Chapter 308 Weak Counterattack

"What happened?"

Mei ignored Kevin's panic, or rather, she had already accurately predicted what might happen next. Although the result might be hard to accept, at least she was mentally prepared.

On the contrary, Kevin, who had rushed in to say something, probably blurted out all the words he had organized in his mind while running just now. He pursed his lips again and again and did not speak for a long time.

"Let's go."

Mei did not say much, but took a step immediately. Kevin hurriedly took two steps back and waited for Mei to pass by him before following Mei closely with Ellie.

Mei's office was originally located next to the war room, and it didn't even take a minute to get there.

Seeing Mei coming, Erwin, Cang Xuan, Danzhu and Blanca all stood up, and they all took a breath of cold air. Finally, Erwin spoke: "Doctor, you'd better take a look at this." Erwin tremblingly handed a tablet from the table. Mei hurriedly stepped forward to take it. The tablet was obviously very thin, but it seemed to be very heavy in Erwin's hand, as if it would fall at any time. There was a paused video on the screen. The volume was muted probably to avoid disturbing other people's work. Mei raised her eyebrows. The scene when the video was still was very familiar to her. After a closer look, wasn't that the scene of the riot in the Third New Paradise City not long ago? She thought about it, pulled the progress bar back to the beginning, and then clicked the triangular play button. Of course, in the process, she also saw the title of this video——"The Fire-Chasing Moth Suppressed the Uprising in the Third New Paradise City?" 》

The video is not long, mainly composed of several clips. The first clip is from the surveillance outside the tower and the factory, which simply records the process of the crowd marching and gathering, and then suddenly goes black with a subtitle:

Why do they do this?

It is a double entendre. Mei tapped the edge of the tablet with her fingers and roughly guessed the direction of the plot. This "they" does not refer to the masses, but perhaps also refers to other people.

Then, the screen turned back to the surveillance at the gate of the first floor of the tower. It was the scene where Stanfa questioned Michael, and Michael was speechless. In the lower right corner of the screen, the author of the video also thoughtfully added the unfavorable information about the Third New Paradise City Hall that was previously posted on the factory TV.

The screen went black again, and the subtitles attached this time were the same as before, but there was an exclamation mark before the question mark:

Why do they do this! ?

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Although the sound was muted, Mei, as an eyewitness at the time, naturally added sound to the next picture in his mind.

It was a series of rapid and panicked gunshots, accompanied by violent shaking of the camera. It was the recorder worn by the military police at the time. They nervously pulled the trigger, emptied the entire magazine in one breath, and shot at the two black-clad bodies that fell to the ground.

Then the scene turned again, switching to the recorder worn by the military police holding the flail. From the first-person perspective, he kept swinging the weapon, beating the crowd that surged up, and even the front end of the flail covered with bone and flesh was thrown away because of too much force. The scene was once very bloody, and the picture went black at this time.

Is it over? Of course not!

The annoying white subtitles lit up again, and this time it read:

Do they even treat us as enemies?

Mei's index finger, which had been gently pressing the edge of the tablet, suddenly tapped the screen and paused the video.

She looked at the snow-white font for a full ten seconds before clicking the play button again.

As expected, the next video was a scene where Mikael used the power of death and the power of the stigmata to separate the rioting crowd from the military and police with green vines.

But the editor obviously had some thoughts. It did not show the whole process, but switched to the next scene after the vines broke out of the ground and separated the crowd.

Both the rioting crowd and the military and police had retreated, and the dust in the air was dyed blood red by the light of dusk, just like the ground.

The green vines were endless, many of which retained the posture of imprisoning human bodies, and the ground was covered with blood. From the perspective of the person holding the mobile phone, the blood even overflowed the ankles.

This was obviously a video of cleaning up the scene after the chaos. The red "blood water" on the ground was not pure blood, but the result of the military and police washing it with water.

But ordinary people naturally cannot tell the difference between blood and blood water. Such a scene can only make them think of the idiom "blood flowing and pestle floating".

The editor's intentions are self-evident in splicing the previous and next videos in this way.

Although it didn't say anything, it used this editing technique to frame the large number of casualties in the riot on Mikael, even though the fact was that Mikael did not kill anyone. On the contrary, it was because he used green vines to separate the crowd and restrain the activists in time that the casualties were prevented from increasing further...

But who would care about these after watching this video?

Next, as expected, there were several photos of Mikael standing high in the sky, opening the space crack. The photos themselves were blurry, and the editor also blurred them, making it difficult for people to notice the white track in the blue-gray sky behind the space crack. Even if they noticed it, the track looked no different from ordinary white clouds at a lower pixel.

And if you ignore those white tracks, although there are no subtitles, the feeling this photo wants to give people is——

The man in the sky wants to destroy the people on the ground.

After that, there were a few more photos, but they had nothing to do with Mikael. They were photos taken by others about the white tracks left by the missiles.

But is the editor contradicting himself?

Obviously not. It deliberately placed the result of this incident, that is, the result of Mikael opening a space rift over the city, in the front, and then placed the cause of this incident, the missile attack, in the back. Obviously the purpose is to split this complete thing into two parts.

Sure enough, the subtitles below are:

"The Fire Chaser fired a large number of ballistic missiles towards the Third New Paradise City. This is a photo taken by an eyewitness."

"According to internal information, the fuses of these missiles were forcibly turned off by a warrior within the Fire Chaser. I wish him well, he is a hero."

"..."

The video ended here. Mei took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Sure enough, she thought.

Being in a different place, if she were the Twelfth Herrscher, she would not resort to storming the headquarters.

Theoretically speaking, with the characteristics of the Twelfth Herrscher, humans can barely defend against its attacks again and again, but they can't do anything powerful to fight back. However, it can hide behind the scenes and only needs to succeed once. Do what the previous ten Herrschers could not do.

But this is not the optimal solution, and humans are not completely powerless to fight back.

In the past two hundred thousand years, humans have conquered fire, rivers, land, and thunder and lightning. If given enough time, it may not be unimaginable for humans to conquer the world of data.

Moreover, humans already have "Prometheus". The last time the Herrscher came fiercely, it seemed that Prometheus was defeated by the Herrscher, but she was caught off guard and still stopped the Herrscher's further invasion. , and turned off nearly half of the missile fuses, which may not be a success.

Prometheus is not a closed model. She is more powerful every day than the day before. After gaining preparation and experience, there is a question mark whether the Herrscher can successfully gain access to the headquarters again.

In such a situation, the war between Herrschers and humans will become a long-term tug of war.

Tug-of-war may seem unfavorable to humans, but it may not be a way to recuperate. The Herrscher's power is mainly concentrated in the data world. In reality, it is not as destructive as the previous ten.

Furthermore, it’s not that humans don’t have ways to deal with it——

Mei herself said before that if you want to completely kill the Herrscher, you must kill all its carriers, and this is impossible with the number of smart devices currently owned by humans.

But this sentence is actually biased. If civilization really reaches the point where it cannot defeat the Herrscher without this method, confiscating and destroying all smart devices, terminals, and servers may not be an option.

Even if there are still fish that slip through the net, Herrscher will not be able to expand its influence when most people in the world no longer own smart devices.

Therefore, if Mei were the Twelfth Herrscher, she felt that she would definitely focus outside the Fire Chaser headquarters.

That is to say, to draw fuel from the bottom of the cauldron and destroy the trust relationship between the fire-chasing moth and humans.

When humans can no longer trust the fire-chasing moths, the reason for the fire-chasing moths to fight will no longer exist.

Humanity will no longer be able to resist the ensuing end.

Thinking of this, Mei calmed down and asked:

"Has the intelligence team counterattacked with public opinion?"

"us……"

Erwin's face turned red and his words suddenly got stuck in his throat. It’s not that he doesn’t know the importance of the situation. The situation has become obvious by now. At least as the head of the Fire Chasing Moth Intelligence Department, he knows very well——

Unlike in the past, they only had to make soy sauce, this time, they will replace the fusion warriors and become the main force against Honkai.

In the past, ordinary people like them always complained about their powerlessness in front of Honkai and the Herrscher. Although they said it was so delicious, they might not be envious of those who could become fusion warriors.

But now, when civilization needs them most, they can do nothing.

"well……"

Blanca sighed and stood up to explain the situation for Erwin:

"Except for Fire Chaser's internal servers, the external Internet is almost completely out of control. We tried to compile the complete surveillance of the scene to refute, but those surveillance records have been deleted.

“Text responses made in the media are inherently weak, or cannot be posted at all, or are deleted the moment they are posted. Even if one is posted accidentally, it will be blocked by the algorithm, and few people will be able to see it.

"Doctor, is it possible to use the computing power of Prometheus to compete with the Herrscher? This is really not an option."

"no."

May flatly rejected Blanca's request.

Indeed, with the computing power of Prometheus, if it works with all its strength, it may not be impossible to preserve the voice of Fire Chaser Moth on the Internet.

But the risks are too great.

"All the computing power of Prometheus needs to be used to protect the headquarters base. If part of it is allocated to fight back, on the one hand it will increase the possibility of virus infection, and on the other hand it will also weaken the defense power of the headquarters. Doing so will only The gain will outweigh the loss.”

"But if we don't do this, we really... Excuse me, Dr. Mei, we don't know how to fight back on the Internet."

"But if we do this, the headquarters will be lost and the whole world will be destroyed. Don't forget that all the nuclear weapon launch keys and fuse unlocking keys are currently kept by Prometheus."

Although putting all eggs in one basket is extremely dangerous, there is no way. In a sense, the data world controlled by Prometheus may be the safest place in the world for a period of time in the future. If these keys are issued...

Uh...

The firewalls and heralds at the headquarters can enter the unmanned area, and the branches...

But if you say this directly, it will be a bit of a blow to morale. Mei was about to speak, and suddenly seemed to think of something, and waved his hand. Cang Xuan and Dan Zhu sat down consciously. Erwin, Blanca, plus Ellie and Kevin, the four of them followed Mei silently into the compartment behind the war room.

All the smart devices had been removed from the compartment. Mei dared to lower her voice and said here:

"There is no other way now. Weiwei has begun to rebuild the servers of No. 16 and No. 0. As long as their computing power after reconstruction can reach the level of No. 17, we will have room for counterattack. Now... we can only wait."

"How long do we need to wait?"

Blanca was not polite. After all, the situation was urgent and she didn't care about the hierarchy.

"It will take at least a month. The server of No. 16 is in the Arctic and the server of No. 0 is in Europe. We have to complete the migration work first, and then use No. 17 to check and kill viruses on their servers before we can start the most basic work."

"Then forgive me for being blunt, one month later..."

"I know..."

In front of close people, Mei can also take off a layer of mask a little. She took off her glasses, stroked her hair tiredly, and said helplessly:

"I know all this, but...is there any other choice?"

"Uh..."

Blanca choked immediately.

Everyone will ask questions, but if the problem cannot be solved, then there is no point in asking the question.

At least at this moment, it was meaningless.

There was silence in the compartment.

After a few minutes, Mei put on her glasses, stood up again, and her face returned to its stern look.

"If there is no new situation, I will go back. There are still a lot of city officials in the American branch to deal with."

Except for Michael who voluntarily walked into the crowd to die, the other city officials of the American branch ran away after the incident. It is not known whether they learned any news in advance. No one returned to their jurisdiction, but disappeared in unison.

Thinking of the inexplicable appearance of Stanfa and the bodies of Levi and the driver found in the secret room of the city hall, I always feel that these people are inseparable from the twelfth herrscher.

Of course, even if they have nothing to do with the twelfth herrscher, these people can't escape the death penalty. Ying has taken a team of fusion warriors to the American branch to find the location of those people. Once found, they will be killed without mercy.

But just as Mei walked to the door, Danzhu rushed to open the door from the outside.

The two almost bumped into each other. Before Mei could ask a question, Danzhu spoke again:

"Doctor, the TV station invites you and Mr. Vashak to participate in tonight's program..."

"Hmm?"

Now that rumors about the Fire Moth are flying everywhere, the TV station will naturally not miss such a good flow, and it is reasonable to invite them to the program.

"I can't go."

Of course, Mei has no time to participate in such a program, but thanks to the twelfth law, the whole world now knows that Vashak is just a puppet, and the real person in charge of the Fire Moth is Mei. If Vashak is still on TV alone, it is highly likely that no one will buy it.

However, can this program really be released? The entire external data world is almost under the control of the Herrscher. If the direction of the program is not good for the Fire Moth, the Herrscher will naturally be willing to release it for everyone to see.

If the direction of the program is good for the Fire Moth, it will probably be cut off by the Herrscher directly, and it is impossible to release it at all.

But this is more or less an opportunity, and it is the only weak counterattack that the Fire Moth can make in desperation. Of course, they have to go.

However, since Mei can't go, it would be better if there is a powerful person in the Fire Moth besides Vashak, and it would be better if he has basic self-protection ability, otherwise it would be a waste of time, right?

"Let Dr. Mobius accompany Vashak."