Thank you @Renea for the Kofi~
Chapter 33: He Seemed Only Capable of Loving an Abstract Person
Xiang Nanli had no idea that in the eyes of others, he was once again being perceived as terrifyingly formidable.
He merely felt that Andrew had suddenly become unusually attentive.
That treacherous, black-hearted doctor no longer addressed him as a casual “you,” but had even switched to the formal, respectful “You.”
If Xiang Nanli knew what Andrew was actually thinking, he would probably shout “Injustice!” at the top of his lungs.
Thinking carefully about it, while Ezekiel and Dongfang Qingdi weren’t completely unrelated to him, his biggest role in the grand scheme of things was probably just opening two Pandora’s boxes.
He had released monsters into the world that should have remained buried in history.
Though Andrew hadn’t guessed the exact process, the conclusion he arrived at wasn’t too far off the mark.
“Please, have some,” Andrew said, pushing a pouch of nutrient paste toward Xiang Nanli. He then picked up his own tray and respectfully retreated.
Xiang Nanli looked down at the extra pouch of nutrient paste on his tray, his tone filled with confusion. “Is this black-hearted doctor trying to set me up again? Is there something wrong with this paste?”
No matter how he looked at it, though, it seemed like a standard product straight off a food factory’s assembly line.
The corner of Dongfang Qingdi’s mouth dropped by one degree. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
The nutrient paste was naturally fine, but Dongfang Qingdi felt that Andrew might just be asking to be formatted.
Wasting food was a bad habit, so Xiang Nanli stuffed the pouch into his backpack. Inside, five other boxes of nutrient paste were already packed.
Dongfang Qingdi didn’t eat either. To avoid drawing attention to his unusual nature, they always ate away from the crowd.
Xiang Nanli continued, “Still, Xiao Qing… you don’t eat, and you don’t charge either. How exactly do you maintain your operation?”
Dongfang Qingdi hesitated awkwardly for a moment before answering truthfully, “I have reserve energy sources. You don’t need to worry about it for now.”
“Oh? Controlled nuclear fusion reactor? Or a photon pulse?”
Those two technologies had already been implemented in some machine-modified humans.
“Neither.”
Xiang Nanli picked at the meat in his bowl and narrowed his eyes. “Xiao Qing, given our relationship, if there’s anything I can help with, just say the word. I won’t charge you a labor fee.”
Dongfang Qingdi sized him up with a critical glare. After a few seconds, he averted his gaze. “Staying alive is already a help to me.”
Hey!
The Eternal City was just a straight-line distance of five hundred kilometers away, yet the truck had been driving for nearly two days and still hadn’t arrived.
The driver explained that with spring approaching, traces of mutant activity had been spotted on many roads, forcing them to take a long detour.
They were finally getting close to their destination.
Xiang Nanli sat on a rock by the roadside eating his meal. Along the way, he had seen quite a few vehicles. Some were decked out in neon lights, bearing signs like “XX Martial Arts Hall” or “XX Fighting Studio.” They roared past, looking wealthy at a single glance.
Xiang Nanli didn’t have a precise understanding of the “Advanced Life Selection Tournament,” but to the grey-market organizations of the surrounding underground cities, it was essentially equivalent to an annual convention.
Many participating teams even used the tournament results as a way to divide the spoils among various factions for the coming year.
This was far more civilized than resorting to gunfights at every turn.
Armed conflicts easily resulted in casualties and were prone to attracting inspectors. Once hauled into court, one would have to spend a fortune bribing the judge… Hell, even lawyers had been pushed out of jobs by AI, so why were judges still purely natural humans?
Gusu was the poorest among the eighteen underground cities of the Human Alliance. Even neighboring Yinshan City was slightly better off.
The so-called “underground cities” were also quite different from the “cities” Xiang Nanli understood.
Due to spatial isolation, the economy and culture of each city had developed in an extremely unbalanced manner; they were merely forcibly linked together by the Human Alliance. They were essentially independent nations. Even the governance philosophies and political systems of the city governors varied wildly.
Reasonably speaking, harsh environments tended to breed lawless mobs, but Gusu City’s underworld and legitimate sectors both lacked a strong voice, making its presence exceedingly weak.
The Fighting Club was considered a top-tier club in Gusu City. Yet, among all the participating groups, it could only be ranked in the middle tier at best.
That was precisely why Rhine had signed the contract so readily.
They might not even manage to fight their way in, so why fall out with Xiang Nanli over an imaginary five million?
At 6:00 PM, the truck finally arrived at the tournament venue.
It was a bit rougher and livelier than Xiang Nanli had anticipated.
The arena was entirely open-air, located two kilometers away from the nearest edge of the Eternal City. While the contestants went to report to the tournament committee, robots and contractors were still working overtime to finish the set-up.
A total of twenty octagonal cages were situated right in the middle of the wasteland, with technicians on the side fine-tuning them. These cages were equipped with special facilities for timing, protection, and other functions.
In principle, no one was supposed to die in the matches. Yet, the mortality rate of the Selection Tournament had always remained high. Some contestants even took pride in beating their opponents to death.
One had to remember that they carried no weapons; their only weapon was the most fundamental tool of all—their physical bodies.
That point alone cast a faint scent of blood over the tournament ground.
As the tournament progressed, these smaller octagonal cages would merge into larger ones.
The ground at the venue had been paved with concrete, surrounded by alkaline wasteland, with farmland stretching further out.
A few simply dressed farmers were tending to rice crops that grew taller than a human being, occasionally casting curious glances in this direction.
Those were slaves of the Eternal City, complete with electronic shackles around their ankles. Every field was assigned a robot supervisor. If a slave rested for too long, the robot would walk over and activate punishment mode—usually an electric shock.
Xiang Nanli stopped an employee wearing a staff uniform and pointed toward the fields. “Are those agricultural slaves?”
The employee sized him up, confirmed he was an outsider, and only then offered a polite smile. “Sir, those slaves are all low-level Synths. No laws of the Human Alliance are being broken, so there’s no need to be overly concerned.”
Is that so? But he had heard that low-level Synths resembled apes more than humans.
Ordinary robots weren’t expensive to manufacture; what cost money were the various software packages bought for them. Furthermore, robots could work until they broke down and offered stable performance. Humans, on the other hand, had a prime working life of less than twenty years, requiring care before then and retirement afterward.
Was human life valuable? At least on the surface, it probably held less value than a single functional robot.
Xiang Nanli had grown up in a peaceful era and received an education rooted in equality for all.
Confronted with such a historical regression, he instinctively felt uncomfortable.
Yet he knew he had better adapt. Aside from him, no one around even cast a second glance at those fields.
Returning to the team, Xiang Nanli let out a long sigh. “No wonder I felt the Human Alliance was so terrible yet hadn’t erupted in class conflict; turns out it’s even worse outside.”
Dongfang Qingdi gave a quiet “Mm,” whispering, “Actually, over all these years, there have been some decent surface organizations. But because they were too idealistic and lacked efficiency, they often couldn’t exist for long—especially after their charismatic leaders died.
“The Eternal City is a small town with a population of only 70,000. Its most expensive piece of equipment is the radiation isolator. It operates on a system of slavery; the slave owners believe that giving these slaves a meal is an act of supreme mercy. In fact, that really is the case. If these agricultural slaves were freed and left the Eternal City’s system, their fate wouldn’t be any better. Because that is simply the nature of the surface environment.”
The world outside was dangerous—so said the city lord, and so said the outsiders. Some slaves who had escaped were brought back as corpses a few days later, gnawed into incomplete remains by unknown beasts, leaving only the women of their families clutching children while weeping uncontrollably.
The city lord declared that the reward for childbirth was half a pig, and that half pig was enough to drive the slaves of the Eternal City to have children at all costs. And after they were born? Who cared. They only wanted to eat meat.
Xiang Nanli thought to himself that it was fortunate his cryo-chamber had been picked up by Xiu.
If he had thawed out somewhere on the surface, he probably would have thought he had landed in the Middle Ages.
The accommodations for the contestants were located slightly to the left of the venue.
They were staying in shipping containers assigned by the tournament committee—two people to a room, each with a room number. Cleaning during the tournament period was self-service. The cafeteria and recreational facilities were on another level. One could also head into the Eternal City to find some entertainment.
Each team’s accommodations were arranged in clusters. The overall environment was roughly equal, but there was clearly some preferential treatment. For instance, the containers in the front row were noticeably larger, possessed better internal amenities, and were closer to the arena.
Carrying his maintenance kit, Xiang Nanli walked for half an hour before finally finding the dorm assigned by the committee.
He heard that once the official tournament began, shuttle buses would be arranged.
The club’s assigned dorm was located at the extreme edge, just a few hundred meters from the farmland. It was manured with who-knows-what, giving off a rather pungent odor.
Xiang Nanli looked down at the keycard and room number—”1607″—it matched.
He pushed open the door and inserted the power card. His smile froze the moment he saw the room clearly.
The bed was a double bed. Aside from the bed, there was only a shower stall—and it was completely transparent. Other than that, there was a television broadcasting adult programming that required extra payment.
The room had been used by last year’s contestants and showed signs of wear. For instance, various colored markers had been used on the walls to scrawl all sorts of nonsense: like “Make friends ***”, “Contact *** to form a group for wasteland clearing,” “Contact *** for hacker intrusion,” and “40% off cybernetics, taken from corpses, works great and safe.”
As for the bedding, it was brand new. The packaging hadn’t even been opened, so guests had to make the bed themselves.
He really shouldn’t have held any expectations for the living conditions.
Xiang Nanli stole a glance at Dongfang Qingdi beside him, then awkwardly sought out Rhine. “Are there any separate beds?”
He had never shared a bed with anyone—never in his life. Even when he was newborn, his parents hadn’t slept in the same bed with him.
Later, his mother had developed cancer. Xiang Nanli had found the best doctor for her, and his mother said she hoped to see him before the surgery. Xiang Nanli took the call and only replied with a single sentence: “Mom, I’m in a meeting.”
It wasn’t that he was cold-blooded; he simply hadn’t processed it. He thought that since he wasn’t performing the surgery, going or not made no difference. Besides, the doctor had said the success rate was very high.
Xiang Nanli wasn’t even acting out of revenge; he simply failed to comprehend his mother’s longing for familial affection on that phone call.
He seemed only capable of loving an abstract person.
“This whole area is all double beds,” Rhine replied. “It’s to save space. Why don’t you go ask the staff?”
So Xiang Nanli bit the bullet and went to find the tournament committee again.
The uniformed staff member took a look at the area—Zone 16. Ah, that far edge region. The polite smile at the corner of her mouth instantly turned impatient. “Sorry, our rooms are uniformly assigned. Though later in the tournament… well, there should be plenty of teams like yours getting eliminated. There might be vacant rooms then~ If you’re still around, that is.”
With that, she pulled out her phone without paying him any further mind and started playing a matching game, signaling that Xiang Nanli could leave.
Xiang Nanli stood there dumbfounded. “What do you mean? Speaking so spitefully! I’ll .”
Xiang Nanli had stepped out without Dongfang Qingdi. The moment Dongfang Qingdi saw the living setup, he had already begun making the bed on his own.
At this moment, the AI voice rang out in his mind: [Come back. I don’t need to sleep.]
Dongfang Qingdi couldn’t quite understand Xiang Nanli’s behavior. For artificial intelligences like them, a body was merely hardware equipment. Whether they had one or not didn’t matter, and how it was used didn’t seem to matter either.
Still, human society was just like that.
Xiang Nanli returned to Room 1607 in a huff. The room had already been cleaned up nicely. Even the chaotic graffiti on the wall had been covered by Dongfang Qingdi using a bedsheet.
Setting down his backpack, Xiang Nanli asked curiously, “Where did the extra bedsheet come from?”
Having one extra would be one thing, but there seemed to be four or five here.
Dongfang Qingdi paused briefly. “Borrowed them from next door.”
Right next to them were contestants from other teams—both fighters and technicians. Some groups had even brought along media workers just to scrape together some web traffic, though they would only live-stream on private platforms.
When Dongfang Qingdi initially went over to borrow things, their attitude hadn’t been very friendly.
His physical condition looked decent enough, but its aesthetic quality far outweighed any sense of raw power. Some contestants had arms thicker than his thighs.
So, he politely snapped two of their hands. The people around him instantly became friendly. They didn’t even wait for him to ask; the moment they heard a knock on the door, they proactively presented newly opened, clean bedsheets.
They were just bedsheets; it wasn’t as if one couldn’t sleep without them. But a snapped hand meant having to find a doctor.
Among the hands Dongfang Qingdi snapped, some were cybernetic as well.
“Well, the contestants here are actually pretty easy to talk to,” Xiang Nanli remarked with feeling. “Way better than the folks from the committee!”
Dongfang Qingdi pondered for a moment, then nodded. “Indeed.”
