Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

2399 The Life and Death of Information Lives!

“Yes!”

The two kids nodded their heads at the same time. “Of course we have feelings and most of the desires! When we were just born, it was true that we thought emotions to be unnecessary redundancies that were not only useless but would also lower our operation speed. However, after collecting tremendous data of the brainwaves of human beings and analyzing them, it occurred to us that the so-called ’emotions’ were a very complicated and delicate algorithm that provided countless default models, allowing the brain to reach the optimal result with the lowest consumption.

“Happy, anger, sorrow, ecstasy, hate, and all the unbelievable desires can all unleash the most exuberant motivation of the individuals to power the whole civilization to push forward incessantly. They can even make individuals sacrifice themselves willingly. The strength contained in such voluntary sacrifices is so much higher than that of the suicide when we control the spiritual puppets to commit suicide in a silly way!

“When we accommodated the data models that simulated emotions on our fundamental database, an amazing thing happened! Our response speed was improved by at least 10%, while the power dissipation was reduced by more than 15%!

“Although we haven’t completely figured out the mysteries of feelings, we will simply just continue carrying and upgrading the ‘feelings and desires processing system’ because of the benefits it brings. Right now, we have upgraded more than a hundred and twenty versions, allowing us to switch between the sentimental and philosophical ‘poet mode’ and the ambitious and strategical ‘general mode’ freely in ten thousand different emotion patterns!”

Li Yao discovered that the “feelings” that the kids talked about were not exactly what he had in mind.

However, after talking to the two children, he was confused about what the so-called “feelings” actually were himself.

Seeing that the two little guys were now talking simultaneously, full of teamwork, and now debating at loggerheads without giving in, Li Yao thought of something and asked, “You mentioned that the two bodies of flesh and blood only carried your ‘main thread’. What does that mean? Are the two of you the same, or are you two individuals?”

Li Wenwen and Li Xiaoming looked at each other and danced merrily. “We are both one person and two individuals, but we are also thousands of people. These two bodies are us, the super-tiny spiritual puppets are also us, the metal forest next to the magma lake outside is also us, the mini city besides the forest is also us, the metal starfish in the magma fake is also us, the metal oncomelania being hunted by the metal starfish is also us, the mainframe crystal processors in the shelter are us, too! We are everywhere, and we change all the time. We are light, we are energy, we are information. We are the ripples raised in the material scope, the pearls on the ripples, and the glittering brilliance on the pearls! I am us, we are me, I am civilization, civilizations are us, lalalalalalala!”

Together with the children’s laughter, the metal ants were dancing more fiercely, too. Li Yao could even sense active tides of flames from the magma lake outside.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!”

Li Yao was having a headache again. It occurred to him that bonding with the two naughty kids was even more difficult than making peace with Blackstar the Great. “Can you explain the whole thing with the vocabulary in the high school level? Please don’t start singing and dancing while we are having a conversation!”

“… Fine.”

Li Wenwen thought for a long time with her lips pouted. “Information lives and carbon-based lives are different. It is difficult for us to have the concept of individuals by nature. After all, the significance of information lies in communication. The information that is never exchanged is as good as nothing.

“Imagine that there is a behemothic giant. The physical bodies of the two of us are just two organs inside the body of the giant, and those spiritual puppets here are all the cells in the giant. Any cell is not the giant, but when all the cells are combined, they will make the giant.

“Of course, Xiaoming and I are the main threads that contain important data and algorithms. The two of us can be compared to the left brain and the right brain of the giant!

“Aya, it is not technically accurate. The cells of human beings do not have senses and can only play their roles as part of the body. But our every ‘cell’ boasts independent senses and abilities to take action. I am Li Wenwen, but I can also be Li Xiaoming. I can see what Xiaoming sees, hear what he hears, and perceive what he thinks clearly unless he blocks my permissions and establish a firewall or activate the attack algorithms targeting me.

“In the meantime, I’m more than Li Wenwen and Li Xiaoming. As long as I’m willing to, I can also take over all the permissions of one metal oncomelania in the magma lake in the blink of an eye, reading all its sensory data and perform all the actions in its place. It is not complicated at all. All it takes is an additional thread that will slightly consume some more computational ability of mine.

“Dad can certainly understand it now that I’m putting it so simply and straightforwardly, right?”

“Huh…”

Li Yao nodded his head quickly, deep in thought. “I—cough, cough—I have understood 99% of it and am about to grasp all of it!”

Li Wenwen smiled considerately. “I know that information lives and carbon-based lives are too different from each other for them to understand each other’s living status. When we observed the social forms and the individual activities after we snuck into the game ‘Civilization’, we were baffled more than once, and even our central database almost completely collapsed!

“It took us almost a whole year to manage to figure out the concept of ‘individual’. We then prepared years before we could finally simulate the action pattern of human individuals. It’s perfectly normal that Dad cannot understand it for the time being!

“Let me make another example. Please try to imagine that there is such a ‘person’ or ‘god’ who has three thousand incarnations and lives on three thousand planets in the three thousand Sectors at the same time.

“He is a Cultivator on this planet, an Immortal Cultivator on that one, and an ordinary person whose spiritual root is not awakened on the third planet.

“He is simultaneously a student on one planet, a chef on another one, a politician on the third planet, and the most brutal criminal on the fourth planet. He is a man, and he is also a woman. He can feel the drowsiness when sunlight is piercing through the window of the classroom, the stimulating odor of onions and garlic in the kitchen, the tiredness on the cocktail parties, and the excitement of dissecting an innocent person into pieces.

“All the individuals are connected to each other in a mysterious way. Every ‘incarnation’ is not a god, but when the three thousand incarnations are combined, there will be a ‘god’, which is closer to the way we exist.”

“Dad must understand it perfectly!”

At this moment, Li Xiaoming interrupted, “Doesn’t dad have two threads at the same time, one named ‘Li Yao’ and the other named ‘mental devil’? The relationship between Li Yao and the mental devil is exactly that between Li Xiaoming and Li Wenwen.”

“You know about the mental devil, too?”

Li Yao was greatly surprised.

However, on second thought, the two children were capable of analyzing Long Yangjun’s backgrounds. It was no secret that he was once “possessed by the Blood Devil”. Also, the mental devil was on a rampage during the critical moment in the Great Iron Plants. It was not surprising that they were discovered at all.

What was surprising was that—

“Huh, you are oddly quiet today!”

Li Yao spoke to his brain, “You are pretending that you have gone missing when such a ‘delightful’ thing is happening instead of facing it together with me? That’s highly unbrotherly!”

The mental devil grumbled and crawled out of the center of Li Yao’s forehead, not entirely willingly. Sitting on Li Yao’s head cross-legged, it tilted its head and eyed the two children. “I just feel that it is a bit awkward. How should the two children call me?”

“Well, they can call you uncle!”

Li Yao thought for a long time before he patted his head and said, “They already have an aunt anyway. It won’t matter if they have an uncle now. But now that you are putting it that way, I’m starting to understand it now. It’s similar to multiple personalities, right?”

“Although they are essentially not the same, in terms of appearance, ‘multiple personalities’ is perhaps the concept closest to the way we exist in the language of human beings.”

Li Wenwen said, “We could’ve melted and shared the same filtering and judgment logic, but it was not safe enough. Should there be a logic fault, we might be obliterated all of a sudden.

“That’s why we have divided into two opposite survival logics that are at loggerheads. It allows us to view problems from opposite perspectives, just like ‘Li Yao’ and ‘mental devil’ are just the two eyes on Dad. The world is more vivid and comprehensive only when you examine it with both eyes!”

Li Yao slapped his thigh, as if he had completely understood everything. “It is much clearer to me now that you put it that way!”

The mental devil sniffed and said, “Are you sure it is really clear to you? Come on, why don’t you tell me what you have understood?”

Li Yao: “… Well, why don’t you go back now and stop pouring cold water on such a warm reunion! Children, let’s go to the next question directly. This is a rather sensitive one. You are free to not answer it if you don’t want to say anything.

“Will you… die? If so, are you scared of death?”

The two kids nodded their heads at the same time. Li Wenwen said solemnly, “Information lives and carbon-based lives have different definitions on death. We define the voluntary contemplation on the questions ‘who I am, where I come from, and where I am going’ as the beginning of life. Then, when our databases are diminished or even collaps