To ascend, I had no choice but to create games

Chapter 362: 224: Steel Factory (Part 2)_2

Chapter 362: Chapter 224: Steel Factory (Part 2)_2

“You’re back again!”

Shattered once more, the Mysterious Mirror came back to life and immediately heard Fang Cheng’s voice, “Why didn’t you dodge?”

“With no sound and such speed, I couldn’t get away, boss!”

“Then you could have used Palm Thunder to blast it away.”

“Do I have that feature?” the Mysterious Mirror asked expectantly.

“No, but I think you can learn, it’s very simple, just…”

After Fang Cheng explained how to use Palm Thunder, the Mysterious Mirror felt he was definitely not of the same species as his boss.

Wrong, they were not the same species to begin with.

However, after dying twice, the Mysterious Mirror had roughly understood the current situation.

To avoid being discovered upon arrival, the squirrel scientists had changed the landing spot on this side of the rail, allowing the Mysterious Mirror to infiltrate smoothly.

The new position was right in the logistics conduit, which meant that as soon as it appeared, it had to immediately dodge the materials carts to keep going successfully.

Fortunately, although the materials carts were silent and very fast, when one was about to arrive, a red light would come on along its track, which made it easy to avoid as long as it was noticed.

As an Artifact Spirit, the Mysterious Mirror learned new things very quickly, and after observing the contents of the materials carts a few times, it knew that the materials came from below, while the area above was the processing plant.

After some thought, the Mysterious Mirror decided to check out the raw materials area first.

The materials conduit was pitch black, with only ceiling lights flashing various colors of light.

Some areas also had their own branch paths, which probably led to various different areas, and there were many of them.

Though nominally a factory, the Mysterious Mirror felt that the scale here was on par with a large city.

The factory’s builders used a very rough management style—if there was anything to add, it was added here.

Through analyzing the raw materials, the Mysterious Mirror found that there were metal ores as well as petroleum resin; any industrial-related materials were available here, and it could see various semi-finished products being continuously transported in the materials boxes.

This factory seemed capable of processing any product. In an ordinary factory, just managing and training the personnel would bring great internal struggle, but the guardians of steel could not be managed in such a way.

According to another Artifact Spirit, Fei, although all the Artifact Spirits within the steel guardians had evolved from puppets, they did not consider themselves akin to puppets.

Puppets were just machines, capable of understanding commands but without autonomous consciousness, mere tools.

Only those who had awakened their own consciousness and ascended to become Artifact Spirits were the real guardians of steel, their brethren.

But having awakened their self-consciousness, they began to have human desires, leading to self-division and infighting.

In this factory, the Mysterious Mirror also saw many puppets at work.

They were born in this factory and, once assembled, were sent off to work on their respective assembly lines.

The bodies of these puppets were specially processed, and each one had a short shelf life. If a part broke, it was dragged away for recycling and replacement, and then new puppets were put on the line.

Arriving at the raw materials area at the bottom, the Mysterious Mirror sneakily watched for a while and found that the materials were transported by spaceship, and these spaceships were also puppets, which showed how advanced the puppet technology here was.

Estimating roughly, the Mysterious Mirror discovered that the factory had tens of billions of various puppets, yet among so many, there were only a thousand Artifact Spirits, which made it clear just how rare Artifact Spirits were.

Having observed the raw materials area, the Mysterious Mirror was about to leave when it turned its head and saw a huge mechanical eye suspended in the air, staring fixedly at it.

After standing still for a moment, the Mysterious Mirror immediately turned to flee, but a dozen mechanical arms extended from behind the mechanical eye, grasped the Mysterious Mirror, and then dragged it away from the place.

Thinking it was going to die yet another time, the Mysterious Mirror didn’t expect to be taken to a room instead.

The room was brightly lit, and ninety-nine colorful Teddy Bears were locked up with him, silently watching the electronic display in front of them.

“What is this place for!” the Mysterious Mirror couldn’t help asking.

“It looks like a test room,” Fang Cheng said. “Let me ask Fei… Hmm, I see now. Your appearance somewhat resembles a certain mechanical bear product. This kind of product requires a certain level of intelligence and a cute exterior, and it must go through a selection process to be produced. The entire procedure is tedious and inhumane, with the failed products being automatically returned to their original places to continue test training.”

“Why do they need something like this!”

“Fei doesn’t know either. Once the factories are built, they don’t dismantle the equipment. It’s likely that the steel guardians once needed the help of the mechanical bears to complete certain tasks. But as the environment changed, the task became unimportant, and yet the production line was preserved and continued to produce mechanical bears.”

“So, what should I do?”

“It doesn’t really matter. According to Fei, since there are no longer any relevant standards, all the selected mechanical bears will just rest for a while and then be sent back to start the selection again. If any mechanical bear breaks down in the meantime, they’ll just be replaced by new ones.”

“Do the steel guardians like wasting capacity that much!”

“They don’t want to. But the entire steel factory is a huge mountain of redundant code. When it was built, no one thought it would become such a vast place, so optimization was never considered. Any little deletion could lead to irreversible consequences, a lesson learned through centuries of blood and tears by the steel guardians.”

Other mysterious mirrors may not understand, but after knowing that this is a ‘Shit Mountain’, the Mysterious Mirror came to understand the thoughts of the steel guardians.

Actually, one can’t really blame the steel guardians who built the factory in the first place.

After all, over thousands of years, even the most perfect system will generate a great deal of redundancy, which accumulates and eventually results in a structure that’s difficult to modify, delete, or replace, just like what we see today.

As Mysterious Mirror communicated with Fang Cheng, numbers finally appeared on the electronic display.

After the countdown was complete, he saw an equation on the electronic display:

[sin²x+cos²x=1]

Below the electronic display, two doors were revealed, with the left door marked: [?].

The right door, meanwhile, bore the mark [X].

Looking puzzled, the Mysterious Mirror noticed that some Teddy Bears had already begun heading towards different rooms, and he followed the crowd toward the room marked [?].

Upon entering, as soon as the number of Teddy Bears in the room reached fifty, the partition between the two rooms opened up. The floor of the room on the right opened up immediately, causing all the Teddy Bears inside to fall down.

Even though he knew that the others were merely being sent back to the initial room, Mysterious Mirror couldn’t help but feel tense.

Having been a Teddy Bear himself in the past, Mysterious Mirror couldn’t help but put himself in the shoes of those little bears, starting to imagine what he would do if he were in their place.

An endless cycle of reincarnation, where only after breaking can you finally be free; just imagining such a Sisyphean ordeal is enough to overwhelm.

Only a saint who has attained enlightenment could find joy in such hellish conditions.

However, Mysterious Mirror didn’t have time to ponder further as the electronic display in front of him lit up and a new question appeared.

With no choice, he finished reading the question, made his selection, and started running again.

After leaving the second room, Mysterious Mirror found that what followed wasn’t a question-and-answer room, but an obstacle course competition.

This stage was designed to test the balancing ability of the mechanical bears, who had to jump across various platforms to enter the next room as quickly as possible.

The door to the room would automatically close after twelve bears had entered, and any remaining little bears would fall below the platforms once more.

This time, Mysterious Mirror did not proceed.

He watched dispassionately as the little bears scrambled one after another, even sabotaging each other, just to reach the goal.

They did not know why they were heading to the next room, which was both their most tragic and their luckiest aspect.

When ten little bears had passed, Mysterious Mirror felt the floor beneath him give way, and he fell directly into the tube below, which sent him via a pipeline back to the initial room to begin the countdown anew, waiting for the next cycle to start.

With a sigh, Mysterious Mirror said to Fang Cheng, “Boss…”

“Come back,” Fang Cheng replied.

And just like that, Mysterious Mirror’s first exploration came to an end.