Chapter 1679: Consciousness Ghosting Copy Technique

In this way, Xia Duo could be considered to have barely caught a glimpse of the essence of an "Artifact Spirit."

If his guess was correct, to research it further, he might need to look inward from the perspective of the soul.

Thinking of this, Xia Duo could not help but sigh; he had initially thought the Tower Spirit was related to Psionic Magic, or even directly originated from it, but now it seemed this idea might have been wrong.

Perhaps it was indeed related at the very beginning, but now it should have little connection; perhaps, as Iolum said, it had become something entirely within the Netheril Magic System.

After adjusting his thoughts slightly, Xia Duo focused his mind and entered a state of high concentration; in this state, he quickly perceived his own soul.

He had experienced this process countless times in the past; at this moment, his soul was exactly the same as his physical body, even down to the details of his clothing, but—

Unlike the scene he "saw" when perceiving his soul last time, this time, Xia Duo actually saw a small ball of light around his soul that resembled a Holy Light Divine Envoy but appeared slightly dimmer than one.

"This—could this be the Communication Artifact Spirit that was just created?"

Xia Duo was both shocked and puzzled; he was shocked because something that had never appeared before had suddenly emerged within his soul space, and he was puzzled because although he had not fully grasped the entire process of creating the Artifact Spirit just now, he could still understand a thing or two.

In his view, an Artifact Spirit existed within a Magic Artifact, or rather, the Artifact Spirit was the Magic Artifact itself, and at the same time, it was a conceptual entity that transcended the Magic Artifact itself and represented all of its functions.

Why would it appear around his soul?

And in the form of such an inconspicuous ball of light?

In Xia Duo's perception, this small ball of light was constantly rotating around his soul, just like a planet orbiting a star, but the strange thing was—

This fellow and the small patch of space reflected around his soul did not seem to be in the same dimension.

The small ball of light often passed through the Outer Planes scenes in the space, which of course mainly referred to the Daxia Homeland in the Boundless Wilderness.

The Rotten Swamp, previously suspected to be somewhere in the Abyssal Abyss, had been stripped away by Xia Duo after his Bloodline Awakening to become an illusory star at the edge of the space, which could be expanded at any time if necessary in the future and descend into the Abyss.

But whether it was the Daxia Homeland or the illusory star representing the Abyss coordinates, the small ball of light suspected to be the Artifact Spirit was not affected at all when passing through them; of course, it did not affect those two either.

Clearly, this existence suspected to be an Artifact Spirit and the small space suspected to be a Shenguo Projection did not belong to the same system, and they also did not seem to have any connection.

Xia Duo tried to perceive this small ball of light, but found that the other party seemed to be a foreign object, yet it also seemed to be of the same origin as his soul; a simple soul perspective did not seem enough to penetrate its essence.

"Perhaps I missed something just now?"

Xia Duo's consciousness floated upward to begin examining his consciousness itself; consciousness was essentially the self, and the self was largely composed of cognition and thinking patterns.

He had previously speculated that the Artifact Spirit possessed a base Ziliaoku; perhaps the Artifact Spirit existed at the level of consciousness, and that small ball of light from the soul perspective was perhaps merely a Projection of it at the soul level.

Only in this way could it be in a different dimension from the small space that was suspected to be a Shenguo Projection but might actually be a special Reality space.

As his consciousness floated upward, Xia Duo's thoughts grew more numerous; unlike perceiving the soul, perceiving consciousness was more like tracing memories, with countless subconscious and conscious mind information intertwined to form a unique and truly existing base Ziliaoku called "self."

Soon, Xia Duo discovered an anomaly!

As someone who performed Meditation Training every morning, Xia Duo was as familiar as could be with his own consciousness; if it were just memories added in a single day, there might be a slight lack of coordination before they were organized, but that would not be surprising.

But now, Xia Duo clearly felt that his consciousness and memories seemed to have an extra layer of "ghosting"!

Consciousness itself was a virtual existence, a collection of countless pieces of information; this layer of ghosting seemed illusory, but it undoubtedly also contained a large amount of information.

Yet at this moment, Xia Duo did not feel that his "self" had been affected, or rather, that layer of ghosting seemed to be mixed with the consciousness information that made up his self, but they were distinct from each other and did not affect one another.

No!

Xia Duo felt that he should be able to change that layer of ghosting, but out of caution, he had not yet taken action; after all, he was not sure what the result would be if he changed it.

What if it caused the ghosting to interact with his self, wouldn't that contaminate his self?

Although Xia Duo performed a personality backup every day, he was not sure how much information that ghosting contained; if it were too much, the subsequent chain reaction of its interaction with his self-consciousness information might make it impossible for him to ever clear the contamination.

Then he would only be able to revert to a previous save.

However, Xia Duo was unwilling to revert to a save whenever possible, as that meant he would have to abandon all thinking processes from this morning onward.

In a sense, that would mean his current self would be erased.

Of course, in reality, the problem was not that serious.

According to his previous speculation, 【Enlightenment Spell】 did not generate the base Ziliaoku of a Tower Spirit out of thin air, but rather it came from the Spellcaster themselves.

Then Xia Duo could perhaps make this further speculation—

This layer of ghosting in his consciousness was perhaps a "copy" of his consciousness.

To put it in the terms of the magic world, the essence of 【Enlightenment Spell】 was that the Spellcaster created an incomplete consciousness Projection and combined this consciousness Projection with some kind of object, facility, or even building, giving it intelligence.

The reason it was called an "incomplete" consciousness Projection was that a complete consciousness Projection would resonate directly with the main body, producing effects similar to a Perception Field or a clone Projection.

Before Xia Duo transmigrated, he had read many cultivation novels, in which a scene often appeared—

The protagonist created a clone and then assigned tasks to the clone, and the clone that received the task would often say this sentence—"Fellow Daoist is me, and I am Fellow Daoist, so where is the talk of toil."

In early cultivation novels, the probability of this scene appearing was particularly high, but later readers considered this kind of plot to be "toxic."

And in the real magic world, Xia Duo was now able to create such a clone, but undoubtedly, if there were no corresponding control methods, one could think with their toes that the clone would definitely rebel.

It was not so much rebelling as it was competing for the identity of the main body; no one would want themselves to be merely a copy of some existence.

Xia Duo himself was like this, and it was even more impossible for a Netherese Mage on the Main Plane to create a Consciousness Copy identical to the main body.

In fact, for any Projection Spell or clone spell, the created clone was controlled by the main body's consciousness, not a Consciousness Copy.

The Clone Technique was even more so; let alone something involving the foundation of the self like consciousness, it did not even have a soul, which was not so unique.