Chapter 588.2: The Sanctuary

Losing one chip meant nothing. Even with just one chip and a brain, he could still exist.

Only then, limited by computing power, everything would be inconvenient.

While Chu Guang pondered, Lu Bei’s expression darkened. He couldn’t help but ask, "Countless chips... just how many are we talking about?"

If Luo Qian had planted 1,000, or 10,000, in Brocade Lake Municipality, would it never end?

They couldn’t very well start chopping off everyone’s heads like the Mutant Humans did...

Even if it was to wipe out the Torch Church, such a method was far too extreme.

Running a CT scan on everyone’s brain was completely unrealistic.

Bionic chip implant surgeries were usually carried out in secrecy, with special carbon-based materials that ordinary MRIs could not detect, let alone the makeshift labs at the frontlines.

To catch every single one, they would at least need the scanner bed inside a Shelter. Either that, or use a memory extractor to comb through visible memories frame by frame for traces of when a chip had been active.

Yore shook his head. "Aside from the Archbishop himself, no one knows the exact number... not even the chosen Apostle."

After pausing, he continued, "But it shouldn’t be to the extent of implanting everyone. Those things are supposedly made in black boxes, and black boxes have lifespans. For example... Someone like Zhang Zhengyang didn’t have a chip implanted. He needed us as intermediaries to communicate with Luo Qian."

"Makes sense." Chu Guang nodded.

He recalled Hyrja once saying most black boxes in Shelter 117 were for bionic organs.

The first black box he recovered from there was a neural connector unit capable of creating brain-machine interfaces.

Later, the Torch Church even tried to recover that black box from him, along with the former administrator’s logs, but they failed.

Thinking for a moment, Chu Guang spoke calmly. "If I were him, I’d implant chips in each plantation owner and heir. That way, all plantation-style settlements are controlled indirectly. Then I would pick a handful of easy-to-manage individuals to serve as my servers, providing processing power, backup, and insurance."

Conveniently, most of Brocade Lake Municipality settlements fit this model. Places with relatively diffuse power like Hope Town were the exception, not the norm.

In fact, not just Brocade Lake Municipality, the entire Brocade River Province was like that.

The hounds raised by Boulder Town’s nobles had already developed every exploitable market in the region, reshaping it into the form they wanted.

That way, Luo Qian only needed to move a fraction of his pieces openly. Most could hide safely in the shadows.

To run full checks on everyone, or kill them all, would be impossible.

No wonder he had abandoned Zhao Tiangan without hesitation...

He had already spun a vast, invisible net that enmeshed over 90% of Brocade Lake Municipality’s survivors.

Seeing Chu Guang lost in thought, Yore smiled faintly. "Very Torch Church-like, isn’t it? The chosen Apostle is only a symbolic leader, a spiritual totem. The ones making plans are the Pathfinders inside the Sanctuary."

"In each parish, the Pathfinder acts as the chosen Apostle wielding divine authority, the totem the faithful revere. But the real executors are every other Apostle connected to the Sanctuary, and the countless believers they guide."

Suddenly Chu Guang thought of something and asked, "Are you Yore now, or Luo Qian?"

Yore was silent for a long time.

That was a hard question.

If he blamed some devil within his heart, perhaps he could lessen his guilt.

But was that truly the case?

After a long time, he gave a bitter smile and shook his head.

"I don’t know."

"Maybe... both."

...

The door to the bridge closed again.

Walking behind Chu Guang, Lu Bei quickened his steps, lowered his voice and asked, "How should we deal with that man?"

𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Chu Guang answered casually, "That depends on him. Honestly, rather than handing him to the Enterprise for study, I’d prefer to keep this piece close."

Of course, if the HIghest Council took an interest in his secrets, Chu Guang wouldn’t mind roping in his old friends from the East Coast either.

After all, with such distance, the Enterprise couldn’t come investigate on their own. In the end, they would have to rely on the New Alliance, the real local power.

Puzzled, Lu Bei asked, "Does that really mean anything?"

To be honest, he didn’t understand why they wasted so many words on a prisoner. He had thousands of ways to break that man without the Enterprise’ technology.

Chu Guang could guess what the young man was thinking. He smiled and said, "Of course it does. You heard him, every chip is part of the Sanctuary, every chip houses Luo Qian. That chip in his head too. And we just negotiated with him for half an hour."

Glancing at the VM timer, he continued, "This is a good start. Didn’t you notice? He’s already beginning to doubt whether his extreme ideal is right. And as he said himself, Yore and Luo Qian both exist inside him."

"Every decision is made by both of them together."

"Even if he can’t tell the difference in his subconscious."

The memory extractor had already combed all of Yore’s memories, yet found nothing about the Sanctuary’s location or way to destroy it.

That could only mean the memory wasn’t in his brain at all. It was cached in the chip inside him.

Now that Yore had given it up, it clearly wasn’t just his choice, but also that of one of Luo Qian’s fragments.

Otherwise, even if he wanted to confess, he wouldn’t have been able to.

When faced with unanswerable questions, cracks had formed in the defenses of both souls. That was why Chu Guang thought it was a good beginning.

After hearing the explanation, Lu Bei’s eyes lit up. "I get it! If we make the chip in his head sync with the Luo Qian outside, we can pass that thought back into the Sanctuary itself?"

Like smuggling a bomb hidden in a package, straight into Luo Qian’s hands!

It was the only metaphor he could think of, but the more he thought on it, the more plausible it seemed. His eyes shone brighter and brighter.

As expected of the wise administrator!

His admiration for Chu Guang only deepened.

But Chu Guang himself chuckled at the interpretation. "If it were that simple, we wouldn’t need to drag the Heart of Steel all the way here."

Lu Bei blinked. "Ah... so it won’t work?"

Chu Guang shook his head. "At the end of the day, cached data on one terminal can’t overwrite the whole network. Just like Little Seven’s cached data on a device won’t overwrite the host’s data after being apart a while."

Luo Qian had no central host. He spread himself across all chips implanted in brains. The advantage was that he couldn’t be destroyed by taking out one host.

Unfortunately, the whole thing came with a fatal flaw.

If the environments of most of his fragments changed fundamentally, and they couldn’t be re-brainwashed by interference devices, the massive network of nodes could be overturned at its root.

After all, bionic chips had to rely on human brains. Without interference, the two influenced each other.

At least the fuzzy calculations that made up personality still had to be computed on the human brain. Those were things Chu Guang had learned from Yin Fang.

Lu Bei looked at him in bewilderment, scratching his head in shame. "Sorry, sir... I don’t quite understand. Maybe just tell me what to do."

Chu Guang smiled. "Simply put, the bastard hiding in the Sanctuary thinks the wasteland is beyond saving. That the world must be destroyed once to be reborn."

"Since they hold such a foolish belief, we’ll show them how we do things!"

If they thought the world was beyond saving...

He would show them the New Alliance’s way.

From Mutant Humans to slave traders, he would cut down the troubles, one by one. When that time came, he would see if the man could still shamelessly claim the wasteland can’t be saved.

First things first...

Chu Guang thought for two seconds, then spoke.

"Hmm, Pinecone Ranch is in trouble. Contact Central Command and have them dispatch a unit there immediately."

If Zhao Tiangan and the Apostles weren’t the only chip-bearers, then Luo Qian still had countless eyes left in Pinecone Ranch.

With the interference device shut down, communications were open again.

They might even try smuggling Mutant Humans inside.

After all, the man had said the church’s basement had a passage to the outside, but he hadn’t said there was only one.

Lu Bei’s face grew serious. He didn’t ask why, only obeyed at once. "I’ll go now!"

Watching him stride off, Chu Guang suddenly thought of something.

Speaking of which...

Today is the third day.

"Wait."

At his voice, Lu Bei stopped, turned respectfully, and asked, "What else do you command?"

Chu Guang smiled. "The enemy should be Mutant Humans."

"Send in the brothers of the Jungle Corps!"