119: Chapter 119 Overwhelmed

Since the personal space could hold living organisms, the other spaces should be able to as well. He tested them one by one and found it was indeed true.

However, this only allowed living organisms to survive inside for a period of time. The spaces contained nothing; they lacked a complete ecological environment. There was no sun, no wind, frost, rain, or snow, no air, and none of the basic environmental components of a biosphere.

He would still need to slowly collect soil, water, air, plants, and animals from the outside to fill them, but at most, he could only build an environment similar to a space greenhouse. It would still require manual regulation, had many flaws, and could not compare to a natural environment. Unless one day the space became infinitely large and could contain an entire planet, some important natural conditions could not be solved, such as the sun, gravity, the atmosphere, and so on.

The Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace had the ability to create a sun, but it was not stable. Calling it a sun was not quite right either. Without the constraint of its own gravity, it was just a super nuclear bomb that would explode instantly upon appearing outside the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace. Unless it reached a certain volume to generate its own magnetic field and gravity to constrain matter, it wouldn't work. But right now, even if he could create a sun with a radius of 10,000 meters, it couldn't generate a sufficiently strong gravitational field. The gravitational field produced by a planet like Earth was far from enough, let alone one that was only 10,000 meters in size.

Then there was the issue of the distance between the sun and the ground. The space was only 10,000 meters high; even at a distance 10,000 times higher, it would still roast any living creature.

Cao Xiao had considered using artificial lighting to replace sunlight, but this was only a stopgap measure. It might work for a short time, but the sun provided more than just light to living things; it also provided the energy necessary for the growth of various plants and animals. If the human body did not come into contact with sunlight for too long, it would cause physical illness, and plants could not grow healthily without the appropriate temperature brought by sunlight.

Gravity and an atmosphere were also essential. Currently, the gravitational environment in the space was just like being in outer space; things placed inside would just float in the air, and living organisms could not function normally within it.

Without an atmosphere, water and air cycles could not form, and thus no climate could be created. This was also a major factor in the failure of the biosphere artificial ecological cycle system experiment back then.

Even if it could only allow living things to survive for a short time, it was still pretty good. If he prepared enough supplies in advance, they could last for a very long time.

Cao Xiao really wanted to go in and experience it himself, but for safety's sake, he first "borrowed" various large and medium-sized animals from elsewhere and tested them for an hour. After confirming there were no safety risks, he took a new mobile phone without a SIM card out of the space, turned on the video recording function, placed it in front of him to record himself, and then Cao Xiao's body disappeared from the spot without any warning.

After a moment of dizziness, he found that everything before his eyes was pitch black, and his body felt weightless. He took out a prepared flashlight and shone it around. Not far away, he discovered the items that had originally been stored in the personal space. He tried to move towards them by using his hands and feet as if swimming, but his body position did not change in the slightest. He had long known this would be the result; he just wanted to experience the feeling of being in outer space.

With a thought, he gave the command to the space to move his body, and in an instant, he appeared in front of a large pile of floating gold.

He reached out and grabbed a gold brick; the twenty-plus-pound gold brick felt weightless in his hand. He threw it outward with force, and the gold brick flew straight to the edge of the space, sticking to the barrier without bouncing back. This violated the common sense of physics, but modern physics could not explain things like spatial barriers anyway.

After experiencing the feeling of weightlessness, Cao Xiao found it boring and returned outside with a thought.

He watched the video recording on the phone and found that after his body disappeared, there was nothing left in place, and the main body of the industrial mother machine did not appear there either. He was relieved and threw the phone into the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace, reducing it to powder.

It was now the early hours of the morning. Cao Xiao was getting sleepy, so he didn't delay any further and checked the remaining functional spaces.

The collection space hadn't changed much, but its functions had been greatly enhanced. It could perform both large-scale collection and precise extraction. It could be set to automatically absorb microscopic matter within a 10,000-meter radius centered on Cao Xiao's body. For example, it could be set to absorb gas particles, bacteria, microorganisms, cells, molecules, and even rays, particles, or light.

This function could be used to extract specific microscopic substances from mixed objects. Unlike the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace, which used physical technology to smelt and decompose, this was a pure spatial extraction. It would not destroy the structure of the mixture. However, if the object was a chemical compound, the chemical bonds would be broken, and the compound would undergo unpredictable chemical reactions.

The practical utility of this function was immense. It could be used for pharmaceutical manufacturing, assisting in cutting-edge scientific experiments, and even treating certain human diseases by extracting excess harmful substances from the human body without causing any harm. For example, to treat cancer, one would only need to strip and extract the cancer cells from the body; no cancer cells would remain in the diseased organs, and there would be no side effects. For example, to treat poisoning or infectious diseases, one could directly collect all pathogens and viruses into the space, and the body would naturally recover very quickly.

Of course, it was powerless against some autoimmune diseases, limb and organ damage, and neurological disorders, but this was already remarkable. Many incurable diseases that modern medicine could not overcome could be solved through this extraction ability.

Even without illness, the human body contained many harmful substances. Long-term accumulation could cause diseases and even seriously affect one's lifespan. For example, the long-term accumulation of toxic substances in the lungs caused by smoking led to permanent damage to lung function, naturally reducing organ lifespan and resulting in organ failure, thereby shortening human life. For example, harmful bacteria and parasites in the body caused long-term harm. Large amounts of harmful substances also accumulated in the skin, reducing skin vitality and changing its color and elasticity. By removing them, one could look younger and more beautiful. Compared to this effect, placenta extract, skincare products, and facelifts were all outdated.

If all harmful substances in a person's body were cleared away, it would be equivalent to a comprehensive purification of the marrow and essence. The benefits to the body were immeasurable. Although it could not extend one's lifespan, it ensured that the body's normal lifespan was not affected. If one cleaned it out every so often, someone destined to live to one hundred would definitely not only live to ninety-nine. Of course, this was assuming the person was physically sound and had no other diseases.

This ability was of immense help to Cao Xiao himself; he now had a few more methods at his disposal. Absorbing rays allowed him to be unaffected by the ubiquitous cosmic rays and electromagnetic radiation at all times; even standing in front of a piece of highly radioactive metal would not cause radiation damage to his body.

He could make the magnetic fields, electromagnetic waves, and electric currents within a ten-kilometer radius around him completely disappear, turning this area into a zero-gravity space state. All communication tools would be unable to transmit or receive signals, all electrically driven devices would be unusable, and living organisms would lose their bioelectricity; neurons would be unable to conduct reflex information, resulting in paralysis of the body and silence of the brain.

And the light absorption effect could prevent reflected light from the surface of any object from scattering, meaning no image information would exist for human eyes or recording equipment, achieving optical invisibility. If one absorbed all infrared rays, electromagnetic waves, and light emitted or reflected from an object, then no radar or optical thermal imaging equipment could detect its existence. This was simply a god-tier skill essential for home travel and killing! From now on, he could go anywhere in the world (quietly)!

Cao Xiao was currently too sleepy to even muster the energy to be happy, otherwise, he would definitely have laughed three times and indulged in self-satisfaction.

The processing space was split into two, divided into two independent spaces of 500 cubic kilometers each, and the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace was also separated into a Synthesis Furnace and a Decomposition Furnace. Their size had increased countless times, and the degree of material processing remained the same as before, with no changes. However, it could now process one hundred items simultaneously, increasing efficiency by several hundred times.

The Manufacturing Space had changed significantly. The shape of the space was no longer a square; it had become a rectangular parallelepiped with a height of 1,000 meters, a length of 50,000 meters, and a width of 20,000 meters. The original 3D printers and machine tools had disappeared, replaced by a stepped, pyramid-style, silver-white metal building with a rectangular base.

This building was called the Manufacturing Center. Inside, there were countless manufacturing devices, both large and small. It could mass-produce various products simultaneously according to blueprints, ranging from nano-robots to 10,000-meter-long star warships. However, the prerequisite was having the required materials and production blueprints; otherwise, even trying to manufacture a tungsten filament light bulb would be out of the question.

The research space brought Cao Xiao a big surprise. The smart brain had not only not grown larger, but instead had turned into a ball of light ten meters in diameter floating in the air. This was a true light brain, not a photonic computer.

A photonic computer is a new type of computer that uses optical signals for digital calculation, logic operations, information storage, and processing. It consists of optical components and devices such as lasers, optical mirrors, lenses, and filters. It performs information processing by directing laser beams into arrays composed of mirrors and lenses, using photons to replace electrons and optical operations to replace electrical operations. The parallelism and high speed of light determine that photonic computers have strong parallel processing capabilities and possess ultra-high calculation speeds.

However, a light brain is composed entirely of a kind of super-material energy photon. There are no electronic components or solid structures inside. It does not require any input or output devices and can be controlled through the user's voice or brainwaves. Its computing power is so formidable that it cannot be described. He didn't know what a computing power of 10^100 operations per second was really like because he couldn't find anything to compare it to. People who believe in such computing power would be speechless upon seeing it, and those who don't believe would also be speechless.

It wasn't just the smart brain that had changed; the research space itself could now be arbitrarily divided into ten independent spaces. Each space could be connected to the outside world through a portal, and within a range of one light-year, one could enter the research space through these portals. This function wasn't prepared for him; it was for people from the outside world to enter the research space. Connecting this to the name "research space," he finally understood the significance of the research space existing independently. A smart brain of small volume could be stored even in the personal space; there was no need to prepare a huge space separately.

This was a spatial laboratory specifically prepared for researchers. After all, no matter how strong a smart brain's computing and logical abilities were, it did not possess human wisdom and inspiration. It could only perform deductions and calculations step by step, and its creative ability was constrained within a fixed framework, lacking foresight and pioneering spirit.

Humans were different. Although their thinking was not as rigorous as a smart brain's, their imagination was unbridled. When inspiration struck, they could even spark amazing ideas, breaking free from the shackles of reality and conventional thinking to discover scientific theories and laws that shouldn't exist at the current level of civilization. Knowledge created by such inspiration could even make humans themselves disbelieve it, or perhaps even be horrified! One could imagine the emergence of the theory of relativity and the law of conservation of energy, as well as that destructive, eerie explosion suspected to be a meteorite impact back then, and that massive, strange coil.

He rubbed his throbbing temples and stopped thinking about those mysterious events he couldn't understand. The changes that occurred after his authorization level upgraded to level three left him overwhelmed and completely disrupted his plans. It was like the feeling of helplessness a minor character in a martial arts story felt when their internal energy suddenly skyrocketed to invincibility, or more like the feeling of someone with indigestion who had eaten too much food at once. He didn't even know how to plan for the future; his brain was in a mess, and coupled with the overwhelming sleepiness that came crashing down on him, he felt extremely uncomfortable and just wanted to have a good sleep.

Perhaps the energy space would have information prompts for the next authorization upgrade. He wouldn't be at ease without checking, so he forced himself to check the changes in the energy space. However, he found that apart from the space becoming larger, there were no other changes, and there were no upgrade condition prompts; there was only one atomic energy reactor standing lonely in a corner. He couldn't figure this out. Normally, when the authorization level was upgraded, the equipment in several spaces would automatically upgrade, but the energy space had nothing, and the only piece of equipment needed to be built by himself. Theoretically, the technological content of an atomic energy reactor was not as high as that of the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace, yet the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace was ready-made. It made no sense that everything else was equipped, but this one was left empty, and he was specifically given the construction blueprints to collect materials and build it himself. The super civilization that invented the industrial mother machine couldn't be lacking in such materials, right? Moreover, it was directly related to the authorization upgrade, which made it even more baffling.

He couldn't be bothered to waste brain cells guessing; these problems, including the industrial mother machine itself, were not something he could understand right now. Anyway, the newly appeared functions were enough for him to tinker with for a long time. It was impossible to upgrade the authorization level again in the short term, so he would sort it out to kill time when he was bored.

The most important thing now was to have a good sleep and forget about the troubles and confusion brought by this authorization upgrade. Cao Xiao closed his eyes, and within two minutes, he fell into a deep sleep.