Chapter 112: Cloud (3)
112 – Cloud (3)
The intricate world of code dissolved and reconstructed.
Suddenly, a flowing river of blue light appeared before his eyes, like a vast and immense galaxy spanning the night sky, dotted with shimmering specks of light. He sank deeper, observing the shape of each star.
Upon closer inspection, it was not a river composed purely of blue light points or code.
File, Edit… Debug.
This was unmistakably a blank program interface waiting to be written. Lin Xun looked up. Above him, thousands of program frames moved slowly, each blue square following its own distinct trajectory and direction. Perhaps each frame reflected a living person in the real world.
He glanced to the right. Similarly, dense squares flowed incessantly, their seemingly chaotic movements appearing grand and almost chaotic in scale due to their sheer magnitude.
Lin Xun remembered the structure of this building. Above were the office areas of others in the skyscraper, while to the right lay the bustling, high-traffic commercial district downstairs.
—What he was seeing was still this world. However, unlike the real world perceived by the naked eye, this was a world of code. In this deconstructed world, his vision was no longer obstructed by ceilings, corridors, or structures of steel and concrete. Instead, he directly glimpsed the structure of everything in this space, down to every individual—each person appeared to him as a blank program interface.
A blank interface was useless. Only by writing something into it could it serve any noteworthy purpose.
A loud crashing sound snapped Lin Xun’s attention back to reality.
Qi Yun was lifted by the prop master, struck heavily on the right side of his chest, and slammed hard against the corridor wall before sliding downward. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, making him appear even more fragile, but he did not shatter.
The prop master turned back toward him.
Lin Xun locked eyes with him, but his hands never stopped moving—he was typing on the keyboard.
At the same time, he stared directly at the prop master and asked, “In the basement, were you pretending?”
If he had been pretending and could act so convincingly, he was no ordinary person. If not, then he must have been contaminated by something when the subway fissure opened.
The prop master did not answer. His eyes held a ruthless, almost inorganic intensity. Under the emergency lights, deep shadows fell across his face, and in that moment, Lin Xun had no doubt that he would kill him without hesitation.
Qi Yun, leaning against the wall, stirred but immediately broke into a violent coughing fit.
The prop master took a step toward him.
At this life-or-death moment, everything seemed to slow down in Lin Xun’s eyes—only the rapid tapping of his fingers on the keyboard felt real.
Sometimes, Lin Xun was truly grateful for his typing speed.
As the prop master’s palm rose, enveloped in countless shrieking black mist, and tendrils coiled around Lin Xun’s limbs and neck, he took a sharp breath and pressed F11, calling up a program he had used before.
Coincidentally, this program was also related to Qi Yun.
Their first meeting was at the Qingcheng Mountain gate, where they fought, and later in the back mountains, they fought again. Qi Yun’s most proficient technique was the sword formation, where several sword cultivator disciples connected through footwork and formations, allowing their cultivation and spiritual power to converge, unleashing a might that no single person could achieve. This was the DDOS method—linking several machines together to perform calculations for a single target, greatly enhancing computational power.
However, in the world of computers, a number below two digits could hardly be considered large.
Not even three digits, four digits, or even five digits.
Of course, at that time, the platforms Qi Yun could borrow were only the few fellow disciples he could see before him.
But at this moment, under the enhancement of the Heavenly Eye technique, the program interfaces of thousands upon thousands of people were displayed before him without exception.
How to write in?
It wasn’t difficult. Copy, interconnect, spread—the speed grew exponentially, like a computer virus outbreak.
Linking several machines together could accumulate their computational power, ultimately completing a calculation task that a single machine could not handle alone. So, how much computational and processing power would a hundred machines linked together have?
What about a thousand, ten thousand, or even a hundred thousand?
Desperately improving the performance of a single machine to handle massive computations—that’s a supercomputer.
Distributing computational tasks to machines that may not be individually powerful but are countless in number, then integrating the results to complete the task—that’s called distributed computing.
Or, by another well-known term, cloud computing.
The cloud—another glorious milestone in internet technology.
And today, it was his only lifeline in a dead end.
Pressing F11, the light on the keyboard shifted and transformed, turning into a dark silver sword in an instant.
Lin Xun gripped the hilt and met the prop master’s palm!
A clang echoed as they collided, the immense recoil forcing him to spit out a mouthful of blood.
His dwindling spiritual power was undoubtedly at a disadvantage in this clash. The prop master exerted force with his arm, his palm pressing down like a terrifying, thousand-ton steel machine. Lin Xun suddenly thought, this must be what they meant by “a mantis trying to stop a chariot.”
His sword-holding hand trembled, the muscles in his arm twitching faintly.
He couldn’t hold on—his spiritual power wasn’t enough.
But—
He was now the host.
All machines that could establish connections were his computational resources.
Connections took time.
A surge of spiritual power suddenly flooded into his body, and the program window representing Qi Yun in the void flickered slightly. A subtle sensation washed over him, as if a delicate link had formed between him and Qi Yun.
One.
The trembling in his right hand lessened slightly.
Four.
The two nearest cubes flickered almost simultaneously, and he steadied his grip on the sword.
Connections continued, spreading outward like a spider’s web.
Thirty-four, and the sword’s gleam brightened.
Seventy-six, and the blade pressed forward, slicing a gash in the prop master’s palm. Black blood gushed out, dripping onto the floor with a tap.
Five hundred seventy-one.
He suddenly exerted force with his arm, pushing the blade forward! The prop master seemed to flinch in pain, stumbling back a step.
It seemed like enough.
But the vast connections of the internet wouldn’t stop here, nor would they ever cease.
2 to the 10th power is 1024—a perfect number, perhaps just a little small.
But all it needed was a little more—2 to the 20th power, 1,048,576.
A galaxy of stars, centered around him, suddenly lit up.
Lin Xun couldn’t count them anymore. Any number that could leave him unable to count it must have a terrifying number of digits.
He took a breath, curled the corner of his lips, and smiled at the prop master.
Then, he struck again with his sword!
The moment the sword tip touched the prop master’s chest—
Boom.
A silent explosion sent ripples through the air. He could no longer hear anything, as if he were in a vacuum.
And in the next moment, centered around him, a violent surge of Spiritual Power erupted and swept outward!
Lin Xun had never experienced the instant of a nuclear explosion, and many people would never experience it in their entire lives. But right here, right now, he felt it must be like this.
He felt something filling his body—perhaps it was Spiritual Power. Rivers seemed to flow through his limbs and bones, and he felt as though he might explode at any moment.
Yet he also felt as if he had already disintegrated. No one was him, yet everyone was him. He seemed to have become a higher, omnipresent existence. Every person, every object—everyone in this vast galaxy of stars was an incarnation of him.
In those few tenths of a second, the immense Spiritual Power fluctuation exploded outward in all directions like an unstoppable tidal wave!
A piercing shriek of demonic creatures rang out. The prop master’s figure stiffened for an instant.
And that was all the time he had left. Because in the next second, the vast Spiritual Power fluctuation reached him.
A small boat could never withstand a tsunami. The moment it made contact with the Spiritual Power fluctuation, the prop master’s body turned into black dust.
So did his tentacles.
All that remained was the clean corridor, Qi Yun sitting there, and Director Gao’s assistant lying on the ground.
The power switch was flipped, and the corridor lights turned on one by one, from near to far.
Qi Yun stared blankly, his lips trembling. “You… you…”
Lin Xun: “I…”
He didn’t know what to say.
Because a mechanical voice sounded in his mind.
“Hidden demon defeated. Hidden task completed. Spiritual Power +20.”
“Distributed computing achieved. Platform actively unlocked: Hadoop.”
“Main quest ‘Reach Nascent Soul Stage’ completed.”
“Main quest ‘Reach Soul Separation Stage’ completed. Main quest rewards combined and will be distributed. Please wait.”
“Welcome to the era of big data.”