Chapter 61: Secret of the Dynamo Core (Part ½)
The last remaining electrical arcs faded away in the darkness and Jack also ceased his violent movements. He sat in the middle of the device and cast off the electrical leads one by one from his body. In the end, all that was left was his violent gasps for breath.
The cutoff in power seemed to have given Jack an unexpected burden. But his robotic eye didn’t lose electrical power and darken as a result. Instead, the intense rise of his mood made him glare all the more.
Jack emphasized once more while gasping for breath: “You cocky bastard. Damn! Do you know what you’ve just done!?”
“I did something that made you extremely uncomfortable, and I'm prepared to continue doing this.”
Luo Nan just said these words in this fashion, for this was what he was going to do.
The Human-Faced Arachnid, having just finished its mission, had already gone through the wall and returned back to his side. Under Luo Nan’s direction, the Human-Faced Arachnid threw itself onto Jack.
Luo Nan was able to confirm that one of the sentences spoken by Jack was not a lie: There was a certain difference between soul bodies and Darksider life forms.
Jack was clearly able to lock onto Luo Nan’s soul body, but he was completely unaware of the Human-Faced Arachnids arrival. He was even unaware that the Human-Faced Arachnid had already assimilated half way into his body.
But on the other hand, the Human-Faced Arachnid couldn’t find an opening in Jack. Even though Jack’s emotions were erupting like crazy, Jack still maintained his soul defenses and this was still displayed. Right now the Human-Faced Arachnid was a probing-type imaging device at best. Even if it figures out the brain activity of Jack to the greatest clarity, it would still be unable to interfere with him at all…...And so it lacked interest.
The Human-Faced Arachnid really did have zero interest towards Jack. This wasn’t because Jack was producing the lowest grade of emotions, as these were no longer in the Human-Faced Arachnid’s diet. Instead, it was because the Human-Faced Arachnid was completely incapable of consuming Jack!
This could be compared to a master painter drawing a lifelike flower, attracting the visits of bees and butterflies. But no matter what, these bees and butterflies would never be able to pluck honey from this flower…… This was the difference between what was material and a picture. The difference between what was real and fake!
From the Human-Faced Arachnid’s perspective, Jack’s emotions were like a vivid yet fake picture.
Luo Nan could see the alteration that Jack had undergone with his brain and its operations. It appeared with a conciseness and efficiency that was shocking: Any kind of stimulation would stir up the mass of neurons, causing some kind of “neurotransmitter” to conduct signals between neurons. Some kind of reaction would be excited to form a running and flowing line of continuous operation.
At first glance, Jack’s brain operation did not seem to be any different than that of ordinary people.
But in reality, most emotions and mental activity of humans use complicated mechanisms of operation. Several brain regions activated in coordination in joint functionality. It was far from the ideal operation of a running and flowing line.
Luo Nan sunk deeper in his investigations from this point. Then he discovered that Jack’s brain operation looked to be concise and efficient, but moreover it seemed to use some sort of encoding method.
The Human-Faced Arachnid had probed exceptionally deeply. It extended its feelers to every nook and cranny of Jack’s body completely without him being aware. And so it resided in the abyss of Jack’s brain. At approximately the central location connecting the left and right thalamus, it discovered that a region of an area where Jack had undergone a precision alteration. Within this area clearly lay an even tinier “nucleus”.
Practically all of Jack’s mental activity would first pass through this pre-constructed channel, go through various encodings, and exchange information with the “nucleus”. Then the nucleus would take the corresponding stimulation and transmit it to every nervous center before feeding back the information.
It was without a doubt that this “nucleus” had a function of system integration: It used various encoding algorithms to form answers that were transmitted outward.
This was originally a natural function of the brain, but now it was replaced by the responses of this “nucleus” machine. The crucial step was the distinction between what was “real” and what was “fake”.
Were all Altered Humans like this?
Luo Nan wasn’t really confident in his own observations. And his thoughts of the functionality of the “nucleus” were more like guesses. Anyway, there was something else that firmly drew his attention:
A thin thread was coiled around the body of this hidden nucleus…...No, it was the metal beetle!
That’s right! This was none other than the metal beetle tossed out by Yan Yongbo!
Luo Nan’s certainty was incomparable. This was because the beetle kept half its original form at one end of the thread. This made him extrapolate that the beetle would completely fade away, given enough time, and become a thin thread.
What were the conditions for the transformation…… Luo Nan looked at the jet-black machine that had ceased operations and could more or less understand.
This coiling thin thread gave Luo Nan a feeling of extreme familiarity.
Using the Human-Faced Arachnid as the medium, Luo Nan put his soul imaging to full use. He then discovered that there was flickering and flowing lightning on the thin thread.
And as soon as he increased the precision of his senses, he confirmed that the thin thread had already sprouted with countless branches. Quite a few had already exceeded the scope of his senses.
Luo Nan saw that these branches had pierced inside the nucleus. And, it had permeated inside the nerves and veins. It might have even spread through the entire brain to form a tree shape structure with the nucleus as the core.
Wasn’t this, wasn’t this…… the external neuron?
“What the hell are you up to now!?”
It was probably due to the relentless nature of Luo Nan’s probing that caused some sort of alarm installed in Jack to go off. Jack was suddenly startled with fright. The blood-red robotic eye locked onto the position of Luo Nan’s soul body.
Rather than Jack’s exterior expression, the changes in Jack’s brain were what made Luo Nan’s mind truly restless.
It was that thin thread. The thread had split into countless branches and had pierced into various locations of Jack’s brain. In an instant, the thread vibrated to form closely woven sparks.
The sparks did not appear on the plane of reality; it had a completely different effect.
At this very moment, the Human-Faced Arachnid felt a burning sensation that was strong enough to threaten its existence. It didn’t need Luo Nan to command it; it just retreated outside in crazed fashion.
Jack’s furious mood had certainly reached the highest peak. He stood up and, at this moment, his body clearly released the glow of dark flames.
The glow of flames came from the inside out, explosively ejecting the Human-Faced Arachnid out of Jack’s body. But the power didn’t lesson at all when it was thrown to the location of Luo Nan’s soul body.
The Human-Faced Arachnid let out a painful scream and the powerful mental attack instantly swept across several floors of the DeShang Building. It was unknown just how many people were caught in the crossfire.
Luo Nan was not in a position to handle others. When the glow of flames erupted, he used all the strength of his soul to retreat through the air.
The world spun as he moved, but Luo Nan’s leap of distance was far below his expectations…… He had only left the room. The total distance he traveled did not exceed 20 meters.
When the glowing flames erupted, an incorporeal electromagnetic field was formed around Jack’s body. It warped the mental plane and even the space of reality.
It was as if Luo Nan’s soul body fell into the bottomless abyss of the sea. Shocking pressure came at all sides of him.
This feeling was far too familiar. Several days earlier on the warship, the burning wraith that was killed by He Yueyin had suffered similar methods of being targeted, suppressed, and even annihilated.
Luo Nan’s thoughts trembled truly like electricity:
The Format of Fire…… Burner!