Chapter 486: Network Depths

Anyway, just like that, the valley now had one more "outsider" who came and went regularly—besides Engineer Sun's construction team and disciples like Xuan Che from Thousand-Peak Spirit Mountain—a snake demon.

Snake Lady actually couldn't understand how far the Borderland was from the Void Locus, nor did she comprehend what "light-year scales" or "other dimensions" were. She seemed to think very simply that this valley was located somewhere near Thousand-Peak Spirit Mountain—her reasoning being that you could reach it by pushing open a door, and going home was convenient.

Yu Sheng chatted briefly with this demon and then very decisively gave up on the idea of explaining things to her.

Right now, the kids had all been called back to class by Teacher Su, and the snake demon had started wandering around bored. Fairy Tale Town wasn't big, so she quickly crawled from one end to the other, then ran over to the nearby farmland. She nibbled on a couple of vegetable seedlings there, got beaten up by Luna, and then ran back, hanging herself on the King's cat scratching post to sway in the sun while sunbathing.

After sunbathing for over ten minutes, she realized there was no sun in the valley, but she still hung there anyway.

Little Red Riding Hood thought she was about to get beaten up by the King next.

Yu Sheng, on the other hand, was quite amazed by this demon's current mental state and lifestyle—Snake Lady's almost wild-animal-like carefree attitude even exuded a bit of "Dao following nature," but if you tried to call her a wild animal… she'd be scrolling through short videos on her Spirit Mirror while hanging there sunbathing, even liking reptile pet videos…

Yu Sheng, Hu Li, and Little Red Riding Hood sat together on the high wall of the castle, watching the snake demon clinging stubbornly to the giant cat scratching post in the distance. After a while, Hu Li suddenly asked out of curiosity, "Where does she live?"

"Actually, there are several empty houses in town—ones we built too many of," Little Red Riding Hood said. "But she checked them all out and said she didn't like any of them, so it looks like she'll be living in the small grove to the north."

"I've seen her 'cave dwelling,'" Yu Sheng said casually. "It's just a messy grass nest with a bunch of rocks she collected from the riverbank and hillside piled up… I'll give her some building materials later. If she really wants to build her own house, she can do it herself. And besides—this place is connected to Thousand-Peak Spirit Mountain anyway, so when she gets bored, she can just go back home to sleep."

Hu Li let out an "oh," then suddenly her ears twitched and her eyes went wide as she stared in the direction of the cat scratching post. "Hey hey, the King just woke up… The King found a snake growing on his scratching post!"

Little Red Riding Hood's eyes widened too. "The King's moving closer… He's hissing! They're both hissing! He raised his paw, hey… Holy crap, the Mage Corps!"

Then the two of them stared at the battle situation on the scratching post, commenting and critiquing. A moment later, they sighed in unison. Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. "Yep, she got thrown off."

Yu Sheng watched Hu Li and Little Red Riding Hood with their heads together, enjoying the spectacle, and felt a surge of emotion. But after holding it in for a while, he couldn't bring himself to say the words "birds of a feather"—mainly because he was afraid of triggering Little Red Riding Hood.

After all, that girl's last embarrassing team-up with Hu Li was still saved in one of Rapunzel's cloud drives…

Thinking of that, Yu Sheng suddenly remembered something else and asked curiously, "By the way, how's your driver's test going?"

Little Red Riding Hood, who had been watching the fun with Hu Li, stiffened at the question, and a look of visible awkwardness crept onto her face.

"…I failed the practical driving test," she muttered. "I did a retake the day before yesterday—but I failed that too."

"Uh, the practical test is pretty hard," Yu Sheng said, having only asked casually and not expected this outcome. He quickly tried to comfort her, then asked offhandedly, "Where did you get stuck?"

Little Red Riding Hood's face flushed, and she lowered her head without saying a word.

Yu Sheng hesitated. "Did you fall into a ditch again?"

Little Red Riding Hood kept her head down.

Yu Sheng understood. After a moment, he let out a sigh. "…Good luck next time."

…

At the same time, in the "border" region of the Borderland, inside a large Western-style mansion on a broken floating island.

The circular hall was brightly lit. Countless cables extending down from the high ceiling intertwined like a canopy at the roof, converging at the center of the hall into a single "trunk" that connected to a large base on the floor. Countless tiny flashes of light traveled and flickered within this "tree," like vigorous life flowing through the intertwined trunk and branches.

A low, pleasant hum echoed throughout the hall, accompanied by a delicate sound like wind chimes that occasionally emerged from deep within the "canopy."

Marlin sat at the base of the "tree," a cable extending from the back of her neck into the trunk behind her. The clockwork maid Maris sat beside her, leaning against her, with several more cables extending from around Maris's winding key holes and connecting to several slots on the base.

This was the data processing center of the stronghold, and also the "node" set up by the "Garden" matrix network in the Borderland.

Under normal circumstances, connecting an Alice doll to the "Garden" didn't require physical contact, but today's situation was clearly special.

Those dangerous pieces of information that might have already been hidden by the public network, as well as the "zombie databases" that might have been buried in the data sedimentation layers after repeated iterations and upgrades of the "Garden," required a higher-authority node authentication to find.

The search had already been going on for several hours, but even with the computing power and bandwidth of a high-level node, finding those scattered fragments of data—which might only be a few tiny pieces left—within such a vast Garden network was no easy task.

Moreover, those scattered fragments might even be shielded by higher-authority security systems.

In the visual illusion formed by the torrent of information, Marlin's consciousness was sinking deeper into the Garden network.

She had already passed the noisy and bustling first-level access layer and the busy and tense second-level access layer. The surface structure of the "Garden" shone brilliantly above her "head" like a monstrous, bizarre city. That city was prosperous and noisy, with countless nodes filled with all kinds of strange data that Alice dolls from every corner of the universe grabbed and uploaded at any moment—from the large-scale military conflict erupting in a certain star sector to the small-scale launch of a new hair care oil for dolls in some city. The astonishing and vast data roared and flowed within the network, written, refreshed, reorganized, and discarded in units of billions…

And below this "monster city" was a quiet, deep reflection. The prosperity of the upper network lingered here only as distant echoes, the visual illusions floating like thin and fragile curtains in Marlin's vision, interspersed with beacons marking major intelligence. Occasionally, other doll mind-forms appeared in this layer, all blurry and coming and going in a hurry.

But the data Marlin wanted to access might be even deeper than this.

She used her authority as a "Regional Envoy" to dive deeper into the Garden network.

The surrounding visual illusions dimmed further. From the upper network, only a few hollow noises trickled down. In the gloom, no other Alice doll mind-forms could be seen, only occasional gray-white shadows darting through the darkness—those were patrol programs called "Sweepers," tirelessly shuttling through the depths of the Garden network, clearing away polluting information that occasionally sank to this layer, and constantly staying alert for any "zombie database" blocked by the main network that might wake up without authorization.

Data could suddenly wake up, like corpses rising from graves in slumber. Although the probability was small, it was always unavoidable for a zombie database to suddenly come alive and develop a self. In some civilization circles, the locals considered this kind of harmful data structure that surfaced from the depths of the network and caused chaos to be the main reason for "machine spirit displeasure." In the "Garden" network, these awakened harmful data structures could basically never break through the defense line formed by the Sweepers.

Marlin stopped at this layer, gazing down at the chaotic, profound, seemingly bottomless abyss of surging intangible things—that was the projection illusion the Garden network created in her mind, reminding her that this was the end of the dive.

A dim light orb floated beside her. From inside the orb came Maris's slightly distorted voice: "Access request submitted. Access keywords: Erin, Omen, Omen Goddess, Black Star, Dark Star, Fault Planet, Spacetime Defect, System Boundary, Super-System Event…"

"Mm, thank you for your hard work."

Marlin said flatly, glancing back at the orb beside her.

The servitor robot produced by Algard-Universal United Industries was indeed powerful. Maris's simulated mind-form could even accompany her this deep into the Garden network and still run normally, which saved Marlin a lot of effort and also considerably reduced the mental pressure of deep network diving—although Maris often acted more like a sassy servitor girl, compared to the role she could play… it wasn't really a big problem.

…Anyway, she wasn't about to open a membership.

Marlin thought to herself, and then she saw a gray-white light shadow suddenly swim out from the chaos, stop in front of her, and then circle around her like a fish.

A Sweeper.

Marlin felt a bit tense instinctively, but fortunately, the standard scanning procedure didn't cause any problems—the Sweeper quickly left, not even checking Maris's orb beside her.

"Why did it only scan you?" Maris asked.

"Because your simulated mind is too crude here to pose any threat to this layer," Marlin said bluntly. "Besides, when we passed through the upper layers earlier, you were already thoroughly scanned. There's no need to waste the Sweeper's computing power here."

"…Honestly, that stings a bit," Maris said dejectedly. "I'm ultimately just a mass-produced, already-outdated industrial product. Even though I keep trying my best to imitate you, I can't change my intrinsic nature."

Marlin was taken aback, and instinctively reached out toward the orb in front of her. "Maris, actually—"

But before she could finish, the second half of the sentence popped out of the orb: "—so why not try the mental upgrade expansion pack specially designed for this situation by Universal United Industries? No need to purchase the full framework; just one auxiliary unit, and your servitor robot can install it on its own. Order now and—"

"Shut up."

"Yes, Miss Marlin."

Marlin shook her head, starting to wonder which one of the hundred-plus settings she had configured when booting up Maris was responsible for smart push notifications.

And at that moment, from the corner of her eye, she saw another gray-white light shadow.

The Sweeper program… why had it come again?