Master of the Stars

Chapter 76: The Tower of Babel (Part 2/2)

If Jack wasn’t carrying so many useless components, he would completely be taken for a mighty Deep Blue Walker with his helmet on.

However, this Deep Blue Walker’s mind was stretched extremely taut. The suspicious signal had given him an intense unease that wasn’t easy to eliminate.

Installing the robotic eye was just a start.

There were still several advanced detection instruments within Jack’s previous body. Right now they took priority. They were disassembled and integrated into Jack’s current exoskeleton armor.

Jack constantly turned his head during the installation process. He let his robotic eye guide all the detection instruments within his body, surveying the inner environment of the vehicle over and over again.

But no matter how many times he surveyed, Jack was unable to seize the suspicious signal once again.

But from another perspective, every detection survey wasn’t completely meaningless. Large quantities of data passed through the Tower of Babel using this method. A highly efficient convergence and combining were realized through this unique structure. Every survey stood for a deeper level of understanding towards the world by Jack.

This was something Jack had never experienced before.

Luo Nan’s evaluation towards this was as follows: Jack was on the right path.

After being frightened by Luo Nan, Jack’s altered train of thought clearly exhibited changes. He no longer chased after increasing his immediate combat strength; he integrated the detection and scanning equipment to the best of his ability to guard against the incorporeal and traceless threat.

From Luo Nan’s perspective, this stuck closer to the essence of configuration over the military fort-style alteration. Namely, Jack was raising perception and awareness capabilities, he was endlessly enriching the source and level of information, he was strengthening the quality of integrated thought. He was climbing upon this grand Tower of Babel from the bottom levels to the top levels, from the concrete to the abstract, to reach the absolute mental domain.

Looking at the long-term, Jack would certainly be able to reap some gains if he were to persevere in this sort of alteration method. He would find it easier to exhibit power on the mental plane.

Was Luo Nan helping Jack make a breakthrough? Obviously, he wasn’t.

He was just looking favorably on Jack’s alterations. There was something that existed within Jack’s body that made it impossible to make up for an error…… His emotional thought process still had no defenses whatsoever. It would be hard for him to find a suitable medium within a short timeframe.

It didn’t matter whether it was his emotions or his thoughts, they were all the foundation of the soul and they were all laid bare in this way. Jack’s soul was tantamount to being completely defenseless. At least in Luo Nan’s eyes, Jack was incomparably weak.

Luo Nan didn’t intervene before because Jack was maintaining a good habit. Jack was doing the utmost to maintain a synchronized tempo between his body and mind. It was like Rui Wen’s body and soul merging. He possessed a powerful defensive strength against purely mental attacks.

But this kind of synchronized tempo possessed extremely harsh demands.

For instance, Rui Wen, who was stronger, needed to constantly adjust the state of her body to constantly maintain her calm and level mental state. Only in this way could she maintain her peak level within intense combat.

Compared to Rui Wen, the current Jack’s range of emotional fluctuations was huge. At the same time, Jack was endlessly altering his ad hoc body. His line of thought over the alterations was not completely the same from the start to the end. Even if he had the Dynamo Core in the middle as a mediator, there was a large probably for it all to come apart.

Jack had found the proper direction; he endlessly raised the strength and level of his soul. But the failure fort-style alteration he made before would eventually cause more and more serious influences towards his synchronized tempo.

Perhaps Jack would eventually discover this problem, but Luo Nan wouldn’t allow Jack the chance to resolve it.

Take the boundary between the material plane and the mental plane to be a water’s surface for instance. Jack, this fat fish that resided in the material plane, was endlessly leaping out through the water’s surface to breathe in fresh air.

Luo Nan was like a patient hunter waiting for his prey to exit the water to the greatest degree.

He even prepared a special weapon for his prey; the dark chains and the wraith sign glowed with a subtle light.

Obviously, the weapon that Luo Nan prepared was the Siege Hammer. The Human-Faced Arachnid was directly participating in order to maintain the attack’s effectiveness. However, there was a change right now that fell outside of Luo Nan’s plans.

The Human-Faced Arachnid was in the middle of recovery when it changed its attitude of avoidance towards Jack; it actually became a bit restless. When Jack’s form of life transformed, this Darksider life form’s view changed from Jack’s nature being “completely unable to be eaten” to being “maybe it could give him a try”.

More importantly, within the depths of Jack’s soul was another “spiritual seed” being nurtured. While it was true that this seed was far in purity from Rui Wen’s seed, which was untainted by even a speck dust, it changed Jack’s flavor to be like a meat that was sprinkled with a bit of hot pepper. It could be eaten with some effort.

In spite of its current weak state, the Human-Faced Arachnid struggled once more and transformed into a somewhat illusory figure. It made its intense desire to consume clear to its master in this way.

Luo Nan was somewhat hesitant.

Then the HexaEar transmitted information through the Psychic Wave Network onto the mental plane while Luo Nan was pondering. Luo Nan’s soul body received this information.

It was a format that was both energy and information. It was traveling on both the mental and material plane. What the HexaEar was doing far exceeded Jack’s current level. Luo Nan could confirm that the HexaEar was encoding the energy and information; a typical wiretapping wouldn’t cause any effects.

However, even though the psychic waves were encoded, they weren’t traceless. In particular, the unique waveband that transitioned from the material plane to the mental plane was like a light breeze blowing across the surface of a lake. There would be some special ripples left behind on the material plane.

Luo Nan was unable to feel this before, but he became more and more sensitive to this after grasping the key to soul breathing. Right now he was a bit displeased though.

This was because Jack wasn’t an ordinary person.

Jack’s holeless observation abilities were gradually increasing. This weak ripple didn’t escape Jack’s attention. Various detection instruments assembled together in an instant to actively probe various wavebands, seemingly burning a hole through the void.

But this was useless. Currently, Luo Nan’s soul body had absolute dominance over the mental plane. He could probe on a deeper and subtle level. In comparison, Jack’s human-made devices were far too crude even if some were able to probe onto the mental plane. No matter their precision, their scope, they were far from meeting the demands necessary to seize Luo Nan’s existence.

And so Luo Nan was able to receive the signals with ease. He used this sort of method to provoke Jack’s sensitive nerves.

He Yueyin was on the other side: “Scout. The target has been locked on. You can rest your soul-attached crow for the time being. Concentrate on observing the various sniper positions in the surroundings. Mr. Bai will contact you in a bit.”

Crag Burst’s muffled laughter was transmitted across. Clearly, he had seen through He Yueyin’s schemes of abusing her authority.

Luo Nan disregarded He Yueyin’s proposal. He had forced his “soul-attached crow” to fly over from the DeShang Building. The journey had been nearly fifty kilometers long, but the crow hadn’t even spent half an hour; its speed exceeded a hundred kilometers per hour. The crow's energy was over drafted no matter how one looked at it. It was highly likely that this would lead to unforeseen consequences to the state of the attached soul. No wonder He Yueyin had expressed her dissatisfaction in this manner.