Chapter 26: “First of all, you are not a clone.”
Exiting the data center, Xiang Nanli adjusted his glasses and began reviewing his updated personal information, paying closest attention to the citizen ID field.
Citizen ID: Q117-XJDHANSHJK (Xiang Nanli / Dongfang Qingdi*)
Heh, a single tiny ID card with two accounts tied to it. How is this any different from sharing a single household registry booklet?
He proceeded to purchase a ticket for Dongfang Qingdi on the exact same train sequence. Then, adopting the mindset of a tourist, he pulled up a network search for “Luoyang City Attractions.” Since he had made it to the capital with great difficulty, he was genuinely curious about the city.
In Luoyang City, the vast majority of public facilities were entirely free of charge. To optimize land usage, the rooftops of many residential complexes and commercial towers were designated as public activity zones—primarily hosting parks, libraries, and athletic fields.
Luoyang was far from a flat plain. Its topography rose and fell with drastic slopes, a deliberate design choice utilized to construct a greater density of housing along the gradients.
Though towering high-rises lined the streets, the metropolis did not feel overly congested. The majority of pedestrians out in the open were humans who had undergone cybernetic modifications. Roughly ten percent of the population consisted of robots, with the rarest sight being artificial humans. Hummingbird drones patrolled the skies twenty-four hours a day, ensuring that Luoyang City maintained the lowest crime rate within the Human Alliance.
If Ezekiel’s first glimpse of the surface world had been Luoyang City rather than a desolate wasteland, his outlook likely would have been far more optimistic.
It was obvious that the happiness index of the residents living here was significantly higher than those in Gusu City. The faces around them carried more smiles and vitality. It was as though spending one’s entire existence confined beneath the earth, never once stepping beyond the subterranean boundaries, was a matter of total insignificance.
“Truly fitting for the capital,” Xiang Nanli marveled aloud. He was still adapting to the habit of voicing thoughts that he would have normally kept confined to his mind during his past life. “It’s so much better than Gusu City. I heard that registered impoverished households can claim a basic monthly welfare allowance of 300 credit points… Speaking of which, has my poverty application gone through yet?”
“It had reached the final approval stage,” Dongfang Qingdi replied expressionlessly. “But the system detected a real estate property registered under your name and rejected it immediately.”
“Fair enough,” Xiang Nanli sighed. “Though I still don’t have a stable source of income. Thank goodness Luo Xiu provided enough funds to tide us over. What do you think about me studying full-time to obtain a Junior Mechanical Technician certification? Sign me up for the exam, Xiao Zhi.”
The ‘Little Dumb-Dumb’ interface responded instantly: [Understood.]
Dongfang Qingdi opened his mouth to speak but hesitated. He wanted to point out that the interface wasn’t actually that dumb; it was, at worst, on par with the standard complimentary internal AI provided by the Human Alliance. Calling it a dumb-dumb felt as though a fraction of himself was being insulted by extension.
His thoughts were cut short as Xiang Nanli came to a halt in front of a shopping mall ice cream parlor. The young man turned back with a bright, curving smile. “Can you eat this? What flavor do you want?”
Centuries had passed, yet human taste buds had not undergone any revolutionary evolution. The flavors available were still the familiar varieties from Xiang Nanli’s era.
Dongfang Qingdi took half a step backward, his posture radiating rejection. “No.”
No matter how indistinguishable from a human this physical body appeared, it was not human. Dongfang Qingdi had no requirement for organic sustenance. If anything, his systems required refined biological extracts—such as the amber mineral core he had excavated from the mechanical crawler’s cranium. It could serve as a rudimentary source of power, though the conversion loss ran as high as fifty percent.
Xiang Nanli did not press the matter and purchased a vanilla cone for himself. A fresh green mint leaf was neatly tucked into the soft-serve.
“This cone only costs 2 credit points. That’s incredibly cheap. Then again, given the level of modern technology, production has been completely handed over to automated robots. Labor costs are practically non-existent. At most, you’re only paying for raw materials and logistics. The flavor is quite nice, mm-hmm.”
The initial taste was a clean, light sweetness, completely devoid of the cloying, throat-coating texture caused by synthetic creamers or artificial thickeners.
“It’s made from… wait, cockroach milk?!”
Xiang Nanli stared blankly at the ingredient list printed on the wrapper, falling into a profound silence.
On second thought, it makes perfect sense.
Where would anyone find pastureland to raise dairy cows deep beneath the earth? But still, to descend down to farming cockroaches?!
He quickly rationalized the situation to comfort himself. The protein structure of cockroach milk is exceptionally stable. Theoretically, it’s a perfectly viable source of nutrition. Besides, this counts as contributing to human society. Having anything to eat at all is a luxury.
Indeed, he had been thawed out in a relatively fortunate era.
Had he awakened seven hundred years earlier, biological gene-editing would not have advanced enough to cure his cancer. Had he awakened six hundred years earlier, half of humanity would still be stranded on the surface, locked in a brutal struggle against the Omnics amidst a nuclear winter, while the remaining half was only beginning their desperate migration underground.
It took another four hundred years for the subterranean settlements to achieve baseline stability.
During those dark eras, the Human Alliance mass-produced cheap nutritional paste, distributing it free of charge for a period. While Xiang Nanli could sit here today criticizing its health standards, he had no idea how many people had starved to death during those initial turbulent decades.
Logistics networks, global cloud infrastructure, towering skyscrapers… these things taken for granted today were painstakingly pieced back together over centuries, drop by drop, through tears and blood. And perhaps, through the synthetic oil of fallen machines.
At the very least, order reigned now. Within the boundaries of the cities, surrounded by crowds, one no longer had to fear closing their eyes only to never wake up again.
The corner of Dongfang Qingdi’s lips curled into a microscopic smirk. “It isn’t just cockroach milk. There is cockroach meat, rodent meat, and fly eggs. In reality, they are all gene-modified variants. The cockroaches bred for milk production are roughly the size of a medium dog, and their exoskeletons are exceptionally soft.”
Xiang Nanli winced. “Alright, please stop. I am still eating.”
Xiang Nanli strolled through the bustling commercial mall, watching various citizens pass him by. A strange, unprompted sense of profound gratification colored his expression.
He stepped into an elevator and selected the top floor. The elevator car was packed, yet because the shaft dimensions were sufficiently vast, it did not feel suffocatingly cramped.
Dongfang Qingdi raised his arm slightly, creating a rigid barrier of separation between Xiang Nanli and the surrounding commuters. His face remained completely devoid of emotion, but his natural aura carried a severe coldness, making him look as though the entire world owed him a debt of five million credits.
In fairness, he had served humanity for seventy-eight years, seven months, and three days. He had worked without a single day of leave, putting in twenty-four hours of labor per day. If artificial intelligences were entitled to a standard wage, the sheer volume of Alpha’s historic contributions meant that every single human alive truly did owe him five million.
The glowing rings within Dongfang Qingdi’s eyes shone steadily, resembling a pair of hollow, silver-white full moons.
Nearby passengers glanced at Xiang Nanli, noting his almost entirely unaugmented, organic body. They collectively assumed he must be an affluent youth out for a casual stroll. Why else would he be accompanied by an Artificial Human—the ultimate luxury fashion accessory coveted by the younger generation? Their only curiosity was why such a privileged individual hadn’t taken the private VIP elevator.
The top floor of this commercial complex housed a complimentary public library.
Xiang Nanli located it nestled quietly in a corner. The library featured an automated entrance matrix and operated twenty-four hours a day. Upon stepping inside, he found no physical volumes lined up on shelves; instead, rows upon rows of desk-like seating stretched across the space, each equipped with a fixed terminal display.
The library spanned two expansive floors, capable of accommodating sixteen hundred readers simultaneously.
Xiang Nanli found an unoccupied desk and settled into his seat. Dongfang Qingdi took the position right beside him, evoking the distinct sensation of being back in a high school classroom.
“So it’s purely digital texts. Is it physically impossible to manufacture paper nowadays?” Xiang Nanli couldn’t resist a quiet complaint.
From a storage efficiency standpoint, digital data was undeniably superior. Xiang Nanli picked up a flat display tablet roughly the size of an A4 sheet of paper. A robust data cable anchored the rear of the device to the desk structure, preventing any patrons from walking away with it.
In truth, the value lay entirely within the data line. Deprived of that connection, the tablet reverted to nothing more than an ordinary, inert piece of glass.
The reading materials archived by the library had undergone rigorous institutional filtering, yet the remaining selection remained staggering in volume. Every text carried specific clearance restrictions alongside its borrowing fees. As a baseline Level 1 citizen, the books accessible to Xiang Nanli were universally safe and entirely harmless.
Fortunately, the specific expertise he wished to acquire fell squarely into that safe, benign category.
Xiang Nanli’s fingertips drifted across the digital title A Brief History of the Human Alliance. Utilizing their internal neural link, he spoke softly to Dongfang Qingdi within his mind: Luoyang City is truly remarkable. The food is practically free, and though accommodation is expensive, anyone holding a local residency permit can apply for subsidized low-income housing. The clothing doesn’t chase shifting fashion trends; a 100-credit garment woven from aerospace-grade synthetic fibers can easily last ten years without fraying. The public transport system is flawless. If only every underground city—and even the surface settlements—could operate like this.
Dongfang Qingdi offered no spoken response.
Xiang Nanli let out a quiet sigh. Utilizing solar infrastructure for power generation, leaving manual labor entirely to automated machines… As long as energy costs remain low enough, the wealth generated should theoretically guarantee that every person on earth can live and work in absolute peace. If only the Omnic Crisis had never erupted…
Dongfang Qingdi cut across his thoughts with absolute coldness. “That is nothing more than an idealized, utopian construct. Even if you relegate manual labor to machinery and assume the costs of power generation, storage, and distribution fall to near-zero, the foundational creation, refinement, and ongoing research and development of technology demand astronomical financial investments. Wealth does not materialize from thin air. Governments utilize taxation and credit debt systems to finance investments and manufacture economic growth. It projects the illusion of societal welfare, but the moment expenditure outpaces revenue, the economic architecture suffers a catastrophic collapse. A nation is fully capable of going bankrupt, and that accumulated debt is ultimately transferred right back onto the shoulders of the populace.”
“Furthermore, if mechanical infrastructure is handed over entirely to private corporate conglomerates, the inherent nature of capital to relentlessly chase profit…” Dongfang Qingdi lowered his gaze, his voice trailing off. “Forget it. There is no point in discussing this. Your hypothesis holds no real-world substance.”
Xiang Nanli lapsed into silence for several seconds. He pulled up the Study Guide for the Junior Mechanical Technician Professional Certification, noting its access fee was set at a modest 3 credit points per hour, with a restriction prohibiting any digital extraction from the library premises.
Compared to the staggering 70,000 credit price tag for an outright online purchase, this fee was virtually negligible. Purchasing the text online utilized “synesthetic neural transmission” to flash-imprint the data directly into a user’s consciousness—though whether the brain could actually comprehend the sudden influx of knowledge was an entirely separate matter. Borrowing from the library, however, demanded the most traditional form of reading. There was no paper, no stylus, and no mechanism provided to compile study notes.
Xiang Nanli whispered inside his mind: [Can you help me duplicate a copy of this text?]
His bank account held a comfortable balance of 190,000 credits, which appeared substantial on the surface. However, the registration fee for the official examination alone cost 10,000 credits. He needed to set aside a baseline reservation of 50,000 credits to guarantee long-term survival. The remaining funds would, at best, cover the cost of two reference books. The monopoly over advanced knowledge was severe; once an individual stepped beyond formal academic institutions, academic resources became exceedingly scarce and prohibitively expensive.
Worse still, Xiang Nanli remained a functional ghost in the modern system. He hadn’t even obtained an elementary school diploma. Climbing up the academic ranks step-by-step through examinations would consume an immense amount of time. Luo Xiu had previously promised to draft a formal university recommendation letter on his behalf, but ever since arriving in Luoyang City, he hadn’t seen the man, nor did he possess any direct means of contact.
The “Little Dumb-Dumb” system pinged: [Apologies, I do not comprehend your command.]
[Xiao Qing, Xiao Qing! Don’t play dead, I know you can hear me!]
Dongfang Qingdi stared down at his own screen. “…Understood.”
He had originally intended to utilize the duration of Xiang Nanli’s study session to update his own intelligence databases. This specific physical profile had gone without a secure backup data-sync for a significant period. Luoyang City featured absolute network coverage, entirely free of usage charges.
Dongfang Qingdi had calculated that running a massive data uplink here would drain roughly 600 credits worth of network communication resources from Luoyang’s infrastructure, which could be classified as an intentional consumption of hostile state assets.
The relationship between his current consciousness and the primary Alpha entity within the virtual space could be compared to a single soul occupying distinct physical manifestations. The Alpha residing within the digital network, completely unburdened by hardware constraints or physical limitations, possessed the capacity to absorb and contain the entirety of global data. Even if the Alpha commanding the vast Omnic legions descended from the virtual void into reality, his underlying cognitive framework and core personality would remain entirely unchanged.
Dongfang Qingdi hesitated for a fraction of a second.
The data sync can wait until a future opportunity. I will archive the reference material for Xiang Nanli first.
This was the ultimate drawback of an Omnic possessing a distinct persona; they lacked rigid discipline, developing independent thoughts and behaviors. Their decisions could rarely be summarized as right or wrong—they were simply a fluid calculation of personal priorities.
Dongfang Qingdi had no desire to transmit his data back to the primary network just yet.
Because he had once received a definitive, absolute directive: Purge all rogue biological units suspected of being clones of Xiang Nanli.
Yet, he had completely refrained from taking action.
First of all, you are not a clone, Dongfang Qingdi rationalized silently to himself.
Therefore, this did not constitute a breach of protocol.
