Chapter Fourteen: Abyss

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The current state of the network traces back ninety years.

Ninety years ago, the "Seven Lands War" was, in effect, a world war.

Battles between various factions raged from the earth to the sky, then into the seas—and cyberspace was no exception.

In fact, in this era of advanced technology, the World Wide Web had long become inseparable from humanity, intimately intertwined with daily life.

Because of this, during the Seven Lands War, the major powers waged a relentless and intense conflict over the network, leaving cyberspace irreversibly damaged.

Meme viruses, malicious programs, deranged artificial intelligences, distorted fragments of cognition...

The "online world," once a haven of freedom born from a technological revolution, had become a kind of hell.

Merely connecting to the network could result in one’s body being hijacked by a roaming insane AI; visiting a website risked contamination by hidden domain viruses that could trace back and infect, paralyze, or even explode the login device—in an age when most accessed the internet via brain-machine interfaces, such attacks were deadly.

Logging in through virtual reality services could trigger all manner of traps or encounters with “cognitive distortion fragments.”

The most common trap was the “prison cage,” forcibly imprisoning a person’s consciousness in a solitary cell with no exit from the network, leaving their physical body a lifeless, tearless vegetable.

The latter was a malignant meme capable of altering and influencing personal cognition—at best causing dramatic personality shifts, split identities, and memory confusion; at worst transforming one into a “cybernetic psychotic.”

When the twenty-year-long Seven Lands War ended, the victors finally had time to mend a world full of wounds.

To rescue the shattered cyberspace and safeguard their future use, they collaborated to carve out a pure domain and constructed the monumental “Domain Firewall,” isolating the remaining corrupted domains and thus restoring the current network space.

—These are the official accounts from the various factions.

The Corporate Alliance shared this narrative as well.

“Ha... as if it were that simple,” Song Shi shook his head inwardly.

While searching for the entrance address to Thousand Star City, he drifted into memories.

In his past life, he once believed this official story without question—until he reached the third tier of psychic abilities, where he uncovered the true truth.

The information provided by the factions wasn’t wrong—but they all conveniently concealed one detail.

That was about psychic energy.

Few could clearly define the true nature of psychic energy.

But one thing was certain: psychic energy represented a power that embodied the self.

In theory, everyone possessed the potential to awaken psychic energy. Yet, for various reasons, only one in three thousand people had become psychics.

The path of Transcendence was born from the desire to constantly strengthen oneself and defeat all opponents; the path of Consensus arose from the wish to understand others’ minds and listen to the whispers of all things; the path of the Great Source emerged from the ambition to control the forces of nature—

The paths of Revelation, Balance, and Truth followed the same principle.

—And a great part of the domain’s collapse in the past was caused by psychic energy!

Theoretically, everyone carried latent psychic energy; some could awaken and use it, while most kept it buried deep within, unaware even to themselves.

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As for the network.

Ancient people could hardly imagine that one day there would be something called the “network,” a world united as one, with an enormous flow of information exchanged every moment.

At the same time, the network environment was irreversibly degrading.

From initial exploration and curiosity to habitual use and the evolution of unique network cultures, anonymity allowed users to act without restraint; when one person began to insult, others would instinctively join the fray.

But it didn’t stop there.

Disturbing bloody images, malicious rumor spreading, fabricated news designed to manipulate emotions and capture attention, echo chambers, trivial distractions, extremist viewpoints, fragmented ideological trends...

All these stirred people’s instinctive “negative emotions.”

Accompanied by an incalculable volume of negative emotions, day after day of internet use and the transmission of vast information caused these negative feelings to subtly infuse the network—

In this world with psychic energy, under the guidance of negative emotions, everyone’s latent psychic energy was triggered and likewise entered the network.

Even if that psychic energy was minuscule.

But quantitative changes led to qualitative transformation.

—This was the real cause of the domain’s collapse.

Countless people used the network day and night, injecting chaotic elements dominated by negative emotions, gradually turning the network into an unprecedented “redundant psychic energy conglomerate,” an extremely complex and confusing one at that.

The cyber warfare during the Seven Lands War was like detonating this already overloaded cyberspace.

Because of psychic energy, if the degradation of cyberspace continued unchecked, it might begin to affect reality—not just indirectly through network means.

It would be a tsunami from cyberspace, shattering the barrier between network and reality, transforming into a psychic shockwave sweeping across human consciousness!

Hence, the war’s victors urgently gathered, partitioned a pure domain, and jointly constructed the grand spectacle of the Domain Firewall, blocking and isolating the other corrupted domains.

Today, the corrupted lower domains beyond the firewall are called the Abyss, named after the ancient mythological wasteland filled with sulfurous steam and eternal magma—an area forbidden to mortals.

······

At one moment.

“—Found it.”

Song Shi slowly exhaled and smiled.

Twenty years ago, the cyberspace seemed no different from twenty years later.

Although network technology surely advanced over those two decades, in his memory, there was no revolutionary breakthrough like brain-machine interfaces or virtual reality; researchers merely made existing structures more elaborate rather than planting a brand-new tree.

Therefore, his memory-based method of locating the entry point still worked. After some effort, he finally found an anchor point of Thousand Star City in the upper domain.

Carefully avoiding patrol programs and defensive traps, Song Shi entered a long corridor.

At the corridor’s end, as he recited a string of passwords, the original wall flickered and a door appeared.

Brushing away the “Warning, warning—” pop-up from the domain deep dive device, Song Shi grasped the door handle.

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Because the “Jack’s Seed” domain deep dive device was a previous generation mid-to-low-end civilian product, its virtual reality service offered only about 15% realism.

But at that instant—

The moment Song Shi gripped the handle, the crude and unsettling “blurry realism” vanished, replaced by a noticeably more authentic tactile sensation.

—Looks like this is the right place.

Song Shi thought.

Thousand Star City lay within the lower corrupted domain, the Abyss.

After enduring bombardments from meme viruses, malicious programs, insane AIs, and the influence of psychic energy, everyone who entered the Abyss experienced an uncontrollable increase in their perceived realism.

Even if, theoretically, their devices didn’t support such high realism.

But it didn’t matter—psychic energy never followed logic.

Focusing his mind, Song Shi hesitated no longer and pushed open the door.

Then, he began to fall—

Cracks appeared on the walls like shattered glass, countless sparkling fragments peeling off and swirling in the air.

With no footing beneath him, Song Shi tumbled through the broken floor, enveloped by a strong sensation of weightlessness from all directions.

The roar of the wind filled his ears.

Opening his eyes, Song Shi found himself falling through the air.

The patch of blue sky above rapidly shrank, indicating he was moving away from the Domain Firewall.

He lifted his gaze and surveyed all around.

It was as if he were inside a surreal dream.

Like someone had wildly splashed a bucket of oil paint onto the sky, the vast curtain of the world was covered in countless dazzling colors, delivering a dizzying, powerful impact.

Beneath the curtain, the silhouettes of cities cloaked within a luminous dome grew ever clearer.

Until, finally.

Silently, a stream of radiant light descended from the heavens, entering the city shimmering with flowing colors, as if an ordinary visitor from yesterday or tomorrow—nothing stirred.

Lower corrupted domain—the Abyss.

—Depth 1, Thousand Star City.