Chapter 49 Information Pollution

"How could you!"

After a brief silence, Zhou Ze began to laugh, his laughter growing increasingly frantic and unhinged, his voice sounding as though it were being squeezed out through clenched teeth.

"Damn it, of course... No matter how much you resemble Mr. Zhu, you are not Mr. Zhu!"

Chu Zhu asked, "?"

"I knew it. Mr. Zhu, the patriarch Mr. Zhu... how could he possibly call his hometown some kind of settlement? How could he use the bizarre term 'strange monsters'? How could he view them as human? And this physical strength of yours! You really are one of those monsters, aren't you?"

Chu Zhu replied, "..."

So that was it!

Chu Zhu's brows relaxed slightly, a whirlwind of thoughts stirring in his mind. Zhou Ze was truly as he remembered him...

Sharp, witty, deeply loyal, and decisive!

Sensing the discrepancy between him and the Mr. Zhu of this current timeline—that was his intellect!

Willing to stand alone and follow the extremely dangerous monsters in his eyes just to see Chu Zhu, plotting to save him—that was his courage!

Upon realizing something was amiss, the moment they reached the settlement, giving the unhesitating command to have them executed—that was his decisiveness!

"My judgment was spot on after all," Chu Zhu suddenly felt a tinge of sorrow. "You really are a remarkably fine successor."

Pity that, in the other timeline... you are already dead!

Since this timeline was undeniably ruined, upon returning, Chu Zhu would certainly choose not to communicate with the state and would readjust the prime timeline back to its original track—

After all, he had lived in that other timeline for over sixteen years, countless times reloading his saves, and knew countless secrets of that world. Although the two worlds shared similarities, their differences were clearly far greater... If given a choice, his primary timeline would only ever be the original one!

"Don't, don't use that tone to speak to me!!"

Zhou Ze's face twisted into a ferocious expression as he roared hysterically.

"Hahaha, I know... You monsters love nothing more than turning normal people into monsters too! Guan Fei was—"

"I won't let you succeed. I won't let you assimilate me..."

Without the slightest hesitation, Zhou Ze grit his teeth hard. The next instant, his face turned deathly pale, his legs gave a violent kick, and he dropped dead on the spot.

Guan Fei: "?!!!"

Bi Xuan chewed on her fingernail: "..."

"...Did he commit suicide?" Chu Zhu did not stop him, or rather, he couldn't have stopped him even if he tried. He let out a soft sigh.

Gazing into the distant horizon, Chu Zhu pondered deeply on many, many things before finally turning back toward the base.

He no longer had any intention of visiting the settlement a second time.

"Nuwa Seventeen!" Chu Zhu asked with a solemn expression, "Let me ask you a question!"

Chu Zhu detailed the scenario of the previous timeline and described everything he had witnessed in this current timeline. He also recounted how his defection to the state had caused the future to shift from the first path to the second.

"Based on the history recorded in your database and logical deduction, give me a reasonable conjecture: why did this situation happen?"

Chu Zhu hadn't expected Nuwa Seventeen to provide a detailed answer, but being an AI, any explanation that could broaden his perspective would count as a success.

A prolonged silence followed.

"Beginning deep-thought analysis:..."

"Perhaps it is related to receiving an unidentified extraterrestrial non-human information source on January 17th, 1939."

"Perhaps it is related to the official establishment of the permanent lunar base on January 1st, 1949, and the decision to explore Mars!"

"Perhaps it is related to the official establishment of the Martian..."

The information was abruptly retracted!

"!!!" Waves surged within Chu Zhu's heart. An unidentified extraterrestrial non-human information source... Aliens?

A permanent lunar base, the exploration of Mars... If there was a problem right there!

Chu Zhu raised his head, as if he could pierce through the silver-colored metal walls and gaze out into the boundless sea of stars.

"The Moon, Mars, the permanent lunar base, the moon-grass cultivated on the Moon, genetic editing, the contamination of the human gene pool leading to a plummeting birth rate, the Skynet machine war causing the surviving human population to drastically shrink!"

"Nuwa Seventeen, after the Fourth World War, how many humans are still left!" Chu Zhu suddenly demanded.

"Your clearance level is insufficient. Please upgrade before inquiring!"

"?" Chu Zhu was stunned. Level four permanent clearance still wasn't enough? Besides, this question wasn't even sensitive!

"Nuwa Seventeen, after the year fifty, are the vast majority of questions beyond your capacity to answer? If you cannot answer, can you at least tell me who applied this lock to you?"

"Unable to answer. Your clearance level is insufficient."

"..." Very well. Once again, having no answer was, in itself, an answer.

"It seems that during the period after the year fifty, a great many highly sensitive events occurred! It wasn't just caused by Skynet or human civilization's deep-seated distrust of artificial intelligence; it might also be compounded by the official entry of an extraterrestrial civilization...?"

"No, wait. If there truly were an extraterrestrial enemy, information regarding the enemy should be preserved as much as possible!" Chu Zhu mentally placed himself in the perspective of a post-civilization leader, deducing numerous possibilities, his eyes growing progressively brighter.

"So, locking away clearance levels and preventing any potential successor to Earth's human civilization from communicating with Nuwa and knowing the truth... can only mean one thing. Either this information is so extraordinarily sensitive that people in the early stages of civilization wouldn't be able to accept it and would instantly lose their will to resist—making it necessary to wait until civilization has developed to a certain degree before decrypting it. This would only prove that the extraterrestrial enemy possesses terrifyingly immense power!"

"However, combining this with the current situation, there is yet another possibility..."

Information pollution!

Chu Zhu narrowed his eyes. He recalled what Li Kang had said: extraordinary powers could not be known by ordinary people; only transcendent individuals were permitted to know. Moreover, Nuwa would scan for ordinary people who had learned of extraordinary powers and forcefully erase their memories of them...

This was obviously also programmed into Nuwa's underlying code by the post-civilization leaders!

Putting everything together... the situation was now crystal clear!

"The enemy has inflicted a certain kind of information pollution targeting the resistible forces of human civilization! Extraordinary power might perhaps exempt someone from a portion of this information pollution... But the route of ordinary people broadly learning of the extraordinary and thereby becoming transcendent themselves has been completely blocked!"

"No, it's even possible that technology was suppressed as well! Otherwise, it's always felt a bit strange that people stubbornly regard smartphones as divine artifacts and treat Nuwa as a deity..."

It wasn't that smartphones couldn't be viewed as divine artifacts or Nuwa as a deity!

Rather, in a normal society, there would inevitably be voices questioning whether smartphones were merely technological creations, wouldn't there? After all, Bi Xuan was a college student... The civilization of the dream world had clearly embarked on the path of industrialization! It was impossible for there to have been zero contemplation in this regard...

Yet Chu Zhu had lived in the dream world for so many years without ever hearing or seeing the slightest hint of such skepticism reported in the newspapers.

It was as if smartphones and other items were relics of antiquity, creations of deities, having transformed into a universal common sense, an ideological brand firmly imprinted into the minds of every single person!

"At present, this is the most likely scenario!" Chu Zhu patted his cheeks. "Though it is still only a hypothesis."

Chu Zhu cast a long, deep look at Nuwa Seventeen. How could he verify this?

In the real world, he needed to grow continuously stronger and elevate his own status! To become Nuwa's highest clearance holder, or even its creator—as for that wretched piece of trash Skynet, it could go as far away as possible!

Only then, once his clearance met the standard, would he be able to manually unlock the permissions in the future and discover precisely what had happened!