Chapter 2209: The Possibility of Awakening Psionics

Although Xia Duo had not held much hope for Awakening Psionics from the start, being so easily denied the possibility of his own awakening from the perspective of psionic existence still left him feeling unwilling to accept it.

It was not that Xia Duo insisted on Awakening Psionics, but rather that only by awakening it himself could he study the essence of psionics from a more intuitive perspective.

He thought that since reality allowed for the existence of psionics, it meant that either his previous understanding of the world was flawed, or perhaps psionics was not the purely idealistic existence that most people believed it to be.

In short, the fact that psionics exists in this world must reflect some kind of reality of this world; this is a perspective completely different from conventional Magic.

If Xia Duo had not known of the existence of psionics from the beginning, that would be one thing. But to know of it and act as if he hadn't seen it, or to deliberately avoid it for fear of shattering his past understanding of the world, was simply not something he could do.

……

Returning to the interrogation itself, after Xia Duo sorted out the development context of Zhamu Dasi and psionics, he continued to extend from the psionic concepts within this consciousness information, searching for the answers he wanted.

The concept of psionics occupied a crucial position in Mohawi's consciousness; having spent a lifetime dealing with psionics, it could be said that Mohawi's consciousness was composed of countless psionic concepts!

Yet precisely because so much information was intertwined and mixed together, even with a relatively clear thread to follow, finding specific content related to Psionic Magic was not an easy task.

The reason is simple: it is the idealistic nature of psionics. All related Knowledge depends to a large extent on the user's own cognition, and most crucially, it is not based on the cognition of objective Reality, but rather more like following one's own whims.

Even though Xia Duo had only come into contact with the consciousness information of one Psionic Mage so far, this same person's consciousness contained all sorts of contradictory information.

As an observer who had undergone systematic scientific training, Xia Duo could of course distinguish where the contradictions lay at a glance, but Mohawi, as a Scholar and Master who had spent his life dealing with psionics, could not possibly have been completely unaware.

In fact, Xia Duo had already parsed Mohawi's subconscious avoidance of certain contradictory cognitions, which could not help but make Xia Duo raise a question:

"Is psionics really that convenient? If it even transcends contradictions, then could a psionic that denies psionics also exist?"

In reality, for Xia Duo to want to Awaken Psionics, he only needed a reason that could convince himself. Regardless of whether this reason conformed to objective laws, as long as he accepted it, he might just be able to awaken.

Thus, he continued to track through Mohawi's Soul Fragments, and soon he discovered a key piece of information regarding the 【Mental Image World】—

It turned out that the Mental Image World was not as rare in Zhamu Dasi as it was in the outside world. The claim that Mohawi was a Master of illusion was actually entirely because psionics had a huge bonus in the field of illusion.

The reality is that any Psionic Master can create their own Mental Image World, and the strength of the Mental Image World is also an important criterion for judging the strength of a Psionic Master.

And to make the Mental Image World more powerful, Mohawi had discovered a great secret that other Psionic Masters might have also discovered, yet no one dared to mention publicly—

The closer the shaping of the Mental Image World is to the real world, the more powerful the Mental Image World is.

Xia Duo further speculated that the "closeness" Mohawi understood might not be a closeness in superficial scenery, but a closeness in deep-seated rules. From this perspective, psionics does not exist entirely detached from Reality.

Following this line to continue tracking, Xia Duo soon found that there were no more related Soul Fragments ahead. The process of forced Projection and the process of shattering the consciousness would both cause damage to the integrity of the consciousness information within.

The latter was even more severe; shattering the consciousness essentially destroys the Soul Projection where the Consciousness Copy exists, and in the process, a large amount of information dissipates before Xia Duo can even parse it.

Therefore, finding key Nodes is very important. Perhaps simply and crudely viewing countless memory fragments after a hundred Consciousness Copies are shattered is not as good as finding one key Node in the memory fragments of a single Consciousness Copy.

Like Xia Duo now, the trail was broken, but he had previously found a very useful memory thread; it was nothing more than changing paths to go around it.

At worst, he could restart the copy. Not every process of shattering consciousness loses the same information; trying a few more times would always allow him to piece together relatively complete information.

Shattering consciousness to search for memory fragments seems aimless, but in reality, it is far more effective than direct interrogation. Direct interrogation is essentially a dialogue of consciousness between the interrogator and the interrogated.

If the interrogator is proficient in mental Spells, they might be able to glimpse some secrets from the other party's subconscious activities.

But facing a Psionic Master, and a Psionic Master whose Personality is intertwined with others, it is almost difficult to get effective results by asking directly. Xia Duo verified this every time he restarted the copy.

After all, getting an answer just by asking casually is much easier than painstakingly parsing a large number of memory fragments, it's just that Mohawi would never let Xia Duo have his way.

When it comes to effectiveness, one must use brute-force cracking. According to Xia Duo's experience, although about twenty to thirty percent of information is lost during the cracking process.

Its essence is to completely dismantle the target's consciousness. If Xia Duo had a team, he could fully analyze all of Mohawi's consciousness information.

Even if he was alone, just by grasping the key points, the information obtained was absolutely orders of magnitude greater than what was obtained through consciousness dialogue.

"It's nothing more than being a bit tired, but panning for gold is a joy in itself!"

This was not a saying of finding pleasure in hardship, but rather that the joy of discovering treasure completely covered that little bit of hardship. If Xia Duo were to choose again, he would be willing to work harder a hundred times over.

……

He continued to track until all memory fragments dissipated, then opened a new Consciousness Copy, first attempting direct interrogation, and after no results, followed the usual practice of shattering the consciousness to search for memory fragments.

Just like this, after several rounds, before the Soul Fragment that had been stripped away to serve as the carrier for Mohawi's consciousness was completely exhausted, Xia Duo had already sorted out most of the content related to psionics in Mohawi's consciousness.

Much like his later speculation, the Mental Image World was not just a handy tool that could be used to attack opponents, but more like a concentrated manifestation of a Psionic Mage's personal cognition and thoughts.

It was also a crucial link in the Psionic Magic System of Zhamu Dasi!

Any intelligent species that actively went to Zhamu Dasi, or was conquered by Zhamu Dasi, had the opportunity to Awaken Psionics, and in the process of awakening, they would undergo a ritual of receiving an Artifact Baptism.

To outsiders, it might seem that the Artifact stimulated the psionic talent of the baptized, enabling them to acquire a special ability, and in fact, this was true.

But what outsiders did not know was that the process of receiving an Artifact Baptism was essentially a process of having one's thoughts and cognition assimilated. Among the Psionic Scholar community in Zhamu Dasi, this had a more professional term, called—"Mental Energy Sharing"!

The Artifact connects a certain essence of all the baptized together, and among them, Psionic Masters can even dedicate part of their thinking, along with the Mental Image World they created, to the Artifact's Mental Image World when their own physical body and Soul die.

Whenever a New Artifact is born, with the help of the surge of Mental Energy at the time of its birth, the Echoes of the thoughts of deceased Psionic Masters preserved in the old Artifacts have the opportunity to return to Reality with their Mental Image Worlds and be completely resurrected.

Therefore, one can also simply consider that the Mental Image World, or those twelve Artifacts, are the root of the Psionic Magic System of Zhamu Dasi.