Chapter 83: The Sky Forum

Page 1

Evening, 8:50 p.m.

“All right, it’s about time to go!” Alpha Princess called out to Ye Chao. Her method: she kicked him out of the endless tower battle arena.

“Are we really going?” The scene changed abruptly, and Ye Chao felt helpless.

First, he had just begun to kill, finally finding some pleasure in the game. Alpha Princess had a point—if he wanted to create battle suits fit for combat, mere theorizing behind closed doors wouldn’t do; he needed real action.

Second, he felt the whole affair was illegal, and he didn’t trust the police.

When he received the secret message from the man in sunglasses, his first instinct was to report it to the authorities, but Alpha Princess had thrown herself about, rolling and raving to stop him.

“What if it’s real? Shouldn’t you figure things out before reporting? Better than stumbling in blindly. Besides, how many communication talents are there in River City? Even if you report, wouldn’t it all end up back in your lap, just like today…”

He had to admit, her words made sense.

Third, Ye Chao disliked all this trouble.

He only wanted to research, to learn, to grow stronger… Now he was gaming one moment, trading the next, then chasing after the Awakened—too much, too chaotic, leaving him overwhelmed.

“You think I want to go, leave such a comfortable place…” Alpha Princess soared from Rolling’s belly.

“Interrupting my most exquisite enjoyment!”

Though Ye Chao had improved, grown stronger, in the imaginary space he was still no match for Rolling, dying at the hammer time and again, a lifelong nemesis.

He couldn’t bear to see Ye Chao tormented in the imaginary realm, the losses were disastrous!

Alpha Princess grumbled, crawling along the camera feeds, making her way from Ye Chao’s home toward the southern city wall.

The time the man in sunglasses had specified was almost upon them. Staying within the city wouldn’t work—the structure of the post-apocalyptic city and the shielding effect of the nano-metal walls were too effective.

Only with recent rounds of trade had supplies become abundant enough; otherwise, this journey wouldn’t be so easy. After all, crossing from the west to the south meant traversing half the city, not as casual as going from the school gate to the central arena.

The key was the newly acquired batch of 1080P high-definition night-vision cameras, which instantly tripled or quadrupled Alpha Princess’s manifestation range, reducing her dependence on ambient light, saving much effort.

Ye Chao, in the surveillance control center, watched as Alpha Princess’s glowing marker hopped across the map.

He had no choice; without his watchful eye, Alpha Princess couldn’t move.

Page 2

At exactly nine o’clock, Alpha Princess arrived at the appointed location and set up the satellite dish as instructed: “Azimuth 148°19′15″, elevation 78°24′45″, polarization angle 45 degrees…”

The message sent by the man in sunglasses—especially the azimuth, elevation, and polarization—was clearly satellite targeting data. Given River City’s latitude, it was likely a geostationary satellite.

Though his purpose remained unclear, he truly meant Ye Chao no harm.

Even if there was that 0.01% chance Alpha Princess had misjudged, with Ye Chao’s current abilities, a little peeking wouldn’t hurt.

After all, it was just connecting to a satellite; could the other side really crawl over along the radio waves like Alpha Princess?

Impossible.

Even if the other side had their own Alpha Princess—which was highly unlikely—they’d have to breach Alpha Princess’s defenses, reverse imprint the cameras, transmit data, see the situation with their own eyes, and crawl over piece by piece.

The first step was impossible!

Because any item can only be imprinted by one person at a time.

Stacked imprints either fail, destroy the item, or… exist only in laboratory experiments.

Alpha Princess couldn’t infiltrate River City’s network, likely for this reason.

But it was only a suspicion; sometimes fantasy was obvious, sometimes subtle—even turning it over in your hands, you might not see it.

In any case, it couldn’t hurt to try. At worst, it was only wasted time…

While Ye Chao’s thoughts wandered, the DTH reacted.

Many peaks appeared at once—cosmic microwave background radiation, solar ions stirring, various AM/FM radio signals from Earth.

The apocalypse had come, the internet was near destruction, but radio—requiring no physical wiring—stubbornly persisted…

Some warned people in the wild about disasters or beast attacks; some were encrypted, used for directed communication between major cities in the Nine Continents Alliance; others endlessly spread dubious messages: “XX is wonderful,” “XX is instant,” “Believe in XX for eternal life,” “Believe in XX and you won’t fail your exams…” and so on.

Though many peaks crowded the spectrum, one towered above the rest, like Everest among mountains—if Everest was still the highest.

Like tuning a radio, adjusting the frequency, connecting, and then a dialog box popped up before Ye Chao and Alpha Princess: “New device detected, existing users please enter account and password, new users please enter invitation code…”

Meanwhile, the page behind the dialog gradually refreshed.

Page 3

It turned out to be a forum—Sky Forum.

Though the registration process wasn’t completed, it was already clear: the forum was divided into sections for cultivation discussion, apocalypse society, adventure guides, prehistoric excavation, black market trading, and more.

Ye Chao had recovered data from various hard drives before; while not intimately familiar, the sight was certainly recognizable.

As for Alpha Princess—if she could access the outside web, she might not know it well, but confined to the research institute, she was all too familiar, since this was the daily mode of interaction for researchers.

In fact, Alpha Princess could vaguely see from the blurred page echoes of the project group’s internal forum.

Registering an account, flooding it with posts without being discovered as an AI—that was a crucial step in her passing the Turing test and being recognized as possessing independent consciousness.

Even after passing the test, she would gossip and chat daily in the internal network, quietly asking others besides her “parents” to bring snacks like adult anime, gentleman’s games, and doujin works—a routine part of her everyday life.

Her parents strictly forbade her from accessing anything unsuitable for children, but much of her off-limits spiritual nourishment was acquired this way—like “Monster Hunter,” for instance.

Still, while forums demanded low bandwidth, they were ultimately interactive—two-way.

But DTH receiving satellite signals was one-way.

Was it possible?

And another key question: what was the invitation code?

Ye Chao was pondering when Alpha Princess, without hesitation, entered ThereIsNoSpoon! in the invitation field.

Access granted!

So that was the meaning of the man in sunglasses’ final message!

And this forum, accessed via DTH, truly was two-way…