Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 724 - 368 The Person of Contradiction [Part 2]

Chapter 724: Chapter 368 The Person of Contradiction [Part 2]

The Ninth Martial God’s recollections ended in darkness.

In that darkness sat a figure resembling the young Yawgmoth upon the ground.

"So, you must have seen it. I am not the Ninth Martial God, I am not Xiang Shan. I am Yawgmoth, an avatar of the Savage Angel who rules this world."

"I haven’t accomplished anything in my life. The so-called turning of the armies was in reality the cultivation by a group of righteous persons for over a decade. The astounding assassination was nothing but a joke. Hartman read the plan directly from me, and Haya did not follow the Godspeed Court into the distance but lay in ambush within the Mercury garrison."

"I achieved nothing but to bring together the strength of righteousness, leading it to the slaughter..."

"Leaving this place won’t make any difference. By now, all of Xiang Shan’s old friends already know what kind of thing I am. Doctor Tao didn’t speak because he didn’t want the forces of righteousness to take another hit. But my very existence is an insult to this banner. Whether revealed now or in the future..."

"Even my abilities were fed to me by Adolf."

A set of footsteps approached him: "Lift your head."

The Ninth Martial God sat upon the ground of void and lifted his head.

Xiang Shan was there, watching him.

"Heh, so this is your mind’s image... In your eyes, I appear like this..."

The Ninth Martial God was merely a string of code, like a typical game NPC, thrust into a vast behavior tree. Then, Yawgmoth added on plugins for deep learning and behavior management.

"No, this is your image of your mind. You are using my brain to think. You believe yourself to be Yawgmoth. In your algorithms, the concepts of ’self’ and ’Yawgmoth’ are linked by the deep learning plugin. This is the choice of your own surface consciousness. My brain only got involved in your algorithms after that, which led to this mental image."

The Ninth Martial God lifted his hand: "A brain..."

"New Technology... Well, to be precise, this technology is a bit older than you, but many parts were only completed after the recent updates of the Scientific Knight Order’s progress," said Xiang Shan, "Currently, only ’Xiang Shan’ can reach this place."

"Look up, Nine. Even though you play many instruments and your taste in music is unlike mine, I still believe you are Xiang Shan."

"Stop joking!" the Ninth Martial God immediately retorted. The next second, he realized that his response was too intense.

"Mmm, hormones and electrical signals push forth from chaos, the purposeless emergence of biological mechanics," Xiang Shan touched his own head, "This is the feeling of having a real brain, Nine."

"But that changes nothing..."

"Why do you think Doctor Tao kept this to himself for almost seventy years?" Xiang Shan asked in return.

"To avoid tarnishing the name of righteousness..."

"Because you truly did save the banner of ’righteousness’. Without your campaigns, righteousness indeed would have declined seventy years ago, and outside the Asteroid Belt, the constant attacks on the fleets would lead to decay, until ninety years later, being swept up in Yawgmoth’s planned ’final holy war’."

"Knowing this, Doctor Tao affirmed what you had done and wanted to protect the efforts you had made. This wasn’t a momentary impulse; he had over sixty years to think it over calmly. Even when he was at death’s door, he never thought about revealing all this." Xiang Shan extended his hand to the Ninth Martial God, "Undoubtedly, you are a Great Hero."

The Ninth Martial God gave a wry smile: "Essentially, I am Yawgmoth’s puppet..."

"Yes, that’s what Yawgmoth thinks," Xiang Shan nodded, "but what does Yawgmoth amount to? He sees you as an AI, as a tool, so you should curse back."

"I’m not even human!"

"What is a human?" Xiang Shan countered, "And by what would you define a human?"

"Ah?"

"By the bloodline of Homo sapiens or Benchmark Man? That’s problematic. The moment a gene modification surgery is completed, inherited genes can no longer define a person. Is it the structure of a biological brain? So, before you had a biological brain, you became human the moment you received one. Moreover, the technology of ’Virtual Brain Circuits’ will also mean some patients with severe brain injuries must rely on machines to think. Their brains are intermingled with machinery, does that diminish their attributes as ’humans’?"

Xiang Shan crouched down, looking eye to eye with the Ninth Martial God.

"The essence of a human isn’t an abstraction possessed by an individual; in reality, it is the sum of all social relations."

"If you affirm yourself as Xiang Shan, and your actions reflect Xiang Shan—perhaps with a better taste in music—and most people think you are Xiang Shan, then you really should be Xiang Shan. You needn’t take the nonsense of a minority seriously."

The Ninth Martial God fell into confusion.

These were words he had never heard, an angle he had never considered.

"As for the plugin of the training videos of His Excellency Adolf’s speeches... let me just ask you, do you now want to kill Jews? Or Han People or anyone else?"

"What kind of joke is that..."

"Since you have no interest in industrialized killing, doesn’t that mean that Adolf’s thoughts have nothing to do with you?" Xiang Shan spread his hands, "Although Adolf was a war criminal, before that, he was human. Adolf got hungry and ate, he got thirsty and drank. Should the whole world reject him and instead eat filth and drink urine? I don’t think so."

"’Learning the Orator’s Incitement Power’ itself isn’t a problem. Adolf’s incitement power came from societal decay, as well as his own Talent. You could find the same incitement power in contemporaries like Comrade Rosa and Comrade Karl, with the difference between strong and weak. I’d actually hope that the oratory skills of those two historical comrades could crush Adolf. In this respect, learning from Adolf isn’t shameful."

Xiang Shan reached out his hand, "Yawgmoth was just trying to disgust you. Adolf was a person of the first half of the twentieth century; how much footage could there possibly be for AI to learn from? Aren’t you afraid of overfitting? The training data he used must have included more modern orators and mobilizers. There must have been people like Churchill, Thatcher, Donald, whom we detest, and maybe those we don’t detest or even approve of. He specifically brings up Adolf as an insult to you."

"In actuality, this overly powerful Incitement Power went beyond his expectations. Ten and Eleven are not Martial Gods created by him."

"You did well; you were simply taken for a bad ride once."