Text Chapter 1855 Sand Painting

Li Yao picked up a handful of black sea water, and found that the sea water was like a mixture of mucus and sand, falling from his fingers in a very strange shape.

It seems that the collapse of the imaginary world has affected the core logic layer, and even the dynamic model of sea water cannot be kept stable, resulting in various weird changes.

This is a deserted world, Li Yao didn't feel too strong aura of life.

Walking along the beach for a long time, the only thing that can be called "life" is that it can be seen everywhere on the beach, like a deflated ball, but there are still countless tentacles, like a strange mixture of crabs and jellyfish. thing.

These weird big crabs were motionless, exuding a very unpleasant rancid smell, it was unknown whether they were dead or "alive".

Naturally, they are not the virtual life produced by the Ethereal World itself, but the artificial intelligence that was added when the Ethereal World was constructed. The original plan was to use them to modulate the primitive ocean, monitor various data changes in the virtual seawater, and accelerate the virtual life. birth.

However, with the collapse of the Ethereal World, not only did virtual life fail to be born, but even the core databases of these artificial intelligences became more and more lengthy and cumbersome. The data overflowed and fell into an endless loop, unable to run any commands.

"Boom...boom...boom..."

In the purple sky, the zigzag-shaped dark clouds rolled feebly, and there were thunderclaps one after another, but the thunder was only the first half but not the second half, like a cock whose neck was stuck, and the sound stopped abruptly, It sounds unspeakably uncomfortable.

On the other side of the beach, there is an endless big city. Looking far away, Li Yao found that this ultra-modern big city also seemed to have experienced the most serious earthquake and meteorite bombardment. There were ruins everywhere, explosions and raging flames. The burnt traces looked more hopeless and dead than the black sea.

"Hello"

The imaginary world gave Li Yao a very uncomfortable feeling.

It seemed that there was only this collapsed world left in the entire universe, and in this collapsed world, he was the only one left.

He couldn't help shrinking his neck and shouting loudly.

Long Yangjun, Wei Qingqing and Professor Xie Wufeng and other expedition members actually landed on the beach not far from him, but no one responded to his call.

When Li Yao finally found the big team and wondered why they didn't respond to him, he found that no matter whether it was the mysterious Long Yangjun, the well-informed Professor Xie Wufeng, Wei Qingqing who was from the Spirit Race, and all the members of the expedition team, all of them were silent. Staring at the beach in a daze.

Li Yao stretched his neck, looked towards the beach, and slowly opened his mouth wide.

He saw a long scroll, or hundreds of sand paintings, stretching from one end of the beach to the other.

The initial sand painting technique was very immature, like a child randomly picking up a branch and sketching on the beach. They couldn't understand what the painting was, it was completely messy lines.

Gradually, the sand painting has its own content and skeleton. Although it looks very immature, it has a rough style, which reminds Li Yao of the murals left by cavemen in the depths of caves.

The content of the sand painting seems to be the depths of the primordial ocean, all kinds of bizarre creeps, single algae, nautilus and trilobites, etc., strange things.

With the gradual evolution of various primitive marine organisms, the brushwork of sand paintings has become more and more sophisticated, and the content arrangement has become more and more refined. With fine sand grains, a long scroll of biological evolution is vividly depicted and lifelike.

Marine life, reptiles, mammals, primates, the attunement of Pangu civilization, the birth of modern humans, the division of human beings, wars and development, the scale of sand paintings is getting bigger and bigger, and the structure is getting more and more complex, developing from a plane When it comes to three-dimensional, until the end, it can no longer be called a "sand painting", but a large-scale sand sculpture. It is a boy and a girl, two very cute children, sitting alone on the surface of a devastated planet, with fleshy little hands He rested his cheeks, as if looking up at the starry sky.

But in front of them are densely packed tombstones, the tombstones of human beings.

In the eyes of the two children condensed with gravel, there is no light at all, and they have neither sadness nor joy, nor fear nor anger towards the tombstone that drowns the whole world.

Li Yao swallowed hard, he vaguely felt that such a long scroll of sand painting looked familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

By the way, isn't this the sand painting version of the entrance of the Tinder Base, which is both illusory and real?

However, at the end of the "Road of Evolution" created by Professor Mo Xuan, human beings are replaced by some large silver-white balls condensed from liquid metal similar to his own body.

But at the end of this sand painting, although the entire planet is covered with human tombstones, there are still two small children looking up at the stars. What does it mean?

Li Yao was a little dry, and asked Xie Wufeng softly: "Professor Xie, what does this mean? Who left this sand painting, Professor Mo Xuan?"

"I don't know, but it's really... very strange."

Professor Xie Wufeng murmured, "Everything in the imaginary world is calculated in real time, just like the real world, it will continue to change. You can see that the ebb and flow of the tide here, although weak and slow, still exists, and from the beach Looking at the shape, not long ago, the tide rose and fell much more violently than now, and the seawater at high tide was enough to submerge sand paintings."

"That's right."

Wei Qingqing also said, "Although the Ethereal World collapsed in the past, it was not completely static, but was running more violently, without any rules at all. The world, if this piece of sand painting is left at that time, it will definitely be erased, or 'deleted'."

"That is to say"

Li Yao thought carefully for a moment, "This sand painting was left not long ago, after the 'life force' of the imaginary world gradually dried up and turned into a dying and still world?

"That was almost the critical moment when Professor Mo Xuan was about to launch his final plan. Why did he leave such weird traces here at that time? If he insisted on 'expressing' something, the illusory realm of the fire base is enough to explain him idea.

"Also, the immature and rough brushstrokes at the beginning are not quite like Professor Mo Xuan's style, but really like an innocent child.

"The question is, besides Professor Mo Xuan, does anyone else exist in the Ethereal World, and will such a painting be left behind?"

"Brushstrokes and styles are imitable."

Professor Xie Wufeng said, "Creating such a sand painting itself is not complicated, regardless of technology or computing power, it is a piece of cake, as long as the database is large enough, input a command to the crystal brain, and it can be completed in an instant.

"The point is, who gave this 'instruction' to whom, and what is the purpose?"

This question caused everyone to fall into silence, and every member of the expedition team felt chills at the back of their heads, as if two pairs of small sparkling eyes were hiding among the gravel, looking at them with a smile.

Li Yao knelt down on one knee, carefully observing the sand paintings one after another. For some reason, he felt an extremely strange feeling. He felt that these sand paintings brought him an unreasonable...intimacy?

It was like a weak electric current swept through his whole body, making him feel numb from his eyelids to his lips, he couldn't tell whether it was pleasant or uncomfortable.

How should I put it, he suddenly felt that these sand portraits were made by himself, or in other words, if he was asked to describe the evolution of life, he would probably draw it like this.

Li Yao was startled, collected himself, and continued to ask, "Have you found the fragments of 'No. 17' and 'No. 18'?"

"not yet."

Professor Xie Wufeng said, "It was originally some fragmented and illusory runes and data fragments, even if they were completely wiped out by the imaginary world, it would not be surprising.

"Why, do you suspect that this piece of sand painting was left behind by 'No. 17' and 'No. 18'? This is also possible, assuming that Professor Mo Xuan embedded a command related to the sand painting in their bodies first, and under certain conditions The next is automatically activated, driving them to leave these things, well, this is a fairly reasonable explanation.

"Let's go and have a look around the city."

The expedition team entered the once majestic but now dilapidated city by the sea along the steps covered with cracks and weeds.

Li Yao discovered that this city is a collection of all the cities of human civilization in the past and present. Antique pavilions and modern skyscrapers with glass curtain walls are closely integrated together.

Over there are strange peaks and waterfalls splashing, and here is the vacuum track piercing the sky and the sunken square hundreds of meters deep.

However, after experiencing the collapse of the Ethereal World, this "City of Ten Thousand Cities" was completely reduced to ruins. No matter the pavilions, pavilions or skyscrapers, they were all entangled by weeds and vines, the waterfalls dried up, the pipes broke, and the sinking The square is full of debris and dust, like the grave of human civilization.

"Professor Mo Xuan once talked to me about his idea of ​​creating virtual life."

Looking at the deserted streets and the city full of bones, Professor Xie Wufeng said with emotion, "At that time, Professor Mo Xuan firmly believed that a new virtual life would be born, but he did not want to create a kind of human beings that could not understand, nor could they understand. Human beings are not controlled by human beings, virtual life that is hostile to human beings.

"How should I put it, he hopes to create a virtual life that possesses human ideas and emotions, agrees with human morals and values, and even regards himself as a 'son of mankind', or in other words, an evolutionary version of human beings.

"So, while creating the 'virtual primordial ocean', he also built this splendid city, combining the essence of human civilization, including our technology, law, morality, art, and epic hero stories. It's all condensed here.

"You can regard this big city as a combination of a 'historical museum' and a 'big library', where the entire civilization is contained. Under the illumination of this 'civilized city', virtual life will be conceived, born and continued. Evolve, become a 'good boy' in a sense."