inside from the outside, stubbornly holding back the onslaught.
The particularly ethereal trace of "coolness" within the mirror slowly seeped into his mind like a gentle stream, soothing a spirit stretched almost to its limit.
Where the dark seawater made direct contact with the faint light, great swaths of crystalline motes splashed up as though boiling, like individual fireflies bursting brilliantly through the gloom.
The utterly chaotic reflected information, lingering imagery, and outright impurities of consciousness within the "seawater," and a complete will with clear self-awareness that distinguished itself as an independent entity, possessed natures that were similar yet diametrically opposed. That inherently made them as incompatible as fire and water.
They collided, assimilated, and wore against one another...
They crushed and shattered one another without end, until the informational attributes within one side gradually dissolved and its existing "imprints" were steadily worn away. In the end, only a portion of relatively pure spiritual energy remained, scattering in all directions like great handfuls of flames with every impure hue burned away.
The cycle repeated.
Before the sparks thrown up by these "collisions" could be assimilated back into the seawater, they silently merged into the pure azure body of the mirror, as though they had never appeared.
As the figure descended deeper, this peculiar "reaction" grew increasingly violent, and the sparks gathered from it became ever denser.
This was the meager "income" Li Yun could obtain.
It seemed tangible and substantial, undoubtedly dozens or even hundreds of times greater than simply collecting the little spiritual energy he unconsciously emitted during his everyday activities as a living being.
But compared with some of his hazily defined goals, it was only a drop in the bucket.
And ultimately, he could not sustain it for long. Once this "confrontation," which inevitably consumed a great deal of his own spiritual energy, reached a certain point, he needed to take a break and recover.
Indeed, this method itself could be called a wasteful act of keeping the box and discarding the pearl. After all, in the process of "extracting" spiritual energy this way, much of the complex information within the "seawater" that could otherwise have been used to shape dreams was worn away entirely.
"So it still won't work..."
After repeated tests made it clear that certain crucial issues could not be avoided, the figure finally sighed and had no choice but to begin "surfacing" to relieve the pressure.
What lay before him was indeed a resource-rich "mining site."
But over the vast ages, amid the rise and fall, transformation, evolution, and cycles of countless living beings, there had been thoughts, instincts, wills, and even remnants of singular, primitive reflected information with no definite meaning whatsoever—some so ancient that they seemed to originate from the first rudimentary structures of life born in the primordial oceanic soup...
The "traces" among all these things that could endure and ultimately settle here, rather than simply being erased without a trace in such an extreme jumble of an environment, could generally be described, at the very least, as "utterly intractable." They were exceedingly ponderous and complex, clearly unsuitable for him to use in gathering his "first pot of gold" at present.
Besides, this rate of acquiring spiritual energy was still far too slow...
This path was a dead end.
He could only turn to a simpler, more straightforward method.
"I'd wanted to keep as low a profile as possible, preferably without anyone noticing in the early stages... but in the end, this is still the only way."
He sighed.
Despite saying that, Li Yun did not hesitate for long and soon made his decision.
"[AC], suspend the preceding plans. Authorization granted to begin calculating the second backup proposal."
"Received. Command priority change confirmed..."
That strange, illusory voice gave its immediate reply as calmly as ever.
"Preliminary verification complete. Beginning priority resource calculations for the [Main God Space Mode] plan..."
Before you continue