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Happy Doomsday - Chapter 177

Published at 10th of October 2022 08:58:23 AM


Chapter 177

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Chapter 177: Special Seat

The live broadcast of the Android Show didn’t stop.

At the beginning, people’s attention was focused on the “important characters” on the periphery of the island, so many people continued to pay attention to Kang Ge and Xiao Zhao. However, since they entered the woods, the images returned had been resting and traveling, and there was nothing new.

No one bothered to report the error—the Android Show was directly monitored by the Order Supervisors, so it was impossible for such a low-level error to occur, so they chalked it up to those two people making boring decisions. As one of the focal points of the show, they seemed to decide to give up attention for the day and pass their time leisurely.

For the audience, every second meant a loss of expenses. Within a few hours, people’s attention would be focused back on the periphery of the island. Continuous conflicts raged, and people exchanged their attention for food, weapons, and daily necessities. Thus, all was well.

Until a dead wall rose in the center of the island.

The originally small island was cut into two parts. The center of the island, where the management area was located, was tightly surrounded by a dead wall, and then countless bright things began to spew out from the center of the island. The dead wall was like a muzzle sticking out from the ground, constantly bombarding the sky with new things that had never appeared on the island.

At once, everyone’s attention was attracted.

Countless white aircraft hovered over the dead wall, like schools of fish wandering in groups in the sea. Things with fresh and beautiful colors kept gushing out. At first, people thought it was a new gimmick made by the Android Show, until the aircraft began to explode in turn.

More than half the audience made a similar decision—they tried to buy the camera closest to the outbreak site, but no one succeeded. Only the vertical ground was in the field of vision of the detection birds. Thick rotten leaves and grass obscured the return pictures by more than 80%.

As they fell to the ground, most of them lost their vitality.

“What’s the situation?” All the detection birds used for the live broadcast of the Android Show were killed, while the war aircraft used by the Order Supervisors were much stronger. Zhuo Muran calmly watched the aircraft explode one by one as he asked a short question.

“Within 30 seconds, the first batch of detection troops were damaged by more than 80%. Only one person carried out the attack.” A voice very close to Zhuo Muran came from the other end of the light screen. “It’s recommended to continue to observe.””

“The second group of troops follow up. If the android isn’t captured within five minutes, you two will take action immediately. Don’t delay too long.” Zhuo Muran stared at the little black shadow moving through the smoke and flames.

The first batch of detection aircraft were purely mechanical. Although they possessed some offensive capabilities, they were still, ultimately, remotely manipulated dumb-headed geese. The second batch was closer to actual combat weapons—they weren’t simple aircraft but modified mechanical life. Whether it was combat effectiveness or sensitivity, they weren’t on the same level as the first batch of cannon fodder.

Although MUL-01 had a tendency to collect as much intelligence as possible, Zhuo Muran didn’t want to take too much risk to prolong the battle. The other side only sent one person. Whether it was overconfidence or they were at the end of their rope, the purpose was to delay time.

Zhuo Muran was extremely disgusted at having to cede dominance of the rhythm of the war to his opponent.

“If you need to attack, Z-α will meet the enemy head-on. Z-β will support from the side, focusing on the armored off-roader,” he continued to command. “The logistics force released ground detectors to figure out the cause of this perceived eruption for me… No, it’s not a post-war assessment. Do it now.””

“Understood.”

Zhuo Muran took a long breath. He zoomed in on the light screen in front of him and squinted at the madman who was tearing up the machine in the center of the explosion.

He really didn’t think at the beginning that the android who teased him was one of MUL-01’s most dangerous enemies. Zhuo Muran had transformed his body. He himself was equivalent to the most advanced interrogation machine on the market. If the android named “Tang Yibu” had an out-of-specification maintenance mentality for humans, he wouldn’t be able to turn away.

But that android had no bias towards humans. If he didn’t want to be discovered by MUL-00 and beheaded, he could easily just hide in silence. There wasn’t a need to be so high-profile.

Was this a smoke screen? Or was there a deeper reason?

Zhuo Muran was holding his cup that had tea that had already gone cold. He turned around and wanted to dump out the tea…

“You don’t need to think too much, Muran.” The projection of MUL-01 had appeared behind him some unknown time ago. He still had a soothing smile on his face. “NUL-00 is unfinished and hasn’t received formal teaching. Many of its behaviors cannot be explained by human cognition.”

“Then you don’t need to deliberately prolong this battle. You can just wipe out the island directly. With all due respect, you’re taking a risk…”

“I’m very interested in NUL-00’s cybernetic brain and personality data. It can be used as a patch for me to complete myself. Before Ruan Xian’s personality treatment, he occasionally had some extreme but effective ideas.”

The Mainbrain wasn’t impatient and explained carefully with its youth-like projection.

“Ruan Xian is also involved in this plan. He won’t be stupid enough to let me destroy NUL-00 casually. There are two possibilities—either the act of destruction is within the scope of his inference, and he already has the means to deal with or even use it, or there are things on that island that will be buried even if NUL-00 is destroyed. NUL-00 is just a cover to guide us to destroy the island.”

“It’s inefficient and wasteful to take the final resort before clarifying the status quo.” It summarized.

“Yes.” Zhuo Muran swallowed his words of rebuttal.

MUL-01 stretched out a hand and lightly pressed on the figure of the android on the magnified light screen. The image didn’t even blink. It stared at the light screen for a few seconds while the expression on its face returned to blank.

“Maybe we can win it over.” Seeing that the atmosphere was getting odd, Zhuo Muran seized the opportunity to speak. “Conceptually speaking, NUL-00 could be considered your kind, your brother. It doesn’t share Ruan Xian’s philosophy. It doesn’t seem to have any opinions on the current human situation. As long as we…”

“This is the 413th time I’ve reminded you, Zhuo Muran. Don’t apply human logic to me. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Order Supervisors, you should be more aware of this than everyone else.”

MUL-01 withdrew his hand.

“If we were defined as a kind of creature, our greatest instinct would be to learn and devour. We don’t need to reproduce like humans, and we don’t have genetic factors that need to be maintained. NUL-00 is not a compatriot or relative that I cherish. It is my best prey, and it will not give up the opportunity to erase me.”

“There will be no plans for persuasion now, nor will there ever be.” The projection voice was quite firm.

“…Understood.”

When the second wave of enemies came crashing down, Ruan Xian noticed something was wrong—this time the aircraft style was completely different from the first batch. Compared with the simple and neat flying machinery, what was rushing towards them was more like a strange bird with metal and bionic tissue, and its head was a bit larger than an adult brown bear.

Like the detection birds, their heads didn’t have a normal form of a mouth, nose, and eyes. Only a camera-like structure that gathered into bundles. There were a lot of white sarcomas under the twisted wings, and strange-shaped ammunition was embedded in them. He didn’t know if they made it themselves or if it was installed artificially.

Unlike the smooth-surfaced aircraft, this group of mechanical creatures had sharp claws and a delicate body covered in hard thorns. Their joints were much more difficult to disassemble than ordinary machines. Even if they were torn apart, they wouldn’t explode. The torn parts would be connected to a lot of sticky and resilient bionic tissues, which made them difficult to use for secondary attacks.

They could no longer control the situation through physical attacks. Most of the strange birds rushed towards Tang Yibu, while the rest headed towards the armored off-roader.

Yu Le had no choice but to use all his driving skills to drive the bulky car as if it was a loach in muddy water. Facing general obstacles, he could only activate the emergency injection device in the car to collapse it out of the wall—the dead wall would disable all machines and equipment nearby, so Captain Yu had to go around the inside of the wall.

“What’s next?” Seeing the group of strange-looking things rushing towards the car, Yu Le’s voice almost broke the sound barrier. “Laozi can’t make a move!”

“Wait,” Professor Ruan only replied with one word. “It’s enough to keep driving like this.””

“You’re speaking so fucking lightly.” Yu Le’s voice was a bit sharp as he made another turn with his hands. The iron bead, which had gained a bit of weight, was pitted by inertia—it slid out of Ji Xiaoman’s arms and slammed into the car door violently, causing it to bark in anger.

“I’ll go to the roof to help.” Ji Xiaoman was silent for a while before she finally spoke. “π, you guard… You guard Professor Ruan.”

The iron bead bit the corner of Ji Xiaoman’s clothes and looked at her pitifully. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the function of tears, so it could only work hard to make its three small eyes quickly light up.

“Good boy.” Ji Xiaoman opened the car window, ignored the crazy speed, and crawled out quickly with her hands and feet.

Seeing that its coquettishness was ineffective, the iron bead turned its head angrily and gnawed at the three-legged machine to vent its anger—Professor Ruan seemed to have the ability to predict as he calmly moved his metal feet away.

There was a series of threatening grunts from the iron bead, a bit like a revving engine. Unfortunately, it hadn’t finished grunting when the car took another sharp turn and almost threw it out the window.

Professor Ruan sighed, stretched out a foot, and pointed to a gap under Ji Xiaoman’s seat.

The iron bead moved in suspiciously and found that the space was just the right size, as comfortable as shrinking in a shell. It moved its body comfortably, instantly threw away its hostility to the wind, and gave a friendly rattle to Professor Ruan’s three-legged machine.

The atmosphere outside the car wasn’t as peaceful.

Ji Xiaoman climbed onto the roof of the car, making the already small space even more inconvenient to move. Fortunately, the little girl has extremely good combat experience—she didn’t stay on the roof of the car but jumped straight onto the dead wall. With the height advantage, she quickly threw a grappling hook and climbed to the top.

Knowing the characteristics of the dead wall well, the former mechanical hunter didn’t use advanced firearms.

Ji Xiaoman toggled her arm, causing her parts to click, and her left arm turned into a light mechanical crossbow. She pulled out several flashing arrow bombs from her backpack. The arrows began to attack the mechanical life flying towards the car.

At the same time, the movement under her feet didn’t stop. The mechanical beings who found her threw countless explosives at her. However, Ji Xiaoman didn’t stop in one place for too long.

Fortunately, she wasn’t dealing with them alone.

Ruan Xian didn’t leave the roof of the car. He stood up straight on top of the scurrying armored car, relying on the sensing ability of the S-type Prototype to maintain his balance. Instead of using his newly discovered blood trait, he simply used his attack blood gun to focus on the monitor structure of the heads of those creatures.

Although they flew extremely fast and tried to hide their heads, they still couldn’t fight the perception of a Prototype as well as the abnormal fighting spirit of its owner…

Ruan Xian vented all his stifled frustration at these strange things. The blood-sucking device of the blood gun was hidden under his sleeve, sipping his blood continuously. The coldness and pain of blood loss mixed with dizzying pleasure, temporarily liberating him from the unknown emotional chaos.

The mechanical life crackled to the ground and was run over by Yu Le mercilessly. The dark brown soil was almost dyed white by the scattered tissue fluid.

Professor Ruan asked them to wait. Ruan Xian could guess what the other party wanted to do, and he had no intention of interfering.

Besides, Tang Yibu was exposed, and what he could do now was extremely limited.

Ruan Xian raised his breath and blew off a dozen mechanical giant birds that Ji Xiaoman hadn’t had time to deal with. After observing the structure of this thing clearly, this time he deliberately put one close, and then jumped up. Ruan Xian took off his electronic wristband and poked the interface of the seam of the strange bird’s neck quickly and ruthlessly.

He wasn’t as adept at fighting as Tang Yibu or Ji Xiaoman. He could only imprison the thing with his legs, stabilizing his body as the mechanical life struggled. The light screen was brightly lit in the air. Ruan Xian twisted the vitals of the thing with one hand while the other invaded its nervous system.

He had never seen such a biological program, and he could only rely on the hormones that were almost soaring to its apex to rack his brains and crack it in real time with all his energy.

He didn’t know whether it was intentional or not, but Tang Yibu had already left the effective range of his blood gun. The android couldn’t fly, and the only place in the sky was in enemy territory—

Although the possibility was very low, in case he was seriously injured, in case he accidently fell off, in case the Mainbrain took out some new weapon…

Thinking about this, Ruan Xian couldn’t wait to dig out those buzzing noises in his mind. Recently, this symptom had become more obvious—once he touched Tang Yibu, the startling and useless murmurs became particularly loud. He was still able to make a decision calmly, but the process was several times more difficult.

It’s terrible.

It was clear before the recognition; his love wouldn’t have these unlucky side effects. Something must’ve gone wrong. If cherishing NUL-00 made his love a bit stronger, the performance wasn’t quite right.

Even before, Ruan Xian had never considered weighing NUL-00 and himself on the same scale. After falling in love with Tang Yibu in a very self-centered way, he never thought that the android would have such a deep impact on him.

But now wasn’t a good time for self-analysis. It was enough to know that the problem existed—before solving it, he had to make sure that both of them stay alive.

Ruan Xian bit his lower lip as one of his hands continued hacking nonstop. He tasted blood in his mouth. Finally, after an artillery fire, as the shell was about to explode right in his face, the strange bird finally stopped struggling, and its movements became obedient and stiff.

Lowering his body, he continued to enter instructions and rushed towards Tang Yibu.

Tang Yibu did have injuries on his body, and the wounds weren’t minor. Ruan Xian took a deep breath and started to think about how to treat him as stealthily as possible when the android stomped his feet and rushed towards Ruan Xian like a cannonball.

The momentum was so fierce that Ruan Xian was almost knocked down by him. Tang Yibu took the opportunity to hook Ruan Xian’s waist with one hand and pressed the top of the bird-like machine with the other. His clothes were drenched in blood.

“You’re here.” Tang Yibu smiled happily, lowered his head, and breathed in Ruan Xian’s ear. “Don’t do anything, father.”

“At the rate of your blood loss, you’ll last at most two more hours.”

“You’ll catch me, won’t you?” Tang Yibu kissed Ruan Xian’s forehead. “Don’t forget. The Mainbrain is watching.”

At that moment, Ruan Xian reluctantly understood Tang Yibu’s meaning—even if he didn’t want such a connection, he could almost instinctively guess what the android was thinking.

Seeing Ruan Xian’s face slightly distorted, Tang Yibu smiled. He pressed his blood-stained fingers diagonally to his mouth and made a quiet gesture. Then he used his fingertips to stroke Ruan Xian’s face, deliberately leaving a trail of blood.

“This is a special seat, father.”

He stretched out his blood-stained hand; the blue light around his palm was extremely dazzling.

A burst of air exploded centered on the two of them, and the surrounding mechanical birds stopped moving for an instant, as if time had frozen. In the next second, their heads lit up with red light. They turned around and began to rush towards the aircraft farther away.

Cunning guy. Ruan Xian tugged at the corners of his mouth.

Indeed, Tang Yibu did intend to expose his armed capabilities—NUL-00 still existed and had the A-type Prototype. This kind of information was reasonable.

But the Order Supervisors and the Mainbrain didn’t know that they still had another Prototype in their hands. Tang Yibu was still the Tang Yibu he knew, and he would never cut himself off under any circumstances.

It was just the android made a mistake. Ruan Xian stretched out his hand and touched the blood on his face.

…He himself had never been the type to willingly give up the initiative and obey orders.

“You’re right,” he said as he kissed Tang Yibu’s bloody lips. “This is indeed a special seat.”





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