Chapter 765: Neural Network
The Tree of Wisdom had arrived.
Its branches rustled in the wind. It sounded like a murmur, a sigh, and a low laugh.
In addition to pollen, there were also a lot of colorful leaves. The fairies scattered their flowers and flew away with the wind. When they landed on humans and monsters, they were like crystal-clear snowflakes that disappeared without a trace, it was as if they had fused with the flesh and blood of carbon-based creatures.
Thousands of translucent tentacles slowly hung down from the tree canopy, as though they were decorative streamers and lights for this strange festival. However, they also slowly squirmed, danced, and expanded.
The dancing of the tentacles carried a demonic rhythm, causing everyone’s breathing and heartbeat to involuntarily slow down. It was as if they were in a bottomless sea, dancing with the world’s largest jellyfish.
All the people and monsters in Peach Blossom Town closed their eyes and murmured, sighed, and smiled with the Tree of Wisdom.
While they were waiting with joy, the translucent tentacles finally arrived on top of their heads.
The tentacles protruded out small thorns that were as small as goose b.u.mps, and secreted a large amount of sticky mucus that a.s.sailed their nostrils.
First, they wrapped themselves around the bodies of humans and monsters. The thorns gently pierced into their skin and stimulated biological electricity, connecting their nerves to the nerves of humans.
The end of the tentacles slowly bloomed again, like colorful crab-claw chrysanthemums, gently and slowly covering the heads of the humans and monsters. It was just like the superbrain helmet developed by the people of Dragon City, which could create a virtual world.
People either sat cross-legged with solemn expressions or they were drawn into the air by the tentacles and danced in the air.
They put on all kinds of strange postures, soaring like eagles, running like lions and tigers, twisting like dragons and snakes.
The monsters whose heads were covered by the ends of the tentacles actually laughed like humans. They even used their deformed and twisted organs to spit out unclear human language and mumble in their sleep.
This scene was so “harmonious and natural”, but it was also so weird that it made people’s bodies shiver and their hair stand on end!
At this moment, an extremely thick tentacle that was surging with colorful light from the root to the end crawled out from the deepest part of the tree canopy and slowly extended in front of Meng Chao.
The end of the tentacle that was as big as a flower bud slowly bloomed. Inside the translucent “petals” were cl.u.s.ters of fluorescent “stamens” or “nerve cl.u.s.ters.”
They did not simply stab Meng Chao’s head.
Instead, they stopped in midair and trembled slightly, as if they were inviting Meng Chao to enter a marvelous new world.
Meng Chao sensed the nervousness and vigilance of Lu Siya behind him.
He took a step forward and stood between the translucent tentacles and Lu Siya so that the Tree of Wisdom would not notice anything unusual about Lu Siya.
At the same time, he constructed a “memory palace” deep inside his brain.
Not long ago, the thing that worried Meng Chao the most was that the monster mastermind had read his most core memory—the memory that originated from the apocalypse.
Now, however, the monster civilization was at its end. Even if part of his memory was stolen, the monster mastermind would not be able to change the outcome of being completely crushed by the torrent of steel.
Therefore, Meng Chao deduced that the final trap carefully laid by the monster mastermind was not to “steal” but to “implant.”
Just as Lu Siya said, she wanted to implant some “mind viruses” into the depths of the brain of the exploration team members. In the final battle, they would explode and spread like a zombie virus, turning a large number of humans into its puppets.
Of course, if the mind viruses were to be believed, they would have to steal part of Meng Chao’s memories and thoughts.
Then, through Meng Chao’s thoughts, he would take advantage of the situation and make it imperceptible, so that Meng Chao would not be able to sense the process of the implantation. He would even think that all thoughts were free will.
In order to gain the Tree of Wisdom’s trust and attract the other party’s attention, and even let the other party unwittingly open the monster mastermind’s “brain port”, Meng Chao did not plan to completely defend his brain.
He deliberately piled a large number of memories of his daily life on the outermost edge of the memory palace.
They were all memories of eating, drinking, defecating, living, living, and training crazily. They did not involve any secrets, and it did not matter even if the monster mastermind spied on them.
Then, there were the memories related to Broken Star Club, Blue Home, Battle G.o.d Palace, the Lair Reconstruction Committee, and a series of commercial arrangements from Superstar Resource Recovery Company.
A large number of commercial secrets were involved.
However, apart from him, the higher-ups of Broken Star Club and other organizations also knew about these secrets. With the penetration of the monster civilization into Dragon City, the monster mastermind had many channels to know about it, and even knew about it already.
Moreover, these secrets did not involve the strategic development direction of Dragon City, nor did they affect the victory or defeat of the Monster War. They were typical “important but ineffective” secrets.
On the third floor of the memory palace, Meng Chao prepared some memories that involved the profound meaning of Battle G.o.d Lei Zongchao’s martial arts, as well as the various items in the ancient ruins.
These were the core secrets of Dragon City.
Of course, all the memories were incomplete and unclear. Even if the thinking tentacles of the monster mastermind could drill to this floor, it would be impossible for it to extract any effective information from the mottled images in a short time, then, it would use the information to turn defeat into victory.
However, the three memory palaces might not be enough to satisfy the monster mastermind.
If Meng Chao was the monster mastermind and they were in a different place… he must have been full of doubts. “Who is this kid named ‘Meng Chao’ exactly? How could he be reborn on the eve of the college entrance examination and become a completely different person? Not only did he break through to Heaven Realm in just a few years, he even stopped and killed four of my generals—White Spirit, Earthquake, Demonic Abyss Eye, and Vortex?
“Where did his power come from? What kind of secret is he hiding?”
The three layers of memories did not explain the problem perfectly.
If the monster mastermind was desperate enough to blow open Meng Chao’s brain, Meng Chao could not guarantee that the secret of the rebirth of the apocalypse would not be leaked.
Therefore, he simply did the opposite. He highly compressed the picture of the apocalypse and turned it into a memory bomb.
He remembered that when the supernatural ent.i.ty, the Demonic Abyss Eye, was about to devour his soul, it was the picture of the apocalypse that triggered the beast greatly and created a mental gap. He seized the opportunity and launched a desperate counterattack.
Therefore, when the monster mastermind took great pains and racked its brains to pry open the deepest part of Meng Chao’s brain at all costs, it discovered that in the future that had the highest probability of happening, Dragon City, together with Monster Mountain Range, and of course, the Hidden Mist Domain, where it was located… would be completely destroyed by thousands of fireb.a.l.l.s. The fireb.a.l.l.s would be as dazzling as the sun, as dazzling as fireworks, and as fierce as meteorites falling from the sky. What would its reaction be?
Meng Chao really wanted to know.
He could not help but want to laugh.
The corners of his mouth curled up slightly. He took a step forward, raised his arm, and extended a finger toward the colorful and glittering stamen. He accepted the Tree of Wisdom’s invitation.
He was so generous, but the Tree of Wisdom seemed a little embarra.s.sed.
The stamen shrank like a Mimosa for a moment, then carefully reached out and poked Meng Chao’s fingertip. It then circled around his finger, wrist, and arm, continuously swimming upward for a full three minutes, only then did it completely entangle with Meng Chao.
When the huge flower covered Meng Chao like a super-brain helmet, the entire world instantly changed.
It was as if Meng Chao’s perceptive ability had increased by a hundred times on the basis of the five-star Spirit Gaze Realm.
He could hear the breathing and heartbeat of tens of thousands of people. He could hear the sound of pollen colliding in the air and leaves falling to the ground. He could hear the tens of thousands of swirls created by the whirling breeze.
He could see every side of the Tree of Wisdom from tens of thousands of different angles. He could see tens of thousands of different colors and lights. He could also see himself. He could see himself smiling from different angles as he sat cross-legged in the giant translucent flower.
It was an extremely wonderful feeling.
It was as if the entire world had no more secrets.
Then, Meng Chao realized that this was what Lu Siya called “shared perception.”
The Tree of Wisdom, or the monster mastermind, had an extremely special and terrifying ability. It could construct a huge neural network that connected the nerves of tens of thousands of humans and even carbon-based life forms, connecting them into a… Whole.
And shared perception was only the first step.
Then, it was shared memory and shared thought.
Of course, like everything that seemed to be “shared”, it was only the memories and thoughts that were filtered by the Tree of Wisdom and wanted to be shared by Meng Chao.
In an instant, countless memories flashed before Meng Chao’s eyes.
It was as if he had just been reborn and the Kindling had exploded in the depths of his brain.
It was also as if he had just stepped into the portal for the first time and endless s.p.a.ce-time had exploded before his eyes.
He became a citizen of Peach Blossom Town.
Not just one, but tens of thousands of people.
He was like an ordinary citizen of Peach Blossom Town. On the days of the intoxicating spring breeze and bright sunshine, he ate his fill and lay comfortably under a tree, listening to the wind blowing through the treetops, and the chirping of birds, which sounded like wind chimes, unknowingly, he fell asleep.
He woke up in the cool stream and found that he was swimming with the other townspeople in a fairytale-like pink stream full of peach blossoms. The children were responsible for catching fish, and the boys and girls were playing with each other in the pink stream, he left the sweetest memories.
He was in the depths of the jungle, eating and dancing around the bonfire with the townspeople to ease the fatigue of the day’s hunting.
Due to the Tree of Wisdom’s protection, the people of Dragon City regarded the fog, wilderness, and jungle as a daunting path, but for Peach Blossom Town’s people, it was a leisurely stroll in the back garden.
Here, the scariest thing was not some monster, but the wrinkled old people, baring their teeth and brandishing their claws, telling the “story of the Earthlings.”
“Earthlings, Earthlings, what a terrifying earthling!
“Peach Blossom people, Peach Blossom people, what beautiful Peach Blossom people!”
The children were frightened by the terrible scenes of the thermonuclear war narrated by the old men. They racked their brains but could not figure out why the Earthlings would use such a terrifying weapon to destroy their homes and themselves.
There were also some children who mocked that the old man’s story was fake—what kind of lunatic would invent a “nuclear weapon” that was impossible to exist, or in other words, a weapon that only existed in h.e.l.l!
Although they did not believe it, they still winked and added fuel to the fire to scare the children who were younger than them.
The screams of the children and the laughter of the older children traveled along the misty mountain range to a very, very far place.