Chapter 583 - 554: Decoding Consciousness

Negative energy seemed to have two dimensions of abilities. The first ability was abstract, reversing moral concepts.

The second dimension of the ability was more absurd, as it could grant Martin superpowers in comics and various Marvel settings. He could even release energy waves or transform them into cold weapons, and he could even share these abilities with his subordinates.

However, when this energy was completely transferred to others, it became less absurd. The energy would heal the new possessor but might not retain its original power.

Of course, in Lille, perhaps because Martin and his negative energy in this world had not yet become so powerful.

Lille could clearly feel his mind becoming clearer. This feeling was akin to the first time he used the Lizard Serum, when the activity of his brain cells initially increased.

The world seemed to have always been shrouded in a layer of fog, but he had grown accustomed to it. Until the fog lifted, he realized his thoughts and perspectives could be sharper.

Cancer cells would be completely reversed into healthy cells, eliminating the risks of cancer or other genetic diseases caused by rapid reproduction, fully activating Lille’s physical vitality.

And although he couldn’t use this energy to enhance his physique or conjure weapons like Martin, Lille suddenly discovered...

He now had a more sensitive intuition for people’s thoughts and consciousness.

If people’s emotions were like unknown objects in a box, ordinarily, people would perceive others’ thoughts by judging the box’s packaging, patterns, and shape to guess what might be inside.

But now, Lille felt that when he tried to stir the box that enveloped people’s minds, it seemed he could see the little thoughts moving inside directly.

It wasn’t x-ray vision, but it was very helpful for engaging in psychological games through some auxiliary means.

Having lost his superpowers, Martin didn’t feel sad or regretful. On the contrary, in every setting, deep down inside, he had considered giving up these abilities. However, as a distinctive villain, this power usually returned to him by the end of events.

Lille flexed his hands—

[Individual variance increased: molecular-level differences]

[Time flow discrepancy intensified.]

He had now returned to Taiping State, returned to Night City.

After Martin’s treatment, the physical lifespan in the Marvel World had extended to about five more years after full body prosthetization, with health issues completely resolved, leaving only the problem of cellular lifespan.

But here... his originally dying body continued to deteriorate. Even after full body prosthetization, he still faced the threat of cancer—

However, if his awareness and emotions became more sensitive to him, then that would mean the brain-machine interface data might perhaps...

Be entirely comprehended by him.

The brain-machine interface could convert brainwave signals into electrical signals comprehensible to man-made machinery, then let machines transform these signals into information understandable to humans, and this process could be reversed as well.

But all this was related to a very important component in the brain-machine interface system: the Cyber Decoder.

The Cyber Modulator was a crucial device in the brain-machine interface for converting electrical signals and brainwave signals. Due to the complexity of brainwave signals, humans used a relatively basic AI algorithm, artificial neural network, in establishing the demodulation mechanism.

The computational chip in the brain-machine interface and the Cyber Modem’s computation all simulated the design of human neural networks. They were connected through different weights and were trained by continuously providing external stimuli.

The entire algorithm could be simply divided into three layers. One was the input layer, where external stimuli were input through neural terminals or surface electrical machines, sending data and information into the complex network for computation. Due to the network’s extreme complexity and the seemingly random and chaotic activity of individual neurons, data sinking into this computational layer was like sinking into the sea.

So this layer could be simply termed the hidden layer.

When the waves surged, they would push the processed data to the target shore, the input layer, becoming what people saw.

The training process involved continuously throwing issues humans might encounter during design into the sea. For instance, an engineer wanted a robotic prosthetic limb to pick up an apple and kept having the subject think and exert force as if using the diseased limb. But in the initial debugging phase, these signals might not be correctly demodulated.

The command to pick up the apple could turn into an attack, smashing the apple with a punch. Or the grip might be too weak, causing the apple to slip from their hand—

As long as the result was incorrect, the engineer would keep testing and tuning until a correct result emerged and the apple was picked up. They would then record the correct result and log the settings and electrical changes that produced it, encoding them.

Thousands of correct and successful encoded information formed the software in each brain-machine interface or prosthetic limb, commonly known as the "operating system" or simply software.

But people still couldn’t understand precisely how these codes were formed, what role electrical currents in brain cells played in the overall performance. Consequently, all prosthetic developers couldn’t avoid one issue:

Cyberpsychosis, hardware issues caused by "psychological changes" they couldn’t solve at all.

People experienced sadness, anger, regret, fear, exhilaration... Extreme emotions that only appeared under extreme conditions. Experiments had been conducted for many years, but everyone was different, especially those extreme cyber lunatics—

Technology couldn’t truly understand these emotions, let alone intricately analyze one’s love and hate.

But Lille could.

Every emotional change was detailed to the extreme for him. As long as the prosthetic system’s monitoring electrodes were sufficiently deep, he seemed to correlate every change in consciousness with the degree of change in electrical signals.

This was a rather... unremarkable ability, but once combined with cyber technology, it would indeed become a very astonishing capability—

Because in this world, the pinnacle achievement of cyber technology in human consciousness, the Soul Killer, couldn’t reach this level.

The Soul Killer was also a massive black-box adaptive artificial neural network. It was an AI fine-tuned by the legendary hacker Otto with her astonishing talent. It could replicate a person broadly but would definitely have flaws in details.

Lille wasn’t like that. It was a strange feeling that, when paired with cyber technology, made his sensitivity to consciousness changes incredibly precise.

He suddenly realized... theoretically, he might be capable of specifically killing Soul Killers: if the hardware conditions were met, he was more precise than the Soul Killer.

Hyper-precise and accurate recognition and replication of consciousness were the main traits of the Soul Killer, but theoretically, Lille comprehensively surpassed that trait.

"Hey! Little Li Zi!"

V waved her hand, bringing Lille out of his thoughts.

Today was a bright sunny day, with a faint scent of rust in the air, possibly the smell of radioactive particles.

At the Great Empire Mall, the Animal Gang had packed everything and boarded their small vans.

It was noon, just in time to see the sun from the mall’s central open-air light atrium. Sunlight shone on V’s face as she carried another "found" raccoon dog, looking like a bandit.

Bang!

On the concrete blocks, Jack once again won an arm-wrestling match against the Wild Man King. Dust swirled around from the immense impact.

He stood up from his seat, lifting the heavy machine gun from the ground with one hand and waved at Lille.

"Time’s up, stop showing off."

V yanked Lille off the ground.

Lille helplessly patted the dust off his clothes and motioned with both hands for her to get in the car first.

Then V strutted into the vehicle.

It was time to raid the Voodoo Gang.