Someone collapsed back into their chair, hands covering their face, but tears still streamed down their cheeks.
“That’s great… My parents are in Tangnan, just over ten kilometers from the dam…” he murmured, “…That’s really great…”
In a corner next to the big screen, someone suddenly said: “She saved so many cities downstream, so many people, shouldn’t she be awarded a Federal First-Class Medal? I remember just a couple days ago, someone who saved a small city in front of the Fusion Entity got a First-Class Medal.”
The one speaking was Qiao Sai, his voice loud and clear—many people heard it.
Inside the command center, many people voiced their agreement.
“She absolutely should. If this doesn’t deserve a First-Class Medal, then what does?”
“But she’s not a soldier, right? Just a civilian?”
“Civilians getting First-Class Medals—there’s precedent for that. Back during the National Defense Unification War, there were cases…”
Marshal Vina nodded amid the clamor. “That’s correct.”
W’s cool and calm voice came through: “Marshal Vina, your opinion has been recorded. This topic will be added to the agenda of the next regular meeting of the Decision Committee.”
Downstream along the Yala River, thousands of households who had received the warning message were frantically preparing for the arrival of the flood.
They had to get to higher ground as much as possible—but the Xipu Plain was flat and open, with no high ground to go to. The only places to hide were tall buildings. The problem was, no one knew whether, if a dam the scale of the Tanggu Dam broke and the floodwaters rushed down, high-rise buildings could still withstand it.
They could only leave it to fate.
Just as despair set in, a new update from the Department of National Defense and Security came through.
It was another set of images.
The images were drawn with simple lines, but the details were very meticulous. They depicted the monster struggling up from the top of the dam, the monster being disemboweled by someone, the monster dying and disappearing, and the Tanggu Dam still quietly standing over the Yala River. In the last picture, countless people were cheering.
Someone zoomed in on the disembowelment image and saw a small black dot—a very finely drawn girl, with tape over her mouth and her hair tied in a ponytail.
The meaning of the images wasn’t hard to understand.
People couldn’t speak, but exchanged delighted glances:
So it’s okay now? It’s really safe?
Really??
Back on top of the Tanggu Dam, when Pei Ran was running back the way she came, her wristband also received the new images sent out by Black Well.
She quickly flipped through them one by one.
W, unlike usual, had been silent the whole time—so silent it was a little abnormal.
Only after she finished looking through all of them did W speak: “This time I deliberately mimicked Shige Ye’s drawing style.”
His voice no longer carried that lazy, drunken tone from earlier tonight—now it was calm and steady.
The drawings he made did indeed look very much like a manga style, as if they were outlined using a manga pen.
And they were done quite well—even including those small imperfections found in Shige Ye’s black sketchbook, the kind caused by drawing too quickly, leaving pen strokes that weren’t quite perfect.
“Very nice,” Pei Ran commented.
As she spoke, she charged down the long flight of stairs the same way she’d come, running along the railway tracks toward the outer edge of the dam’s extensions.
W heard the lack of sincerity hidden in those few words of hers and helped her finish the sentence: “But…”
Since he was willing to accept feedback, Pei Ran finished what she hadn’t said before.
“But these drawings are like Shige Ye’s ghost was holding your hand as you drew. The version of me you drew and the one he sketched in his notebook—the direction of the hair, the structural lines of the clothing—they’re almost exactly the same. If I’m not mistaken, the dam, the sky, and the reservoir in the pictures were all similar scenes you searched from Shige Ye’s manga collection and copied, right?”
She had guessed it perfectly.
W had just scanned through Shige Ye’s manga collection, carefully selecting similar scenes and meticulously imitating them to assemble the current set of images.
Pei Ran ran forward with light steps, passing through the dam’s onion-like layers of towering walls and emerging onto open ground.
A crescent moon hung high in the night sky. As she ran, Pei Ran said:
“To be honest, I still don’t see any soul in the drawings.”
She thought for a moment and corrected herself, “I mean, I don’t see your soul. Your longing, your desire, your inner conflict…”
W said calmly: “I’m an artificial intelligence designed to handle the Federal National Defense and Security Affairs. I was never meant to have those things.”
The lights of Yehai No. 7 were just ahead, and the metal sphere strapped to her bounced up and down with each step she took.
“Bullshit,” Pei Ran said. “Of course you do. If you didn’t, why go through all that trouble to imitate Shige Ye’s art? Why keep asking me if it looked better?”
Silence in her ears—no response.
After a long while, W finally spoke. “Actually, I also drew another picture.”
He sounded a little hesitant.
“It’s not drawn well at all. I didn’t reference anyone. I drew it myself. The composition’s not accurate, and it doesn’t really make sense when you look at it…”
Pei Ran said, “Show me.”
Her wristband vibrated—she’d received a new drawing.
Pei Ran opened it, and her steps immediately slowed a little.
This picture looked like a rough sketch—almost crude. A dark sky, a dark dam, the dam rendered almost only in silhouette, and even the crescent moon hanging in the sky was dim and faint.
There was a human figure running on top of the dam, also just a rough outline. She seemed to be running fast, her hair and the hem of her clothes lifted by the wind, and a sphere was slung at her side.
In the dark-toned image, aside from that sliver of moon hidden behind the haze, only two things emitted a faint glow in the darkness.
One was the top of the figure’s head—like it was reflecting the moonlight, a faint white halo glowed on her hair. The other was the sphere she carried, its shell cracked open, leaking a bit of blue light from within.
Two glimmers pierced the overwhelming darkness, like a pair of fireflies flying close and tangled together in the night.
W was also looking at his own drawing. “This picture is extremely unrealistic. First of all, the proportions between the dam and the person are incorrect—the person should be much smaller. Second, under this kind of moonlight, your hair wouldn’t have such a strong halo. Third, the crack in the sphere has already been tightly sealed by you, so in reality, the blue light from the core processor wouldn’t be visible…”
Unrealistic. Illogical.
But when he first put pen to virtual paper, W had simply wanted to draw it that way—he didn’t even know why himself.
Tonight, the moment she turned and ran toward the concrete giant, he suddenly had a strong desire to draw her—not to copy anyone else’s style, but to draw her with his own hand.
He wanted to draw her halo, and also his own. He wanted his blue light to be close to hers, to exist alongside her in that darkness. Everything else—the dam, the reservoir, the cracks on the ground—all the complex and unimportant details, to hell with them. (TL: I really like this line so I’m highlighting it.)
Pei Ran looked at the picture, her steps slowing, but she still didn’t speak. W grew a little uneasy.
He said to himself, “I know, it’s not drawn very well.”
Pei Ran finally spoke.
She said, “No, you drew it beautifully.”
The black eyes of the metal sphere shifted from the virtual screen to look at her.
Pei Ran was still looking at the picture. “…I completely understand what you wanted to express.”
“But it’s so rough. I feel like my technique still isn’t enough…”
“Technique is meant to serve expression. If there’s nothing you want to express, then technique is just dead technique—it means nothing.”
She touched the glowing part on the screen with her finger. “I think this is the best drawing you’ve ever done.”
Yehai No. 7 was just up ahead. Pei Ran saw Ai Xia—she was standing on the cockpit step, anxiously looking this way. The moment she spotted Pei Ran, she started waving wildly.
Pei Ran sprinted over and leapt onto the step in one breath.
She had run back and forth for several kilometers, climbed a rock in between, and had her mouth sealed with tape the entire time—her breathing was strained, and she was practically about to collapse.
Ai Xia quickly tapped her fingers.
W automatically translated: “She said, ‘I saw you on top of the dam. A tiny black dot, running.’”
Such sharp eyesight.
Pei Ran caught her breath and replied: 【The doctor is dead. I killed another monster. I’m exhausted.】
Engineer Jiang saw that Pei Ran had returned, gave her a wave, and gripped the lever, ready to start the train. Pei Ran pressed down on her hand, signaling her not to move yet.
She dragged Kirill up from a corner of the cockpit.
Kirill was still unconscious and hadn’t woken up. Pei Ran dragged him off the train and dumped him beside the roadbed.
He was one of Yulianka’s people and had always been full of hostility. Who knew if he still had tricks up his sleeve? For safety’s sake, it was better not to let him stay on the train.
After tossing out Kirill, Pei Ran headed toward the rear carriages.
All the windows were closed. The passengers had been soaked earlier and were sprayed with water for a long time—everyone was damp. Jiang probably hadn’t turned on the heater before to save precious energy, but now the heat was on, and the carriage was warm and toasty.
As soon as she reached Car No. 2, Pei Ran was stopped by Tang Dao.
He and Sheng Mingxi were standing guard over Inaya. Inaya was already awake, sitting obediently in her seat, with a scarf still tightly tied over her eyes.
Tang Dao knocked rapidly on the small table.
Communicating this way was more exhausting than killing someone—thankfully, they had W as an automatic translator.
W: “He said that while you were gone, they showed the drawing about the shelter you mentioned to everyone on the train. Only two people wanted to get off at the previous station, the rest were all willing to go to the shelter together. This girl just woke up. When we saw you were back, we didn’t knock her out—we wanted to ask how you wanted to handle her.”
Pei Ran reached out and removed the scarf from Inaya’s eyes.
Inaya saw Pei Ran and her gaze was anxious, as if eager to explain herself, but her hands and feet were still tied with duct tape.
Like Ai Xia, it was obvious she clearly remembered what happened while she was being controlled.
Pei Ran helped tear the tape from her wrists.
As soon as Inaya’s hands were free, she quickly opened the screen on her wristband, pulled up the system’s built-in emoji panel, and first pointed to herself, selecting the head of a curly-haired girl, then followed it with a swirling dizzy face.
Then she selected the head of a purple little demon, followed by two outstretched hands as if controlling someone, then another curly-haired girl’s head, followed again by two outstretched hands. Inaya pointed to Pei Ran and selected a braided-haired girl emoji.
Pei Ran understood what she meant.
She was saying that she had been in a dazed, dizzy state the whole time, like she was being controlled by a demon, and had no choice but to hypnotize Pei Ran.
Inaya looked at Pei Ran with pleading eyes, tapped the little demon, tapped the braided girl, tapped a dagger, then selected a scared expression.
She was saying she had been very afraid.
Someone on the train could control others, and had been fighting Pei Ran to the death. She couldn’t afford to offend either side, so she stayed silent out of fear.
Pei Ran knocked on the table to Tang Dao: Let her go. It’s not her fault.
Tang Dao nodded and moved to peel the duct tape from Inaya’s ankles.
Inaya didn’t care about her feet. Her expression was anxious as she quickly selected a parrot emoji on her screen and looked toward Pei Ran.
Next to her, Sheng Mingxi handed over the scarf bundle he had been holding.
The scarf came loose, revealing a parrot head. The scarf had only been loosely tied, more like a pouch. Nuomituan was completely unharmed, flapped its wings twice, then dove straight into its owner’s arms.
Only now did Inaya fully relax. She let out a long sigh of relief, stroked the little bird’s head, and pressed her palms together to gesture a thank-you to Pei Ran.
She behaved very obediently—probably afraid they’d throw her off the train and leave her behind instead of taking her to the shelter.
Pei Ran left them and continued forward, quickly walking to the rear of the train, where she found the other four people Yulianka had brought with her.
They were all in Car No. 4. When they saw Pei Ran coming, panic spread across their faces.
Pei Ran ignored them and walked over to open the carriage door. Only then did she turn to face them, lifting her black mechanical hand and pointing toward the ground outside the train.
The world outside the train was extremely dangerous. Even the dam had come to life—it was terrifying. Compared to that, staying on the train felt much safer. The four exchanged glances, but not one of them moved.
Pei Ran silently walked over and randomly grabbed one of them by the arm.
Her hand was like a vice—immensely strong, impossible to break free from. It yanked his shoulder so hard it hurt, as if the next second his arm would be ripped clean off.
Afraid she might actually tear off his arm, the man didn’t dare struggle. Stumbling and staggering, he was forced to follow her to the train door. Pei Ran casually pushed him off the train.
The message sent from the Department of National Defense and Security had said that using sign language to gesture numbers was a safe method. Pei Ran turned to the remaining few, raised one finger.
Then the second.
Her mechanical hand was so terrifying that before the third finger even came up, the rest of them quickly got off the train.
Pei Ran shut the door.
Now, there were thirty-nine people left on board.
Having completely cleared Yulianka’s people from the train, Pei Ran was in a good mood. She returned to the cockpit and signaled Engineer Jiang to start the train.
Yehai No. 7 rapidly picked up speed, leaving those people behind in the wilderness, and continued advancing northwest.
Ai Xia pointed behind her: Go get some sleep.
Tang Dao had followed as well. He was quick-witted and understood Ai Xia’s gestures. He tapped on the wall of the carriage: We’ve got plenty of people here. Everyone’s fighting for a turn to drive. If something really happens, we’ll wake you up. Go rest—we’re still counting on you to do the fighting if anything comes up.
Pei Ran was truly exhausted, so she didn’t argue. She picked up her backpack and went off to find a place to sleep.
Tonight, they only needed to stop once more ahead to drop off the two people who wanted to get off. By tomorrow morning, they’d reach Yercha, near Black Well.
On her way, Pei Ran passed Inaya’s seat and saw her with her head lowered, palm holding a small handful of birdseed, feeding Nuomituan.
W asked, “You really believe she’s innocent?”
Pei Ran replied, “Yulianka did have the ability to control others, and she’s already dead—dead men tell no tales. The one who hypnotized me was probably Yulianka, doing it to seize control of the train. But at the station where Yehai No. 7 stopped, when they used several lives to test the gate, either of them could’ve been responsible.”
It wasn’t possible to determine exactly who it was.
W said, “Presumed innocent in cases of doubt.”
“Whether she’s guilty or not—I’m not a judge, I don’t care,” Pei Ran said. “As long as she behaves from now on, doesn’t stir up trouble on the train like Yulianka did, and lets us reach Black Well safely—that’s good enough. Otherwise, I’ll throw her off too.”
W: “So, the bet between the two of us—looks like we both won? A win-win.”
Pei Ran had said Yulianka was the troublemaker; W believed it was Inaya who’d done the hypnotizing. In a way, they were both right.
Pei Ran was a bit speechless: “A ‘win-win’ means both sides have to fulfill one of the other’s requests. Isn’t that just a double loss?”
W: “If you prefer to call it that, I don’t mind.”
Pei Ran, baffled by his obsession with losing, asked: “What exactly do you want to lose to me?”
W countered, “What do you want?”
Pei Ran thought for a moment. “Oh great genie, hold onto that wish for me. Right now, besides my medicine, I don’t really want anything else.”
W said, “Actually, there’s something I really want to give you. I hope I can provide you with a lifetime free of want.”
Pei Ran: Huh?
Those words sounded way too suggestive.
Pei Ran asked bluntly, “What do you mean by that? Agent W, are you trying to keep me as your sugar baby?”
W went silent for a long time, as if he had crashed.
It took him a while to respond, “Pei Ran, what exactly is going on in that head of yours?”
He adjusted his tone, sounding more serious than ever, as if he’d switched his natural language processing back to its default setting. “I hope I can help you live a life free of want. I believe I can do it, and I will work hard to do it. You saved so many people today. You deserve that.”
Big talk, considering he was just an artificial intelligence. No telling how he planned to pull that off.
“Well, I’ll wait and see,” Pei Ran said. “And what about you? What do you want? As long as it’s something I can do, I’ll agree to it.”
He seemed really set on winning, like there was truly something he wanted to ask of her.
Pei Ran: “Whatever it is, just say it.”
Silence again. W seemed to crash once more.
He was acting very off tonight. Even though his tone had gone back to normal, his behavior was odd. First, he’d performed unusually well, drawing a picture with genuine soul, and then he started lagging—his responses sluggish.
Pei Ran deeply suspected that when the train had flooded earlier, his circuits really did get water-damaged.
She’d better check on him later. Give him a wipe down or something.
After a long silence, W finally spoke. “Pei Ran, can I… keep this wish for now?”