Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 241 - 241 21 Seeing the Thunderbolt

241: Chapter 21: Seeing the Thunderbolt 241: Chapter 21: Seeing the Thunderbolt “`

In the early 1940s of the twenty-first century, inside a laboratory in Beiping, Xiang Shan was sitting at the control panel.

Behind him were several experts, including Chen Feng.

These researchers mostly came from the field of cognitive science.

Opposite them was a man sitting on a chair.

The man was roughly in his fifties, wearing a device on his head that somewhat resembled the goggles of a video game character’s cosplay.

However, the device was fundamentally decorative, intended to mitigate the uncanny valley effect caused by his oversized prosthetic eyes—his wife and children had complained multiple times before that his prosthetic eyes were “scary”.

Early prosthetic eyes were slightly larger than the eyeballs of Natural Persons.

The man’s prosthetic eyes were in a shut-down state, and the prosthetic ears were also adjusted to block out sound, capable of “hearing” only external voice signals.

Xiang Shan picked up the microphone and said to the volunteer, “Mr.

Pan, this is the last time, I repeat for the last time, this experiment could cause you some physical discomfort, and it might last for a relatively long period.

You may drop out at any time if you cannot endure it.”

“Got it, it’s written in the contract,” the man said nonchalantly.

Mr.

Pan came from Zhili and made a living as a masseur.

His mother had a difficult birth when he was born, and his retina was damaged, resulting in congenital weak vision.

For him, the world had only faint sensations of light.

Under the sun, people or vehicles were “quickly passing small black balls”.

Last year, while venerating his ancestors in his hometown, he did not move away from a string of loud firecrackers in time due to poor eyesight, which led to severe hearing damage.

It was at this time that Soth Divine Realm, the company founded by Xiang Shan, developed the first generation of prosthetic eyes and ears and entered the trial phase.

They widely sought volunteers and embarked on a series of cognitive science research.

Mr.

Pan heard this news and immediately signed up.

The company would provide volunteers with sensory prosthetic bodies that were then very expensive, free of charge.

These volunteers, in turn, had to cooperate with a series of experiments.

These artificial senses had already obtained reliable data in primates.

However, scientists still wanted to explore the role “perception” plays in human cognition.

After Mr.

Pan received the prosthetic eyes, he regained “vision”.

At first, he could indeed see things, but he couldn’t distinguish colors, nor did he know what he was looking at.

He couldn’t even tell “distance”; he would even think that the ground beneath the fifth-floor window was “within reach”.

He couldn’t describe his own vision.

The process of mastering vision for him was similar to the process infants go through, only faster—he just needed to establish connections between existing experiences and visual signals.

And the process through which Mr.

Pan “mastered vision” provided quite significant research material.

Now, a year had passed since this once visually impaired person gained his vision.

He was currently participating in the “auditory and visual perception swap” experiment.

Early psychologists believed that if the outer ends of the optic nerves were connected to the ears, and the auditory nerves to the eyes, humans should be able to hear lightning and see thunder.

In reality, human senses are far more complex than this, and visual and auditory processing is not realized by the same neural activity.

“Vision” is not presented as “video” inside the brain.

External light invokes excitement in the retinal cone cells and rod cells.

This excitement is converted into a continuous neural signal.

The “vision” the brain processes is actually the “signal”, not the “image” itself.

How this signal constitutes the world as humans perceive it is what scholars are interested in.

In this experiment, the images received by Mr.

Pan’s prosthetic eyes would not be sent to the optic nerves after being converted into neural signals but would instead be routed to a router, then from the router to the prosthetic ears, entering the brain along the auditory nerves; the stimuli received by the prosthetic ears, once turned into neural signals, would also go through the router, entering the brain via the prosthetic eyes and optic nerves.

However, during the experiments conducted on monkeys, nearly two-thirds of them exhibited abnormal agitation, which is why Xiang Shan warned repeatedly.

After the routine procedures, Xiang Shan looked at Chen Feng.

Chen Feng nodded and said, “Experiment begins.”

“It is now 9:45 AM, the first trial,” Xiang Shan spoke as he hit the enter key.

The commands that had been prepared long ago began to execute.

Mr.

Pan’s vision and hearing had been reversed.

Mr.

Pan’s first words were, “So noisy.”

And his second was, “Is this my voice?”

The third was, “Why is this so green?

Ah—ah?

Ah, ah!

Oh!

Ugh!

Wow!

Damn!

This sound… so fucking cool!”

Then, Mr.

Pan raised his hand, indicating he wanted to stand up.

Xiang Shan said, “Permission granted.”

Mr.

Pan did not understand.

He cried out, “What’s that?

A bunch of flowers… Did you say something?

Professor Xiang?

Was it you who just spoke?”

“Yes,” Xiang Shan replied tentatively.

But Mr.

Pan still did not understand, “Damn, how do you know what this color means…”

Impatiently, he stood up.

Immediately, Mr.

Pan’s face changed dramatically.

He attempted to take a step forward but completely failed to master his body’s posture and fell to the ground, vomiting uncontrollably.

Xiang Shan immediately stopped the program’s execution, and the standby emergency team quickly followed up [this primarily to prevent photogenic epilepsy, hysteria, or shock caused by severe emotional fluctuations].

In the subsequent reports, the researchers learned an outcome that was somewhat expected.

“`

Mr.

Pan’s vomiting stemmed from the disarray of his original sense of direction.

He “heard” the light in front of him and “saw” the sound on his left and right sides.

After starting to move, this triggered severe motion sickness.

In the subsequent experiments, the researchers chose to have Mr.

Pan wear an encompassing helmet.

This helmet had two prosthetic ears at the front and two prosthetic eyes on the sides.

Throughout the next series of experiments, Mr.

Pan remained in this state.

For about three days, he was completely immersed in “excitement.” He would continuously test his various sounds, to see what they “looked like.” Like a baby, he kept grabbing small objects, tossing them to the ground to “see” and “listen”—he interacted with the world in all kinds of ways.

But after three days, a sense of boredom began to emerge.

He became irritable.

In this state, he couldn’t understand other people’s language.

To him, other people’s words were just a blur of light in his “eyes.”

Mr.

Pan was not the only participant in the experiment.

There were dozens of volunteers in the same batch.

The vast majority of volunteers dropped out at this stage because they could not tolerate the irritation.

However, a few persisted.

The scientists played music for these individuals, asked them to try painting, and to hum any song at will.

According to the report, these volunteers described their surroundings with “music.” To them, incandescent lights were like buzzing white noise.

Sunlight was akin to the sound of babbling water.

Natural scenery in their eyes was like a complex symphony.

When describing food, they often used sounds that easily evoked “hunger,” like “gurgling” or “salivating.”

Moreover, some even learned “to listen to others speaking.”

They had completely adapted to this peculiar mode.

The human brain can be modified through experience, to reestablish its own perceptual processing patterns.

Today’s “no vision training” is based on these early experiments.

The construction of the Soth Divine Realm allows certain brain functions to form more advanced, more complex connections.

An Internal Strength Master can utilize the brain’s “visual processing” neural resources for “processing auditory information.” This mechanism is similar to the “compensation” of the “blind having more acute hearing,” but it is more controllable.

“I actually possess a similar ‘seed’ myself, just never practiced it…

Matsushima and Jader have just delved deeper.

Just concentrate a little more…

I can do it too,” Xiang Shan said to himself: “To see the thunder, to hear the lightning…”

In his consciousness, the sound of the “storm” turned into a steady flowing blackness.

Within this expanse of ink…

—He “saw”…

He saw more “feet,” saw more “outlines of prosthetic bodies,” saw the “vibration of engines”…

They were as conspicuous as a few flashes in the darkness.

In this era, the Martial Artists skilled in this art didn’t need to be so “deliberate.” They no longer had to process information visually.

All this could be completed “outside of consciousness.”

But for Xiang Shan, it was still progress.

“Countdown…

three, two, one…”

With a “bang,” another bomb exploded.

The soundwave rolled over like a war chariot.

Almost simultaneously, synchronizing with it, Xiang Shan sprinted at full speed.

Under the cover of the noise wave, he swiftly passed between two Rangers, less than two meters apart.

—He could see…

The troops on the blockade line were quickly redeployed.

Countless squads frantically moved behind him.

Bullets whistled, suppressing the surroundings.

But Xiang Shan continued to press deeper.

From the complex footsteps, he could hear another countertrend movement.

It was Jader.

The two moved silently through the dust for about two hundred meters before coming together.

“Nice work,” Jader said.

“But bro, aren’t you quite the expert?

Was your earlier lack of understanding about ‘No Vision’ just to test me?”

“No, I just wanted to learn about some of the newer theories,” Xiang Shan shook his head.

Since the dust contained a considerable amount of Iron Dust, they still couldn’t use the radio.

They had to talk this close.

“The nearby Rangers have heard the explosion; they’ll quickly converge,” Jader said.

“Getting information out of them won’t be easy.”

Xiang Shan said, “Let’s move another two hundred meters.

After two hundred meters, we’ll go find those Rangers!”