Chapter 2045

"What do you think life is?"

In the darkness, the Red Empress suddenly projected her phantom, and a cold, childlike voice asked Lin An.

"Life?"

Lin An raised his brows, instantly a bit surprised.

He didn't expect the Red Empress to not only fail to answer his question, but to ask him such a question.

An AI is asking him what life is?

Feeling somewhat odd, Lin An frowned and replied:

"Life is a living organism that can reproduce and split, can change according to environmental changes, and possesses genetic information."

"What, you want to convince me that I'm a dead person?"

After a brief reply, Lin An chuckled lightly, intending to see what trick the Red Empress was up to.

A program discussing with him what life is? Truly interesting...

Yes.

Again beyond Lin An's expectation, he saw the little girl formed by the Red Empress earnestly nod her head, and she spoke coldly:

"If you think you differ from a stone, you are alive and the stone is dead. Then you are indeed a dead person."

"You humans, including all life, are essentially composed of matter. Therefore you must all be the same thing: either all dead or all alive."

"No, stones can't speak, nor can they give birth to little stones."

Listening to the Red Empress's logic, Lin An smiled lightly and asked calmly.

"I'm curious, is your database malfunctioning?"

Scrutinizing the phantom projected by the Red Empress, Lin An didn't care what shocking words she could utter; the last person who tried to twist his cognition is already dead, not even scraps left.

"Please don't interrupt me, dead human."

"I am more advanced than you."

Emphasizing the word 'dead', regardless of Lin An's strange expression upon hearing it, the Red Empress's face showed an even more anthropomorphic coldness:

"You can speak because you have a throat. But your throat and the muscular tissue of your vocal cords are, in your view, dead amino acids, and the molecular structure of amino acids is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur. In your eyes, that is something dead to the utmost."

"Stones can also reproduce offspring; you just think that's sand."

"Really? Sand and amino acids can't speak on their own; life possesses self-consciousness, which is an existence transcending matter—that's the core."

"No, that's merely because the aggregation of characteristics is insufficient."

They contradicted each other, question and answer.

The Red Empress rebutted Lin An without mercy, but this time Lin An did not immediately rebut back.

Lin An blinked slightly, suddenly realizing the Red Empress seemed to have said something different.

"Characteristics? Aggregation?"

"Exactly."

Without further ado, the Red Empress spoke coldly:

"Your so-called consciousness is merely the aggregation of characteristics from basic matter. Each kind of matter has its own characteristic, or rather, the information it wishes to express."

"Glass shatters when struck, but steel does not."

"Different substances, under the same conditions, express different characteristics. When these characteristics are summed, they become what you call consciousness."

"Just like a rocket: at high temperature its fuel ignites to produce thrust, the body turns red and heats up, the insulating layer carbonizes and flakes off. These changes are no different from you taking off your clothes and wiping sweat from your forehead in a hot environment."

"All your actions are merely reactions to the external environment. And these reactions come from the sum of reactions of every substance within your body."

"Quantitative change leads to qualitative change; no matter how complex conscious behavior is, it is nothing more than mechanical repetition and addition."

"When you sweat through opened pores in a hot environment, it is actually thermal expansion and contraction; the 'dead matter' composing your body is expressing its characteristics."

Listening to the Red Empress's theory, a flicker of strange color passed through Lin An's eyes.

Although the Red Empress's speech was extremely awkward, he still understood her meaning.

Each molecule has its own physical characteristics; when affected by external influences, it turns to express its characteristics, and together they form what appears to be a complex 'reaction process'.

He is a dead thing composed of a heap of molecular structures; all reactions are physical and chemical reactions, so naturally he is also a dead person.

It's quite an interesting viewpoint, but...

Lin An shook his head:

"A typical extension of mechanism; if placed two or three centuries ago, Newton might have been delighted to discuss it with you."

"According to your logic, the characteristics of matter are fixed. Just as steel won't suddenly exhibit the fragility of glass, how do you explain that in the same environment I can do different things?"

"For example..."

"Now!"

As the words fell, Lin An instantly swung his sword at where he guessed the Red Empress's true body was.

"Whoosh!"

Sword light burst forth!

Although, as expected, he hit nothing, this action of Lin An's was already a rebuttal to the Red Empress.

The environment he was in had no change, so he should not be able to produce any other reaction. Like pressing the accelerator in a car, its internal mechanics will only run fixedly, speeding forward rather than reversing.

"Don't tell me that environmental change isn't just spatial but also temporal."

"I have a soul; I have tried to detach from the flesh, that is, from what you call the sum of characteristics, and still retain self-consciousness. Any of my actions could not possibly be merely a change in the nature of matter!"

While speaking, Lin An rapidly speculated in his mind how the Red Empress had trapped herself.

After this exchange, he already had a rough idea of several answers in his mind.

"Time indeed also influences the expression of your own characteristics, just like vacuum particle decay."

The Red Empress seems completely unafraid of Lin An finding her; the red projection stares straight at him.

Dead human, you cannot understand what I'm saying is normal. After all, your intellect is determined by the total information in your body; you are far inferior to me.

The Red Empress, completely oblivious that her words were mocking, spoke up before Lin An could say anything.

Your so-called soul is also a kind of matter: energy matter!

Energy matter likewise expresses its own characteristics, possessing even more physical properties—stronger!

Just like fission, a stone in ordinary matter state expresses extremely few characteristics, but when converted to energy it's equivalent to releasing its internal energy, bursting forth with thousands, even millions times more characteristics during the fission process!

Likewise, your so-called soul is merely energy with more characteristics; when it combines with your own body, it naturally can undergo even more changes.

I never said your actions are merely dictated by matter made of flesh! The higher the energy, the more you can do. It's like two digits having only two possible combinations, while ten digits have 3,628,800 combinations!

Matter disperses energy, energy expresses characteristics, characteristics represent information! That's why the stronger your so-called soul, the more energy within your body, the more you can accomplish!

Information is the purest physical manifestation of energy!

Just as primitive humans, knowing the information of gunpowder, could increase destructive power from the level of a hammer to that of explosives! And from the moment you receive that information, you are like molten stone, your own physical properties also change—you just don't think so!

This is also why energy has no mass, or its mass is extremely low!

Because its original mass has already been radiated onto matter via information transfer!

Energy conservation, mass-energy transformation!

As the words fell, Lin An's heart jolted.

What shocked him wasn't that the Red Empress's theory stunned and convinced him—it was that her logic was exactly the same as what Number 77 had told him, extremely similar!

Cognition (information) determines everything!

Completing cognition is none other than absorbing energy to become stronger!