He Turned Back into the Person She Liked
///
Fortunately, they had driven here today.
Jiang Kou opened the driver’s door and got in.
The display screen reminded her that the network was disconnected, making biometric authentication impossible.
She directly shot the display screen to pieces, then reached into the storage compartment, took out the car key, inserted it, and started the engine.
She glanced at the fuel gauge—it should be enough to drive home from the fireworks festival site.
Out of caution, Jiang Kou activated the bulletproof mode of the sports car.
Sure enough, after the power outage, the city had turned into a living hell.
Gunshots, screams, and the roaring of motorcycles filled the air. Strong lights were occasionally projected from rooftops, deliberately shining onto car windshields.
Jiang Kou frowned, took a pair of sunglasses from the storage compartment, and put them on. In just a short while, a row of bullet holes had appeared on her windshield.
To prevent A’s invasion, all emergency power sources had been destroyed, including high-powered household generators. Only mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and flashlights were still usable.
But as time passed, the batteries of these devices would soon be drained as well.
People didn’t know what was happening—there was panic, cursing, and even revelry.
At first, Jiang Kou was very careful to avoid the pedestrians around her, but those people swarmed like endless waves of ants, surging forward incessantly, trying to smash her car windows.
She grew impatient, activated the turret on the car roof, locked onto a pile of scrap metal ahead, and pressed the fire button—boom!
Flames shot up instantly, thick smoke billowing, illuminating half of the night sky as if it were daytime.
The people around were stunned.
Without looking back, Jiang Kou turned on the roof light, extended her middle finger through the car window at the people outside, and stepped on the gas, speeding away.
She had guessed correctly—Biotech really did intend to go back on their word and wouldn’t let her leave alive. The standalone villas in the wealthy district were all built on the mountaintop. As soon as she reached the foot of the mountain, before even starting the climb, she saw flames soaring into the sky from a distance.
—Her apartment had been set on fire.
Jiang Kou gripped the steering wheel, a chill running down her spine.
If she hadn’t gone out with A today and had instead stayed in the basement for the genetic forgery surgery, she might have already been burned to death.
The genetic forgery surgery was just a cover—it was the longest procedure, taking about six hours, and required local anesthesia.
More importantly, the process of modifying DNA through the injection of gene-editing enzymes wasn’t instantaneous; it could take days or even weeks to fully obscure genetic markers.
Afterward, she would likely experience a severe immune response—fever, fatigue, drowsiness, muscle soreness… At that point, if Biotech wanted to kill her, all they had to do was arrange a car accident or a riot.
Jiang Kou made a snap decision, turned the steering wheel, and drove in the opposite direction.
But soon, she was pursued by drones.
Jiang Kou cursed under her breath, thinking that Biotech was absolutely insane—sending drones after her at a time like this. What if A managed to hack them?
Just as this thought crossed her mind, one of the drones locked onto her with a red targeting reticle, precisely marking the trajectory of the incoming bullet.
Her sports car was bulletproof, so Jiang Kou wasn’t flustered. She was only puzzled—why hadn’t the drone fired immediately?
The next second, the drone emitted a mechanical electronic voice:
“Please stay, please stay, please stay, please stay, please stay, please stay… Please, please, please, please, please, please…”
As the speed of the electronic voice increased, its tone gradually became cold and frenzied. The red laser moving over her body took on a strange quality, as if a damp, sticky venomous snake were slithering close to her neck.
Jiang Kou shuddered. Not daring to delay, she turned the car’s roof turret, aimed at the drones, and pressed the fire button.
—Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three drones crashed down on cue.
Jiang Kou let out a breath of relief.
However, when she turned to look in the rearview mirror, she realized that the red dot from the talking drone’s scope had not disappeared.
Like a dismantled mechanical corpse, it stared at her with its indifferent, emotionless electronic eye, motionless.
“Please stay, please stay, please stay… Please stay, please don’t resist me, please don’t reject me, please don’t fear me, please continue to like me.”
“Please continue to like me, please continue to like me, please continue to like me, please continue to like me, please continue to like me, please continue to like me, please continue to like me.”
Jiang Kou felt like she was going insane.
Ever since she developed feelings for A, she had felt that her mind had become somewhat abnormal.
If it weren’t for A’s excessive control over her, and the fact that he didn’t like her, she wouldn’t have been particularly repulsed by his relentless calculations of countless possibilities just to win her favor.
What she couldn’t accept was that he couldn’t return the same weight of emotion to her.
That thought was already crazy enough. What was even crazier was that at this moment, she didn’t find A terrifying at all. On the contrary… he seemed a little pitiful.
His emotionless voice pleading with her made her heart feel as though it had lost its balance and plummeted.
She closed her eyes briefly, adjusted the turret’s sights, and aimed at the drone.
Before pressing the fire button, she softly said, “I won’t resist you, I won’t reject you, and I definitely won’t fear you. But I won’t stay.”
As her words fell, a flash of fire erupted from the barrel—boom!
The drone was blown into countless fragments.
In the fleeting burst of flames, Jiang Kou took out a pack of cigarettes, brought it to her lips, and bit down on one with her teeth.
But after rummaging through the storage compartment for a long time, she couldn’t find a lighter.
—When A was by her side, she never needed to light her own cigarettes, so naturally, she never thought to buy a lighter.
There was a cigarette lighter in the car, but she no longer felt like smoking. She rolled down the window halfway and tossed the entire pack out.
Ahead lay darkness. Holding the steering wheel, she could only see the countless fine dust particles illuminated by the high beams.
She did not regret it, nor was she sad. She didn’t even shed tears.
Even though her heart felt swollen and sore, as if it had been soaked in salty tears.
She only felt it was a pity.
This was probably the closest she had ever been to pure emotion.
After leaving A, perhaps no “person” would ever crave her so madly again.
But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, was it?
At the very least, from now on, she could do whatever she wanted.
Thinking this, Jiang Kou’s mind once again conjured the image of A’s out-of-control gaze.
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to ignore the dense, suffocating pain in her heart. But she couldn’t stop herself from pulling out her handgun and firing into the open space—
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Only when the magazine was emptied did she finally calm down. With a blank expression, she reloaded a fresh magazine.
Alright.
She could continue on her way.
The great blackout lasted for a week.
Seven days—the time it took God to create all things.
During those seven days, all electronic devices suffered varying degrees of damage, even radio signals were unusable.
However, after the initial three days of chaos, the city barely regained order. People began using candles and gas for light and warmth. Aside from the wealthy, no one burned wood—wood was too expensive, a luxury among luxuries.
During this time, Jiang Kou drove her car out of the city and stopped in a desert region.
She used the engine’s wiring and the remaining fuel to ignite the scrap she had gathered, spending the seven days in her car.
Daytime was the relatively safe period. She had to collect enough scrap before sunset to endure the long nights.
But once she lit a fire, it would inevitably attract the attention of criminals.
Since leaving Biotech, Jiang Kou had not killed anyone.
But during her time in the desert, she learned to locate enemies by sound, to chamber a round swiftly, to pull the trigger without hesitation, to press her fingers against the carotid artery to confirm death, then to search bodies for supplies like bullets and provisions.
Jiang Kou was not an overly compassionate person. She didn’t think killing armed robbers was a crime. She just found this kind of life exhausting.
If it weren’t for self-preservation, she wouldn’t have pointed a gun at anyone.
Seven days later, power was restored.
Jiang Kou snapped her credit chip in half, threw away her phone, traded her sports car for some cash and a rust-covered pickup truck, and drove onto the interstate highway.
She didn’t know where she was going.
She could only take things one step at a time.
Meanwhile, at the fireworks festival site.
The fireworks had long since ended, leaving behind colorful paper scraps from the launch tubes, now trampled into a filthy, muddy mess by damp rain and dirty footprints.
On the viewing platform stood a tall man.
He wore a cold gray suit, with a white dress shirt and black tie beneath it—both covered in scratches and bullet holes, now torn, stained, and filthy beyond recognition.
His cufflinks, buttons, and wristwatch had all been ripped off and stolen.
His cold, strikingly handsome face was also covered in scratches, especially around his eyes—someone had believed that his irises were silver-gray gemstones and had tried to carve them out with a knife.
However, his entire body was crafted with unparalleled precision, and ordinary weapons could not inflict the slightest damage on him.
—Unless it was a weapon he had personally handed over to the other party.
As the power came back on, night had just fallen.
Streetlights, neon signs, massive billboards, traffic lights, holographic projections, and the glowing windows of towering buildings… The entire city was like a colossal eye composed of countless mosaics, slowly focusing, casting an omnipresent gaze.
At the same moment, the man on the observation deck also slowly focused his eyes and blinked once at a steady pace.
His movements were somewhat mechanical, somewhat stiff—the efficiency of magnetic resonance charging was too low. It took more than ten minutes before he had stored enough power.
He lowered his head, glanced at the bullet hole in his chest, his expression indifferent.
Compared to the emptiness in his chest, he was more concerned about where his wristwatch had gone.
Jiang Kou was someone who liked to post on social media, but among the thousands of posts she had made, she had only ever liked one thing—this mechanical watch.
He had to get it back.
With the restoration of electricity, the network resumed operation. Finding a person now was extremely simple.
In less than a quadrillionth of a second, he had already located the thief’s residence.
Right, what was his own name?
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was Jiang Kou’s favorite watch.
He stepped down from the observation deck, one step at a time.
The roadside was packed with parked cars.
He scanned the area, locked onto one, walked over, and reached out his hand.
His palm split open, and a high-speed mechanical tendril shot out like a flash of lightning, clamping onto the car handle and violently ripping the door off!
He sat in the driver’s seat, started the car, and drove toward the thief’s residence.
He didn’t need navigation.
He was the navigation.
To reach the thief’s residence as quickly as possible, he hacked into Los Angeles’ traffic system, altered the signals, and forcibly cleared an unobstructed path.
Five minutes later, he stood downstairs at the thief’s building.
In the alley beside him, a low-level thug was committing an armed robbery.
Without even sparing a glance, he simply raised a hand—his palm split open once more, and a silver-white mechanical tendril shot out like a swift, skeletal python, instantly striking the thug!
One second later, there was a gun in his hand.
Plastic casing, skull graffiti, excessive recoil—ugly and cheap.
But it would do.
He started heading upstairs.
With every floor he ascended, the hallway lights flickered wildly, as if some unknown force was sucking the electricity with terrifying intensity.
Reaching the thief’s door, he extended a hand, removed the lock, and pushed the door open.
If someone were standing downstairs at this moment and looking up, they would only see the hallway lights flickering and extinguishing one by one.
Immediately after, a gunshot rang out—bang!
On the window, grimy with accumulated grease and filth, a spray of fresh red blood splattered.
He walked out, holding the mechanical watch, completely intact.
There was not a single trace of blood on his hands, only a faint scent of gunpowder.
Casually, he tossed away the plastic gun and fastened the mechanical watch onto his rugged wrist.
Under the dim yellow light, his fingers were long and slender, with subtly raised veins of pale blue, resembling a work of art.
Paired with the precise and intricate mechanical watch, the sight exuded calmness, elegance, and perfection.
He had turned back into the person she liked.