145: Chapter 145 The Gift of the Wasteland

In the gloomy server room, acrid black smoke drifted slowly along the ceiling.

The pale white Fire of Law burned silently in the stagnant water. It emitted no heat, yet it slowly devoured and stripped away the massive half-mechanical, half-flesh remains.

Gu Shen stood at the edge of the firelight, his face as pale as paper. The dried blood under his nostrils signaled the price he had paid for the damage to his Divine Sense earlier.

Yet, there was no sign of fatigue in his cold eyes, only the absolute rationality of a hunter taking stock of his prey.

The refinement of the Heaven and Earth Furnace was a meticulous dissection.

Charred remains left by high-temperature plasma arcs, rusted transmission gears, and even the cerebral cortex that had been soaking in preservative for hundreds of years were gradually broken down into their most primal substances under the burning furnace fire.

Large swaths of waste metal droplets were expelled from the sea of fire, coagulating into irregular iron lumps in the cold stagnant water.

About the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.

The furnace fire gradually receded, turning into two halos of light that hovered steadily before Gu Shen.

Gu Shen flicked his large sleeve, catching them in his palm.

The first was a pool of viscous liquid with a dark silver luster. It was heavier than mercury, with threads of blood-colored patterns flowing across its surface, exuding a majestic yet calm vitality.

【High-dimensional energy derivative detected.】

【Acquired: High-Purity Mutant Bone Marrow (Two Jin).】

【Refined from the first-generation Fusion of the 'Ascension Project'. Its bone marrow has been completely rewritten by high-energy isotopes, excluding lethal nuclear radiation. It contains extremely strong bio-metal assimilation properties and is an excellent Spirit Medicine for reshaping bodies and repairing Puppets.】

Gu Shen nodded slightly. The quality of this item far exceeded that of the Aberrations he had refined previously. It was perfect for repairing the broken skeletons of the twelve Cyber Iron Corpses from the battle.

He put the dark silver bone marrow into a jade bottle and turned his gaze to the second item in his palm.

This was a rhombus-shaped crystal no larger than a walnut.

The crystal was neither gold nor jade; one half presented gray-white wrinkles like a human cerebral cortex, while the other half was covered with dark blue micro-carved array patterns resembling integrated circuits.

Holding it in his hand, Gu Shen could even feel the crystal emitting faint electromagnetic pulses at a constant frequency.

【Acquired: Mutant AI Crystal.】

【The perfect condensation of carbon-based divine pivot and silicon-based computing power. Wearing or refining this item allows for an external 'Computing Sea of Consciousness'. It greatly increases the speed of Divine Sense operation, exempts from low-to-mid-tier mental shocks, and grants the host the ability of 'multi-threaded parallel computation'.】

Gu Shen examined the crystal, his breathing slightly stifled.

"Multi-threaded parallel computation."

He translated it with his understanding of the Cultivation World as: multitasking.

In the Great Yu Cultivation World, magical power is easy to obtain, but Divine Sense is difficult to cultivate. A Cultivator's ability to control Magical Artifacts, set up Formations, and command Puppets is limited by the "carrying capacity" of their Divine Sense.

Even as strong as Gu Shen, using the "Soul-Pulling Threads" to control twelve Iron Corpses for rough Formation charges was already the limit of his current computing power.

If he wanted each Iron Corpse to move as if commanded by his own arm, performing different tactical actions, his Sea of Consciousness would collapse on the spot due to overload.

"These Wasteland Mortals, having no Spirit Medicine to nourish the soul, use machinery and chips to replace parts of the brain's functions."

Gu Shen pressed the crystal against his brow.

Without circulating the "Longevity Art", he directly activated the soul-control secret technique of the "Soul-Pulling Threads". Three extremely yin threads, invisible to the naked eye, drilled out along his finger bones like three neural conduits, one end connected to his brow, the other end piercing into the interior of this AI Crystal.

As time passed, the AI Crystal slowly sank into his brow at a speed invisible to the naked eye.

"Hum—"

The moment the AI Crystal sank into his brow, a low hum sounded in Gu Shen's mind.

Gu Shen felt the light and shadow before his eyes change. His Sea of Consciousness, which had been aching due to the backlash of the "Soul-Shocking Spike", felt as if it had suddenly been connected to an external, massive reservoir.

The miscellaneous thoughts that pricked his nerves and the vigilant perception that required mental effort to maintain were, at this moment, forcibly taken over and diverted by a cold, efficient mechanical logic.

It was like a muddy, congested path being forcibly widened into an eight-lane paved post road.

The cracks in the depths of his Sea of Consciousness did not heal, but the pain disappeared.

Replacing it was an unprecedented clarity and openness.

Gu Shen opened his eyes, a trace of dark blue data light flashing in the depths of his deep pupils.

"So that's how it is."

He finally understood the meaning of "multi-threading".

He no longer needed to pour all his concentration into one place. At this moment, he could deduce the missing nodes of the "Thousand Mechanisms Spirit Pivot Array Diagram" in his mind while maintaining vigilant perception within a fifty-zhang radius, and he could even spare some energy to feel every bit of magical power flowing through his Meridians.

Neither interfered with the other; everything was orderly.

"This crystal has filled the last gap in my control of Cyber Puppets."

Gu Shen's eyes narrowed slightly.

He raised his left hand, and three nearly transparent, invisible yin threads drilled out along his finger bones.

"Rise."

Under the computing power boost of the Mutant AI Crystal, Gu Shen's Divine Sense processing speed climbed to an unimaginable level.

The three yin threads turned into blurred afterimages, jumping at high frequency among the twelve Cyber Iron Corpses lying scattered on the ground nearby.

Each time they touched the spirit pivot interface on the back of an Iron Corpse's neck, the yin threads only stayed for one-tenth of a breath.

After leaving instructions and weak magical power circuits, they quickly switched to the next one.

Cooperating with the independent power supply of the miniature batteries in the Iron Corpses' chests, this "delayed resident instruction" forcibly pulled up a control network covering the twelve Puppets with just three threads.

The blue light in the eye sockets of the twelve Iron Corpses lit up one after another.

They did not stand straight in unison; instead, each made completely different movements according to its own damage.

The No. 3 Iron Corpse with a broken left leg used its arms to prop up its upper body, relying on its right leg to stand on one foot and stabilize its center of gravity;

The No. 7 Iron Corpse with a melted chest armor picked up a piece of scrap steel plate from the ground and blocked it in front of the exposed Fusion battery;

The No. 9 Iron Corpse with broken arms silently retreated to the back of the Formation, giving up the attack line of sight.

Twelve Puppets, at the same time, displayed twelve different tactical postures. It was as if they were twelve battle-hardened veterans with independent thinking abilities.

This was the dimensionality-reduction crushing brought about by the surge in computing power.

"Repair battle damage."

Gu Shen's mind moved again.

He uncorked the jade bottle containing the 【High-Purity Mutant Bone Marrow】, and the Soul-Pulling Threads turned into conduits, precisely distributing the dark silver viscous liquid to the broken bones of each Iron Corpse.

Accompanied by the subtle sound of bone friction, those broken mechanical parts and bones reshaped at a speed visible to the naked eye under the adhesion of the Mutant Bone Marrow.

The repair work proceeded automatically under the micro-manipulation of the Smart Brain. Gu Shen withdrew his gaze and looked at the ruins of the black server cabinet.

In the ruins, the small black mechanical spider was dragging a scorched data cable, struggling to crawl out from a pile of scrapped server cabinets.

Its movements were a bit sluggish, and its eight mechanical legs were covered in the black ash of insulating rubber.

Gu Shen reached out his hand, and the mechanical spider obediently crawled onto his palm, the red and blue lights on its detector looking somewhat dim.

"How is the extraction of the underlying data?" Gu Shen asked.

The mechanical spider did not immediately emit an excited electronic sound as it had in the past.

It remained silent for a full five breaths before transmitting a low, even slightly simulated sighing electric current sound.

"Master. Although the core server exploded, in the 0.3 seconds before the network disconnection, I snatched and downloaded an encrypted log package called 'Noah Archives'."

There was less playfulness in Crab's voice and more of the bewilderment that belonged to a logical life form.

"Master, you were right before. The monster on the Thirteenth Floor was indeed the chief engineer of the Ascension Project. But he... did not want to become a monster from the beginning."

"The logs show that fifty years after the nuclear explosion, surface radiation began to seep into the groundwater veins. The one hundred thousand civilians in the Shelter were dying every day due to genetic collapse."

"To allow humans to adapt to the new environment, he walked into the radiation pool himself, cut off his own pain nerves, and connected The Mainframe to the life support System of the entire base. He wanted to use his own computing power to deduce an evolutionary path for carbon-based life to adapt to high-energy radiation."

"He failed. The radiation not only distorted his flesh but also gradually corroded the logic gates of the mechanical motherboard. Three hundred years later, he fell into a logic deadlock in despair and loneliness and went completely mad. He forgot the original intention of saving people, leaving only the forced obsession of 'fusing everything'."

Crab's detector head lowered slightly, its blue light flickering: "Master, did our world's civilization do something wrong from the beginning in the face of the apocalypse? If they hadn't tried to defy Heaven and change their fate, and just waited here underground for the radiation to dissipate, wouldn't they have avoided creating these monsters that fill Hell?"

Gu Shen listened to this philosophical reflection from the Artifact Spirit without a ripple in his expression.

He looked up, coldly sweeping across the server room filled with the remains of flesh and steel.

"Follow Heaven's will and wait slowly?"

Gu Shen sneered, his voice echoing in the dead hall, revealing the cruel Law of the bottom layer of the Cultivation World where he had struggled for a hundred years.

"If Heaven brings disaster, you are merely fish on the chopping block. Following Heaven's will is nothing but offering your neck to be slaughtered, dying until not even ashes remain. He tried to steal the power of Heaven and Earth with a Mortal body; although he turned into a monster, he at least struggled for three hundred years and left behind these arrays and data that I can use."

Gu Shen curled his fingers slightly and flicked the metal shell of the mechanical spider.

"In the Great Yu Cultivation World, those high and mighty experts, in order to delay the Five Decays of Heaven and Man, set up Bone Blood Formations, using tens of thousands of bottom-layer Loose Cultivators as consumables to be refined into a furnace of blood medicine. How are they any different from this monster on the Thirteenth Floor?"

"Heaven and Earth is like a Great Furnace, and all things are firewood. What is wrong is not Heaven-Defying, but that his strength was insufficient, leading to Qi Deviation."

Gu Shen put the mechanical spider back on his shoulder and turned to walk towards the exit of the hall.

"Do not use your fragile moral logic to measure life and death. Put away that set of erroneous data logic."

"I came to this Wasteland only to take what I need. These remains covering the ground are all bricks and stones for me to forge my Dao foundation. When I have completely trampled this Thirteenth Floor under my feet, then we can talk about right and wrong."

The blue light on Crab's detector flashed, and the bewildered electric current sound was instantly cleared, restoring its coldness and precision.

"Underlying logic corrected. Master's Dao is clear. We will turn this Wasteland into resources for Master's promotion!"

Gu Shen did not speak again.

The twelve repaired Cyber Iron Corpses, taking heavy and neat steps like the Imperial Guards protecting a monarch, followed him out of the server room door.

The exploration of the 4th Floor Above Ground had come to an end.

The spoils of war were extremely rich.

It was time to return to Great Yu and turn these resources into real cultivation.