Chapter 1684: Consciousness Editing

Any algorithm has its theoretical working efficiency; so-called "enhancement" is, in essence, providing a better operating environment, or simply "optimizing" the algorithm itself.

Here, Xia Duo failed to provide a better operating environment; instead, because he deleted quite a bit of the cognitive process, his thinking became discrete, chaotic, and unsystematic, perhaps making the information process more complex and inefficient.

As for intelligence.

Xia Duo can still directly control the Communication Magic Tool now, but he can no longer command the intelligence to do anything through consciousness.

His control is more like controlling it directly from the hardware level, while the intelligence that originally served as the control software has completely collapsed.

Although the "Artifact Spirit" has not yet completely perished, there is no doubt that for an ordinary Spellcaster, such an Artifact Spirit is no different from having disappeared.

For Xia Duo, such an "Artifact Spirit" has only the last bit of residual heat left to be utilized.

However, before verifying that hypothesis, there is still a very important problem that Xia Duo needs to solve, which is how to input specific information into the "Artifact Spirit" after the intelligence disappears.

If there were intelligence, it wouldn't be difficult; even direct dialogue or demonstration would work, as having intelligence means being able to understand, and being able to understand means being able to record it independently.

But now that the intelligence has disappeared, one must use the method of directly "writing" information.

Such a method might be researched through 【Enlightenment Art】, but the Enlightenment Scroll has not yet been cracked, and Xia Duo believes the Seven Towers should have specialized technology for editing Tower Spirits.

He can think of the possibility that a Tower Spirit might leak secrets; as researchers, the Seven Towers could not possibly fail to think of this possibility.

If the information in a Tower Spirit's underlying Ziliaoku—that is, the Consciousness Copy of the original Spellcaster—cannot be edited, then there is no doubt that any Tower Spirit could potentially leak secrets.

Furthermore, from the fact that a Tower Spirit does not possess a self and is not a clone of a Spellcaster's consciousness, it can also be seen that 【Enlightenment Art】 must necessarily include the function of selecting only specific consciousness information for projection.

According to Xia Duo's research in recent days, as well as his past understanding of the consciousness domain, he feels that 【Enlightenment Art】 might be the projection of a Spellcaster's subconscious.

The conscious mind is built upon the subconscious; losing the conscious mind does not have a major impact on the integrity of memory, but rather causes more damage to the personality.

And personality is the sum of mental models; mental models are also divided into those in the conscious mind and those in the subconscious. If the conscious mind disappears, almost half of the personality disappears.

According to the "Self = Memory + Personality" formula summarized by Xia Duo, if half of the personality disappears, then a self cannot be formed—at least, a self identical to the Spellcaster cannot be formed.

Xia Duo even boldly speculates that for intelligent beings possessing a dual-layer structure of subconscious and conscious mind, as long as the conscious mind disappears completely, it is impossible to constitute a self based solely on the part of the mental model in the subconscious.

However, it can constitute intelligence, possess Wisdom, be able to think and understand normally, and provide various feedback.

……

Obtaining Tower Spirit editing technology through 【Enlightenment Art】 is likely impossible in the short term, so Xia Duo decided to use some "home remedies."

So-called "home remedies" are actually just trying one's luck with selection and bias.

This time, Xia Duo placed his bets on his own special Soul and his control over the subconscious.

Although he still has a very long way to go before completely integrating his subconscious and conscious mind, he can at least manage to interpret Subconscious Information and has a certain degree of control over the subconscious.

And the special Soul he obtained through multiple Bloodline Awakenings—or perhaps through his transmigration—might be able to directly modify its underlying Ziliaoku within the link of the "Artifact Spirit."

Because Xia Duo suddenly realized that even just deleting the underlying Ziliaoku information of an "Artifact Spirit," as he had done before, was not something an ordinary Spellcaster could achieve.

The prerequisite for being able to do so is having a fairly strong degree of control over consciousness.

However, deleting Artifact Spirit information can be done by retrieving memories, but what about adding information? Does one have to re-project?

But isn't that the effect of 【Enlightenment Art】?

If he could directly project an "Artifact Spirit," then what would he need 【Enlightenment Art】 for?

"Or is my hypothesis wrong?"

Regardless, he must try it first; Xia Duo steeled his mindset. At worst, he would waste an Enlightenment Scroll to start the next stage of research, but if he succeeded, he would not only save an Enlightenment Scroll but also gain many benefits.

Xia Duo has always been a man of action; since he had made the decision, he began to execute it immediately.

First, just like deleting the Artifact Spirit information, he sank his consciousness to perceive consciousness itself, and after that, he attempted to project consciousness information by himself.

Regarding this point, Xia Duo actually had experience; after all, isn't giving orders to an "Artifact Spirit" within his consciousness a form of information input?

It just isn't as convenient as directly projecting consciousness information, especially when it involves the input of a large amount of information.

Xia Duo wants to verify whether specific thinking patterns of the subconscious can load data analysis algorithms to become a "Big Data Analysis Chip" in a certain sense; he certainly needs to input a large amount of data to conduct experiments.

It is truly inconvenient not to be able to directly project consciousness information.

……

In consciousness.

Xia Duo first used only the form of intent to continuously strengthen the thought of "inputting information," attempting to achieve the goal of projecting consciousness information through this method.

But unfortunately, even the consciousness level is different from the pure spiritual world—the Astral Plane—and one cannot just do whatever one wants.

Perhaps because he is in the Main Plane, Xia Duo decided that if the following attempts still did not work, he would go to the Astral Plane to try again.

The Communication Magic Tool itself, due to its design, does not possess the property of converting astral matter, but the Artifact Spirit within it does not have such a problem.

At most, once in the Astral Plane, the communication function of the Magic Artifact itself would fail, but the various abilities inherent to the Artifact Spirit would still exist; perhaps it might even be enhanced because of the Astral Plane!

Thinking of this, Xia Duo was truly eager to try, but he decided to finish the attempts in the Main Plane environment first!

……

After the direct intent projection failed, Xia Duo thought about overlapping the essence of the "Artifact Spirit" he had come up with—the Consciousness Copy—with his true consciousness, and perhaps it would pick up some new information when they separated.

Doing this might carry a slight risk of consciousness contamination, but the "Artifact Spirit" had already been deleted by Xia Duo until almost only pure sensory information remained.

The "Artifact Spirit" originated from a projection of his own consciousness, not someone else's, so the risk itself was relatively low, not to mention that it was all pure sensory information.

Such contamination, even if it really occurred, would be very simple to clear.

Is there anything in this world that has absolutely no risk?

Even people choke to death drinking water; should one stop drinking water because of that?

As long as the risk is known and controllable, and as long as one can bear the various consequences it triggers, then do it!