Chapter 1168: Chapter 1167: Automation

Downstream of the White River, in the Gran Region, a newly built large-scale factory stood on what had once been wasteland like a towering fortress. The main structure, built from gray-white artificial materials, had hard, straight lines, and its strictly utilitarian design made it completely different from the intricate and exquisite Mage’s Workshop of the old era, yet it also carried a certain rough and powerful "industrial aesthetic."

At the edge of the plant, a tall Magic Monitoring Tower was watching over the fluctuations of magic throughout the entire area, in order to prevent unauthorized spellcasting from interfering with the operation of the machines and communication systems inside the factory. Security personnel wearing light equipment were patrolling and standing guard at various intersections, protecting this key facility backed by the Administrative Office. A broad avenue extending from the riverbank ran straight through the entire plant; on the avenue, a black Magic-guided Vehicle was coming to a smooth stop in front of one of the workshops.

The door opened, and Lady Ropney Gran, wearing a dark-edged long dress, her hair pinned up, tall and slender, stepped out and turned her gaze toward the large workshop before her. Behind her, another figure also stepped out of the Magic-guided Vehicle, none other than the "Lantern Saintess" Selena Gerfen, who seemed almost ghostlike.

"So this is the main production area of Gran Heavy Industries..." Selena Gerfen lifted her head and saw the large workshop standing before her like a fortress. The hard, straight lines of its exterior were like sharp blades cutting through the clear and bright sky, while the material pipelines and liquid and gas pipes extending from the roof of the workshop stretched out like the blood vessels and nerves of monsters, connecting to other nearby workshops and distant high storage tanks. The industrial power contained within all this made her involuntarily narrow her eyes slightly. "Truly worthy of being one of the largest industrial bases in the south... I suppose I can understand why the King chose this place as the test site for the ’Wetware Intelligence Workshop.’"

"The Empire has invested a great deal of funding and preferential policies here. The King ordered me to use these resources to build an industrial base capable of supporting the entire southeast. What you’re seeing is actually only part of this large-scale plan—in terms of the bigger picture, all of this is still just the initial stage. In the future there will be even larger facilities and more factories appearing in this area," Lady Ropeney said, a proud expression on her face as she introduced the results of her years of work to her guest. "Aside from the residential districts and the legally designated farmland, woodland, and water source conservation areas, there is still a vast stretch of wasteland north of Gran City. Now, these desolate lands can finally be put to use."

As she spoke, this Lady could not help but glance at Selena again. Her gaze fell on the other’s legs, and she asked curiously, "Though it may be a bit rude to ask, you didn’t really need to ride in the car with me... As a resident of the network, wouldn’t it have been enough for you to simply appear in front of me once I arrived at the destination?"

"Life needs a bit of ritual—that’s something the King once said, and I think it makes a great deal of sense," Selena Gerfen smiled, her tone relaxed. "Letting oneself occasionally live like a ’living person’ in the real world helps maintain a clear self-awareness and prevents one’s mindset from aging and growing dull. That’s a lesson I’ve summed up over these past few hundred years."

"...Honestly, I just find it a little strange, especially when I think about the fact that you’re actually just maintaining a seated posture on a chair while synchronously flying along with the Magic-guided Vehicle..." Ropeney’s expression was somewhat odd.

"...All right, that is indeed a detail I failed to consider," Selena Gerfen looked slightly embarrassed for a moment, but quickly waved a hand to shift the topic. "Let’s not dwell on these minor details—has everything in the workshop been prepared?"

"Of course," Ropeney nodded with a smile. "Everything was ready as of yesterday."

Only at this moment did the plant’s responsible managers, who had come to greet them, confirm that the two ladies had finished talking. They stepped forward with their technical staff. After Ropeney exchanged a few brief words with them, she made an inviting gesture toward Selena. Selena had been looking forward to this moment for a long time. She lifted her head and saw the heavy mechanical gate at the front of the large plant building opening smoothly under the drive of ancient magical devices. A brightly lit workshop gradually unfolded before her eyes.

Inspecting the new-type workshop of Gran Heavy Industries was in itself one of the main tasks of her visit to the Gran Region, as important as observing Patty’s condition and verifying the effect of the Anti-Divine Barrier. As for why a "Node Scholar" like her, who specialized in the fields of neurology and networks, would be associated with a heavy industrial workshop, that had to do with the cutting-edge technology about to be put into operation here: wetware host, magic-conducting machinery, neural network—the three major technologies that the Cecil Empire prided itself on would be fused together here.

With anticipation, she followed behind Lady Ropeney, stepping through the alloy gate driven by magic-conducting machinery. After crossing a short connecting bridge and undergoing identity verification and entry registration, she finally found herself among those enormous machines, pipes, and cables.

Inside the exceptionally spacious and bright large workshop, processing machines two to three meters high and more than ten meters long were neatly lined up on both sides of the passage like steel monsters. Thick material pipelines slanted down from the upper levels of the workshop to connect to the tops of those machines, and various large-scale, structurally complex transmission mechanisms were linked behind the large processing machines. Together, these elements intertwined into the arteries and branches of this "steel court"—all of which would have been unimaginable wonders in the era of traditional Magic Workshop. However, by themselves, they were not enough to surprise Selena.

She had toured factories in other places as well; those factories also had magic-conducting machinery similar to what she saw here—at most on a somewhat smaller scale and in fewer numbers.

What truly warranted the attention of a technical expert like her here were the "nerve lines" that connected those machines—

Amidst the "arteries" formed by the interwoven material pipelines and transmission mechanisms, another complex network structure came into her view. These were pipes and cables wrapped in heavy, sturdy composite protective layers. They extended out from inside each machine, some plunging into the ground, others running along the workshop’s upper beams, stretching out toward some area either outside or inside the workshop. The surfaces of these lines all bore dark-red markings, and faintly glowing enchanted coatings covered various key interfaces or inspection points. A certain dim light flowed and flickered slowly within them, making these things appear almost alive.

In fact, they truly were alive—even sentient.

"All the machines here have actually been modified on the basis of existing equipment. Their primary working structures are still the original systems, only with new control units added—this has reduced the cost of upgrading the workshop by at least half," Lady Ropeney walked forward and tapped her fingers on the metal side panel of one of the large processing machines. "This is the newly added control unit—note, added. The original manual control section has been retained, so that manual takeover or emergency shutdown can be performed when necessary. Mr. Pluman, please open the cover."

The workshop supervisor addressed as Pluman immediately stepped forward and used a special key to open the steel cover that already looked very sturdy. Selena leaned closer, and the structure beneath the cover came into her view.

She saw a "magic symbol Palette" with delicately segmented sections installed on an internal rack, yet the ends of the magic symbol units were connected to dark-red biological tissue. That biological tissue grew out from a conduit deeply buried inside the machine, branching into one nerve strand after another, fusing with the entire "Palette" device like vines spreading and proliferating in the soil. Deep within those magic symbols, nerves, and conduits, she also saw another pipeline for transporting nutrients. Dilute biomass was slowly flowing through the pipeline, nourishing the neural nodes inside the machine.

At this moment, in Selena Gerfen’s eyes, one of the nerve strands suddenly seemed to receive a signal from an upper-level unit, the magic symbol connected to it lit up in response, and a low humming came from inside the machine. A few seconds later, everything returned to calm.

Lady Ropeney’s voice came from the side: "The system is running a self-check—the workshop’s neural network performs this kind of self-check at regular intervals, just like a workshop supervisor doing a routine walk-around inspection of the machines. But human eyes are nowhere near as sensitive as these nerves. These nerves can perceive the condition of every machine as clearly as a human being sensing their own fingers. All failures and potential failures can be detected and uploaded at the first possible moment."

Selena Gerfen nodded, rose from beside the machine’s "neural control unit," and stepped away. She looked up and saw a neural conduit extending overhead, merging and fusing with several other neural conduits, then disappearing into a large beam higher up.

"There are several kilometers of neural system and supporting biomass pipelines here. They communicate between machines, exchange data between neural nodes, draw nourishment from the circulation pumps and fission pools underground, and have reserved external interfaces leading to other workshops—but if we want to transmit data to more distant places, we still need to relay it through the Magic Web Nexus," Lady Ropeney explained beside her, raising her hand to point at a facility deeper in the workshop. "Next we’re going to the ’brain’ of this workshop, hmm... a brain in the literal sense."

Led by Ropeney and the workshop supervisor, Selena Gerfen arrived at the depths of the workshop. At the end of a connecting passage, she saw a large tower-like facility—it looked somewhat like the large distillation towers in an Alchemy Factory. Its lower half was embedded in a large opening in the workshop’s underground, while its upper half extended all the way to the workshop’s dome. A great number of pipelines and artificial nerve cords converged above it, feeding into the tower like blood vessels connected to a heart. A connecting bridge controlled by mechanical devices linked the middle section of this tower to the workshop’s main thoroughfare.

In front of this tower, Selena Gerfen closed her eyes slightly, and another layer of vision unfolded—this was a sight that ordinary people could not perceive with the naked eye, something only an Eternal Sleeper like her could see.

Currents of thought formed by neural impulses flowed quietly through this cold, steel-built workshop, weaving into a net.

In her field of vision, in a stretch of darkness, all the machines gradually began to glow. Tiny motes of light appeared inside them and converged, flowing along artificially designed pathways. They intersected in the air and underground, growing mighty like rivers of life, and finally connected to that shared source—that source was right before her eyes, an artificial brain formed by countless neural nodes converging together and emitting intense thought pulses... and there appeared to be more than one brain?

She opened her eyes, and the image formed by her transcendental perception was immediately replaced by reality. She saw Lady Ropeney stepping forward, while the tower that carried the factory’s consciousness was opening its door.

The interior of the tower was brightly lit. Three tubular devices, each with a diameter of two to three meters, were fixed to the floor at the center of the room, spaced several meters apart. Countless pipelines were neatly connected from above to the tops of those devices. In the center of these three tubular devices arranged in a triangular pattern, Selena Gerfen saw something half embedded in the floor. It resembled the carapace of some kind of insect, with a rounded arc on its upper half and an alloy base on its lower half—the strongest thought pulses were emanating from inside it.

"This is the workshop’s Main Brain—after it passes acceptance, it will also become the Main Brain for the entire industrial zone. The ones beside it are the backup and the Servo Brain. They each have different functions and can quickly take over the system if any one of the brains encounters a problem," the workshop’s technical director stepped forward. He was a veteran Druid; his sparse hair and sunken eye sockets testified to his professional reliability. "In theory, unless all brains die simultaneously, as long as even one remains in normal operation, the entire system will not come to a halt—at worst, efficiency will drop somewhat..."

Lady Ropeney walked a few steps forward and gently knocked on the "Main Brain’s" shell with her fingers. Accompanied by a crisp sound, the shell immediately opened slowly, revealing a crystal container filled with biomass solution, and the artificial brain soaking inside the container.

Immediately afterward, the three tubular devices around them also opened their own shells in response. As the alloy protective casings slowly lowered, the interiors of those devices also revealed crystal tubes filled with biomass solution and floating brains immersed in the liquid.

A large number of artificial nerve cords, metal needles, and fiber conduits were connected to those brains. If an ordinary human being saw this scene, they would probably find it... extremely stimulating.

But those who had worked here for a long time were clearly no strangers to all this—just as Druids and physicians were also quite accustomed to the appearance of corpses.

"These are neural docking units, which also include monitoring extreme nodes. The wetware host controls the workshop’s neural network through these docking units, perceiving and controlling all the machines. The monitoring extreme nodes allow our central control to be constantly aware of the condition of every Servo Brain, and they are also used to issue instructions to these Servo Brains," the technical director introduced this complex and advanced system from the side. "According to the deepest-level directives of the Servo Brains, they will only release commands outward after receiving a signal from a monitoring extreme node and verifying the operator’s permissions. If any part of this chain malfunctions, they will sever the neural network and, through the broadcast system, alert the workers in the workshop to manually take over the machines."

"This is to prevent anyone from hijacking the factory’s command authority," Lady Ropeney added from the side. "According to the King, once a system achieves a high degree of integration and centralized command, it also acquires the risk of having its permissions stolen. In the near future, taking over a factory may require nothing more than a single wrongly authorized command—that’s a risk we cannot afford to ignore."

"Ah... the King is indeed very good at this kind of network-level infiltration and permission manipulation..." Perhaps recalling something sweat-inducing, Selena Gerfen’s expression turned slightly peculiar for a moment. Then her gaze fell on the manual control console in the corner of the room, where a large red button stood out conspicuously. "What is that thing?"

"A one-key overclocking button, used to提升 the system’s operational efficiency in the short term, typically used when we need overtime production or to rapidly reset the system," the technical director replied immediately. "Its main working mechanism is to automatically inject syrup into the biomass pipelines when the button is pressed..."

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