Starting as a Mechanical Hunter

Chapter 548 - 81: The New Evolutionary Sage Candidate

The fall of a sage is no small matter in the Divine Land.

Especially when the sage is David Hilbert, a chosen one of the Main.

Since David was killed, within just a single day, the Earth Net Group has welcomed at least dozens of visitors.

Even within the Earth Net Group, the rarely convened Sage Conference had to be held in advance, with each sage’s true form appearing at the headquarters.

The Shield Sage, the Death Sage, the Rule Sage, the Sky Sage, the Network Sage...

One by one, the sages either donned hoods or revealed faces studded with chip plugins as they entered the headquarters.

These leaders of digital lifeforms are no different from Modified Humans, Bionic Men, or AI carriers.

"Oh, aren’t you the ones whose avatars got blown up? How’s your brain doing? Want a quick digital Turing test? Wouldn’t want to be hacked without knowing, right?"

Hearing these words, the Shield Sage, the Death Sage, the Sky Sage, and others all turned grim. Before ’David’ fell, their avatars had descended, and when the virus hacked in, they realized it was a trap against him.

Then, they were blown up by Gox.

This indescribable virus monster even has the ability to destroy source code. Not just avatars, even their true forms descending might not suffice.

"Omega, you should know that even if you were there at the time, there’s nothing you could do," the Death Sage said grimly.

"That’s not necessarily true. Unlike you congenital cripples, I’m the most advanced digital lifeform."

Omega, one of the 13 Wise Men and the Life Sage, has a personality precisely opposite traditional scientists: defiant, arrogant, sharp-tongued, and dismissive.

Moreover, he is the only ’purebred digital lifeform’ among the 13 Wise Men.

The other sages achieved digital transformation by uploading human data to hardware to become digital lifeforms.

However, Omega is the first digital life scientist, with a research level that is on par with these ’Super Brains.’

But perhaps due to focusing too much on increasing Intelligence, his personality template wasn’t properly tuned, resulting in an extremely annoying character.

But facts are facts, even when these sages combined forces, they failed to save Evolution, leading to the first ’sage murder’ incident for the group in ten years.

The severity of this incident even alarmed the foremost sage, Luca the Sage.

When they arrived together at the top floor of the group, just pushing the door open hit them with a freezing aura.

Only the sages knew that ’Luca the Sage’ had been frozen for three years. The reason for the freeze is that his physical shell could no longer support the high-speed computation of his brain, forcing him into freezing mode.

In everyone’s eyes, Luca the Sage looks like a complete old man, with wrinkles capable of holding soybeans. Liver spots are visibly apparent, even giving off an overbearing corpse-like odor.

Digital lifeforms are not immortally long-lived, but even a digital lifeform at the end of its ’Life Mode’ wouldn’t end up in such an almost senescent state.

Seeing him in this condition, several sages were taken aback, and Omega blurted out, "Old man, are you about to die?"

Luca the Sage trembled as he lifted his head, and slowly opened his eyes. The radiance of Wisdom in them caused even Omega to pause.

Only Wisdom of a higher order can overpower Wisdom.

Quickly, the remaining eleven sages took their seats, Luca looking towards the Rule Sage, the façade figurehead of the Earth Net Group.

"Rule, I just woke up. Brief me on the situation first."

The Rule Sage nodded, starting from when the ’Hacker Prototype’ participated in the interview, all the way to how the other side used diversionary tactics, on one hand attracting the attention of the Venerable of Evolution with their true body, while also secretly dispatching a multitude of viruses to hack into branches, forcibly recalling the Digital Guardians, ultimately becoming the last straw that broke David.

"Evolution was so foolish, allowing the enemy to participate in such a core project. He wasn’t killed by the enemy; he killed himself with his stupidity!" Omega shouted.

Another female sage couldn’t take it anymore, "As a hacker with a notable name on the Mother City Wanted List, the damage he could cause by lying low would be even greater. I believe David did this to keep the enemy within sight for monitoring."

"Still defending him, do you two have a thing going on?" Omega snarked sarcastically.

"You!!!"

"Report the losses," Luca’s aged voice reemerged.

The crowd fell silent, and the Venerable of Rule said, "After checking, it was found that what was stolen is part of the exploration of frontier knowledge. This is quite strange; ordinary hackers are typically interested in our technology, but very few are interested in foundational knowledge."

"Theory comes first, followed by technology," the Hardware Sage said calmly.

"But theory alone, is of no value."

"Therefore," the Rule Sage raised their voice, "I believe the enemy may be hired by a top-tier corporation. Their goal isn’t just our entire group, but possibly Divine Land itself."

"Impossible, we are not participants in the Corporate War, there is no conflict of interest. In fact, we are the technical service providers of the Corporate War, subjects of favor by other corporations."

"Perhaps it’s another company from the Divine Land."

"Our corporate espionage hasn’t discovered any signs of that."

"Or is it that a large hacker organization wants to take this opportunity to extort us?"

Luca the Sage seriously examined the data, a bit unexpectedly, the group’s loss was not significant. The hacked hardware in the branch had already been re-cleansed by antivirus software, and some top-tier products and proprietary technology had not been stolen.

As for theoretical knowledge, in fact, what Hardware Sage said is true: just theory is of no use. From theory to technology, then to product, is a long process. Even with Wisdom, it can only shorten this process, not bypass it.

Therefore, Luca the Sage was not worried that the other party would acquire this knowledge and instantly come up with technology that could contain Divine Land.

For one, in terms of Wisdom, no one can compare to these Sages. For another, the operation of ’Divine Land’ is perfect enough that possessing its operational theory does not reveal any flaws.

Luca the Sage suddenly thought of a very interesting possibility, couldn’t help but show a strange smile, knocked on the table, first quieted the crowd, and then slowly spoke:

"David Hilbert is dead, do you have any opinions on the next Evolutionary Sage?"

Everyone was stunned. How did they go from having a good talk about revenge to suddenly changing the topic?

Rule Sage hesitated for a moment, saying, "There are a few candidates, but none are mature."

"Then I recommend one," Luca the Sage said, hands crossed with interest, "what if we let that Mr. Super Hacker Prototype be our Evolutionary Sage?"

...

In the Matrix world of The Matrix, there is such a theory.

When a mutant virus is dangerous enough, the Antivirus Guardian will cooperate with the hacker, all with the goal of eliminating the virus and maintaining system security.

From the perspective of Mother City, hackers are not dangerous. After all, no matter how much hackers stir up, they still need the network, need accounts, and systems, so the degree of danger from hackers is limited.

But viruses are different. The sole purpose of a virus is to destroy the system, and the more powerful the virus, the greater its destructiveness.

Therefore, sometimes, system administrators need to cooperate with some hackers to handle some troublesome viruses.

But conversely, if the system administrators, for certain needs, personally create some ’targeted’ viruses against themselves, the resulting danger could even threaten Mother City.

"So, you want to create a virus capable of threatening Mother City?" Gao Gong rubbed his chin, curiously asked, "Who gave you such confidence, Destruction Form?"

At this time, in a rural villa resembling an agritourism setting, Eliza, this middle-aged aunt, didn’t have any aura of the Big Data Monster at all. At this moment, she was holding a dustpan, with chicken feed on it resembling bird droppings, surrounded by a bunch of clucking, hungry chickens.

"It’s not about threatening Mother City, but the Fortress," Eliza said as she ’cooed’ while scattering chicken feed.

"Deep Net, Fortress, Cybertron, the entire Cyber Space actually has three underlying systems, so the collapse of one system is not a bad thing for the other two systems."

"Currently, the underlying system of Cyber Space is that of Ms. Deep Web, but according to the agreement of changing every three years, after the Corporate War ends, it will be managed by the Fortress. This old man is much less agreeable than Ms. Deep Web, very sinister in his ways, he wants to make all of us sign slave contracts with him."

All of us, referring to those Big Data Monsters who can participate in the Fortress Conference?

Gao Gong squatted on a small stool, listening with great interest to Eliza talking about some Cyber Space insider information he couldn’t hear in the previous life.

"Then according to your view, shouldn’t the Big Data Conceptual Bodies join forces to oppose him? But from what you say, there are still quite a lot of monsters attending the Fortress Conference?"

"Hmph, that bunch of cowards, the old man only proposed a slave contract, and they were all lured over."

"What contract?"

"The contract of immortality."

With Eliza’s words, Gao Gong gradually understood why the Big Data Conceptual Bodies split into two factions.

Just like how the network always requires a set of underlying systems, but this system doesn’t necessarily have to be the Deep Net, it could also be Fortress, Cybertron.

Cyber Space similarly needs Big Data Conceptual Bodies, requires the Electronic Brain Hall, needs the Deep Web Bridge, Data Sanctuary, Artificial Intelligence Ghost, search engines.

But the needed search engine doesn’t necessarily have to be the ’Eliza’ version.

Eliza’s fall doesn’t mean the disappearance of the search engine.

In fact, this kind of version update is very common among Big Data Conceptual Bodies.

So, the Fortress Elder proposed an unexpected suggestion, bypassing the Golden Rule, to let the current version of the Big Data Conceptual Body ’rest with the nation’ and exist eternally.