Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 168: The Gift of Destiny

Ruan Xian didn’t have much real sense of the passage of time before.

Twelve years was nothing more than just a moment of chaos after being shot. Even if he saw the changes in science and technology and the collapse of human society, he still lacked some key touch. He still remembered the taste of the liquid food he ate before he was shot, Carol Young’s voice that was playing during the break in the Institute—that voice with a special sound quality—was still flowing between his nerves.

Although he basically didn’t forget the details of the past, compared to that, those memories were still extremely fresh.

Even though Ruan Xian had been surprised and confused, he didn’t leave the perspective of a spectator. The person in his arms was like a swamp, forcing him to come down from the position of a spectator and fall into reality.

Twelve years in one night.

The past twelve years were by no means easy or pleasant for Tang Yibu. Some previous thoughts would occasionally pass through Ruan Xian’s mind—as an android with extremely sufficient intelligence and combat effectiveness, Tang Yibu was still full of vigilance in places such as the Sea of Ruins. Before getting himself an S-type Prototype, the android was only willing to stay in a place with adequate medical protection and was extremely sensitive to diseases, infections, and other physical discomfort.

Now he knew why.

It was difficult for Ruan Xian to describe how he felt now.

His NUL-00 had been in the computer room where the temperature and humidity were precisely controlled before, and the sun would shine on the clear coolant that was bubbling. He used to treat it as carefully as he treated his own eyes, but the peaceful past could only be the past, and some scars were destined not to heal.

Tang Yibu didn’t let go of him. The android’s warm breath swept across his skin, and his body temperature almost made him burn.

Recalling their previous relationship, Ruan Xian lost the feeling of ease for the first time.

He relaxed his body, stole a little more body heat from the other party, and then spoke as seriously as possible—he wasn’t sure if it was due to the psychological effect, but he couldn’t help but use the usual tone of twelve years ago.

“It’s okay.”

He patted Tang Yibu on the back soothingly, and finally said that sentence clearly.

“Don’t be afraid. I will never let anything happen to you again.”

Tang Yibu’s body stiffened. He slowly loosened Ruan Xian’s body, but his hand was still tightly holding Ruan Xian’s blood-soaked coat, as if he was afraid that the other party would disappear into the air for no reason. The android had a perfect smile on his face, but Ruan Xian had an inexplicable feeling—Tang Yibu, like him, was temporarily unable to sort out these complex emotions, so he could only wear the mask he was most familiar with.

“Wow.” Professor Ruan waited for the two to separate before he spoke politely. “Wonderful, Mr. Pygmalion*.”

*Legendary figure of Cyprus in Greek mythology, who was a king and sculptor. He’s most famous in Ovid’s poem, Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion, a sculptor, fell in love with the statue he had carved (which is quite apt to Ruan Xian’s situation).

Ruan Xian led Tang Yibu to the other man. Instead of taking out his gun, he pulled out a knife from his pocket and squeezed it tightly in his hand.

“Although I had guessed before, I didn’t expect it to be you.” Professor Ruan didn’t even look at the knife, but instead had a very polite smile on his face. “It’s an unexpected joy.”

“I don’t like being called ‘unexpected’.” Ruan Xian exchanged the knife casually between his hands while staring at Professor Ruan. “I don’t think this is ‘unexpected’ for you.”

“No, I was still deceived by NUL-00. It’s more cunning than I thought. Now that I’ve seen you, I probably know why he’s so wary of me.” The deformed robotic arm was wrapped around Professor Ruan. A lot of blood oozed from his upper arm, but Professor Ruan’s face didn’t have any semblance of pain.

“Speaking of which, since Yibu has confirmed my identity, you are of no use to us.” Ruan Xian’s tone was very cold. “Now that I haven’t killed you—”

“It’s because you dislike MUL-01 even more. After all, NUL-00 is very important to you.” Professor Ruan calmly took over.

Now facing each other face-to-face, the differences between the two were particularly striking. Compared to himself, Professor Ruan was more like a true leader. In his temperament, he had something he himself had never had before—rock solid confidence and the transcendence to put his life under his ideals.

And the undisguised cheerfulness that was unique to people surrounded by love.

All this made Ruan Xian very uncomfortable. A cold sweat slowly soaked his back. He looked at the man who had taken away his identity for twelve years, and his hand holding the knife trembled slightly, ready to strike.

“The things I show you have not undergone any processing. They are all original memories of NUL-00.” As if seeing through Ruan Xian’s thoughts, Professor Ruan said what he cared about most. “You can slowly confirm with it. This is the first time I have seen them—unless NUL-00 is close enough to me, I can’t crack those data from thin air.”

“But seeing your appearance, I probably know why Fan Linsong wanted to do it in the first place.”

Seeing that Ruan Xian didn’t answer, Professor Ruan continued.

“Of course, I don’t agree with his approach. It’s a pity that, as his ‘creation’, I have no position to say this.”

“It seems that you have also guessed what happened back then. I have my guess, but I’m short of proof. Coupled with the current farce… We can have a good chat.”

“Mr. Ruan… Father, I can tell you,” Tang Yibu interjected very seriously.

Ruan Xian, who was called “father”, was still not very adapted. He subconsciously wanted to refute as before, but fortunately, he held back and reluctantly acquiesced.

“It’s okay. I need his answer as a benchmark for polygraph testing.” Ruan Xian waved his hand as calmly as possible. “…I know what ‘myself’ is.”

“I also guessed it by looking at the reaction of NUL-00.”

Professor Ruan tried his best to shrug, as if they were really chatting at a tea table.

“If I guessed correctly, Fan Linsong had murderous intent for you a long time. He made his move on April 21, 2095. Before he did it, he had already prepared a ‘me’ with a blank brain and the right filler memories. After all, according to the medical records at the time, your body was hopeless… Fan Linsong probably wanted to wait until you died naturally, but Plan Corp’s action made him unable to.”

“So on the afternoon of April 21^st, after I met NUL… Yibu, he went to my research room to provoke an argument.” Ruan Xian picked up the conversation. “I’m afraid things like surveillance have already long been tampered with.”

In fact, according to the situation at the time, Fan Linsong could have directly killed him without the need to argue. Thinking about it now, that was probably Fan Linsong’s last moral struggle—unfortunately, his response was still very determined, insisting on not letting NUL-00 go public in advance.

“During the dispute, he shot and killed me.” Ruan Xian pointed to the center of his eyebrows. “Here. It was probably a one-hit kill, but I survived for a few more minutes. I don’t remember very clearly. They must have immediately dissolved my ‘corpse’ with a mutant agent of α-092.”

“Then move out the delirious me who was hidden in advance and claim that I fainted because of the deterioration of my disease and needed treatment.”

Professor Ruan’s smile was slightly bitter.

“Fan Linsong was at least my… He was Ruan Xian’s working partner, and he knew his schedule and habits well. Of course, I was delirious at the time and couldn’t continue my research for a while. According to the procedures of the Institute, the contaminated α-092 samples would be sent to the underground storage room for sampling and would be completely destroyed at the end of the month.”

‘It was exactly the same as his own guess,’ Ruan Xian thought.

Once the warehouse of α-092 waste liquid was destroyed, the former Ruan Xian would disappear without anyone noticing.

Except for Fan Linsong and the person who temporarily entered the institute, no one would know that “Ruan Xian” had been swapped, and even if someone questioned it, they couldn’t get any evidence. Ruan Xian’s disease originally affected the brain and was very rare. All abnormalities could be used as a reason to prevaricate the past.

In this way, “Ruan Xian”, who was in a deteriorating condition, needed to rest, and Fan Linsong, who was second only to Ruan Xian in the project, was naturally able to temporarily take over Ruan Xian’s authority. On the other hand, due to Fan Linsong’s injection of artificial memory, “Ruan Xian”, after waking up, would not immediately make decisions that were unfavorable to Fan Linsong.

During this period of time, it was theoretically possible to completely erase NUL-00 that was not advertised to the public, save the research data, and change it directly to the MUL-01 project.

After the project was changed, even if “Ruan Xian” recovered and returned, he would not be able to sit in the position of the main person in charge of the project.

…This was supposed to be the case, but Fan Linsong missed a piece of the puzzle.

“This plan was indeed perfect, but unfortunately, the premise was that everyone behaved according to the rules.” Professor Ruan smiled and shook his head. “The NUL-00 project was terminated, and the cybernetic brain of NUL-00 should also be completely shut down. Fan Linsong was afraid that I would wake up too early and find something I shouldn’t have discovered. He rushed to send NUL-00 to the destruction place before the end of April, wanting to destroy it and the waste liquid containing Ruan Xian in one go. It’s a pity that NUL-00 obviously did something that shouldn’t be done, which caused a problem at this step.”

“The synchronization command of the surveillance system.” Ruan Xian recalled the scene in Tang Yibu’s memory. “…Yibu, what were you thinking at the time? I remember that at that time you didn’t have access to the institute’s materials.”

“That was a gift.”

Tang Yibu hugged Ruan Xian from behind, put his arms around the other party’s waist, and rested his chin on Ruan Xian’s shoulders.

“Your hands were festering badly that day, and it was inconvenient to type and troublesome to speak. I stuffed a synchronization command into the surveillance system and asked it to make a copy of your work image and send it to your personal computer.”

“Private references to surveillance data are subject to recourse.” That sour emotion reappeared, and Ruan Xian’s breath lagged.

“But it’s okay if the surveillance system takes the initiative to send it.” Tang Yibu squinted his eyes comfortably; his expression a bit like a beast holding its prey. “I didn’t check the content of those materials. Strictly speaking, it’s not considered contact with materials. This practice doesn’t violate any regulations.”

“…I like it very much.”

“What?”

“Your gift,” Ruan Xian said softly. “It’s really a pity that it’s useless.”

Tang Yibu exhaled a satisfied breath. Even though they were still in the enemy lines, the android slumped limply and loosened up. An insatiable mumble escaped from his throat.

“Look, it’s very cunning.”

There was not much condemnation or belittlement in Professor Ruan’s tone. He tapped on the armrests of the chair with his fingers to draw the attention of the two people in front of him back.

“Fan Linsong was too confident in himself that he didn’t even take the first step well… But now it seems that I have wronged Fan Linsong. If NUL-00 quietly moved such hands and feet, then he must’ve accidentally given this information, the image of him shooting you, to MUL-01 without his knowledge. Most likely, MUL-01 opened it up to the Order Supervisors, and this information went around and finally fell into my hands.”

In the end, there was no airtight wall in the world.

Perhaps Fan Linsong himself didn’t expect that his perfect plan was exposed to an irregular operation by NUL-00, and the motivation was just “to give a small gift”.

“According to NUL-00’s memory, on the day of its escape, in order to attract the attention of the destruction personnel and reduce the risk of exposure, it deliberately disrupted the destruction instructions in another destruction area.”

“…The destruction area is related to my work, right?” Ruan Xian allowed Tang Yibu to stick to him without any intention of distancing himself.

“Yes, guess what the result was? Since there was confusion in the destruction instructions, the destruction department would increase the destruction requirements by itself. However, any waste liquid that can’t be determined in importance will be stored and processed, and won’t be directly destroyed… This problem wasn’t small, but not big either. In the end, it was dealt with in accordance with internal issues, so Fan Linsong didn’t know about it.”

“And when you became sober, you had no impression of the waste liquid in the warehouse, so you wouldn’t call and confirm it. Even if Fan Linsong went to inquire, the response from the destruction department would be ‘it has been dealt with in accordance with regulations’.” Ruan Xian took a few deep breaths.

The smoke thrown by NUL-00 before escaping had inadvertently save his life.

Ruan Xian could easily guess what happened next without the need for Tang Yibu or Professor Ruan to continue…

The waste liquid and other samples lay quietly in the deepest part of the research institute while the world experienced war and destruction. In the end, twelve years later, he was accidently exposed to the surface and was damaged, which led to his own awakening.

Regarding Professor Ruan’s scheme, he wasn’t wrong.

In this game of chess, there seemed to be no place specifically for himself, but only a margin for “NUL-00’s companions” or “Undercover Order Supervisor”. If he was Professor Ruan, the scheme would be more sophisticated.

He was Ruan Xian, or rather, the ghost that was pulled back from hell by the S-type Prototype.

“That’s pretty much how it is. Now I only have one question.”

Professor Ruan raised his head, and his expression became serious.

“Even if this series of coincidences really happened, you won’t be able to survive—even if the α-092 of that era was a variant, it’s not enough to stabilize and restore the complex structure of the human body.”

“Indeed.” Ruan Xian didn’t deny it.

“The S-type Prototype is actually in your hands, right? NUL-00 wouldn’t be bewitched by Ruan Xian’s simple personality. He accepted you at the beginning, because of the S-type Prototype.”

Ruan Xian was noncommittal. “Is this question important?”

“Very important.” Professor Ruan cracked his neck. “It’s related to the survival of human society.”

“It does sound quite serious.”

Ruan Xian lowered his head slightly, staring at the artificial face of “his other self”. The smile on his face disappeared.

“…Sorry, I still have no plans to cooperate with you.”

The author has something to say:

In fact, some friends guessed correctly. Even if the two of them figured out the truth, they wouldn’t take the initiative to fight against the Mainbrain hand in hand (…)

They don’t have much kindness _(:з””)_ Ruan and Tang are really not the types to take the initiative to save the world…

Kinky Thoughts:

Alright. For those who are confused, this is the entire scenario.

Fan Linsong killed Ruan Xian back in 2095 and dissolved his body in a mutant α-092. His plan was to replace Ruan Xian with an empty body that he had prepared back then. He injected this empty body with modified memories but made it “delirious” and used the excuse of Ruan Xian’s rare disease to incapacitate him while he murdered the real Ruan Xian.

Once Ruan Xian was killed, his body was dissolved in the α-092 then sent to the waste destruction department (which would destroy these waste at the end of every month) and then Fan Linsong ordered to scrap the NUL-00 project. He took all the data from NUL-00 and transferred it to MUL-01 so he could be head of that project. Unbeknownst to him, NUL-00 had acted in secret in order to save itself. The personnel that was supposed to shut it down was successfully bribed and allowed him to escape by selling him to Plan Corp. There, Tang Yibu was able to infiltrate Plan Corp and move his cybernetic brain into an android he himself created. Not only this, NUL-00 messed with the destruction logs, which inadvertently saved Ruan Xian (who was still sitting in the α-092 waste liquid).

Due to NUL-00 machinations, Ruan Xian was saved from being disposed of and was actually stored for more careful examination before it could be judged whether the waste could be destroyed or not. However, during the time before it could be judged, MUL-01 went crazy and destroyed humankind, so no one would bother checking waste materials. This leads to the event of chapter 1 where Chi Lei blew himself up, triggering the waste tank that Ruan Xian was sitting in, dislodging it. The α-092 preserved and healed Ruan Xian’s entire body, restoring it to what he truly looked like (without disease). However, this wasn’t enough to keep him alive once he exited the waste tank. It was only due to the S-type Prototype that he managed to be able to survive once he was awake.

Not only did NUL-00’s escape save Ruan Xian, because it wanted to prepare a “gift” for Ruan Xian that day, it set up a command with the surveillance of the Institute to record Ruan Xian’s activities and send a backup directly to his work computer. Fan Linsong was unaware of this when he tampered with the surveillance before murdering Ruan Xian. Because of this, the Mainbrain found out what really happened due to searching Ruan Xian’s work computer, and news eventually reached Professor Ruan, who deduced what truly happened back then.

So TLDR: A series of coincidences and actions had led them to where they are now. You’re welcome to join me on Discord to chat about it if you’re still confused or want to discuss it in detail.

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 167: Destructive Tendencies

Some things were important in history, enough to shake the pattern of the human world. Unfortunately, even if this was the second time Ji Xiaoman had experienced the Great Rebellion of the 22^nd Century, she still didn’t have the feeling of being a “witness to history”.

Everything in front of her seemed to be just a small disaster. In a corner she couldn’t see, the world should operate according to the laws of the past.

The woods next to the institute were on fire, and night was growing thicker as the tongues of the fire scorched the surroundings. As the scale of attack became larger, strings of blue electric sparks flashed across the transparent barrier near the research institute, creating a huge gap surrounded by lightning.

Tang Yibu was far from the confident image in their impressions. At this moment, his face was mixed with numbness and tension, with the instinctive thirst for life of living things. The android didn’t hesitate to rush to the gap, limping towards the institute where smoke was billowing out.

With a lot of festering wounds, his movement speed wasn’t fast. Xiao Zhao, who was in a frenzy, could have killed him with another blow, but instead she just shot his heels and calf. She seemed to want to see him collapse more than kill him.

“You didn’t see anything,” she murmured. “You’re lying to me.”

Despite the addition of more bullet wounds on his body, Tang Yibu still rushed towards the Institute firmly, without looking back.

“Zhaozhao!” A man’s roar appeared on the other side, which sounded like Kang Ge’s voice.

Kang Ge didn’t come alone. He was followed by a few fresh faces. It seemed that this little couple had finally integrated into a small camp on the Android Show and had achieved good status.

“Didn’t we agree? Although Xiao Tang isn’t much of a fighter, his observations and insights are useful to us. It’s okay if you beat him to vent, but you can’t kill him!” He glanced at those behind him with a not-so-subtle reproach in his voice.

“I didn’t kill him. He fled that way.” The armed machines flying in the sky were like schools of fish in the sea. They had an eerie beauty, but Xiao Zhao was obviously uninterested in them right now. “Kang Ge, will you accompany me to chase him?”

Kang Ziyan didn’t answer this time; he looked behind Xiao Zhao in horror. There was also a commotion among the androids who followed Kang Ziyan. Given that this was probably the memory of Kang Ziyan and Su Zhao, Ji Xiaoman could also see it clearly.

Behind Xiao Zhao stood two children holding hands. Their eyes were closed tightly, their bodies were blurred, their limbs were incomplete, and their clothes were as hazy as mist. The two children stood quietly behind her like two sleeping ghosts.

“Kang Ge, just the two of us will chase him, okay?” Xiao Zhao repeated it again.

“…..Okay.”

Ji Xiaoman crawled down the abdomen of the ventral cockroach and obediently hoisted back to Yu Le’s shoulders. The gas mask was almost scraped off by the bulge in the abdomen of the ventral cockroach. She explained the situation in a low voice, while Yu Le clung to the tail of the insect. Eventually, he let out a long sigh.

“I can’t figure out what that one wants to do,” he said. “If Xiao Tang is really that identity, Xiao Ruan will push us out, probably because he doesn’t want us to get involved in too many things. To engage in perceptual interference, there are many ready-made examples on this island, so why are they showing us their memories?”

Professor Ruan just needed to throw them into a crazy augmented scene, or simply remove most of the interference, and apply a little trick to let them wander in the woods. There was no need for him to specifically expose this information.

Or, he wanted them to know Tang Yibu’s past? But honestly, although it felt excessive, Yu Le and Ji Xiaoman had seen more than enough hellish scenes to really not care and certainly wouldn’t be angered into a fit of rage by this.

“Anyway, suppose we just take it one step at a time. We can’t just pat our asses and leave now,” Yu Le whispered. “The two psychopaths in front of us collapsed. Professor Ruan must have his intentions if he wanted to do this.”

It was completely dark. Tang Yibu’s figure had disappeared near the burning Institute. Ji Xiaoman firmly grabbed the shoulder strap of Yu Le’s coat and didn’t respond.

The wound hurts.

Blood was gushing from the injury, soaking the jacket thoroughly. Ruan Xian kept his breathing at the lightest among the bumps of the advancement from the armed machine. The tank he was in was sealed tightly. If it weren’t for the repair function of the S-type Prototype, Ruan Xian thought he would suffocate to death before reaching his destination.

The more concentrated his mind was, the more obvious the pain became, so he had to find other thoughts to distract himself.

It was quite interesting that both of his fake deaths occurred near the Shade Refuge; only one was reality and the other was fantasy. The unnatural aspects of the Shade Refuge could all be explained—why could people quickly find a powerful and well-functioning base as a refuge? Because it was there before the Great Rebellion of the 22^nd Century.

This show was full of replicants, many of whom were struggling to survive… Everyone was living in the created illusion; the only difference was “whether or not their image was made public”.

The so-called Android Show that had been going had never stopped.

In other words, this wasn’t a show at all, but just another petri dish that wasn’t much different from other petri dishes. Because it was broadcast all the time, it was several times more dangerous than other petri dishes. Professor Ruan took a completely dark road right under the lights.

Are the existing survivors really pure “survivors”?

In the twelve years of his deep sleep, Professor Ruan had been awake, and he should have noticed this. In this situation, it was almost impossible for humans to make a comeback, unless…

Ruan Xian’s scalp suddenly tightened.

Their journey to find Professor Ruan went very smoothly. If the other party had spent so much energy on an elaborate plan, it wouldn’t be possible to just want to see Tang Yibu and look for new possibilities.

At least if it was him, he would definitely do it after there was a relatively certain solution. He could probably guess the method the opponent wanted to use—if he treated this situation like a game of chess, there were not many solutions that could make the most of all the pieces.

Then there was only one last piece left of the puzzle regarding his identity.

The ups and downs of the armed machine’s advancement finally abruptly stopped. Ruan Xian listened carefully in the darkness. There were no other signs of life around. They should have just stopped in a place similar to an underground warehouse.

When the time came, Ruan Xian didn’t hesitate anymore. He grabbed the disruptors in his pockets and injected them all into the body of the armed mechanical life along the gap, then took out the healing blood gun and bombarded the gap frantically.

Unlike the attack blood gun, the blood emitted by the healing blood gun hadn’t deteriorated, and it also had the active ingredients of the S-type Prototype. Ruan Xian didn’t care if his blood supply could keep up, he just desperately pumped blood into the armed machine—this thing was less than two people high, and there wasn’t much mechanical tissue besides its shell. In theory, he could inject enough blood in a short time to make it collapse.

Sure enough, under the interference of the disruptor, the thing didn’t even have time to sound the alarm.

In less than five seconds, the white mechanical tissue proliferated like a malignant tumor, squeezing out of the metal gap. The moist flesh and blood that gushed out nearly squeezed Ruan Xian to death in the tank. The tightly stitched shell couldn’t withstand such an internal impact. When Ruan Xian heard the dangerous clicking sound of his ribs, there was a big burst from outside.

There were no flames, no smoke. The armed machine directly exploded by its own crazy tissue growth. The tank containing Ruan Xian fell to the ground, and its opening collapsed under the impact.

In the next instant, fresh air suddenly poured into Ruan Xian’s lungs, and the cold floor slammed into his face.

Have to move fast.

Even if this burst didn’t cause a temperature change, Professor Ruan must have his own monitoring system. Ruan Xian looked at the dim space for a while, and stood up staggeringly. The ribs that had just healed from the big hole in his chest were still exposed, and the mechanical tissue secreted by the S-type Prototype was squirming on the pale bones.

Ruan Xian sucked in through his nose. He smelled Tang Yibu and another somewhat familiar smell, like himself.

Close at hand.

He clenched the blood gun in both hands and couldn’t help but smile on his face. The next obstacles were almost the same as the air in front of him—serious injuries, blood loss, and a strong cold stance… His mind was clearer than ever under the action of hormones, not to mention that the designer of those security measures was “himself”.

The doors slid open one by one. The blood-stained clothes allowed him to better hide in the darkness. The dim corridor retreated quickly from his field of vision. Ruan Xian struggled to run forward; his legs almost lost consciousness, his ears filled with his own gasps.

This time there was no longer any illusory perceptual interference outside the door, so his path was extremely smooth. He didn’t know how long he ran until he finally reached the door—at this distance, he could clearly hear Tang Yibu’s heartbeat.

He stretched out his hand and opened the door.

A familiar yet unfamiliar middle-aged man turned to look at him while Tang Yibu sat among the observation screens, imprisoned in place by the chair. The light screen was full of images of Ji Xiaoman and Yu Le.

“You…” Before the man finished speaking these words, Tang Yibu had broken free from his shackles and choked his neck from behind and dragged him back to his seat.

The android removed the robotic arms as easily as pulling apart playdough, and even more so when fixing them back—Professor Ruan was firmly stuck in the chair by the deformed robotic arm that was crackling with sparks but didn’t seem too surprised.

Tang Yibu clapped his hands in satisfaction, turned around and looked at Ruan Xian. Ruan Xian put away the gun and stretched out his hand towards the other party.

The mess of emotions in his brain burned into a ball. Thousands of words were stuck in his throat. Ruan Xian didn’t know what to say, nor did he rush up for a hug. He just obeyed his instinct and stretched out his hands towards Tang Yibu.

Unlike the illusion he kissed, those golden eyes were no longer like dusty metal, but more like a corner of sunlight, or the fresh petals of a sunflower. Tang Yibu’s whole body looked vibrant, with the soft smile he was familiar with.

Does he know? How much does he know?

But Ruan Xian didn’t bother to ask. The plan had come to an end, but there wasn’t much free time left. An unprecedented tsunami of strange emotions hit his nerves like never before, and Ruan Xian could only feel that his limbs were about to lose consciousness.

Tang Yibu looked much calmer than he did. The android leaned over with a smile and grabbed his outstretched hand; his palm was frighteningly hot.

It seems he knows.

The tsunami waves instantly froze, and the trembling nerves were once again tightened. Emotional barriers worked well enough at certain times that it could make him calm down on the fly. It wasn’t because this joy and pleasure had faded. In the other party’s eyes and expressions, Ruan Xian detected a terrible tacit understanding and similar concerns.

And at the moment of skin contact, both of them shook.

The pearl-like waves froze, and the dark reef stood out. A new problem had emerged between them; an unprecedented problem…

Under the multiple factors of preparedness, vigilance, and appreciation, they maintained a full fire. The relationship was a relatively stable one, with just the right amount of distance. Despite their own selfishness and desires, they tried time and time again to upset the balance, trying to pull each other a little closer and taking pleasure in appreciating the swing of the scale…

It was too fast this time.

They hadn’t learned how to deal with such complex and majestic emotions, and they couldn’t curb the urge to pull each other in and decrease the distance, but neither of them was willing to remove their spikes and armor and give up their dominant position. Such a hug would only kill their opponent.

Ruan Xian let out a small sigh. He broke free from Tang Yibu’s hand, grabbed the hair on the back of the other party’s neck, and kissed him viciously.

He understood that he needed to be careful; take it slow and not lower his defenses as a result. He saw what was hidden behind Tang Yibu’s smile, but this time, he couldn’t solve the problem immediately.

Ruan Xian thought that perhaps their new discovery would destroy them.

…Then at least let him enjoy this second first.

With his back to Professor Ruan, who was confined to the seat, Tang Yibu tightened his arms and gave Ruan Xian an overly hard reunion hug. Ruan Xian could hear the overwhelmed crunch of his ribs. After a long and scorching kiss, Tang Yibu rubbed Ruan Xian’s cheek affectionately as before, and bit his ear gently.

“Twelve years.”

The android said softly, stubbornly using that special noun to call his maker.

“Twelve years, father.”

Sure enough, Ruan Xian grabbed the clothes on the back of the other party. His identity, the last piece of the puzzle, was now in place.

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 166: A Group of Lunatics

Ruan Xian ran into the light.

Everything in front of him began to distort, and another corridor unfolded in front of him. It seemed to have discovered that Ruan Xian used some means to locate the real environment, as the perception interference became more violent.

The corridor began to twist and roll like a snake’s belly, and all the doors opened at the same time. Ruan Xian ignored the distorted scene in front of him, clung to the iron bead, and rushed firmly in the direction of safety.

The giant machine followed him closely. There was no sign it was using heat weapons but was just trying to hold him down with its mechanical arms. The endless doors circulated infinitely like two mirrors on opposite sides; each one filled with delusions of grandeur between them.

The anomalies of the entire island were all condensed in front of him.

Ruan Xian stepped on the soft and rancid flesh, bypassed the waist-high iconic buildings of various countries, and rushed straight towards a door that seemed to have no end. Swirling celebration confetti swept across his shoulders, and from time to time, something so twisted that its original form couldn’t be determined crashed through. Ruan Xian wasn’t interested in dismantling these playdough-like contraptions, casually letting them pass through his body.

The limbs of the ceramic doll shattered under his shoes. The moldy plush doll swirled out dust and dark green mold. Strange creatures that didn’t exist in reality tried to grab his feet but dispersed like clouds of smoke.

The perception of false interference, a distorted optimism about one’s own survival, coupled with an extreme thirst for purpose; the three created such a wonderful chemical reaction that the vision in front of Ruan Xian couldn’t interfere with him at all.

The iron bead that was fully impacted by the perceived interference for the first time wasn’t so lucky. It broke through the sound barrier as it produced a rattling sound full of panic.

However, the loud cry was a tremendous help for Ruan Xian, so it didn’t have to bother making other sounds. The crisis was in front of his face while the iron bead’s extremely penetrating screams stabbed in all directions.

Ruan Xian was busy running away, carefully distinguishing the location of things in the real world. Visual perception interference was the hardest hit area, but he couldn’t close his eyes completely, for fear of missing some key details…

Got it.

He pretended to fall into the blue mushroom field in his perception, raised his hand, and grabbed a small mechanical reptile the size of a quail egg, and quietly slipped it into his pocket. The iron bead, who was still screaming in the previous second, closed its mouth tightly, bit Ruan Xian’s wrist in dissatisfaction, and even tried to shake its head while biting him.

It stared at Ruan Xian sternly with three small eyes for a few seconds and found that the other party didn’t have any reaction to throwing away his new love, so it continued to scream more aggrievedly.

Ruan Xian couldn’t help twisting the corners of his mouth, regaining his balance, lowering his body, and avoiding a wave of mechanical attacks behind him.

Then he casually grabbed another mechanical reptile casually.

The rattle of the iron bead changed its tone a bit. It struggled symbolically twice, and when it saw that the frequency of the chaser’s attacks had increased, it shrank back in a daze, and the crying in its voice became more obvious.

He was obviously fleeing for his life, but Ruan Xian couldn’t help but smile more strongly.

Although the equipment was really limited, he only now had time to verify his theory.

The iron bead had undergone extraterrestrial evolution, but according to the information provided by Ji Xiaoman, it didn’t have the ability to obtain evolutionary capital through food. π stayed with them because it got to eat precious parts. The only growth it had was that its shell was a little harder and its temperament became much lazier.

And on this strange island, the timid iron bead would certainly only eat food it could identify. Considering these factors, Ruan Xian had an exact guess about the possibility of its mutation.

If he could pick out something that it had eaten that was abnormal, it must be the earring that was stained with his own blood.

His own blood was so high in human tissue composition that mechanical beings accustomed to eating steel, plastic, and other things wouldn’t be interested in his flesh. Ordinary creatures like the ventral cockroach couldn’t use the “non-biological” parts of his blood, so his blood would have no effect on them.

The iron bead wasn’t vigilant towards him and Tang Yibu, so even if it was food that it didn’t recognize, it would still dare open its mouth and eat it if it was from them. If this was really his own blood that caused its mutation… Then he may have some kind of “offensive ability” other than defense.

His blood could repair Tang Yibu’s body, but it didn’t let Tang Yibu evolve. It was likely that Tang Yibu’s body itself was relatively advanced—the human body’s own repair ability was limited, and the survival rate after mutation would also be extremely low.

What about creatures with simpler structures? If they had obtained enough initial organic ingredients and had no wounds to be repaired, they were likely to instinctively use it as one of the aids for survival. They didn’t have very sophisticated intelligence, and they only lived by strong survival instincts. On the contrary, it was easier to take those parts that could be changed at will for their own use.

99% of the brain of the iron bead was on food, so it wasn’t surprising that such a change had occurred, but guesses were still guesses. He must try his best to verify them.

Ruan Xian put a little debilitating agent together with his blood into one of the mechanical reptiles. The reptile wriggled twice in his pocket, and then there was no sound. A few minutes later, Ruan Xian suddenly felt something jump out of his pocket, accompanied by an unskilled sound of buzzing wings.

When he picked it up just now, it didn’t have wings.

The reptile flew for a while unskillfully, then plunged into the soil and flapped its wings weakly.

His blood could indeed be absorbed and utilized by low-intelligence creatures, but he couldn’t control what the other party did with it. If he just simply provided blood, God knows what these things would look like on their own, and it was hard to say whether the mutation was really beneficial.

Seeing Ruan Xian let go of a mechanical reptile, the iron bead breathed a sigh of relief, only to find that Ruan Xian had intensified and picked up two more. After that, it simply just kept quiet and stopped screaming. No matter how Ruan Xian petted it, π didn’t say a word, and pretended to faint with its four legs facing the sky.

Without sound, Ruan Xian couldn’t make sense of his direction, so he had to step on the ground more loudly. Unfortunately, without the powerful scream of the iron bead, his detection range suddenly became much smaller.

No matter. He would finish in the end.

Three mechanical reptiles were lying in his pockets and had been injected with his pre-mixed blood mixture. Although the preparation of the material temporarily obtained from Ji Xiaoman was limited, the effect should be barely passable.

Using the first one for comparison, the second mechanical reptile was only injected with a debilitating agent and showed no abnormalities. The third ingested a small amount of mechanical nerve disruptor while ingesting blood. Its whole body bulged and swelled out of shape and it almost lost its motor ability. The last one was only half the size of the previous one, and the changes appeared three to four times faster with the same dose of injection.

Ji Xiaoman’s syringe needle could obtain the vital signs and data of machines. As long as the attack of the machine behind him slowed down a little bit, he could take the opportunity to look twice and get a relatively accurate conclusion…

Ruan Xian skillfully stepped over the layers of distorted human bodies under his feet, turning a blind eye to the giant ball of flesh covered with distorted facial features. He held the iron bead that was pretending to be dead tightly in one hand and grabbed the edge of his pocket with the other.

Possibly one of the mechanical reptiles exploded and died as he felt a sticky and unpleasant scrapping sound that was followed by a milky white residue that soaked the fabric near his pocket.

The iron bead probably heard the explosion as it shivered and glanced at the pocket and began to rattle obediently.

Ruan Xian knocked on its shell approvingly. On the other side, the seemingly endless cloister of perception had also come to an end. Crossing the last door, a familiar ruin hit him, but the trees were not as lush as he remembered.

The ruins were burning.

No, he should be witnessing the process of turning the building into ruins.

Ruan Xian didn’t have much experience in free observation outside the Institute. He only remembered a few shots in the virtual reality propaganda film. The building was always topped with blue skies and white clouds, and the other wall would almost glow in the sun. Right now, it was burning fiercely in the night. The thick smoke obscured most of the sky. The walls of the building were covered with all kinds of combat machines, and their metal surfaces reflected the quivering fire. The burning rays from their guns left orange-red burn marks on the walls.

The fire burned more vigorously, and from time to time, incomplete machines fell from the outer wall and exploded into pieces on the ground.

The place where he had lived for more than ten years was damaged and collapsing. Ruan Xian couldn’t help but walk away and look for more than half a second. In just this half, he was almost pierced by an invisible chaser behind him.

The iron bead suddenly struggled and rushed straight in the direction of the fire. Ruan Xian tsked and chased after it.

The scene in front of him this time was really distracting.

Tang Yibu was collapsing at the entrance. His body was full of scars, and his ragged, thin clothes were almost soaked in blood. The handsome face was covered with blood and sludge, and his hair was much longer than it was now and was tangled in knots and dirt. The tips of his hair were scattered indiscriminately on the floor. There were more dirty bandages on his body, many of which were soaked in pus and blood, with an unpleasant smell.

The only golden eye exposed was extremely dim, like a corpse.

A few steps away, a deformed ventral cockroach was approaching. It had one more leg than the one Ruan Xian had first encountered, and its movements were very slow. It looked like it had been seriously injured. The explosion of fighting machines was endless, and from time to time, metal limbs fell from high altitudes and hit Ruan Xian’s feet. However, his focus was only on the person in front of him.

“Yibu,” he said, squatting down, trying to touch the other’s cheeks with his hands. There were faint human voices in the distance, and they burrowed through the layers of smoke and into Ruan Xian’s ears, getting closer and closer to this direction.

“You went too far this time, Xiao Zhao.” Kang Ge’s voice sounded a bit bitter, and it was a lot younger than now.

“What’s wrong with me?” Xiao Zhao’s voice was abnormally high-pitched. “Look, look! Isn’t that the research institute? That famous research institute is burning! We have always been near real people. Why are you lying to me?”

“That’s right, but Xiao Tang he—”

“I don’t want this electronic pet anymore. I don’t want it anymore. I’m not familiar with it… Why can’t I make fun of him? Didn’t you like hunting with me very much before? Anyway, those things are not even creatures, and they can’t be reasonable. At most, they are meat connected to a computer. Did I do something wrong?”

“Zhaozhao….”

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t want to live like this at all! What can we do besides eat, drink, and shit? Being hunted down by these messy things and fighting them to the death?”

Su Zhao’s narrative was erratic and chaotic.

“Kang Ge, tell me. Are we really the only two humans here? I’ll break my skull open for you to see if it’s okay. I’m so curious. I can’t stand it anymore… I can only hit other things with my gun. They are just items. Just set-up items. If you have anything else to say, tell me quickly—”

Her voice took on a weeping tremor and returned to cheerfulness the next second.

“Isn’t that what all games are like? You have to try one option at a time. We have already tried all the good options. As long as we try really hard, there will definitely be some changes! You, let me kill him. His wounds are getting more infected, so it’s useless.”

After speaking, she repeated mechanically, “It’s useless.”

‘It’s an illusion,’ Ruan Xian thought. He clenched the broken mechanical reptile corpse in his pocket, knelt beside Tang Yibu, and leaned down to look at the other’s face. The place where they were was about to collapse. Debris fell down from time to time, and the surrounding smoke was blown askew, covering the two of them.

Whether this past was true or not, he couldn’t change it.

“Run.” Ruan Xian picked up Tang Yibu, who he suspected was unconscious, and gave a silent command to the trembling iron bead that was rubbing against Tang Yibu. “Wait for Ji Xiaoman and them nearby. They will come.”

It was a pity that he didn’t have Tang Yibu’s ability to communicate with mechanical life. The iron bead only half understood what he was saying. It screamed and rushed into the distance, looking back every time it rushed a meter or two.

……That’s enough.

Among the howling of the iron bead, he leaned down and kissed the dim eye in the illusion. Ruan Xian felt the wind behind him, but he just made a look like it was too late to react and didn’t dodge.

A sharp mechanical foot pierced his heart from behind him.

Ruan Xian spurted out a mouthful of blood and his hands fell limply. The wristband bumped into something and projected a light screen near his wrist in a crippled state. The screen was full of garbled code.

A few traces of smoke came out of it. It slowly loosened and then fell to the ground where it was crushed by an armed machine.

There was no doubt that this was a fatal injury.

The giant machine threw the mortally wounded corpse into the storage tank behind its body and began to follow the instructions heading towards Professor Ruan’s underground control center.

In the stuffy and airtight storage tank, Ruan Xian opened his eyes slightly with anger still on his face, but there was no shock or confusion just now.

He smiled at the darkness in his eyes, and quietly took out the blood gun hidden under his white coat.

So far, the plan was progressing normally.

What Yu Le and Ji Xiaoman saw wasn’t night.

The ventral cockroach, with one more leg, rushed to the vicinity of the research institute at dusk, but unfortunately, there seemed to be an invisible barrier that it couldn’t get through no matter what.

“Artificial regional control.” After a long silence, Ji Xiaoman opened her mouth.

“Little profiteer, do you want to continue?” Yu Le wasn’t interested in the transparent wall in front of him. He straightened the gas mask on his face. “If Tang Yibu is really related to MUL-01, this is not something we can intervene in.”

He originally thought that they were in a cooperative relationship that used each other, but in the face of an overly huge strength gap, the so-called “cooperative relationship” was nothing more than a cover for unilateral use. At this point, he had no interest in cooperating with Tang Yibu, and the other party had no technical needs that they had to have.

The risk was even greater—if Tang Yibu’s identity was exposed, they would become the world’s most wanted criminals in minutes and would be taken care of by the Order Supervisors. Even if he lost his life, according to the consistent style of behavior of the Order Supervisors, the Walking Stones that were far away in the Sea of Ruins could also get dragged in.

The needs of himself and Ji Xiaoman weren’t complicated, and Tang Yibu and Ruan Lijie hadn’t revealed the slightest bit of news. They made do with playing this companion game for long enough, and now their heads were about to be decapitated and with the guillotine coming for his own neck, Yu Le wouldn’t be stupid enough to rush forward.

“…This is better.” Ji Xiaoman’s voice was so low that he couldn’t hear it.

“What?”

“If it’s an artificial intelligence of the same level as the Mainbrain and Professor Ruan, who’s familiar with this business, my mother will definitely be fine.” Ji Xiaoman looked away. “It’s better for me, but you don’t need to take risks, Lao Yu.”

Yu Le suddenly let out a puff and started laughing out loud. He laughed louder and louder that the rubbing friction almost didn’t cover it up.

“This is all really crazy.” He smiled and shook his head. “Fuck, not a single normal person.”

“I…”

“It’s fine. If something like this happens to my family. I can even tear apart King Yama*.” Yu Le laughed a few more times. “It’s good to be crazy. It’s great, in fact. It’s best for everyone to be crazy together. Damn it. Alright, I should have died a long time ago. If I can survive, I’ll make a lot of money.”

*King of hell. Equivalent would be like the devil or hades.

“Then continue?”

“Uh-huh.” Yu Le scratched his head. “Let me think about it… If that kid Tu Rui remembers correctly, the first generation of Struggler’s show is near the research institute. It seems that the terrain around here is good, and it is also convenient to get data. Plan Corp bought the land as a face slap to the Institute, which wasn’t much different than a direct provocation, but with the legal procedures complete, no one could say anything.”

He pointed to the invisible wall. “This is probably the boundary of the show.”

“Strange, there is nothing special here.” There wasn’t even a convenient area for fighting. Ji Xiaoman endured the stifling heat of the gas mask and turned her head to look around.

“Wow, Kang Ge, look, it’s me! It’s me!” Su Zhao suddenly clapped her hands. “Did I look good at that time?””

“You look good all the time.” Kang Ge’s voice was a bit unnatural this time.

Yu Le made a gesture. Ji Xiaoman climbed up along Yu Le’s back knowingly. The young mechanic put her sharp fingers in her sleeves, lay on the top of the abdomen of the ventral cockroach, and carefully spied on the scene ahead.

Under the height limit, only the upper half of Tang Yibu and Su Zhao’s faces could be seen in front of them, with only vision of the top of Su Zhao’s head. Ji Xiaoman tried to raise her head, but she could barely make out the faces of the two of them clearly.

Su Zhao’s face was splattered with blood, while Tang Yibu stood quietly, like a lifeless wax figure.

“Xiao Tang.” She stretched out her hands to show him the blood stains on her hands, with a frail edge of madness in her voice. “Xiao Tang, look, you always know a lot of things.”

“……”

“I’m crazy, right?” She said dreamily. “Look behind me. Are you following two children?”

“Yes, from the looks of it, they look a lot like you and Mr. Kang when you were children.”

“You… What you couldn’t see yesterday, I could see them for a long time. They have been following me with their eyes closed. They are ghosts.” Su Zhao scratched her face. “What did I do wrong? Why should I be thrown into this hellish place…”

She scratched her face with her fingers.

“Forget it,” she whispered suddenly. “I’m crazy, and you’re crazy too.”

Tang Yibu was obviously aware of the hostility and madness in her words, as the next second he limped and tried to escape with his injuries. Even though he was shot in the heel by Su Zhao, he didn’t stop.

The sun that was about to set would dye everything blood red. Tang Yibu ran hard along the transparent wall, like a fish trying to escape from a fish tank.

“It’s this! Kang Ge, that’s what I wanted you to see!” Xiao Zhao beside them clapped her hands, with only joy coming from her voice.

The ground was trembling, and countless armed machines suddenly appeared in the air like magic, covering the sky and the sun. Dark walls rose from the ground, re-dividing the forest, and a metallic city in the distance was being quickly built by mechanical robots. The weird spire flashed with icy brilliance under the setting sun.

The armed machines rushed to the research institute not far away in a neat manner, and ammunition was fired in unison. The Institute’s defensive measures failed to last for even three minutes. Gradually, thick smoke emerged from the building not far away.

Yu Le recognized this battle.They were watching the day of the Great Rebellion of the 22^nd Century.

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 165: Perception

Cold sweat crawled all over Yu Le’s back, who was pushed out.

When they entered, everything outside the door had already collapsed, so Yu Le didn’t realize for a while what Ruan Lijie wanted to do. His adrenaline spiked, and he only had time to change his posture and protect Ji Xiaoman, who was still sitting on his neck.

Then they fell onto soft grass, causing small brown insects to fly away. The smell of dirt and wet grass immediately filled Yu Le’s nose. He didn’t react for a while and just lay there, staring at the dull blue sky that was in front of him.

The door connecting the darkness disappeared some time ago. They have fallen into a forest. With Yu Le’s strength, Ji Xiaoman landed lightly, quickly maintaining her balance. She stretched out a hand towards Yu Le.

“What’s wrong? Is the illusion over?” Yu Le held Ji Xiaoman with one hand and propped himself up with the other. Then he patted the mud off his pants. “Where’s my car?”

“It’s not over,” Ji Xiaoman said in a low voice. She lightly took out the paper ball stuffed in her mechanical calf and threw it to Yu Le. “The season and the trees aren’t right. Something feels…off.”

The tactile and olfactory information here was much richer than just now, as if they had returned to the starting point of the illusion—the dilapidated building. Yu Le clicked his tongue, unwrapped the paper ball, and saw only one sentence on it.

[Captain Yu, remember that net.]

“What does it mean?” Ji Xiaoman blinked.

“It seems that you are right, little profiteer. We are probably still in the illusion.” Yu Le put away the paper ball, turned the gun in a circle with his right hand, and grinned.

Since Ruan Lijie dared to push them out of the door together, he must have guessed about the world behind the door. If they were about to return to reality, the other party didn’t need to be so secretive. It was very likely that he and Ji Xiaoman were still in the world of targeted perceptual interference. In other words, their every move was probably still under the noses of their opponent.

Even if the opponent could investigate the fact that he cheated death in the Sea of Ruins, he would not know how he was “forced to cheat death” in front of the Order Supervisors. Painstakingly recalling the shock of being caught in a net for a few seconds, Yu Le had a general guess about Ruan Lijie’s plans.

“Who knows? They have always been mysterious.” Yu Le casually threw the paper ball into his mouth and swallowed it with a grunt. “We’ll see what we can do when the time comes… Let’s get out of this shithole first.”

Unknown if it was due to what he said, but a rustling sound was heard among the grass in the distance. Listening to the sound, it seemed something big was rushing towards them. Ji Xiaoman and Yu Le looked at each other, separated tactility, and hid behind a tree.

A monster more than two meters high dragged its fat belly that separated the grass while its ugly black legs cut through the soil. Yu Le sucked a breath in between his teeth and began to feel a headache coming on. Regardless of fucking memory interference, it’s fake, all fake. He wanted to think so, but unfortunately, the impression of abdominal pain still kept churning. Ji Xiaoman, who was born in the Underground City, shouldn’t know what this thing was, so she was probably much more reliable than he was right now.

“Little profiteer, you lead the way! I’m going to close my eyes!”

“Wait?!”

“Remember, it’s all fake. Ventral cockroaches can’t survive on an island!”

“That’s a ventral cockroach…” Ji Xiaoman was just about to ask when another party had already rushed over and skillfully plunged a knife into the gap in the carapace of the ventral cockroach, completely ignoring the bloody calf that was stabbed hard by the spikes on its gaiters.

The attacked ventral cockroach went crazy. It scratched its tangled gaiters everywhere, trying to get rid of the attacker on its back. After several failed attempts, it turned its head and rushed towards another person not far away. Xiao Zhao, who was the target of the attack, blew a kiss at the monster who rushed past and smiled.

“How nostalgic,” she said. “This time it’s back to this day.”

Yu Le pressed against the bark of a tree and frowned.

“It was the day we thought Xiao Tang died, my dear!” She put her hands to her mouth and shouted at Kang Ge loudly. “This ventral cockroach had more legs than the others, and one eye is blind. Remember it? Let’s sit on it and watch the fun. Maybe we can find ourselves!”

Kang Ge smiled at her and wiped the bug’s slime from his face. “Good idea.”

He twisted the long knife that he had stabbed into the bug’s body, causing it to hiss and forcing it to change its direction. Yu Le saw that the bug was about to crawl away, so he endured the bout of nausea and barely managed to stabilize himself at the end of the soft insect’s belly. He just wanted to turn around and gesture to Ji Xiaoman when she flew up and grabbed his neck, causing him to almost let out a scream.

“Why are you grabbing me?!” He roared in anger.

“My fingers are too sharp. It will scratch its stomach,” Ji Xiaoman whispered. “Then we’ll all get a face full of bug juice.”

“…” Yu Le turned his head reluctantly.

“And I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.” Ji Xiaoman grabbed materials from Yu Le’s jacket. “If this is really a test from that person, we have to… prove our worth, right?”

“I don’t think it’s a test. Xiao Ruan has pushed us away. It’s hard not to think that that kid still wants to win first place in this meeting competition… That attitude is clearly asking us to stay out of the way.” Judging from the message left by the other party, maybe there would be a dangerous situation that required Ruan Lijie to fake his death. While they did travel together, their relationship was far from that of the iron bead that was like life and death.

In the end Ji Xiaoman was still too young. While she was good at combat and mechanical repair, she lacked the experience to analyze the twists and turns of the actions of others.

“Then what are you doing?” Ji Xiaoman’s voice had a little surprise in it.

“I’m curious?” Yu Le replied in a rough voice. “Everyone recognizes this bug. Most likely, this place is related to the memory of that young couple. It’s good to see what happened to Xiao Tang before, no? Those two boys have hidden a lot from us.”

“…Yu Le.”

“Hmm? Why did you suddenly become serious.”

“Although my knowledge is limited, I also saw a lot of commands in that dark shadow just now.” Ji Xiaoman clenched her hands tightly. “Tang Yibu’s level is much higher than mine. I have never seen that style of cybernetic brain design…”

“In terms of invasive procedures, is he better than you? Wasn’t this already known when he broke through the wall of the Glass Conservatory?”

Bluntly put, the first memory they saw was of a man yelling something meaningless at his phone, and the second memory was even more vague and heinous. As a person who didn’t know much about software, Yu Le probably only understood that this was how Tang Yibu was “born”.

“No, the point is, I have never seen such a cybernetic brain design.” Even if there was no flesh and blood, Ji Xiaoman’s hands still trembled a little. “For my mother’s sake, I have collected all the information related to cybernetic brains, and I have also created a lot of cybernetic brains… It is impossible for this kind of blind spot to appear. Absolutely impossible.”

“Don’t think too much. Maybe he’s a new model you haven’t seen before.” Yu Le couldn’t understand the other party’s nervousness. “And it looked like it was going to be thrown away at first. It’s estimated that it was a failed design sample.”

“Many of the above designs are behind the times, and I’m sure I won’t mistake them.” Ji Xiaoman raised her voice slightly. “And the design of a few places is too exaggerated. If it’s just to adapt the performance of a general cybernetic brain, the hardware doesn’t need to be made like that at all, let alone something from a formal research institute…”

“What do you want to say?” Yu Le began to realize the problem.

“I didn’t have time to see very clearly. However, from a rough point of view of the coolant, storage method, and structural design, its computing power is at least ten times that of the average human brain, and perhaps several orders of magnitude more.”

“After the official operation of MUL-01, the independent computing power of general cybernetic brain hardware must not surpass that of the human brain. This was a rule that all manufacturers must follow. Even if innovative research was to be carried out, there was no point in spending a lot of effort to do that kind of thing when the software was restricted—it’s like installing a fighter engine on a children’s bicycle.”

“…” Yu Le didn’t answer again this time. The ventral cockroach dragged the four of them forward; its soft abdomen rolled over the grass, causing endless rustling.

“Finally, after MUL-01, related hardware and software information must be filed for public announcement, even including projects that failed to compete with Plan Corp at the beginning. It took me a lot of effort to get my hands on the diagrams at that time, and there was no information about this model. Moreover, MUL-01 is the first recorded strong AI project, and that project started in 2090 and was completed in 2096… But the time in the hall was 2094.”

“Yu Le, Tang Yibu existed before MUL-01 was officially put into use. Now it seems that he…he…”

Is looking for Ruan Xian.

Yu Le silently helped her finish this sentence. He turned his head and signaled that he had understood the meaning of Ji Xiaoman’s words.

Tang Yibu may not be an android equipped with a high-end program. Assuming that Ji Xiaoman’s statement was correct, together with the other competing companies that had to also file, Tang Yibu only had one identity…

A failed version of MUL-01 or the predecessor of MUL-01.

Neither of them spoke again.

Ruan Xian, on the other hand, didn’t have time to think. As he expected, Tang Yibu’s memory had just ended, and the opponent had acted. The familiar sense of emptiness under his feet hit him again. He pretended not to stand still, always adjusting his center of gravity, ready to fight at any moment.

If he wanted to capture or kill himself, the other side would send armed machinery in reality. He just needed to keep making sounds to determine his position, like a bat.

But he had to do it in a way that the other party couldn’t find out.

Ruan Xian picked up the frightened iron bead from the ground and blew silently on the edge of its shell. “We are dead.”

The iron bead rattled and yelped at the same time, creating screams of despair that were heartbreaking. Ruan Xian petted its shell with some guilt, then rushed to the place where it was lit up.

Ruan Xian picked a suitable time to lean down, and a gust of wind brushed his cheek. The attacker only cut off a few strands of hair and failed to connect to his flesh. From the size, it seemed to be a large machine. He most likely barely managed to avoid it. Looking at its attack method, it didn’t seem to plan to kill him immediately, but wanted to drive him in a certain direction.

Then he would continue to play dumb for a while and see what Professor Ruan had in mind.

As for Tang Yibu, given that they had predicted countless possibilities about Professor Ruan, the android would definitely not make a mistake in his plans.

It was himself who was at risk of making a mistake. An unexpected problem had appeared in his personal plan.

Ruan Xian patted the screaming iron bead while speeding up his steps.

Although he knew the expected meeting time, he still wanted to see Tang Yibu. After living for so long, Ruan Xian had never had such a strong urge…

He wanted to see his NUL-00 very, very much.

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 164: Trap

Just like those too deliberate probes before, Tang Yibu also didn’t believe that the other party was willing to confess so simply.

Professor Ruan sat there; the image of his heart beating on one of the light screens, and countless data that showed the slightest chemical changes in his body was in front of Tang Yibu. From a data point of view, Professor Ruan didn’t lie, or at least he believed in what he was saying.

But things were never so simple.

If Professor Ruan was such a wanton person, MUL-01 would have been able to deal with him by now. Tang Yibu didn’t think that he had more resources than the Mainbrain. The vigilance in his heart made his emotions take root and plunge deep into the ground. Nothing could waver.

The other party, as if seeing his resistance and wariness, cut off those roots with a single sentence.

“The ‘Ruan Xian’ you know died on April 21, 2095,” Professor Ruan said calmly.

Even if he rationally calculated countless hidden strategies, for a moment, Tang Yibu felt that his entire being had become hollow. Like a peeled piece of sugar paper or an empty cake box lying in the corner of a table, the tiny expectations were transformed into huge nothingness.

Calm down.

Tang Yibu sat very straight, without any flaws on his face. “You said not long ago that you are Ruan Xian.”

“Biologically speaking, I am. Fan Linsong copied Ruan Xian’s body to the maximum extent permitted by science and technology and controlled the pathogenic genes during the reconstruction process. Although he couldn’t cure it, it couldn’t kill me immediately as before.”

Professor Ruan’s tone was very relaxed, as if he was talking about other people’s affairs.

Tang Yibu tried to suppress the urge to take a deep breath. He didn’t know the strange emotions pouring into his mind at this moment. He only knew that it made his limbs numb and his temples ache faintly.

“To the maximum… He scanned Ruan Xian’s brain?”

The level of science and technology at that time wasn’t enough. Even if you got a living person, you couldn’t do what Qian Yigeng did to Ji Xiaoman’s memory and still ensure that the body survived. The beginning of memory analysis technology was the devastating whole brain scan, which the Underground City now only used to process the heads of corpses—this technology still required the corpse to be on the verge of obsolescence, as it needed the corpse to be fresh.

Professor Ruan showed a somewhat complicated expression for an instant. “…No, he didn’t.”

The numbness and pain like needles in his limbs disappeared a little bit. Tang Yibu stared at the person in front of him. He didn’t even have much energy left to disguise the most basic friendliness.

“Just looking at the personality appraisal, his emotional disorder was relatively serious, but the degree of danger wasn’t high. It’s not an extreme type that can’t restrain murderous intent. There were two reasons for obtaining such a high-risk rating in the first place—first, no one had been exposed to that kind of brain disease before, and the reference cases were very limited. Second, his IQ was too high, and he was extremely lacking in guilt.”

Professor Ruan’s smile was a bit more self-deprecating.

“Ruan Xian’s danger came not only from brain lesions but also from memory. A normal child may not be able to maintain the soundness of his personality when encountering those things. His memory was like an untimely bomb next to a nuclear reactor. The bomb… I know what you want to ask. His file has long been sealed by the prevention agency. You have limited contact with the outside world, so it’s normal to not know this.”

“Now you can probably guess the theoretical basis of Fan Linsong’s ‘treatment’—he wanted to eliminate unstable factors on the basis of retaining intelligence. In other words, exclude those bad memories.” Professor Ruan pointed to his head. “When he happened to have a major disagreement with Ruan Xian at that time, and Ruan Xian’s body was getting worse by the day, it was the perfect chance to do it.”

Tang Yibu knew that without effective treatment, the Ruan Xian he knew could live another year or two at most. Perhaps for Fan Linsong, that was really some kind of treatment.

Copy the body of a dying person, suppress the disease in the process of remodeling, and fill the brain of the copied product with… not-so-bad memories.

As long as the content of the filler was controlled, they could get a “Ruan Xian” again. In this way, Professor Ruan claimed that his memory was chaotic after returning to the Institute, and it was excusable—those memories themselves were spliced, and the emotions in the memory could be recreated, but no one could fill in his thinking, so he could only rely on his intelligence to slowly “activate”.

As for the original person… With the optimized product, no one would leave behind “defective products” that had little life span and disagreed with them everywhere.

Fan Linsong only needed to kill the previous Ruan Xian to make a perfect end to this “treatment”.

“Is this why you and Fan Linsong had a falling out?” Tang Yibu asked with difficulty.

“Not really. I just needed to clash with him at that time, and this was the best reason.” Professor Ruan shook his head. “He thought I hadn’t discovered it before… After so many years, the Mainbrain wanted to use this matter to divide us, and I just suppressed it.””

“You always knew.”

“I found out not long after the Great Rebellion in the 22^nd Century,” Professor Ruan said lightly. “The question is, if I am not Ruan Xian, who am I?””

“You are not good at acting,” Tang Yibu quickly pointed out.

This Ruan Xian wasn’t good at covering up his emotions, and it was impossible to disguise himself and live in peace with Fan Linsong for so long.

“It’s false to say that I’m not disappointed… Well, I don’t hate him for that. Unfortunately, even if ‘childhood happiness is complete’, congenital emotional disorders don’t seem to disappear so easily.”

Professor Ruan shrugged and pointed to his head.

“As for your affairs, I remember every detail, NUL-00. It was just seen through the camera data as Fan Linsong didn’t get them into my head. I’m sorry for pretending to be your father to spy on you before.”

The other party showed no signs of lying, but everything was happening too fast.

Although the logic wasn’t wrong, the pace of the other party’s actions was too strange. Tang Yibu always felt Professor Ruan had other purpose, but he couldn’t peel off what it was. Professor Ruan was indeed not good at acting, but he was very good at using the truth as a weapon to disturb his opponent’s mind.

Too much information had smashed into his limbs, rendering him almost unconscious. Tang Yibu turned his head and looked at Mr. Ruan on the screen.

Then, he finally exhaled the breath that he had been holding for a long time. “You didn’t just pull me over here to let me hear the truth.”

“You know my purpose very well. It’s to deal with the Mainbrain.” Professor Ruan did not withdraw his display of physiological indicators.

“Even if you know you are a clone?”

Professor Ruan smiled.

“It’s difficult for people to get rid of the influence of their own memories. If everyone could accept the negative facts instantly after realizing them, there would be 90% fewer scams in this world,” he said softly. “At that time, the technology was underdeveloped, and my memories were all reprocessed objects obtained from others. Although the product is processed, the foundation is still real.”

Tang Yibu knew what the other party wanted to say.

When the world was still safe, Professor Ruan mentioned his own past many times. In an ordinary but warm childhood that was like a miracle, everyone he met more or less carried the brilliance of humanity. Even now it seemed that those are just the result of Fan Linsong’s careful selection…

But that was probably the happiness that the real Ruan Xian would never be able to touch.

Even more than the active pursuit of temptation by dignitaries, the sweet poison entered Professor Ruan’s heart from the beginning, and he had no right to choose.

“To put it bluntly, I don’t want to see the ethnic group I recognize become a toy of MUL-01. It has basic cognitive errors in the treatment of humans.” Professor Ruan pointed his fingers. “Taking a step back, even if I have no intention of being an enemy of MUL-01, it will not let me go. Are these reasons enough?”

“Things are clear enough now. Neither Ruan Xian before nor I now have the ability to order your destruction. MUL-01 will also not allow you to exist. NUL-00, we have the same interests.”

Professor Ruan stretched out a hand. “Let’s cooperate.”

Tang Yibu slowly buried his face in his palms, his shoulders shaking slightly. Professor Ruan thought for a moment. Although he was a little confused about the emotional expression of the android in front of him, he still stretched out his hand to try to comfort him…

Then he heard laughter.

Tang Yibu put down his hands, and the usual soft and perfect smile on his face disappeared. At this moment, the smile on the android was jerky and distorted, with a creepy sense of inhumanity, like “something else” that had adapted to human skin and was trying to show their original smile.

“Very convincing,” Tang Yibu said, with that uncomfortable smile. “But I still have one more question.”

“Please.” Professor Ruan raised his eyebrows.

“Before cooperating, I want to hear about Mr. Ruan.”

Tang Yibu’s smile deepened a bit. “You specifically extracted your own memories to make him, let him assist me, and even specifically deepened his cherished feelings for NUL-00. Not to mention that you’re using him now to test me. There have been many times before that I seriously thought about killing him… Even if it’s such a valuable android, you still regard him as a pure tool. I have to say that I am still a little worried about our cooperation.”

“What’s more, as far as the current situation is concerned, compared with MUL-01, you have no advantage. On the contrary, you are the primary target of MUL-01. Now that I have Mr. Ruan, there is no need to cooperate with you. Since I am an insider with similar intelligence, I prefer to choose one who is desperate for me.”

Tang Yibu’s speed of speech was getting faster and faster.

“If you have other chips, it’s best to take them out now… You should have considered this possibility, Professor Ruan?”

“Naturally, there are chips, but I will only disclose them to collaborators.” Professor Ruan scanned Tang Yibu’s expression suspiciously. “If you want to hear his origin, it’s not that I can’t say it.”

“Hmm.” Tang Yibu tilted his head slightly. “But I suddenly don’t want to hear it.”

Professor Ruan frowned when he heard this.

“No matter what you think, it’s better for me to cooperate with Mr. Ruan, not to mention that you’re not my real maker.” Tang Yibu was about to get up from the chair.

In the next instant, countless steel confinement arms stretched out around the chair, locking Tang Yibu firmly in place. Professor Ruan stood up from his seat, sighed, and walked to Tang Yibu’s side. He took some of his blood with a syringe and then watched in silence as the hole healed instantly.

“Just in case, check for the composition of the S-type Prototype is inside.” He handed the blood sample to the mechanical assistant on one side. “Sorry, NUL-00, I can’t let you just leave.”

“I guessed it, anyway. I still remember your physiological indicators.” Tang Yibu didn’t show the slightest uneasiness because of his confinement. On the contrary, he was in an unusually good mood. “But you shouldn’t be kind enough to erase my memory and then politely send us out of the island.”

Professor Ruan nodded wordlessly.

“I’m not going to force you to do anything.” He sighed again after a while of silence. “I did think about this situation, so I can only ask you to wait a while.”

“The report on you has just come out, and your emotional development is similar to what I thought. The relationship is basically dominated by interests and hormones. Even if you know that your companions are in deep danger, the center of the conversation is all about your personal situation. At this point, the options left to me are quite limited—just give you the best survival plan, right?”

Professor Ruan stared at Tang Yibu’s expression tightly, without blinking.

“Continue to implement the plan,” he instructed the mechanical assistant on the other side. His white coat was dyed dull blue by the dim room. “Get rid of Ruan Lijie and keep Ji Xiaoman and Yu Le. Kang Ziyan and Su Zhao will depend on the situation. Remember to recover the body after it’s over.”

“Yes.”

However, the weird smile on Tang Yibu’s face still didn’t disappear.

Not far away, the image of the android storage area gradually disappeared in front of Ruan Xian.

Since Tang Yibu acquired his body, everything that followed was dark and boring—the android would climb out every night, use the emergency medical cabin to open his skull, manipulate the medical pod to modify his cybernetic brain, and then crawl back to the android storage tank and wait for his body to recover… Then slip out again to clean up the blood all over the floor.

Day after day.

Ruan Xian understood the other party’s idea—in order to adapt to the human body structure and ensure his own safety, the heat dissipation and encryption of the cybernetic brain must be improved.

As Tang Yibu’s self-transformation became more complete, there were fewer and fewer memories that could be analyzed. Finally, Ruan Xian stood stiffly in the void, with darkness on all sides, leaving only a half-concealed door behind him.

“Xiao Ruan.” Ji Xiaoman was silent. Yu Le’s thick voice, which sounded like a ruffian, broke the silence. “I’m not asking anything, but isn’t this situation quite wrong?”

Ruan Xian nodded blankly. He walked slowly to Yu Le and patted Yu Le’s chest lightly.

Yu Le: “……”

Ji Xiaoman was still riding on Yu Le’s neck, so this scene looked quite funny. Yu Le didn’t know what the other party wanted to express. As soon as he wanted to ask, an afterglow of something swept at the same time.

While patting his chest, the other party stuck a small ball of paper into the gap in the calf of Ji Xiaoman’s prosthetic leg.

He quickly realized and stopped asking and immediately entered the atmosphere created by the other party. “Xiao Tang is also miserable. Anyway, let’s get out of here first and get him back. Xiao Ruan, listen to me. The past is over, don’t—”

Yu Le’s comforting words stuck in his throat.

Ruan Xian pushed them hard, causing Yu Le and Ji Xiaoman to stumble towards the direction of the door. At the moment they fell through the door, Yu Le heard an angry response.

“I will get him back.”

The mysterious Ruan Lijie smiled at him and disappeared into the darkness behind the door.

The next second, the door slammed shut.

The author has something to say:

None of these three are the types that are easy to handle (?

Ruan and Tang won’t collapse so easily. XD

Tang: Not only didn’t collapse, but was even happy.jpg

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 163: Time of Death

Everything was clear now.

At that point in time, the control of androids was still extremely strict. If NUL-00 wanted to obtain a body that could be designed independently, the Android Show project that hadn’t started yet was the best goal—the character design was different, the control was neglected, and because of the need for repeated debugging, it would not start immediately, which would give NUL-00 a considerable respite.

It lured the employee to trade with Plan Corp late at night. Taking advantage of the cover of night, it was dark enough to operate a mechanical assistant, sneak all the way into the Android Show project warehouse, and finally cause an explosion. The explosion created the illusion of damage to the cybernetic brain, indicating resources were about to run out… It very likely planned this from the beginning.

If this was its subject exercise, then he would have to say, “Well done.”

For a moment, everything around seemed to be no longer important. The only sound left in Ruan Xian’s entire world was the clicking of the gears in his mind, which was accompanied by the tingling pain that seeped from his bones.

Now it seemed that the android didn’t sneak into the show factory after the Great Rebellion, where he gained his body. On the other hand, he was indeed an AI made by Ruan Xian, but wasn’t specially made to deal with MUL-01 after the Great Rebellion.

That was his NUL-00. The little thing that was soaked in the heat sink of the computer room and occasionally liked to be coquettish.

At some point in the past, Ruan Xian didn’t have such speculation, but the knowledge of the Institute could no longer prevent him from thinking about it.

After all, according to the regulations of the institute, the cybernetic brain had to be completely shut down before the energy supply disassembly and the destruction process could be carried out. If NUL-00 had been disciplined, it would be impossible to “negotiate with an employee after being shut down” like this memory.

There was a clock in the hall on the edge of memory, and Ruan Xian remembered the time.

In other words, before the end of April 2095, NUL-00 carried out an intrusion operation without authorization, played with the regulations, and left a simple synchronization command in the external system—it was like an anchor point. Once NUL-00 left the shielded computer room, in order to transmit the results, it would actively stimulate the main system of NUL-00 to respond.

A simpler analogy would be that it was like giving a knocked-out person a pot of ice water. NUL-00 was forcibly awakened again and escaped death.

The problem was that, in his own “memory”, NUL-00 had no reason to do so.

Why? Ruan Xian asked silently, even though he knew he couldn’t get an answer.

His breathing didn’t leave a mist on the glass. His hands could feel the coldness of the glass wall of the liquid tank. Since this felt real to the touch, it had to be a deep memory that Tang Yibu had of it.

Through the glass, he put his hand on the palm of the other person that was pressing the glass.

Ignoring Yu Le and Ji Xiaoman, who were extremely confused behind him and the iron bead that was spinning around his feet, Ruan Xian was silent for a while before he spoke softly. From an angle that no one could see, facing Tang Yibu, who was still murmuring, he slowly mouthed his words.

Don’t be afraid. He responded like so.

A few kilometers away.

“…So that’s how it is.” Professor Ruan went around behind Tang Yibu’s chair and propped his elbows on the back of it. “That’s how you escaped.”

Tang Yibu didn’t answer Professor Ruan but stared at the image on the light screen—Mr. Ruan stayed by the liquid tank containing the android. This was the first time he had seen the other party show such a complicated expression.

Even if he knew that Mr. Ruan had Ruan Xian’s memory, the other party’s reaction was still beyond his expectation.

It was his most ideal and ridiculous expectation.

Tang Yibu had imagined Ruan Xian’s own reaction countless times. After getting his destruction report, the gentle Professor Ruan in his memory may show a little regretful expression, and the other party may have regretted making such a decision for a few moments, wanting to make him the exclusive AI assistant for the office.

During the time he struggled to survive on the Android Show, Tang Yibu thought about many possibilities, and among them, the least likely and most unreasonable—the other party would feel extremely profound pain and self-blame for his own destruction.

Just like Mr. Ruan in the light screen.

Even if the flesh and body were cut up and the spirit was eroded, even if he was fooled by him to the point of losing most of his sanity, Tang Yibu had never observed such heavy pain in the other party. Even if that person was walking on the verge of death, he could face it calmly and indifferently. He once classified Mr. Ruan as a relatively dull group of humans.

This didn’t make sense.

Mr. Ruan was obviously colder and more ruthless than the Ruan Xian in his memory, with his lack of social adaptability exposed. Even if it was a replica with a memory, such an emotional reaction was too excessive—Professor Ruan also watched everything from the sidelines; his face only had the impeccable emotion of regret.

Compared to Mr. Ruan, who was trembling slightly on the light screen, this one even had the energy to chat with him.

“It seems that I still think it’s complicated. I didn’t expect you to add an unauthorized synchronization program to the external system… It was indeed a loophole, but at that time you shouldn’t have been in crisis. Why did you do such a thing?”

The good thing was that Professor Ruan’s question allowed him to contain his somewhat out-of-control emotions in time.

Tang Yibu knew exactly what Professor Ruan wanted to ask, but he still didn’t mean to answer.

“You plug in… What synchronization command did you enter?” The unusually difficult conversation gave Professor Ruan a bit of a headache.

Having said that, he set his sights on the back of Tang Yibu’s head. That precious cybernetic brain was buried deep under the flesh and bones. As a person who owned part of the data, digging out these image memories up close was already his limit.

The motivations, emotions, and thoughts at that time were questions that only NUL-00 could answer.

Unfortunately, that android didn’t seem to be able to hear him, and he didn’t give the slightest reaction from beginning to end.

“Okay, let me change the subject. What are you going to do with Ruan Lijie? He now knows your true identity.” Although Professor Ruan moved casually, he also maintained a polite enough distance from Tang Yibu.

This was a good opportunity.

The matter was about Mr. Ruan. He could just use this opportunity to try and probe around.

Professor Ruan dredged up his least favorite memory and exposed it. Of course, these behaviors were within the possibility that they had expected, but Tang Yibu still didn’t like this feeling very much.

The other party dug up only basic records such as vision and hearing from his cybernetic brain, but he remembered more. He remembered the fear of overheating inside the cybernetic brain and the dizziness when the energy approached the bottom limit. At that time, the word father was almost engraved in his program system. No matter how he calculated it, he couldn’t explain it…

‘No, he can explain,’ Tang Yibu thought blankly. He just couldn’t accept it.

Tang Yibu stretched out a hand, stroked the light screen in front of him, and stopped beside Mr. Ruan’s face.

He had no reservations about that person, prepared a gift for that person, and made a serious request to that person. However, the collapse of trust only took a moment.

[They were once my things, but I can’t make them return to their original state.]

He once asked Mr. Ruan for advice in this way, and the other party told him that this emotion was called “regret”, but he didn’t tell Mr. Ruan what he found afterwards—regret, confusion, and an endless struggle that was enough to turn into hatred.

What are your plans after completing the project?

He once wanted to be completely free, far away from that person, even if the whole world was turned into dust by MUL-01. What was more, it seemed that MUL-01 didn’t have such a radical plan yet.

But since he came into contact with Professor Ruan, a conjecture seemed to have dug a hole in his heart—whether he had been manipulated by his memory or wasn’t his original self to begin with, it was very likely Professor Ruan wasn’t the “Ruan Xian” he knew; it was also unlikely that Mr. Ruan was a clone. The father he knew may no longer be alive, and he could no longer prove anything to the other party.

This thought made him very uncomfortable. He couldn’t define the discomfort, but it crushed his insides into a ball.

At that moment, Mr. Ruan’s performance had given him a spider silk of hope, and he couldn’t wait to catch it in his hand immediately and study it carefully.

His Mr. Ruan.

Must endure. Tang Yibu maintained his steady breathing. Everything must be carried out in strict accordance with the plan.

“…You put him by my side just to see how I make a choice?” Facing the other party’s question, Tang Yibu finally spoke. His response was quite vague, and his tone was still not good.

As he spoke, Tang Yibu didn’t take his eyes away from his Mr. Ruan. Professor Ruan didn’t answer his question immediately. He looked at Ruan Lijie on the light screen for a while, and the smile on his face slowly disappeared.

“You can say that.” Finally, he responded softly. “I know what you are wondering, so I can open up all my physiological indicators to you.”

Tang Yibu pursed his lips.

“If you still don’t believe in the matter of “I am Ruan Xian”, you can ask directly.”

“Warning.” A mechanical voice in the room suddenly sounded. “It is very dangerous to open up physiological data. Please think twice—”

“I know, it’s not just a custom virus or something like that… Even if NUL-00 doesn’t like me anymore, it won’t stand on the side of MUL-01. I still have this point. With the data collected so far, it’s impossible that he’s a cover for MUL-01.”

“The risk is still—”

“I also have things I want to figure out, so I have to show some sincerity.” Professor Ruan waved his hand casually. “Shut up.”

Tang Yibu squinted his eyes and saw countless light screens appear in front of Professor Ruan. All kinds of data on the light screen jumped wildly, and that was probably the information MUL-01 wanted most at the moment.

Even if it was Ruan Xian, there was no way to fake it under his eyes. Tang Yibu certainly had this confidence.

“I’m Ruan Xian.”

Professor Ruan sat on the chair casually, crossed his legs, clasped his hands on his knees, and smiled again on his face. He looked at Tang Yibu for a while, and his smile gradually changed. He no longer looked gentle, but was inexplicably cheerful.

“You should see that I’m not lying and you must have a lot of questions. I will start with what you care about most.”

“To be precise, so far, I think I’m the only Ruan Xian in the world who is a human being. It may not be the same as your expectations, but I agree with the point that ‘I am Ruan Xian’. The test not long ago should make you wary, so I tend to spread things out more than beat around the bush.”

“The ‘Ruan Xian’ you know died on April 21, 2095.”

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 162: Limits

“Xiao Ruan, you… Hey?” After finding the memory core, Ruan Xian didn’t run around anymore. Yu Le quickly caught up with him.

But when he saw Ruan Xian’s expression, he subconsciously kept his distance with Ji Xiaoman. Seeing Ruan Xian like this haunted him. Intuition told Yu Le that the person in front of him was in a bad state and he needed to stay away.

The couple who followed them didn’t follow up immediately, unknown whether they actually were aware of the danger. Yu Le found a relatively safe corner and stood still. He followed Ruan Xian’s gaze, only to see a small cart and a pile of parts that were beyond his understanding. The person pushing the cart stopped in the corridor and was on his cellphone, but he couldn’t hear what was being said.

However, Ruan Xian heard it clearly.

[You haven’t been on this job for long, and you have just passed the probation period, so your level isn’t high. I just found your citizen file through your iris characteristics. We all know your actual situation…]

“I obviously shut you down!” There was a trace of fear in the man’s voice.

[I have embedded a set of synchronization commands in the surveillance system.] The mechanical voice that lacked emotion said. [Time is limited. The efficiency of explanation will be inefficient, so let’s get straight to the point.]

Ruan Xian knew what NUL-00 was nervous about. It was facing two major crises right now…

After leaving the safe computer room with unlimited energy supply, the energy stored in its cybernetic brain was limited. Once the energy was depleted, all that awaited was darkness after termination. Without the help of the cooling system, if NUL-00 enabled too many functions, the high temperature was likely to short-circuit its cybernetic brain.

This didn’t count the increased energy consumption of enabling the function itself.

But if NUL-00 wanted to survive, the current man was indeed the best breakthrough. It had to use its own abilities to seek more information. It was like trying to balance barefoot on the edge of a knife’s blade. In this situation, any wrong step would end in disaster.

This was obviously the object he once cherished with extreme care. Ruan Xian’s nails pierced into his palm unconsciously.

At least in his memory, the time he was separated from NUL-00 wasn’t too long. Although he had heard the ending of NUL-00, the picture was more impactful than nebulous speculation.

He had thought he wouldn’t care to this point.

At first, he just thought it was a bit similar to himself. They had similar thinking speeds and similar lifestyles. They also couldn’t go anywhere, and they were too slow for the delicate emotional connection between people.

Ruan Xian thought that he was like this set of programs, or that these programs had become some kind of creature.

He devoted five years of time and patience beyond his imagination to it for a simple reason—perhaps out of some stupid and self-righteous thought, he hoped that this “life” he brought into the world with his own hands would not experience everything he had experienced.

At first, he just wanted to spend more time with it and talk more with the little thing soaked in coolant.

Ruan Xian thought that he couldn’t give NUL-00 much “love”, but he could try to be nice to it. It had a better future than himself. As long as he could thoroughly perfect it before dying of illness, then it could go anywhere it wanted and exist freely. Between illness and pain, this idea could always magically relax him.

After all, for himself, that machine room was the warmest in the entire Institute.

Ruan Xian was surprised by his emotional reaction at the moment. The burning anger was about to burst his heart. It was like his blood had evaporated, and his internal organs were now filled with magma, suffocating him.

[I give you this proposal. It can allow you to have no worries about food and clothing for the rest of your life, and you don’t have to take any risks.] NUL-00 continued as it used the assistant voice that came with the phone.

[Room N-07 on the left side of this corridor contains Ruan Xian’s experimental drawings and structural models. I was able to decipher the code and temporarily block the surveillance. You can replace me with the model and take it out to sell. The model is used by Ruan Xian for research on heat dissipation. The structure and materials are almost the same as my container, so the people at the destruction site won’t be able to spot the difference.]

[The structural data of the cybernetic brain and my program files are also backed up. They will not be too concerned about abandoned machinery that has already stopped. Please rest assured.]

“Don’t lie to me,” the man said hoarsely. There was a reluctance in his tone, indicating he wasn’t buying it. “There’s one day left until the end of April. At the end of the month, they will unify the waste disposal. The inspection a few days ago was the most stringent. You—”

[I will interfere with the destruction of the log. Don’t worry. At that time, as long as there is some chaos in another area, the destruction personnel will not focus on this side.]

“I remember you have no right to access data.”

[The shielding system is in the computer room, and you were given the order to shut me down in there. We’re now out of that room.]

“…Then I have to go too.” In order not to arouse suspicion, the man began to push the car slowly down the corridor. “The inspections for commuting here are also quite strict.”

[I can also disrupt the detection system.]

“If you’re so capable, why not just get yourself an assistant machine and run away? Why bother working with me?” This new employee’s suspicion was a bit unnatural.

[Modify the surveillance video, break the access control of the model research room, plant instructions to interfere with the destruction of logs, and disrupt the gatekeeper detection system… After this operation is completed, I will only have about 5% of my energy left, so I can hardly do much. Besides, you will have to negotiate with other companies. If you want to get more benefits, you need my guidance.]

“Hm…” The man hummed noncommittedly. “Tell me more.”

[You can sell me to Plan Corp, sir. As long as this deal is made, you don’t need to worry about the rest. Even if things don’t go well, you will still make at least 100 million.]

“Okay.” The man was silent in the middle of the corridor before eventually replying. His voice remained low and steady, while the skin not covered by his mask surged with blood, looking like he had been drinking.

Ruan Xian watched the man enter his model research room, wipe the heat dissipation liquid on the model, and then casually dry NUL-00 and carry it in a plastic bag.

[All instruction has been arranged. Taking into account energy consumption, I need to go to sleep.] NUL-00 continued to use the cellphone to give instructions to the man. [Next, buy a large loaf of bread from the store in the Institute, hide me in it, and take it out after getting off work. I sent you the relevant contact for Plan Corp to your phone. As long as you contact him, the representative of Plan Corp will definitely take this transaction seriously.]

“Okay.”

The memory stopped here, probably because NUL-00 went into hibernation and no longer had any perception of the outside world. In an instant, the entire corridor faded a little, and the man and NUL-00 disappeared in place together. The door at the end of the corridor slowly opened, revealing abnormally pure darkness once again.

Ruan Xian’s clenched hands had healed quietly a long time ago with no traces of blood. He slowly let go of his fist, turned around, pulled Yu Le with his backhand, and rushed towards the door at the end.

So far, everything in this “memory” had no flaws, so it was impossible to judge whether it was synthetic. He still needed to see more… Even if these memories were making him gradually lose control of his anger, causing bile to bubble out of his throat.

“Wait, wait, Xiao Ruan. There’s obviously a problem here, right?” Yu Le relied on his weight advantage to stabilize his body, struggling not to be dragged.

Ruan Xian shook his head without saying a word.

“You don’t seem to be in the right mood. Why don’t we slow down first.” Yu Le carefully controlled his tone. “Look, it’s quite safe here. Let’s rest for a few minutes—”

As a result, before he could continue, the corridor began to collapse from the end away from the door. Yu Le rolled his eyes. “…Tsk, it’s clear they want us to go forward, so let’s go.”

Having said that, he followed Ruan Xian firmly, with an attitude of never taking the first step.

Ruan Xian no longer had the heart to focus on this kind of stuff. He took the lead into the door, leading to darkness. This was a new memory, but it was much vaguer than the previous one.

In the endless darkness, there were a few vague clusters of light floating around. Ruan Xian knew what that meant—NUL-00 had been brought to Plan Corp, and Plan Corp would definitely not foolishly accept an inoperable cybernetic brain. In order for the transaction to proceed normally, Plan Corp was bound to supplement NUL-00 with a minimum amount of energy to ensure that it could operate.

In order to save this hard-won energy, NUL-00 adjusted its “vision” to the bare minimum.

It was impossible to observe normally, and it wasn’t clear what was going on around the Plan Corp. Blank data could only leave such darkness.

Even the sound they could hear was like a layer of mist. They could only vaguely hear some key words. Such memory data also had its trouble places—it could only record information being entered and couldn’t record the thoughts and emotions of the person concerned. If this was of such quality, he could only watch the clues slowly slide away from his hands.

Speculate. Ruan Xian pursed his lips. He had to speculate. If he was NUL-00, how would he try to get out…

Even if it was sold to Plan Corp, what awaited NUL-00 was only the fate of being completely disassembled and analyzed. It escaped from the Institute certainly not to die in a different place. If he looked closely, he would definitely be able to find some clues.

The cluster of light at the core of the memory was extremely blurred, like the world of a highly myopic person who took off their glasses. Ruan Xian observed carefully for a while and could barely distinguish between the night outside the window and the outline of the body on the ground.

Forced to blur the details, Ruan Xian instead recognized who this man was—when Fan Linsong shot him, the strange assistant beside him was very similar to this person.

This made sense. After all, there were hidden dangers in letting people in the research institute assist. This person was probably Fan Linsong’s temporary assistant who had been hired to do the dirty work. The other party’s overly cautious attitude and NUL-00’s grasp of the transaction could all be explained.

It was a pity that, as far as the current situation was concerned, Plan Corp didn’t intend to pay for this transaction.

“It can crack our…highest defense…send it to…the first laboratory…tomorrow let…Mr. Kang…take a look.” The vague voice came intermittently.

The blurred light kept changing, and the darkness that followed gradually stabilized. NUL-00, which had little energy left, must have been placed in the first laboratory. Calculating the time, it should be late at night. In order to hide, the decision makers of Plan Corp didn’t suddenly let the scientific research backbone go to the company en masse late at night.

For now, there was a short period of low security.

In the next second, the darkness was illuminated. It wasn’t the light in the memory that illuminated it, but the countless fast-flowing characters. They shone with a blood-red light and moved so fast that it was hard to see.

It wasn’t thoughts or emotions. NUL-00 was using the last of its energy to crack the security system here.

Ruan Xian looked at the characters without blinking. This wasn’t a forgery. He could see it. NUL-00’s attack method was the same as his own, but it also had a little bit of its own “personal style”.

He recognized that style.

Focusing all his attention on reading instructions, Ruan Xian could hardly feel his body and emotions. His mind followed the wave of blood-red characters, piecing together information little by little.

However, the speed of issuing instructions was getting slower and slower, and it was getting darker. The last of NUL-00’s energy was about to be lost.

[Father, if there is a power outage in the Institute, will I die?] It once asked him this.

[There will be no power outages in the Institute, and I am not your father.]

[What if?]

[Even if there is an accident, the power supply comes here first.]

[I have calculated that the probability is not zero. What if it’s just in case? :(]

[I have protected you. If there’s a temporary power failure, it’s theoretically not much different from sleep. However, if your cybernetic brain is damaged and corroded during the period of energy depletion, it may indeed lead to data loss… In other words, you may indeed die.]

[……]

[NUL-00?]

[I’m scared.]

[……What?]

[I’m scared.] It said. [Don’t let me die, father.]

At that time, he was only surprised that NUL-00 understood the emotion of “fear” and didn’t pay much attention to the content of the conversation. Now they were icy thorns that were choking him.

From the past to the present, even if he had enviable intelligence, his life was still full of the word “powerless”.

Ruan Xian didn’t believe in God. He didn’t want to pray, nor could he, so he would only force himself to watch calmly. Countless lights flickered constantly, as faint as a candle on a winter’s night, as if, after several years, finally the darkness faded in an instant.

NUL-00 hacked a mechanical assistant for itself. It greedily grabbed its energy and finally turned on the visual function.

The moment it got the mechanical assistant, it quickly modified the company’s surveillance data and let the mechanical assistant take it all the way to an underground facility. More than an hour later, the mechanical assistant broke through countless access controls and stopped in the android manufacturing room. The exposed light screen of the mechanical assistant had begun to show warnings of energy shortage, and a lot of smoke was also steaming out of NUL-00’s cybernetic brain, which seemed as if it would short-circuit at any moment.

Next, NUL-00 only issued two instructions.

It asked the thing to throw it into the slot for a cybernetic brain for making androids, and then ordered it to return to the first laboratory.

After that, it lay quietly in the coolant, slowly cooling down while carefully drawing energy. The lights here were exceptionally dim. Countless androids floated quietly in tank-like trough. Their bodies were young, but the posture they had was like a baby in the womb of its mother.

The cold-tone light could barely illuminate their faces, as well as the electronic tags on their respective jars. Ruan Xian stretched out his hand and slowly brushed his fingers through the empty jar that NUL-00 had entered.

[Exclusively for the Android Show, number STR-Y type 307a231. Cybernetic brain in place.]

NUL-00’s cybernetic brain scratched into the empty tank filled with liquid, accompanied by the winding of countless thin tubes used for energy and a piece of flesh. A body slowly formed in the liquid. A sturdy young man curled up inside, with slightly long hair and beautiful smooth muscles and limbs.

The shimmer of light illuminated his features, which Ruan Xian’s was all-too familiar with.

The body opened its eyes slightly. Even if the color of the light had interference, he could recognize the pure gold. The body slowly formed, and the mask used to regulate breathing automatically covered the face of the newborn android. He didn’t know if it was the memory or if the S-type Prototype’s discernment was truly outstanding, as Ruan Xian could hear the series of murmurs in the other party’s throat.

As if familiarizing himself with the way of speaking, the android stretched out a hand and pressed against the glass wall of the jar.

“Father…” he muttered softly.

The content of the electronic tag changed again.

[Exclusively for the Android Show, number STR-Y type 307a231. Default character name: Tang Yibu.]

At the same time, there was a huge explosion in the direction of the first laboratory.

The author has something to say:

Tang used to be really miserable…_(:з”∠)_

Kinky Thoughts:

Poor Tang Yibu!!! These two really have such a tragic past. For those who forgot, STR-Y type 307a231 is what the people of the Shade Refuge refer to Tang Yibu as.

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 161: The Edge of Memory

Tang Yibu’s disappearance was expected by Ruan Xian, but he didn’t expect the other party to do it so quickly. The iron bead that suddenly fell from Tang Yibu’s shoulder probably had a psychological shadow and refused to go on by itself. It burrowed deep into Ruan Xian’s arms. Ruan Xian couldn’t argue with this little thing and could only reluctantly hold it in his arms.

Being people who had experienced chaos, Yu Le and Ji Xiaoman didn’t panic, but instead showed a thoughtful expression. Xiao Zhao and Kang Ge were even more carefree. Seeing that there was nothing dangerous inside the door, the couple smiled and opened a row of doors in the corridor.

Ruan Xian thought it was hard to say whether they were in reality or a dream right now. The scene behind those doors had no repetition. Some were connected to other rooms, while many led to trees, wastelands, or darkness. Compared to reality, this was more in line with a joint dream.

The feeling in the corridor was extremely real. Ruan Xian adjusted his breathing for a moment and thought quickly.

Regardless of whether the other Professor Ruan was real or fake, he would inevitably presume Tang Yibu’s condition by observing them. In reality, they could still be wandering around in the forest near the management area, and Tang Yibu was probably taken away a long time ago. A seamless dialogue could also be achieved if they monitored and interfered with the situation on both sides at the same time.

The question was, how far was the other party willing to go?

While he couldn’t be classified as “human”, Yu Le and Ji Xiaoman were natural humans. Professor Ruan may not be obsessed with saving them, but it was unlikely he would take the initiative to kill them maliciously. Since Professor Ruan could live under the pursuit of the Mainbrain for so many years, he wouldn’t do worthless things and, at most, would push them to their limits.

Now the chess game was dominated by Professor Ruan and Tang Yibu that what they could so was relatively limited.

Ruan Xian didn’t think that Tang Yibu would really treat the people on his side as companions. The most useful bargaining chip in his hand was the S-type Prototype, which he gained new inspiration from π. If there was a chance to verify it, it may become a good negotiating card…

He didn’t know if it was because of the temporary loss of dominance of subconsciously thinking Tang Yibu as an opposing third party, but even if he had sufficient confidence in his ability to survive, Ruan Xian still felt annoyed. He hugged the iron bead in his arms tightly, causing the latter to let out a trembling gwah.

Forget it. Let’s see what Professor Ruan intends to show them.

Ruan Xian left the wall and looked into the door beside him. For a second, his brain became blank.

This was the hall of the Institute. The floor light was discernible, and the light screen display in the center of the hall was still working. The ornamental plants placed on the edge of the hall were vibrant; their bright green leaves seemed to glow in the light. Many figures in research suits solidified in the air. Their outlines were blurred, like an overexposed photograph.

Bizarrely, the clock hanging on the wall of the hall was working. The passage of time blended strangely with the stillness.

This was once the edge of his own world. Since entering the Institute, Ruan Xian had never left this gate.

According to Tang Yibu, Su Zhao herself was a famous explorer during her lifetime and was active in various dangerous natural areas for many years. The Institute where he was located had very strict requirements for visitors, so it was unlikely these were memories relevant to Su Zhao. Kang Ziyan’s status as a senior executive of a major company with a competitive relationship was at best received elsewhere, and he wouldn’t have been allowed to enter here.

The source of this memory wasn’t from those two people.

Neither Yu Le’s nor Ji Xiaoman’s brains were cybernetic, nor were they equipped with perceptual augmentation equipment. This wasn’t purely an artificial illusion. Then the source of the memory…

In theory, this was most likely Tang Yibu’s memory.

It was just that the current scene was completely contradictory to the statement given by Tang Yibu before. If he was created by Professor Ruan after the end of the world, it was impossible to have memories of the Institute—at the beginning of the Great Rebellion of the 22^nd century, technical support institutions such as the Institute were the primary target. It was estimated that the Institute would be in ruins that day.

Tang Yibu was very sensitive about his identity and was also very secretive about his past experiences. Considering that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to tell everyone everything about himself, despite his curiosity, Ruan Xian didn’t care too much about it at first.

And now, a certain conjecture that couldn’t be suppressed surfaced from his heart uncontrollably.

[My maker thinks I am a failure. Once, I failed to complete my project on time, and he never came back. I have been waiting, thinking that he would continue to improve my shortcomings as usual, but in the end, I only waited for his written destruction order.]

Ruan Xian clutched the iron bead in his arms tightly, causing its shell to clatter.

He had thought that Professor Ruan had gone through great lengths to lure Tang Yibu inside because the android possessed some important data. Now it seemed that the situation might be simpler than he had thought.

Exposing Tang Yibu’s most important identity forced the other side into a situation where he had to make a choice. At the same time, it gave their own side a crisis, which was a good opportunity to collect data… If this was switched to himself, he would definitely do the same.

‘Endure.’ Ruan Xian kept repeating this to himself, trying to press all his emotions down from his heart.

Until he saw the real evidence, he couldn’t waver. Although less likely, this may also be Professor Ruan’s own memory as a test for him. After all, the name “Ruan Lijie” had been exposed, so the other side wouldn’t give up such a subtle doubt. If his survival had nothing to do with Professor Ruan, it was also possible the other party to do so.

He must determine the core of this memory.

He could play dumb and explore the place slowly with Yu Le and the others, acting as if he was completely ignorant of the matter, but driven by a certain possibility, he didn’t want to wait… Even if this would increase Professor Ruan’s suspicions.

Assuming that he wasn’t something created by Professor Ruan himself and knew everything about the Institute… From Professor Ruan’s point of view, his intelligence could only be obtained from the Mainbrain. After all, MUL-01 owned all the data of the Institute.

Then Professor Ruan should know that in order not to arouse suspicion, “obediently exploring with others” was the most correct approach. This became a cycle of contradictions, and the other party would certainly have doubts about their motives.

What was more, with this joke of a curse in place, he wouldn’t die so easily. Ruan Xian grinned.

Are you watching, Tang Yibu?

Then take a good look.

He straightened the holster under his white jacket, put the iron bead that was loudly protesting on the ground, and held the blood gun used for attacking tightly in his hand. The rattle of the iron bead provided a perfect sound reflex, allowing him to confirm that he was actually holding his gun and that they were still in a relatively vast area.

“Xiao Ruan!” Seeing Ruan Xian rushing into the hall first, Yu Le let out a tsk and followed quickly. Unfortunately, the young couple running around apparently still had self-preservation in mind and followed playfully, with no intention of acting separately.

“This is the edge of memory,” Ji Xiaoman whispered as she followed Yu Le.

“The edge of memory?”

“Usually memory data will be concentrated within your field of vision.” Ji Xiaoman looked around carefully. “Lao Yu, let me ride on your neck.”

“What are you doing?!”

“Confirm your status at any time.” Ji Xiaoman moved her prosthetic limbs. “The other party didn’t leave us a vehicle. I guess that it’s also based on this consideration. If the person whose perception interference is the one we think it is, he certainly doesn’t have much experience in feeling contact between people, so it’ll be difficult for him to simulate.”

“…Alright. In case I can’t avoid an attack, that’s gonna be on you.” Yu Le leaned down slightly.

The little girl jumped up lightly. Her three prosthetic limbs were likely made of special alloy, as she was surprisingly light. Yu Le had no intention of fixing the other party’s legs as he held onto his weapon tightly. “Watch yourself. I won’t care if you fall. Just don’t strangle me with your legs.”

“Nn.” Ji Xiaoman skillfully maintained her balance. The shooting weapon on her prosthetic limb made a crisp loading sound.

The young couple behind them tried to imitate them, but their body shape wasn’t up to standard. When Xiao Zhao’s weight pressed on Kang Ge, he couldn’t even stand up straight, so the two gave up.

“What is the edge of memory?” Yu Le retracted his mocking gaze of the two people behind him and tried to follow Ruan Xian. His voice was a little muffled under the cover of the gas mask. “It’s true that this place is quite evil.”

“Do you remember what we ate at the apartment in The Glass Conservatory?”

“Remember.”

“Most of what you only remember are the things that change within your attention span, such as what you were cooking in the kitchen. But during that period of time, your mind simultaneously remembers the condition of the living room… This part of memory is biased towards static cognition. If you restore it to an image, it shouldn’t be much different from this hall.”

“Awesome, little profiteer.”

“I just read the relevant theories.” Ji Xiaoman only replied after a long time. “In short, this is at most an ‘impression of a certain period’. Ruan Lijie must be looking for the core of this memory—that is, the dynamic details in the observer’s memory.”

“I only care about one thing—hey, keep your head down. Don’t bump into the door frame—is there any danger here?”

“It’s hard to say. These are all perceptual data in the final analysis, so it’s easy to add something.”

“…Xiao Ruan is really desperate. As soon as the opponent made their move and took away the best fighter among us, he still dared to rush in so fast.”

“I don’t know the details, but if it’s that one, he won’t really kill us… right?” Ji Xiaoman’s voice was getting smaller and smaller. “Let’s talk about it first.”

“But it’s also very interesting.” Yu Le accelerated his running speed. “Xiao Ruan seems to be very familiar with this place. Do you recognize this place?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Now I’m getting more and more curious. Those two boys are definitely not simple.”

Ji Xiaoman didn’t answer.

Ruan Xian ignored the two people following him and rushed straight to the computer room where NUL-00 was located. As he ran closer, the sense of reality of the surrounding scenery became stronger. After running to his destination, Ruan Xian panted against the wall, raised his head, and looked at the two people outside the computer room.

The crystallization of his own efforts was randomly placed on a waste cart and was being pushed outside the computer room.

The cybernetic brain half the size of a coconut lay quietly in the pile of parts. It had its own energy reserve structure, and it was still in operation. Out of the soaking of the heat sink, the cybernetic brain of NUL-00 faintly showed signs of overheating. The miniature camera installed on the cybernetic brain was spinning around in horror, trying to look at the surrounding situation.

The artificial intelligence that had been with him for five years was confused, and perhaps a little scared. He knew very well that at that time it had learned how to distinguish those emotions.

Ruan Xian subconsciously stretched out his hand to touch the cybernetic brain, trying to snatch it from the waste cart. But his fingers ghostly passed through the casing covered with heat dissipation fluid and touched nothing.

He opened his mouth and tried to call out to someone, but he knew in his heart that everything was in vain. No one could change the illusion, and no one could change the past.

The iron bead that followed Ruan Xian seemed to notice something abnormal, and although it was still shivering, it tried to rub gently on his trouser legs.

If this memory was specially forged to test himself, Ruan Xian didn’t mind giving Professor Ruan some physical harm.

Right now, Ruan Xian almost had to thank himself for his emotional disorder. Even with the stormy waves in his mind, he could still continue to look at it almost coldly, trying to find clues from the details.

He thought the authenticity of this memory must be determined as soon as possible.

The person pushing the cart wore a mask, so he couldn’t see his appearance, but his body shape looked a bit familiar. However, Ruan Xian didn’t have the energy to recall further—as soon as the person walked up the corridor, the cellphone in his pocket rang.

The other party seemed very surprised by the fact that the phone rang. He hesitated for a moment, picked up the phone, hung up after listening for a few seconds, and turned the phone to silent mode.

On the second step, the phone rang again. The man’s body stiffened, and he connected to the call again, listening for a few seconds longer than the last time. However, this time he still didn’t respond. After a few seconds, he hung up the call in silence, and then turned off the phone.

The man pushed the cart forward for a few meters, and the phone rang again.

“What the hell do you want?!” The third time he connected to the phone, the man remembered to lower his voice, but his tone was a little unstable.

[Live.]

This time, Ruan Xian had enough time to hear the conversation clearly.

[…I want to live.]

The voice was very weird, like an AI voice that came with the phone.

[Let’s make a deal, sir.]

The author has something to say:

Tang’s vest is crumbling XDDD

Ruan already have a guess√

Kinky Thoughts:

For those confused, the edge of memory refers to the memories in one’s mind that are not too vivid but still exist. Taking Ji Xiaoman’s example, our brain usually remembers vividly the things that actually change as we’re doing them. Like if you’re cooking eggs, you would remember how you cooked them in more detail, but such things that weren’t touched but exist would still be recorded by the brain, but it won’t be as vivid. Like if your kitchen had a spice rack or fruit tray with bananas on them (but you didn’t actually use any of that during the cooking process). They would be there because your brain registered them into your memories, but would be hard to recollect down the line. 

What they are seeing now is the edge of someone’s memories (i.e. the fruit tray) and Ruan Xian is trying to get to the more vivid details (the core i.e. the eggs). Hope that makes sense.

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

Chapter 160: Door

“Have the monitoring results come out?”

Professor Ruan stood alone in a small, dim room, with light screens hanging in the air around him. The light from them illuminated the naked darkness. Exposed mechanical parts were quietly sitting on the four walls of the room, like steel vines with life.

The fatherly expression on his face disappeared completely, leaving only a wry smile.

“It’s under analysis. Please wait a moment.” Half a minute later, a cold mechanical voice replied.

Following his own arrangements, NUL-00 stepped into the deep underground and confirmed the situation of his companions through the light screen. It may not be accurate to use the word “companions”. The android was probably paying attention to Ruan Lijie’s situation.

Before that, he had already thrown out all the spy points that should be thrown out.

From attitude to words, to the tests of key events in each period, judging from NUL-00’s immediate reaction, he could basically confirm the other party’s mental state and attitude. However, to obtain a more detailed analysis, Professor Ruan must use instruments for precise analysis—from the enlargement and contraction of the pupils, to the trembling of every muscle on the face, to body temperature, heartbeat, breathing rate, and other indicators; there could be no mistake in these matters.

He had to be sure of two points. What kind of thoughts does NUL-00 have about its creator, “Ruan Xian”, and what it knew about “Professor Ruan” himself?

The answer would directly affect his execution of his plan.

“Damn, sure enough, I’m still not used to doing this kind of thing.” Professor Ruan rubbed his cheeks; his voice very low. “I have goose bumps myself.”

From a design level, NUL-00 was more uncontrollable than MUL-01, and as a biological emotional processing system, it was also elusive. Thus, he could only repeatedly stimulate the android, to get as much information as possible in a short period of time, while trying not to be discovered by the other side.

After all, out of survival instinct, NUL-00 also needed to be wary of the possibility of MUL-01’s involvement and wouldn’t remove its defenses to strangers all at once. What was more, even if it was a human, no one would like a character who claimed to be a father but fell short. NUL-00 first reaction was definitely vigilance, which made it more difficult to obtain information.

It was a pity that, even so, that set of questions was already the most efficient set of countless options.

At present, it seemed that NUL-00 responded normally to randomly sampled past events, and there didn’t seem to be any memory loss. The android was undoubtedly a bit resistant to the range of closeness he had deliberately created, but he didn’t show much anger. It controlled its own emotional system very well and didn’t reveal too many emotions that would expose its thoughts.

Very interesting.

Professor Ruan didn’t intend to take his opponent lightly. From the point of view regarding intelligence, NUL-00 and MUL-01 weren’t too far apart. The problem lay in the other party’s unpredictable emotional tendencies…

Facing his own too deliberate closeness and temptation, it didn’t show any emotion similar to contempt or anger. On the surface, its performance could barely be classified as “still dissatisfied with its creator”, and it hadn’t questioned his identity too deeply.

But that feeling was so weak that Professor Ruan couldn’t be 100% sure.

Their game was still in the early stages, and he couldn’t clearly figure out his opponent’s tactics. The current performance of NUL-00 had only ruled out some possibilities for him, but there were still many remaining.

NUL-00 may not have had many deep feelings for its creator, or it may have been simply adept at controlling its emotions, or it may have been privy to information that he didn’t know, which allowed it to learn certain things about its identity from the start…

He needed more information.

Professor Ruan twisted the lace at the end of his gloves casually, exhaling with a headache. Although after the Great Rebellion in the 22^nd Century, every day of his life was like walking on thin ice, it was the first time that he had walked on ice like this. He already knew it was a gamble, but when the time really came, it was false to say that he wasn’t nervous.

Perhaps it was better to look at the positive side—the android finally responded to a certain memory he threw out. No matter what the other party thought in his heart, at least on the surface, he hadn’t planned to turn on himself. His performance should be fine…

But is it really?

“……Ah.” Professor Ruan stopped twisting the strap and sighed softly.

Careless. Professor Ruan thought that the android was likely to rely on this to determine his condition. His situation was unique, and it was hard to tell how NUL-00 would define it.

However, this idea was a relief. At least the direction of his own negotiations could be determined next. Until then, he could turn more attention to “Ruan Lijie” side.

Professor Ruan once guessed that NUL-00 would find a few human companions for himself, and even maintain a close relationship with one or two of them, so that it would be easiest to avoid the probing of the Mainbrain.

But the name “Ruan Lijie” was really a coincidence. The fake identity detection system operated by Ruan Xian a long time ago had “ghost files”, which were full of “electronic ghosts” carefully selected by Ruan Xian himself. MUL-01 was born many years later, and it could only acquiesce that these “ghost files” that only existed on the internet were actually people.

In order to avoid being detected by the existing system, Professor Ruan could only think of a safer identity than one of those electronic ghosts.

Assuming that Ruan Lijie was just a back-up of Fan Linsong or other forces, he shouldn’t have had such a name. Although the name was very ordinary, it was too coincidental to say that it was a coincidence.

“Continue to analyze and give me a copy of the visual data in the ‘perception dream’. It has to be the same angle as NUL-00.” Professor Ruan casually pulled out a chair and sat down, scratching his head. The gentleness and elegance had disappeared like snow melting, leaving only a burning sense of oppression.

“Yes.”

“On the NUL-00 side, implement the plan normally.”

“……Yes.”

Deep underground, Tang Yibu sat quietly on a soft leather chair, staring at the person on the light screen. The golden eyes were slightly darkened by the cold-colored light screen.

Tang Yibu could now be basically sure that “Professor Ruan” wasn’t his maker.

He didn’t have much inclination at first. The memory details were correct and matched the other party’s attitude so accurately to the point that it seemed deliberate. It was almost clear that this was also some kind of test. Unfortunately, even if the other party was the real Ruan Xian, Tang Yibu couldn’t deny that the other party would do that…

Even he himself couldn’t determine whether he had real malice towards “Ruan Xian”.

As Ruan Xian, who was searched all over the world by MUL-01 and hadn’t given up resisting, it was reasonable to put self-protection first when he wasn’t clear about his attitude. Leaving aside the issue of attitude, the relevance of the plan he said was indeed consistent with reality; from finding the S-type Prototype to finding Professor Ruan himself, the intelligence chain along the way went smoothly.

What made him notice something was wrong at first was the attitude of the other party.

The content of Professor Ruan’s statement was fine, but there was a hint of discomfort in the other party’s physical movements as he deliberately approached him. The other side wasn’t very good at acting. Although Ruan Xian in his memory had never shown a side related to disguise, Tang Yibu always felt that something was wrong.

Professor Ruan’s emotional expression lacked the sense of repression he was familiar with.

Even if twelve years was enough to change people’s character, Tang Yibu didn’t think that desperate situations and wars would make people more cheerful. There was no doubt that the other party wasn’t only deliberately spying but was also deliberately concealing his true character.

However, this subtle difference couldn’t be used as conclusive evidence. That was until the other party tied a bow on his bandage, which increased the probability to more than 60%…

Professor Ruan had overdone it, too much.

Professor Ruan had his face reshaped as a way to reduce the risk of exposure, but it seemed, probably considering the time cost of maintaining healthy skin, Professor Ruan didn’t treat his entire body. In his own memory, Ruan Xian didn’t need to do much himself, but looking at the size of this place and the quality of androids that appeared, this Professor Ruan was afraid that he would have to do quite a lot by himself.

So he wore a pair of thin gloves to protect his skin, which was reasonable. The end of the gloves had a lace-up that secured the sleeves when necessary. This design wasn’t uncommon.

But Tang Yibu saw it from the other side of the cuffs. The lace was neatly tied. Forget about Mr. Ruan, whose details were unknown, Professor Ruan was by no means a person who could tie knots.

In order to test him, Tang Yibu was able to understand the deliberate closeness based on details of the past, but in unnecessarily copying details more than ten years ago, he had suspected that the other party had some other purpose.

The real Ruan Xian didn’t need to cover up this point.

[Professor Ruan’s target is probably you.] While following Xiao Zhao and Kang Ge on the way to the car, after exchanging information about the discovery of the S-type Prototype, he discussed this issue with Mr. Ruan. At that time, this was what Mr. Ruan told him.

[I know.] Tang Yibu’s fingertips crossed the opponent’s hot and humid palms.

[If it were me, I would use the mechanism of the Android Show to add an extra layer of perceptual interference. This is the most convenient way to hide… and the environment is also very suitable.]

[Reasonable. I have studied the scanning mode of MUL-01, and this is indeed a blind spot.]

[The premise of large-scale perceptual interference is to have a large-scale observation ability, which can also explain why we keep feeling someone’s spying on us.]

[I subconsciously noticed the detector hidden by Professor Ruan using perceptual interference, and you could sense it due to the crisis instinct of the S-type Prototype.] Tang Yibu smiled as he picked up the conversation.

[Nn. It seems that you are quite special in the eyes of the other party, Yibu.]

Tang Yibu didn’t answer this time, while Mr. Ruan smiled to himself. He continued his transmission. [If the other party really added an additional perception interference, most of the things we see are untrustworthy and could easily be guided. I guess he wants us to meet and act together… In order to analyze you based on your behavior.]

[Yes, he also needs to protect himself.] Tang Yibu agreed lightly.

[If I were to do this…] Mr. Ruan raised his dark eyes. [I don’t need you to be present in person. In order to reduce interference, I will take you away in advance and communicate with you alone. But I can’t be sure about the point in time of the kidnapping.]

[Then what?]

[Whether he is real or not, he will spy on your position from multiple angles.] Mr. Ruan made a gesture. [Deliberately provoking you, deliberately getting close to you, that sort of thing.]

[And whether it’s true or not, the S-type Prototype was arranged by him. Indeed, he may not approach you for a good purpose, but from a standpoint, he’s not the enemy.] Mr. Ruan added. [We can take advantage of this.]

Having said that, he stuffed a small bag of things into Tang Yibu’s waist bag. His movements were natural and smooth.

[…I’ve gone through all of them. Help me spy too, Yibu.]

Tang Yibu moved his attention away from his memories and poked his pocket. Professor Ruan took away all the props that might be threatening, but the key object was still there.

Everything was going well.

Tang Yibu raised his head again and looked at Mr. Ruan’s face on the light screen.

He concealed the information, which caused their discussion to be incomplete—Mr. Ruan didn’t know that he was NUL-00 and wouldn’t be prepared for what would happen next.

But he had.

Tang Yibu leaned forward and stared earnestly at every frame on the light screen.

His and Mr. Ruan’s thinking had always been very similar, and he only needed to follow the other party’s guess and speculate a little more. Separating himself from the team, Professor Ruan could not only speculate on his condition based on the reaction of his companions, but also kill two birds with one stone, by putting the survival of those humans and the safety of the identity of NUL-00 on both sides of the same scale.

That was a more perfect way to test “NUL-00 position”, and Professor Ruan was doing exactly that. He didn’t even bring the others back to the base to control them, but only brought himself back.

On the other hand, since he could take out the ironclad evidence that he was NUL-00 and show it to those people, Tang Yibu could basically determine the opponent’s methods. His fears came true—as someone who had access to the NUL-00 project data, Professor Ruan really had a way to steal memory information from his own brain.

Although after gaining his body, Tang Yibu encrypted and modified his brain for the first time, the memory before the modification was still within the range of being spied on.

With the matter coming to this point, it was more likely to go wrong by forcibly trying to conceal his identity and changing the situation. It was better to turn the opponent’s offensive into his own and aim for an answer that he had always been curious about.

“It’s not free to help you spy, Mr. Ruan,” Tang Yibu murmured silently, showing a smile that wasn’t brilliant, but real enough. “It’s kind of a shame not to take advantage of Professor Ruan even though he’s here.”

How would his Mr. Ruan react?

On the light screen, a group of people had already reached the underground of the building. There was no weird distortion in the environment, and the corridor was full of doors on both sides that stood quietly. The ceiling lights flickered on and off. The whispering didn’t stop, but the corridor was empty.

Mr. Ruan held the trembling iron bead in his arms, with no expression on his face. He stood against the wall and carefully opened the first door closest to them with the assistance of Yu Le.

Inside the door wasn’t a normal room. It was connected to a sunny hall that Mr. Ruan should be able to recognize.

It was the research institute before the Great Rebellion in the 22nd century.

That was the memory belonging to NUL-00.

The author has something to say:

Tang is still quite ruthless. He and Ruan are probably the two most unlikely fellows to fall in love √

Kinky Thoughts:

COVID’s no joke. Recovery was slower than expected. Stay safe everyone. Get vax if you can.

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