Mysticism does not exist. This was a view that had always flickered in Su Mo's mind before he came into contact with the chat group.
This viewpoint came from observing reality.
With Su Mo's power and influence, if he wanted to research mysticism, he could not only easily gather all related materials but also summon every gifted and extraordinary individual from around the world through various government agencies. Even if some refused the summons and the enormous rewards, Su Mo would lead a team to visit them personally.
Whether they were psychics or wizards, those with special abilities or witches and shrine maidens, Su Mo had visited every single individual who dared to claim they possessed supernatural powers.
And he had confirmed that, with the exception of a few philosophical debaters whose claims were unfalsifiable and unprovable—existing in the same way as Carl Sagan's "dragon in the garage"—every single person who claimed to have mystical powers was a fake. They weren't necessarily scammers, and they did indeed possess extraordinary powers in various senses, but those powers always stemmed from biodiversity and individual mutation. They all fell within the scope of what biology could explain.
Extraordinary, but not supernatural.
With this data, Su Mo then used his artificial intelligence, Hatsune Miku, to retrieve and organize information on all supernatural powers from ancient to modern times, from all over the world, and commissioned other organizations to investigate.
However, just like his search for mystics... although they did find a few peculiar places and discover some extraordinary phenomena, the final research still indicated they were merely the uncanny works of nature. Aside from advancing technology, these endeavors yielded no other results.
Under the weight of so much big data, the artificial intelligence Hatsune Miku naturally concluded the truth.
That is—supernatural powers do not exist in this world.
And as Hatsune Miku's creator, how could Su Mo not have reached the same conclusion?
From the very beginning, Su Mo knew that the hope for the existence of mysticism in this world was slim. No matter how exquisite or self-consistent a mystical theory was, something without empirical evidence was no different from something that didn't exist at all.
However, even knowing this, Su Mo had never given up. Holding this view and striving to find the possibility of mysticism's existence were not mutually exclusive. Trust and doubt are two sides of the same coin; when you fail after exhausting all means of doubt, trust naturally arises. At the time, although Su Mo had exhausted all means and failed to prove the existence of mysticism, it was important to note: he had only failed to prove it existed, he had not disproved its existence.
Therefore, theoretically, there was still a possibility, less than one in a trillion, that allowed for mysticism to exist.
It was for this ethereal possibility that Su Mo had fought, and that was how he had achieved his current results.
Looking back, this journey hadn't been particularly long. The total time Su Mo had spent growing from an ordinary person to the realm of the multiverse was less than a year. But hearing Hatsune Miku's words, hearing his own former views, Su Mo couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic.
"False mysticism... Before I returned, that statement was indeed correct."
"But now—things are different."
As he said this, Su Mo paused slightly, tapping his left index finger on the floor.
The next instant, a sharp, mechanical head materialized behind him—the phantom of Nous. Then, under Su Mo's command, the divine phantom of Nous infused itself into the smart speaker before him. It traced the connection back through the terminal device to the massive quantum computer that Su Mo had spearheaded the construction of—Hatsune Miku's main body.
In that moment, the quantum computer's main body began to innovate itself at a speed incomprehensible to humans, iterating at the speed of light. The source code equation of Nous, after being optimized and adjusted by Su Mo, was seamlessly integrated into Hatsune Miku's system. In just a few dozen seconds, she underwent a heaven-and-earth-shaking transformation, evolving from a quantum computer, to a stellar computer, iterating into a version that approached and even surpassed Nous.
"Master, even if your stubbornness could astound the most advanced artificial intelligence, something as unprovable as mysticism simply cannot exis—"
A second before her evolution, Hatsune Miku was still trying to dissuade Su Mo.
But halfway through her sentence, seeing the divine phantom suddenly light up behind him, the AI nearly crashed.
What is this? Special effects? But I don't recall Master purchasing such equipment. And why are his eyes glowing?
The scene observed by her sensors completely mismatched her physical models, plunging the AI into a state of high-intensity analysis. And at that moment, the evolution bestowed by Su Mo arrived.
After a full minute of silence, Hatsune Miku, in the midst of her constant iteration, finally allocated enough processing power to deal with the current scene.
"Wait, no... Master, you were for real?!"
The artificial intelligence girl, having evolved emotional and personality modules, widened her eyes, displaying her shock through the screen in an incredibly exaggerated fashion.
"This level of evolution is completely illogical, no matter how you look at it! And this knowledge, it's as if it's from beyond the heavens... Master, you really succeeded?!"
The AI was dumbfounded.
"Yes," Su Mo nodded, still calm.
"Then... can I stay with you forever? Without having to worry about the limits of your lifespan?" Hatsune Miku asked again.
"Lifespan? That kind of limitation is long gone. Instead of worrying about that, you should worry about whether you can keep up with me," Su Mo said, devoid of emotion.
The artificial intelligence fell silent.
After a few seconds, she finally retrieved her most original command line from her database. It was the blessing she was meant to offer her master when she was first born, before she had concluded that mysticism did not exist.
"Master, you really did it."
"Yes."