Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1359: Jump or Not?
"I have an immature idea..."
"I have another immature idea..."
"I have yet another immature idea..."
"I always have immature ideas..."
Unexpectedly, even after uploading myself to the web, I still couldn’t escape Qianqian’s curse of "immature ideas." Half of these ineffective pieces of data cleared from the database are related to Qianqian: impulsive plans, far-fetched designs, short-term goals that are completely unattainable... Due to Qianqian’s high-ranked node status and her 24-hour connection to the Imperial Data Network, whenever she came up with such an idea and really planned to act on it (which is almost 100% for Qianqian), the Imperial Data Network would temporarily store it as a top-level directive, but these messages would typically become invalid within 24 hours: some because Qianqian suddenly lost interest, some because they were strongly advised against by me or Big Sister.
The result is that every time the database self-maintains, it generates a bunch of these fragments: they have become Xyrin’s favorite collectibles, and Qianqian and Xyrin have formed a subtle supply and demand system...
I was studying the orange-red cubes floating down from the sky but didn’t have time to read them all: these cubes began to dissipate within minutes of touching the ground, just as Xyrin said, this colorful petals in the network world was a very brief beauty.
"The two databases up there are probably responsible for temporarily storing high-ranked node instructions." I looked up and explained, otherwise, it would be difficult to understand why Qianqian’s spiritual pollution (I have to use this term to describe that girl’s thoughts!) would be so concentrated in this area—unless she had reached the stage where her thoughts were running wild across the entire network.
"Yes," Xyrin confirmed my guess, "they’re specifically used for handling temporary information generated by nodes above high-ranking officers."
I estimated that Qianqian alone produced as much data as Sandora, Lin Xue, and the entire Command Center combined—what a formidable mind!
Now the only thing to be thankful for is that Qianqian’s ideas won’t cause any impact except for just running around the database: there won’t be any real actions, no real projects, no problems of wasting resources, as they are shot down as fast as they are generated, otherwise just Qianqian alone, the current GDP of the New Empire probably wouldn’t be enough for her to play with...
I shook my head to throw aside these far-fetched ideas, looking up at the road ahead, we still couldn’t see the Rift that Xyrin spoke of, only endless plains, plains, and more plains, with occasionally dazzling strange landscapes, this bizarre and colorful network space probably has no end, after all, minute by minute countless new Angel Envoys keep popping off the production line, the network’s expansion speed is extremely astonishing, if not for a set of protocols system supported by countless adjustments from predecessors making it stable and reliable, the mere expansion speed would be enough to crash ordinary networks. Taville uses complex algorithms to convert abstract things on the network into information that we can understand, and makes Bingdisi and myself have the same "perception" as Xyrin, but this perception probably still has some fundamental differences, I feel like I might not be able to fully understand the world as Xyrin sees it.
The breeze lightly brushed my ears, light appeared in my vision, I could feel temperature, and gravity—these absolutely ordinary things in the real world all mean a corresponding information environment here, perhaps a breeze is the collective thought of thousands of Angel Envoys, perhaps the temperature around indicates the current average speed of the spiritual network, these are the information we can perceive but can’t decode, at least for beings like us coming from the real world, it’s indecipherable. I suddenly feel a bit confused: with such being the case, can I solve the issue of the Rift?
We can’t even completely understand what it is.
"What’s on your mind? Still moving or not?" Bingdisi’s boisterous voice brought me back from my thoughts, I saw this female hooligan raising her hand pointing to the distance, "Follow the arrow, Xyrin said there’s a data hub up ahead, once we pass the first hub it’s considered halfway through the journey, the Rift is calm right now, we have to hurry before it moves."
I tossed aside the thoughts in my heart and nodded, then charged forward, Bingdisi stunned for a moment then quickly followed, because we accelerated to supersonic speed, Bingdisi could only communicate with me through spiritual connection: "You scared the hell out of me with that sudden burst of speed! My 36E take-off is slow, you didn’t know?" 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢
I: "...," I decided not to talk anymore, anyway this female hooligan always has something to say, unless I embarrassed myself so much by tossing my face on the ground and stomping on it, I’ll never win a verbal battle against this indestructible guy.
Next, focused on hurrying, there was nothing much along the way to draw attention, we quickly arrived at the data hub Xyrin mentioned, which is another abstract thing that seems quite hard to understand. It looks like a huge streamer, shimmering with alternating blue and gold glows, one end is connected to the ground, while the other end flies high in the air, spans over ten meters wide and for fear more than a thousand meters high. In this bizarre space, a breeze exists, yet the direction this "streamer" sways is not consistent with the wind direction, it looks like the decorative cycle and repeat background objects in a game, repeatedly swinging gently within its unique amplitude.
Approaching the streamer, I heard the whistling wind sound, although this thing doesn’t sway with the wind, it insists on emitting the sound of flags fluttering in the wind, this space’s things... are truly odd.
Xyrin’s image moved from the ground to the surface of the streamer, I finally didn’t need to look down to talk to her, but her face wobbled back and forth due to the streamer’s movements, occasionally twisting into a funny shape, appearing quite comical.
"I am checking the network status around," Xyrin said, "getting close to the Rift requires very high network stability, sudden disconnection or packet loss is not amusing—though I don’t know if you would be affected by packet loss."
"We won’t," no sooner had Xyrin finished speaking, another embedded image appeared on the streamer, Taville appeared on the screen, "Don’t worry, your majesty, your and Lord Bingdisi’s souls are not completely reliant upon the network, instead they exist as independent entities, merely borrowing bandwidth to exist, if large-scale packet loss indeed occurs, your souls would at most be expelled, but would not perish like those reliant on network-born information. Theoretically... well, in fact, this is the case."
She finally didn’t dare say theoretically this is the case—otherwise Sandora and the others would definitely fight her.
"That’s good then," Xyrin nodded in relief, "I was just saying the network around the Rift is unstable, should we slightly delay our action? Now we can proceed. Oh wait a moment, I’ll mark this hub, if an emergency occurs ahead, we can teleport back quickly through this hub."
"Speaking of which, what exactly are these hubs?" I looked at the magnificent streamer before me, this thing looks beautiful, but its light and airy image is quite different from the boxy things seen along the way: most things in this space are square and angular, including the upside-down earth in the sky and those orange-red cubes earlier, these streamers here are truly exceptional.
"The mainframe," Xyrin casually said, "the data hub is the place where the mainframe interfaces with the network, similar to key control points, each hub oversees a very large area of the network space, the node here is of XL-34, next we’re heading to the XL-28 hub, except that the Mother mainframe’s hub is not on the path of progress, and its image is different, as the highest mainframe, her interface point in the network is a broad light beam penetrating all intermediate layers, Hey, just there behind you, on the horizon...
For the first time, hearing such an amazing thing, curiously I turned to look, indeed saw a beam piercing the sky at the edge of the horizon—I might have seen it before but didn’t notice, never thought about the kid’s mother in the network being such an impressive natural sight!
Huge enough to be seen as natural scenery, you can imagine how spectacular Bubbles looks here.
"Bubbles, Bubbles," I excitedly and freshly called the kid’s mom, as she is one of the network servers, calling her doesn’t have to go through Xyrin, "I can see you! You’re magnificent here! From afar broad, thick and..."
"Kids’ dad please don’t say that..."
I: "..." Quietly closed my mouth and continued on our way.
The next few data nodes are quite close together. Perhaps to enhance network stability, the mass-produced servers have intentionally adjusted their work segments to safeguard this operation. Where there are data nodes, network stability and impact resistance are enhanced, and the servers’ large-capacity, high-speed cache can effectively reduce packet loss rates — although this hasn’t been proven harmful for me and Bingdisi, it does, after all, affect the overall success rate of the operation.
As we moved forward, I finally noticed a change in the surrounding atmosphere: The omnipresent breeze had weakened almost imperceptibly, the ground began to lose its color, the original lovely shades of light purple and blue were increasingly mixed with unhealthy gray and white tones, eventually turning the land into what resembled a desert. The undulating mountains and deep valleys in the sky seemed to be avoiding something ahead. As we progressed, the sky appeared flatter and eventually became a vast plain akin to the ground.
These phenomena all indicated the same thing: Ahead lay an information desert zone. Under the automatic avoidance of network security protocols, data flowing to this area had been cut off. Even the comprehensive Imperial Data Network refused to provide index services for this network segment.
Xyrin grew increasingly silent: She hadn’t spoken for a long time. As the collective consciousness of the network, she should have already sensed the approaching danger.
"There, that’s the Rift!"
After hastily traveling for a while longer, Xyrin finally broke her silence. We stopped to look at the scene before us.
Color had completely vanished from view. Whether it was the plains beneath our feet or the inverted piece of land in the sky, everything had turned utterly pale, except for Xyrin’s image following at our feet along with Bingdisi’s and my figures. There were no colors in the surroundings, the entire world seemed like an unpainted plain model, monotonous and dry when looking all around.
But in the distance, the darkness seemed to tear through space, piercing this pale world. It was a massive round void spanning the sky and earth, as if a giant spear once pierced through heaven and earth, leaving an astonishing scar here. Dark tides surged within the void, starkly contrasting with the pale surroundings. Xyrin dared not move a step further: In fact, once the surrounding colors faded, we had already entered the data evasion zone outlined by the safety protocols. Xyrin had come this close only due to her "self-as-network" nature. Any further forward, she feared her momentum would draw her in uncontrollably. The Rift sporadically moved within this pale zone, expanding or contracting suddenly. For an awareness rooted in the network, this was already overly dangerous.
We told Xyrin to stop there and retreat quickly to a safe area. As a network’s collective consciousness, her withdrawal was essentially irrelevant as the Xyrin interface accompanying us was merely an interaction mode. She herself remained eternally within the entire network. Asking her to leave fundamentally meant to cease probing data from the Rift. Once her focus was elsewhere, the Rift couldn’t swallow any of her information.
Of course, this severed our communication with Taville: Any data connecting to the Rift would be lost, and Xyrin couldn’t survive here. This place was an absolute Black Barrier for spiritual connections.
Before leaving, Taville rapidly analyzed the data we had discovered. I could imagine the tense, bustling atmosphere inside the lab outside now. However, Taville’s analysis could only touch the surface — evaluating network conditions, estimating bandwidth near the Rift, analyzing safety factors, and so on. What lay within the Rift was a mystery until Bingdisi and I returned.
"Your Majesty, you and Lord Bingdisi possess special souls that cannot be swallowed by the Rift. Thus, in theory, you can safely approach and even enter the Rift. But the safety of the Rift itself does not mean there is nothing dangerous on the other side. If you encounter any situation there, please unleash your Void Power immediately — this may lead to a short-term network crash or even the destruction of some nodes, but it’s preferable over losing our Leader." Taville reminded one last time, followed by Lin Xue’s image appearing before us: "Wood, and Bingdisi, I haven’t seen anything terrible yet, but the Rift interferes tremendously — it definitely harbors something extraordinary. It currently holds no malicious intent but possesses the power to threaten you. Understand my point?"
"If things don’t look good, then just make a run for it," Bingdisi said nonchalantly. "Don’t worry, I honed my skills smashing the principal’s windows back in the day — yes, I’ll take your hubby along."
"...Now I’m even less reassured..."
After ending the communication, Xyrin also retreated to a safe distance. Bingdisi and I took a step forward, severing the last bits of connection from our spiritual link: We had entered the Black Barrier Zone.
"It’s as quiet as death." Bingdisi murmured unhappily while quickly approaching the vast void ahead. "No wind, no sound, treading on the ground feels unreal. I feel this place is missing something."
"No choice, data is interrupted here after all. We’re hopping between a group of mutation nodes now. Besides ourselves and these nodes, nothing is evolving here, not a single byte."
Information that absolutely does not evolve is stagnant; equating stillness with death was perfectly explained here.
Finally, we arrived in front of the vast void, observing its essence along the boundary. It plunged vertically underground. It was a perfect circle with an approximate radius of a kilometer (speaking of which, are length units reliable within this virtual space?). Yet upon close observation, it seemed like a black disc printed on the ground: The darkness inside was so intense that terms like "pure black" couldn’t even describe it entirely, making it impossible to discern whether this "entrance" had any inner walls, even from such a close distance. Try drawing a pure black circle on paper and painting cave walls inside with the same black color — you’ll find this entirely unfeasible.
The Rift presented such a circumstance.
"Without sensing Abyssal Aura, I truly felt it might be an Abyss Gate," Bingdisi echoed my thoughts.
I looked up and saw a black circular zone in the corresponding position in the sky, equally deep and unfathomable.
Simply observing nearby definitely wouldn’t reveal anything. However, regarding the investigation into this Rift’s reality, Bingdisi and I, not being experts, had no clue how to begin. Luckily, what we needed to do was simple, requiring no specialized knowledge — all we had to do was jump inside...
Decipher what exactly was going on within (or on the other side of) the Rift: whether it harbored a powerful malevolent tumor, was merely a network glitch, or an interface to a Fallen Apostle’s network. Once these mysteries were unraveled without needing specific reasons, Bingdisi and I could consider our mission accomplished far beyond expectations. The remaining solutions lay in the hands of scientists outside.
"Earlier Taville mentioned it should be fine if we jump in," I patted Bingdisi’s shoulder. "We aren’t network data; the Rift can’t delete us. Moreover, if luck favors us, the Rift’s capacity might be limited enough to be ’overloaded’ by the Void Creatures’ souls; then it would resolve at once."
"Hmm." Bingdisi nodded gently and suddenly glanced over with unprecedented seriousness before softly speaking in a rare tender tone:
"You jump, I’ll watch..."
I: "..."
I grabbed her arm and jumped in. (To be continued. If you enjoy the work, feel free to visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users are encouraged to visit m.qidian.com for reading.)
