Chapter 31: A Mutant, and a Brainless Version at That
This was perhaps the most slapdash contract signing since the Combat Club’s inception.
The atmosphere around the ring remained fervent as the defeated Neptune limped out of the arena. No one cared about the loser.
“Donghuang”—the name was taken directly from Donghuang Heavy Industry, and Dongfang Qingdi didn’t even bother trying to hide the association.
The contracts were signed at 10:00 AM, and by 11:00 AM, they were already sitting inside the club’s private shuttle bus.
Xiang Nanli sat in the back row of the bus, propping his chin up with one hand. His electronic lenses were clearly working, casting a faint green glow across the glass panes. He was busy reviewing the digital contracts sent over by Ryan.
One was his own employment contract as a “Technical Advisor,” and the other was Dongfang Qingdi’s fighter contract.
He had already let Xiao Zhi look them over. As far as the current laws of the Human Alliance were concerned, there weren’t any major loopholes.
That’s the one bad thing about technological advancement, Xiang Nanli thought. He had heard that ever since the court AI “Magistrate” was put into service, lawyers had become an extinct, ancient profession, though the academic study of law somehow survived.
Tsk. Infuriating.
As a mechanical technician accompanying them the entire way, his salary was a mere 600,000 credit points. Meanwhile, if Dongfang Qingdi managed to break into the top 10, he would not only receive the organizing committee’s prize money, but the club would also shell out an additional 88,000 credit points as a bonus.
[Xiao Qing, I don't think I've asked you yet—why do you want to enter this selection tournament?]
Earlier, when Xiang Nanli wanted to sign the contract to make some money, Dongfang Qingdi had seemed rather reluctant.
Dongfang Qingdi replied directly: [Because of you.]
AI never threw boomerangs; they always pitched straight down the middle.
Xiang Nanli blanked for a moment: [What about me?]
[Your body is very fragile. The top 10 finishers in the selection tournament are rewarded with a Grade 3 Gene Serum, which I believe will be beneficial to you. After using it, even if your protective suit is breached, you won't have to worry about damage caused by surface radiation. Your self-healing capabilities, stamina, and risk-resistance will be significantly enhanced.]
There was another sentence Dongfang Qingdi left unsaid: “Plus the prize money. That way, I can leave you without any worries.”
Yes, he was planning to walk out of the house empty-handed.
Gene Serums were considered a mature and stable technology. Just like Cyberpsychosis, the issue of genetic mutation had long since been resolved. Taking a legitimate Gene Serum ranked within Grade 5 or lower yielded a mutation probability lower than winning the lottery.
Sometimes, mutation wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; it could just be an alternative direction for biological evolution.
This was perhaps where humans differed from electronic lifeforms. When a program crashed, electronic life could only sit helplessly before a giant pile of spaghetti code. But biological life would always find a way.
Many of the Apocalypse Knights from the Black Cross Inquisition had originally started out as genetic mutants.
As for the consequences of a failed mutation…
A mutant, and a brainless version at that.
The bus pulled up to the curb outside a public hospital and stopped for two minutes.
A familiar metallic figure walked into the vehicle, a medical pack slung over his shoulder.
“Good afternoon, friends!” Andrew waved his four mechanical arms, walking with a bouncy, skipping stride. “I’m the accompanying physician for this trip!”
While restorative Gene Serums could fix the vast majority of physical trauma, doctors were still highly necessary due to how expensive the serums were. In the New World, the service a doctor provided was often purely psychological comfort.
Think about it: when you were grievously wounded, lying on the ground after injecting a tube of Gene Serum, the agonizing side effects would make you question why you were even born into this world. At that moment, a gentle doctor holding your hand and telling you that you would definitely pull through provided far more solace than lying alone on the dirt.
Ryan’s reason for seeking out Andrew was also incredibly straightforward: he was cheap.
Signing Xiang Nanli had pushed the club’s expenditures slightly over budget, leaving Ryan with no choice but to cut costs on the medical staff. He had abandoned his original plan to collaborate with Dr. Diana—a beautiful blonde who demanded 400,000 credit points—and switched to Andrew, who only cost 200,000.
Andrew only held a junior medical license and hadn’t managed to pass the intermediate professional title exam in centuries. He could only work as an ordinary doctor in a public hospital, so his call-out fees weren’t high to begin with. 200,000 credit points equated to four months of his salary, making it well worth taking a month of leave and risking a trip to the surface.
With that, all members participating in this selection tournament were accounted for.
Three fighters, one mechanic, one doctor, and Ryan acting as the part-time coach.
Andrew gave Ryan a brief hug, then walked toward Xiang Nanli, speaking in an exaggerated tone. “My dear, I am so happy to see you.”
It was rather awkward; if it hadn’t been for the address Andrew provided, Ryan never would have found Xiang Nanli. Afterward, Andrew had felt guilty and deliberately avoided contacting him. But since Xiang Nanli was sitting on this bus, he had clearly reached an agreement with the club.
The adult world was all about seeing through things without spelling them out.
Andrew stepped up to Xiang Nanli, intending to give him a warm hug—
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Dongfang Qingdi sitting right next to him.
The person sitting directly in front of them was Pluto, a broad, heavily built man who completely blocked Dongfang Qingdi from view. Furthermore, Andrew wasn’t tall, so he had only managed to spot the crown of a head earlier.
But now, Andrew saw his face clearly.
Andrew had abandoned his flesh-and-blood body long ago. His head was a square block of metal, a heavily outdated model, incapable of expressing any emotion other than a permanent smile. Yet at this exact split second, Andrew felt his smile stiffen.
Dongfang Qingdi turned his head, assessing Andrew’s threat level.
Mechanization: 99%. Modification direction: Utility worker. Built-in surgical instruments: Various. Weapon systems: 0. Battle modules installed: None. Danger level: Extremely low.
Thus, he casually turned his head back to look at the scenery outside the window.
“My dear Xiang Nanli, I’ve truly missed you. This is, this is…” Andrew’s voice stuttered. He held Xiang Nanli’s hand, his mechanical eyes locked dead onto Dongfang Qingdi’s profile. “What a handsome gentleman. Is he also a competing fighter for the club?”
“Yes, he’s my friend.” Xiang Nanli originally wanted to say ‘Synth,’ but right now, Dongfang Qingdi wasn’t displaying his pupil rings. “His name is Donghuang.”
By human etiquette, Dongfang Qingdi should have introduced himself, but he clearly lacked the interest.
Andrew stood frozen for at least three seconds.
“Apologies, my nervous system hasn’t been updated in a long time. It lagged a bit,” Andrew replied slowly. “Donghuang. What a wonderful name. May we get along well.”
Andrew walked to the very last row, clutching his medical case, and slowly sat down. As he went to sit, the bus jolted, causing him to nearly trip onto the floor. He gripped the handrail, looking utterly distracted.
Andrew had seen the news before; he knew that the investigation team had discovered Donghuang Heavy Industry’s underground facility. But centuries had passed… what could possibly be left in that factory? Nothing but a few mutant corpses.
Back when Andrew first joined the company, the research focus of those human traitors at Donghuang Heavy Industry had already shifted from “creating a body for the great Machine Overlord” to “biomechanical research.” Andrew hadn’t possessed the clearance to access the core data, but he had seen the failed products from the previous round of development.
Was it a coincidence? This name, this face.
Whether it was or wasn’t, Andrew thought, it had nothing to do with him. He was no longer a lifetime employee of Donghuang Heavy Industry. It was always better to avoid unnecessary trouble; living a stable life was more important than anything else. If he died, who would still remember his friends locked away in prison?
…
The bus finally pulled into the transport station of Gusu City.
“So, the only way to reach the surface is still by taking the transport station elevator.”
This was public transportation. The club had bought tickets but lacked the funds to charter the entire vehicle. Xiang Nanli had assumed there would be a more covert method.
Following his usual routine, Xiang Nanli went to the service area to buy a protective suit, only to unexpectedly discover that there was already a suit registered under his account—provided by Immortality Tech.
Of course, it wasn’t that Immortality Tech had finally realized their founding father was suffering in the slums. This protective suit had been pre-ordered for him by Xin Zhui. Back when Xin Zhui had recruited Xiang Nanli to do mechanical repair work, he had promised him a suit.
This protective suit was visibly higher in quality than the rented ones, offering a much tighter fit. While the previous suit made him look like an astronaut, this one made him look like a trendy, streetwear-styled youth. Naturally, his face remained entirely concealed.
Xiang Nanli tucked his electronic lenses inside the visor of the face mask before putting it securely over his head. He felt like he could walk into a bank to rob it and no one would be able to tell who he was.
Out of the entire team, he was the only one who required 100% environmental protection.
Dongfang Qingdi merely rented a mask as a formality, strapping it over his face while leaving his silver-white eyes exposed.
Xiang Nanli checked his ticket to find his seat number, sat down, and buckled his seatbelt. Dongfang Qingdi sat right beside him.
As the surface train prepared to depart, Xiang Nanli felt the pressure gradually increasing against his body. He spoke up: “Only the transport stations connect the underground to the surface. If the Omnics wanted to launch an attack on the underground, wouldn’t they just need to shut down the transport stations?”
“Theoretically, yes.”
“And in reality?”
“The management AI currently responsible for the Human Alliance’s transportation system is called Hou Tu. Care to guess how many minutes it would take Alpha to breach its defenses?”
As he spoke, the corners of Dongfang Qingdi’s lips curved upward by exactly one additional degree compared to usual, carrying a faint hint of pride. Unfortunately, Xiang Nanli didn’t notice the subtle micro-expression.
Before Xiang Nanli could respond, a passenger sitting nearby spoke up with clear dissatisfaction, “The Human Alliance’s defenses aren’t that fragile! Alpha was thrown into the digital prison ages ago! Furthermore, we specifically built a new cloud network architecture that doesn’t share data with the original network. Any external signal will be immediately identified by Pangu.”
Her words conveyed a single message: The Human Alliance today is completely safe.
Indeed, the new generation of the Human Alliance lived underground. Ninety percent of these new humans would go their entire lives without ever seeing the real sun. They were separated from the era of the Omnic Crisis by far too much time.
Names like Alpha, Luoyang, and Xiang Nanli were so distant that they only appeared in history textbooks. As far as anyone knew, only Alpha was still alive, but it hadn’t been active for a very long time.
The lifespan of an artificial intelligence was just that long.
As for the Omnic Crisis? What even was that?
Who cared? The robots in their homes were working perfectly fine—docile, sensible, and one hundred percent obedient.
People often choose only to believe what they want to believe.
Dongfang Qingdi didn’t argue with her, nor did he feel inclined to trigger a demonstration on the spot.
Silence fell over the carriage.
Xiang Nanli asked in his mind: [So, how many minutes?]
[1,784 seconds and 12 milliseconds. Roughly 29.73 minutes.]
Xiang Nanli raised an eyebrow slightly, asking, “Is that also from the offline database?”
Dongfang Qingdi replied with complete transparency, “Yes.”
He had been disconnected from Alpha 0.0.0 for ages, so how could it not count as an offline database?
After a long absence, Xiang Nanli set foot on the surface once more.
The surface of Gusu City looked no different from his last visit, but there were significantly more large transport vehicles parked by the roadside. These vehicles were heavily guarded, stamped with corporate logos, and flanked by armed security personnel standing near the doors.
Most of these corporate employees hailed from major metropolises like Luoyang City and Chang’an City. They were exquisitely equipped and bore arrogant expressions that contrasted sharply with the overall dilapidated and desolate nature of the surface.
The buildings here were ancient and low-rise. Only a small fraction of them kept their lights on at night to indicate they were open for business, giving the impression that the city could suffer a water or power outage at any moment. Xiang Nanli had lived here before; when the wind blew at night, the air would fill with sweeping yellow sand.
Even so, this was already the most prosperous human settlement for hundreds of miles around.
The selection tournament’s venue was located 500 kilometers away. They still needed to take a vehicle to get there.
“The wasteland area where the underground factory was discovered happens to be closest to Gusu City, which is why the surface has seen a sudden influx of outsiders,” Ryan explained. “The black market has quieted down quite a bit lately, choosing to lay low until this wave of excitement passes. Let me see… those look like Immortality Tech personnel transporting cargo.”
This particular convoy was transporting the corpses of the Crawlers. Specifically, the ones from the glass greenhouse. To facilitate transport, the originally massive corpses had been hacked into appropriately sized chunks.
Their ultimate destination was the local branch offices of Gusu City, where they would be dumped into warehouses for storage. If warehouse space ran tight in the future, they would likely be disposed of as experimental waste.
When these mutants—which vastly exceeded normal sizes—were first discovered, the scholars had been incredibly thrilled. Unfortunately, after multiple rounds of testing and reconnaissance, they discovered that these mutants truly only possessed the single advantage of a massive physique.
Perhaps because they had been sealed underground for too long, the corpses from the glass greenhouse possessed absolutely zero scientific research value. Their physical strength didn’t even match that of ordinary anomalies. After conducting gene sampling, the resulting data proved entirely disappointing.
These mutants even had names recorded in the paper archives: names like Hebrew, Timothy, Judas, and one called Ezekiel.
Donghuang Heavy Industry hadn’t left much data behind.
“They gave them such grand names, only for us to end up on a wild goose chase.”
“Wasn’t ‘Ezekiel’ found in the ruins?”
“Even if it was found, it’s just a corpse. It’s been six hundred years; it’s impossible for it to still be alive.”
A group of employees wearing Immortality Tech uniforms strolled past the transport station’s VIP security checkpoint. Since they weren’t discussing a classified project, they didn’t bother lowering their voices. They quickly vanished into the entrance.
Andrew stood at the very end of his group, clutching his suitcase.
His entire body was rigid, his eyes filled with terror, and his mouth silently repeated a single name over and over without making a sound: “Ezekiel, Ezekiel, Ezekiel!”
Combined with the “Donghuang” he had seen today…
Fantastic, Andrew thought. Either the world has gone mad, or I have.
__
Author’s Note:
【Unlockable Lore Data】
Scholars: A professional position; researchers employed by corporations, generally under lifetime contracts. They are responsible for archeology and scientific research, frequently conducting ruin expeditions on the surface, sometimes operating alongside the Human Alliance’s investigation teams.
Would you like to continue translating the next chapter, or do you have any specific adjustments you’d like to make to the terminology used here?
