Chapter 1359: Jump or Not?

"I have an immature idea..."

"I have another immature idea..."

"I still have an immature idea..."

"People have immature ideas at any time..."

Unexpectedly, I uploaded myself to the Internet, but I still couldn't escape the curse of Qian Qian's "immature ideas". Half of the invalid data cleared from the database was related to Qian Qian: Impulse planning, far-fetched designs, short-term goals that are simply impossible to achieve... Due to Qian Qian's status as a high-ranking node and her 24-hour connection to the Empire's data network, whenever she had such an idea, it was not really possible. If you intend to put it into action (for Qianqian, this is almost 100%), the Imperial Data Network will temporarily store it as a top instruction, but this information will basically be invalidated within 24 hours: some are Qian Qian suddenly lost interest, and some of them were remonstrated by me or my elder sister.

The result is that every time the database is self-maintained, a lot of such fragments will be generated: they have become Xiling's favorite gadgets to collect. Qianqian and Xiling formed a subtle supply and marketing system...

I studied the orange-red cubes that fell from the sky, but I didn’t have time to read them one by one: these cubes began to dissipate a few minutes after touching the ground. Sure enough, as Xiling said, in this online world, The colorful fallen flowers are only a short-lived beauty.

"The two databases above should be responsible for temporarily storing high-level node instructions." I looked up. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why Qian Qian's mental pollution (I have to use this word to describe that girl) Thinking!) will be so concentrated in this area - unless she has reached the point where her thoughts are running rampant and spreading throughout the entire network.

"Yes," Xiling confirmed my guess, "They are specially used to process temporary information generated by nodes above senior officers."

I did the math and realized that Qian Qian alone had generated an amount of data equivalent to half that of me, Shandora, Lin Xue and others plus the entire headquarters - what a terrifying brain this is!

The only good thing now is that these Qianqian ideas will not have any impact other than slipping around in the database: there will be no real actions, no real projects, and there will be no problem of wasting people and money because they were shot. is as fast as it is produced. Otherwise, the current GDP of the new empire might not be enough for her to endure...

I shook my head, putting aside these irrelevant thoughts, and looked up at the road ahead. Now we still can't see where the rift valley in Xiling's mouth is, only the endless plains, plains. Still plains, and the occasional dazzling strange landscape, this bizarre cyberspace may have no end at all. After all, a large number of new apostles come off the production line every minute, and the speed of this network expansion is extremely alarming. If It is not supported by a robust and reliable protocol system that has gone through countless adjustments by ancestors. I am afraid that this expansion speed alone is enough to collapse the ordinary network. Tavel uses complex algorithms to convert abstract things on the Internet into information that can be understood by us, and allows Bingtis and I to have the same "senses" as Xiling, but I'm afraid there are still some differences in the nature of these senses. I feel that I may not fully understand the world in Xiling's eyes.

There's a breeze in my ears, there's light in my sight, I can feel the temperature, and gravity - things I take for granted in the real world. This all means that there is a corresponding information environment. Perhaps a breeze is the collective thinking of thousands of apostles. Perhaps the surrounding temperature means the current average speed of the spiritual network. This information can be sensed but cannot be interpreted. , at least it is incomprehensible to creatures from the real world like us. I suddenly felt confused: In this way, could I solve the problem of the Rift Valley?

We don't even fully understand what it is.

"What are you thinking about? Are you still leaving?" Bingtis's whirring voice woke me up from my thoughts. I saw the female gangster raising her finger and pointing into the distance, "Follow the arrow. Xiling said there was something ahead. The data hub, after crossing the first hub, we have completed half of the journey. The Rift Valley is very calm now, we have to hurry over before it moves anywhere."

I put aside the thoughts in my heart, nodded and rushed out at once. Bingtis was stunned and quickly followed, because the two of them were moving very fast, exceeding the speed of sound. So Bingtis could only use his mental connection to talk to me: "I rely on you, uncle! It's scary to suddenly run so fast! Don't you know that I, 36e, start slowly?"

Me: "..." I decided not to speak. Anyway, this female gangster has something to say at any time. I will never be able to defeat this invulnerable guy verbally without throwing my face on the ground and stepping on it.

Next, focus on the road. There will be nothing extra to attract your attention along the way. We quickly arrived at the data hub that Xiling mentioned, which is another abstract thing that seems difficult to understand. It looks like a huge streamer, glowing with alternating blue and gold colors. One end is connected to the ground, and the other end is flying high in the air. It is more than ten meters wide and may be as high as a thousand meters. Remain. There is a breeze in this weird space, but the direction in which this "streamer" dances is not consistent with the direction of the wind. Rather, it seems to be the recurring background object that appears as decoration in the game, looping in its own unique amplitude. Swinging slightly back and forth.

Getting close to the streamer, I heard the sound of hunting wind. Although this thing did not dance with the wind, it still made the sound of a flag being blown by the wind. The things in this space... were really weird.

Xi Ling's image moved from the ground to the surface of the streamer. I finally didn't have to lower my head to talk to her, but her face was swaying due to the dance of the streamer, and was distorted into ridiculous shapes from time to time, making it look very funny.

"I'll check the network conditions nearby," Xiling said. "Being close to the Rift Valley requires a high degree of network stability. Sudden link disconnection or packet loss is not fun - although I don't know if you will be affected by packet loss. .”

"No," as soon as Xiling finished speaking, another embedded picture suddenly appeared on the streamer, Tavel appeared on the screen, "Don't worry, Your Majesty, the souls of you and Lord Bingtis are not completely attached to the Internet, but It exists in the form of an independent individual, only borrowing bandwidth. If large-scale packet loss does occur, your soul will only be expelled at best, and will not die like the information that is attached to the network. .Theoretically...well, that's actually the case."

This time she finally dared not say that this was the case in theory - otherwise Shandora and the others would definitely come after her desperately.

"That's good," Xiling nodded reassuringly, "I was just going to say that the network around the Rift Valley is not very stable, so should I postpone the action a little bit? Now we can continue on our way. Oh, wait a minute, I'll put this hub Mark it so that if there is an emergency ahead, you can teleport back through this hub and run away."

"Speaking of which, what are these hubs?" I looked at the magnificent big streamers in front of me. This thing looked very beautiful. But its light and airy image is very different from the square things he saw along the way: most things in this space are square and angular, including the upside-down earth in the sky and the orange-red ones before. Cube, these streamers are really an exception here.

"Host," Xiling said casually, "the data hub is where the host intervenes in the network, just like a key control point. Each such hub monitors a fairly huge piece of network space. The node in front of you is xl-34 , next we are going to hub No. , well, it’s behind you. The one on the horizon..."

This was the first time I heard such a magical thing. I turned my head and looked curiously, and sure enough I found a beam of light reaching all over the sky at the end of the horizon - I might have seen it before, but I didn't pay attention at all at the time. I never thought about the child. Her mother is such a popular natural sight in cyberspace!

So huge that it can be considered a natural landscape, you can imagine how spectacular the bubbles look here.

"Bubble, Bubble." I called the child's mother in a very fresh, excited, and eye-opening way. Because the other party was one of the network servers, the call to her did not need to be transferred through Xiling, "I saw you! You are here This place is so spectacular! From a distance, it looks rough and..."

"Dad, please don't do this..."

Me: "..." Just shut up. Keep on your way.

The next few data hubs are relatively close to each other. Perhaps in order to improve network stability, the mass-produced hosts deliberately adjusted their working sections to protect this operation. Where there are data hubs, the network The stability and impact resistance will be enhanced, and the large-capacity cache of the hosts can also effectively reduce the chance of packet loss. Although the last one has been proven to be harmless to Bingtis and me, after all, it can still affect the entire operation. success rate.

As I continued to move forward, I finally felt that the atmosphere around me began to change: the ubiquitous breeze gradually weakened to almost imperceptible, the ground began to fade, and the originally beautiful lavender and blue were increasingly mixed with a sickly grayish white color. , in the end the land even completely faded to almost a desert, and the undulating mountains and deep valleys in the sky seemed to be avoiding something in front of us. As we moved forward, the sky seemed flatter, and in the end it simply turned into a great plain like the ground. .

These phenomena all mean the same thing: there is an information desert area ahead. Under the automatic circumvention of network security protocols, data flowing to this area is blocked, and even the all-encompassing Imperial Database refuses to provide indexing services for this network segment. .

Xiling became increasingly silent: she had not spoken for a long time. As the collective consciousness of the network, she should have felt that danger was approaching.

"That, that is the Rift!"

After walking around for a while, Xiling finally broke the silence. We stopped and looked at the scene in front of us.

The color has completely faded from the field of vision. Whether it is the plain below our feet or the other piece of land hanging upside down in the sky, it is completely pale, except for the image of Xiling following our feet, and the figures of Bingtis and I. , there is no color around, the whole world seems to have turned into an uncolored plain model, looking around, it is monotonous and dry.

But in the distance, darkness penetrated this pale world as if tearing apart space. It was a large circular hole that penetrated the sky and the earth, as if a huge spear had pierced the sky and the earth, leaving a shocking legacy here. The scars and darkness surged inside the cavity, forming an extremely sharp contrast with the pale surrounding environment. Xi Ling no longer dared to take a step forward: In fact, when the surrounding colors faded, we had already entered the data avoidance zone delineated by the security protocol. Xi Ling came here entirely based on his special nature of "itself is the network" Being so close, she was afraid that she would not be able to stop if she went any further. The rift valley was moving erratically at any time in this pale area, expanding or shrinking in an instant. This is too dangerous for a consciousness rooted in the Internet.

We let Xiling stop here and evacuate to a safe place as soon as possible. Of course, as a network's overall consciousness, she actually doesn't care whether to evacuate or not. What follows us is always just an interactive interface of Xiling, and she herself is always the entire network. Asking her to evacuate essentially means asking her to stop detecting the data on the Rift Valley. As long as her focus is not on the Rift Valley, the Rift Valley cannot swallow up any of her information.

Of course, as a result, the communication between us and Tavel will be cut off: because any data leading to the Rift Valley will be lost. And Xi Ling cannot survive in this area. This is the only absolute black barrier that cannot be reached by spiritual connection.

Tavel analyzed the data we detected as quickly as possible before Xiling left. I can imagine the tense and busy atmosphere in the laboratory outside now, but Tavel's analysis can only be superficial, measuring the network status. Estimating the bandwidth near the rift valley, analyzing the safety factor, etc. - we will only know what it is like in the rift valley after Bingtis and I come back.

"Your Majesty, you and Mr. Bingtis have special souls that cannot be swallowed by the rift. Therefore, in theory, it is safe to approach or even enter the rift. However, the safety of the rift itself does not mean that there are no other dangerous things on the opposite side. Whatever, once you encounter a situation, please directly explode your void power - this will cause the entire network to be down for a short time or even some nodes to be destroyed, but it is better than losing our leader." Tavel warned for the last time. Then Lin Xue's image also appeared in front of us: "Wood, and Bingtis. I haven't seen anything bad yet, but there is unprecedented interference in the rift. There is definitely something incredible hidden in it. For the time being, It’s not malicious, but it has the ability to threaten you, understand what I mean?”

"If the situation goes bad, just run away quickly," Bingtis still said carelessly, "Don't worry, I have already gained good skills when I smashed the principal's window - well, I will take your husband with me."

"...I'm even more worried..."

After ending the communication, Xiling also retreated to a safe enough place. Bingtis and I stepped forward, and the last link in the spiritual connection was also interrupted: we entered the black barrier area.

"It's as quiet as death." Bingtis muttered unhappily as he quickly approached the large hollow in front, "There is no wind, no sound, and there is no real feeling when you step on the ground. I feel like there is something missing in this place. "

"There is no way. After all, the data has been interrupted here. We are now jumping among a group of mutated nodes. Except for ourselves and these nodes, there is nothing evolving here, not a byte."

Information that absolutely does not evolve is like a pool of stagnant water. The principle of being still equals death is perfectly explained here.

We finally came to the big hole and observed what it was from the edge. It goes vertically deep into the ground, and is a perfect circle with a radius of probably one kilometer (in this virtual space, is the unit of length reliable?). However, when I looked carefully, I felt that it was just a black round cake printed on the surface: the inside of this thing The darkness is so thick that even the word "pure black" cannot describe it, so that even at such a close distance, you can't tell whether this "hole" has an inner wall. You can try to Draw a pure black round cake on a piece of paper, and then use the same black to draw the inner wall of the cave in the round cake. You will find that this is completely impossible.

Rift Valley presents this situation.

"If I couldn't feel the aura of the abyss, I would really think this was a gate to the abyss." Bingtis expressed my inner thoughts.

I looked up and saw that there was also a perfect black circle in the corresponding position in the sky. It was also deep and bottomless.

Of course, you can't tell anything just by looking at it, but when it comes to investigating the truth of this rift valley, with our abilities as laymen, Bingtis and I definitely don't know how to start, but fortunately we need to do something It's very simple, and doesn't require much expertise, just jump into this thing...

Understand what is going on inside (or on the opposite side) of the rift: is there a powerful malignant tumor, or is it just a network failure, or is it the network interface of the fallen apostle? As long as we understand these, we don’t need to know the specific reasons. Bing and I Even if Thies's task is overfulfilled, the remaining solution lies with the scientists outside.

"Tavel just said that it should be no problem for us to jump in," I patted Bingtis on the shoulder, "We are not network data, Rift Valley cannot delete it, and if we are lucky, Rift Valley's capacity is limited , it will even be 'strung to death' by the soul of the void creature, so it's just one step."

"Yes." Bingtis nodded slightly, suddenly looked over with an unprecedented seriousness on her face, and then she said in a rare soft tone:

"youjump, ilook..."

I:"……"

I grabbed this guy's arm and jumped down. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to Qidian to vote for recommendations and monthly votes. Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile users, please read it.)