I, Stone Golem, only want to forge.

Chapter 130 Computing Power Balance

Murphy stared at the thing for a long time, and the number kept dropping.

The number 490,000 does sound like a lot.

However, based on this fluctuation range, it jumps two or three points per second, more than a hundred points per minute, six or seven thousand per hour, and more than ten thousand per day.

At this rate of decline, it will probably be zero within three or four days.

As for what will happen after the system is wiped clean, Murphy has not seen it with his own eyes, but based on experience, the base may come to a complete standstill.

However, this seems a bit too coincidental.

It hasn't been here long, and this thing is already almost broken down. The timing is just too perfect.

It's as if it was specially prepared for it.

A brain in a vat that was about to run out of energy had just three or four days left when it arrived, enough for it to take a tour, and it just so happened to shut down shortly after it left.

The coincidence was so striking that it aroused a hint of suspicion in Murphy's mind.

Murphy didn't care that he was being schemed against.

But it can be quite unpleasant if everything you do is planned by others, and every step you take is pre-arranged.

Fortunately, after the numbers on the screen jumped for a while, they inexplicably and suddenly rose by several thousand points.

Murphy had already turned to leave, but when he caught a glimpse of the numbers on the screen suddenly jump up, he stopped and looked back at the screen for a while longer.

It discovered that although the numbers on the table kept decreasing, every now and then they would inexplicably jump up suddenly.

The exact amount of the increase varies; sometimes it's a few thousand points, and sometimes it can jump directly to tens of thousands of points.

The overall trend is in a delicate dynamic equilibrium, with the total increase slightly exceeding the total decrease.

Therefore, the overall trend is one of slow upward growth.

This eased Murphy's doubts somewhat.

The two of them walked around the brain in the vat.

After confirming that there was nothing else worth seeing in this area, Murphy continued walking deeper into the control room.

The fan-shaped layout of the central control room narrows as you go further in, with a semi-circular wall at the deepest part, and a metal door on the wall that matches the style of the several sealed doors outside.

Murphy walked to the door, and the scanning device on the door lit up as usual, turning on with a ding.

Behind the door was a short corridor, at the end of which led to a large, circular office building.

Murphy walked down the corridor into the circular office building and then stopped.

It finally saw what it had been longing for all along.

This circular office space is quite large.

In the very center is a huge metal sphere.

The surface is made up of countless curved metal plates, with evenly spaced gaps between them.

Without a doubt, this thing is a tentacle-shaped mechanical device specifically designed for office use.

To be precise, it is a central operating unit that integrates multiple robotic arms.

It is currently not powered on, standing quietly in the center of the office, with all the metal panels tightly closed.

Murphy walked halfway around the giant metal sphere, searching through the craftsman's memories for the corresponding activation method as he went.

Following the layout conventions he remembered, Murphy walked to the diagonal side of the circular office building.

Sure enough, there was an inconspicuous little box against the wall.

The box was embedded in the wall, and its surface was a metal cover that blended almost seamlessly with the wall's color, so it was almost invisible unless you looked closely.

Murphy reached out and lifted the cover, revealing a scanner with a numeric keypad.

But before its fingers even touched the keyboard, the screen on the scanner lit up by itself.

A pale blue scanning beam was projected from the top of the instrument and quickly scanned Murphy's face.

Then a line of text popped up on the screen: Identity confirmed, operation authorization approved.

This scanner verified Murphy's identity on its own, without even requiring him to enter a password.

Soon, the huge metal sphere in the center of the circular office building reacted.

The closed metal plates began to slowly open, unfolding layer by layer like a flower blooming, revealing the inside of the sphere and several thick mechanical tentacles curled up at the very center.

As the last metal plate folded into place, all the tentacles sprang out from the center of the sphere.

Immediately afterwards, a sphere slowly floated up.

Murphy's gaze fell on the spinning sphere, and the memories of the tentacle machinery in his mind became clearer and clearer.

It instantly realized what the brain in the tank in front of it was for.

The entire network of tentacle mechanisms operates without any traditional control panel.

The core processor of the entire system is that rotating sphere mentioned above.

It is responsible for continuously collecting all relevant information in the surrounding space, analyzing and processing it, and then issuing instructions to control the tentacles to perform specific tasks.

However, the sphere itself is not responsible for large-scale computational processing.

When the complexity of the task exceeds the sphere's own processing capacity, the data will be uploaded to a higher-level processing unit in some way.

That is, the brain in the jar that's soaking in the glass container.

Murphy suddenly stopped, turned his head sharply, and looked at the eyeball on his shoulder.

This eyeball seems to have the same structure.

A small sphere with several thin tentacles trailing behind it.

The eyeball noticed Murphy looking at it and shook its body.

The three tentacles swayed gently in the air, then curled back up and settled themselves back on Murphy's shoulder.

But this time, surprisingly, it didn't express any opinion. It just lay there quietly, its eyes on the ball half-closed, as if responding to Murphy's gaze with silence.

Murphy didn't know if the eyeball truly didn't know its relationship with the system in front of it, or if it knew but couldn't say it.

In either case, if it doesn't say, Murphy can't press it for details.

It could only pull its gaze away from the eyeballs and then immediately turn away again.

I quickly walked back the way I came to the screen in front of the Brain in the Vat.

It stared at the numbers flashing on the screen.

Just as it predicted—the number jumped a tiny bit faster than before.

Before Murphy activated the central control ball, the balance was being consumed at a rate of two to three points per second, steadily declining from a base of over 4.97 million.

Now, the frequency with which that number is dropping has clearly increased, to about four to five points per second.

This perfectly confirms Murphy's earlier deduction.

The sphere wasn't collecting and processing data independently; it was merely a relay station.

The sphere is now activated, even though Murphy hasn't given it any specific instructions and is merely keeping it in standby mode.

The sphere continuously scans the surrounding environment for information, then packages the data and uploads it to the brain in the vat for processing.

Therefore, as the workload of the brain in the vat increases, the rate at which the balance is consumed also accelerates.

Murphy stood in front of the glass jar, watching the brain slowly floating in the transparent liquid.

A hypothesis suddenly popped into my head.

If the brain in a vat only processes data within the base.

Therefore, the computing power required to maintain these basic functions should be relatively fixed.

Even if there are fluctuations, they won't be too significant.

The numbers have been dropping, which is understandable.

The doors Murphy just went through were all automatic, the corridor lights along the way were motion-activated, and the fan at the stairwell is still running.

Whether it's monitoring the security status of the entire base or maintaining the basic operation of various infrastructures, this "brain in a vat" clearly needs to continuously process data in the background.

Therefore, it is perfectly normal for there to be some consumption.

Murphy was really curious about something else.

Where did those points that kept rising every now and then come from?

Theoretically speaking, the brain in a vat is a biological brain, not some strange mechanical processor.

Using it to process information would consume biological energy.

So, could the "balance" displayed on this screen be vitality?

As an energy source, vitality is actually quite durable.

Murphy thought about it more and more and felt that this speculation made some sense, so he activated his spiritual insight and prepared to investigate it carefully.

However, no evidence related to vitality was found.

However, Murphy was not disappointed.

Although the liquid in the tank did not exude any life force, it contained something else that Murphy was extremely familiar with.

The curse energy formed after the curse was refined by the mountain core.

Having figured out what kind of energy the Brain in a Vat consumed, it walked along the curved wall of the control room to the back.

Theoretically speaking, as the core control room of an entire base, you should have a complete facility layout diagram, right?

If Murphy could find the facility map, he could locate the device that supplies energy to the Brain in the Cylinder.