Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1357: Upload

"So, is the Soul Unison complete?"

I feel nothing unusual in my body, only the vivid memory of that momentary Illusion remains. Thinking back, the Illusion felt so real, even the lingering fragrance from Bingdisi seems to linger on my chest—but it was just an Illusion. In the eyes of onlookers like Sandora, the two people in Soul Unison didn’t move an inch, and that ambiguous ten-second hug never happened.

"I don’t know..." Sandora looked up and down at Bingdisi and me. She is an expert in Soul Studies, but has only a superficial understanding in the Divine Technique field. "It seems like your souls were in contact for a brief moment, so it seems the Unison is complete."

I moved my body around, not feeling any discomfort from having another person in my soul, nor did I know where Bingdisi was—could it be true as she said, hiding within my soul? Then why can’t I feel it?

While I was pondering this, suddenly I heard a voice in my mind: "Did you think Soul Unison is akin to a ghost possession? What feeling are you expecting—you normally wouldn’t feel your soul, right?"

The voice clearly belonged to Bingdisi. However, this was entirely different from usual mental connectivity dialogue: that voice wasn’t "from others" but emerged from my own thoughts!

It’s as if a part of my own will suddenly started acting on its own, organizing a sentence that originally belonged to Bingdisi, so I didn’t perceive the voice in my mind as hers, but thought it was my own bizarre monologue!

If I didn’t have half the reason left to clearly distinguish that Female Hooligan’s tone, I might really think I’d developed Schizophrenia. It was then I truly realized the difference between Soul Unison and so-called "mental tenancy." After the Unison, the two souls have no distinction between them, and when the second soul speaks in your mind, you don’t feel as though something foreign has entered your body—there’s no such sensation; you feel it is simply one of your own thoughts!

No wonder I can’t feel Bingdisi’s presence. I initially thought she’d be like Alaya, vividly present in my Spirit World, visible alongside that Dull Cat Angel hand in hand running joyfully through the boundless realm of my mind—now it seems I took it for granted. Soul Unison is a much deeper intertwining; Alaya’s presence in my Spirit World is akin to lodging, whereas Bingdisi... she has now become part of my Spirit World itself. The former is like a tenant, while the latter directly turns into a brick in the house.

But Bingdisi was right on another point: Soul Unison does not lead to confusion between two personalities. I can still discern clearly which part of the thoughts in my mind belong to me, and which belong to Bingdisi; the former is sharp and clear, while the latter mostly only has a vague semblance. I assume, unless one party in the Soul Unison voluntarily opens up to the other, the two streams of consciousness can’t be mutually readable in full.

As I was thinking this, Bingdisi spoke again: "Wow, this feels really strange—so this is what it’s like in a man’s body? Damn, this is so profound... Wait while I have a look around..."

"What the hell are you doing?!" I jumped up on the spot, instantly feeling goosebumps arise all over as if that Female Hooligan had entangled herself around my body like a water snake. "I warn you, this counts as sexual harassment..."

"Harass your grandpa, we’re in Soul Unison now, you can even see and control my body if you want—do you believe that if I told Sandora about this, she could eat you alive?"

I was left speechless by Bingdisi’s rogue behavior and could only feebly retort: "Aren’t you worried Sandora might eat you too?"

The Female Hooligan was undeterred: "Sure, you can dice, and I’ll slice, as we get sprinkled with the same can of pepper in front of Sandora..."

...I realized I was out of my mind trying to verbally spar with this fool. Her sharp tongue is as powerful as half a battalion’s artillery, and now she’s using my mind as the main battlefield within my own soul, holding every advantage of timing, geography, and personnel. Arguing with her felt like arguing with myself; after just a few exchanges, I was almost driven to Schizophrenia...

"Ah Jun, what are you doing?" A shout from the real world finally got me out from the frustrating circumstance of arguing with myself. I looked up to find Qianqian holding onto my arm, observing my forehead with curiosity. "You just suddenly leapt up."

I thought for a moment, too afraid to tell her about a Female Hooligan sexually harassing her husband, so I solemnly shook my head: "Nothing, just getting used to the feel of Soul Unison and waiting to log on..."

While speaking, I saw Bingdisi again—in front of me, vacantly standing, her body in temporary Chaos state. Her words echoed in my mind, sparking my curiosity to try communicating with the shell.

A slight dizziness came over me, like being thrown into a constantly swirling tunnel. I found my spirit split into two streams: one in the usual position and the other... watching my original body from a bizarre angle, as if looking at myself in a mirror, standing both before and within it.

I hesitated for a moment, realizing that part of my soul was observing my body through Bingdisi’s eyes.

Damn, this relationship is too complex—might I suggest you draw a relationship diagram before attempting these paragraphs.

Understanding Bingjie’s earlier astonishment makes sense now, for I found myself possessing two bodies simultaneously—one being that of a voluptuous lady staring down at her own ample chest: I nearly failed to balance in the new body! I pity Bingjie for having such a hefty load just walking around daily; her earlier exclamation was justified, damn, it’s profound...

A Female Hooligan’s smug voice echoed from the distant depths of my consciousness: "With your big talk and dismissing me as if not a woman... Have you seen such a complete woman?"

... I don’t know how that Female Hooligan’s brain nerves are wired, doesn’t she feel embarrassed!

"Ah Jun, what are you doing again?" Qianqian’s voice rang timely as before, prompting me to pull my soul back, focusing with meditation, explaining to the inquisitive Beast Qianqian with a serene expression: "Nothing, just continuing to get familiar..."

"This one seemed like she blinked just now, but now there’s no more reaction," Sandora took the opportunity to investigate the shell-like Bingdisi as the lab’s equipment was being adjusted. She pinched the latter’s cheek to find only weak instinctual responses, "Hey, it indeed seems she doesn’t respond much to external stimuli."

What happened next was memorable; Qianqian suddenly leaned in, firmly pinching Bingdisi’s chest with a confused voice: "How exactly does she grow like this... and without padding!"

Observing Sandora continuing to tweak Bingdisi’s face: "Teach you not to run your mouth!"

Silently, Lin Xue left the scene, and just when I thought she was a kind person, Miss returned with a box of paints...

Bingdisi’s despairing voice resonated in my mind: "Dear God, quickly stop your wives from this chaos!"

I was perplexed: "Can’t you control your original body? It seemed like I managed to control both just now..."

"Cut the crap, I’m the auxiliary soul now! Auxiliary soul has no rights! Auxiliary soul... Sandora stop pulling my mouth! Qianqian, Qianqian drop those sinful claws of yours! What are you doing, secure my body! This is not what we agreed!"

Bingdisi’s wailing lasted quite a while, but in reality, Qianqian and the others didn’t do anything too dreadful—in my view, it was merely playful antics among girls, essentially comparable to sticking notes on a sleeping friend’s face. I’d wager everyone who’s lived in dorms has done more wicked things. It’s just that there’s a difference between being unknowingly pranked and witnessing one’s body being messed with. Besides, the Female Hooligan is usually the prank initiator, never the victim like today...

Finally, Bingdisi gave up. She switched off her five senses to the outside world and entered a Saint mode as immovable as a mountain, leaving me with just one sentence: "...next time I won’t ever believe you family of evil spirits again."

"The device is ready."

The lab assistant’s unperturbed announcement finally ended this minor interlude, also saving Bingdisi’s body: Qianqian had already planned to write the Huanghe Tower inscription on Sister Bing’s forehead. Luckily, she only scored thirty-two in Chinese back then, otherwise, with her execution power, there would probably only be a signature left by now. Taville stepped forward to help me prepare one of the access pods, this remarkable female scientist, who remained entirely focused throughout the morally questionable scene just now, didn’t even glance sideways with any of her mass projections. I admired her immensely.

I tried to maintain a normal mindset as I lay into that sliding-cover coffin-like access pod, while Taville was swiftly adjusting a series of devices beside me. The inside of this pod appeared to be devoid of any mechanical devices, with smooth inner walls, entirely like a crystal lining. As some people said: the ultimate direction of technological progress must be toward simplicity. A primitive neural intervention device might be covered with electrodes, needles, and scanners, yet a device capable of uploading a soul appeared only as a smooth crystal shell, and even its control panel was just a holographic screen suspended outside the pod—which made it all the more like a coffin...

"The uploading process might cause slight dizziness, lasting approximately a minute. If you experience any additional discomfort after one minute, please jump out of the network immediately: as long as you produce a clear mental command to jump, you can do so." Taville said softly. I saw that she was a bit nervous: the national Leader is about to become the first user of the experimental device she manufactured, and she wasn’t yet sure about the device’s effects—because I was the only one who could use the full range of the device’s features, which undoubtedly brought Taville immense pressure.

"No worries, I trust your technology," I said easily, finding a more comfortable position in the coffin. Sandora and Qianqian hovered around, tidying up my somewhat messy clothes, with Sandora wearing an apologetic look, "Ah Jun, it should have been me by your side, but... this time I can’t help at all."

"Uh, no problem," I thought about it, unable to hold it in, "hey, could you guys step back a little..."

"Huh?"

"It feels like a farewell ceremony with a corpse... Can’t Taville design a different look for such devices next time?"

Everyone: "..."

The lab assistant conveniently interrupted the brief awkwardness: "Network status normal, transcode system stable, redundancy component check passed, uploading will commence in one minute."

Taville began closing the crystal outer cover of the access pod: "The compiler system has selected an appropriate interface for you; the abstract data on the network will appear before you in a form comprehensible to real-world people, and you may explore it yourself. The environment over there won’t be too bizarre. Additionally, Xyrin is already waiting for you on the other side of the network. She will also maintain your connection to the real world, and we will communicate with you via her..."

The last few words from Taville became indistinct as the crystal outer cover of the access pod completely closed. Through this layer of translucent hard material, the lab’s scene became increasingly blurry and distorted in my eyes. Familiar things seemed to be turning into bizarre blotches and bands of color, while my consciousness was rapidly descending into an Abyss with no bottom. I silently waited for the dizziness to subside within a minute, suddenly remembering that I seemed to have forgotten to ask how long this task would last—would I still make it to lunch?

I guess I’ve been with Sandora for too long...

"Bingdisi, are you there?"

"I’m here, feeling good, just a bit dizzy."

"That’s good—let’s give it our best."

Then the last glimmer of light disappeared along with the dizziness.

The sensation of rapid descent lasted for about ten seconds, or perhaps just a moment: for under certain conditions, one’s sense of time often becomes distorted. I found my vision brightening up again, with the dizziness ending, appearing that the upload process was smoothly completed without the so-called additional discomfort. I tried opening my eyes, but the first attempt failed—because my soul was still accustomed to having a body to command, but now I was in a ghostly form lingering in the network, making ’opening my eyes’ a fallacy due to the lack of a physical body. I pondered for a moment, ignoring this discomfort with a simple mental cue:

I want to see, I desire to see, I can see.

Then the surroundings became brilliantly dazzling, as a bizarre world filled my vision entirely: the entire Spirit World of the Xyrin Apostles, a limitless expanse...

I gazed at the scene before me in amazement, feeling as if I’d stepped into an absurd fantasy space. Beneath my feet was an endless flat terrain, which wasn’t made of earth or stone. It looked somewhat like plastic, sporting a beautiful color blend of light purple and blue. Around us, this terrain had almost no undulations, yet in the farthest gaze, "cliffs" seemed to suddenly sprout from the ground—at a distance, they looked like many cube pillars inserted vertically into the earth.

This space lacked the sky in the usual sense, for which I was already prepared. I hadn’t anticipated seeing sun, moon, stars, or blue skies and white clouds in this Spiritual Network: above the land was another upside-down piece of terrain largely different from the flat ground below us. The celestial terrain comprised numerous uneven rectangular blocks. The sections of those blocks appeared uniformly sized, yet from afar I couldn’t determine how extensive they were, though if approached closely, they must be considerably large. They closely squeezed together, leaving no gap between them, similar to square chopsticks packed tightly in a holder, forming uneven "mountains" and "valleys," sharing the same coloring of light purple or blue like the ground beneath us, with a texture somewhat resembling plastic.

I looked up for a while and finally confirmed that the "sky" didn’t remain still: the bar-shaped objects comprising the sky kept extending and retracting, following a certain pattern, altering the sky’s shape accordingly. Mountains and valleys moved slowly, forming an extremely slow yet immensely large-scale wave surge.

An upside-down slow wave surge over the land. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

These were all the sights we could see upon "landing" in this place, somewhat absurd and quite baffling to look at. I couldn’t think of any real-world setting that could possibly resemble this, aside from the Spiritual Network. Moreover, according to Taville’s theory, the scene I saw wasn’t the true "appearance" of the Spiritual Network. This representation was "translated" through transcode devices, transformed into scenery comprehensible to real-world people. The true landscape of the Spiritual Network was something outsiders would never witness, something only the Xyrin could appreciate.

"Seriously, how long do you plan on staring?"

Bingdisi’s somewhat disgruntled voice came from beside me, finally drawing me back from the grand and peculiar sky surge to see that she was already fully armed: wings lightly raised, a Holy Bow in hand, with a Holy Light-congealed arrow nocked on the bowstring.

"Oh, when did you detach?"

"Right after the upload ended, of course. Can’t stay inside a guy’s body forever, I’m no idiot."

Me: "...Could you repeat that?"

"This place looks pretty grand," Bingdisi didn’t care one bit about my righteous indignation, analyzing the surrounding environment, she suddenly frowned, "Xyrin was supposed to be waiting here, but where is she?"

"I’m still here." Xyrin’s voice abruptly came from below. It startled me to the point of jumping back over two meters. Only then did I notice that the ground where I had been standing had at some point turned into the semblance of a liquid crystal screen. A square image with a side length of about half a meter was embedded in a stream of flowing green data, and in the picture was a lively girl with short black hair. Judging from this, it seemed like I might have stepped on Xyrin’s head...

Why was she appearing as a two-dimensional picture! (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for it, your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please head to m.qidian.com for reading.)