Super Gene Ⅱ: Evolution

"We still need to get the Life Base of the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon. How do you plan to deal with her?" Ouyang Yudu asked.

"A living one is naturally more valuable than a dead one, let's bring her with us. Don't worry, with me here, she won't escape," Lin Shen understood Ouyang Yudu's meaning and thought for a moment before speaking.

Anyway, the Fire Seed inside Flarela had to be obtained first, and it could only be done above the Sea of Flames.

Once back at the camp, a character like Flarela could only be handed over to the Celestials for management; there was no way Lin Shen could take her away.

Ouyang Yudu and Wei Wufu didn't say anything. Since Lin Shen had captured her, they had no objections to how he decided to deal with her.

Lin Shen himself felt uncomfortable holding Flarela, so he summoned the Evil Dragon and placed her on its back, letting the Evil Dragon carry her.

The injured Fallen Seraph had long since transformed into particles and returned to Flarela's body. As long as she was not dead, the Life Base could not escape freely; it had to return to her body.

Unfortunately, after Flarela's acupoints were struck, the Strength inside her body had difficulty circulating, and she could no longer summon the Life Base.

Lin Shen and Wei Wufu followed Ouyang Yudu to search for the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon. Lin Shen hoped they wouldn't find it too quickly; it would be best to search for a few more days. He needed at least one night's time, to first retrieve the Fire Seed from Flarela while she slept.

Ouyang Yudu took them first to Fire Rock Island, where the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon was most frequently sighted. However, upon arrival, they found no trace of the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon.

"Should we wait here for the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon to appear, or go check out a few other places where it might show up?" Ouyang Yudu sought Lin Shen and Wei Wufu's opinions.

"Let's wait here," Lin Shen said quickly, fearing that they might find the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon too soon if they went elsewhere, without giving Wei Wufu a chance to speak.

"Alright, the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon is often seen here, so waiting a bit is fine," Ouyang Yudu said and landed on Fire Rock Island.

Fire Rock Island looked much like the mainland, made up of red-brown sand and rocks. However, Ouyang Yudu explained that the sand and rocks here wouldn't explode on impact, unlike those on the mainland.

Lin Shen picked up a handful of soil and squeezed it; indeed, there was no explosion. If it were soil from the mainland, squeezing it like that would cause it to crackle like firecrackers.

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Lin Shen lifted Flarela down from the Evil Dragon's back and placed her on a sandy area leaning against a rock. He sat down beside her, "I need to watch her. You two can go around if you like."

"Wait..." Wei Wufu sat down next to him, showing no desire to wander off.

Ouyang Yudu also sat down nearby, "This area is where the Crimson Flame Starburst Dragon roams. Other creatures dare not come near. To hunt for Ascended Creatures, we'll have to go elsewhere."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Lin Shen was now feeling frustrated. Although he normally enjoyed the company of these two, their staying here made him very uncomfortable.

It was like bringing a girl back to his dorm room and then hinting in every way possible to his roommates, hoping they would leave for a while, but the roommates wouldn't even step outside the door.

"Forget it. When night falls, I'll sleep next to Flarela under the guise of guarding her. It shouldn't be hard to retrieve the Fire Seed while she sleeps," Lin Shen calculated in his mind.

He didn't dare to say it outright, fearing a problem might arise with Wei Wufu.

If Lin Shen talked about killing Flarela, Wei Wufu wouldn't care, but if he mentioned sleeping with Flarela, Wei Wufu would definitely stop him from doing so.

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Of course, Lin Shen wasn't really going to sleep with Flarela, but he couldn't explain this to Wei Wufu, and the matter of Fire Seed simply couldn't be explained.

Seeing that it was getting late, with only a little more than two hours left before the sunset, Lin Shen could only wait patiently.

With nothing else to do, Lin Shen couldn't help pondering the question posed by the Thinker once again.

How exactly should one define being alive? Is the existence of carbon-based life fundamentally the same concept as that of intelligent machines?

Like a car, if it can still be started and operated, can it be said to be alive?

But if defined this way, the meaning of being alive seems too broad.

"Do humans and intelligent machines truly have any essential differences? Could the ability to learn be the difference between them? Obviously not," Lin Shen thought deeply.

Human learning, just like with intelligent machines, is a process of discovering and recording.

Humans cannot imagine something they have never seen or understood, like the various deities and monsters that they have conjured up from thin air.

What seems like pure imagination is actually not totally made up, as all of the mythological creatures in these legends are not imagined from nothing, but rather are combinations of elements from things humans have seen.

For instance, an Angel is simply a human body with a pair of bird's wings, and a true dragon has the antlers of a deer, the face of a horse, a snake's body, a fish's tail, and so on.

As far as Lin Shen knows, he can't think of any mythical creature that is purely a product of imagination without any basis.

From this standpoint, the so-called learning ability of humans is no different from that of intelligent machines – both are merely copying and pasting.

Lin Shen dwelled on this not to prove he wasn't an intelligent machine; whether humans are intelligent machines or not is irrelevant to him.

Lin Shen felt that as long he could live and feel everything in the present, what he actually was didn't matter one bit.

The reason he kept contemplating this was because he thought of something highly intriguing.

If humans and intelligent machines are the same, then could one just find the right method to directly transfer knowledge into one's storage device, or in other words, the brain?

Yun's Valkyrie's Protection seemed to possess such ability.

Lin Shen's memory was average, his talent for practice varied – sometimes high, sometimes not so much – which might be due to his uneven skills. If he could find a way to directly store knowledge into his brain, then he wouldn't have to bother learning all those things.

Although Valkyrie's Protection was a route, it had too many limitations, and besides, not every skill could be first learned by Yun.

"If I regard myself as an intelligent machine for the moment, then Evolution Skill, could it not be a process that allows upgrading the system, absorbing external materials, and upgrading one's own configuration?"

"If that's the case, this system could be man-made or perhaps made by something else intentionally. As the Thinker said, could it be a shoddy program written by a lowlife, one that actually has the potential for optimization?" Lin Shen slowly mused over the question.

"Previously, I practiced a flawed version of Evolution Theory and its effect was even better than the original. Later versions of Stepping on the Immortal Court and the Twenty-Eight Fists, after modifications, also worked normally. Could this suggest that the system program within my body has been optimized through modifications?

If I could optimize my own system even better, might it allow for the smoother operation of various programs, that is, better so-called talents..."

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