The tomb of the Tang Dynasty in Bailuyuan is 3,000 kilometers away, separated by the Loess Plateau, the North China Plain, the East China Sea and the archipelago.

The summer in Osaka is about to pass, and Qin Beiyang receives an admission letter from Kyoto No. 3 High School. In addition to the excitement, he felt shy. Yuwen went back to Nagoya to study. The money I earned as a craftsman in a monastery was far from enough to pay for future school fees.

So, he took up the pen and wrote a letter—

Anna:

See the words like meeting. Dagu mouth farewell, the end of the world is far away, I miss you very much! I'm fine in Japan, don't read it! I have been admitted to a higher education institution, but I am a self-financed student, and the cost is not cheap. Three years of preparatory department, three years of university, and when we return to China, the Beiyang government must have been turned upside down, and we will be able to walk hand in hand under the sun!

August 30, 7th year of the Republic of China, Beiyang

A few days later, he received 1,000 silver dollars from China, which was converted into Japanese dollars, enough for three years of tuition and living expenses.

Qin Beiyang faced the direction of the motherland and prayed for Anna's safety. He did not leave an address in the letter, only a bank account number, in order to prevent Ouyang Anna from coming to Japan to find him.

The start of school is imminent, Qin Beiyang took the nine colors on the road, and the Tang knife was disguised as a long-handled umbrella. The two children, Amye, Kogi and Ouyang Sicong, still live in the temple in Osaka.

Get on a night bus on the Keihan Line. At five o'clock in the morning, we arrived in Kyoto. At that time, there were not only Japanese-style streets, but also Western-style buildings and factories, presenting a mixed style of Japanese and Western. The sky was bright, passing by the Kyoto Imperial Palace, Qin Beiyang remembered the Forbidden City in Beijing. The scale and momentum are worlds apart, but the Forbidden City of Japan has another simple and elegant atmosphere.

Qin Beiyang moved into the dormitory for Chinese students in Yoshida, Kyoto, and could overlook Mt. Hiei from the window, and then report to the third high school.

He put on a black stand-up collar student uniform, a hat with a white brim, and put on clogs on his feet, facing the mirror, and he was not comfortable.

Most of the students in the dormitory are from the families of the official eunuchs and gentlemen, and they are official students who receive government subsidies. Qin Beiyang said: "My father is a German translator who works at Deutsche Bank in Tianjin, and has been dead for many years. He didn't lie either, and said a string of German words to prove it.

Kyoto's No. 3 High School, Qin Beiyang has to study Japanese, physics, chemistry, as well as two foreign languages: German and English.

Although Chinese culture has been deeply imprinted on Japan since ancient times, after the Meiji Restoration, Japan's improved Western civilization has imprinted China. The professors of Peking University have many new words hanging in their mouths: revolution, art, culture, civilization, literature, feudalism, class, state, democracy, freedom, economy, society...... All of them are translated into Chinese characters by the Japanese, and then fed back by Chinese students. It is not that the Chinese have never translated, and Mr. Yan Fu thinks that his translation is more accurate than the Japanese. It is a pity that seventy percent of the social and humanistic terms that remain in modern Chinese are "Japanese loanwords".

In late autumn, the maple leaves of Arashiyama turned red, like a large flame burning in the west of Kyoto, Qin Beiyang actually had the illusion of returning to Camel Village in the western suburbs of Beijing to overlook Xiangshan. He wandered through the ancient streets and alleys, visited Kiyomizu-dera Temple and Nijo Castle, sat by the pond of Kinkaku-ji Temple for a long time, looked up at the golden ceiling and was in a daze, listening to the monks play the shakuhachi of the Tang Dynasty, which has become extinct in China......

On this day, Professor Yamamoto from the Department of Physics at Kyoto University came to give a lecture at the Third High School. This mechanical university scholar also has a reputation in Europe and the United States, is used to wearing kimonos, and calls himself a descendant of Kansuke Yamamoto, a famous general of the Sengoku Takeda family.

This class is too esoteric for college students, the professor writes a line on the blackboard, and Qin Beiyang translates it into Chinese in his heart-

Soul mech

Not as restrained as at Kyoto University, Professor Yamamoto's shocking remarks are almost identical to what Dr. Holstein said when he tried to transform the Four-Winged Angel Town Tomb Beast at the Nanyuan Arsenal - "The so-called 'soul machine' is the combination of modern mechanical power and spiritual power." ”

A Japanese classmate boldly questioned: "But this is not scientific? ”

"The 'soul' as I understand it is not a ghost or ghost in folklore, but two scientific concepts: first, the nerve cells of the brain, that is, the transmission of information between the synapses of neurons. Every student here, you are doing this activity in your mind, some call it soul, some call it consciousness. ”

The student who asked the question was embarrassed and said with a red face: "Professor, you are talking about the soul of a living person. But no soul can exist apart from the living brain, human or animal. What the scientific community does not recognize is the soul of the dead. ”

"The soul of the dead – I would say the second concept: the electromagnetic field. The living space of human beings is full of all kinds of electromagnetic waves. The human brain is an ingenious electrochemical organ, and bioelectric signals are transmitted between brain cells. Some powerful electromagnetic fields can affect the signals of the human brain, producing emotions such as fear and even ghost hallucinations, which has been scientifically confirmed. Can we deduce the other way around? Suppose that the electromagnetic waves of the human brain, in turn, affect the electromagnetic field of the outside world? For example, after a person dies, the function of the brain itself disappears, but the electromagnetic waves it has released and transmitted may not disappear permanently, and may be transmitted through some special way. ”

"Like a tape with a recording function? Souls can also be recorded? ”

In the classroom of Kyoto No. 3 High School, it seemed that an axe had split Qin Beiyang's brain and shot a ray of light. But he spoke first, and was considered impolite by his Japanese classmates, and someone whispered "Nishina Jin"!

Professor Yamamoto didn't care: "This classmate, you said it well, please continue!" ”

"I'm sorry, Mr. Professor." Qin Beiyang bowed deeply at this time, and said with a trembling tongue, "There are many substances in nature that can store information, not just magnetism. I understand that the so-called 'soul machine' is an electromagnetic signal with some kind of consciousness. This consciousness, known as the 'soul', is grafted on from a person or animal and persists in the machine for a long time, even becoming its own consciousness. ”

He remembered that in the underground palace of the imperial tomb of the Qing Dynasty, he followed his father to learn the "Nine Palaces of Beast Making". The fifth palace "Seed Soul" is to bury the beloved things of Emperor Guangxu during his lifetime into the heart of the tomb beast. Electromagnetic waves similar to "souls" are permanently stored in the body of the tomb beast, making the originally lifeless steel and stone become living creatures with souls for thousands of years.

Professor Yamamoto's face was calm, Qin Beiyang was quite nervous, did he say something rebellious? Are you going to be criticized and punished by the school?

Suddenly, the professor applauded him: "Classmate, can I ask your name?" ”

"Qin Beiyang."

"Zhi......" Professor Yamamoto realized that he had said wrong, "Chinese? ”

"I'm Chinese."

Some international students are ashamed to admit that they are Chinese and are afraid of being discriminated against by the Japanese, but Qin Beiyang has raised his head generously.

"Unbelievable!"

Professor Yamamoto was surprised that the students who had not yet stepped into the threshold of the university had accurately predicted his thinking methods and experimental plans, and secondly, he admired Qin Beiyang's Japanese level.

Encouraged by the professor, Qin Beiyang became more and more emboldened: "The truth of science has been discovered by human beings step by step. The same is true of the 'Soul Machine', which, though deviant now, may become the path of science in a hundred years. ”

Professor Yamamoto bowed slightly, and wrote a line of English on the blackboard——

Artificial Intelligence

The students pulled out the English dictionary in their desks – the first meant man-made, the second meant intellectual.

"Remember, the world of the future must be the world of Artificial Intelligence!"

After class, Professor Yamamoto deliberately called out to him. The professor is one and a half meters tall, and Qin Beiyang is more than 30 centimeters taller than him, and it is quite difficult to speak.

"Student Qin, next semester, I invite you to my lab as an assistant. I'm working on a true 'soul machine', and I'm sure you'll do it!" ”

The Japanese have gotten the Tomb Beast? Without waiting for Qin Beiyang to ask questions, Professor Yamamoto smiled and left with the lesson plan, and the students bowed one after another. 10