Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1358: The World Through Xyrin’s Eyes
In a data space completely different from the real world, don’t measure what you see by common sense.
I repeat this rule that Sandora told me before uploading, then arrive at the scene embedded in the ground, and see Xyrin grinning foolishly at me on the screen: "Why did you appear in this form?"
"To save network resources," Xyrin’s lips moved, but her voice came from all directions, "His Majesty’s soul strength is very high, even uploading consciousness alone puts a great burden on the network, so I need to reduce my network usage rate. This network is layered, data in each layer can circulate independently. My essence is in the base chain link; when communicating with His Majesty, using a simple interactive interface like this maximizes network utilization."
I understood, but whether I understand or not doesn’t really affect much: just knowing that Xyrin is the chief administrator of this network, the decisions she makes are naturally beneficial to the network as a whole. The only impact is that I have to talk to Xyrin while lowering my head, which feels quite odd, and I occasionally accidentally step on her forehead...
"This place is really desolate," Bingdisi remained fully armed, yet with a lazy expression, looking around. She aimed her bow at a protruding rectangle in the sky, "Your spiritual network is always so busy, I thought there’d be bustling scenery here—do you think if I shoot an arrow, it’ll disrupt the network? If fighting happens here, it’s better to confirm first."
"The backbone of the network has data protection, as long as it doesn’t exceed the threshold, it won’t be damaged. The threshold is determined by the willpower of all connected Xyrin Apostles, so there’s no need to worry about harming the network. What you see here is the scenery presented after transcoding the surface layer data; this data updates twenty-six times per minute, with each update repairable by the associated systems, so there’s no fear of destruction."
Bingdisi shot an arrow, and the light arrow formed by Holy Light exploded in the distant sky, breaking several slowly descending rectangles in half, just as Xyrin said. The broken rectangles did not scatter and disappear; a large burst of golden light mist erupted at their fracture points, which were restored to their original state within a few breaths.
"Hmm, the feel is odd; you need to use the technique of manipulating information elements of the Plane to interfere with things in this space, but after getting used to it, it’s just that," Bingdisi confirmed the "feel" of this attack, slung the golden longbow onto her back, turned her head, and gave me a confident smile, "Let’s go, my combat power can reach twenty billion!"
"Still able to have a battle here?" I smacked my lips; Bingdisi arrived fully armed, even though she still wore a carefree smile, but knowing this female hooligan, she’s already in a highly tense state of combat readiness. Looking at the surrounding environment, though it’s a bit strange, we’re certainly not going to encounter enemies before reaching the rift: this is the spiritual network of Xyrin Apostle, undoubtedly home territory!
"Stop babbling; I came as a guardian, entrusted with a heavy responsibility—how will you explain to Sandora if you die on me?"
Me: "..." I really shouldn’t have provoked her foul mouth!
"How do we go to the rift?" I looked down at the screen on the ground at my feet, Xyrin nodded, and suddenly a light blue directional arrow appeared in the air in front of us, very easy to understand.
"The position of the rift is not fixed, and it’s not on this network segment right now; you need to pass through several information transfer hubs to get there. Also, you cannot use Space Transmission or other methods to travel in this space; here, Space Transmission means upload and download. The network load is already at a very high level; if His Majesty and Lord Bingdisi were to be subjected to Second Order upload, it might cause widespread delay... External communication."
Xyrin was interrupted halfway by a message from outside the network, her screen moved aside, and Taville’s figure appeared on the screen: "Your Majesty, there’s a situation that needs to be reported to you."
"What is it?" As I hurried along the arrow’s direction with Bingdisi, I lowered my head and asked, the screen displayed on the ground moved alongside us at the same speed, leaving a slowly fading trail on the ground like an ice ship breaking through solid ice. Behind us, this trail stretched over a hundred meters long.
"Based on the device load report just generated, the consciousness of the Void Creatures is causing system disturbance beyond expectations. Although we’ve employed all Xyrin Hosts in the shadow space to share the compiling of your soul, the disturbance still exceeds the self-repair threshold of the core program. So, the entire system can only run for approximately seven hours; afterward, whether you’ve finished the work or not, you’ll be forcefully offline—otherwise, you might burn out all connected devices. Please note, you only have seven hours; time is precious. In theory, that’s the case."
Taville ended the communication right after speaking, truly as she said, time is precious, and also as Xyrin said, bandwidth is precious too.
Being a Void Creature in life form indeed proves to be troublesome; it should’ve been expected from the start, uploading the soul of a Void Creature into the network, no matter how you see it, it’s a major achievement: although a half-baked Void Creature, the instinct for information disturbance is still present. Taville judged we have seven hours to figure out what the rift is; measuring my own intelligence, if the rift is a high-tech phenomenon indeed, the time might be quite tight...
Just then, I sensed a uniquely oppressive gaze beside me, turned my head, and saw Bingdisi glaring fiercely in this direction: "It’s the same old situation again; your talent ability always causes trouble!"
I’m innocent: "Being born like this isn’t my fault, complain to my mom if you have issues."
Bingdisi almost tripped on her left foot: "Your mom? She’s still alive?"
"Travel six hundred billion light years, turn left, dive into the Void, and you’ll see my mom..."
That’s when Sister Bing truly went down, sliding for over ten meters: having run too fast, she couldn’t seem to brake with her 36E at this point, and I watched in trepidation as Bingdisi slid so far out: Won’t that get worn off?
Several seconds later, Sister Bing returned with a murderous look, hugging her chest. Deductive reasoning with my toenail makes me feel she wants to kill me...
Thankfully, a voice suddenly emerged at the critical moment to save the scene, Xyrin appeared just in time: "We’re about to cross the public data, pay attention!"
"What is that?" I asked instinctively, then raised my head to see the spectacular scene in the distance, "What is that!!"
A storm! A rainbow-colored storm! It lay horizontally between the heavens and earth, a few kilometers away, covering the sky while connecting the vast flatland under our feet and the mountain peaks hanging in the sky. The storm contained radiant light flows, colorful and indistinct, but completely unrecognizable as anything clear. I squinted and observed for a long time, finally finding a scenario somewhat similar from my memory: like the night city traffic accelerated, car lights becoming a firefly-like river, only the storm before us stands vertically on the earth, its scale and density overwhelmingly spectacular.
"Just now it was nowhere to be seen, how did it suddenly appear?" Bingdisi’s attention was also captured by the spectacular rainbow storm, finally forgetting the grudge over the 36E brakes, "Wow, it’s so beautiful!"
"This is part of the public data being updated. This spectacle appears randomly at any location on the great plains because public data belongs to a slow database, and an update can take over ten minutes. Actually, the plain beneath your feet is the basic exchange layer of the network, and those rectangular blocks in the ’sky’ are a visualization of various data sets. The inverted mountains are databases or database access points. The newly added public data moves through the most basic link where I am now and then enters long-term stored databases through the exchange layer. Each ’entry’ forms such a big storm."
"We have to go through that thing?" Bingdisi smacked her lips, "It doesn’t look very safe."
"Actually, it’s okay," Xyrin replied, "all data has its own ’signature.’ Data with mismatched signatures cannot affect materials not in the same process as them, the storm will brush past you without any mutual influence. Just treat it as a scenery——this is my favorite view!"
We traveled at lightning speed, and moments later reached the base of the rainbow storm. Only then did I realize that its size was even larger than I expected, and going around it would be a huge waste of time. This storm was completely silent, with splendid light streams sliding silently by like in a silent movie. Bingdisi reached out to stir in the light stream, seemingly wanting to catch something, but she felt nothing.
"It’s like a phantom, indeed non-interfering," Sister Bing was a bit disappointed, "What are all these things?"
"All sorts of things from the lowest-end terminals uploaded, but they belong to the insignificant part. They are not compiled into the upper-tier database but are open to the public as shared information. After a secondary screening, some will be placed in a lower permission database and made available to the Servant Army and civilians," Xyrin introduced with great interest, "There are many things I’ve never encountered in the Old Empire Era, back then no one collected such weird and bizarre knowledge——like how to fry a half-cooked fried egg, knitting methods, and game guides. Oh, there’s one thing I still can’t figure out, why is the upload priority of game guides the highest among civilian data..."
I think I understand why but was too embarrassed to explain to Xyrin——it has to do with the child’s mother...
With a feeling of wonder, Bingdisi and I walked into this grand rainbow storm. Just like Xyrin said, because data in different threads cannot interfere with each other, this stunning storm had no effect on us. I felt like I was passing through a phantom, opening my eyes was thrilling, closing them felt ancient and peaceful. If it weren’t for being pressed for time and having urgent matters to attend to, I might have wanted to linger within the rainbow storm a bit longer: although visually oppressive, this sight is truly something rarely seen.
Even without using Space Transmission, Bingdisi and I were incredibly fast, crossing the magnificent giant wall within a few minutes. Ahead was still an endless plain, and those rectangular ’mountains’ previously seen remained on the horizon, seemingly not getting any closer. Xyrin kept explaining to us the completely different rules of this strange space compared to the real world. Now I know that the land beneath us is a relatively basic layer of the network, and at the same time, it’s also one of the backbones of the entire network. Any node, whether Soldier or Emperor, must connect to this layer to reach other zones on the network. And those seemingly unreachable rectangular ’mountains’ in the far distance are the ’safe buffer points’ on the network, which normal data can’t reach unless Xyrin opens these buffer points to the entire network. They are used to control erroneous information and outdated data packets produced daily on the network. According to the basic protocol, logs and dangerous information that need to be cleared are also sent to these buffer points. At the buffer point, junk data is identified one last time, about ten percent returns to the network, and the remaining ninety percent is permanently erased. If a catastrophic accident happens in the network, these buffer points are a powerful protection: they will immediately unfold, freezing data flow within a vast range, and then using their huge throughput to batch delete messages and their sources not on the legitimate list. Thus, all harmful elements to the network eventually get directed towards those dark and square mountains——Xyrin describes those things as "my household garbage bin."
"Under the control of the basic protocol, everything runs automatically. Generations of Xyrin Hosts have upgraded and patched this network countless times, so it actually doesn’t require an administrator to oversee," Xyrin’s image followed closely beneath Bingdisi and me as I am now used to not looking down while speaking to her, "This network itself is not conscious, but under the constraint of billions of strict rules and near-intelligent judgment conditions, something without self-awareness can also behave as agile as a creature. It doesn’t need to be aware of its existence, it only needs to respond appropriately under suitable conditions, this is ’unconscious correctness,’ and thus, everything here is in perfect order."
"But since you were born, things have changed a bit, right?" I said casually.
"Yes, a system reaching a certain complexity provides the foundational conditions for the birth of intelligence, and this intelligence is an extension of the system’s original ’self-regulation rules,’ I am the first administrator on the network, making it operate at higher efficiency, and according to the Rulebook provided by Bubbles, I conduct self-diagnosis and upgrades when the network encounters issues..."
A network capable of writing patches and making up for deficiencies by itself——this is one of Xyrin’s major significances.
A flash of light slicing through the sky interrupted my conversation with Xyrin. Bingdisi instinctively raised her bow, but we quickly realized there was no enemy; the flash emerged between two inverted mountain peaks in the sky. It lasted for more than a second, connecting the rectangular blocks at the top of the two peaks. The entire process was silent, and after the flash disappeared, I saw a large amount of orange-red cubes slowly detaching from those two mountain peaks and then falling at a very slow pace. They gradually closed in as they fell, appearing to form something resembling a chain or a monstrous snake. The orange-red chain seemed destined to reach the ground. Judging their falling direction and my own speed, I found that we were soon about to encounter them.
"What are those things?" Bingdisi and I asked in unison.
"Self-maintenance of the database! More good stuff is falling down!" Xyrin suddenly shifted from her previously unhurried and calm demeanor, and when she saw the orange-red cubes floating down, she let out an excited cheer, "Quick, quick! They’ll soon disappear once they reach the ground! You can only watch them for a short while!"
Bingdisi and I were clueless, but Xyrin seemed too busy to explain, so we sped up once again. Moments later, we arrived at where the cubes were falling——they continued to float down leisurely, still at a great height from the ground. I discovered an odd phenomenon: when far away, each of them appeared to be only palm-sized, but now that we’ve reached the landing spot, theoretically shortening the distance from these falling blocks by hundreds of times...
Their size still hasn’t changed, defying the laws of perspective!
Everyone with a normal world view knows this principle: far away small, nearby large. When something is very far away, it looks small, but when close at hand, its size naturally appears larger. This is the simplest and most understandable spatial perspective phenomenon in art and optics. However, those orange-red blocks falling from the heights did not adhere to this rule at all. I initially thought when Bingdisi and I arrived at the scene, we would find the giant cubes spread out on the ground, extending like a mountain range, but now——
These palm-sized small cubes leisurely landed on the ground, scattering not too densely nor too sparsely around us, looking like falling sakura petals in this network space, very beautiful yet even more bizarre.
"Aren’t they beautiful!" Xyrin said happily, evidently suiting her aesthetic taste, "These are the invalid data removed after each self-maintenance of the database. Network nodes with authority always make all sorts of decisions, but not all decisions can ultimately be executed. These decisions get temporarily stored in the database, and when the decision-makers or other logical systems deem them as having no implementation value, they are cleared as you see now. Before this, they pass through the basic exchange layer and are finally sent to the buffer point——not only are they beautiful, but they carry some interesting content. Although eventually cleared, they are quite fun to read when accessed."
It seems Xyrin doesn’t just find these appealing; she delights in collecting the outdated data discarded by the database. This hobby somewhat resembles the collecting-obsessed fox at home——thinking so, I bent down and picked up an orange-red small cube, intending to see what kind of data had been deemed of no execution value before it dissipated.
As soon as the thought of reading emerged, the small cube turned into a stream of fireflies in my hand, and I heard a familiar voice: "I have a rather immature idea..."
Pick up the next cube: "I have another rather immature idea..."
Next: "I also have a rather immature idea..."
I went through over a dozen, with Qianqian’s immature ideas scrolling in my mind a dozen times——ding-ding-dong-dong, the database nearest to Qianqian must be really stressed out! (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets, your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please go to m.qidian.com to read.)
