"I may have spoken to your 'sir'." I came back from memory and said to Harlan.
The old emperor in front of him widened his eyes when he heard the words, and stared at me with a frozen expression on his face. It was only when I couldn't help but punch him that Harlan finally realized: "You said that you and 'that lord 'Ever contacted?!"
"It's not just about contact, as I said, maybe your 'sleepwalking state' a few days ago was also caused by this," I sighed, and suddenly felt that this guy in front of me was probably the most unlucky guy I knew, " In fact, before you invaded the borders of the empire-probably when you and your legions suddenly lost their minds, I once communicated with a guy of unknown origin. I only heard her voice. At first I thought she was from another Place, until you provided some information just now, I didn’t realize that she is probably your boss behind the scenes. The voice came from across the void, and it only talked with me for a few minutes... maybe longer, I was entering the void I can’t feel the flow of time when I’m in the middle of the night. That voice said a lot of inexplicable things, roughly that she was interested in me. I still remember one thing she mentioned at the end: In order to talk to the void creatures, she always Suffering losses all the time. If the losses she speaks of are yours—that would explain everything."
Harlan doesn't have much information, and he doesn't know that the boss behind the Fallen Apostles is actually a cluster consciousness, so he feels a little baffled by my deduction. He raised his own question: "How can you be sure that the voice is 'that lord' ? Just the closeness in time? Or is it just because my legion has shown signs of direct spiritual connection with void creatures not long ago?"
"Did you know that the 'sir' you are talking about doesn't really exist in the real world?" I asked a heavy question.
Harlan was stunned as I expected: "What do you mean? You said that 'over there' is now controlled by a spirit creature?"
"It's even more inconceivable than spirit creatures. Many races that have mastered information network technology have created similar life forms, but the apostles have created the most powerful one among them," I said, suddenly my heart moved, and I snapped my fingers casually. "Come here, Xiling."
Xiling is everywhere—as long as there is a place covered by the imperial information network, it is the back garden of the super consciousness. She can hear all the calls to herself within the coverage of this network, and she can also upload and download herself to any place covered by the network. place. In fact, it is a bit inaccurate to say that Xiling is "everywhere". Strictly speaking, her body is the entire area covered by the network, and there is no concept of "presence" and "absence" at all: Xiling's body reaches thousands Tens of thousands of worlds are so big, and we creatures in the real world live under her "shadow". Rather than saying that she teleports to a certain place, it is better to say that she has chosen a coordinate in her "body". It's just a temporary interface created in front of the creatures trapped in the real world.
It is precisely because of this special nature of Xiling that when my voice fell, the surrounding air crackled and crackled as if charged, and a large number of small crystal clear light particles gathered from all directions. In less than two seconds, one A girl with long straight golden hair, fair complexion and ruby-like eyes appeared in front of us. The girl has a noble appearance and a kind of piercing beauty. She is wearing a pure black long dress, with her left hand on Wearing long black silk gloves, before she opened her mouth and giggled, she looked like a princess who came from the dark night. The only thing that spoiled the atmosphere was a silly metal plaque hanging on her chest, just like a Like a primary school student or a dementia patient, this sign has her name and the contact information of the Imperial Army written on it...
Xi Ling has to change her look every time she appears. Her insensitivity to the real world makes her unable to remember her appearance at all. Basically, she forgets what she looks like after sleeping. From this point of view, Qianqian prepared for her The little sign is really useful—without this thing, I might not be able to recognize the girl who looks like a foreign princess in front of me as Xiling.
"Her name is Xiling," I pointed at Xiling and introduced to Haran. "Theoretically, she is the same kind of life as the leader behind the fallen apostles, but she is slightly weaker and under control. Xiling, this It's Harlan, you should have his information."
The blond girl gave Harlan a military salute happily, but her tone was not as serious as her military salute: "Hello, I know you, you are node HF-35S1-S57-CXEE15, Harlan? Croix? Leyva Your Majesty Wright, welcome home, I'm Xiling." After saying hello, the girl's attention quickly shifted, and she happily ran to the counter to greet the silver mole: "Sylvia! I want some snacks! I want the black one, the round one with chocolate on top, Tavier likes it!"
Someone must have realized the biggest difference between Xiling and ordinary apostles: she might salute the emperor, but that was because others taught her to do so, plus a certain instruction, but in her own perspective, all apostles There is no difference at all. To her, Harlan is first a node number composed of numbers and letters, second is the name of a real creature, and finally is a Xiling emperor. The reason for this is simple: the "network node" of the apostles of Xiling is the only one that will not change as their authority or power rises. The only meaning of this node for Xiling is to provide an "AND or NOT gate" , she can't tell the difference between the countless nodes that make up herself. An LCD TV that costs tens of thousands of dollars and a desk lamp that costs tens of dollars, their plugs are essentially a few pieces of copper and a bunch of plastic, so this explanation is easy to understand...
I turned to Harlan: "Do you feel anything?"
"I... not so sure..." Harlan stared blankly at Xiling's back, "I can't feel her identification information, she should be an apostle of Xiling, but her identification code is not open to anyone? Is the emperor's authority still high?"
"It takes some technical means to query Xiling's identification code. It is impossible to read it directly. You don't have that high processing capacity. Her body is discretely distributed in the entire spiritual network," I said to Xiling who was waiting for the snack to be ready. He beckoned and called her over, "You know how to send documents directly to ordinary apostles through the Internet, right? You try to send something to Haran, just anything."
Xiling thought for a while, and then sent the price list in Sylvia's store, and Harlan's expression changed.
"You usually receive instructions from 'that lord', is this the encoding and forwarding rule?" I asked.
Harlan nodded slowly: "Just for a moment, I even thought it was really... This kind of information encoding and transmission method is incredible, it completely bypasses the existing communication protocol, and it is completely impossible to query the source of the information, nor can it be found forwarding trajectory, as if the information came from the Xiling Apostle’s network itself, rather than a specific sender.”
"Xi Ling is a group consciousness, she is indeed the spiritual network itself, and so is the 'adult' you are talking about."
At the moment, I explained everything about Xiling to Harlan. After understanding this special life form, he naturally knew why his old boss had to sacrifice a lot of spiritual nodes to connect with void creatures. In the end, our topic turned back to "that lord": "So according to my judgment, the boss behind the fallen apostle used you as consumables or buffers in order to talk to me. She is essentially just a person living in the Internet. If you don’t create an interactive interface like Xi Ling, she can only communicate with the outside world in a completely unprotected form: you can imagine what it would be like to turn off all the firewalls in the spiritual network. Void creature information Disturbance is a fatal poison to the will of the abyss side. I believe that in the short few minutes of communication, the opposite 'Abyss side Xiling' almost used up all the nodes she used to buffer—that is, you, when she The end of the communication came rather hastily."
Harlan was stunned for a while, then suddenly shook his head with a wry smile: "It's such a situation, we have been controlled by our own spiritual network? Well, it makes sense, if you regard her as the racial consciousness of the Apostle of Xiling , but also has this qualification."
The old emperor is somewhat self-deprecating, so I will not continue on this topic. Now it is basically certain that the person who contacted me suddenly was the ruler behind the scenes of the fallen apostles. Now I am facing an unprecedented unsolved mystery:
Why did she do this
I thought about it, and felt that the other party was definitely not looking for me to consult about psychological problems...
"I can't give you an answer to this." Harlan heard my doubts and spread his hands helplessly, "I can only say that 'my lord' must have her own plan, and everything she does has a purpose, but never No one knows exactly what she wants to do, she only gives orders, and we can occasionally deduce some plans from these orders, but more, only 'that lord' knows."
"Anyway, sacrificing a military tycoon and his entire army in his own name, just to connect directly with the void creatures for a few minutes, seems a bit too much for the gain." I shook my head dumbfoundingly, "This is my life The one with the highest appearance fee... ”
Harlan gritted his teeth and looked at me: "Your appearance fee is mine!"
Me: "... well, let's not talk about this. In short, you were sold by your boss, but I think Xi Ling on the abyss side should not be a fool. Even if she sells her teammates, she should be sold at a good price. Do you think she and a Void What do creatures get by talking for a few minutes?"
Harlan reached out and drew circles on the table, as if using this little action to help himself think: "Thinking about the worst, maybe she can briefly invade the Imperial network by connecting directly with you, stealing information, or trying to understand the weaknesses of void creatures , Thinking about it worse, maybe through this direct connection, she has already left something in the imperial network or your spiritual world, such as spy programs."
I blinked: "Why is there only bad and worse, and nothing else?"
"Of course," Harlan laughed, "and worst of all—"
Me: "... I think you are a little pessimistic."
Harlan waved his hand indifferently: "It's a good thing to be pessimistic. Only by imagining the worst can you make the best preparations. The worst case scenario is: 'My lord''s plan is close to success, and her plan doesn't need to be left behind." There are too many people, so some subordinates who are not very obedient to discipline become things that can be thrown out and sacrificed. You can imagine that on the battlefield, the army that is about to return home from victory throws away redundant ammunition that is inconvenient to carry and temporarily manufactures supplementary soldiers This is common sense in the army."
My cold sweat broke out on the spot. Harlan was right, there is the worst thing besides bad and worse: In case Xiling on the abyss side feels that the situation is set, and he does not regard the empire as a threat at all , then her sacrificing millions of nodes is really not a big deal!
Harlan seems to be a thorny hardliner in the circle of fallen apostles, so he was regarded as an outcast by Xiling on the abyss side. Only his servants can follow—Harlan obviously didn't meet the standard.
At least there is still room for dealing with the worst situation and the worse situation, and if it is the worst situation-it will be too late to do anything, and the "great cause" of the fallen apostles may be just around the corner!
"The above are all conjectures," Harlan reassured me, "Although I can't remember the details of the 'Great Cause', I always feel that it should not be realized so soon. In my memory, our actions on the 'Great Cause' have been deadlocked for a long time. 'My lord' seems to be trying to break through a certain technical difficulty. Until I left, there was no sign of breaking through this technical difficulty, and I clearly remembered what plans she had after the Protoss started the expedition. Although the millennium is short, it can There is still a lot to do.”
I grinned and waved my hands, this is really the rhythm of never having too much shit from the sky: "Okay, let's stop this topic here, let's put the situation of the fallen apostles aside. Let's talk about you now Son—what are your plans for the future?"
"Plan?" Harlan was taken aback, then nodded with a smile, "What do you want me to do? You are the biggest here, tell me."
"Then let me make it clear. Now that the abyssal apostles have been established in the empire, I need an experienced supreme commander—not Viska, she doesn't even bother to command her own general army, and her personality is completely childish. So I want you Help me run the Abyss Independent Regiment. The size of this regiment is roughly equivalent to a regular main force regiment, and there are some miscellaneous units that we seized from 'there' here and there. I can tell you clearly that their organization is chaotic. I can't bear to look at it, it's a complete mess."
I directly pointed out the situation of the Abyss Independent Group to Harlan. Anyway, as long as the other party takes over this stall, he will definitely find out the problem immediately. Instead of letting him catch up at that time, it is better to get a vaccination now. When communicating with the Apostles of Xiling, you don't need to use too many narrow-mindedness, they don't take this trick.
I waited expectantly for Harlan's reaction.
"I thought about it," Harlan deliberately paused for a few seconds before he said slowly, "If I'm not wrong, I'd better bring my old soldiers when I go back—they should all be taken from me by you, right?"
Me: "...you summed it up pretty well."
"It's such a big circle..." Harlan's expression was somewhat subtle, but he still nodded cheerfully, "I agreed, let an old general lead his former soldiers, is there anything better than this?"
I breathed a sigh of relief and peeked at Sylvia who was humming a little tune behind the counter and wiping the countertop. I thought to myself that they are both emperors. Why is there such a big gap in the sense of responsibility between the two
Then we talked about Harlan, the supreme commander, and the positioning of the Abyss Independent Regiment. First of all, I explained to the other party the current ruling structure of the empire: due to various reasons, the new empire temporarily stopped implementing the sky zone system of the old empire, and the entire empire has only one big sky zone, which is jointly governed by all emperors and supreme generals of the empire . Secondly, follow the military parliamentary system of the old empire: the head of the empire, the general and the lower-level staff group together form the imperial army. According to the authority tree, the apostles of Xiling have their own external legions—such as Pandora and Vigilante. Scar’s general guard, me and Sandora’s Royal Fleet, etc. This legion is the only one under the full command of the corresponding commander. The other regular imperial troops are under the order of the military department—the emperor still has the first authority group, but In the absence of an order from the emperor, the commanders of each legion could move their own troops in an emergency.
Harlan will retain the authority of the emperor, but he will be responsible for fewer things: he will focus on the construction of the Abyss Independent Group and the construction of territories for those Abyssalized Apostles. Now that the latter has reached its scale, I think it's time to create some universes suitable for their survival in the empire. After all, the abyss troops have a special "nature" that allows them to stay with normal races for a long time. The latter has an impact, and this is not something that can be controlled artificially.
In short, these things that are about to be built independently need a clear person in charge, and the person in charge must have high enough authority: Harlan is quite suitable.
"I thought I could take it easy and become a legion commander or something." Hearing my arrangement, Harlan seemed a little regretful, "So you're still in charge of building your own house?"
"Don't even think about retiring," I giggled dryly, "theoretically, you have five emperors in the empire—but look, Bella Villa is mentally broken for twenty hours a day, and the remaining The only time I spend is training magical girls. My sister has already deleted the emperor's authority. She prefers to take care of the children at home. Only Sandora and I are in charge. If you also withdraw the emperor's authority, one-fifth of the emperor's council in the new empire Three members are on strike..."
"...Although it is true to say so, why is your 'three-fifths' statement so strange?"
"If there are only three of you in the whole clan, sooner or later you will be able to master the trick of using the number of people as a slot."
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