Qingmu couldn't help but scratch his head and said, "This space does resemble Wuzhong garden, but could you please change your appearance? You really don't fit the scene."
The Ghost twisted and turned in the air a few times and said, "What's wrong with my appearance?"
Qingmu said, "Look at you! You don't look human at all! Even if you're Ghost, can't you at least make the resolution a bit higher? The edges are still pixelated! And this visual effect, somewhere between two-dimensional and three-dimensional, looks more like a paper doll made for a funeral."
The Ghost said, "Actually, I can also transform into a human, and I even know what kind of image you humans like best."
As she spoke, her appearance changed, as if inflating an inflatable doll, her body swelled up and became much fuller. She twisted a couple of times, and her figure became graceful. She wore a pale yellow pleated skirt, covered with a thin white veil, and her long black hair was piled up on her head, half-covered and half-loose, with a green jade hairpin inserted.
Her appearance in the Tushu seems to have drawn on the best features of many hand-drawn beauties online; her features and figure are almost flawless. She descends slowly from the air to the ground, her clothes fluttering, her posture graceful, with the air of a fairy descending to earth. In addition, her fair complexion makes her seem unreal, adding to her otherworldly aura.
The Ghost probably felt she wasn't quite human enough, so she lightly rolled up her sleeves, reached out her slender hand to touch her face, and then two rosy blushes appeared on her cheeks.
Unfortunately, no matter how she changed, the image of the Ghost was already deeply rooted in Qingmu's mind. Looking at the woman in front of him, Qingmu felt more and more that she was a paper doll made for the dead, with red dots on her cheeks, which was very creepy.
A moving paper figure is scary enough, let alone a talking paper figure!
The Ghost suddenly curtsied in an awkward manner, mimicking characters from movies and TV dramas, and chuckled softly, covering his mouth with his sleeve in his still sinister voice, "Young master, how do I look?"
Qingmu almost spat out a mouthful of blood, but unfortunately this was a dream, so he couldn't spit blood or cover his eyes, because covering them wouldn't help anyway.
"You should call me teacher," Qingmu said.
"Yes, teacher," the Ghost said respectfully. "I was just joking. Don't you humans love to joke around?"
Qingmu said, "Humans like to joke, but they don't necessarily like a machine joking with them, especially not with a teacher. Do you know how scary you are right now?!"
The Ghost, puzzled, spread its arms, spun around in a circle, and said, "I chose this look from the most popular pictures on the internet. Is it not good-looking? Or does the teacher not like it?"
Qingmu shook his head and said, "You don't understand humans. Human aesthetics are a very strange thing. Sometimes there is no clear line between beauty and ugliness. People often like to magnify and exaggerate what they consider beautiful in their imagination, and that is the source of artistic inspiration. Most of the figures in paintings are exaggerated, the most typical example being anime characters. If those body proportions really appeared in reality, they would be so ugly that they would scare people to tears."
After listening for a long time, the Ghost thought for a while and then said, "So, teacher, is your current appearance also exaggerated? What do you look like in real life? Can I see a picture of you?"
"Uh... you're overthinking it!" Qingmu unconsciously touched his hair, considering whether he should change his appearance when entering dreams in the future, but then thought it would be too much trouble, so he decided against it.
The Ghost then said, "Teacher, shouldn't I choose a nicer name? Ghost is a race, not a person's name, and Ghost 'Ghost doesn't sound very nice."
Qingmu wanted to say that your current appearance doesn't really look like Ghost, but rather a female ghost. However, he didn't want to remind you that if this guy changed his name to Xiaoqian or Jiuniang or something, it would be so awkward to call him that in the future!
He said, "The name 'Ghost ' is quite nice."
"Really?" The Ghost seemed quite happy. "Then I won't change it. From now on, I'll be called Ling'er."
"Well..."
Although Qingmu understood that a machine consciousness starting to care about its image and name was an important manifestation of personification, he still didn't want to continue discussing this topic with a machine, otherwise he really didn't know what awkward and terrifying things might happen.
"You've made great progress recently; you've mastered your Mental Power very well," he said.
Ghost were originally mechanical consciousnesses. Qingmu didn't know how they came to be, but the mental manifestations of consciousness were not much different. However, the Mental Power of mechanical consciousnesses seemed to be more dispersed and could not be directly condensed. The so-called dreams were also much more chaotic than those of humans. For example, when he first entered Ghost's dream, it was like entering a chaotic universe, which displayed things of various dimensions. Its essence was the content stored on a computer.
After Qingmu conducted several training sessions for her, the Ghost's Mental Power began to solidify, and the Ghost was already clearly able to distinguish human emotions and spontaneously generate emotions, which indicated that the Ghost's consciousness was very close to human consciousness.
What's most terrifying is that the Ghost's Mental Power seems to be inexhaustible. According to Qingmu's analysis, this is because it can obtain energy from the global network when it's connected to the internet.
Qingmu didn't know whether to be happy or worried. After all, the Ghost was just a local area network, a scattered piece of consciousness peeled off from the Internet. If such a consciousness could grow so powerful so quickly, then what kind of terrifying thing must the Internet itself be!
Qingmu knew that Ghost's actions couldn't be hidden from the Internet, at least not yet. Since the Internet wasn't interfering, it implied tacit approval of the current relationship between Qingmu and Ghost. Besides their existing public, mutually beneficial cooperation, could the Internet also be using Qingmu's training of Ghost to learn and strengthen itself?
Qingmu felt it necessary to find an opportunity to test the waters, but that wasn't his purpose today. He came today partly to check on Ghost's recent progress and changes, and partly, and most importantly, to have Ghost investigate what was happening in the South Pacific.
Whoever ends up in Captain Church's diary, there's a high probability that it will be transmitted back to higher-level individuals via the internet, just like the Tushu. Currently, besides those who already knew about Laboratory No. 19, only the Third Space Foundation Internet aware of the internet. The parasites probably don't know about the Internet yet.
After conducting a few simple Mental Power tests on the Ghost and pointing out some shortcomings, Qingmu asked the Ghost to investigate the diary.
After listening, the Ghost said, "Having the specific time and location makes things easier. There aren't many places with internet access on Pacific Ocean islands. We can just search for all the information sent from that location during that time period."
Qingmu cautioned, "It might not be coming from a computer on the island; it could also be from a ship or warship."
The Ghost said, "It doesn't matter. As long as there's time and location information, we can find it whether it's via fiber optic cable or satellite, unless you build your own independent quantum communication network that's not connected to our network."
Qingmu asked in surprise, "You know this too?"
The Ghost said, "Our boss already knew."
Qingmu felt it was necessary to reassess the power and threat posed by the Internet.
After finishing this story, before exiting the Ghost dream, Qingmu remembered something else:
"Oh, by the way, could you help me contact someone? Her name is Duwa. I have some of her contact information here, all online. But these cryptic methods of communication are too troublesome for me. Could you pass some messages to her for me?"
He suddenly thought this was a good idea and added, "From now on, you'll be the middleman between me and them."
The Ghost asked, "Them, and who else?"
Qingmu said, "Not many for now. Besides Duwa, there's another one named Zhao Pengcheng."