Chapter 10: “You were the one who abandoned me first.”
Xiang Nanli had a dream about Alpha.
In the dream, the other party was a blurry, luminous silhouette. He couldn’t see the face clearly, only sensing that it was tall and beautiful, with skin that possessed a metallic texture. No surprise there—it was a handsome man he had sculpted himself, tailored to his own fetishes.
Alpha was wearing a black trench coat, looking as if he were attending a funeral. In his hand, he held a bouquet of lilies; there were chaotic pixels surrounding the beautiful flowers.
Alpha was watching… him?
For some reason, despite the lack of facial features, Xiang Nanli could feel the sorrow radiating from him. Do robots dream of the dead? In your eyes, who am I?
Xiang Nanli couldn’t help but shed tears. He was not a god; he was human. No matter how calm he appeared, it was merely to better cope with pressure. But even when he held it in, the pressure didn’t disappear. He, too, could feel lost and helpless.
Xiang Nanli felt like a villager who had never left his mountain hollow, suddenly thrown into a modern city. This forest of steel was so foreign, and in that moment, he felt rejected by the entire world. Every cold steel bar seemed to proudly lecture him: “Go back. This is not your era.”
Xiang Nanli stepped forward, choking out, “You abandoned me. Alpha, you abandoned me…”
Unexpectedly, the silhouette responded. Xiang Nanli saw those lips move, yet no sound came out. It took Xiang Nanli a long time to react, to realize what had been said.
It said, “You were the one who abandoned me first.”
Xiang Nanli was shaken awake in his sleeping bag. The movement was rough.
He pulled back the hood, his eyes and nose red, his voice hoarse: “What’s wrong? Is it time to start work?” He was so tired it felt as if someone had slammed a hammer into his head; his temples were throbbing, and his heart felt uneasy.
Alpha: [According to calculations, you have only rested for 89 minutes. It is estimated that you need another 600 minutes to meet your daily sleep requirement for the brain.]
Xiang Nanli was merely a non-combatant who had received a genetic shot. Without any modifications, his physical constitution wasn’t worth much.
Xin Zhui’s face, usually smiling, now held not a hint of warmth: “The pursuers are here. We need to evacuate. Even though this place seems safe, we cannot take the gamble.”
Xiang Nanli became instantly sober, answering solemnly: “Understood.”
Xin Zhui had woken him up rather than leaving him to fend for himself, which proved he was still useful.
Xiang Nanli hurriedly went to the parts he hadn’t finished assembling. There was no way to carry so much stuff with them. He packed his tools, looking at the mechanical arm he had half-assembled and hadn’t yet installed, his expression darkening.
“Take this arm. Maybe there will be time to install it on the way. Forget the rest.”
He stuffed the power-supply lines into his pockets.
These mechanical prosthetics were scavenged from Donghuang Heavy Industry; there should be more later.
Although he didn’t know what use an extra arm would be for someone in Luo Xiu’s paralyzed state, one never knew. He liked to do everything within his power.
Xiao Yan pushed the cart, placing the mechanical arm onto the trolley along with the semi-finished Xiu. She moved toward the deeper parts of the air-raid shelter: “This way.”
They didn’t clean up the signs of their presence.
First, there wasn’t enough time; second, if the shelter were discovered, a bit of cleaning wouldn’t make any difference.
Xiang Nanli was once again carried on Xin Zhui’s back—this time because the team leader felt he ran too slowly.
Such was the life of a technical specialist; at moments requiring escape, they appeared to be a drag.
Xiang Nanli felt a bit ashamed, but on second thought, if Xin Zhui hadn’t snatched him from the transit station, he would be eating fresh vegetables in the Underground City right now. With that thought, he felt perfectly justified.
Xiang Nanli even had the mood to observe his surroundings.
There was indeed a hidden world behind the shelter. In front of them was a wide tunnel, with gods and Buddhas carved into the rock walls on both sides. The artisan was clearly an artist.
These gods and Buddhas were not like the ones Xiang Nanli had seen in the past. They were “Mechanical Bodhisattvas.”
A Mechanical Guanyin, coded and etched, sat upon a lotus, holding a mechanical core that resembled both a lotus seed and a heart.
Behind, countless mechanical arms fanned out like a Thousand-Armed Guanyin. On the other side, a massive Buddha head hung low, eyes downcast.
Behind its brain was a circular halo, and on the chin, the metallic cutting and stitching lines were strikingly obvious—several hundred years ago, robots didn’t prioritize “human-like” aesthetics; they loved to preserve these clear mechanical structures on their faces and bodies.
But this was a sanctuary—a shelter for the human district. So, the one who carved these mechanical gods must have been human.
Humans viewed incomprehensible great power as “divine power,” and they could only imagine things based on what they had already seen. During the war between humanity and the machines, groups of humans would inevitably collapse under the high pressure. Thus, the gods took on the appearance of the machines.
—Great gods, I beg of you, leave a path for the world, show mercy.
Xiang Nanli was awestruck by the cave art in the tunnel, but Xiao Yan, who was pushing Luo Xiu, couldn’t help but sneer:
“The employees of ‘Donghuang Heavy Industry’ are indeed human traitors. If the machines are the gods, then what are we? Temple slaves? It’s only right that we were purged by the Investigation Bureau several hundred years ago.”
“Bodhi.” Xin Zhui remained indifferent. “Once we enter the second level, activate all the trigger bombs we planted earlier.”
“Understood, Vice-Captain,” Bodhi replied lethargically.
The standard configuration for an investigation team: Combat Specialist + Technical Specialist.
The pure fighters: Xiu, Xin Zhui, Rock. They just loved to fight; nothing more to say. The most fierce-fighting handsome guy was now paralyzed on the cart.
Medical: Xiao Yan. She was the team’s only doctor, equipped with many medical instruments, like a mobile operating table.
White-hat/Simple Prosthetic Repair: Bodhi. A legitimate top university graduate who studied cloud network security, but he was more adept at using bombs and manufacturing explosive weapons. He was the one who hacked the access card for the Donghuang Heavy Industry shelter.
But this division of labor wasn’t absolute; even Xiao Yan, who looked the frailest, was more capable in a fight than Xiang Nanli.
They arrived before the second door.
It looked like the entrance to an underground warehouse, locked with an electronic keypad. Centuries had passed, and the lock was still lit.
Bodhi pulled out a data cable and connected himself to the entrance. He muttered to himself, a light flickering with varying intensity in his eyes. One could almost see strings of data matrices flowing within his pupils.
This was a field completely unknown to Xiang Nanli. He held his breath, feeling as though it were all fantastical.
Xiang Nanli whispered: [Is he cracking the code?]
[Yes, that is a brain-computer interface. Six hundred years ago, brain-computer technology was already widely applied. This technology doesn’t require as much hardware equipment, using the brain as a computer, so it is quite popular.]
[However, brain-computer interfaces require modification.] Alpha replied.
After a tense half-minute, there was a “beep,” and the door opened.
“Put on your oxygen tanks,” Xin Zhui reminded them. “Everyone except Xiu. I’m worried the gas might be toxic.” Luo Xiu’s level of mechanization was already such that he could be considered a silicon-based lifeform.
Xiang Nanli put on his oxygen mask and asked, feigning ease: “Who is hunting us?”
Xin Zhui didn’t speak.
Xiang Nanli gritted his teeth: “This is completely an undeserved disaster; I should at least have the right to know, Sir? I was originally going back to the underground, and you guys kidnapped me. Helping to fix a robot is one thing. I—I was just defrosted from the cryo-pod; I haven’t lived enough yet. If I end up dying without knowing why, isn’t that just tragic?”
He had been putting on an act, but the memory of his dream from earlier suddenly resurfaced, and a heavy sense of sorrow swelled in his heart. Tears flickered and fell from Xiang Nanli’s eyes.
Luo Xiu spoke stiffly: “It’s the Black Cross Inquisition. Before, a large number of mutants were heading toward the site of the old Donghuang Heavy Industry. We accepted the mission to investigate and discovered traces of the Black Cross Inquisition’s activities here.”
“The Black Cross Inquisition is a surface terrorist organization. I believe that is mentioned in ‘Common Human Knowledge.’ They neither support mechanical modification nor show any mercy for underground humans. They call themselves ‘New Humans.’ Under the banner of ‘Purification,’ they launch the ‘Apocalypse War’ everywhere. Their most famous achievement was 120 years ago, when they slaughtered and occupied Yinshan City to serve as their stronghold.”
Yinshan City was one of the 18 underground cities. Its name originated from a poem, “Do not let the Hu cavalry cross the Yin Mountains.” But now, people’s enemies were not the “Hu,” and Yinshan City was the underground city closest to the Omnic Legion’s territory—it was equivalent to a frontier outpost. Because of frequent warfare, its GDP ranked last every year, and it bled resources from other cities. After it was seized by the Black Cross Inquisition, the Human Alliance—always adept at weighing pros and cons—actually handed over the underground city on a silver platter!
At the time, the Human Alliance had wanted to watch the Inquisition make a fool of itself. Instead, the Inquisition signed a peace agreement with the machines under harsh conditions.
In ancient times, this would have been denounced as treason, but the high-ranking officials of the Inquisition couldn’t have cared less.
Survive first, then talk about everything else.
Yinshan City was the holy land of the Inquisition, but for the Human Alliance, it was a piece of chicken rib—tasteless to eat, but a pity to throw away. Even now, there was no unified opinion within the Alliance on whether to retake the lost territory.
“With Bodhi’s assistance, I disguised myself as a Donghuang Heavy Industry robot and eavesdropped on the Inquisition’s intelligence.” Luo Xiu continued: “They came to Donghuang Heavy Industry this time because they translated an ancient piece of intelligence. Xiang Nanli had designed a body for Alpha. The blueprints were in Donghuang Heavy Industry’s core database. During the years when the machine crisis first broke out, Donghuang Heavy Industry had been secretly manufacturing a body for Alpha!”
As for the life-threatening experience of going undercover as a machine, Xiu didn’t elaborate, only speaking of the most important points.
The Alpha that Xiang Nanli designed—initially, it was just a super artificial intelligence, and it had no physical form. Even now, Alpha still lacked a physical form. Its “soul” was trapped in a certain data center station.
The reason was that when Xiang Nanli created it, he had implanted a virus in the source code. As long as the virus wasn’t cleared, Alpha would automatically trigger a “death program”—a format—if it ever tried to transfer itself into another “device.”
Unless Xiang Nanli unlocked it himself, Alpha would never be able to possess a “body” in reality. In other words, while Alpha lacked a body, if one could find a way to destroy its data center, the eight-hundred-year-long machine crisis might finally end.
Xiang Nanli’s mind went blank: [Wait? When did I ever set something like that up??]
“The goal of the Apocalypse Horsemen who came this time is to transport the mechanical body secretly produced by Donghuang Heavy Industry back… This body was designed for Alpha and is highly likely to have cracked the virus program. We absolutely cannot let it fall into the hands of the robots,” Luo Xiu said righteously.
Xin Zhui sneered: “However, on the very day we sent the information back, Xiu’s location was exposed. We didn’t receive any support from the Investigation Bureau, either. There must be a traitor who leaked the news to the other side.”
