Chapter 1 "Soul?"

When Tang Yuan heard the voices of Su Zhou and the two Sacred Sages, he subconsciously stood up straight and exclaimed, "It has a soul?! When did this happen?!"

At the same time, in response to the atmosphere, the black car's onboard AI also activated the loudspeaker, exclaiming with emotional inflection: 【I have a soul?! When did this happen?!】

The unison was like a duet.

Tang Yuan and the onboard AI's voices caused the surrounding pedestrians and civil servants to turn their heads and cast curious glances, causing Tang Yuan, who was somewhat socially anxious, to feel his face flush.

The building housing the Security Bureau's conference hall was quite inconspicuous, and there weren't many actual pedestrians, mostly civil servants working in related departments. But after all, it was still in Tiandu's urban area, with a large flow of people, and it wasn't suitable to discuss anything there.

Just as Su Zhou, Tang Yuan, and Dao Sheng were heading to the underground parking lot, preparing to start a further discussion there, Su Zhou, while observing the black luxury car that was driving stably and automatically on the road, curiously turned his head and asked Tang Yuan, "Seriously, Tang Yuan."

"What exactly did you do to this car's AI to make it both smart and have a soul?"

Su Zhou's words were full of implications, but Tang Yuan's expression was incredibly blank and ignorant.

"I didn't do anything, just a normal commute… At most, it was just using the car's spiritualization to get around. I guessed it might have some effect, but I never imagined the effect would be so great!"

While muttering to himself, Tang Yuan looked nervously at Dao Sheng, who was frowning and thinking beside him.

The majesty of a Sacred Sage was still very heavy for an ordinary government employee like him.

And Su Zhou's question, as his direct superior, baffled him even more: "Actually, I really didn't know it had a soul until Minister you mentioned it!"

Speaking of this, Tang Yuan couldn't help but use his spiritual power, his eyes shining with spiritual light, to look at the black car beside him.

Tang Yuan had the strength of the Transcendence stage and could originally see all kinds of souls in the world.

With his spiritual-type divine power and psychic bloodline, if he seriously used his spiritual power to scan, an ordinary person's three souls and seven spirits would be seen through, with no room for concealment.

Theoretically, if the car had a soul, he would know immediately, and it wouldn't be up to Su Zhou, who had barely ridden in it a few times, to discover it.

But the black car wasn't an ordinary person without spiritual power after all—Tang Yuan gave it a serious scan, but could only see bursts of extremely bright spiritual power fluctuations, which looked like the sun up close, causing his eyes to sting.

That was the radiance released by the car's spiritual power engine when it was running.

Although the engine wasn't running at full power, its power was still like the sunlight of daytime, covering all the car's own spiritual radiance.

"Your strength is still a little lacking, and our car's soul is indeed quite weak and unusual, so it's normal that you can't see it."

Realizing this, Su Zhou laughed. He stretched out his hand, and a ring-shaped fluctuation enveloped the car.

With a thought, he suppressed the spiritual power engine's radiance radiating in all directions, confining it inside the engine—and then, like the stars appearing after the sun sets below the horizon.

As the engine's radiance dissipated, Tang Yuan suddenly saw a rather strange spiritual power structure floating in the car's system.

It was a weak spirit body, very different from a human soul, shaped like a '工'.

Its lower main body was located in the spiritual power engine, and its upper main body was located in the AI host. The two major parts were connected by a spiritual power line, interacting with each other with information and spiritual power, forming the most basic soul structure.

And this was the onboard AI's soul.

"No, no wonder I didn't notice."

Seeing this scene, Tang Yuan's mouth widened slightly. He couldn't help but mutter, "I've seen this before, and I thought it was just a normal spiritual power meridian… I didn't expect this to be the AI's soul?"

"After all, it's a non-human thing. When it condenses spirit and transforms into a soul, it's normal for its soul structure to be completely different from that of humans."

Dao Sheng replied solemnly, also watching this scene.

Compared to Su Zhou, who looked relaxed, and Tang Yuan, who was merely surprised, his expression was extremely grave, and he spoke to the air, "Chongwen, what do you think?"

【As expected, it still happened?】

In response, the voice of Yan Sheng, hidden in the network space and omnipresent, sounded from Dao Sheng's proxy terminal.

He sighed, and all the cameras in the parking lot and along the passageway began to twist, locking onto this ordinary car from different angles, as if 'staring' at it: 【Artifacts holding souls… trouble has come. I thought there would be a few years of buffer time, but I didn't expect it to appear now.】

"Yes, although it should just be a special phenomenon caused by long-term exposure to a high-spirit environment, now that the first case has appeared, then the rapid increase in a large number of cases in the future is also foreseeable."

Talking with Yan Sheng, Dao Sheng held his hands behind his back. At this moment, not only was his expression solemn, but his tone was also filled with immense worry: "Related countermeasures should also be started quickly, otherwise, it may be too late."

Every word and action of the two Sacred Sages revealed an extremely serious sense of gravity.

It was as if the fact that the onboard AI had a soul was a big deal, and would have very serious consequences.

This instead confused Su Zhou and Tang Yuan.

Especially Su Zhou, who scratched his head, but was quite puzzled in his heart: "Wait, is something happening that I don't know about?"

The young man glanced at the black car, which had already obediently parked in its parking space and didn't say a word, and then looked at Dao Sheng, whose expression was solemn, and said inexplicably, "I just came back from abroad, so I might be a bit behind on the news, and I don't know what's going on…"

"But, could this really be a very important thing?"

"It is. This is a crisis." To this, Dao Sheng turned his head with a solemn expression and met Su Zhou's eyes. He said with utmost seriousness, "A crisis that is unprecedented for human civilization, and may even cause its collapse."

Su Zhou: "?"

Tang Yuan: "?"

Unnamed Onboard AI: 【?】

Even the black car flashed its headlights because of this sentence, showing the unrest in its heart.

"No, what crisis is there?"

Su Zhou frowned slightly. He stretched out his left hand and patted the hood of his car, then casually swiped his right hand, reaching into his personal space, seemingly looking for something: "Cars have souls, isn't that normal in this world where spiritual energy is reviving?"

"Look."

As he said this, he had already grabbed the hilt of the Miedu Blade.

In a burst of metallic clanging, the somewhat puzzled divine blade, which didn't sense any enemies, was pulled out of Su Zhou's personal space.

The sharp silver blade, the thick crimson-black body, and the dark red lava patterns spreading on the side of the blade like blood vessels… the divine power of the strange divine blade stirred the surrounding spiritual energy.

The moment the Miedu Blade appeared, the temperature of the entire underground parking lot rose by three degrees. This was the result of Su Zhou slightly suppressing the aftereffects of the divine blade's power.

Everyone, including the black car, took a slight step back without changing their expressions, to avoid being affected by the power of the Miedu Blade.

Holding the divine blade, Su Zhou reached out and gently touched the spine of the Miedu Blade. The owner's gentle touch immediately made the divine blade feel extremely comfortable, and it made a powerful 'clang!' sound.

"Look!"

While stroking the blade, Su Zhou showed off to Dao Sheng, Yan Sheng, and Tang Yuan, "My Miedu Blade also has a soul!"

"Clang!" And the Miedu Blade was also very cooperative, vibrating energetically, and the incomparably tyrannical spiritual power fluctuations even ignited the dust in the surrounding air, spreading a ring-shaped crimson fire cloud.

After a long period of precipitation and the gathering of vows, the Miedu Blade can now be considered a top-level divine weapon. If it weren't limited by the purity of its main material, and hadn't already killed many powerful divine beasts, and even many supreme bloodlines, the Sky Devil King's divine blade wouldn't be strange even if it advanced to the Overlord-tier divine weapon.

And because the Miedu Blade was too noisy, and began to connect with the heavens and earth only a few seconds after appearing, wanting to expand its own domain, Su Zhou quickly sent the Miedu Blade back to his personal space.

But his meaning was already very clear.

——Is it really that strange for objects to have souls in this era of spiritual energy revival?

"After all, spiritual energy has revived, and it's very common for objects to transform into spirits. My knife can have a soul, and it was originally just a piece of sharpened iron. And AI at least has a set of precise algorithms that simulate intelligence. It's perfectly normal for them to generate souls under the influence of spiritual energy."

Reaching out again, patting the black car's hood, Su Zhou looked around at the two people in front of him, somewhat puzzled, "Could it be that you're worried about the rebellion of intelligent machines?"

"No way, no way, no way? What era is this? Spiritual energy has been revived for four years, and there are still people who believe in this, right?"

"Intelligent machine rebellion is indeed nothing to fear… Actually, most of the possibility of intelligent machine rebellion is just human imagination. We have specially studied this topic and ultimately negated this possibility."

Faced with Su Zhou's question, Dao Sheng thought for a while, and finally shook his head and said, "I only know the result of this. It's better to let Chongwen speak."

After speaking, he raised his hand and took off the proxy terminal on his left wrist, using spiritual power to suspend it in mid-air.

Yan Sheng's calm voice sounded from it.

【It's not strange for objects to condense spirits and give birth to souls… Su Zhou, your divine blade was able to develop intelligence because it has killed many powerful enemies. This is especially common. In ancient times, some people even deliberately fed weapons with blood and used evil ways to refine the spirits of swords.】

【A more righteous method of containing spirits is to take a part of a person's body as the main material to forge a weapon, and then use the spirit of the original owner to nurture the weapon's spirit. Spending more than ten years can naturally cause the sword to condense spirit and be born with a soul.】

【In addition to this, anecdotes about various pieces of furniture and objects giving birth to souls because the owner has invested a lot of emotion are also common around the world.】

【The theory that all things have spirits, and the eight million gods of Yingzhou, are talking about this kind of situation. Various tsukumogami (tool spirits) in daily life are very common in today's Yingzhou society. There are even cases of deliberately cultivating various tsukumogami to show off and compete. If Su Zhou has paid attention, he should know that today's Yingzhou has a special 'domesticated elf' competition to evaluate which family's tsukumogami is better and stronger. Yingzhou's national comprehensive competition has such a branch.】

"Ah, this…"

"Tsukumogami competition?"

Yan Sheng's words not only left Tang Yuan dumbfounded, but even Su Zhou was slightly stunned.

Domesticated elves… no, domesticated tsukumogami competition?

This kind of thing was really beyond his imagination.

Although the Zhuzhao Group did support many folk sports projects in Yingzhou, it was mainly hosted by Qiming, and who could have imagined that the people of Yingzhou could open their minds like this?

Secretly taking out his phone to search for related information, after reading a rough overview, Su Zhou was immediately amazed by the open-mindedness of the people of Yingzhou.

【The first Domesticated Elf Comprehensive Competition opens!】

【Let everyone see my electric fan tsukumogami, isn't it cute? It will automatically cool and always follow you!】

【How to cultivate your own little elf, ten tips for spiritual containment and cultivation.】

【How can you get your tsukumogami to be close to you?】

These are actually small things. On the Yingzhou network, the most popular thing is still the competition between tsukumogami.

Videos of things like table tsukumogami fighting TV tsukumogami, or water-steel dual-system fish tanks fighting fire-electric dual-system electromagnetic stoves really shocked him.

And the sumo match between refrigerator tsukumogami and wardrobe tsukumogami, showing off their *shiko* stances to each other, was even more bizarre, making one wonder if this scene was happening on Earth.

——Actually… they can play like this?

"Amazing! The imagination is beyond ordinary people!"

"But after all, this proves my idea, right?"

Praising a few times and putting away his phone, Su Zhou nodded. He said strangely, "Look, incidents of various artifacts condensing souls are emerging one after another. They have existed since ancient times, and they can't be considered a crisis at all."

"On the contrary, this will become a means of entertainment. Everyone raises spirits, just like raising pets."

Su Zhou's thoughts were indeed very normal.

Even Tang Yuan nodded slightly, quite agreeing.

"It's not necessarily a pet…" The pale-faced young man even muttered in a low voice, "If you're with them for a long time, it wouldn't be strange to treat them as family, right?"

【Yes, it's indeed not strange. Whether it's pets or family, whether it's ancient times or the era of immortals and gods, this is not a problem.】

Yan Sheng first agreed with Su Zhou and Tang Yuan's viewpoints, but then his tone became serious: 【But, have you ever thought about it, if any artifact, any tool, can easily develop a spirit and have its own consciousness… then wouldn't this 'modern industrialized civilization' of ours, which is based on the close cooperation of tight-knit tools and a whole set of progressively developing industrial chains, completely collapse because of this?】

【The power grid system has a thunder spirit that cuts off the current, the communication network has a fairy that interferes with communication, the mobile phone suddenly can't be used because it has developed its own consciousness and wants to rest, and the rocket engine suddenly stalls and the satellite stops running are not impossible. And once it happens, the loss will be tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.】

Saying this, as an expert in artificial intelligence, electronic souls, and the traditional soul field, Yan Sheng Wu Chongwen's tone carried an extremely strong sense of worry.

【Intelligent machine rebellion? Let's not talk about whether intelligent machines have the logic and necessity to rebel against humans. Ultimately, the essence of the intelligent machine crisis is not the rebellion of machines, raising weapons against humans, but 'machines not operating according to human will.'】

【If you can understand this, then you will understand that as long as the machine has a soul and becomes an intelligent machine… then there is no need for any rebellion at all.】

Speaking of this, Yan Sheng's voice even turned stern.

【Their very existence is a huge crisis for our civilization.】