The professor stood up, leaning on his pipe, and paced back and forth in the cramped laboratory.
"For an organization to maintain a high degree of cohesion, it must have beliefs and a shared ideology, and every member must have a sense of mission. Historically successful organizations have generally followed this principle. Organizations that rely on the lure of profit and the coercion of power quickly disintegrate. But you are different—"
The professor turned and stood still, looking at Huang Liang. "As far as I know, although you have centralized power, your rule is not brutal; you control a lot of wealth, but you do not use money to motivate your members; your members are all self-motivated and have an unimaginable spirit of dedication, just like you, who are willing to commit crimes, go to jail, and sacrifice everything, including their lives, for the organization."
From this, it seems you must have lofty beliefs, dreams in your hearts, and a mission on your shoulders, which is why you can forge ahead regardless of everything. But the problem is, it seems you have nothing! You have nothing! You don't even know who you are, why you listen to them, or even who you are listening to, yet you keep doing it. Have you ever thought about why this is?
Although the chill of the Canada winter wouldn't reach the underground laboratory, Huang Liang felt cold all over, and the heating in the laboratory seemed to be turned up a bit too high. A fine layer of sweat seeped onto his back, sticking to his underwear and making him feel uncomfortable all over.
Mei Yiqiu asked almost all the questions he had wanted to ask over the past year, and from a professor's perspective, he analyzed them more thoroughly than he had thought about in the past.
"I've thought about it, but I can't figure out why," he said.
Mei Yiqiu said, "Well, let me ask you, do you ever feel like someone is controlling your consciousness? Like... an octopus's tentacles, with a tentacle reaching out from somewhere unknown, all the way into your brain, influencing your consciousness?"
Huang Liang was stunned.
He stood there, almost unable to move. He knew that if he moved even slightly, he would tremble, a state he never wanted to show in front of others.
So he remained still, like a ninja, and said, "Please elaborate further, Professor."
The professor said, "Actually, this is just a guess, and there's nothing to reveal. You'll have to find the answer yourself. That's why I'm here with you, because your answer might also be the answer I'm looking for, and it concerns the fate of humanity. If there really is a super octopus, controlling tentacles like yours, to invade such a small world as humanity, what would its purpose be?"
Huang Liang gradually calmed down, realizing he wouldn't get an answer today. He bowed gratefully to the professor and said, "Thank you, Professor Mei. Your words have enlightened me and relieved many of my worries. If I find the answer, I will definitely tell you."
Mei Yiqiu laughed and said, "Okay, okay, that day will come." He added, "Don't take it too seriously. You should still maintain your usual caution. Although an octopus's brain may not be able to know what its tentacles are thinking, it's always good to be careful."
"I know." Huang Liang nodded solemnly, closed his eyes to calm himself down, and then asked, "Professor, you just said that we need to reassess the strength of 'all parties.' Who else besides us are the 'all parties' you mentioned?"
"The situation might be more complicated than you think," Mei Yiqiu said. "I'll try to keep it simple. This Madam Situ," he pointed to Situ Yuli with his pipe, "Used to work in Laboratory No. 19 under LBNL, a very secretive lab. To this day, we still don't know who founded it or how many experiments beyond human imagination it has conducted. One of the projects was the human chip, yes, the one you felt on Charlie's neck."
Then, Mei Yiqiu told Huang Liang about Laboratory No. 19 and the emergence of independent consciousness on the Internet without any concealment.
Huang Liang was stunned. It took him a while to recover before he said, "This world is much more complicated than I knew!" He remembered the GHOST on his phone, which now confirmed some of his previous guesses, but the truth was even more bizarre than he had imagined.
"Does the organization know about the existence of the Internet Consciousness?" He suddenly thought of this question.
"Your organization's higher-ups most likely know this," Mei Yiqiu said. "I even speculated in the past whether Internet Consciousness was the source of Parasitic Consciousness, or whether it was one of your parasitic targets. However, I later dismissed this idea. All indications suggest that the Internet is wavering, or that it has its own purpose. But one thing is certain: it knows more than we do, and all information disseminated through the internet will become part of its memory."
Huang Liang gasped, "That does sound terrifying!"
"What's even more terrifying is who was behind this project? Who founded Laboratory No. 19, and who terminated the project and killed all the researchers and subjects?"
"Now that the project has been terminated, what can Mr. Dickinson do...?"
"The chip on Charlie's neck was implanted recently. Qingmu obtained it; we don't know the specific details, but as long as there are still subjects alive, it means this project likely hasn't ended, but has been moved to a more secretive location."
Huang Liang felt a headache coming on. He needed time to process all the information he had suddenly learned. He said, "Professor, thank you for your trust and for telling me so much. I will keep my promise and tell you as soon as I get the answer I want. But what can I do for you now? You didn't call me here just to tell me this, did you?"
"Of course not," Mei Yiqiu said. " Charlie has been researching related topics, so after getting the chip, he decided to try it himself. This is our first time performing such a surgery, and we only have a superficial understanding of the chip's principles; we've only connected it to 24 of the 31 pairs of spinal nerves. We haven't yet found a connection between the chip and Internet signals, and Charlie isn't feeling well, so I thought of stimulating it with acupuncture, but we don't have a reliable doctor who understands both acupuncture and neurology."
"So I delivered myself right to your door?" Huang Liang laughed.
Mei Yiqiu said, "It's not exactly like they offered themselves up; that wasn't the main purpose, it was more of a side effect."
"Just a side effect? What's the main purpose then?"
"Your organization sent you to North America, probably because of William Wolf, right?"
"That was true before."
"That makes sense. They originally intended for you to come directly to Vancouver, but they sent you to Los Angeles instead. I think their target is probably me; if they can get closer to Wolf through me, that would be perfectly natural. Of course, they might have other motives. Anyway, since we're going to meet anyway, I might as well take the initiative. I don't want to accidentally get injured or anything and then be rescued by you; that kind of movie plot is too risky."
"So you had your assistant find me. But I still don't understand, how did you know where I was?"
"That's not difficult. You have a GHOST app on your phone, right? It knows your location. Besides, Los Angeles is Wolf Family territory; every little thing that happens here doesn't escape their eyes. Of course, I didn't contact you entirely on my own initiative; I just took the initiative a bit, following your organization's intentions. That's called 'going with the flow'!"
Huang Liang took out his phone and glanced at it. "So, the ' Internet ' has been watching me all along?"
"You can't say it's 'staring' at you. If you don't actively send messages to GHOST, it just knows where you are," Mei Yiqiu said.
"Should I delete this awful thing?"
"That's unnecessary. Theoretically, as long as we have cell phones, the ' Internet's' brain can track our every move. As for this GHOST, I don't know how Qingmu made it; it's rather special..."
Mei Yiqiu's expression suddenly turned a little strange, like a mischievous old man playing a prank. "You can try to be friends with it, because... it's a bit like you!"