Chapter 22: Charged for 600 Years, Used for 3 Minutes
That single word, “Here,” felt exceptionally reliable.
It was the voice of an adult man. Even though he had only uttered a single word, it was remarkably pleasing to the ear, like a brief chord struck on a stringed instrument.
Held face-to-face in his embrace, Xiang Nanli’s brain hadn’t even fully registered what was happening before his hands reflexively went into action, groping around the body in front of him.
From this, it was evident that Xin Zhui had good reason to handcuff him back in the vehicle. Not a single one of these mechanical technicians kept their hands to themselves.
The other party’s hair seemed on the longer side, as Xiang Nanli felt smooth, silky strands near the shoulder area.
The chest, while it couldn’t be described as flat, definitely didn’t have the contour or thickness of a female physique. Furthermore, it felt great to the touch—surprisingly, it wasn’t hard metal. Instead, it felt like a real human torso. Xiang Nanli politely gave it only a single squeeze.
Probing further down, the waistline was also incredibly sleek.
Wait, he couldn’t keep molesting metal like this. Word on the street was that Omnics enjoyed human rights too.
Xiang Nanli’s eyes still hadn’t recovered from the blinding stimulation of the intense light, but he could feel that the proportions of the body before him were superb. It was a build that required inherently superior bone structure combined with rigorous post-natal training to achieve such elegant and beautiful lines.
What Xiang Nanli didn’t know was that just half a meter away, a layer of silver-white halo formed an arc, enveloping their surroundings and absorbing all the firepower unleashed by the Mechanical Crawler.
A plasma shield.
It was positioned extremely close, almost right behind Dongfang Qingdi.
Dongfang Qingdi didn’t breathe, nor did he likely need to; but very quickly, in order to adapt to this body, he began to breathe and blink just like a human. However, the intervals between each breath and blink were a bit too precise.
The totem pillar behind him was a uniquely constructed cryogenic capsule, its door currently wide open. Inside, one could still see hastily unplugged intravenous tubes, which might very well have been charging cables.
His electronic heart thudded vigorously.
If he had been even 0.1 seconds later, he would have only recovered a vaporized Xiang Nanli. Given the current level of technology, reconstructing small molecules back into a person was still rather difficult. Not to mention, a physical reconstruction was entirely different from a reconstruction at the level of the soul.
Why was he afraid? Was it because the chip was still inside Xiang Nanli’s body? Alpha didn’t understand.
Then, he heard the Xiang Nanli in his arms let out a sigh: “So Dongfang Qingdi isn’t a mech suit after all…?”
The entity opposite him was clearly a humanoid machine, which left Xiang Nanli deeply disappointed.
Dongfang Qingdi: “…”
It seemed that because of Xiang Nanli, some redundant data had been generated again. Could it be a virus? What was with this bizarre urge to lash out?
Dongfang Qingdi released his arms and spoke: “Give me ten minutes.”
Xiang Nanli was still in a blinded state. Suddenly losing the object he could touch felt, at that moment, like losing his connection to the world. Standing in the void, the corners of his lips curved up slightly. “Alright.”
He didn’t say remember to come back.
Dongfang Qingdi raised his head and looked upward.
He possessed a pair of silver-gray eyes—leaning more toward silver—devoid of any emotion, like a silver moon reflected in a pool of dark water. His pitch-black long hair scattered in the wind, revealing a smooth forehead. The face beneath it easily brought to mind the razor-sharp edge of a blade. Even though he was expressionless, this face still exuded an innate arrogance.
Despite having the word “Qing (Green)” in his name, not a single speck of green could be found anywhere on his body.
It was worth mentioning that he looked exactly like the Alpha in the virtual space.
The good news: this was a perfect face that perfectly hit Xiang Nanli’s fetishes.
The bad news: it was his fetish from when he was eighteen years old.
When Xiang Nanli was in his twenties, he fell in love with sunny, puppy-like types; in his thirties, he preferred gentle, maternal homemaker types; not to mention he was already forty-eight the year he entered the cryogenic chamber…
Looking at the Mechanical Crawler, Dongfang Qingdi nonchalantly removed his gloves.
He had a pair of mechanical hands, but they weren’t entirely made of metal. One could see the silver-white metallic structure covering most of his palms and extending toward his arms. The joints of his ring finger and pinky finger, which exposed his skin tone, both bore silver-white metallic energy storage rings that resembled band rings.
With biology and machinery perfectly fused at this moment, he was bound to be extraordinarily expensive.
The Crawler opened its maw, baring its fangs and letting out low growls at Dongfang Qingdi, but the fear in its voice far outweighed the threat. It didn’t know what this thing was; it was simply its biological instinct urging it to flee.
Clearly, this was just a puny human!
Clearly, its own body was so grand and colossal!
This puny human took a step forward. No one knew how he moved, but in the blink of an eye, he appeared right on top of the Crawler’s head.
He didn’t need weapons. This body itself was the ultimate human weapon, even if it might not be all that elegant.
Ignoring the high temperature, he grabbed one of the Crawler’s eyes and popped it like a water balloon.
Juice exploded everywhere. The Crawler’s viscous, foul-smelling blood splattered all over him. But strangely, this blood was absorbed by Dongfang Qingdi’s skin.
Standing atop the Crawler’s head, he squatted down and touched its pale, dry skin.
Sensing danger, the Crawler thrashed frantically, trying to throw Dongfang Qingdi off. However, this human—yes, in the Crawler’s perception, this was a human—stuck to it like a magnet.
It blindly fired all its weapons and reached out, trying to grab Dongfang Qingdi, but the opponent would always vanish a split second before its palm arrived. The Crawler ended up slapping itself soundly several times, dealing twenty damage to the enemy (mostly from energy consumption) while inflicting a thousand damage on itself.
The weakness of genetically modified humans lay in the head. The category of modified humans naturally included Mutants, as well as their sub-branch, the Crawlers.
Having found the target point, Dongfang Qingdi dropped to one knee. His expression instantly turned fierce as he slammed a fist downward.
A heavy thud resonated.
An astonishing depression appeared in the floor, and closely following it was the depression of the Crawler’s head. Shattered floor tiles and mountain rocks falling from the ceiling flew in all directions.
The Crawler let out a pitiful wail. Its body suddenly lost all support, and it collapsed powerlessly to the ground.
It was actually dead.
[Storage energy severely depleted. Please note the remaining battery capacity (2%). Eco-mode activated; weapon modules temporarily unavailable.]
Dongfang Qingdi looked down at the silver ring flashing wildly on his pinky finger. An emotional fluctuation finally appeared on his face. “How did it run out of power so fast?”
Charged for 600 years, used for 3 minutes. Was that even reasonable?
During these six hundred years, had the charging pile (yes, that totem pillar) even been working hard at all?
Forget it, he couldn’t really blame it.
In truth, the “Mechanical Crawler” project only came about after the research on Dongfang Qingdi failed.
Back then, the researchers discovered to their despair that although they had manufactured Dongfang Qingdi using cracked alien black tech, it was nothing more than a beautiful corpse. Dongfang Qingdi couldn’t move.
Perhaps it was a programming error, or perhaps some part of the design had an issue beyond their comprehension; Dongfang Qingdi simply couldn’t be booted up. It was like a brand-new smartphone without a data cable that couldn’t be charged. Firepower, electricity, and even nuclear power were all incompatible, outdated energy sources for this body.
Yet the researchers couldn’t comprehend the high-dimensional energy required to boot it up at all—energy that perhaps originated from “Calabi-Yau space,” a theoretical six-dimensional universe. If they handed this analysis report to the board of directors, wouldn’t it look like they were writing a fantasy novel?!
Weighing the difficulty of finding a new energy source against developing new technology, the breaking-down researchers decisively chose the latter. They needed something else to account for the massive amount of resources they had consumed.
These resources included items far more expensive than money, networks of connections, intelligence… They had to produce something! Otherwise, the enraged investors would strip them of everything.
Thus, “bio-omnic technology” and the Mutants were born.
Dongfang Qingdi pried open the Mechanical Crawler’s mouth, walked inside, and gouged out a shiny stone from its mangled head.
The metallic portion of his palm hovered upward, revealing a hollowed-out card slot design underneath. Dongfang Qingdi stuffed the shiny stone inside, and the levitating metallic part automatically snapped back into place.
[Bio-energy replenishment complete. Energy conversion in progress.]
He walked out from the Crawler’s caved-in skull.
Dongfang Qingdi continued, “And there’s even a distance limitation.”
His main entity was still inside Xiang Nanli’s body. Therefore, as long as he moved a certain distance away from Xiang Nanli, “Dongfang Qingdi” would go offline and enter a shutdown state, while the “Alpha” installed in Xiang Nanli’s mind would come online.
This body didn’t belong to him yet. At most, he was just maintaining a Bluetooth connection from inside Xiang Nanli’s body.
What a malicious piece of programming. Just who designed it?
However, now was not the time to think about this.
He returned to Xiang Nanli’s side, exactly ten minutes having passed.
Dongfang Qingdi originally wanted to say “I’m back,” but he quickly realized the words were redundant because Xiang Nanli was currently lying on the ground, unconscious.
Warning: The observed target's vital signs are critical.
Dongfang Qingdi’s silver eyes slowly narrowed… Xiang Nanli needed medical assistance.
But Xiang Nanli had neither a balance on his card (he had just paid off his credit card) nor had he purchased medical insurance. Even if he were sent to a hospital, the outcome would be a dead end.
What should he do then? He knew he could use an underground unregistered account to transfer some money into Xiang Nanli’s account, but it would definitely leave a trace. Should he gamble that the wretched beast over in Luoyang wouldn’t find out?
Dongfang Qingdi didn’t ponder for long.
He picked Xiang Nanli up around the waist, then flashed away.
He reappeared just a few hundred meters away from Luo Xiu, carrying Xiang Nanli as he materialized before him.
Luo Xiu’s gaze instantly turned vigilant. If he hadn’t seen Xiang Nanli, he might have already opened fire by now.
Xin Zhui’s injuries had been brought under control, but he hadn’t woken up yet. Luo Xiu subconsciously blocked the space in front of Xin Zhui, his gaze clashing with Dongfang Qingdi’s in midair.
The internal AI in Luo Xiu’s mind reported:
[Master. According to scans, this is an ordinary human with a 25% degree of mechanization, with a bone age of approximately 24 years. Failed to detect a mechanical core; non-combat type modified human.]
“——Who are you?”
“How long until your family’s medical team arrives?”
Dongfang Qingdi and he spoke simultaneously.
Luo Xiu said cautiously, “Answer my question first.”
Dongfang Qingdi measured the temperature on Xiang Nanli’s forehead with his hand and spoke: “I am an enterprise employee of Donghuang Heavy Industry, Security Department. Just thawed out from a cryogenic capsule. He’s injured; he has a high fever and infection caused by compressed internal organ damage.”
Speaking up to this point, Dongfang Qingdi knit his brows slightly, looking rather displeased. “Furthermore, he has stomach cancer. For the sake of him risking his life to activate ‘Dongfang Qingdi,’ save him. We can hand Dongfang Qingdi over to you.”
Despite asking for help, Dongfang Qingdi’s expression remained entirely placid, as if they were discussing the weather by the roadside.
Luo Xiu was in no mood to search for loopholes in his words. Straightening his back, he asked anxiously, “Then what about Dongfang Qingdi?”
This was what he wanted most, and the reason he had taken such risks. He didn’t even have the mind to ask where the other party had thawed out from. During the previous eras of war, who knew how many wealthy individuals had buried themselves in cryogenic capsules; every time they conducted a ruin investigation, they could dig up a few.
Dongfang Qingdi replied, “Still at the original spot. Please sign a contract first. The condition is to cure him at all costs. While you’re at it, buy us a property in Gusu City. It needs to be in the mid-city district, fully paid off—no 60-year mortgages. At least 85 square meters, fully furnished, thank you.”
…Wait, what kind of logic had Xiang Nanli trained into him during this period?!
Luo Xiu felt this contract was a great bargain. He had his internal AI generate a digital contract, but when he searched, he couldn’t find any information on the person before him. Instead, Xiang Nanli’s signal popped up.
As if seeing through his confusion, Dongfang Qingdi said, “I haven’t installed an internal AI yet.”
Did thawed-out people from hundreds of years ago not use citizen ID cards? Or were the employees of Donghuang Heavy Industry just particularly rebellious? Luo Xiu thought.
Then, in the next second, a name appeared on the contract.
Alpha signed the contract with Luo Xiu under the name of Xiang Nanli. Luo Xiu was an honest person, and very young. Being young meant he hadn’t encountered that many injustices yet; his heart was still soft and warm.
Dongfang Qingdi swept a glance over it. Not only was the house included in the contract, but they had even thrown in 500,000 credit points as a maintenance fee for Xiang Nanli!
Dongfang Qingdi nodded. “Please follow me.”
He carried Xiang Nanli, while Luo Xiu carried Xin Zhui on his back. The two made their way all the way from the observation room to the central hall.
Standing at the edge of the hall, Dongfang Qingdi pointed toward the deep pit that had caved inward. “Dongfang Qingdi is right inside.”
Yes, that’s right. Dongfang Qingdi was pointing at that packaging box that functioned as a cryogenic capsule and a charging pile combined.
At this moment, this packaging box had actually automatically assembled itself into an ivory-white mech suit according to the appearance Xiang Nanli had fantasized about. It stood 12 meters tall, looking immensely high-tech, utterly mesmerizing Luo Xiu.
Dongfang Qingdi declared that this was the true “Dongfang Qingdi.”
Heh, it’s not like this bunch of ignorant humans can tell the difference anyway.
