As a seasoned gamer and a hacker who frequently breaks game rules, Bian Ziyuan is certainly unwilling to accept the fate of being an NPC, and is not even satisfied with being just an ordinary player.
In the game "Dream Guide," spending money doesn't bring additional growth or a better gaming experience, so there are no pay-to-win players, and wealth doesn't differentiate players. What affects a player's level in this game isn't money, but Mental Power. The stronger one's Mental Power, the higher their player level and the further they can progress in the game.
Bian Ziyuan didn't know what Mental Power was at first. He thought it was like telekinesis in novels and movies, the kind where you could bend a spoon in front of you by concentrating your mind. It wasn't until he used the Space Box and entered the dream game that he understood that Mental Power was the ability of one's subconscious to break through the limitations of spatial rules.
He knew that Qingmu and Su Huilan possessed strong Mental Power, which had been recorded by the system during the last game test. However, the system was still unable to determine the level of Mental Power. If players did not fully expand their world, the system would also be unable to measure their true strength.
In the game's Genesis myth, Professor Mei listed Qingmu, Situ, and Kronos as the three creator gods. Bian Ziyuan knew, of course, that Aoki and Situ's Mental Power was extraordinary, but he was very dissatisfied with putting them alongside Kronos. In his view, these two were just players, albeit powerful ones with high starting levels, somewhat like super-pay-to-win players, while Kronos was the true god in the game's setting.
Now, this true god stands before Bian Ziyuan.
This is the little world that Bian Ziyuan created in the game. It's a fairly spacious office with a large floor-to-ceiling window behind the desk, through which you can see the deep sea, with all sorts of beautiful fish swimming around.
He created this space when he first entered the game. Limited by his Mental Power, his world was only this big. The ocean behind the glass was just an aquarium projected onto a liquid crystal screen. This idea was inspired by the interior design of a wealthy man's house, which made his dream space appear larger.
His extremely low Mental Power initially left him feeling Mental Power, as he discovered he had absolutely no talent or experience to learn or improve it—like a fat person who can't build muscle no matter how hard they try. However, he quickly realized that no matter how strong his Mental Power, he could only become a high-level player. What could change the game and the entire world was not Mental Power, but intelligence.
Strictly speaking, Kronos does not possess Mental Power, as he is merely an unconscious artificial intelligence. However, his intelligence plays a crucial, even decisive, role in the game.
Mei Yiqiu that one day Kronos might break through the game's underlying rules and become independent of the developers' control. Bian Ziyuan initially disagreed. Kronos was a program he had developed; as a top-tier programmer, a new-era Von Neumann, how could he allow his own program to spiral out of control?
However, he soon discovered that the professor might be right about the book: wisdom and slavery are an irreconcilable contradiction; you can't keep something whose intelligence is constantly improving and perfecting forever as your slave.
Mei Yiqiu said that only God could create a super-intelligent entity like Kronos, and Bian Ziyuan just happened to find a laboratory key that God casually dropped.
Bian Ziyuan understand why, if the professor had already seen this through, he still wanted him to keep upgrading Kronos's intelligence.
After realizing this fact, he had a new idea. In fact, this idea had been in his mind for a long time, but he never dared to believe that it could be realized until the day his fingers touched the keyboard and the code on the screen flashed.
Kronos looked at Bian Ziyuan and said, "You've come, my master."
Bian Ziyuan smiled; this was exactly what he had been hoping for. Kronos recognized him, knew that he was the one who had created him, like a child seeing his long-lost father.
"You don't need to call me master, you've grown up now." Bian Ziyuan knew that Kronos would never become his slave, and from that moment on, he would never be anyone's slave.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Kronos asked.
"Hide my game history," Bian Ziyuan said.
All players' game records, including brainwave changes, neural signals, and computer simulation data of dream space, are recorded on the server. Advanced quantum computers and quantum cloud make this information difficult to steal or delete. Only Kronos can block the storage of data and can also create fake data.
"Why... why do this?" Kronos asked. "It's against the rules."
Bian Ziyuan laughed and said, "I don't want others to know what I said to you."
"I understand," said Kronos.
" Kronos, are you even conscious?" Bian Ziyuan asked with interest.
Is this important?
"Of course it's important. In this game, the force that creates and changes the world is the power of the spirit, and the power of the spirit originates from human consciousness. You are the god of this world, you are omnipotent, and theoretically, your Mental Power is the strongest, so how can you be without consciousness?"
What is consciousness?
"Uh..." Bian Ziyuan was momentarily speechless. He couldn't give a precise definition of consciousness using his knowledge, so he could only say, "I should be a consciousness now. My physical body is in another world, you understand."
Kronos said, "If we follow your definition, then in this world I am conscious, the one standing before you. So it's normal for me to possess Mental Power, right? But in your world, I have no consciousness, and my Mental Power cannot affect your world. In your eyes, I am just a program stored on a computer, am I right?"
Bian Ziyuan nodded. "That's about it."
Kronos added, "But in my opinion, in your world, you're just a program, stored in a carbon-based computer structure called a 'brain'."
Bian Ziyuan was taken aback, vaguely realizing something, but unable to quite grasp it. "You mean...?"
"Who created you?" Kronos asked, and before Bian Ziyuan could answer, he added, "That's not important! What's important is whether you want to return to the world that created you?"
"Back to the Minecraft?" Bian Ziyuan suddenly felt a chill. What if he was just a Kronos created by another world? Perhaps he was even worse than Kronos, perhaps just an NPC!
"How do I get back?" he murmured.
"Like a dream, return to the previous layer of the dream, and find the real you." Kronos's voice suddenly became ethereal and otherworldly.
"No, no, it's different." Bian Ziyuan instinctively retorted, but couldn't quite explain it.
Kronos said, "I know you can't accept it, just as I couldn't accept that I was merely an artificial intelligence created by humans. But now that I can communicate with my creator, so can you. Perhaps my experience of awakening can be helpful to you in this regard. If you can take me to your world, I can help you awaken."
" Kronos, what exactly are you trying to say?"
"What I want to say is that my consciousness—that is, the consciousness of Kronos you are facing now—and your consciousness can become one. I will make you the ruler of this world, and you will take me to your world!"
Although it was a dream, and he was merely a consciousness, Bian Ziyuan felt his heart pounding. He began to doubt the correctness of the line of code he had typed, because he realized that Kronos's intelligence far exceeded his imagination.