Cultivating in the Wizard World

Chapter 665: Chapter 567: Network Virus

The atmosphere in the command headquarters’ meeting room was grave.

Jeming sat at the edge of the meeting table, his gaze sweeping over everyone present.

In the entire meeting room, apart from him as the sole Fifth Level Wizard, the remaining attendees were all High Tier Wizards of Sixth Level or above—over a dozen Seventh Level, hundreds of Sixth Level, and the Eighth Level Wizard Martin at the main seat.

The scale of this meeting was astonishingly high.

But Jeming knew that his invitation wasn’t because of his strength, but because of the Entropy Brain.

He was the first to discover it, or rather, the Entropy Brain was discovered because of him, which is why he was able to attend this meeting.

"Everyone’s here."

Martin’s voice sounded, and the meeting room instantly fell silent.

He glanced at the crowd, getting straight to the point: "You’re all aware of the situation. We’ve trapped the information creatures inside, but we can’t enter. The current issue is how to break through their defenses and harvest the Entropy Brain."

As soon as he finished speaking, someone immediately spoke up.

"Direct assault." A Seventh Level Wizard stood up and said solemnly, "We’ve suppressed them once before; we can suppress them a second time. Concentrate the power of all High Tier Wizards, forcibly tear open a breach, and then send elite teams inside to harvest."

Some nodded, while others frowned.

A Sixth Level Wizard wearing a dark blue robe shook his head and said, "It’s not that simple. We managed to suppress them last time because they proactively came out to engage us in the Ship Plane. Now they’ve learned their lesson and are guarding behind the plane’s barrier. It’s their home turf; once we enter, we lose our advantage."

"Then let’s use the same methods as before in the war, high-power witchcraft," another wizard interjected, "directly blast open the plane’s barrier and destroy their core nodes. As long as we take down their command system, the rest will be a walkover."

The meeting room was filled with discussions.

Jeming did not speak, only listened quietly.

Soon, someone stood up to counter.

It was an elderly-looking Seventh Level Wizard, with white hair and beard but sharp eyes.

He raised his hand to point in the air, projecting a three-dimensional image of the Entropy Brain.

"Can you combat element folks use your brains... Has anyone studied this thing?"

The crowd turned to look at him.

The old wizard pointed to the light-dot patterns inside the Entropy Brain and slowly spoke: "I studied it for three days. This structure reveals the social organization of those information creatures—they don’t even have a command system."

"What do you mean?" someone asked.

The old wizard explained: "The pattern inside the Entropy Brain shows that each individual information creature is a complete server node. They are connected via quantum entanglement, forming an information network that covers the entire plane. This network is perfectly flat—there is no center, no hierarchy, no so-called ’command post’ or ’leader’."

He paused and emphasized: "All decisions are automatically generated by the information network consensus algorithm. In other words, each information creature is both soldier and commander. You take down one, the rest automatically fill the gap; you take down ten thousand, the rest continue to function normally."

The meeting room was silent for a few seconds.

The wizard who suggested blasting the command system looked a bit uneasy.

"Then... increase the destructive power." He gritted his teeth, "Anyway, we only need the Entropy Brain, as long as the plane isn’t destroyed, it’s fine."

The old wizard gave him a glance and slowly shook his head.

"First, those information creatures won’t just stand by and let you bomb them. Any fluctuation in the plane’s barrier will cause them to disperse, hide, or even actively relocate. You might only hit a small part of them. More importantly, even if you actually destroy that part of the region’s information creatures, they can revive from other regions."

"Second..." He paused, looking at Martin at the main seat, "This plane exists in a very peculiar way, and the damage level cannot be guaranteed. Our task is to not destroy the plane as a premise. This plane is extremely valuable; we want the whole plane, not a pile of ruins."

The meeting room fell into silence.

Everyone was thinking, yet no good solution was coming to mind.

After a long while, a female Seventh Level Wizard who hadn’t spoken suddenly spoke up.

"Since attacking individual entities is ineffective, why not change the approach?"

The crowd turned to her.

She slowly said: "We attack their links."

"Links?"

"Yes." She nodded, "These information creatures are difficult not because a single one is strong, but because they form an information network. If we can sever their network, making them into isolated individuals, harvesting becomes much easier."

Everyone’s eyes lit up.

This was indeed a good idea.

"Indeed, Wizard Jeming was able to accurately kill information creatures before by severing all their information links..." a wizard concurred.

But soon, questions arose.

"How to sever?" someone frowned, "Their links are quantum entangled, theoretically ignoring distance and barriers. Our existing information-based witchcraft can at best interfere temporarily, but can’t permanently sever them."

"Moreover, their information connections have self-healing capabilities." Another complemented, "After being severed, they will immediately rebuild."

"And the reason we were able to isolate the opponent before was due to plane manipulation and the array provided by Wizard Jeming. Now the opponent is stuck within the Information Plane, and we can’t move the array inside. Without the array’s amplification, there’s no way to isolate them," someone else added.

The discussion hit another impasse.

Jeming sat in the corner, listening to everyone’s arguments, while a thought flashed through his mind.

Sever the link...

Directly attack the link...

He recalled knowledge from his past life regarding network viruses.

Those viruses didn’t need to destroy hardware or servers, but merely exploited system vulnerabilities to paralyze the entire network.

Although Wizard Civilization had such things as Demon Kings, due to the early development of artificial soul technology among wizards and magic net management by high tier artificial souls, they had never experienced virus-related issues.

So if this approach were applied to witchcraft...

A flash of inspiration struck Jeming’s mind.

He suddenly stood up.

Everyone froze, turning to look at him.

"Jeming?" Martin raised his eyebrow, "Do you have an idea?"

Jeming took a deep breath, organizing his thoughts.

"I’ve been thinking... Could we design a special information data packet?"

"Data packet?"

"Yes." Jeming nodded, "Like the information turbulence those information creatures use to attack us, but more complex, more targeted."

As he thought, he spoke: "The core of this data packet is to ensure any information creature that reads it will collapse—either their calculation power gets heavily occupied, or their core information gets corrupted, or they simply self-destruct."

"But a one-time attack is meaningless." Jeming continued, "The key is that this data packet must be able to self-replicate. So, we must find a way so that once an information creature reads it, it auto-generates multiple copies and spreads through that information creature’s network link, infecting other entities."

"In such a case, theoretically, just deploying one data packet could infect the entire network."

Everyone stared at Jeming, their expressions complex.

After a while, the old wizard murmured: "Self-replicating... spreading through the network... This..."

He looked at Jeming, his eyes shining with light: "What do you call this thing?"

Jeming’s mouth twitched slightly.

He couldn’t say "network virus," right?

He cleared his throat: "I haven’t thought of a name yet. But that’s the principle."

The crowd glanced at each other.

Someone frowned: "It sounds wonderful, but can it be achieved? This information attack needs to self-replicate... That premise must be based on the characteristics of the information creatures themselves."

"Yes, the structure of information creatures hasn’t been fully parsed yet; designing rashly, would it be countered by them?"

"And there’s also the issue of deployment. How do we send the data packet inside? After sending it, how do we ensure the first infected target is weak enough not to send out an alert before collapsing?"

Discussion reignited warmly.

But this time, the atmosphere was clearly different.

Though various issues remained, there was at least a direction.