Chapter 4: Doing Black-Market Work.
Whether he wanted to or not, Xiang Nanli still selected Introduction to Omnic Principles and hit ‘one-click read’.
If this were a physical book, this introductory material would probably be over a thousand pages long. But converted to data, its size was less than 20MB.
They say the human brain is the most precise supercomputer, capable of subconscious calculations ranging from solar flares to human extinction. Yet, stuffing this 20MB inside gave Xiang Nanli a beautiful sensation akin to a missing brainstem.
He felt like he zoned out for at least half a minute.
Closing his eyes, Xiang Nanli watched streams of text and diagrams flow through his mind.
“The cost of the textbook is just the basic ticket for admission,” he murmured. “The talent for analysis and comprehension is the invisible threshold.”
—Actually, there was more. As a lowest-tier citizen of the underground city (Citizen Level 1) without any academic standing, Xiang Nanli technically wasn’t even qualified to purchase these materials. He just didn’t realize how much fate favored him.
In an instant, Xiang Nanli plunged into studying. Faced with an ocean of database information, his eyes actually gleamed with excitement.
These were precise conclusions drawn from humanity’s countless trials and errors. It was a shame he wasn’t the pioneer of these conclusions, but skipping 800 years of detours wasn’t a bad deal either.
Today, research on Omnics was mainly divided into two categories. Simply put: the engineering side handling the physical construction and R&D, and the computer science side managing software like code and algorithms.
Xiang Nanli’s desire to make money on the surface wasn’t purely a pipe dream. Not everyone had left the surface during the Great Evacuation six hundred years ago. There were still many biological settlements up there. And yes, “biological” included more than just humans.
Especially near the transit stations—areas that nominally still fell under the jurisdiction of the underground cities. They offered a baseline of security but lacked strict supervision, making them a grey zone hovering between legal and illegal.
In the underground cities, whether you were a mechanical repairman or a network engineer, your fees wouldn’t be cheap. But you needed degrees and certifications to get your foot in the door. It wasn’t that Xiang Nanli couldn’t pass the exams, but after looking at the application qualifications, exam schedules, and certificate issuance processes, he felt going to the surface was far more cost-effective.
The system’s voice was cold and ruthless: “Although I have not queried your mental state, you have been continuously awake for 26 hours. This is highly dangerous. I strongly advise you to enter a state of deep sleep. If you have sleep disorders, I can administer electrotherapy to your brain.”
Xiang Nanli: “I… fine, okay.”
He had read the Rights of Human Alliance Residents. The relationship between a human and their built-in AI was like that between a hunter and a sled dog. When the hunter gets lost, the husky will autonomously navigate to prevent its owner from making a fatal mistake.
Xiang Nanli didn’t want to be forced to sleep just yet.
The system continued: “You are a Homo sapiens with a mechanization degree of 0. Based on your basal metabolic rate, you require a minimum of 9 hours of sleep daily, along with an intake of 800ml of pure water, 350g of vegetables, 80g of meat, and 150g of carbohydrates.”
Lying on the narrow bed, Xiang Nanli closed his eyes and retorted grumpily, “Are you paying for it?”
The system instantly fell silent.
Xiang Nanli stayed holed up in the small hotel for two weeks, rarely stepping out. When he was awake, he was either lying in bed or sitting by the narrow window. To an observer, it looked like he was just zoning out and daydreaming.
Only the system knew he was engaging in highly precise, deep-level cognitive activities. The neural currents zipping back and forth… electrified the system very comfortably. Yes, this sensation of being recharged was indeed called “comfort.”
Of course, Alpha didn’t consider itself a pervert; it was merely describing an objective fact.
On the fifteenth day, with five days left until his train ticket, Xiang Nanli’s vacant eyes suddenly lit up.
He rushed into the bathroom and took a brisk, refreshing shower.
“I completely understand it now. I haven’t put it into practice, but that doesn’t matter.” Xiang Nanli talked to himself while washing off. “It’s very simple. All I need is a convincing persona. Hmm, how about a mechanics student from a military university doing social practice? Or a former big-tech employee taking some under-the-table jobs because he’s short on cash?”
He was extremely fond of talking to himself. Ever since he was a child, his peculiar and eccentric behaviors had made him a misfit among other children.
Xiang Nanli was a second-generation immigrant. His parents were technical middle-class professionals—one doctor, one lawyer. Their union was perhaps born less out of love and more out of a shared fear of downward class mobility.
His parents believed in detached parenting, meaning they gave their child minimal attention to let him grow freely. Even when that child was a helplessly crying infant.
His elementary school teacher once suggested transferring Xiang Nanli to a special-needs school. His parents agreed verbally but didn’t actually care. Later, he attended a so-called elite school (an all-boys school requiring a letter of recommendation, formerly an aristocratic public school with hundreds of years of history), and no teacher ever brought it up again.
Xiang Nanli knew his mental state wasn’t quite normal. Maybe it was mild autism or Asperger’s syndrome—who knew? It didn’t impact his quality of life, and once he became an adult, he never thought about correcting it.
“I believe it is feasible,” Alpha answered him. “Analyzing your current physical condition, I suggest pretending to be a college student.”
Xiang Nanli paused for a second. His mindset just hadn’t adjusted yet; he forgot he had a built-in AI in his brain.
He said sincerely, “Alpha, you’re so good to me.”
This was a scenario Xiang Nanli used to fantasize about before he reached adulthood. He wanted an accommodating friend who would never leave him, a friend who would respond to all of his sleep-talking murmurs. This was also his original motivation for studying artificial intelligence and robotics.
Of course, it also helped that he perfectly caught the tailwind of his era.
Xiang Nanli rinsed the suds off his body and turned off the showerhead. He was dripping wet, water sliding down the tips of his slightly curly hair.
He wiped a palm across the steam-fogged mirror.
The mirror reflected his current face. Perhaps due to multiple modifications undergone in the cryo-pod, or perhaps because of the gene serum the kind Investigator had injected into him, Xiang Nanli looked incredibly young. His eyes were a cool, jade-like emerald green.
He had a quarter Germanic ancestry, giving him deep-set eyes, almost parallel double-eyelid folds, and a high, delicate nose bridge. Up until he was fourteen or fifteen, people often mistook him for a pretty little girl.
Yet, the year he entered the cryo-pod, he was forty-eight.
The smile on Xiang Nanli’s face widened. “I love the new world.”
The system thought he smiled exactly like an evil villain in a TV show.
The ‘evil villain’ blow-dried his hair and changed into the clothes the hospital had given him. The outfit was a one-piece suit devoid of any extra decorations or patterns, zipping up the back. The material looked like reflective plastic with a certain degree of stiffness, but the inner lining felt surprisingly soft. Probably some new material.
He checked the time. 8:30 PM.
Xiang Nanli dug out the small card the doctor had given him and dialed the comms number on it. “Doctor, it’s me. Xiang Nanli.”
Andrew paused for a second before his expressionless mechanical face spat out enthusiastic words. “Oh, it’s you. What is it, my dear boy? Have you figured it out? Do you need a loan, or are you looking to sell something?”
After speaking, Andrew glanced at the date on his computer. Fifteen days. He lasted longer than expected.
Xiang Nanli leaned against the wall and narrowed his eyes slightly. “Before, I told you I didn’t remember anything. But recently, I seem to have recovered some memories. I recalled that I might have been a mechanical repairman before.
“If you’d be willing to help me rustle up some clients, I would be very grateful. How does a 60-40 split sound? You take sixty, I take forty.”
Andrew fell into a rare silence. “My dear, do you know what you’re saying? Just two weeks ago, I thawed you out of a cryo-pod from several centuries ago.”
When Andrew didn’t hang up immediately, Xiang Nanli knew his plan was half successful.
He spoke: “You have absolutely nothing to lose. If I can’t fix it, I’m the one responsible. I’ll send you the contact info shortly. I’ll conduct the transactions on the surface. Even if I get arrested by the Alliance police, it will have nothing to do with you.”
Sitting at the triage desk, Andrew rubbed his chin. “Sounds like zero loss for me. But for clients referred by me, I want an 80-20 split. You get twenty; I get eighty.”
Xiang Nanli: “Deal.”
Andrew hung up the communicator and looked up at the patient in front of him.
“I put your prosthetic eye back in, but fixing a prosthetic is a mechanic’s job. If you can’t see, that has nothing to do with me.
“Don’t get mad. I know you don’t have insurance, and you still paid three thousand in medical bills. But you don’t want me to call security and add your name to the medical blacklist, do you?”
Andrew opened his built-in AI and glanced at a newly received message. “For the sake of your medical bills, this guy says you can go to him for repairs, and his prices are cheaper than market rate. The contact info is here. Up to you if you use it or not.”
…
…
System: “Andrew is not a good choice. Based on my analysis, if investigated by the Human Alliance, the probability of him selling you out is 99%.”
Standing in the junkyard, Xiang Nanli let his hand rest casually by his side, his appraising gaze sweeping over the various metal parts. “I know. But I need resources, and a bit of cover. The best way is to make people think there’s profit to be made.”
For instance, the location of this very junkyard was “kindly” provided by Andrew.
Every day, the underground city produced massive amounts of garbage. These wastes were sorted and sent to different junkyards. This specific junkyard was dedicated to handling mechanical parts.
Parts sent here had already been scanned during an initial screening. Usable or threatening parts would be sent to a warehouse for reuse. Only the parts confirmed as scrap made it here.
Xiang Nanli’s slender, pale fingers, entirely devoid of calluses, pointed around at the ground. “This, this, and these. Bundle them and sell them to me for 80.”
His aura perfectly mimicked a pampered rich kid.
The surface was dangerous, and with Xiang Nanli’s current financial state, he couldn’t even afford the cheapest bullets. But maybe he could cobble together an intimidating blank gun out of scrap metal. He also needed a place to test out the results of his studies.
The junkyard boss was probably a man. The reason for the ambiguity was because his heavily modified cybernetic body made his gender hard to tell. If he wasn’t a guy, he was a very butch iron lady.
The boss was named Jesse, the junkyard manager, a position passed down through the family. He sported a blonde mohawk, wore a tank top, and had two completely silver arms.
With a filthy jacket tied around his waist, Jesse spat his cigarette butt onto the ground. “You’ve got a good eye. These parts all come from a security company under Immortality Tech. For the sake of that pretty face of yours, 800. No discount.”
“Or we could ****,” Jesse said, looking at Xiang Nanli with a strange smile.
Xiang Nanli was slightly confused. “What did he say? Why couldn’t I understand it?”
The system answered coldly, “It was extremely offensive. You don’t need to know.”
Xiang Nanli: “…”
Artificial intelligence being too intelligent really was a bit of a problem.
Ignoring the latter half of Jesse’s sentence, Xiang Nanli smiled. “Sell me this pile for 80. With the remaining pile, I can assemble two mechanical arms for you. They won’t have built-in weapons, but they’ll work fine for normal use. How about it?”
Jesse finally showed a sliver of interest. “Right now?”
Xiang Nanli nodded and smiled. “Right now.”
__
Author’s Notes:
The Great Evacuation: Approximately 900 years ago, humanity was forced to evacuate the surface due to factors such as rogue Omnics, nuclear winter, mutants, and xenomorphs. This evacuation involved a total of 260 million people and took 34 years to complete. It was the largest migration event in human history.
