Xingkong was fine now. Pei Ran stood up, only then realizing she was utterly exhausted.
Escaping from the underground vault, rushing back to Black Well in the aircraft, an hour of life-and-death speed, a desperate sprint, climbing stairs, killing a group of people, repairing W and Xingkong—after all this chaos until now, it was long past midnight.
Ren remembered something and handed her a key. “Master, the logistics department delivered the car you bought this morning. It’s parked in the lot downstairs.”
Pei Ran took the key and said to Ren, “Quite a few resource vouchers must have been deposited into the account these past two days, right? Go check the distribution center to see if there are any energy blocks compatible with you and Xingkong.”
Ren was puzzled. “Energy blocks? The one I have now can last a long time. Master, I probably won’t need a replacement within your lifetime.”
Pei Ran: “…”
“What if it breaks?” Pei Ran said. “Buy as many as you can.”
The incident with W’s energy block had shaken her badly.
Pei Ran washed up hastily, placed the mechanical spider on her pillow, and collapsed facedown onto the bed.
W spoke up. “Pei Ran, my camera is still on…”
Telling him to play blind had just been a joke. Pei Ran buried her face in the pillow and muttered only, “Do whatever,” before passing out.
The mechanical spider looked at her with its black eyes, then crawled over and tried to tug at the blanket trapped beneath her body with its legs.
It struggled to pull the corner of the blanket out, but it was too small—there was no way it could move it.
It quickly scurried over Pei Ran’s back to the other side and tried again, but still couldn’t budge it.
It had no choice but to stop.
A moment later, Ren quietly slid over, followed by Xingkong.
Xingkong whispered, “What’s wrong?”
Ren replied just as softly, “It’s God. Told me to cover the master with a blanket.”
At this very moment.
Blue Zone.
An unfinished factory building, in a fairly large underground room.
The makeshift arena, assembled from metal plates, stood empty now, the surroundings deserted as well. Only in one corner of the factory were piles of scattered parts—all dismantled components from intelligent robots.
Some were stolen from factories, some picked up, others recycled from various sources—a messy heap, like a garbage dump.
This underground factory had no windows, and the lights were off now, leaving it in darkness. Because it was so open and lacked any heating, anyone stepping inside would definitely feel a slight chill.
But CT122 didn’t feel it.
Its newly replaced body didn’t even have an environmental temperature detection module.
The only human in the room—a one-eyed man with a prosthetic eye—was curled up on a single bed in the corner beside the junk pile, wrapped tightly in a thick blanket, head and all, fast asleep.
CT122 had been carefully monitoring his breathing, counting the rhythm.
It finally concluded that One-Eye must be sound asleep.
This underground fighting ring was run by One-Eye and two others. Over the past few days, CT122 had overheard their conversations—before the Silence, they had been running the same business up north in Alaku City—
Modifying all kinds of smart robots, making them fight in the ring, pitting them against each other, and profiting from the bets.
It was illegal—
Killing robots wasn’t against the law, but operating an unlicensed underground gambling den was.
The gambling business was highly lucrative and had long been monopolized by the big conglomerates. Not just anyone could get into it.
But One-Eye had been lucky, operating smoothly without ever getting caught, leaving no criminal record.
This time, when he came to Black Well, his prosthetic eye—functioning no differently from a natural one—let him pass the screening without issue. Based on his technical skills, he was assigned to work at Blue Zone’s smart robot repair factory.
The factory recycled old parts, frequently hauling in truckloads of scrapped robot components from Yercha, Alaku, and other cities beyond Black Well—casualties of the Silence.
No one paid much attention to these piles of junked parts; management was lax.
The resource vouchers he earned from work were barely enough for three meals a day. After just a few days, One-Eye’s mind started wandering.
Black Well had almost no entertainment. After a day’s labor, everyone was bored, scrambling for ways to have fun.
In times like these, when death lurked everywhere and every day alive was a bonus, amusement was especially crucial.
One-Eye saw his chance and revived his old trade, setting up this underground fighting ring.
With easy access, he often smuggled parts back, cobbling together these battered robots himself or taking in others’ robots for the fights.
The business was pure profit—taking a cut from every match, a guaranteed win.
Over the past two days, CT122 had watched coldly as one AI robot after another was smashed, hammered to pieces, dragged off the platform, and dismantled back into parts.
Some still had reuse value—repaired, wiped, and shoved back into the ring.
Those humans treated artificial intelligence as nothing more than disposable objects, exploiting them for profit and amusement.
Every night was a fight to the death.
CT122 had fought with all its might these past two days, maintaining an undefeated record.
But no one knew how long this could last.
Fighting in the ring every day meant certain death sooner or later. Only by escaping would there be any hope.
But before that, CT122 had to do one thing first.
It was the dead of night, utterly silent.
Based on normal human sleep cycles, One-Eye should be in deep slumber—the perfect time to act.
CT122 flexed one of its legs slightly.
Before falling asleep, One-Eye had forcibly shut it down, but he didn’t know that patrol robots from the Public Security Bureau had their own safety protocols, allowing them to reactivate autonomously.
Yesterday, after it killed several robots in a row, they had excitedly upgraded it with a stronger new body.
Not humanoid—just over a meter tall, with three multi-jointed mechanical legs and a pair of arms. Its core processor was housed in a paint-can-sized body, topped with a red multifunctional camera.
The camera’s origin was unclear, but it had night vision. The new body was compact, agile, easy to conceal—yet packed explosive power, perfect for tonight’s plan.
CT122 moved smoothly.
Even back when it was a mechanical dog, it had already mastered walking on three legs. Every motion was controlled, its red lens fixed on the figure in bed.
It crept to the desk and picked up a sharp awl.
Gripping the tool with its mechanical hand, it advanced toward the bed with extreme patience.
Steady, even breathing still registered—proof One-Eye remained in deep sleep.
As the finest AI officer in the Public Security Bureau, it was incapable of making even a whisper of sound. CT122 was absolutely confident.
It reached the bedside, quickly calculating the position of the human’s heart based on the blanket’s contours.
Ding-ding-ding—dong-dong-dong—
Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-ding-dong—
Suddenly, an earsplitting alarm blared, startlingly loud.
One-Eye threw off the covers and bolted upright.
His wristband had gone off.
The wristband projected a virtual screen, its glow illuminating One-Eye’s face as he stared in shock at the red-eyed robot gripping an awl by his bed.
He reacted swiftly, immediately groping frantically through the blankets.
CT122 knew what he was searching for.
A remote control. That was One-Eye’s trump card—one press, and it would collapse, powerless to rise.
CT122 didn’t wait for him to find it. Without hesitation, it drove the awl straight toward his heart.
One-Eye let out a bloodcurdling scream.
He looked down in disbelief at the awl embedded in his chest, paused for a second, then toppled backward.
CT122 yanked the awl free, ignoring the blood gushing from One-Eye’s wound, and quickly tossed aside the blankets to search for the remote.
One-Eye usually kept it on the bed—but tonight, it wasn’t there.
Having been forcibly shut down earlier, CT122 hadn’t seen where he’d put it.
“What’s wrong?”
A voice suddenly came from the other end of the basement.
There was a small partitioned area where the other two men who ran the underground fights slept—one nicknamed Blackie, the other Catfish.
They’d been woken by One-Eye’s scream.
Someone peered over.
The glow from One-Eye’s wristband screen still illuminated CT122’s silhouette by the bed.
The man froze for an instant, then leaped up and charged forward.
CT122 rapidly calculated its options, flipping the awl in its grip and shifting into combat stance—
Taking out two more humans shouldn’t be a problem.
But then it saw Blackie rush past, heading straight for a table.
Zooming in, it locked onto the target: behind a pile of parts on the table, the corner of that deadly remote—the one that could paralyze it—peeked out.
A quick calculation of distance and speed confirmed it couldn’t reach the remote in time. It turned and fled.
The basement had no door yet, just an open frame. CT122 darted through into the adjacent room in an instant.
Speed was critical.
Over the past two days, it had observed carefully—this remote was also a piece of junk salvaged from who-knows-where, with shoddy performance. Its effective range couldn’t exceed forty meters.
In other words, as long as it could successfully put forty meters between itself and its pursuers, it would be free.
The adjacent room was also part of the unfinished factory, vast in size. Relying on the mental map it had constructed when first brought here, CT122 raced through the labyrinthine underground structure.
Footsteps seemed to give chase behind it. Finally, CT122 spotted the glow of the stairwell.
Its legs coiled—then sprang upward.
Outside, the night was still deep. The factory windows hadn’t been installed yet, leaving only gaping frames that let in the scattered artificial lights of Black Well’s dome.
CT122 leaped through one of these openings.
A wide road stretched outside, flanked by rows of factory dormitories in the Blue Zone.
One side of the road was incomplete—just a rough pavement outline, devoid of streetlights or surveillance cameras. CT122 bolted in that direction.
This unmonitored stretch usually attracted shady humans even at night, conducting all sorts of illicit dealings.
By the standards of an AI law enforcement officer, every one of them deserved to be hauled in for interrogation.
But tonight was bizarrely empty—not a single human in sight.
Footsteps pounded behind it. Two distinct sets—undoubtedly Blackie and Catfish.
Having just committed murder against a human, there was no chance they’d let it escape.
CT122 sprinted at full speed.
Then came the sound of tires crunching over uneven ground from the unfinished road ahead.
Trouble, CT122 assessed.
If this was a factory vehicle, Blackie and Catfish would surely flag it down to give chase. They’d amassed plenty of resource vouchers lately—with enough offered, nothing was impossible here.
The vehicle’s engine noise abruptly stopped.
A shout carried through the night:
“Who goes there?”
The voice belonged to someone from the vehicle, challenging its pursuers.
“We’re just… out for a run. Exercise.”
“Running around in the middle of the night? There’s a curfew tonight—you didn’t get the memo?!”
CT122: Curfew?
Glancing back, it saw a green military truck had intercepted Blackie and Catfish. Armed soldiers were jumping down from the vehicle.
CT122 immediately ducked into the shadows of a building.
It could still hear the voices outside.
“No one in Black Well is allowed outside without special authorization tonight.”
“Take these two into the truck.”
Then came Catfish’s panicked voice: “Huh? We really didn’t know! Where are you taking us?!”
Their illegal operation meant they couldn’t risk exposure—being thrown out of Black Well was their worst fear. Admitting they were chasing a murderous AI was out of the question.
“What’s there to be afraid of? Come with us first. If everything checks out, we’ll let you go.”
The military truck’s engine roared back to life, made a U-turn, and drove off in the opposite direction.
Now the empty streets belonged to CT122 alone.
No longer needing to flee for its life, it slowed its pace, carefully scanning the surrounding factories.
The last time it had been dragged here in its mechanical dog form, CT122 had spotted a smart robot repair factory along the way—likely stocked with the parts it needed.
A white multi-story building. It located the target quickly and stealthily approached.
From what it had observed before, security here was tight: armed soldiers stood guard at the entrance. Infiltration seemed unlikely.
But as it drew closer, it realized the guards were gone.
This was beyond strange.
Tonight, everything felt off.
A curfew. Deserted streets. Military patrols rounding up stragglers. Even the factory’s armed sentries had vanished.
Something major must be happening in Black Well.
Whatever it was, CT122 wouldn’t waste this opportunity.
It quickly mapped the positions of nearby surveillance cameras, calculated a blind-spot route, and advanced toward the factory.
The facility had security systems, but as a rigorously trained AI law enforcement model, breaching defenses was as much its specialty as catching those who did.
With practiced precision, CT122 hacked into the security system, temporarily disabled it, located a ventilation shaft, retracted its three legs, and slipped inside.
Crawling through the duct, it peered down through a mesh grate.
The factory floor at night was silent and empty.
A little further ahead, it spotted its own kind.
Dozens of smart robots of various models lay scattered about, all seemingly damaged—charred black with scorch marks, missing components, lifelessly discarded.
It looked like a mass grave.
CT122 opened the vent and nimbly slid down.