Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 763 - 9 "The Lifecycle of an Old Friend

Chapter 763: Chapter 9 "The Lifecycle of an Old Friend

```

"All the news websites and search engines here will collect information from the outside world under certain conditions," "Zhu Xinyu" said excitedly. "While they prefer to check the information stored in the server’s memory, once they can’t find useful intelligence, they will use a secret interface to gather information from the outside world."

"And all we need to do is enter specific commands into the search bar of any news website, and we can exploit a vulnerability to influence this collection process..."

To this, everyone had only one comment, "Awesome."

"Yawgmoth" stroked his chin, "But why... why would he leave such a vulnerability?"

"It’s because of the ’playacting’ needs," Xiang Shan sighed. "The current King of Mars needs AI that can perfectly play the part of his former friends—that’s us—and many of our prototypes were heavy internet users. My prototype was Xiang Shan, whose philosophy was ’search engines should become an extension of the human brain.’ And then there’s..." He extended his hand and rubbed Zhu Xinyu’s head: "Her prototype couldn’t spend a moment without electronic devices, constantly immersed in the internet, rapidly browsing for information..."

Zhu Xinyu slapped his hand away, "Even simulating tactile sensations consumes computing resources. Conserve! I must conserve!"

Xiang Shan didn’t change his expression, "If we weren’t like this, it wouldn’t feel right to the current David’s original self."

"David" looked rather odd, "All things said, let’s still call that drunkard ’King of Mars’ or something. Calling him David just feels weird to me..."

Anatoly was quite serious, "But that’s the real David Klein."

Xiang Shan said, "I’ve gotten used to searching for something every time my thought process hits a certain keyword. No matter how comprehensive the server’s database is, it can’t possibly include every keyword my mind might come across. That’s why there definitely needs to be a way to collect external intelligence under certain conditions—our programmers just didn’t anticipate that we would find their loophole..."

Ingrid pondered, "Now that makes sense. I suspect during several ’Reincarnations’, that’s how we realized something was off about the world."

David Klein’s development of the Illusory Realm actually went through many setbacks.

Because the AI he created aimed to emulate the smartest humans, the best at discovering and doubting in the world.

Initially, he set the stage within virtual reality. But back then, human physical engines hadn’t caught up.

Xiang Shan had always felt that "virtual reality" could be a tool for reducing costs and increasing efficiency in many areas. However, Yawgmoth had an extreme dislike for such things. He believed that humanity’s indulgence in virtual reality technology was a dead end.

After the Sublimation War, the largest virtual reality community was still built by the Fourth Martial God. Because online communities are places that "naturally have rules," even the most chaotic online communities have a group of users who spontaneously maintain order, which was more orderly than the chaotic world shaped by Yawgmoth. He created an orderly virtual community and opened it up, letting more people experience a "rule-based" life.

But the focus of the Fourth Martial God’s virtual world was not on physically emulating reality, but rather on the social and cultural aspects.

Some physical engines used for research by the Scientific Knights Order were complicated enough, but unsuitable for executing such a task.

For a long time, the Pseudo-personality Masks created by David were either too smart, quickly realizing they were in a virtual world, or too dumb, making David feel they "did not resemble old friends."

When David first arrived on Mars, he switched to direct simulation in the real world. He created Prosthetic Bodies for all "old friends" that felt almost identical to flesh. And his private domain is those one-to-one replicas of Superman Enterprise buildings, which were also leftovers from that period.

The lower gravity on Mars was a problem. David solved it with magnetism. Cybernetically Enhanced People could use magnetism to achieve an earthly sense of gravity inside warships. It was the same here. David secretly mixed ferromagnetic materials inside all objects and always ensured that the direction of magnetism nearly aligned with that of gravity.

This indeed worked for a while.

That is, until "Xiang Shan" peeled the plastic skin from a table, smashed the ceramics that hid the Iron Block, and then used these non-ferromagnetic things to calculate the gravitational acceleration.

Later, when checking the memory of that "Xiang Shan," it was found that he had always felt a discrepancy between the center of gravity he estimated visually and the "center of gravity" he sensed tactilely.

In the subsequent research process, different "Xiang Shans" also showed anomalies.

Human memory "formats" are different from computer files—they are very ambiguous and have unclear boundaries. Memory files of Xiang Shan from the thirties to the sixties had elements mixed in from later periods—in the seventies Xiang Shan created "Cyber Martial Arts," fundamentally reorganizing the knowledge he had learned earlier.

"Cyber Martial Arts" too had a strong connection with past memories.

So, these memory files were mixed with such elements.

Xiang Shan was very sensitive to centers of gravity.

The Conquest Heavenly King had to move the project back online—the Earth-Moon system was Hartman’s territory. He couldn’t build a "Garden" there.

Fortunately, by this time, the Scientific Knight Order had made great strides in algorithms.

And the "Mona Project," actively promoted by Yawgmoth, also gave David more techniques for designing Personality Masks.

The structure of the Personality Masks was also being continually updated.

By this point, the Conquest Heavenly King could create AI that perfectly mimicked old friends. And the virtual reality he created was capable of emulating these old friends’ AI in a short time.

However, his old friends thought too much.

As the virtual reality ran for a longer time, the AIs would find various clues.

That’s when David would have to reset the entire server and then patch and update the vulnerabilities.

In this struggle, both the AI and virtual reality grew rapidly.

Although the AI’s capabilities were becoming stronger, for the Conquest Heavenly King...

Only this was more like his old friends.

It’s just that... the Conquest Heavenly King didn’t realize how much like his old friends these AIs had become.

He also didn’t realize how active his old friends were behind the scenes.

More than twenty years ago, AI Zhu Xinyu found a vulnerability that allowed it to intervene in the maintenance crew’s backdoor through a flaw on a virtual web page, with limited interference in the virtual reality itself.

This wasn’t really significant, AI Zhu Xinyu was just experimenting continuously based on the knowledge of Zhu Xinyu’s original self. Many previous generations of AI Zhu Xinyu did this. Those who didn’t do this weren’t like Zhu Xinyu. After a reset, everything would revert.

But that year, a maintenance worker for the Conquest Heavenly King downloaded a psychological self-test program called "Five Stops of the Mind Contemplation."

This malicious program was designed to help Zhu Xinyu’s Personality Mask steal computational resources from the human brain.

```