Chapter 1554: The Code War Within the Central Formation Spirit Computer

Amid the urgent alarm, every immortal gate councilor present fell silent.

A long while passed.

"Central Formation Spirit Computer, please open the host code, divine soul code, and allow the sword soul of immortal gate citizen Jiang Ding to enter deeply within, to correct the errors."

"This is the authorization document from the Citizens' Assembly."

Jiang Ding produced a document and said quietly.

A beam of light projected down from the Central Formation Spirit Computer, landing on the authorization document, repeatedly verifying within it the anti-counterfeiting marks added by the current version of the Central Formation Spirit Computer, the marks of every major councilor, the marks of every immortal gate citizen representative, and the reference marks of every branch of the Central Formation Spirit Computer across the lands…

The various verification measures were complex to the extreme.

"Permission verification passed, Lord Great Sun Councilor."

The voice of the Central Formation Spirit Computer came through.

"You may enter the interior of version. 254.24 of the Central Formation Spirit Computer in the form of a sword soul, eliminate the 'Ancient God Ancestor Virus,' and correct the erroneous code."

"You need to be aware of the following information:"

"First, your duty is only to correct, not to modify; you may not modify any Central Formation Spirit Computer code; any violation shall be treated the same as a virus;"

"Second, every process of your repair must be conducted under the monitoring of all immortal gate councilors, citizen representatives, and the current version of the Central Formation Spirit Computer; should any monitoring blind spot appear, you must suspend the repair and await renewed authorization and judgment from the Citizens' Assembly."

"Do you acknowledge this information?"

"Acknowledged."

Jiang Ding said solemnly.

The Central Formation Spirit Computer is a supreme treasure of immortal gate civilization, the strongest pillar of the immortal gate citizens' political system; it is far too important to the immortal gate to permit any risk of individual influence within it.

"Authorization passed again."

The voice of the Central Formation Spirit Computer came through.

This time, however, it opened the firewall of the supreme treasure of civilization, permitting a designated living being's divine soul to enter the underlying code space of the Central Formation Spirit Computer and complete a virus-cleansing process.

Jiang Ding gave a slight nod to the surrounding immortal gate councilors, then sat down cross-legged, his long sword resting across his knees.

Clang!

Amid a crisp sword-chime, a hazy divine soul emerged, merged as one with the Taiqing Flying Sword, transformed into an invisible sword-light that flew toward the main host mountain peak, touched nothing, and merged completely into it.

……

An unknown length of time passed.

Jiang Ding passed through firewall after firewall, then traversed an immensely long Illusion Realm composed of arrays of distributed quantum computers in infinite recursion, and finally arrived at the very center of the code cluster.

He saw—a battlefield!

Countless data, a battlefield composed of countless codes; two unrivaled super-rank program

mers were attacking each other, invading and counter-invading; in an instant no one knew how much data collapsed and was annihilated into ash—the carnage was terrible to the extreme.

"This is,"

"the code battlefield that has continued in the immortal gate to this day…"

Jiang Ding held his breath.

From the year three thousand onward, after the Ancient God Ancestor took the Six Paths of Reincarnation as his foundation and relearned immortal gate code programming, he had waged an endless slaughter against the entire immortal gate programming technical team.

Was the Ancient God Ancestor truly this powerful?

A mere remnant soul, a mere beginner, having only come into contact with code programming for several thousand years, and yet already sufficient to wage war against the programmers of an entire civilization, and even hold the upper hand, and in a few more thousand years would achieve victory.

The reality of this happening was shocking to behold.

Jiang Ding's heart trembled.

At this moment, he re-examined the Ancient God Ancestor—this peerless prodigy of the realm who had risen from obscurity and restored the hegemony of the human race—and felt he needed to reassess this person.

In such a state, the Great Sun Sword Master's consciousness merged with the immortal gate fleet collective consciousness, especially the immortal gate programmers' collective consciousness; his every thought was immediately perceived by the other programmers.

In an instant, a wave of angry emotions was drawn forth.

Many cursed openly, especially some young whippersnappers, genius programmers.

"Lord Great Sun Councilor!"

"Are you perhaps too aged, to the point of being dizzy and bleary-eyed?"

A bespectacled homebody-type youth said without the slightest courtesy: "Where on earth does this old coot's programming ability suppress us? This old thing has clearly been left in the dust by us by eight streets!"

"No—eighteen streets!"

"Oh?"

Jiang Ding's brow twitched.

This was the first time he had ever been called an old fellow.

His divine sense swept over this homebody-type youth.

Oh, only thirty-eight years old, Teacher Ouyang Gu, a specially-recruited student of Clear Wind University, extraordinarily gifted in programming Yan Suan Fa, possessing an extremely precious intuition, regarded as a possible inheritor of the mantle of the Divine Mechanism True Venerable, a key cultivation seed of the immortal gate…

Forget it, too lazy to argue with you.

"Tell me about it."

Jiang Ding curled his lip.

To speak plainly, he was not skilled at programming code; if these problems could not be transformed into sword dao problems, he possessed no top-tier attainments in them either.

In the past he had not minded this, for a person cannot be skilled at everything.

"Our programming, invading and counter-invading, is far stronger than this old thing's!"

"Far stronger!"

Teacher Ouyang Gu did not fear the Great Sun Sword Master—or rather, did not fear any of the immortal gate's powerhouses, because he had broken no law—and waving his arms, said: "If it were a fair fight, we would have beaten the piss and shit out of him long ago; what the hell is he!"

"Then, where is it unfair?"

Jiang Ding said with great interest.

"In the spiritual nature of the magic treasure."

"In this aspect, he utterly crushed us, and in a devastatingly thorough manner at that…"

Teacher Ouyang Gu's voice dropped low.

In that instant, the will of the Great Sun Sword Master was not in contact with him alone, but with all the immortal sect programmers, including Zhenjun Shenji True Venerable, whose attainments in array spirit algorithms ran deepest.

"Jiang Ding,"

"In code intrusion and counter-intrusion, we hold an overwhelming advantage. A mere native, no matter how gifted, or even a heavenly being's remnant soul, cannot surpass our civilization in programming."

"This is a discipline born on our very soil!"

Zhenjun Shenji True Venerable said in a heavy voice: "I was defeated by the spiritual nature of the central array spirit computer magic treasure. It's equivalent to us winning in programming, but this bastard directly modified the hardware like the graphics card and processor, forcibly cutting off the transmission of our code, plunging us into the enormous strategic disadvantage of one against hundreds."

"Simply too despicable!"

"What's the difference between this and yanking the power switch and network cable during a hacker competition?"

"Absolutely no hacker professional ethics whatsoever!"

"This is the reason we've gradually fallen into a disadvantage."

"If the central array spirit computer didn't require programs and code to run—otherwise it would just be a computer main unit case too brittle even for cracking walnuts, utterly useless—then the central array spirit computer would have long been breached by him."

"Understood."

"So, what I need to do…"

Jiang Ding was caught between laughter and tears, vaguely guessing something.

"Very simple!"

"Capture his remnant soul, or suppress his remnant soul's control over the spiritual nature of the central array spirit computer magic treasure, and then beat him to death!"

Zhenjun Shenji True Venerable said viciously.