Psychics don't die from gunfire

Chapter 14 [Abyss]

The current state of the Internet can be traced back to ninety years ago.

The "War of the Seven Lands" ninety years ago was in fact a world war.

The war between various forces has spread from the land to the sky, and from the sky to the sea - cyberspace is no exception.

Rather, it is better to say that in this era of highly developed technology, the "World Wide Internet" has long been inseparable from and closely related to human beings.

Because of this, during the "Seven Lands War", major forces launched a protracted and extremely intense war over the Internet, causing almost irreversible damage to cyberspace.

Memetic viruses, malicious programs, crazy artificial intelligence, distorted cognitive fragments.
The "Internet world" has transformed from a free paradise brought about by the technological revolution into a hell.

Just by connecting to the Internet, it is possible for your body to be hijacked by a crazy artificial intelligence hacker; by entering a website, a hidden domain virus can trace the source of the contamination, paralyze or even explode the login device - in an era when people generally access the Internet through brain-computer interfaces, this is an extremely deadly attack.

When logging into the Internet using virtual reality services, you may trigger various "traps" or encounter "cognitive distortion fragments."

The most common of the former is the "cage trap", which forcibly imprisons a person's consciousness in a cage room, making it impossible to exit the Internet, and the real body becomes a bloodless and tearless vegetable.

The latter is a malicious meme that can tamper with and affect personal cognition - at the mildest, it can cause a drastic change in temperament, split personality, and memory confusion, while at the worst, it can turn a person into a "cyber psychopath."

When the "Seven Lands War" that lasted for twenty years ended, the victors of the war finally had time to clean up the devastated world.

In order to save the fragmented cyberspace and for their own future use, they worked together to divide and clean up a pure domain, and at the same time built a giant wonder called the [Domain Firewall] to isolate the rest of the fallen domains and save the current cyberspace.

——The above are the official statements of major forces.

The same is true for [corporate alliances].

"How can it be that simple?"

Song Shi shook his head in his heart.

While searching for the entrance to Thousand Star City, he lost himself in memories.

In his previous life, he had believed these words without a doubt. It was not until he entered the third level of psychic power that he knew the real truth.

The information officially provided by various forces was not wrong - but at the same time, they all concealed one thing.

That's the part about Psionics.

Few people can clearly explain what the essence of psychic power is.

But there is only one thing that can be confirmed, that is, "psychic power" is a power that represents oneself.

Theoretically, everyone has the possibility of awakening psychic powers. Of course, due to various reasons, the current proportion of psychics is only one in three thousand.

Because of the desire to become stronger and defeat all opponents, the "transcendence" path of "continuously strengthening oneself" was born; because of the desire to understand the hearts of others and listen to the whispers of all things, the "consensus" path of "deepening into the spiritual realm" appeared; because of the vain attempt to control the nature of heaven and earth, the "great source" path of "mastering the power of the great source" was born.

[Revelation], [balance], and [truth] are the same principle.

——And a large part of the collapse of the Internet in the past was caused by [Psychic Power]!
Theoretically, everyone possesses potential psychic power, but some people can call it out and use it through "awakening", while many more people keep it buried deep in their hearts until they die, without even knowing it themselves.

And the network.

It was hard for people in ancient times to imagine that something like the "Internet" would appear one day in the future, with the entire world connected as one, and huge amounts of information being transmitted and interacted at all times.

At the same time, the network environment is deteriorating irreversibly.

From initial exploration and curiosity to familiar use, and even the evolution of various cultures unique to the Internet. "Anonymity" allows users to be free, and when the first person starts to insult, others will involuntarily join in the fight.

It's much more than that.

Discomforting bloody pictures, the spread of vile rumors, fabricated news that only plays with emotions and consumes traffic, the echo chamber effect, nipple music, extreme views, and fragmented ideological trends
All of these things trigger people's instinctive "negative emotions".

Accompanied by countless "negative emotions", in the day-to-day use of the Internet, following the transmission of huge amounts of information, these "negative emotions" are subtly injected into the Internet - in this world with [psychic power], under the guidance of "negative emotions", everyone's hidden psychic power is triggered and also injected into the Internet.

Even this little bit of spiritual energy is insignificant.

But quantitative change leads to qualitative change.

——This is the real reason why the network collapsed in the past.

Countless people use the Internet day and night, and throw all kinds of messy things with "negative emotions" as the main body into it, making the Internet slowly become an unprecedented "redundant psychic aggregate", and one that is extremely complex and confusing in composition.

The various cyber warfare attacks during the "Seven Lands War" period were equivalent to directly detonating the "cyberspace" that had long been overwhelmed.

Because of [psychic energy], if we continue to sit back and watch the degeneration of "cyberspace", the latter may turn to affect reality - it will no longer be just an indirect interference with reality through the Internet. Instead, cyberspace will set off an unprecedented tsunami, shattering the barrier between the Internet and reality, and turning into a "psychic shock" that sweeps across human consciousness!
Therefore, the victors of the Seven Lands War gathered urgently, separated a piece of pure network domain, and jointly built a giant wonder - [Network Firewall] to block and isolate the rest of the fallen network domains.

now.

People named the lower layer of the fallen network outside the firewall the "Abyss", which refers to the scorched earth in ancient mythology that is not accessible to mortals and is filled with sulfur vapor and never-extinguished magma.

······
a moment.

“——Found it.”

Song Shi slowly breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.

The cyberspace twenty years ago seems to be no different from that twenty years later.

Although network technology will certainly make further progress in the next twenty years, in Song Shi's memory, there has been no revolutionary technology like "brain-computer interface" or "virtual reality". The researchers have only made the branches and leaves of existing trees more prosperous, rather than planting a new big tree.

Therefore, the method of finding the address entrance in memory is still effective. After some effort, I finally found an anchor point of [Thousand Star City] left in the upper network domain.

Carefully avoiding several patrol procedures and defense traps, Song Shi walked into a corridor.

At the end of the corridor, as Song Shi recited a string of secret keys, the original wall in front flashed and a door appeared.

Song Shi swiped away the "Warning Warning--" pop-up window on the network deep-diving device and grabbed the door handle.

Because the "Jack's Seed" network deep-diving equipment is a low-end civilian product of the previous generation and has its own performance limitations, the realism of the virtual reality service is not very high, probably only about 15%.

But this moment.

The moment Song Shi grasped the handle, the originally crude and uncomfortable "fuzzy sense of reality" disappeared, and was replaced by a clearly real touch.

——It seems that the place is right.

Song Shi thought.

The location of [Thousand Star City] is in the lower level of the Fallen Network [Abyss].

After being bombarded by various memetic viruses, malicious programs, crazy artificial intelligence, and the influence of psychic energy, everyone who steps into the [Abyss] will have their own degree of realism adjusted to a certain extent that is uncontrollably increased.

Even in theory, this person's device does not support such a high degree of realism.

But it’s not a big problem, because psychic power is inherently unreasonable.

Song Shi concentrated his mind, pushed the door open without hesitation.

Then, Song Shi began to fall——

Cracks of broken glass appeared on the surfaces of the surrounding walls, and countless crystal fragments peeled off the walls and danced in the air.

With no support to stand on, Song Shi fell from the shattered floor, and the strong feeling of weightlessness enveloped him from all directions.

The strong wind whistled in my ears.

Song Shi opened his eyes and found himself falling in the air.

The blue spot above was shrinking rapidly, which meant that he was moving away from the [Domain Firewall].

Song Shi raised his head again and looked around.

It’s like being in a bizarre dream.

It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of oil paint onto the sky. The curtain that swept across the world was filled with countless brilliant colors, bringing a dizzying and intense impact.

Under the curtain, the outline of the city shrouded in light became clearer and clearer.

Until the final end.

Silently, the streak of light coming from the sky fell into the glittering city below, just like the thousands of visitors from yesterday and tomorrow who were already commonplace, without causing a single ripple.

The lower level of the fallen network domain, [Abyss].

——Depth 1, [Thousand Star City].

(End of this chapter)