“How’s LAO Curator Wu?” Li Feng stared at the blacked-out screen for a while before turning to ask Cheng Gu.
“He’s emotionally unstable,” Cheng Gu replied.
“I’ll go shoot him,” Li Feng stood up. “Wasting oxygen.”
After standing, he glanced toward the glass wall. Mr. Long was looking at him.
Curator Wu didn’t know about the General. The fact that the General’s brain was locked in the military base’s eighteenth level of hell—before Li Feng found out, probably only Mr. Long and Colonel Yu’s group knew.
If it weren’t for the fact that the brain was kept at the base, and the General was the military’s head, Colonel Yu probably wouldn’t have known either.
This top-secret matter, due to it involving the lives of the people in the lab—including Mr. Long himself—had to be disclosed to more people. But what Mr. Long thought about it, no one knew.
Li Feng didn’t care too much. Anyone who found out about this would never casually reveal it. No matter how many heroes there were, the General had always been the symbol of safety for Yun City.
Especially now, after the statue of the bioroid on the mountain by the city gate had been decapitated, Yun City was finally about to return to a state of three-party cooperation—such a critical juncture.
Curator Wu was sitting dazed by the lab bench and only glanced up when Li Feng walked in.
Li Feng sat across from him and leaned back in his chair. “Heard your emotions are a bit unstable.”
It was like Curator Wu had been poked in the rear. He shot up. “How can I be stable? How can I be stable?!”
“Don’t waste oxygen,” Li Feng said calmly. “Every time you’re unstable, we lose a day of our lives.”
“Cut the crap,” Curator Wu glared at him. “You know about this, don’t you?”
“Can we talk calmly?” Li Feng said. “You’re the head of the lab. If you act like this, how can I feel safe telling you what I know?”
Curator Wu sat back down, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly. “What’s the truth about the General? Everyone thought the General was just a recycled image used for secrecy and that there were different people through the generations. But now, it doesn’t seem to be the case, right?”
“What’s the deal with those two chief researchers?” Li Feng asked.
“What, you want to trade this kind of info with me too?” Curator Wu looked at him.
“Isn’t it fair?” Li Feng said. “I’ve always traded information equally. I don’t give for free, and I don’t take for free either.”
“Cut the crap.” Curator Wu gritted his teeth, paused, then relented with a sigh. “I don’t know the specifics. You know I’ve never cared about this stuff. Director Lu was still in charge at the time. Those two were the best technicians back then. They had access to Yun City’s most advanced tech.”
“Like what?” Li Feng asked.
“I really don’t know. But you’re aware—our tech today is far behind pre-war human civilization,” Curator Wu sighed. “No talent, no technology. We’ll never go back to the pre-war days—at least not in our generation.”
“Get to the point,” Li Feng said.
“They must’ve found something pre-war, beyond their clearance, maybe even beyond their technical abilities. Or those things were too dangerous for our current level of technology. So then…” Curator Wu looked at him. “Maybe what they found was the General’s secret and the related technology.”
Li Feng said nothing.
“Before I took over,” Curator Wu continued, “Director Lu sealed off some materials. After I took office, I followed his instructions and confined the two of them to the warehouse. That’s all.”
“Then they must have had access to the lab’s data,” Li Feng said, frowning in thought. “Those two might be the people who understand the lab and the General best right now.”
“Your turn,” Curator Wu said.
“Yeah, it’s just like you thought. There’s only one General. He’s been dead for a long time. His brain is kept underground at the base,” Li Feng rattled off. “Qiu Shi and the others are using the General’s brain in various ways to establish communication with us through the lab screens. That’s it.”
Curator Wu stared at him in silence for a long time before finally asking, “How do you know all this about the General?”
“I’m afraid of dying,” Li Feng said.
“You don’t seem afraid at all,” Curator Wu replied.
“I’m so afraid of dying that I’m not even afraid of death anymore,” Li Feng said. “That’s why I know.”
“If they can connect to the General’s brain…” Curator Wu fell into deep thought again. “Then the reason they kept the General’s brain—was it for the technology, or for the data in the brain?”
“No idea,” Li Feng replied. “If we make it out alive, that’s your problem.”
“Could there be other brains?” Curator Wu looked at him, eyes suddenly lighting up.
“Don’t go crazy,” Li Feng stared back. “Or you’ll be the one donating the next brain.”
Going to the General’s office wasn’t something that could be done repeatedly. After Qiu Shi disconnected, he vomited twice. It was said that Mr. Long felt sick for two days. Even the two chief researchers said the aftereffects of connecting were intense.
“Let’s head back to the hospital first for a check-up and take your meds,” Xing Bi said. “Lin Sheng and the others will stay to see if they can get more out of them.”
“How? Lin Sheng and Xu Jie are both second-grade bioroids,” Qiu Shi asked.
“Let Ji Sui interrogate them then,” Xing Bi smiled.
“Alright, let’s go,” Qiu Shi stood up and walked out. “It’s not that I want to go to the hospital—I just want to get some fresh air. This place is too suffocating. I don’t know how they managed to stay down here for twenty years.”
As they exited the warehouse zone, Qiu Shi glanced back. The unused bioroids had been stuck here even longer. He wondered if they could sense they weren’t just imprisoned in sleep pods—but those pods were buried in the deepest part of the underground mine.
When they left the exhibition hall, Ji Sui specifically told them to take the car. Minister Liu had left a car for them in the parking lot.
The hospital wasn’t far. Qiu Shi had originally planned to walk, but after seeing the outside, he tugged Xing Bi back toward the parking lot.
The celebration had just ended. The narrow mountain streets of Yun City were packed with joyful people. Everyone was waving little flags. The flags were of different colors and printed with different designs—some had the bioroid units, others the Immortal Heroes Unit 2, and some had Qiu Shi’s portrait. Some people even had his image printed directly on their faces.
“I feel like I’m seeing nothing but myself everywhere,” Qiu Shi said as he got in and shut the car door.
“Afraid of being recognized?” Xing Bi smiled, started the car, and exited through the rear gate of the parking lot.
Taking this route would lead to the hospital via a narrow road on the north side of the inner city. It was longer, but less crowded—since past that was Yun City’s fertilizer pit zone, and there were several checkpoints along the way. Regular people didn’t go there.
“That white-bearded guy—was he really your teacher?” Qiu Shi looked at Xing Bi. “I remember… when Li Feng showed me your memories, your teacher didn’t have a beard. His hair wasn’t that long either.”
“He only shaved his beard not long before he died,” Xing Bi said. “He said grooming it took too much time. Things were already chaotic back then.”
“He was outside the General’s office… Did they work in the same place?” Qiu Shi asked.
“No,” Xing Bi replied. “That’s why I found it strange. He had no military background. It’s unlikely he could freely move around the General’s office.”
“Was I just too dizzy and saw wrong? Or was there some detail I missed?” Qiu Shi wondered aloud.
“He couldn’t have been there. He was just my teacher,” Xing Bi said. “He was a scholar. He wouldn’t have had direct contact with the General.”
“Should we ask those two chief researchers?” Qiu Shi asked.
Although the two chief engineers had also connected to the General’s office, neither of them had mentioned the presence of anyone else, so out of caution, even when Qiu Shi saw the white-haired old man, they didn’t bring it up.
“Let’s try probing them a little first,” Xing Bi said. “These two may seem crazy and foolish, but they are chief technicians after all. Even if they’ve lost their minds, they couldn’t possibly be truly dumb.”
Qiu Shi’s body was recovering quickly. The lab doctor checked him thoroughly—everything was improving, and there was nothing abnormal.
“Are Curator Wu and the others okay?” the doctor asked quietly.
“We still can’t reach them,” Qiu Shi replied. “But there shouldn’t be any immediate danger to their lives.”
“Ah,” the doctor sighed. “If we lose the people inside, and if this lab is gone, Yun City will regress by who knows how many years. Who knows what things will become then.”
“Don’t be too pessimistic,” Qiu Shi said. “In all my years, the only Yun City tech I’ve really enjoyed is canned food.”
And even that had been nurtured from human corpses.
The doctor looked at him, opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing.
Qiu Shi could understand how the doctor felt—after all, this was his profession. His perspective was different from that of the average citizen. But for most people in a world like this, all that really mattered was having enough to eat, something warm to wear, and staying alive.
After the doctor left, Qiu Shi took his medicine and said, “I don’t want to reopen the lab for the sake of the technology.”
“I know. You’re doing it for Li Feng,” Xing Bi said. “How touching, partner.”
Qiu Shi chuckled, drank half a bottle of water, and wiped his mouth. “It’s true. If Li Feng dies, we’ll be dragged into an even bigger mess. I want him alive. I want him out. As long as he’s around, Yun City can keep functioning, and I can go back to the way things used to be. I don’t want to think too much—didn’t have much brain to begin with. If I can solve a problem with my fists, I’d rather not use my brain at all.”
“Mm, I know,” Xing Bi said with a smile.
“Zhao Lü and the others must be thinking the same thing,” Qiu Shi said. “Those guys followed me all the way to Xima Town because they were afraid I’d die out there. And now I’m stuck in Yun City. They’re probably cursing me out as a group in Xima Town right now.”
“At least you’re not dead,” Xing Bi said. “You even got to see the General’s office.”
“That place outside the General’s office—it must’ve been a military base back then. It looked so nice,” Qiu Shi said. “The roads were flat and wide, the trees were beautiful, there were lots of flowers. I wonder if you can see other places from in there…”
“Qiu Shi,” Xing Bi cut him off. “That’s not the real world. And it’s not the real past either. What you saw was the General’s memory—his consciousness. Doing this is already dangerous enough. Don’t let your mind wander beyond its limits.”
“I know,” Qiu Shi said. “I kept getting confused in there. I know it’s dangerous. I’m just saying the world back then was beautiful.”
“If you want to see it, I can take you,” Xing Bi said. “Yun City is in a mountainous wasteland—chosen for defense and security. But farther out, there are ruined cities.”
“Ruins, huh.” Qiu Shi said.
“Still, they’re ruins you backwater post-apocalyptic bumpkins have never seen,” Xing Bi said.
“Hey?” Qiu Shi looked at him. “We’re just having a nice chat, why the sudden insult?”
Xing Bi laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Qiu Shi said. “I won’t do anything dangerous.”
Not long after resting at the hospital, he received a call from Minister Liu, asking if there was any progress with the lab. Li Feng’s assistant and secretary at the Security Bureau were starting to get nervous since they still couldn’t reach him.
“There’s a rough direction now,” Qiu Shi said. “I’ll head back shortly to keep searching.”
“Anything you need me to do to assist?” Minister Liu asked. “I’ve taken over Li Feng’s responsibilities for now. Let me know what you need—I can make it happen.”
“It’s going well so far,” Qiu Shi said. At this point, the only option was to continue searching in the General’s office.
“Qiu Shi, I’m not trying to pressure you,” Minister Liu said, “but the people trapped in there are… extremely important to Yun City. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they determine its future.”
“I understand,” Qiu Shi replied.
After ending the call, he collapsed back on the hospital bed. “Why the hell did this whole thing fall on my head?”
“You could hand it over to Minister Liu and the others,” Xing Bi said.
“I’m afraid if they go in, the General might shoot them on sight,” Qiu Shi said.
Xing Bi laughed.
“If the General had pulled the trigger when he pointed the gun at me today, would I have died?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Probably not. That’s his memory,” Xing Bi replied. “If things deviate too far from how they actually happened—like him killing a stranger in his office—it could trigger suspicion in his brain and cause the memory to reset back to its original state.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Qiu Shi smiled, then looked at Xing Bi. “Hey, you handsome bioroid—come here.”
“Mm?” Xing Bi walked over to the bed and looked down at him.
“Give me a kiss,” Qiu Shi said, arms wide open.
Xing Bi leaned in and slid his hand under Qiu Shi’s shirt.
“Hey,” Qiu Shi chuckled. “What are you doing?”
“Checking if your heart rate patch is still on,” Xing Bi said.
“I didn’t wear it today,” Qiu Shi said, touching his face. “As a sharp bioroid, how did you miss that?”
“I noticed,” Xing Bi said, pressing his face to Qiu Shi’s neck. “I just needed an excuse.”
Yun City was still buzzing with excitement and joy. On the drive back to the exhibition hall, they could hear “The Song of Yun City” playing everywhere. Minister Liu had gone all-out to create a mood of peace and victory.
Back outside the lab, Sang Fan and the others were still on guard. When she saw Qiu Shi, she handed him an orange.
“Where’d this come from?” Qiu Shi asked in surprise. “They only give these out during city celebrations.”
“I went out earlier,” Sang Fan said. “Someone outside gave it to me.”
“You actually went outside?” Qiu Shi peeled the orange and popped a segment into his mouth. “Weren’t you afraid of being mobbed?”
“It was the people crowding around me who gave it to me,” Sang Fan replied.
“…You adapt well,” Qiu Shi said.
Sang Fan just smiled.
A beep came through the earpiece, followed by a voice: “Xing Bi.”
“What is it?” Xing Bi asked.
“Come to the archive room.”
“Did you find something?” Xing Bi gestured to Qiu Shi, and they both headed toward the archive room.
“We need to look into this person.”
The voice belonged to Qu Shen, who was still going through the files.
Ever since the lab incident, Colonel Yu had handed over the internal security of the exhibition hall to Xing Bi. Now, in the internal corridors, all Qiu Shi saw were bioroids. If he didn’t look out the windows, it felt like stepping back into the era of that imagined “friend.”
The exhibition hall was full of visitors that day. Even through the corridor walls, they could hear the noisy crowd. The recent battle had already been added to the hall as part of Yun City’s “history.” The exhibition hall hadn’t had any major updates in years—usually just adding Mr. Long’s speech after each city celebration.
This time, with such a significant update, residents of the inner city had flocked in to visit.
But that kind of lively scene was limited to the inner city. For someone like Qiu Shi, who’d spent over a decade as a corpse collector, it was easy to imagine what the outer city looked like now.
People there were likely in chaos over the sudden distribution of canned food and winter clothes—there was joy from the unexpected supplies, but more often there was grief and despair from being robbed or even killed over them.
Li Feng might not be able to change all of that. But at least he could remove the added fear of war and slaughter from those people’s lives.
The archive room was on a restricted floor, very quiet. Though the records were accessible, the information they could find was still limited.
“Other than a small amount of top-secret or permanently sealed files,” Qu Shen said, “I’ve already gone through everything. There’s basically nothing on the construction or structure of the lab.”
“Basically?” Xing Bi asked.
“Except for one bioroid,” Qu Shen pulled up a file. “This is a first-generation bioroid, categorized as experimental personnel. At first, I thought it was a clerical error, but…”
The file contained an image—an anatomical diagram of a bioroid, surrounded by various annotations.
“Is this a standard structural diagram?” Xing Bi stared at the image.
“It looks like it, but it’s not. It corresponds to a specific bioroid,” Qu Shen zoomed in on the image. In the bottom right corner was a number, which looked like a file number. “This is its ID.”
“An ID?” Qiu Shi leaned in to look.
“The ID corresponds to the small square labels,” Xing Bi explained. “It’s for identification, but it’s not usually used as the unit’s official ID. First-class bioroids have names, and second-class IDs don’t follow this format either.”
“This is a first-generation ID,” Qu Shen said. “But I’m certain all units from the first-generation series have already been terminated. The termination data is accessible—body materials were all documented as recycled—except for this one.”
“It wasn’t terminated?” Xing Bi asked.
“It shows as terminated,” Qu Shen said, “but there’s no record of body recovery or disposal. I searched using this ID and found only one record: it was on a list of core personnel in a pre-war lab. But again, it was only marked with the number in the bottom corner…”
“He was a core technical staff member in the lab?” Xing Bi looked stunned. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No.” Qu Shen replied.
“So, there was a first-generation, first-class bioroid who was a core lab technician before the war,” Qiu Shi summarized. “But for confidentiality, he had no name—only an ID written in the corner. And now, this bioroid is supposedly terminated, but there’s no actual proof of it. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes,” said Qu Shen.
“Should we ask Mr. Long? Might he know what’s going on?” Qiu Shi asked.
“These are pre-war files. No one’s ever looked at them,” said Qu Shen. “This bioroid’s data is this limited. Even if someone did see it, they wouldn’t think twice.”
“Could he have some kind of connection to the lab?” Qiu Shi looked at Xing Bi. “Would the two Chiefs know anything?”
“Let’s go,” Xing Bi turned and walked toward the transport bay. “Let’s ask.”
Qiu Shi followed, frowning and asking as they walked, “Hey, do you think I could link my brain with theirs? Go snooping inside their heads a little?”
“Qiu Shi,” Xing Bi turned around to look at him. “Get a grip.”
“Mm,” Qiu Shi chuckled. “I was just curious.”
“Stop being so curious all the time.” Xing Bi pulled him to stand in front of him. “This is a warning.”
“So serious?” Qiu Shi was taken aback.
“Yes,” Xing Bi said firmly.
Qiu Shi had never seen that kind of expression on Xing Bi’s face—cold and stern, with anxiety lurking in his eyes.
“I get it,” Qiu Shi said. “I get it. I won’t. I might not be as smart as you, but I’m not brain-dead either.”
“Mm.” Xing Bi gave a grunt of acknowledgment, reached up, and turned off the team comms on his earpiece, then shut off Qiu Shi’s too.
Qiu Shi looked at him.
“I’m afraid,” Xing Bi said.
“Afraid of what?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Afraid of losing the people I care about. People. Hope,” Xing Bi said.
“What people?” Qiu Shi asked.
“You.” Xing Bi said. “Your brain really doesn’t work that well if you need me to spell that out for you.”
“Fu-ck your ancestors,” Qiu Shi replied.
Xing Bi laughed.
The two Chiefs were sitting in front of a monitoring screen, watching the mechanical arms repeat the same motions over and over.
Qiu Shi stood behind them for less than five minutes before feeling like he was going to die of boredom.
“When do you guys get off work? Or take a break?” Qiu Shi asked.
“In about ten… ten minutes,” the tall one turned his head. “We’ll take a break.”
“How come you didn’t need a break when you took us to the electric chairs?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Questioning is boring,” the short one said quickly. “Linking is fun.”
“You have to finish questioning before you can do linking,” Qiu Shi said. “If you jump straight to linking and get nowhere, isn’t that just a waste?”
“Okay.” The short one immediately turned around.
“Ji Sui just asked you earlier—you said you’ve done over ten private links. Is that true?” Xing Bi asked.
“Yes.” The short one nodded repeatedly.
“You encountered something unusual, didn’t you?” Xing Bi asked. “Why can’t you say?”
“It’s not that we can’t,” the tall one glanced at Ji Sui standing by the door. “He’s not the team leader.”
“Chiefs talk to team leaders,” Ji Sui said.
Qiu Shi couldn’t help but click his tongue.
“Can you talk now?” Xing Bi asked.
“There’s someone else inside,” the short one said. “An old man hiding in there.”
