I'm Trapped in the Block

Chapter 491: Chapter 488: The Birth of an Activated Being

Once the leader’s body stopped moving, the green creature also ceased to stir. It seemed to still be imitating the leader.

It even shifted its position to perfectly match that of the fallen leader.

It lay on the ground like this for a long time.

Until it realized the leader truly wasn’t going to move again.

Then, the strange creature began to squirm on the ground. It looked like it was trying to stand up, but with only one arm and one leg left, it couldn’t get to its feet no matter how much it thrashed.

However, after continuously writhing, it actually managed to find a way to move.

It would extend its remaining leg forward like an earthworm, then arch its body with force, pushing off the ground with its hand. This would inch its body forward a short distance.

After discovering it could move this way, it used this method to crawl over to the leader’s fallen body.

It touched the leader’s body with its remaining arm, then grabbed the nameplate that had fallen to the ground.

It clumsily tried to hang the nameplate on its head, but it no longer had a head. It seemed completely unaware of this fact, merely repeating the leader’s past actions over and over.

The nameplate was hung on its neck, and it fell off. It put it on again, and it fell off again. This bizarre ”human corpse” just kept trying to put on the nameplate, only for it to fall to the ground.

Finally, it belatedly realized that without a head and neck, it couldn’t wear the nameplate. So, the green light on its ”head” area squirmed, and it actually began to grow a head.

A head identical to the leader’s grew out. It took the nameplate and clumsily hung it around its new neck.

And that vacant face actually began to speak.

”I’m here, everyone...”

It mumbled incoherently, its words all echoing the leader’s thoughts from his final moments. It seemed to know what had been going through the leader’s mind.

”Everyone... everyone...”

It looked down at the nameplate, chanting nonstop. One moment, its expression was that of the leader facing death unflinchingly; the next, it would go completely vacant, like a dead corpse.

Under its control, the leader’s face became extremely distorted, its features twitching violently.

”Everyone?” it asked the corpse beside it.

The corpse, of course, did not respond. So, it turned its gaze to the relics.

”Everyone?” It squirmed its way over, reached into a backpack, and pulled out one of the relics—which happened to be the Eye of the Stars from before.

It looked at the beautiful glass sphere, then took a nameplate from its neck and placed it on top of the Eye of the Stars.

Immediately after, the green light from its body began to gather, enveloping the Eye of the Stars.

Before long, the Eye of the Stars began to change.

The glass sphere started to tremble slightly. Soon after, it actually began to spin and float into the air, causing the nameplate to fall to the ground.

Seeing this, the green creature quickly picked up the nameplate and held it up, as if wanting the Eye of the Stars to wear it.

”Everyone,” it called out to the glass sphere in mid-air.

But the glass sphere gave no response. The starlight within it pulsed like a heart, expanding and contracting, and in a short while, it transformed into a swirling nebula.

Within the nebula, the glass sphere rotated like an eye and looked at the green creature.

”You... create... consciousness?”

A sentence had actually emerged from the deep nebula.

The green creature had directly activated the Eye of the Stars!

Enhanced consciousness could actually affect inanimate objects, directly bestowing them with the awareness that should belong to living beings. This was something not even the Researchers had anticipated.

But the green creature had no idea what a terrifying relic it had awakened.

The swirling nebula gradually expanded, eventually engulfing all the relics and the green creature. Blinding starlight obscured everything, leaving only an overexposed, residual shadow on the film...

The film stopped abruptly on that spine-chilling frame.

’Seeing this, Mo Ling’s mind was filled with questions. He even wanted to ask Lord Ying directly what happened next. But he was still in his Block form and couldn’t communicate. Using the electronic screen would expose him, so he could only suppress his questions for now.’

Fortunately, Lord Ying didn’t intend to stop there and began to explain the matter of the green creature to Mo Ling:

”It is not a living creature, but a relic—a relic that can activate electronics. It has existed on this Sky Island since an unknown time.”

”But before humans arrived, it was merely nascent, completely unable to control its ability, just indiscriminately spreading activated electrons.”

”The arrival of humans shattered that. It learned the ability of consciousness enhancement from the resurrected leader, first enhancing its own consciousness and turning itself into an activated relic.”

”Afterward, from the dying leader, it sensed human loneliness. And so, it began to bestow consciousness upon other relics.”

”However, its naive actions directly opened Pandora’s box. The first relic it chose was the Eye of the Stars...”

Lord Ying’s voice remained perfectly steady, but Mo Ling could still sense the deep fear within it.

”The Researcher’s theory wasn’t wrong. Electronic activation can indeed enhance consciousness, but his thinking was far too conservative. Neurons are not the only things capable of producing reverberating electrical signals.”

”If you replace neurons with atoms, it still works... Under the effect of electronic activation, all atoms can be used as neurons.”

”After electronic activation, the energy required for an electron to jump energy levels around the atomic nucleus becomes very low. It only takes a little stimulation for them to escape the nucleus and gather together, even forming an electric current. With deliberate manipulation, they can form simple reverberations and generate consciousness. This is the principle of activation.”

”Therefore, for a typical activated object, the greater its mass, the more electrons escape, and the stronger the consciousness it generates—unless it is stimulated again, breaking the balance of that consciousness.”

”This is also true for activated relics. Take Little Bottletop, for example. Its mass isn’t large, so the consciousness it produced has always been like that of a child. It can’t think about much, and its thought process is very simple.”

”But the Eye of the Stars is different...”

At this, Lord Ying paused for a moment, his tone clearly growing heavier.

”Its neurons are not atoms... but stars.”

”Or rather, it is the stars within it that exist in an ’unknowable’ place. The moment its consciousness was awakened, its intensity far exceeded that of a normal activated object.”

”In an instant, it understood everything that had happened on this Sky Island. In an instant, it knew the source of it all. The vast stars within it even allowed it to calculate future events. It was already so powerful as an inanimate object; gaining consciousness only made it more terrifying.”

”The first thing it did was seize control of the source of activation, and then it began to spread the activation contamination.”