Chapter 309: Linglong Group (Seeking Monthly Tickets!)

"I'll say, I'll say, don't kill me. I'll say whatever you want to know, please don't kill me."

Lin Xian's aura immediately made Tang Yun's face pale. She seemed to realize her situation at this moment and hurriedly said: "It... it was the organization called Deep Red World that brought us here. They said... they said that here we could perform digital-like life connection, and also... also not be affected by dark invasion, and could... could safely and happily hide in the polar night waiting for the end of the doomsday!!"

"You?" Lin Xian's gaze condensed: "Besides you, who else?"

"And my husband!"

She said, finally remembering something, her gaze looking around the honeycomb center, muttering in her mouth:

"Husband, where is my husband..."

Tang Yun's mental state seemed extremely unstable, completely unable to control her emotions, constantly searching crazily. Fortunately, the instinct for survival kept her a shred of reason, allowing her to conduct partial communication and dialogue.

Long-term sleep had caused her limbs to almost lose coordination. She tried to stand up but kept struggling on the ground, even losing much of her sense of direction.

From the intermittent confession of the other party, Lin Xian learned that Tang Yun had come to participate in this project with her husband Wen Cheng and several other collateral relatives of the Wen family. As senior members of the Deep Red World, they enjoyed extremely high treatment.

They came here to accept the introduction of the Deep Red World to the mycelium network and the Zero Element Plan, and personally participated in the experiment of being briefly invaded by hallucination spores, experiencing the happiness and magic of entering the hallucination consciousness.

The purpose of the Zero Element Plan was to connect to a kind of tender mycelium here through the survival cabin plus a special biological isolation device, allowing consciousness to enter the mycelium network, while maintaining happiness and consciousness ascension, and being immune to the infection of the underground polar night dark invasion. And the entire Zero Element Center operated unmanned, the purpose of which was absolute secrecy and safety. The isolation device could perform timed blocking according to the active time of the mycelium network, avoiding brain overload and the spread of mycelium growth that couldn't be stopped.

But the problem was, even with only 9 hours of brain overload, that wasn't something ordinary people could bear. The life support device of the survival cabin couldn't save them at all. People kept dying in every cycle. The Deep Red World had long foreseen this situation, but according to these Advent Sect people, such death wasn't true death, but that consciousness upload had already been completed. So even if the body died, the consciousness could still exist in the mycelium network in an eternal state. After the darkness passed, the consciousness could be completely reversed and exported through gene cloning technology, reaching "rebirth" or even returning to youth!

So for these Deep Red members, whether it was rebirth after escaping the disaster or eternal life in consciousness, it was an excellent plan to escape the doomsday. This was also the reason why the members lying here were basically over 40 years old.

"Their people said that the mycelium here is a very special form of life, more advanced than human life forms by more than one level. If the brain is connected to the mycelium network, it can be immune to the influence of dark invasion and won't be attacked by strange entities. So no work personnel are allowed here, the purpose of which is to maintain 'purity', create a safe environment, and... with the mycelium network..." Tang Yun's face was nervous and afraid, her gaze constantly looking at Lin Xian: "And... get along harmoniously."

"Get along harmoniously?" Lin Xian laughed upon hearing this word: "There are people who believe this kind of ghost talk?"

Tang Yun wrapped herself in the blanket Luo Yang had just found for her and said in a low voice while sitting on the ground: "They made multiple plans, saying that consciousness wouldn't completely detach, and the AI would cut off the mycelium network at a fixed time, allowing us to rest and survive. And the second plan was that even if we died, our consciousness would... would enter the mycelium network and survive in an eternal state, and it would be very happy."

She looked at the ground with scattered pupils, seemingly carrying a certain yearning: "We all tried it. In that consciousness, whatever we wanted, we had—wealth, freedom, sex, power, delicious food, fragrance, touch... all beautiful feelings, everything we wanted was there. That kind of happiness isn't the nerve stimulation of drugs, not a delusional fantasy, it's so real, as if that was the real world..."

"Isn't that still a hallucination?" Kiki frowned: "You're still lying there, nothing has changed."

"No!"

Hearing Kiki's words, Tang Yun suddenly retorted loudly: "It's different. They're right, they're right. If the essence of life is consciousness, then what is the difference between everything I feel in this body here and everything I feel in the mycelium network? There is no difference. The sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty felt in 60 or 80 years of life can all be felt in the mycelium network. One can possess everything and be alive. If so, why do we still have to be terrified in this doomsday, afraid of the night falling?"

"Even if the whole world is destroyed, I will live eternally in that consciousness world. But others are truly dead. Then you tell me, by that time, who is alive and who is dead? Which side is reality, and which side is illusion?"

"But you know clearly that it's a hallucination created by the brain. These aren't real at all!" Luo Yang couldn't help but respond upon hearing this series of words.

"Is this world necessarily the real world?!" Tang Yun responded immediately: "... Buddhism has a saying, a grain of sand is a world, a leaf is a Bodhi. Our Blue Star, our Milky Way, perhaps are just a neuron point of some cosmic creature, and our lives are just flashing consciousness neuron signals, right!"

The faster Tang Yun spoke, the clearer her train of thought seemed to be. Blood began to seep from the corners of her blood-red eyes, and black-red blood also flowed from her nasal cavity, soon staining the blanket in front of her red.

Seeing Tang Yun's state at this time, Lin Xian couldn't help but feel stern in his heart, remembering the scientific shock caused by the massive prohibition of digital life laws many years ago, which triggered a tsunami-like ideological debate worldwide.

Regarding the concept of 【Living】, countless people had different views. And the part of people who supported digital life all had the same thoughts as Tang Yun at this time, believing that the essence of human survival was consciousness form, and the body was just a carrier. As long as consciousness could be maintained, replacing the body with a robot, a terminal computer, or entering the Internet, in essence, it was the same. The digital immortality faction believed that consciousness upload was the ultimate form of life continuation, perhaps even transcending physical limitations.

But the key to the introduction of this prohibition law lay in its philosophical dilemma regarding the definition of life, that is, it was impossible to determine whether the consciousness existence simulated by data and the consciousness iteration of the human brain itself were the same and possessed iterative ability. Thus, it couldn't be regarded as a real life, but a kind of AI, whose logic was completely contrary to human morality.

He had originally thought that this Deep Red World was just playing some gimmicks to fool some rich people who still held resources in the doomsday. But he didn't expect that they were using the theoretical logic of digital life combined with the characteristics of the mycelium network, having their own perspective on viewing the doomsday, and were determined to do so.

"Sigh, hopeless." Kiki shook her head, her gaze looking speechlessly at Lin Xian.

"Lin Xian, what do you say?"

"No... no..." Tang Yun was confused and chaotic at this time, constantly trying to struggle up from the ground, but because her limbs hadn't exercised for a long time, she didn't know how to stand at all for a while, and began to say in her mouth: "I want to go back, I want to go back. My son, my husband, they are also inside. I can't wake up now!"

"You still want to go in?! 70% of the people inside have already died. You're lucky to have come out alive without your brain being devoured by mycelium." Lin Xian looked at the mycelium fragments on Tang Yun's head, secretly wondering what kind of technology this Deep Red World had used to actually isolate the physical invasion of mycelium into the brain, while being able to connect to the mycelium network. This point was truly bizarre.

"Her situation is relatively rare among this group of people. Her mental power is very powerful, so her body has always maintained vitality." Ding Junyi walked over with a mobile terminal: "Others with weak resistance, letting the brain overload, couldn't hold on for too long at all."

Lin Xian said upon hearing this: "It seems that this Deep Red World didn't inform them of this point."

"They did say." Shu Qin also said with a complex face: "Death is uploading consciousness, becoming eternal life."

"Wow." Luo Yang adjusted his glasses: "Actually having a perfect logical closed loop, these people are truly amazing."

Kiki stood beside Lin Xian with her arms crossed: "Of course, otherwise how could they fool these rich people."

Tang Yun, who was listening to the conversation of the crowd, was full of shock and incredulity: "Impossible!..." She said, suddenly thinking of something, got up and rushed toward the glass curtain wall "My husband, my son are still inside!!"

"What are your husband and son's names?" Luo Yang asked.

Tang Yun responded immediately: "My husband is Wen Dong, my son is Wen Jiacheng, and... and he is the same age as Wen Qi." She said, looking at Kiki.

"Found it... Wen Jiacheng, 0912 cabin..."

Luo Yang on the side held the mobile terminal. He had already accessed the monitoring center here, and at this time frowned and looked at Lin Xian and the others, saying in a low voice: "The vital signs show that he has been dead for a long time."

"What?!" Tang Yun was shocked: "Impossible, absolutely impossible! When I was inside, he was clearly there too. It's impossible that he's dead."

Tang Yun's words made Lin Xian have some questions. He looked at Ding Junyi at this time: "Director Ding, you say, could it be that consciousness upload has really been completed?"

"Right, right, right, it must be like this, it must be like this!" Tang Yun shouted hysterically.

Ding Junyi, however, had a calm expression, responding in a flat tone:

"The data I found from the Zero Element Center is not enough to prove that this mycelium network has the nature of distributed cloud network data transmission and storage, so it cannot be confirmed. Even if it is, it is not feasible from a logical perspective."

"How so?"

Ding Junyi said: "First of all, this sky mushroom mycelium, as a dark species, we don't know its biological logic at present. Let's take the simplest example. The original digital life plan was to simulate the neural network through the super computing power of a quantum computer, compressing consciousness data into iterative quantum bits to realize consciousness 'upload' and 'immortality'. The underlying calculation logic is quantum bits, that is, 0 or 1. And traditional computers use binary bits, that is, 0 and 1. But no matter which one it is, these are calculation logics designed by us humans. So if this mycelium network is really to be realized, then the calculation logic of this mycelium network must also be able to be compatible with the neuron calculation logic of the human brain. Can you understand what I mean by saying this?"

"Understand, it's not simple. It means these alien creatures and our human 'operating system' are different." Kiki understood immediately.

"Not bad. But this is my logic. My thinking boundary is limited by my human identity and the education I received. Abilities may cover higher life forms, so my logic isn't necessarily correct. However, from a practical perspective, there is another guess, that is, the son she saw is a phantom 'simulated' by her brain through calculation. We have experienced this point before, so we should be able to understand."

Lin Xian frowned slightly upon hearing this: "I roughly understand."

Just at this time, Luo Yang, who was searching with the mobile terminal, spoke again: "That's not right. I've searched several times. Besides this Wen Jiacheng, there are no other people with the surname Wen at all."

"What did you say?!"

Tang Yun, whose emotions were in chaos, heard this and didn't know where the courage came from. She actually crawled up from the ground crazily, snatched the mobile terminal from Luo Yang's hand, and kept flipping through it. She looked at the information of everyone inside one by one, but couldn't find her husband's information at all.

Instantly, her face turned whiter and whiter, her movements stopped slowly, and she sat down on the ground powerlessly, her brain blank, constantly muttering in her mouth: "Impossible..."

Kiki's telekinesis moved, taking back the mobile terminal from her hand. Lin Xian took it and looked at it, seemingly understanding something.

"It seems that for such a perfect immortality plan, your husband doesn't fully believe it."

Tang Yun turned her head to look at Lin Xian, trembling all over: "You... what do you want to say?"

Once these words were out, the others immediately understood what Lin Xian meant.

One guess was that Wen Dong was afraid and fled at the last moment, not daring to enter.

The second was that Wen Dong had planned it, deliberately sending his wife and son here, but the reason for this was intriguing.

Tang Yun wasn't a fool. Although her brain was dizzy at this moment, she clearly remembered everything that happened after coming here. She recalled her husband's lukewarm state, which was completely different from her and others' questioning, joy, and fantasy upon learning about this eternal consciousness plan. And now that Wen Dong's name wasn't on the survival cabin list, she finally realized it.

Instantly, all the panic and nervousness on her body disappeared, and she collapsed on the ground, her face pale, not caring at all about her private parts being exposed in front of everyone, her eyes full of incredulity and despair.

Lin Xian saw this scene, sighed in his heart, turned to look at Kiki, and said in a low voice:

"This can be considered an acquaintance of yours. What do you plan to do? I'll listen to you."

From Kiki's words before, this woman shouldn't be bad. Now she had fallen into the miserable end of lying in a coffin and becoming mycelium nutrients, and miraculously survived, only to still have the beautiful dream of immortality. She could be considered a pitiful person. If she were just a stranger, Lin Xian might just intend to let other fleets preparing to turn north to the Dawn Center take her away, life and death being up to fate. But this person could be considered a relative of Kiki's family, so Lin Xian decided to ask her thoughts.

Kiki nodded upon hearing this, but glanced at Lin Xian, seemingly having her own thoughts: "Saving her is very simple. But don't you wonder why they came here, and what happened to the Wen family in Jinhai?"

Lin Xian's heart moved, thinking to himself how his brain suddenly became slow. It had to be Kiki, always thinking about her family's property for Lin Xian anytime, anywhere. If this were in peaceful days, she would definitely be a one-in-a-million good wife!

The small interlude ended. Lin Xian had people bring some hot water and clothes to Tang Yun from the train. After Luo Yang and the others solved the problems inside, they went out to patrol the tunnel, leaving Lin Xian, Kiki, and the others.

Tang Yun's physical state was extremely poor at this time. She didn't take the clothes and hot water handed over. Kiki looked at her appearance, took a deep breath, and walked over.

"Hey, we are still in the polar night, and danger could happen at any time. If you want us to save you, at least cooperate. Being naked is so embarrassing."

She had disheveled hair and a decadent face, burying her head with eyes that seemed to have lost their luster, muttering:

"What's there to cover with a few pieces of meat? Men and women lying there are all the same..."

After speaking, she raised her head on her own, looking at Kiki with a scrutinizing gaze, and after a long time, said:

"We all thought you and your father died. Wen Qi, Auntie has nothing to help you with, just suggest you, be careful of that Wen family..."

"I didn't have the surname Wen in the first place, I have the surname Zhao!"

Tang Yun looked at the clothes and hot water placed in front of her, her eyes changed, and she said:

"I know you have no feelings for this Wen family, but you being able to survive from that plane, perhaps this is heaven's will..."

Kiki frowned upon hearing this, alert: "What do you mean?"

Tang Yun took a deep breath: "I don't know much, but from the reaction of your aunt and those people after you and your father had the accident, they... perhaps they knew you would have the accident long ago."

Lin Xian, who was listening to this on the side, also became interested and walked over:

"You mean, her father was framed and killed?"

Tang Yun shook her head: "Whether it was, I can't be sure. After the Apocalypse Day, Wen Qi's father held all the power, deciding the life and death of the entire family in the doomsday. He used the resources of the construction business and shipping business to place bets in the Federation and the Phoenix Society. Besides the underground city plan, he was also prepared to take 3 bulk grain commodity cargo ships of 500,000 tons directly to Dawn City, used to exchange for a 【Dragon Whale】 deep-sea navigation warship under the original Federation plus an entire escort fleet for escape at sea. In addition, he also cooperated with the Silent City to plan to transform an Eternal-class doomsday train at the Jinhai Train Industry Center, used for family members to chase the Dawn Center along the land."

"Wow, underground city, sea route, land train, putting eggs in so many baskets." Lin Xian was amazed upon hearing this.

It had to be said that this Linglong Group was also a chosen one, because after the Apocalypse Day, the assets of the vast majority of the world's top 500 companies became nothing in a short time, because money was no longer money.

But some companies were different, such as Jian Xuwei of the Fenge Group of the *Silver Star*. As a technology group, the Fenge Group mastered transportation, machinery, manufacturing, and energy. The group's assets could be said to be the most popular things in the doomsday.

And the Linglong Group was construction and shipping. The former was relatively simple. The Linglong Group definitely had a place among the contractors of the Federation's underground city project. And the Linglong Group also had security companies with armed forces, which gave it a very high cooperation value and weight in the dialogue with the government.

Shipping went without saying. Bulk commodity shipping business often started at 500,000 tons per ship. And as one of the world's top ten shipping companies, the Linglong Group had over 410 large and small shipping cargo ships under its group. In the doomsday turmoil, there must have been grain or energy cargo ships in transit. These things were worth a lot. In the doomsday, grain was gold, and energy was banknotes. And Kiki's father could mobilize these resources in a short time, quickly taking them to exchange for benefits with the government or other organizations before the world's internal chaos, rebellion, and large-scale population extinction. From this point alone, Kiki's adopted father could be said to have quite decisive means.

And the Dragon Whale mentioned by Tang Yun, although it sounded a bit outrageous, Lin Xian knew that the strategic direction of the original Federation, which was now Dawn City, was to build underground cities, and the part of sea-surface warships stripped from the Interstellar Military in their hands basically couldn't be used, and they couldn't fly. And 1.5 million tons of grain could at least feed 10 million people for a year and a half. If it was the minimum living requirement, it could even reach two years. It made sense for the original Federation to use sea-surface warships that couldn't be used to exchange for grain with the Linglong Group.

"Oh, I understand what you mean." Kiki gained spirit: "You mean your Wen family now has an Eternal-class doomsday train fortress under construction, and a Dragon Whale chasing the Phoenix Society's Noah, and also has a quota for the underground city plan. All the Wen family's resources have been divided into three directions, right?"

"Four, I guess." Lin Xian spoke at this time, signaling to Tang Yun sitting on the ground: "Isn't she here."

Tang Yun shook her head upon hearing this and said: "These plans were all arranged by your father, but after your father was gone, your aunt Wen Hui was the main speaker. She immediately canceled these plans of your father, preparing to donate all resources to Dawn City, in exchange for... a seat as a federal councilor. She believed that this way, the entire Wen family wouldn't be torn apart, and could also maintain its upper-class status in Dawn City..."

"Ah?"

Lin Xian frowned upon hearing this: "Good guy, main idea is to go down together, right."

"Oh my god~" Kiki was so angry that she jumped up upon hearing this, gnashing her teeth: "What kind of pig brain is this? The doomsday has arrived and she still wants to be a councilor, to be a person above others. I was excited for a while when I heard about the Eternal train and the Dragon Whale, and it turns out they were all ruined by her?"

"I don't know the specific situation. I only know that the Eternal-class train has already been transformed halfway... others..." Tang Yun said.

"So you guessed that she and her father were framed based on this?" Lin Xian asked.

Tang Yun shook her head upon hearing this: "No."

"The reason I have such a guess is because I discovered that my husband, including Kiki's aunt Wen Hui, had secretly contacted this Deep Red World long ago."

"It's even possible... before the Apocalypse Day!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 310 =====