“The door’s not closed,” Xing Bi reminded him.
“What’s there to be afraid of?” Qiu Shi pressed his elbow against Xing Bi’s chest, staring into his eyes. “There’s no one else here but the two of us.”
“Then turn on the heater,” Xing Bi said.
“A proud hidden guard,” Qiu Shi pulled open Xing Bi’s shirt and pressed his hand against his abdomen, “and you’re afraid of the cold?”
Xing Bi’s skin was smooth and warm. When Qiu Shi placed his hand on it, he felt a bit dazed. It was the first time he realized that after his enhancements, the sensations in his palms and fingertips seemed sharper. Xing Bi’s body heat flowed into his palm and was pumped up his arm with every beat of the pulse at his wrist.
“I’m afraid you’ll get cold,” Xing Bi said. “This is the shelter, not the temperature-controlled lab of the inner city.”
“I’m not cold,” Qiu Shi said.
“Not even if you’re naked?” Xing Bi asked.
Qiu Shi looked at him without answering.
“What, you plan to fu-ck your ancestor fully clothed?” Xing Bi asked.
“…Xing Bi,” Qiu Shi grabbed his chin, paused for a moment, and sighed. “You’ve really got a thick skin.”
“Under normal circumstances, not this thick,” Xing Bi replied. “I’m mostly worried you’re too thin-skinned for this to go anywhere.”
“This has nothing to do with skin.” Qiu Shi’s hand slid to Xing Bi’s waist. He slowly leaned down, wrapping his arm around Xing Bi’s lower back, buried his face in his neck and rubbed hard twice, then couldn’t help biting his shoulder. His voice came out with audible, heavy breaths. “This is instinct. Like an animal.”
Xing Bi didn’t respond. He slipped his hand under Qiu Shi’s clothes.
His palm sliding across Qiu Shi’s back stirred a small storm beneath the skin. Something deep inside began to churn.
Qiu Shi suddenly sat up and stripped off his clothes in a couple of swift motions.
Outside, a gust of wind howled past. The door, left unlocked when they entered, was blown open with a loud bang, like someone had kicked it in.
It felt like someone had smashed a chunk of ice against Qiu Shi’s back.
He gritted his teeth and held out for two seconds, then finally jumped off the bed. Tossing aside his clothes, he yanked down his pants while walking over and kicked the door shut with one sharp motion.
Bang. Like a competition.
Xing Bi watched Qiu Shi’s back.
There were no scars left on Qiu Shi’s body. Once upon a time, he’d had many—traces left from years of crawling through the dangers outside the city. Scars that marked him as one of the corpse collectors who struggled and stubbornly survived in this world. But after his enhancements, they had slowly faded.
Yet his body still radiated human vitality—the luster of his skin gleaming softly, the contours of his muscles shifting with his movements, carrying a gentle strength.
Qiu Shi locked the door, grabbed the heater ball from the corner, and turned it on. A warm orange light instantly filled the room. Carrying the ball, he walked back toward the bed. The glowing light danced across his nearly flawless—though not “factory standard”—body.
Xing Bi could feel his own heartbeat and breathing start to speed up in sync.
A strange physical sensation. He had never felt something this intense before.
“Gonna leave this here,” Qiu Shi placed the heater on the table beside the bed, released his grip on his pants, kicked them aside, and looked down at Xing Bi, who was still lying on the bed, propped on one arm, watching him. “Hey, Ancestor.”
“Hmm?” Xing Bi answered.
“Xing Bi,” Qiu Shi said.
“Mm.” Xing Bi answered again.
Qiu Shi didn’t even know what he wanted to say. He just wanted to hear Xing Bi’s voice—that hoarse, gravelly voice that somehow made a single hum sound incredibly se-xy.
Se-xy.
He no longer remembered where he had read or heard that word. Only now, in this moment, did he understand it clearly.
He braced his hands on the bed and slowly lowered his head, placing a kiss on Xing Bi’s chest.
Then upward—to his collarbone, throat.
Downward—to his abs, his lower abdomen…
His lips moved up, his hand moved down.
Do you know how many memories a person holds?
As many as the stars in the universe.
Yes, like the stars.
Some we remember, some we forget.
But the ones we savor, we remember. A mouthful of breath, a mouthful of moan, a mouthful of burning skin—the ones with a hint of pain, those stay the clearest. The corner of the mouth, the throat, the nape…
Outside, the howling wind fell into silence.
But inside, the heart raced like a stampede. Every tiny touch sparked waves of chaos.
A small white light lit up on the back of Qiu Shi’s hand.
It was a direct link from Li Feng, but he wasn’t wearing his earpiece and didn’t feel like getting up to put it on. So he just lifted his head and shouted, “Sleeping! Fu-ck off, you bastard!”
The light went out.
Xing Bi laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Qiu Shi tightened his arms around him, pressing his face hard against Xing Bi’s back. He pressed so firmly that his nose nearly flattened. “Was I wrong?”
“No,” Xing Bi reached back to touch his leg. “He’s probably about to call me.”
“Ignore him,” Qiu Shi said.
“My pet unit’s set to auto-connect…” Xing Bi began.
Before he could finish, the small device on the table jumped into the air: “Video call from Li Feng.”
The word video nearly made Qiu Shi leap out of bed. He grabbed some shirt—he didn’t even know whose—and hurled it at the unit.
The pet bot was wrapped up in the clothes and dropped to the floor.
“Meeting in thirty minutes,” Li Feng’s voice came through the fabric. “Museum conference room.”
“Fu-ck, I never should’ve let you out,” Qiu Shi swore.
“Hurry up. Get dressed,” Li Feng said.
“Motherfu-cker!” Qiu Shi jumped up, grabbed the clothes off the floor, opened the door, and threw both the clothes and the bot out into the hallway. “Go stare at the snow!”
As he shut the door, he saw Xing Bi smiling.
“Yeah, laugh it up.” Qiu Shi jumped back into bed and pounced on top of him. “You really are shameless.”
“You’re not exactly modest either.” Xing Bi hooked his finger at the corner of Qiu Shi’s mouth. “Human instinct really is… fascinating.”
“Fascinating?” Qiu Shi kissed him at the corner of his mouth. “More fascinating than your bioroid-specialised programming?”
“It’s different,” Xing Bi said. “Humans… are primitive, and—”
“You’re the one who’s primitive.” Qiu Shi buried his face in Xing Bi’s neck. “Bioroids were created by humans, and you have the nerve to call us primitive.”
Xing Bi just laughed and said nothing.
“Are we going to the meeting?” Qiu Shi asked.
“If I say no, will you skip it too?” Xing Bi asked.
“Yes,” Qiu Shi said.
“Then we’re not going,” Xing Bi replied.
“Okay,” Qiu Shi said.
Xing Bi pulled the blanket over them. Qiu Shi didn’t move, still sprawled on top of him, one hand wrapped tightly around his back.
They stayed like that in silence for about five minutes.
“…Fu-ck,” Qiu Shi muttered.
“We still have to go,” Xing Bi laughed.
“Yeah, after all that effort, almost died,” Qiu Shi mumbled. “It’d be…”
“We have to go. You really don’t want to?” Xing Bi asked.
“Didn’t you say we weren’t going?” Qiu Shi looked up at him.
“I knew you’d definitely go,” Xing Bi said.
“Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doing this for,” Qiu Shi said. “It’s like Li Feng kept pushing and tricking me along the way until I ended up here. But sometimes I wonder, if there really was another choice—what would it be? Would I have taken it?”
“Do you know why Li Feng picked you?” Xing Bi gently patted his back.
“Because I’m easy to fool,” Qiu Shi said.
“Besides your immunity, he’s known you for a long time. He knows what kind of person you are,” Xing Bi said. “He knew all he had to do was give you a push. He didn’t even need to present options. No matter how unwilling, you’d still keep going.”
Qiu Shi said nothing.
“Every era, every story, has a hero,” Xing Bi said. “And you’re the kind of person who’s bound to be that hero.”
“Fu-ck,” Qiu Shi sighed, pulled off the blanket and got out of bed. He looked back, then pounced and kissed Xing Bi on the nose. “I don’t really get it, but you make sense.”
Xing Bi laughed for a while.
The shirt that had been thrown outside was Xing Bi’s. Qiu Shi picked it up, shook it out, and tossed it onto the bed.
“It’s dirty,” Xing Bi said.
“What’s dirty?” Qiu Shi put on his pants and pulled out a cigarette, lit one.
“The shirt you threw outside—it’s dirty,” Xing Bi said.
“…Where is it dirty?” Qiu Shi held the shirt up and looked it over. “It’s all snow out there, hasn’t even melted. Where’s the dirt supposed to come from?”
“Don’t you have some clean clothes in that closet?” Xing Bi asked.
“Yeah,” Qiu Shi opened the closet and rummaged through it. There were only a few pieces, salvaged from the Welfare Department’s warehouse. “But they’re all old…”
“That’s fine,” Xing Bi said.
Just as Qiu Shi was about to grab one, he stopped and turned to look at Xing Bi. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Hmm?” Xing Bi looked at him and curled his lips slightly. “The ash’s about to fall on you.”
Qiu Shi glanced down at his cigarette, bit it in his teeth, and blew off the bit of ash hanging on the tip. “You just want to wear my clothes to the meeting, don’t you?”
“How is blowing the ash off any different from just letting it fall?” Xing Bi chuckled.
“I don’t see the difference with one lump of ash,” Qiu Shi tossed him the shirt. “Sometimes I think you relics are real childish.”
“Mm,” Xing Bi smiled as he put on the shirt. “Unlike you apocalypse guys who know nothing but instinct.”
Qiu Shi turned and looked at him. “Huh.”
“Primitive,” Xing Bi said. “But I like it.”
Qiu Shi stared at him for a moment, then rushed over just as he was about to button up, pulled him into a tight hug, slipped his hands under the shirt and around his back, squeezing hard before planting a big kiss on his face and letting go.
“That habit of yours is actually pretty nice,” Qiu Shi turned off the heater and opened the door. “Only start buttoning up after putting everything on.”
“I didn’t use to have this habit,” Xing Bi said.
Qiu Shi turned his head.
“I was waiting for you,” Xing Bi said.
“Fu-ck,” Qiu Shi said, and strode out the door.
Even though he had slept a bit, it had been too short. As soon as Qiu Shi got into the car, he started yawning.
“Tired?” Xing Bi glanced at him.
“Yeah,” Qiu Shi leaned against the seat. “I’m gonna nap. Wake me when we get there.”
“Okay,” Xing Bi said.
Qiu Shi closed his eyes, just about to fall asleep, when Xing Bi flicked his face with a finger. “We’re here.”
“Your ancestor,” Qiu Shi opened his eyes, annoyed. “You messing with me? I just started to sleep.”
“You’ve been snoring for ten minutes already,” Xing Bi said.
“Really?” Qiu Shi looked out the window—sure enough, they were already inside the inner city, parked in the exhibition hall lot.
“Want another five minutes?” Xing Bi offered. “We’re five minutes early.”
Qiu Shi didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes again.
Director Liu looked at the meeting list in front of him and hesitated slightly, then glanced at Li Feng. “Chen Dang’s attending too?”
“Yeah,” Li Feng nodded.
“Is that appropriate?” Director Liu looked toward the door. The other attendees hadn’t arrived yet, and he lowered his voice. “Do Lao Song and the others know?”
“They’ll know when they get here,” Li Feng said. “Chen Dang is a bioroid. He’s not like Luo Zhenzhang or Gao Shan—if we want to work together, we might as well be transparent.”
“Do we have any control over him?” Director Liu asked. “He might not be a stealth guard, but he’s still a bioroid.”
“With his permission, Lao Wu installed a controller in him,” Li Feng said. “I can activate it if necessary.”
Director Liu was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. You’ve always been more thorough than us.”
This wasn’t a private meeting. While Li Feng and the others had been locked in the lab, a number of emergency responses had been deployed, involving many parties. Separate briefings had lost meaning and only bred suspicion, so they had decided to bring everyone together.
From the company side: Director Liu from the Emergency Response Department, Director Song from Tech Development, Curator Wu, Colonel Yu, the two chief engineers, Zhang Qifeng, Lin Sheng from Xing Bi’s team, and others…
“Where are Qiu Shi and Xing Bi?” Director Liu asked. “Everyone else is here—just waiting on them.”
“I think I saw their car in the parking lot when I came up,” Curator Wu said.
Li Feng cleared his throat and said nothing. He really had no idea what those two were doing in the parking lot for so long.
Just as he was thinking of calling Qiu Shi, the conference room door opened and Xing Bi and Qiu Shi walked in. Qiu Shi looked half-asleep, with seat marks still imprinted on his face.
…They actually napped in the parking lot.
“Everyone’s here. Let’s get started.” Li Feng pulled out a cigarette, then caught Curator Wu’s furious glare. He glanced at the overhead ventilation. “Ventilation to full, sorry.”
Since there were no staff present and this was on the exhibition hall’s turf, Curator Wu had to get up and adjust the ventilation himself.
“Everyone here is familiar with each other, so to save time, we’ll just introduce the unfamiliar faces,” Li Feng looked at Chen Dang. “This is Chen Dang, leader of the bioroids in Donglin Town. And these two…”
Li Feng turned to the two chief engineers. “Wang Hong and Zhang Tan, chief technicians during Director Lu’s tenure. They’ve been conducting… secret research in the bioroid warehouse.”
“This meeting is mainly to brief everyone on the recent lab lockdown incident,” Director Liu continued, “as well as the current war situation in Yun City.”
To the south, the defensive line from Xima Town to Shidi had been established. The supply and defense route from Xima to Yun City had been fully opened. To the north, the defensive zone from Donglin to Xilin had taken shape, and the corridor from Donglin to Yun City was under construction. The bridge had already been built. Any wanderers who were willing to submit to Yun City’s management could stay; those who wished to leave could do so freely—but anyone wanting to re-enter later would have to pass through inspection…
“The next step is to move toward Xingchuan,” Colonel Yu looked at Zhang Qifeng. “That’ll be led by Director Zhang and Captain Zhu. Thank you for your hard work.”
“Just doing our job,” Zhang Qifeng said.
“Now, let’s move on to…” Director Liu looked at Li Feng.
“Given the recent war developments and Yun City’s actual situation,” Li Feng said, “Yun City will activate all level-one and level-two bioroids within a week.”
Everyone looked up at him.
The decision was astonishing. Although bioroids had been gradually activated in small batches—twenty or thirty at a time—this would multiply that number tenfold. For the people of Yun City, who had always been told that bioroids were uncontrollable and posed the highest level of danger, and that it was difficult to determine their stability, this was indeed a shocking move.
“The current threat to Yun City comes from the Symbiont Legion,” Li Feng said, extinguishing his cigarette. “Their combat strength isn’t something human soldiers can counter. Our defense line is long—any single breach could be fatal. We need the help of the bioroids…”
Li Feng looked at Xing Bi. “All activation, screening, and personnel arrangements of the bioroids will be handled by Xing Bi’s team and Chen Dang.”
Xing Bi looked at Chen Dang, who was already watching him.
“You all should be familiar with each other,” Li Feng said. “Whatever happened before, we’re all stuck on the same boat for now. Let’s hope for smooth cooperation.”
“Now then,” Minister Liu took a deep breath, “we’re moving on to the core of today’s meeting. It involves the highest authority granted since the founding of Yun City. Due to the current special circumstances, everything discussed in this meeting must remain strictly confidential.”
“We were only able to open the lab this time,” Curator Wu said, “because of Qiu Shi…”
He turned to look at Qiu Shi, and everyone followed suit.
Qiu Shi was slumped in his chair, head tilted back, sound asleep.
“It was Qiu Shi who used a previously locked technology in Yun City,” Curator Wu had no choice but to continue, “Under the operation of our former chiefs, Wang Hong and Zhang Tan, he entered… the General’s memory system and found a way to reverse-unlock it. And through this technology, we discovered some suspicious elements.”
“There was intrusion data in the memory storage,” Wang Hong finally got his turn to speak, and his words came out rapid-fire. “We initially analyzed it and thought it belonged to a certain bioroid, but we weren’t sure who. After further analysis over the past few days, we found that this bioroid data wasn’t always present in the memory system. It comes and goes electromagnetically… and it wipes out any other intruders in the memory system.”
“Data?” Colonel Yu asked.
“Yes. It’s not consciousness or memory—it’s data. That’s how we know it came from a bioroid,” Wang Hong said. “Qiu Shi has seen it…”
Everyone turned to look at Qiu Shi again.
He was still sleeping, head tilted back.
Li Feng looked at Xing Bi and cleared his throat.
Xing Bi reached out and propped up the back of Qiu Shi’s head, making him sit up straight.
Qiu Shi opened his eyes and blinked a few times before asking blankly, “What is it?”
“What did the bioroid data you saw look like?” Wang Hong asked.
“What data?” Qiu Shi said.
“The one that chased your teacher,” Xing Bi whispered a reminder.
“Looked like black mist,” Qiu Shi said. “But like it was all one piece. It could chase people.”
“Any theories?” Minister Liu looked at Curator Wu.
“We suspect it’s related to a missing first-generation bioroid,” Curator Wu said. “According to Mr. Long, this bioroid was ‘empty’—all data had disappeared. Combining that with the data appearing in the memory system…”
“What connection does this thing have with Yun City—or with the war right now?” Colonel Yu asked.
Li Feng stood up and activated the projector. It displayed a detailed map of the area surrounding Yun City. There were no place names, only overlapping lines and a few black dots.
“This is the pre-war layout of the cable network, or at least the parts we’ve confirmed,” Li Feng said, looking at Chen Dang. “All symbiont nests and destroyed camps are located at the densest cable nodes. That’s probably not a coincidence.”
“You’re saying the thing behind the symbionts is this data?” Qiu Shi couldn’t help asking, wondering if he’d woken up too fast—his brain seemed to be running ahead of him.
“That’s a question for Chen Dang,” Li Feng leaned on the table and looked at Chen Dang. “He’s had contact with the symbionts. Mayor Luo said some strange things, too. I think Donglin Town knows something.”
Qiu Shi thought of Mayor Luo’s poem.
That glorious age long past… those eyes that had seen centuries…
“Shit.” He turned to look at Xing Bi.
“Who?” Xing Bi whispered.
“I’m asking about that first generation,” Qiu Shi said, eyes suddenly wide.
Xing Bi smiled slightly. “No idea. But there’s someone we can ask.”
“Who?” Qiu Shi asked.
“No one has seen the Leader,” Chen Dang said. “That’s what they call this person—the Leader. He can access our communication systems at will, but he rarely shows up. I’ve only interacted with him a few times.”
“What’s the Leader’s ultimate goal?” Minister Liu asked.
“To build a world without humans, one that can never be destroyed,” Chen Dang said.
Everyone fell silent.
“A non-existent thing,” Qiu Shi said. “Dreaming big, huh.”
Everyone looked at him again.
“That’s not quite the right way to interpret it,” Chen Dang said.
“How else should we interpret it?” Qiu Shi said. “A piece of data—can’t see it, can’t hear it, can’t touch it—why would it think it can build a real world? All its knowledge about the world comes from humans in the first place.”
Chen Dang stayed quiet, watching him.
“This is a world with sound and color, with mountains and rivers, with blood and flesh,” Qiu Shi said. “Even bioroids are desperately trying to feel it. The emotions you want to experience—birth, aging, sickness, death, love, hate, sorrow, joy—they’re all part of being alive. The world isn’t going to be destroyed. It’s just there.”
