anovelconsole Chapter 98 The Composition of Memory
Chapter 98 The Composition of Memory
As I pondered, footsteps approached from the depths of the fork in the road.
A figure emerged from the shadows.
The opponent wore leather armor belonging to the Xin tribe, but half of his body had been mutated, leaving a hollow in his chest cavity. His remaining face was distorted.
"kill……"
Broken syllables were squeezed out of the mutilated throat.
Xinwu recognized the face. It was the tribesman who had accompanied him to meet the supply team earlier.
As the tribesman approached, more silhouettes emerged from the darkness deep within the mine. There were missing Necromancer warriors, colossal dire wolves, orcs, goblins—a diverse array of beings, each clinging to some lingering obsession from their past lives, wandering in the depths of this consciousness.
They are remnants from this mine, residue stripped off after being swallowed up.
Ghosts in collective memory.
Suddenly, the entire mine shaft began to shake violently.
The rock wall overhead cracked open.
The wandering remains stopped in unison, raised their heads, and turned their empty faces toward the dome. A vast will swept across the space like a storm, purifying these dying consciousnesses into dust.
The supreme being noticed the anomaly here.
Above the clouds.
Su Cheng frowned as he looked at the cards in his hand.
"That's really rare."
"What's wrong?" Liang Jiu leaned back in the plastic chair and threw out two cards.
"It seems like a rat has infiltrated my divine realm," Su Cheng complained, stretching his neck.
Liang Jiu looked at the card game and responded.
"Really? Then you'd better find it quickly."
……
The vibrations in the mine tunnel gradually subsided.
The crack on the top of his head slowly healed, and the will of God withdrew its perception.
Silence returned to all around.
The remains of the wandering creature in the passageway completely disintegrated, but by a twist of fate, they paved the way for Xinwu, saving him from a lot of trouble.
Xinwu bypassed the ashes on the ground and continued deeper into the area.
The mine tunnels are getting wider and wider.
Most of the supporting wooden pillars on both sides have rotted and broken, and some places have even collapsed completely, turning them into dead ends.
The deeper you go, the stronger the sense of incongruity becomes.
The bones buried in the loose soil along the way became increasingly sparse, and the fragments of information about the deceased were rapidly diminishing. It was as if some force was deliberately erasing any trace of the place's existence.
Not long after, the road ahead was cut off.
It's like a piece of land that was completely carved away by some incomprehensible force, creating a huge cavity.
It's as if something once existed here, but has now been completely erased.
Xin Wu stood on the edge, remaining motionless for a long time.
Scattered in the deep pit below were countless tiny red ores and blood-red crystals, their faint red light shimmering in the darkness.
He slowly descended the sloping gravel slope.
The sound of crushing ore underfoot echoed continuously, and Xinwu casually picked up a piece.
Memories flooded my mind, but the content couldn't form a complete picture.
Only fragmented pieces intertwine.
Running, fear, blinding light, and sudden death.
Everything came to an abrupt end.
It's too short, so short that it can't even be called a memory.
Xinwu picked up several more pieces of red ore.
But this only includes things like appetite.
Simple consciousness such as the desire to reproduce.
It's all fragmented and illogical pieces, not enough to piece together a complete experience.
It's like a book that's been torn to shreds, leaving only a few pages.
He stood up and looked at the red chips scattered all over the ground.
Suddenly, something dawned on me, and I understood something.
These are all remnants left behind after they were deleted.
The collective consciousness is actively cleaning itself up, just as people forget some unimportant things.
To ensure the efficient operation of the vast network, he had to discard meaningless information.
Those individuals who have been dead for too long, memories of insufficient value, and knowledge that cannot contribute.
Stripped and pulverized, it eventually piles up here, becoming this graveyard of information.
Xinwu gazed into the endless darkness.
Here lie countless discarded memories, the waste products of the metabolism of thoughts, piled up like mountains in the darkness.
Deleting things can relieve stress, but it doesn't solve the problem at its root.
New information continues to pour in.
Every moment, new perceptions are uploaded and recorded.
The size of the Gestalt is expanding endlessly. If 10,000 are deleted today, 100,000 will be added tomorrow.
One day, the speed at which waste is cleaned up will be far slower than the speed at which the network expands.
What will happen then?
Xinwu doesn't know.
But he had a vague feeling that the gods had brought him here perhaps to find that answer.
Xin Wu crouched down and picked up a slightly larger red crystal from the ground. His inner fire slowly ignited, and a dark golden light spread along the lines of his palm, covering the surface of the crystal.
A faint burning sound rang out, and Xinwu waited quietly.
The Heartfire has the ability to perceive the soul and emotions; it is his second pair of eyes and the way he, as a priest of the Heartfire Clan, peers into the world.
But this time, nothing happened.
The red crystal, like a piece of withered wood, slowly dispersed under the burning of the heart fire. After a moment, the crystal turned into ashes and fell softly through the fingers.
Xin Wu frowned.
It's too fragile, so fragile that it doesn't seem like a carrier of information.
Just then, faint footsteps sounded in the distance. Xin Wu looked up and saw several figures slowly emerging from the depths of the mine tunnel.
The detached consciousness of several kobolds is approaching.
They looked dazed, having been wandering aimlessly through the mine tunnels.
Now drawn by the fire in their hearts, like moths to a flame, all those empty gazes fell upon Xinwu.
Strangely, when they approached the deep pit formed by the accumulation of red ore, they stopped.
Xinwu observed them quietly.
The expressions on the faces of those remaining consciousnesses gradually became conflicted; they seemed to want to get closer, yet instinctively resisted.
A kobold's afterimage slowly reached out, as if trying to touch the crystals on the ground. But upon contact, his body trembled. The next moment, the hand swiftly withdrew, and a hint of fear even appeared on his face.
Xinwu was stunned.
fear?
These things are clearly dead, and they don't even possess complete intelligence, so why would they be afraid?
He looked down at the red crystals scattered all around his feet and suddenly had an absurd guess.
These wandering consciousnesses in the mine may not even know they are dead. They retain the obsessions and habits of their former lives, chasing after the image of being alive, but in essence, they are nothing more than a piece of information recorded by Gestalt, an echo that is repeatedly simulated.
These red crystals were precisely the parts that Gestalt himself had deleted. To them, it was perhaps something even more foreign than death.
And so, instinct began to succumb to fear. Just as the living fear graves, and wild beasts shun fire. These lingering consciousnesses did not know the reason, yet they still instinctively distanced themselves from this place, from their inevitable end.