The isolation door opened, revealing the deep night outside, with its chasms and cliffs.
The spiral arms of the light vortex tilted upward, leaving just enough space beneath them for people and vehicles to pass through.
Delivered from desperate straits, the people who had been chased by the frenzied soldier amalgamations were overjoyed and sprinted toward the exit.
Inside Pei Ran’s body, the maddened light points were still scurrying wildly. She took a deep breath and traversed the light vortex once more.
A dense swarm of light points rushed toward her face, like a storm of countless fine needles, each stabbing into her body.
The moment Pei Ran emerged from the vortex, W took a step forward and grabbed her arm to steady her.
The last time she had passed through the vortex, emerging from the tunnel of the shield machine, W had still been nothing more than a battered metal sphere. His only two folding arms had barely been enough to support his own movement, leaving him helpless as he watched her stagger forward unsteadily.
Now, at last, he could reach out and support her.
Pei Ran steadied herself and silently said to W, “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
She was rapidly mobilizing the green light within her.
When it came to traversing the light vortex, the first time was unfamiliar, but the second time was easier.
Now, Pei Ran had experience. She knew she couldn’t let the maddened light points run rampant inside her—the more they scattered, the worse it would feel. The urgent task was to gather them all together.
She had experience, and her green lights were old hands at this.
Green Light No. 2, like a seasoned sheepdog, didn’t need her direction. It had already begun darting back and forth on its own, rounding up the scattered flock in wide circles.
Green Light No. 1 was also busy, eagerly feasting on its midnight snack.
There was so much to eat, and plenty of time to do it. Pei Ran urged it, along with Green Lights No. 3, 4, 5, and 6, to hurry up and help No. 2 with the herding.
This time, the number of maddened light points that had entered her body was far greater than before, swarming like a cloud of hornets. She had to handle them carefully.
Still, she could tell that her condition was much more stable than last time.
W was also observing her. Seeing that she wasn’t in as bad a state as before, he let go of her arm.
The crowd rushed toward them.
Now, everyone recognized her—this person who had recklessly plunged into the light vortex and opened the isolation door was none other than that Pei Ran from the central square’s big screen.
Last time, she had saved Black Well. This time, she had saved them all.
People surged out of the door in a frenzy.
Xingkong was also driving the small truck over.
Pei Ran gestured at it, signaling for it to drive straight out. However, Xingkong had already pulled up in front of her, braking sharply before hopping down from the driver’s seat.
Just then, the light vortex suddenly moved.
It didn’t shift position, but the suspended spiral arms abruptly shuddered violently.
Like flicking a wet towel, scattered green light points sprayed outward from the arms.
Everyone knew how dangerous the light points were. Those near the exit panicked, scattering in all directions, plunging into chaos.
Amid the disorder, Pei Ran saw several green lights shooting straight toward Xingkong.
Xingkong hadn’t anticipated this at all. It looked up at the incoming light points, momentarily stunned.
Maddened light points were just as lethal to artificial intelligence.
Acting purely on instinct, Pei Ran lunged forward at lightning speed.
Though her body was unwell, her movements were still swift. She reached Xingkong before the green lights did, wrapping her arms around it in a tight embrace.
The green light points struck—one piercing the back of her head, two more embedding themselves into her back. Just like the other maddened light points, they didn’t pass through her. They remained trapped inside her body.
Still holding Xingkong, Pei Ran rolled across the ground. When she scrambled back up, she released it and immediately dove forward again, shielding the panicked crowd from several more light points.
As she turned her head, she suddenly noticed another stray green light flying toward a different robot nearby.
This robot was also silver-white, though not the same model as Xingkong or Ren. It was tall, roughly the same height as W in humanoid form.
It had been caught in the human tide, fleeing Black Well along with everyone else.
W had mentioned earlier that he’d ordered all intelligent robots in Black Well to evacuate. This must have been one of them.
“No point worrying about more lice when you’re already infested, no use fretting over more debt when you’re drowning in it.” Pei Ran dashed over without hesitation, intercepting the green light for this robot too.
The robot seemed frozen in shock.
Pei Ran, focused on escape, only spared it a brief glance before grabbing Xingkong’s hand and gesturing for it to get back in the truck.
W pulled the car door open and asked by her ear, “Should I drive?”
He still wasn’t entirely reassured about her physical condition.
Pei Ran shook her head. “I’ll do it.”
After everything she’d just been through, her vision was filled with white light, the world around her slightly blurred at the edges. Yet, strangely, the discomfort in her body wasn’t as overwhelming as she’d expected.
Green Light No. 2 and the others were working hard to herd the “sheep”—and doing a damn good job of it.
Pei Ran climbed into the driver’s seat, started the vehicle, and sped through the open isolation door.
Behind them, CT122 stood frozen in place, its entire body rigid as if locked up.
It had just witnessed with its own optical sensors how Pei Ran charged alone into the dangerous light vortex, pressed something, and forced the sealed isolation door open.
When she emerged, her face was deathly pale, her movements uncharacteristically sluggish, her gaze slightly unfocused.
Yet immediately afterward, she had lunged forward to save that domestic service robot from her household.
She seemed genuinely close with those two robots.
Though that was understandable.
Just like Nuo Nuo with her little dog, Pei Ran probably treated those two as household pets. Besides, they were her property to begin with, and not cheap either—saving them was like pulling banknotes from a burning house.
At the time, CT122 had been so focused on observing Pei Ran that it completely failed to notice a light point streaking toward itself.
At the critical moment, after having already saved several humans, she had suddenly dashed over and used her own body to intercept the light point for it too.
CT122 knew exactly how dangerous this green light was to artificial intelligence—it had personally witnessed all the intelligent robots in the vertical farm collapse under its effects.
Pei Ran clearly knew this too.
Yet she had rushed over to save it, just like she’d saved those other humans.
So naturally, without the slightest hesitation, she had shielded it from lethal danger.
As if it too were human.
She hadn’t even seemed to care much about the act, giving it only a passing glance before leaving.
CT122 felt its core processor’s logic circuits in complete disarray, as if on the verge of crashing.
It stood motionless in the human current until someone shoved it violently from behind.
A man fleeing for his life turned to glare at it with a vicious expression that clearly said: You’re just a robot—what are you blocking the way for?
Before the man could take another step, CT122 hooked a leg around his, twisted his arm, and gave an effortless push—sending him flying face-first to the ground.
The man never expected an intelligent robot would suddenly attack him, much less with such crisp, efficient movements and impossible strength. He scrambled up in panic, not daring to so much as glance back as he fled.
CT122 paid him no mind, simply lifting its head to scan for Pei Ran’s pickup truck.
The vehicle had already passed through the isolation gate and disappeared from view.
Inside the pickup, W glanced expressionlessly at the rearview mirror.
There was absolutely no mistake—the intelligent robot Pei Ran had just saved was the same Zhirui Corporation XR-7G2 model that had sounded the alarm in the vertical farm.
The scratches on its body were unmistakable to W at a glance.
He hadn’t noticed it earlier because it was the first to detect the light vortex’s intrusion and trigger the alarm, but because, before pressing the alarm, it had seemed to hesitate for a brief moment.
Later, when he ordered the vertical farm’s intelligent robots to enter the hall housing the shielding layer generator and remove the corpses of the Striker-Type-13s and soldiers, it was this same robot that hesitated again before entering.
The latter could be explained—perhaps it was simply afraid of death. But the former was strange.
Pressing the alarm wouldn’t have threatened its life. So what had it been hesitating about back then?
The pickup truck surged forward, charging out of Black Well’s southern exit.
Outside, cold winds howled, and the night was thick with darkness. The exit’s camouflage layer had long since deactivated, leaving only the light spilling from the open isolation door to illuminate the great chasm.
A sloping path led from the chasm up to the surface, crowded with people scrambling upward. The path was narrow, the movement slow.
As the crowd poured out of the exit, the frenzied soldier amalgamations followed in close pursuit, trailing the human current.
With so many people packed together, the arrival of those maddened amalgamations would turn this into a slaughterhouse in moments.
Unable to push through the bottleneck of the slope, some panicked and fled along the chasm’s base instead, while others began clawing their way up the cliff walls on either side.
Pei Ran tried summoning Green Light No. 1 again.
It finally responded, seemingly in high spirits now that it was well-fed and ready to write, no longer needing to labor alongside No. 2 as a weary sheepdog.
Pei Ran immediately composed the command in her mind:
[All maddened soldier fusion entities—explode.]
Boom—boom—boom—
A chain of explosions tore through the air.
The targets had been specified clearly. The blasts didn’t harm a single bystander.
Shrapnel littered the ground. In an instant, the world fell silent.
The imminent threat had vanished without warning. People exchanged bewildered glances, utterly lost.
Then came a tapping at the rear window—Team Leader Li.
Her “voice” flashed: [Impressive.]
The crowd continued scrambling up the slope in a frantic rush. Pei Ran steered the pickup toward it.
Then she noticed something: the group that had fled along the chasm’s base earlier was now sprinting back at full speed.
Terror twisted their faces as they ran—as if fleeing something unspeakable.
Bringing up the rear of this fleeing group was a familiar face.
W said, “It’s Qiao Sai.”
Pei Ran swung the truck around and drove toward him.
Illuminated by the entrance lights, Qiao Sai had spotted Pei Ran from a distance—along with the humanoid version of W in the passenger seat.
Since W’s body had originally been produced by his family’s tech company, Qiao Sai wasn’t the least bit surprised. Seeing them was like spotting a lifeline.
He sprinted over, jabbed a finger toward the chasm behind him, then at the slope, before clambering into the truck bed.
His message was clear: Go. Now.
Whatever was chasing them had emerged.
From the depths of the chasm came the sound of wheels grinding over rubble.
And from the sound of it, there wasn’t just one vehicle.
In the faint glow of the night sky, a strange black shadow advanced from the darkness of the rift.
Tunnel lights flickered over its surface, revealing its full form to Pei Ran.
It resembled a convoy.
Or more accurately, a serpentine chain of interlinked vehicles.
Military trucks and civilian cars fused together in an unbroken line, each one grotesquely encrusted with living human bodies—so densely packed their original shapes were barely recognizable.
These people were deeply embedded in the vehicles, their flesh partially merged with the metal frames, twisted into the chassis like macabre ornamentation.
Many were still alive.
Their exposed limbs writhed in agony, torsos arching as they strained to free themselves from the metallic prison.
But it was hopeless.
The cars themselves were interconnected by these same pliant human forms, forming a nightmarish train of flesh and steel.
At the head of this abomination was a military truck. At its apex, a single unaltered head rose above the others—a familiar face.
Marshal Vina.
She’d left Black Well earlier. Clearly, the light vortex had claimed her too, twisting her into this.
Even mutated, her silver hair remained impeccably groomed. Only her eyes had changed—now blood-red, scanning the ground below as she leaned forward, hunting.
The moment she fixed on a target, her grotesquely distorted arm would shoot out—
Like iron drawn to a magnet, the chosen person would instantly be yanked skyward, seized by her glowing green claws, and hurled behind her. Like droplets merging into an ocean, they would disappear into the flesh-metal amalgamation of the nightmarish convoy.
Her greed was insatiable. One after another, she kept plucking people from the ground, as if declaring: This one is mine. That one too. All of you belong on my train.