Chapter 66: The Foolish Assembly Line

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Imaginary Space.

The atmosphere here burns hotter than ever before.

This heat is different from the fervor before the cataclysm. Before disaster struck, what people couldn’t do in reality, they sought in games—games exist to let us live out dreams impossible in the real world. After the cataclysm, those things became possible, at least in theory; the allure of games should have diminished greatly.

Yet every era has its own ways to play.

Previously, games were for chasing dreams. Now, they’re for venting emotions.

What choice is there? Reality is suffocating—it’s the apocalypse, after all.

Oppressed by superiors, forced to scrape together money for gear. Eyes stabbed by the gleam of a boss’s bald head. Girls lost to the charm of a superior’s handsome face, leaving others to fail in their pursuits...

Rarely is there a place to be so uninhibited.

Vengeance is impossible in real life, sometimes not even mentionable. But inside the game, you can freely gang up and beat down as you please.

Games are addictive, whether for chasing dreams or venting frustrations; there’s always one to suit you.

Let’s put it this way: the battles here are fiercer, more spectacular than before the cataclysm!

Take the simplest snow map in CS, for example.

At the start, everyone spawns with guns, crossbows, javelins, grenades, or swarms of stones.

One javelin-wielder pole-vaults onto a house. A crossbowman fires a tracking arrow in a dazzling arc. The pole-vaulter twists midair to evade, but—BOOM!—a grenade explodes at his feet, blasting him skyward.

“Rat-tat-tat... swoosh swoosh swoosh... bang bang bang...”—bullets, arrows, stones, fireworks, all trailing him as he tumbles away in the blink of an eye.

From then on, it’s spectator mode, watching through someone else’s eyes.

“Damn it! Not again!” Junyuan Guan nearly throws his helmet in a rage, reaching out to grab it, only to catch a bald head. Suddenly he remembers: this is the game; you can’t grab the helmet without logging out.

A group of teachers chuckle in secret, intensifying their efforts. Coordinating with the other side, they swiftly take out Ximen Qiong, whose movements appear shaky but are actually cunning and unpredictable. Now, the match officially begins!

Bullets fly, arrows are blocked by pans.

Counter-terrorist mode specializes in ranged combat, but there are close-quarters modes too—like Overwatch, League of Legends, King of Glory...

In other modes, Junyuan Guan’s favorite hero is an Indian woman, flamboyant and strange, able to deploy multiple cameras at once, automatically locking onto targets. A rapid barrage of beams swiftly eliminates opponents.

Junyuan Guan feels this is quite similar to his own abilities.

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Of course, this is also why he gets relentlessly targeted when switching modes. For new players, the Indian woman is simply infuriating, ruining the game experience.

Their side is wild with excitement, while Alpha Princess quietly observes nearby.

Half of her CPU threads simulate the world to support the game’s progress; the other half frantically collect combat data from everyone present.

From a character perspective, nothing escapes her notice—every breath, every tremor is recorded in the newly created combat template.

Artificial intelligence learning sounds light as a feather, but its essence is even lighter—statistics! (A Nobel laureate said this, not me—ha!)

To simulate a human or dinosaur running on a computer, with only bones, joints, and corresponding weights, the computer must run hundreds of thousands, even millions of iterations, bumbling like a toddler, just to barely learn how to walk; hundreds of millions more to discover the proper running pattern, gradually picking up speed; more iterations still to run with strength and grace.

And this is only relatively simple running.

Combat is far more complex!

It requires nearly every bone and muscle; demands every possible movement—flexible, coordinated, robust, swift, sharp...

Each movement has a theoretically optimal pattern.

How many such patterns exist?

Take badminton, for example.

Basic footwork includes starting, seven fundamental movement steps, positioning for striking, five return steps;

Basic tactics: five for the front court, five for the mid court, four for the back court...

Just matching footwork and tactics yields hundreds of patterns to optimize.

And then there’s grip style, left or right hand preference... Combine them and you easily get over a thousand!

After a century of development, the hundred-meter sprint has almost a single optimal technique, but depending on individual talent and training, dozens of methods have emerged.

With badminton’s thousand patterns, how many training methods would it take to reach the best?

Combat is even more complex and random than badminton. To become the strongest, with billions or tens of billions of movements to optimize, there must be billions or tens of billions of patterns.

This isn’t just simple infinity—it’s the second level of infinite numbers [Note 1].

The opening of Imaginary Space allows others to supply data; otherwise, even with F91’s computing speed, Alpha Princess couldn’t hope to tackle this.

Supercomputers may not suffice.

The real limitation is human lifespan—not enough time to finish the calculations...

While Alpha Princess is busy, Ye Chao is equally occupied.

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Using bartered materials, he crafts new holographic sensory helmets.

Based on feedback from the first batch, he promptly corrects issues: custom-fitted square-head versions for Fang Ju, round-head ones for Junyuan Guan, and versions with holes for those worried about damaging their hairstyle...

This is actually quite efficient—saving materials. As long as the key electrodes are placed correctly, the shape matters little.

It didn’t take much time; with experience, production becomes easier. Crucially, Imaginary Space assists with manufacturing, basically functioning as a fully operational, infinitely precise lathe.

Create a qualified part, prepare materials, then copy, copy, copy... yielding countless components.

With all kinds of parts produced, assembly follows, and the finished goods roll out.

The most troublesome aspect is sourcing materials and assembly.

But even that has solutions.

Currently, Alpha Princess can only create NPCs in Imaginary Space with singular, almost mindless functions. These NPCs lack interactivity, but are perfect for the assembly line—working 24×7 without pay or complaint, outdoing even online writers.

Disassembly and assembly lines are being tested. Though not fully finished, efficiency is already visible.

Once operational, Ye Chao’s task will be to take materials from the end of the disassembly line, process and duplicate them, then load them onto the assembly line—saving even more time and effort.

This allows him to devote more time to making Iron Man suits!

Yes, Iron Man suits.

Note 1: I wanted to find a symbol for an infinite number, but couldn’t. It’s a Hebrew letter called Aleph. I hoped everyone would search for it, but after checking, it turns out there’s no related entry, so I must explain it myself.

The first level of infinity is the set of real numbers. This includes sets of natural numbers, rational numbers, etc. Though nested, all are infinite, and their sizes can’t be compared—they’re considered the same tier. Looks large, but it’s nothing special.

The second level of infinity treats the set of real numbers as a unit, then composes infinitely many such sets.

To visualize: the first level describes all points on a line; the second level can fully describe all geometric points in lines, planes, and volumes—far superior to the first.

The third level of infinity, as you might guess, treats the second level as a unit, then composes infinitely many second-level sets.

The significance of the third level is that, theoretically, it can describe every geometric curve in space numerically.

These three levels basically cover all numbers imaginable—nothing else left for us to count...

Even the number of atoms in the universe is but a trivial first-level infinity.