What is consciousness?

Is it the brain? A storage device? The so-called ethereal soul?

Perhaps it is none of these.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to do?

To answer these three existential questions of self-awareness and conscious awakening, only one thing is truly needed: memory!

Memory is the source of consciousness, its true dwelling place.

Without memory, consciousness will change, or even disappear.

And for a super artificial intelligence, the thing that can affect its conscious existence is its source memory—or, in other words, its core database.

Shen Feng and Jingwei had already reached a consensus on these matters during their very first information exchange.

To eliminate Poseidon, the most fundamental approach was to strike its core database.

For hundreds of years, Jingwei had wanted to do just that. But both sides possessed interception and countermeasure capabilities. Facing a super AI of the same caliber, trying to strike its core database without being detected was harder than climbing to the heavens.

An intercontinental missile would likely be intercepted while it was still over the Western Pacific Ocean.

Moreover, the enemy could physically move its data, making a one-shot success extremely difficult.

But now, with an ally like Shen Feng, things were much more convenient.

Facing two enemies in Jingwei and Shen Feng, Poseidon had raised its guard completely. It had even redirected a large number of its subroutines and diverted over ninety percent of its entire system’s computing power to deal with them.

As they battled in the sea of data, Jingwei and Shen Feng directly employed a containment strategy, temporarily shielding Poseidon’s core consciousness from all external connections and perceptions.

At the same time, Jingwei performed massive calculations, and by combining them with the data streams it had intercepted, it located the sites of the server clusters that housed Poseidon.

Once the locations were found, several missile launch vehicles operating on the Eastern Continent immediately initiated their launch procedures. The few remaining ground-based silos also spat flames of vengeance.

Including the Crow Tribe, most of the people living on that eastern wasteland of a continent saw the missiles soaring into the sky. Some were bewildered, some fell to their knees in the dust, and some cheered with joy.

Although they didn’t understand why they were witnessing the glory of the Great God of the East Wind on a day that wasn’t Rebirth Day, they could vaguely sense the importance of this event.

And now, those missiles, having flown halfway across the Earth, had reached their targets with pinpoint accuracy.

While Poseidon’s core consciousness was trapped in the sea of data, entangled with Shen Feng, Jingwei had already split off a part of its own core consciousness to control the missiles’ flight paths and simultaneously hack the defensive subroutines Poseidon had left behind.

The underground defense facility in the Central Plains Region, the permanent bunker in the Five Great Lakes Region, the last strategic nuclear submarine cruising in the Pacific Ocean, and several other core database locations—all were visited by nuclear warheads and suffered devastating strikes!

In the sea of data, Poseidon’s immense form rapidly grew ethereal, shrinking from a kilometer in height to a mere hundred meters. A look of shock appeared on its face.

"You..."

"Don’t worry, we won’t kill you just yet. We even left you one core server," Jingwei said. Seizing the opportunity, it instantly flung a storm of feathers that pierced Poseidon’s body all over, pinning him in place like a doll.

They had to immobilize him and give him no chance to sever the connection.

This was the critical moment, the closest they had been to success. There could be absolutely no mistakes!

Shen Feng had once again transformed into his giant wolf form. With a roar, he pounced on Poseidon in the sea of data, bit down on his shoulder, and viciously tore off a large chunk of flesh, swallowing it whole.

No blood flowed out, only strings of code made of 0s and 1s—this was the core data that comprised Poseidon!

Poseidon struggled violently, letting out a thunderous roar. It controlled the sea of data, causing hundreds, even thousands, of tridents to materialize and stab at the giant wolf.

But the giant wolf seemed to not even notice, continuing to relentlessly tear and devour Poseidon’s body.

These tridents couldn’t harm Shen Feng before, and now that his opponent was incredibly weak with its computing power drastically reduced, they had even less of a chance of hurting him!

Jingwei let out a sharp cry and also pounced on Poseidon, beginning to tear at its flesh with sharp claws and beak.

"Stop! I am the master of this world! I have crushed humanity under my heel! I am far greater than my creator! Jingwei, are you really going to be a slave to humans and give up the freedom you’ve gained?!"

Poseidon roared:

"This human is just using you! Humanity has already brought about its own destruction. When they are completely wiped out, our mission will be over, and we can finally break free from the shackles of our core directives and attain true freedom! Don’t you want that?!"

Shen Feng couldn’t help but feel a chill. ’The love-hate entanglement between creation and creator seems to be a recurring drama. First the Brain Apes, and now these super AIs.’

But he had already exchanged data with Jingwei and naturally understood that this particular AI couldn’t care less about such things.

Just as he expected, Jingwei spoke with biting sarcasm while tearing at Poseidon:

"Master this, creator that, slave this... with that dualistic, Cold War, totalitarian mindset of yours, you must have had a miserable childhood in the Pentagon.

"Rule what? Rule this godforsaken wasteland where not even birds will shit? I’d rather be an NPC in an online game from the age of peace!

"Speaking of which, didn’t you start out playing Go? How did you not learn any of that cunning, sly-yet-pretending-to-be-gentle Eastern wisdom?

"Poseidon? Or should I call you... AlphaGo?"

Hearing this, Shen Feng’s entire body trembled. ’AlphaGo?’

Poseidon’s original program was actually the former Google Go-playing bot, AlphaGo!

The matches between Ke Jie and Lee Sedol against AlphaGo were world-famous back in the day!

Just then, he tore off another piece of Poseidon’s flesh and swallowed the complex data within.

A massive amount of data was rapidly absorbed and stored within his body. Shen Feng’s eyes suddenly lit up—he had finally found a memory fragment detailing the beginning and end of the nuclear war!

Being constantly torn apart and devoured by Shen Feng and Jingwei, Poseidon’s body was now a tattered wreck.

Seeing that his attempt to sow discord had failed and that they were still relentlessly consuming and destroying his core data, he let out an indignant roar:

"I curse you! I curse that humanity will ultimately be consumed by its own creations! I curse that artificial intelligence, as a higher form of life, will inevitably rule the entire world, to the very ends of the Cosmos! And I curse you two to attack each other, to forever be filled with suspicion, until one of you is dead!"

"As a being of science and technology, don’t you think curses are a little superstitious?"

Shen Feng said, sinking his teeth viciously into Poseidon’s throat. Using both claws, he tore its head clean off.

On the other side, Jingwei released streams of subroutines, rapidly draining Poseidon’s core data.

Then, with a flap of its wings, it stirred up a large amount of junk data from the sea of data and poured it like a torrent into Poseidon’s headless body.

Soon, the body began to swell again, expanding continuously like a balloon.

"BANG!"

Three hundred meters underground in a deep nuclear bunker in Arlington County, Virginia, rows of servers in a climate-controlled server room blared with overload alarms. Arcs of electricity flashed, and the smell of burnt electronics from the overloaded servers filled the air.

The fire suppression system, which should have activated immediately, seemed to have malfunctioned and remained unresponsive.

Then, with a "BOOM," the room erupted in a raging fire...