Overturned Tower

It wasn't until he reached this realm that Russell finally understood why there were rumors that "if you cross the Leviathan Wall, you will lose your essence as a human being."

His red shift level finally reached the ninth level.

It is only the last step away from the tenth level of redshift, the highest theoretical level.

But even so, Russell's spirit inevitably began to alienate...

The biggest difference is that the separation between him and the "God Vessel" has finally disappeared.

Just like when a psyker loses control, becomes corrupted and becomes a demon - then the soul cannot withstand the expanding psychic energy within the spirit body, and thus breaks apart. The expanding demon squeezed out the spirit body, and the remaining part was inherited by the demon.

Although theoretically, the two are integrated into one. But in fact, it is just the core of the "demon" covered with outer shells called "memory" and "personality".

Now the separation between Russell and the container of God disappears... Originally like an oil droplet suspended in water, the container of God that existed inside Russell's spiritual body was given to him by Russell when he broke through the wall of Leviathan. "Digested" away.

They are completely and truly one. But this time Russell is the main subject.

When Russell possessed some of the abilities of the "God's Vessel", he also possessed some of the characteristics of the devil. The biggest difference is that he can dive into the sea of ​​group subconscious.

It turns out that the sea of ​​group subconscious resists everyone. Awakening will will make the spirit "lighter" and can only be suspended on the surface of the sea of ​​collective subconsciousness. After falling into sleep, as the willpower weakens, the individual's will can dive deeper, but then At this time, their consciousness is hazy and vague... This prevents them from making any changes to the sea of ​​collective subconsciousness with a clear attitude.

But at this moment, Russell was able to project and sink his spirit into the deep sea of ​​group subconsciousness without falling asleep.

According to the "Subjective Cognition Hypothesis" of psychic science, it is said that the "sea of ​​group subconscious" in everyone's cognition is different, and its performance is based on personal cognition. Russell at this moment can prove that this statement is indeed correct——

Russell sat in the back seat of the float car, took out a bottle of champagne from the wine cabinet next to him, and poured it for himself.

The golden wine looks like shining liquid gold under the warm lights inside the float car. A string of tiny bubbles emerging from the bottom looked like a crack under the light.

Russell held it up and pointed it at the light.

At that moment, the golden light penetrated the wine and shot into Russell's eyes.

Russell felt his consciousness leave his body in an instant, suddenly "forward" and penetrated into the crack.

When he woke up again, he appeared in the huge "art gallery".

On both sides are towering golden walls that stretch to the sky, with countless moving and talking portraits hanging on them, like the portraits in Harry Potter.

Each portrait is chatting to the painting next to it, but none of them can see Russell... It is as if there is no "person outside the painting" in their knowledge.

The closest portrait beside Russell is that of Delphinium driving a car.

However, the Delphinium in this painting is not as rational and cold as she usually is.

She was huddled in a fluffy and soft beanbag, wearing a cool swimsuit, holding an exaggeratedly huge barbecue, biting it with a comic-like mouth, and still talking to the front.

There was also a painting hanging in the direction she was looking in front of.

But the painting was blank inside.

That's where Russell originally was.

This does not mean that Delphinium is hungry or greedy/nor does it mean that she is a lazy soul deep down... because this intention is highly concentrated and has an abstract underlying foreshadowing that requires human interpretation.

She is curled up in the beanbag at the moment, which shows that her soul is a little tired at the moment; and its warmth can warm the "coldness" of the soul, but she is not wearing thicker clothes and is just leaning on the sofa, so Ming Cui There is still a small amount of loneliness in the bird, but this loneliness can be easily relieved, and there is already a person to relieve it.

She is dressed in cool clothes, which means that she wants to "take off the restraints", but still has a small amount of clothes, which shows that she does not want "wild and unrestrained freedom"; she gnaws food exaggeratedly, showing that her soul is... Hungry, eager for something.

And what she was chewing on was a huge piece of barbecue, so maybe... she was referring to herself. Because when Russell and Delphinium went out to eat for the first time, they had barbecue. The size of the barbecue was so huge that she couldn't control it, which showed that she had a faint fear of her "talent" in her heart, followed by greater greed and more determined actions.

"do not be afraid."

Russell suddenly said: "I will always stand by your side."

"……What do you see?"

Delphinium, who was driving, didn't look back, so her voice was a little soft: "My heart?"

"I'm sorry. It was just instinct."

"It's okay, no need to apologize. My heart is upright and without any shadow. There is nothing that I can't let others see...especially you."

Delphinium smiled.

She hesitated for a moment and then asked: "But if you modify the minds of those people, would this be a bit..."

"I did not distort their memories or personalities."

Russell shook his head: "I just removed the effect of the 'fog' on them."

"fog?"

"Actually, I don't know what it is..."

That may be the true nature of the spiritual plague.

Russell said in his heart.

His consciousness returned to the gallery in the blink of an eye.

In this gallery that is supposed to be windless, there is a faint, hazy colorful mist slowly drifting from a distance.

It is so beautiful and ethereal, like an aurora flowing across the ground. It wrapped Russell within it, but did not cause any harm to Russell. Instead, it cured his fatigue.

But after it flowed through, iridescent stains appeared on some paintings on both sides.

They are like a kind of oil that adheres to the surface of the painting. The color is different for everyone, but it can be easily erased with a gentle wipe. But if you stay long enough, it becomes part of the "painting" itself.

Those whose true color of the frame is contaminated by this rainbow color will become more crazy and radical visible to the naked eye. The portraiture itself would also begin to become "conventional." The more people are already polluted, the more likely they are to be further polluted.

Delphinium didn't change much because her willpower was high enough; her mind didn't have much dirt attached to it, so she only felt that her "spirituality had gotten better" and "her mood was less messy."

"...Those things should be related to artificially and maliciously guided public opinion, or rumors spread everywhere."

Russell said uncertainly.

He has been wandering in the sea of ​​collective subconsciousness for the past few days.

Russell noticed that the more people who are persecuted or bullied in daily life, or who are more likely to believe rumors, or who are easily induced by the media to become angry or sad, the more likely it is that these "colored fogs" will be attached to their portraits. ". But only a few people can resist these colorful fogs and remain true to themselves without being infected by them.

Although Russell also knows that even for people in the normal world... being bullied, deceived, and misled is normal, so it is normal and reasonable to change one's mind.

But in this world, it's obviously different. Everyone becomes more sensitive and more susceptible to permanent effects. Although this may also be the reason why people in the cyberpunk world suffer from excessive psychological pressure...

...But what if the cause and effect are opposite?

It is precisely because people are easily infected by that "fog" that the world has reached this point.

So Russell specially conducted an experiment, which was to erase the dirt deep in the hearts of these people.

He could see with the naked eye that the people he wiped became rational overnight... Although it did not improve the social atmosphere overnight, it did help some people recover.

For example, a person who is always angry and will even quarrel with others just because they look at him twice; or a person who is willing to accept any marketing strategy and is willing to deceive almost all his money by the merchant's sales trap. ; Or someone who is crazy about chasing stars and is as fanatical as a believer...

Overnight, they suddenly woke up.

An angry person still has a bad temper, but it will not make people feel "angry for no reason"; a person who loves krypton money is still inclined to consume like a person who buys things randomly, but at least he will not spend all the money or even ask others Borrowing money feels natural; star chasers still like the celebrity idol, but they will not lose their minds because of it and become "weird" in the eyes of others.

And the most characteristic point——

That is, the whisper that had always existed from the bottom of my heart disappeared. Their nights were finally restful.

People who are smelly cannot easily smell their own scent, and people who keep hearing small sounds in their ears will gradually ignore that sound - there is a special power that makes everyone anxious. And people have long been accustomed to this "anxiety", so they don't notice it at all.

But after Russell removed that "dirt", more than one person posted on the Internet saying that his mind became peaceful.

It wasn't until they "waked up" that they realized they had been trapped in a dream.

It's like a person who has been pushed by his parents since he was born and never understands what he likes and what he wants to do...but one day he suddenly understands and his eyes light up. It's that feeling of sudden enlightenment.

At the same time, almost everyone's blue shift intensity increased overnight. Those with blue shift intensity lower than four levels have even directly increased by two levels.

People who originally opposed each other for no reason, just because of a sudden misunderstanding or anger, hoping to kill each other, suddenly realized that their actions were so stupid, and apologized to each other; those who were either greedy, arrogant, or jealous had already Those annoying people who have reached the point of being crazy and become "incomprehensible people" in the eyes of normal people. When they go to work, they look at other people ignorantly and are even a little afraid of their former selves.

Only the more depraved ones - a very small number of twisted people who harm others but do not benefit themselves, or those who are insane to an outrageous degree, still maintain their own madness and distortion.

Originally, the entire society was in chaos, so they were not conspicuous; but now, it is like the citizens of a country of madmen who were injected with madman's medicine in a well and suddenly all recovered from their illnesses... and those who took the madman's medicine orally were still... Maintaining the confusion, they became so conspicuous in an instant.

This is not just one or two people, but a large group of people.

Then, Russell suddenly realized something.

Because he is not from this world at all, let alone from this era, there is one thing that he has always ignored...

He has always believed that the various chaos in this world are either "very easy to understand, and the world on my side will be like this", or "this is hard to understand, and it probably belongs to the special provisions of the cyber era and the spiritual world." ”, and didn’t feel any problem.

But what if this chaos is actually man-made?

Or……

——Why does he think that the world he once lived in is the benchmark of truth and there are no problems?

What if the people in this world have actually already accepted a kind of "sublimation"?

After all, they are not natives who have not left the planetary age, but have entered the glorious cosmic civilization of the starry age.

Human beings in the 20th century are completely different from those ancient people in BC; and how can the gap between the cosmic civilization that has entered the age of stars and the human beings in the 20th century be so small?

Even if civilization ends and inheritance dies... can human beings really degenerate so quickly and completely?

Even if humans can deteriorate, why do named elves also begin to deteriorate?

Why is it that a good person like Delphinium, whose moral standards are far above average, cannot awaken the power of Holy Order?

So Russell had a bold conjecture.

——Maybe there is such a curse that makes the human spirit continue to deteriorate.

This may be the "spiritual plague" that the deer-headed statue refers to.

Just like the curse of the legendary Tower of Babel, it creates barriers between people and disperses them to various places, making people unable to understand each other and allowing unprovoked malice to gradually hatch from the bottom of human hearts.

He was once as noble and pure as a god, but now he is as humble and twisted as an ant.

And this curse may not be limited to this world... even the world where Russell once lived is also infected by it.

Russell has adapted to that environment, so he can only lament how depraved the world is.

But as Russell "dispelled" the corrosion of the souls caused by the unknown curse they had endured, their twisted posture dissipated in an instant.

Although it cannot be said that everyone became a good person or a saint overnight - at least everyone became a normal person.

In other words, he has become a "civilized person" whose "reason can roughly control the body and behavior" and is not easily deceived, deceived and instigated by others. It is as if he has "an extra brain" and has become a more rational "civilized person".

...Is this state normal? Am I abnormal?

Therefore, Russell decided to meet Sai Lun at this time - not entirely to reassure Delphinium, nor was it because he had a "trump card" at this moment.

But he felt that he was very close to the edge of the truth, so he wanted to find an answer.

Chairman Sai Lun is one of the oldest named elves, and she is someone from that era.

...Perhaps she can provide an answer for Russell?

Russell didn't know where the chairman was. Therefore, he asked Delphinium to take him to the unlisted small company that Delphinium saw on the surveillance camera where the previous "Shu Shu" went.

And they are very lucky, Sai Lun is actually working here today.

She is respected as the chairman, but she is actually typing code in such a small company.

The moment before they entered the door, Sai Lun seemed to sense it and turned around. And the door was opened immediately before they knocked.

Seeing it with my own eyes, I couldn't help but marvel at how beautiful that lady was. That kind of cross-gender beauty, although not as demonic as Russell's mentor, still made Delphinium look lost for a moment.

But the first words Sai Lun said with a smile surprised Delphinium:

"You were able to successfully eliminate the influence of the Dream, Thrall. It's amazing."

"I'm not Sal yet, don't say that."

Under Delphinium's stunned gaze, Russell shook his head.

He asked: "What is a fantasy dream?"

"It's a possibility of world destruction."

There was no Riddler part. When they met for the first time, Ms. Selon answered straightforwardly and without any concealment: "A disaster called 'Twilight'."