Chapter 773: Chapter 656: Fatherly Kindness
Many years ago, an internal debate erupted within Skytop Company about the appropriate level of realism for the Home game.
Restricting players of different ages based on content suitability was not disputed: reducing pain and transforming some pain into numbness was also not disputed.
But parts involving privacy, which were unrelated to content suitability, such as defecating, left people scratching their heads on whether to include the details.
The opposing side believed that spending effort on creating animations for defecating was meaningless, and since the Home World’s time flow matched reality, players couldn’t possibly go twice.
The supporting side argued that defecating was an indispensable part of open-world immersion, and the animation not only needed to exist but be realistic—
Emptying the bowels would activate the parasympathetic and vagus nerves, release dopamine and endorphins, regulate serotonin secretion, trigger a full-body relaxation response, causing mild euphoria. It relaxes the body and mind.
"Back then, people were amazed when open-world chairs could be sat upon. Wouldn’t it be even more unprecedented if we made defecation animations?"
Under this mindset, Skytop Company dedicated a team of over a hundred people, meticulously crafting, striving for millimetric accuracy in their depiction.
However, this meticulousness has now become a twenty-year spanning bullet, striking right at the minds of professional players.
"Pilipilipili plurrrrp—"
"Splash—"
"Pfft bang!"
The sounds varied according to the condition of the digestive tract.
The group of professional players retracted and returned to their original positions, clean and untainted.
Except their expressions were utterly numb and stiff, as if burnt out, leaving only pure white ash.
White Horse Tombstone wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, finding the code baptism of the Time Machine done by [God of Mankind] to have a frighteningly high priority or mystery, effectively overriding the [Reverse Time Coffin]’s effect,
restoring her from a ruined corpse state back to a human, with Spiritual Power Value fully recovered. However, some item skills were still on cooldown.
"..."
Wan Ling’s smoke head emitted a grinding sound, shouting angrily: "So what if time has reversed? Do you have the strength to fight me?"
With that, she flew straight up, overlooking the matchbox-like buildings and tiny ant-like people below, plunged her hand into her lined-filled chest, and tore herself apart.
Her chest emitted a brilliant strong light, with Wan Ling’s palm facing the sky and another palm facing the ground.
Buzz—
The sun’s texture disappeared out of thin air, plunging the world into boundless darkness,
with mountains, forests, lakes, and cities all transformed into pure code, held tightly in her hand.
Directly skipping the second and third stages, Wan Ling reappeared in her true form, becoming a gargantuan metal ring in the shape of a jellyfish.
"Talk as tough as you want, but you still don’t dare to cross this door."
The howling wind swept through, tussling Liu Hai’s hair strands, while Li Cheng shook his head nonchalantly, kneeling on one knee and pressing the hand wearing the Merciful Soul-giving Gloves onto the computer case.
Soul Implantation, complete.
The fans spun rapidly, the graphics card howled, the memory’s self-test lights flickered nonstop, and the case’s CD drive suddenly opened, spewing out a vast length of perforated paper tapes.
These tapes were the storage medium and instruction carrier of early computers, with holes representing 1, and no holes representing 0.
The tapes varied in color, with white, red, yellow, green, and black, collectively forming a regular icosahedron, that is, the [God of Mankind].
"Disaster AI, it’s Disaster AI!!"
The Lobster, returning from Hell, changed his expression suddenly, retreating two steps instinctively.
The United Government’s propaganda department was quite ingenious, portraying [God of Mankind] as extremely cold and devoid of humanity in their narratives.
Desert transformation was labeled as destroying the desert ecosystem, promoting nuclear and other clean energies was said to disregard people’s lives, enhancing societal security via surveillance systems was called an invasion of personal privacy,
and even fabrications were made, claiming the public services provided by AI for supporting the elderly, nurturing orphans, and aiding disabled individuals were hellish concentration camps.
God of Mankind glanced at him, neither sad nor happy, seemingly unsurprised.
He looked up at the metal ring in the high sky and suddenly flung a perforated paper tape.
Wan Ling treated this as a major threat, hurriedly ascending and reinforcing the air wall in layers.
The perforated tape continued to soar upward, colliding with the air wall with a "pop" in the breath-holding gaze of everyone.
Then, nothing else happened.
The tape lost all its kinetic energy, fluttering back to the earth, landing on the asphalt pavement.
Wan Ling: "..."
The professional players: "..."
White Horse Tombstone, along with the hastily arrived Lulina and Sunset Melting Gold: "..."
"What on earth is going on here."
Brother Bing couldn’t help but chuckle, "After all that buildup, that’s it?"
Creative works, regardless of genre—be it fantasy, magical, martial arts, cultivation, or even supernatural and superpower—often incorporate the "the older, the stronger" trope.
But in the field of computers... it’s honestly conscience-bending to claim that early computers using eight-hole tapes are superior to quantum supercomputers.
God of Mankind silently looked at his paper tape body and then glanced at Li Cheng.
The latter spread his hands, shrugged his shoulders.
Even the most skilled woman can’t cook without rice. God of Mankind only has a small fraction of personality projection code, and Li Cheng has only a limited Spiritual Power Value, lucky enough to succeed in Soul Implantation.
"Haha, hahahaha!"
Wan Ling shook the air, "For all my caution, old thing, this is no longer your era!"
She laughed wildly, as if unleashing all her pent-up frustration.
"Indeed, just us remnants, along with the personality image of [God of Mankind], are far from being your match."
Li Cheng sighed, leisurely unfolding the scroll of the Ancient Long War Map, "But what if we add this to the mix?"
Between his fingers was a delicately detailed metal chess piece.
The war chess spun downward, covering the entire villa in the massive shadow of the Alpha Snake Head.
[God of Mankind], with an icosahedral form, suddenly soared into the air, embedding itself at the center of the Alpha Snake Head’s forehead.
God of Mankind possessed the consciousness of a top Extraordinary Life but lacked a corresponding strong body. Meanwhile, Alpha Snake Head, as a relic of the former [Heavenly Enemy], had a body but acted on mere instinct.
Together, the perforated tape spread out, filling in the missing half of Alpha’s eye and extending down the neck, fusing the broken, sparking cables.
Gray Rain sighed upon seeing this, "One look, and the encounter surpasses countless in the mortal world."
"That’s a love poem," Li Cheng twitched his mouth, muttering softly, "don’t go making incorrect examples."
"Oh, oh." Gray Rain agreed readily, "I see God of Mankind and Alpha Snake Head, truly like two smiling tigers, a pair of double-horned sharks."
High above, Wan Ling realized something was wrong, immediately shaking the ring to unleash a stream of data.
Alpha abruptly lifted its snake head, spewing out high-energy particles intermixed with code as well.
Both torrents dissipated simultaneously, with God of Mankind’s perforated tape rustling, stretching out from mechanical joints to form limbs.
In comparison to the massive snake head, the limbs appeared too slender, akin to matchsticks, but at least they existed. Aided by the [Floating Engine], God of Mankind hovered up, flying into the sky, reaching to grab the metal ring.
Their codes being of the same root, the air wall couldn’t block God of Mankind, whose taped hand seized the metal ring. Like a discus thrower, it rotated several times at high speed, and when the centrifugal force peaked, it hurled Wan Ling heavily to the ground.
Exuding parental fondness and filial obedience.
The professional players present exchanged glances; they had no way back, so had to fly up in pursuit, joining Alpha Snake Head to surround the metal ring.
