Chapter 684: Unresolvable Conundrum
Translator: flycrane01 Editor: Millman97
In the training room, Li Yao was pacing back and forth anxiously like a leopard that had fallen into a trap. Now and then, he would scratch his hair hard, as if he was trying to dig out some insights from it.
The training room was rented for during the Edge Sharpeners' Meeting. Since he had too many secrets that he would rather nobody knew, he had installed very inconspicuous monitoring rune arrays in the corners of the training room to make sure that it was not broken into or under surveillance.
In a corner of the training room, a weirdly-looking crystal processor was trembling violently and sending a large paragraph of information out.
What Li Yao was transmitting was the Ice God Project and the Grand Illusionary Soldier Project that he had learned of that morning.
But he was transmitting them not through the Spiritual Nexus established by the Grand Illusionary Group but through his own route that Mo Xuan and himself had worked on together.
Professor Mo Xuan and him often talked a lot about the secrets in the Heaven's Origin Sector, and no information was absolutely safe in the Spiritual Nexus. Therefore, when the Glorious Sunlight Group was about to rise, Li Yao secretly transferred part of the capital to Professor Mo Xuan and asked him to refine a batch of their own Spiritual Towers.
Spiritual Towers were nodes of the Spiritual Nexus and a piece of classic magical equipment dating back to ten thousand years ago. They were not complicated in structure, and Professor Mo Xuan could totally build them right now.
After a batch of Spiritual Towers was produced and disguised as meteoroids and debris, they were shipped to all the space zones from the Cross Wind Space Zone to Heavenly Saints City by Sparkle in secret.
Naturally, with Li Yao's current wealth, it was impossible to build a second Spiritual Nexus that covered the entire Flying Star Sector. However, constructing a 'Spiritual Route' to support point-to-point communication from Heavenly Saints City to the Cross Wind Space Zone was quite realistic.
Since it was his personal route, there was no way that anyway could monitor the data at all.
At first, Li Yao was quite hesitative because the Glorious Sunlight Group had just been founded and was in dire need of money in every regard. He had wondered whether or not it was necessary to build such a route.
However, after witnessing Xiao Tianbao's remarkable skills, he could not help but feel lucky that he made a wise decision.
Unfortunately, the Spiritual Towers on the route were still too few. The signals were intermittent, and the speed of transmission was extremely slow.
Also, the size of the information contained in the Ice God Project and the Grand Illusionary Project was unbelievably huge. It took half an hour before they were sent over.
At this moment, there was one hour, nine minutes, and thirty-seven seconds to go before the 'Mist Clearing Operation'.
"The two proposals of planetary-level magical equipment are both very excellent. What are you worried about, Li Yao?"
After the relay across more than ten space zones, Professor Mo Xuan's picture on the light beam was twisting. Occasionally, streaks and flakes were popping up.
"I don't know. The plan looks perfect. I just…"
Narrowing his eyes, he tapped his temples and said, "I don't like the Grand Illusionary Soldier intuitionally. I feel that I smelt something uncomfortable."
"Our brain receives billions of items of information every day. 99% of that is deemed to be useless and is screened out," Professor Mo Xuan said. "Our brain will only process the 1% information that is useful for us.
"However, the 99% filtered information is not really abandoned forever. Some of it is still stored inside our brain and analyzed by our subconsciousness without us knowing it.
"Now and then, our subconsciousness will connect the blinking gold pieces in the 99% useless information and come up with some very precious conclusions.
"This is what our 'intuition' really is.
"A Cultivator's brain is much more developed than that of an ordinary person. The analysis and computational ability of our subconsciousness are also a hundred times better than those of ordinary people. Sometimes, our intuitions and predications are actually the results of the computation of our subconsciousness!
"Therefore, if you feel that the plan is inappropriate intuitionally, don't let go of your suspicion easily. Listen and sense with your heart. Stand in your subconsciousness and find the answer from the 99% useless information!"
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao closed his eyes and mumbled, "Did you know, Professor? I suddenly remembered the 'Limit Challenge Competition' in the Devil Flood Dragon Island, the first brutal battle that I ever participated in when I was young.
"In the Devil Flood Dragon Island, all the young genius near my hometown were gathered. Most of them were talented and the best, one-in-ten-thousand elites.
"At that time, my capability was merely mediocre compared to them.
"However, with my talents in refining, I was able to assemble most of the magical equipment on the Devil Flood Dragon Island and sold the tools to the geniuses.
"What they did not know was that I left a 'backdoor' in every piece of magical equipment, and I was the real master of their weapons!
"Therefore, even the geniuses whose capabilities far exceeded mine would be at the mercy of me as long as they were using magical equipment assembled by me!"
Professor Mo Xuan said casually, "I see where this is going. You are scared that somebody might leave 'backdoors' in the planetary-level magical equipment.
"Leaving backdoors is almost the unspoken rule in the circle of refiners. Even I always felt tempted to leave a few backdoors when I was refining magical equipment.
"However, if you're worried that the Grand Illusionary Soldier has backdoors, there are two critical questions that need to be addressed.
"Firstly, the Grand Illusionary Soldier is a piece of magical equipment highly dependent on the Spiritual Nexus. Without the Spiritual Nexus, they are barely of any value for a battle and will be a waste of resources.
"But the Flying Star Sector is too large a place, and the signals in the Spiritual Nexus are bound to lag when they are transmitted dozens of space zones away, not to mention the interference during transmission.
"Look. We are merely sending signals of picture and sound, and the transmission is already very unstable. It is terribly difficult to transmit complicated telepathic thoughts continuously.
"If there were really backdoors, how big would the backdoors have to be?
"Moreover, although most of the Spiritual Nexus is built and managed by the Grand Illusionary Group, the hundreds of sects scattered across dozens of space zones can influence the Spiritual Towers, too. They can always destroy the Spiritual Nexus if they realize that the Grand Illusionary Soldiers are going out of control.
"Once the Spiritual Nexus is down, the Grand Illusionary Soldiers will be wasted iron and coper!"
Li Yao frowned. "This is also the question that baffled me most. I wouldn't be so anxious if I knew the answer.
"The first problem can be resolved by technological approaches, however hard. But the second problem can barely be fixed," Professor Mo Xuan said.
"Before the Grand Illusionary Soldier Project is fully activated, technological hearings and source code examinations that can potentially take one to two years will be conducted first. There are many experts that specialize in crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus in the Flying Star Sector. All the important sects have their own advisors, too. I've been in touch with some of them before, and they knew what they were talking about quite well.
"With so many experts, they can always run the test with the most simple and straightforward methods, say, 'infinite regress'. After one to two years, loopholes will definitely be found out if there are any.
"You don't think that the wisdom of all the experts in the Flying Star Sector combined is no match for a retard, do you?"
Li Yao was even more agitated. He was about to bash the wall with his head while he said, "Indeed! I thought so too. We are not making a movie right now. The experts and scholars are not stupid. They can locate any loophole and kick open any backdoor if they have one to two years."
Li Yao paced to a corner of the room in annoyance, when his body suddenly stiffened.
"…If they have one to two years. One to two years."
He jumped high as if he had been struck by lightning, and his head crashed into the ceiling, which was more than four meters from the ground. After a crack, a giant hole was left on the ceiling, and he fell back to the ground with dusts all over his face.
Lying on the ground, Li Yao stretched out all his limbs and stared at the hole in the ceiling. His soul seemed to have exploded, and shocking brilliance beamed out of his eyes!
"Professor, I haven't found out the answer to your first question yet, but I've come up with a possibility for the second question.
"Professor, you and my four Senior Brothers are all special spectral Cultivators that are combinations of Phantom Entities and the mainframe crystal processor of Sparkle. Crystal processors are part of you, and your understanding about them must be a hundred times deeper than normal crystal processor experts!
"In your opinion, if the time for examination is shortened to three to six months, instead of one to two years like right now, is it possible to hide some of the loopholes?"
Professor Mo Xuan pondered for a moment and said, "Locating a loophole in the billions of lines of source code is like fishing for a needle in an ocean. If the time limit is three months or shorter, full-coverage methods such as 'infinite regress' will not be adopted. Theoretically speaking, it is possible to conceal a backdoor.
"However, it is just theoretical. As far as the Cultivators of the Flying Star Sector and the Heaven's Origin Sector that I know, I don't think any of them can achieve such a goal!"
"That's right! That's right!"
Li Yao suddenly sat straight. He crossed his legs, and brutal brilliance beamed out of his red eyes despite his face still being coated with dust.
"Professor, the Temple of Immortals is a weird organization, is it not?
"In their debut one year ago, all their operations were smoke grenades, and their sole purpose was to raise a war between the Iron Plateau natives and the space residents!
"Their scheme was indeed seamless and flawless.
"If I, the weirdo neither from Iron Plateau nor from the space, did not show up, it is quite possible that their plan would have worked out!
"However, it has been an entire year after the battle of Iron Plateau, but the Temple of Immortals has kept a low profile and resorted to normal approaches such as assaults and assassinations.
"Such dull and straightforward methods are completely inconsistent with the wisdom implied in the scheme when they first showed up.
"It is almost like an unparalleled martial arts expert who starts waving his fists idiotically after he performed the most brilliance move in the world!"
"Maybe, the Temple of Immortals has been accumulated their strength in preparation for their thunderous attack, the Mist Plan," Professor Mo Xuan said.
Li Yao sniffed. "The thunderous attack has been fully unraveled before it is carried out. That's too stupid.
"However, let's put the 'Mist Plan' aside and look at Iron Plateau in retrospective.
"Professor Mo Xuan, what do you think will happen if I didn't show up and a great war between Iron Plateau natives and the space residents broke out exactly as the Temple of Immortals planned?"