The Programmer Cultivator

Chapter 435: Chapter 73: Another Lesson’s 2nd Core Foundation: Encoding Rules

This matter had been troubling him for six long months. He’d wanted to ask on several occasions, but he was afraid it was a test from Elder Xing, so he always held back. His research attempts had repeatedly come to nothing.

Today, the time had finally come!

He knew that as long as he understood the foundation of how the so-called Quantum System could influence reality, he would be confident in using that "foundation" to slowly merge the two systems and forge a new path—a Heaven-Reaching Path.

Yuxing paused for a moment. Seeing Xu Weihai’s complete focus on him, he continued, "Previously, I taught you the most fundamental principle of the Outer Celestial Universe Federation: from storing information as the presence or absence of electricity to its representation as 0s and 1s.

So, what I’m going to talk about today is the second step after the 0s and 1s—encoding!"

Xu Weihai asked in confusion, "Encoding?"

Yuxing nodded. "Yes. To be precise, encoding rules.

Right now, you only know about code and how to write it. You know the ’how,’ but not the ’why.’

Do you understand how the virtual objects you create with code are expressed, or why they even take form?"

Xu Weihai shook his head. He knew this was Elder Xing’s style. You answered if you knew, and you admitted it honestly if you didn’t.

Seeing this, Yuxing continued, "It all begins with encoding. Even the subsequent Quantum System is built upon these ’encoding rules.’

It might sound abstract, but its origin is quite simple. During the Celestial Universe Ancient Era, there was an ancient kingdom somewhat similar to the Hongmeng Culture.

That kingdom invented a printing technique called ’Movable Type Printing.’ It involved creating individual, solid blocks for each character. When you wanted to print something, you simply had to arrange the blocks.

This marked the birth of the very first encoding system.

As the Celestial Universe developed through the ages, the encoding system evolved, eventually giving rise to the discipline of code.

As I said before, the discipline of code begins with accessing the presence or absence of electricity and representing it with 0s and 1s. The presence or absence of electricity is its starting point in reality, while the representation as 0s and 1s marks the very beginning of the virtual.

The so-called ’Integrated Circuit Board’ is actually just a collection of countless electrical storage devices. An Artifact reads these storage devices, recording the presence of electricity as 1 and its absence as 0.

This was the initial conversion from reality to the virtual. It was from this that encoding rules were born.

They designated ’0000’—that is, four instances of ’no electricity’—to represent the character ’A.’ ’0001’—three ’no electricity’ and one ’has electricity’—represented the character ’B.’ By combining these in various ways, they formed the first encoding rules, thereby completing the conversion between reality and the virtual.

Of course, this is just an example. In the Celestial Universe’s encoding, the character ’A’ isn’t necessarily ’0000,’ but you get the idea.

And it was also because of these encoding rules that the Celestial Universe found the way back from the virtual to reality, marking the dawn of Quantum Power.

In the same way, ’0000’ could represent one of the Celestial Universe’s Magic Runes. Therefore, with a complete set of encoding rules, the Celestial Universe’s code and Magic Runes could be interchanged, achieving a seamless integration.

And so, with the virtual and the real intersecting—one part being read/write access, the other being encoding—these two core foundations formed the Heaven-Reaching Path of the Celestial Universe Array. This is how Quantum System Power was born."

As Yuxing spoke, a bolt of lightning flashed through Xu Weihai’s mind, tearing through the Chaos and shattering that final barrier.

Decades of knowledge about Arrays and six months of specialized code study now erupted into a Brainstorming within his mind.

’If encoding can handle Magic Runes, then couldn’t it handle Array Dao Runes just as easily? There’s essentially no difference between them!’

’In other words, the only thing I’m missing is a set of encoding rules?’

As these thoughts raced through Xu Weihai’s mind, the Spiritual Power around him surged, and a Spirit Wind began to swirl. Before Yuxing’s astonished eyes, a virtual Rune slowly started to materialize between Xu Weihai’s brows.

Yuxing’s expression changed. ’This is...?’

’The path of the Ancient Cultivators? Advancing through Enlightenment Dao without any external assistance?’

’What the— I went out of my way to find a good-for-nothing, a hand-picked dud! I know I’ve been cramming a lot of information into him for the sake of my plan, but how could this kind of breakthrough happen?!’

’Even the current prodigies in Hongmeng with Immortal Spirit Roots are rarely this flashy!’

’Er... of course, if someone with an Immortal Spirit Root was force-fed information like this, they would’ve reached enlightenment ages ago. I mean that even when those prodigies have a spontaneous epiphany, it’s not this dramatic.’

’But I didn’t work my ass off for six months teaching you just so you could reach Foundation Establishment this way! If you complete your Foundation Establishment now, wouldn’t I have to start all over from scratch?’

’Besides, compared to achieving Enlightenment Dao in the spotlight at the exchange conference, this breakthrough is just a backup option. It’s not worth wasting this chance.’

"Snap out of it!!!" Yuxing roared, his voice piercing straight into the depths of Xu Weihai’s mind.

Xu Weihai, who had just begun the process of Enlightenment Dao, snapped back to his senses with a dazed expression, not even realizing what had just happened to him.

Yuxing looked at him and said, "Under normal circumstances, this would be considered a fortuitous opportunity, and I would never have interrupted you.

But I have already arranged your Heaven-Reaching Path for you. I can’t let you stray onto a side road.

Remember, from this day forward, you must not, under any circumstances, attempt to construct the ’Hongmeng encoding rules’ in your mind by yourself. This path to Foundation Establishment, while not bad, still falls short of the path of Spiritual Wisdom Rune Life that you are meant for.

Even if you were to succeed, it would only be considered laying the foundation for the path of Rune Life. When the true path of Rune Life later emerges, you would only be considered one who laid the groundwork.

Yes, the kind of unknown foundational figure who wouldn’t be able to share in many of the benefits. Becoming a saint or an ancestor would be out of the question."