Chapter 574: Abnormal Data Structure

Yu Sheng was a bit slow to react to Marlene's words. "What do you mean by abnormal mental operation efficiency?"

Marlene deliberated for a few seconds, then explained to Yu Sheng, "Maris discovered a large number of inexplicable useless threads in Ailin's mental operation, as well as a data structure that occupies a huge amount of storage space and cannot be probed. These things are severely slowing down her thinking efficiency, and could even..."

This puppet lady hesitated, leaned forward slightly, and said in a low voice, "Have you ever felt that Ailin occasionally does some inexplicable things..."

"She doesn't just do them occasionally, she does all kinds of inexplicable things almost every day," Yu Sheng had already understood her meaning, and his brows furrowed. "And she's silly too... Do you mean her situation is actually because her brain is really... broken?"

"Living puppets don't have a brain, but you can consider that there is indeed something wrong in her mental structure."

Marlene looked serious, and with a casual wave of her hand, a clear holographic projection appeared in the air beside her, displaying Ailin's mental operation status—complex charts and data were dazzling, and Yu Sheng couldn't make sense of them, but he could immediately understand the large number of constantly refreshing red error markers.

Yu Sheng's brows tightly knitted together. Shock accompanied by a flood of uncontrollable thoughts burst forth, and in his racing mind, he subconsciously muttered, "...Could it be that her 'fusion' with the Omen Goddess hasn't ended yet? Is the process still stuck?"

"Not likely," Marlene shook her head before Yu Sheng finished. "If it were really a mental malfunction caused by asynchronous consciousness, then there would be quite obvious misaligned waveforms detectable, and Maris would also be able to scan mental data that doesn't belong to Alice puppets at the first moment. But Ailin's current situation looks more like..."

Yu Sheng unconsciously leaned forward, a tense look on his face. "More like what?"

"More like a huge 'foreign object' is 'encapsulated' in her memory," Marlene's finger swept across the holographic projection. The complex charts and data streams instantly reorganized into a hazy mist-like dot matrix, and a huge red cube structure floated within, tightly sealed by a data shell labeled 'unresolvable.' "Maris used part of the Garden Network's computational power and still couldn't unlock the encapsulation structure of this thing—considering that forcibly invoking more computational power might damage the normal parts of the mind, I didn't let her continue."

This time, even Hu Li, who had been dozing off, and Luna, who had been staring blankly, immediately came over. Hu Li's eyes were wide open, her golden-red pupils full of surprise and curiosity. "...This has been inside Ailin's 'mind' all along?"

Yu Sheng also immediately asked, "How long has it existed? Can you tell?"

"A long time—at least far before this 'Boundary Bridge Crisis,'" Marlene said gravely. "Although Ailin herself seems unaware of the existence of this thing, the bottom layer of her mind has been conducting high-intensity interaction with this huge data structure. Maris scanned a massive amount of log fragments and error messages in her mind—but apart from 'ancient age,' almost nothing useful could be analyzed."

Yu Sheng listened attentively. After she finished, he thought for a while, then touched his chin and said, "So, this thing could even date back to three thousand seven hundred years ago, when Ailin first tried to fuse with the Omen Goddess..."

He stopped halfway through his muttering, and then a memory seemed to flash in the depths of his heart.

Yu Sheng suddenly remembered something: after he entered the large cavity in the center of the Black Dot Lab, after he saw the 'plush bear' that carried Ailin's final memory, the golden-haired Ailin had said a passage in her final log—

"'She agreed to my fusion proposal and chose to voluntarily give up most of her consciousness, only hoping that I could preserve a special set of data from her memory. The scale of that data was astonishing, but harmless—I couldn't understand what it was, but it was clearly of extraordinary importance to her.'"

A special set of data... astonishing scale... harmless but incomprehensible...

Yu Sheng's eyes shifted slightly. Some information that he had subconsciously ignored after the incident ended came back into his field of vision as he reorganized his thoughts.

Hu Li immediately noticed Yu Sheng's expression change. "Benefactor, have you thought of something?"

"One thing..." Without delay, Yu Sheng immediately told the people present what he knew.

After finishing, he paused and added, "At the time, I thought the 'special data' mentioned in Ailin's log was the memory fragments of the Omen Goddess's home world that I saw afterward."

"Memory fragments wouldn't have such a large scale, nor such a complete data structure and tightly sealed 'shell,'" Marlene immediately said. "This thing was clearly carefully crafted."

"Right, carefully crafted..." Yu Sheng said softly, his gaze falling back on the holographic projection beside him. The striking red cube floated in the 'mist' symbolizing memories and consciousness clouds, occupying nearly half the space of the projection, with countless tiny specks of light flickering and wandering at the boundary between the cube and the 'consciousness mist.'

Each flash seemed to represent a large-scale data exchange operation.

Inscrutable, incomprehensible, carried out in secrecy, endless—Ailin had been processing this astonishing 'abnormal data' in the bottom layer of her mind, possibly even never stopping when she was sealed in the oil painting, yet she herself knew nothing about it.

Luna stared at the holographic projection in midair, silent for a long while, before breaking the silence haltingly. "Ailin, brain, not good, is it, because of this?"

Whether it was an illusion or not, Yu Sheng even felt that Luna's words carried a hint of concern.

"That's... hard to say," Marlene shook her head, with a somewhat embarrassed expression as she spoke. "Such huge abnormal data obviously occupies a massive amount of storage space, plus the mental computational power consumed by continuously processing this data, it definitely has some impact on Ailin's everyday thinking. But then again—during the check, Maris found that Ailin's mental redundancy is enormous. Maintaining daily life actually doesn't take up much of her computational power, so even if this 'mental burden' has an effect on her, it's actually very small."

Marlene always speaks so euphemistically that Yu Sheng took a moment to understand her meaning. "Oh, so you mean her situation is simply because she doesn't use her brain in everyday life, right."

Luna beside him also nodded. "Not that brain not enough, is that not used."

Marlene blinked, as if trying to maintain her usual elegant demeanor, but it seemed she could barely hold it. "You could also say it's a free and unrestrained personality, a chic way of life..."

She couldn't keep up the pretense.

Yet there was no hint of mockery on Yu Sheng's face.

He was just thinking of the golden-haired figure who faced the out-of-control alien god three thousand seven hundred years ago.

He thought of the constantly decaying corpse of the goddess in the Omen Temple.

The long escape journey, death and decay, sealing and slumber.

Finally, he thought of that little puppet sitting on the roof under the sunset, holding a pan and looking at the sky.

She said—

"Okay."

Then there was no problem.

"As long as it doesn't affect her, then there's no problem," Yu Sheng said. "Is this 'foreign object' harmful to her?"

"As far as I can see, there's no 'harm'—ignoring the mental resources it itself occupies," Marlene thought for a moment and said meticulously. "The biggest problem is that it generates and accumulates some log data, but these things themselves are constantly cleaned up by Ailin's bottom-level mind. And compared to the resources occupied by the 'abnormal data' itself, the impact of those logs is almost negligible."

"Can this thing be dealt with?" Hu Li beside him also asked curiously, pointing at the holographic projection. "For example, transfer it somewhere else, or store it in your 'Garden Network' or something... Or simply delete it?"

As soon as Hu Li finished, Marlene's expression instantly turned serious. "I strongly advise not to touch it."

Yu Sheng quickly understood. "...If it can run, don't touch it, right?"

Marlene nodded slightly.

"This 'abnormal data' may have existed in the bottom layer of Ailin's mind for three thousand seven hundred years," she said solemnly. "Even if it itself is in an encapsulated state and hasn't interacted much with other mental data, its long-term existence has already subtly changed Ailin's mental structure. Add to that the fact that Ailin once fused with the Omen Goddess, and this data might also have a connection with the Omen Goddess..."

"In short, the relationships are intricate. Let alone touching the 'abnormal data' itself, I didn't even dare let Maris recklessly touch the error messages and seemingly useless idle threads it generated."

Yu Sheng didn't speak, just silently nodded.

A bug is a bug, but a bunch of bugs can work.

That Ailin's messy head can now work normally is already a miracle. If we really start tinkering and mess something up, it won't be as simple as getting bitten a couple of times by an enraged little puppet...

Just as Yu Sheng was thinking this, Marlene suddenly spoke again.

"Now that we have recovered Ailin's original shell, although it cannot directly affect the 'abnormal data' in her mind, the restart of this shell should be able to relieve her mental pressure to some extent."

Yu Sheng immediately looked up. "How so?"

"Ailin's current situation is very special—her mind is not stored in a specific body, but is distributed and running in a huge 'puppet network,'" Marlene explained patiently. "Although in my opinion, this 'puppet network' that you and she created together is somewhat... unbelievable, but according to Maris's inspection results, this network is indeed running stably."

"And if Maris's further calculations are correct, after Ailin's 'original shell' is integrated into the puppet network, it will further improve the operational efficiency of the entire network. Although we don't know how much impact it will have, an increase in the network's total computational power inevitably means that the mental pressure caused by the 'abnormal data' will relatively decrease."

Yu Sheng was silent for a moment.

But suddenly, a thought came to his mind—something Ailin had mentioned to him before.

After the mass-produced shells exceeded a certain number, she seemed to feel that her mind had become much 'sharper.'

"...So it turns out that creating clones really does increase her computational power!?"

(End of Chapter)