Starting as a Mechanical Hunter

Chapter 738: Chapter 263: Personal Data Encryption

The name Soul Recognition Technology sounds strange at first, reminiscent of the old era’s facial recognition technology.

Of course, in this era, let alone facial recognition, even personality recognition doesn’t necessarily work, hence the need for soul recognition.

As it turns out, its business does quite well, with its clientele including major corporations. Under this kind of recognition technology, business spies, personality-imbedded software, cyber hackers, and information thieves are all unveiled on the spot.

By the time of the Cyber Tide, soul recognition technology became even more powerful. Once certified by the soul machine, everything would be controlled by it. Master of Souls, Personality Yama, Pale Death God—these are all nicknames for future ’Skulls’.

However, the current soul recognition technology is in a crisis of life and death. In such a short period, no Skull Society member could rush nearby, so ’Skull’ can only rely on itself.

”Very peculiar technology. We once tried to crack this small company’s product, but strangely, we couldn’t replicate it,” Boss Huang chattered incessantly.

”That only proves your technology department’s incompetence.”

Plagiarizing the ideas of a small company and investing vast resources to iterate at a hundred times the speed once value is discovered is standard practice for big corporations. However, this doesn’t work well with members of the Skull Society.

’Boss Huang’ is the corporate representative responsible for this corporate war from Confidential Electronics, a bald man covered in ’graphics cards’. To be more precise, they’re not ’graphics cards’ but ’calculation cards’. The former converts electronic information into graphics, while the latter transforms them into ’high-density information’, with more variation and complex technology.

At this moment, the shapes on ’Boss Huang’s’ skin kept changing, sometimes showing war projection scenes, sometimes the face of a brain-machine modifier, or changes on a virtual level.

”Mr. G, what do you think?” ’Boss Huang’ suddenly turned and asked Gao Gong.

At this moment, these three giants had disembarked from the command ship and entered a mechanical hub of a Mechanical City, a place with many mirror-like ’recognition machines’. It could be asserted that this was an underground base of ’Soul Recognition Technology’, but whether it was a branch or the headquarters remained unclear.

As the three walked by, the mirror reflected silhouettes.

”Perhaps you’re just a fork on a technology tree,” Gao Gong casually remarked.

Be it ’Confidential Electronics’ or ’Soul Recognition Technology’, in Gao Gong’s view, they are all Level 2 Civilizations, some technology domain within the ’Artificial Data Space’.

And such a civilization in the ’Artificial Data Space’ is a rare Level 2 virtual civilization. Most Level 2 civilizations are either carbon-based or mechanical.

The ultimate goal of this civilization is to achieve a transformation of life forms, not the temporary kind like in Cyber Space, but a permanent one, transforming ’civilization members’ into virtual life forms. Technologies like consciousness upload, brain-machine transformation, and cyber networking are part of it.

Similarly, the ’Electronic Brain Plan’ is an information revolution at one of its stages.

After five or six such virtual revolutions, this civilization will reach its limit and be ready for civilizational escalation.

In the timed Hell Task, [Civilization Totem], Gao Gong needs to collect professional knowledge from all systems.

For the other two civilizations, Gao Gong has almost collected them all. For instance, there are six knowledge chains in the ’Brain Domain Civilization’, and he collected five of them. For the ’Transformer Civilization’, out of six, he collected five and a half.

In contrast, for the ’Artificial Data Space’, he only collected one, the ’Artificial Neural Network’ rewarded to Little Wolf Dog by Sister Rose.

Most likely, there’s also a knowledge chain of this civilization behind ’Soul Recognition Technology’s’ product, which is why he chose to take action.

”A different branch on a technology tree, very interesting analogy,” ’Boss Huang’ was a talkative person who never stopped his chatter, ”I also tried to acquire shares of this small company, pity that the kid was oblivious to propriety.”

”If you acquired it, it would have been outright consumption,” Dr. Manhattan sneered from the side.

”Hahaha... your dry humor is as interesting as ever, Manhattan, no wait, the fake Manhattan.”

’Boss Huang’ said with a grin.

’Manhattan’ was taken aback, glanced at Gao Gong in front, then turned to look at the nearby ’Graphics Card Monster’, a hint of confusion flashed in his eyes: ”What do you mean?”

”The fake becomes real, the real becomes fake, nothing becomes something, something becomes nothing. Surely, you don’t believe you’re an imitation, right? But upon hearing my words, you will ponder, and the more you ponder, the more wrong it feels; your ’Manhattan’ memory isn’t deep, certainly not regarding me, which is disconcerting for an old opponent.”

”What did you do to me?!”

’Manhattan’ was furious, and blue high-temperature flames surged from his body, the fire licked, and the surrounding ’mirrors’ cracked inch by inch. He grabbed ’Boss Huang’ with one hand. ’Manhattan’ stood over two meters tall, while ’Boss Huang’ was only about 1.4 meters, making him look like a dwarf in comparison.

The flames swirled into ’Boss Huang’s’ facial features, scorching his skin, burning through his bones, yet the grin on ’Boss Huang’s’ face only grew broader.

”If the real ’Manhattan’ was as easy to deal with as you, it would be wonderful indeed.”

In the burnt black hole of ’Boss Huang’s’ eye sockets, ’Manhattan’ seemed to realize something. His expression changed, and he hurriedly tried to let go. However, he then found that he could no longer release his grip. The uncontrollable energy flames poured into the other party’s body madly until the last lick of the flame was devoured; ’Manhattan’ was gone.

A charred, smoking, mostly revealing white-bone humanoid form stood where he was, talking to himself.

”Fortunately, fortunately, the card didn’t burn out!”

In the next moment, hundreds of ’calculation cards’ shot out in all directions, inserted into the various slots of the Mechanical Main Brain.

’Bang’, ’Bang’, ’Bang’, ’Bang’...

One monitor after another turned on, one surveillance camera after another lit up, even the ’recognition machine’ unique to ’Soul Recognition Technology’ was rebooted.

Soon, a holographic projection beamed down, and ’Boss Huang’ appeared once more, but this time, the holographic ’Boss Huang’ wasn’t covered in ’graphics cards’.

”Phew, the young people these days are really dangerous. If you continue developing like this, will there still be a place for us old folks in the Cyber Test Field?”

Under the holographic projection, ’Boss Huang’ scanned with his eyes, and an ’Energy Detection Instrument’ of the main brain immediately activated.

The energy pillar skyrocketed, with the power consumption nearly operating at 100% capacity.

”Haha, indeed, Manhattan is trapped too.”

During the corporate war, all Mechanical Main Brains went into hibernation, with almost no energy consumption. And now, the main brain’s energy consumption was skyrocketing, which could mean only one thing—’Boss Huang’ switched to the main brain engine’s location, and indeed, a gigantic blue fireball with a diameter of one kilometer was burning fiercely, flames flickering from the Energy Storage as if ready to burst out at any moment.

Most corporate executives are hard to kill but not easy to kill, commonly known as thin-blooded monsters, but not only are these two tough to kill, but they’re also incredibly capable in battle.

If it weren’t for this, they wouldn’t be capturing the ’Enemy Leader’ alongside Gao Gong when the battle was already decided.

’Boss Huang’ stroked his chin and pondered for a moment:

”But it’s really interesting, it’s not about copying a personality, nor cloning a flesh body, but completely replicating an entire entity. If it weren’t for my personal data encryption technology preventing the other party from obtaining memories, they might have succeeded.”

’Boss Huang’ looked towards Gao Gong ahead. Mr. G seemed completely unaware of the situation here, still strolling leisurely.

”It seems Mr. G got hit too, but his situation seems different from ours.”

Gao Gong indeed got hit.

In fact, ever since he planned to capture ’Skull’ alive, he anticipated retaliation from the other side, so he had Gao Yuanyuan open up her mind early, preparing to track the IP + instant teleportation to control the opponent in one fell swoop.

The result was a bit unexpected. In the ’data space’ formed by the ’Biological Computer’, the four walls were filled with densely packed small screens, and on the screens, Gao Yuanyuan in her white dress kept appearing, jumping from one small screen to another, seemingly lost, and if she crawled out of the screen, she would be a standard ’Zhenzi’.

Gao Gong found it a bit amusing and couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his mouth.

”Bro, what are you laughing at!”

Seeing herself working hard while Gao Gong was grinning foolishly, Gao Yuanyuan couldn’t help but stomp her foot and whine.

”Haha, not laughing at you, keep going.”

It wasn’t that Gao Yuanyuan lacked ability, but the other side used some method, and whenever Gao Yuanyuan opened the opponent’s ’brain’, the IP address traced always pointed to Gao Gong’s location.

”Don’t worry, your inherent ability combined with No. 13’s authority will definitely pinpoint the opponent’s location. I can sense the opponent’s consumption tricks, but this exhaustion surely has a limit. Once that limit is reached, the opponent’s done for.”

virtual lifeforms, two virtual boss templates, half of the No. 13 Destruction Form, handling two ancient pieces of information, they’re not easy to deal with.

To put it this way, it’s because Gao Yuanyuan is a sweet and innocent girl, without any murderous intent or dark side. If she did turn dark, there wouldn’t be anyone on this planet she couldn’t kill.

More importantly, Gao Gong knew one thing.

Skull Society members underwent so many forbidden transformations that their life forms warped to an exaggerated degree, unable to complete consciousness upload or cloned body operations.

Compared to the corporate executives who have all sorts of ’life-saving methods’, they have only one life.

So, they’re easy to kill.

Of course, Gao Gong also understood that a guy with just one life would be inherently dangerous, because he himself had only one life.

Going down the fusion route, life forms began to change gradually, becoming non-replicable.

The ’Biological Computer’ suddenly produced a sizzling sound, and the light flickered intermittently. Gao Gong understood that the guy with just one life was coming to play for keeps.