Sacred Souls: Genesis

Chapter 21: Blame Someone Who Doesn’t Exist

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Jiang Qiao woke up from the Sacred Souls world and returned to reality.

As he was walking into the living room, he saw Ocean Blue curled up on the sofa, completely engrossed in a comedy as she held a bucket of popcorn.

This goddess completely didn’t care about her image, and her elegant azure blue robes had been exchanged with a short-sleeved hoodie and a pair of track bottoms.

Ocean Blue was the very image of a shut-in girl at this moment.

She was on the sofa, and when any funny points came on in the movie, she would laugh out loud with zero regards to her image, then stuff another handful of popcorns into her mouth.

“Ahem…” Jiang Qiao coughed, wanting to attract the attention of the shut-in goddess, hoping to make her realize that she was completely disregarding her status as a goddess.

Her chest was flat, sure, but she was a Maker. Who knows what had happened to her to reduce her to such a state…

Ocean Blue turned her head and looked at Jiang Qiao, before looking back at the TV and laughing boisterously again.

She didn’t care in the slightest of what Jiang Qiao thought of her!

“Wouldn’t you destroy the dreams of your past followers if they saw you like this?”

Jiang Qiao sat next to Ocean Blue on the sofa. After she imbued him with the power of Maker Mode, a faint bond was created between the two, and so they became close very fast.

“It’s not like they can see me like this, anyway.” Ocean Blue was completely unperturbed. “Have you thought of how to increase the number of our warriors… No, players?”

As Jiang Qiao was busy checking the star map, Ocean Blue was focusing on the TV, and it felt as if she had given up on herself at this point.

Perhaps it was because Jiang Qiao was too strong, that this original Maker was starting to become somewhat of a mascot character.

“I’m going to officially release Sacred Souls.”

Jiang Qiao held a VR helmet, which was far more advanced than the ones on Earth. This VR helmet was something like the ones from the movie Ready Player One.

The most direct explanation was, once players wore the helmet their consciousness was still in the real world, but the things that they see become the virtual world. When used together with a haptic suit, they could have a semi-immersed gaming experience.

Taking the most popular VR game War for example, the players could experience the visuals and sounds of the game, as well as the feeling of touch from the game, but they couldn’t emulate the senses of taste and smell. The sense of touch wouldn’t be so realistic either, because it was only a sense emulated by a haptic suit.

“You want to use this to let players enter the Sacred Souls world?” Ocean Blue put down the popcorn in her arms, and snatched the helmet over from Jiang Qiao. After observing it, she put it on and saw an interface like a computer desktop.

“Two ways to login: Through the phone, and through the VR helmet. Even though logging in through a phone would be too conspicuous, but that’s not going to be our problem anyway…”

“Then whose problem is it going to be?” Ocean Blue took off the VR helmet, seemingly not used to it.

“Tiangong(read: Heavenly Palace)” Jiang Qiao said a name that only existed in mythology back on Earth. “More precisely, Tiangong-13”

“Do you mean this helmet?” Ocean Blue asked as she saw the words written on the back of the helmet, saying that ‘This product is allowed to access the Tiangong Network.’

“Not this helmet, but the entire network!” Jiang Qiao took out his own phone and waved it in front of Ocean Blue. The internet on Bluestar was at least eight years more advanced than the internet back on Earth.

It was because Bluestar was successful in creating artificial intelligence! This artificial intelligence wasn’t made to accomplish any special missions, but it was because of this artificial intelligence that Bluestar accomplished Internet of Everything, and most online services were based on the supercomputer Tiangong-13.

The server of the game War was based in this supercomputer.

“Isn’t it just a tool made by you humans?” Ocean Blue had been spending the past few days learning about the wonders of technology, and she only had a simple understanding of the internet. “How can a tool help us mask the truth of Sacred Souls?”

Ocean Blue had zero self care, but she wasn’t foolish. She knew that in order to let the game Sacred Souls seem more normal in the eyes of players, it would have to be a game that could be made with the current level of technology.

“Because Tiangong-13 could think for itself, and it can make games too!”

Jiang Qiao searched for a piece of news from three years ago with the title: ‘The danger of artificial intelligence! Will humanity be conquered by machines in the future?’

This news was written by an expert from Eagle Nation a year after Tiangong-13 was released. This article was made in response to the supercomputer uploading a VR game that it had programmed and developed itself onto the web. The graphics of the game could be compared to the triple-A games of the time, but the game itself was extremely boring—Just a mere walking simulator, but it still caused quite the commotion back in the day.

But after that, no one paid the article attention for some reason and Bluestar remained peaceful.

“You want to let everyone think that Sacred Souls was made by this… Art.. Arti…What was it called again?”

“Artificial intelligence.”

“Right! Made by this artificial intelligence?”

“The platform for VR games in this world is on the Tiangong-13, and if we upload this game by ourselves it would have to go through many layers of human verification! I can’t create a bunch of people in the real world and create a large-scale game company to go through that!”

Jiang Qiao knew that a game on the level of Sacred Souls would probably be impossible to accomplish, even if the largest game companies on Bluestar worked together. Just the complete immersion experience and hundred-percent reality emulation would be a technical hurdle for the current technology they had.

If Jiang Qiao said that he created this game by himself, he would probably get invited for tea the next day.

“No no no! Creating human beings on Bluestar would require at least fifty to sixty thousand points of energy, and that amount would have to be multiplied by ten times to make their existence rational by implanting memories and stuff!” Ocean Blue was most concerned about the energy she still had.

“So, we just throw the blame onto Tiangong-13 and problem solved.” Jiang Qiao played with the VR helmet in his hands and said, “Say that Tiangong-13 created this game, and uploaded it to the game platform on its own accord so the people won’t be able to delete it either!”

“That sounds like a plan.” Ocean Blue only knew little about the internet, but she knew that it was a plausible plan.

Basically, they were going to blame someone who didn’t even exist.

“I’m going to enter Maker Mode, then,” Jiang Qiao said as his pupils started to turn golden. At Ocean Blue’s current level it would be too hard to twist the reality of Bluestar, but it wouldn’t be hard to manipulate virtual data. In Maker Mode, Jiang Qiao could completely and effortlessly pin the blame on Tiangong-13.