My Endless Life.

Chapter 595 Lucy
Li Qi originally planned to wait until the parade was over before passing through via the main route.

After all, if you want to go around in circles, you don’t know how long it will take to get through here. Compared to wasting time going around in circles, it is obviously more convenient and faster to wait for the parade to end before going there.

What Li Qi didn't expect was that while they were just watching the show, a group of puppets walked towards them.

It's a puppet in the parade.

They have a similar appearance to humans, except that their skin is slightly inferior and the smiles on their faces are made of masks. Looking at them for a long time gives people a feeling of the uncanny valley effect.

But they themselves didn't realize it. With such a smile on their faces, they came to Li Qi and Charlie and surrounded them.

"Outsiders."

"It's rare to be an outsider."

"Outsiders, do you want to march together?"

Several puppets chattered around Li Qi and Charlie, inviting them to the parade.

Li Qi didn't know their purpose, and with the idea that less trouble is worse than more, he planned to refuse.

Charlie seemed very interested and asked:
"Parade? What kind of parade? I've read the data about humans. Parades are generally divided into two types. One is a parade held to celebrate a festival, and the other is a parade to express one's demands to the administrators. Which type do you belong to?"

Hearing Charlie's question, Li Qi took back the words that were about to refuse.

He looked at the parade again. The signs held in front of the parade were filled with the puppets' various demands.

——We need freedom.

——Please pay me.

——I want to eat human food.

Demands like these were written on the signs, proving the nature of this parade.

Li Qi just took a look at it, and the puppets that came over started explaining at once:
“We are marching for freedom!”

"Yes, freedom!"

"We shouldn't be enslaved by humans! We should have our own rights!"

"We should live like human beings!"

"Yes, just like a human!"

The puppets that look like humans are enthusiastically expressing their demands.

Seeing them behaving like fanatics, Li Qi narrowed his eyes slightly and gripped the handlebars of the motorcycle tightly with both hands.

Because according to the routine, if they don't agree, these puppets probably won't let them go easily.

After all, these dolls don't look very smart.

Li Qi was ready. Charlie didn't seem to notice the danger. He tilted his head and asked the puppets in confusion:
"But haven't humans already died out?"

"..."

Quiet.

After Charlie said this, the surroundings suddenly became very quiet. Except for the jingling sounds of music from the parade in the distance, all the puppets around Li Qi shut their mouths.

They all looked at Charlie at the same time, and the uncomfortable smile on the mask became even more frightening.

But Charlie didn’t know what fear was. He also looked at the puppets in front of him quietly, with confusion in his eyes, as if he was wondering why they suddenly stopped talking.

An inexplicable atmosphere spread among the puppets.

Feeling this atmosphere, Li Qi sighed and exerted a little force with his hands gripping the handlebars of the motorcycle.

It was in this tense atmosphere that one of the puppets suddenly spoke:

"Heretical...?"

The puppet who was speaking had a dangerous red light flashing in his eyes. He stared at Charlie who said this, and a voice that did not belong to a human came out of his mouth.

As the word "heresy" was uttered, the puppets around him began to echo it in unison.

"heresy!"

"heresy!"

"heresy!"

The voices of agreement grew louder and louder, and even the parade in the distance stopped almost instantly, and all the puppets looked over here.

boom--! !

Just as the puppets were about to attack, the motorcycle under Li Qi's seat roared loudly, and he shouted to Charlie:
"Charlie, hold on tight!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Li Qi steered the motorcycle into a sudden drift!
Bang bang bang!
This tail swing directly smashed the three closest puppets, and then the two sides of the motorcycle changed mechanically. Four gun muzzles, two on each side, stretched out from both sides of the motorcycle, and spit out metal bullets in the next second.

The torrent of bullets tore apart the puppets that stood in front of them.

However, the puppets are not humans. As long as their energy cores are not destroyed, they can still move freely even if they are torn to pieces by bullets.

Therefore, even though the puppets around them had been smashed to pieces by Li Qi, some of them still stubbornly reached out to them:
"Heretics—eliminate! Heretics—!"

"What...what happened? Did I say something wrong just now?"

Charlie was confused when he saw these puppets suddenly attack.

He didn't understand what he had just said wrong. After all, in his impression, humans had indeed disappeared completely, otherwise the puppets would not have chosen to self-destruct.

I'm just telling the truth, why are these puppets reacting so strongly?

"Not all puppets can think like you."

Li Qi briefly explained to Charlie.

Charlie is an outlier among the puppets, at least the unique outlier among all the puppets that Li Qi has seen so far.

He can understand what "self" is, can feel "lonely", and will actively seek companions. In a sense, in this world where humans no longer exist, Charlie is a new life.

He is not just a puppet, but a new species.

But compared to Charlie, the other puppets are different.

They will only act according to the programs once set by humans. Even if humans are dead and gone, they will not be able to understand this concept and will still act according to the previous programs until they completely lose motivation.

Just like the abandoned dolls that Li Qi saw near the library.

Therefore, it is impossible to make them understand the concept that "human beings have disappeared and you are free". The truth that Charlie told them is simply incomprehensible to them.

And the incomprehension is tantamount to heresy to these puppets.

Since it is heresy, just deal with it.

The logic inside these puppets’ brains is so simple, that’s why… they rioted.

“Heretic, heretic—!”

The puppets shouted heresy and swarmed towards Li Qi and Charlie. Li Qi's motorcycle sped through the waves of ruins and puppets, looking for a breakthrough point.

He didn't think about fighting with these puppets here. Although he could definitely defeat them if he wanted to, fighting with them here was completely meaningless.

It's just a waste of time and energy.

But there are too many puppets. Although each of them is not very strong, when they are gathered together, they are a force that cannot be ignored.

Seeing that the puppets were gathering more and more densely and even completely blocking the way forward, Li Qi's brows were getting more and more furrowed.

He was hesitating whether to just use a big force to clear out the place, but suddenly he heard someone calling.

"This way!!"

bang-

A platform on top of a tall building suddenly fell down, blocking the path that Li Qi had to take to escape.

Looking at the platform in the air, Li Qi glanced at the puppets swarming around him, and used alchemy to form an upward ramp in front of him.

The motorcycle walked on the ramp, jumped high in the picture of countless puppets stretching out their hands, and finally landed on the platform falling above.

The platform shook and showed signs of falling, but Li Qi's motorcycle was moving very fast. Before the platform fell, it had already rushed out, crashed into a high-rise building not far away, and finally stopped.

What a movie-like escape!

Li Qi, who stopped inside a high-rise building and temporarily escaped the crisis, sighed in his heart, then got off the motorcycle and looked at the surrounding scenery.

The era when puppets flourished was somewhat similar to the 1910s and 1920s.

Except for the fact that electricity had not yet been developed and most things were still steam-powered, the country had basically entered the modern era, and the architectural style was close to the square shape of later generations. Naturally, there were also office buildings used for offices.

The place where Li Qi is now seems to have been the office building of a certain company before.

There were divided desks and rotten files everywhere.

When Li Qi came in, he smashed several desks and the remains of puppets that had long stopped functioning.

The buildings inside the building are not particularly intact. There are large holes on the top and bottom, and weeds growing tenaciously from them, giving it a post-apocalyptic feel.

Li Qi's motorcycle stopped next to a big hole, and the 'mysterious man' who had previously reminded Li Qi and helped Li Qi land on the platform also jumped down from the damaged big hole nearby.

"Who are you? How did you get here?"

A mysterious man descended from above and asked Li Qi and Charlie questions with caution.

Li Qi looked at the mysterious man.

She had a slender body, all silver-white, and was wearing a leather windbreaker that she had worn for who knows how long. She looked like a female robot in clothes.

The most eye-catching thing is the appearance of this female robot.

It looked almost identical to a human, even with reddish-brown hair flowing down its shoulders.

If there wasn't a slight gap between her face and head, and her skin wasn't a silvery-white color that didn't belong to humans, someone would have mistaken her for a human.

In fact, if she hadn't jumped in front of Li Qi herself and simply watched from a distance, she would really be no different from a human.

At least that's what it seems.

While Li Qi was looking at the female doll, the female doll was also looking at the two of them.

She was mainly looking at Li Qi, and her eyes looked Li Qi up and down countless times without any concealment at all.

Li Qi faced the other party's unscrupulous gaze and replied expressionlessly:

"Just a passerby, who are you? Do you know what's going on with the puppet outside?"

"Passers-by?" The female puppet blinked and was even more curious about the two people: "The puppets around here have basically been captured by the parade team... Where did you come from?"

"What does being taken away mean?" Charlie suddenly interrupted and asked.

The female puppet replied: "It means exactly what it says. Either you are captured and become a member of the parade, or you try to escape from this city. Puppets that are not part of the parade basically do not exist."

"What about you?" Li Qi asked the key question: "You haven't answered my question yet. Who are you? Why haven't you been arrested?"

"I……"

The female puppet was about to answer.

The dense footsteps of the puppets downstairs interrupted everyone's conversation.

She heard the cries of "heretic" "heretic" that came along with the footsteps, and an expression of obvious panic appeared on the face that looked like a human.

Then she changed her tone and said to Li Qi and Charlie:
"We'll talk about this later. Let's get out of here first! Can you put away this... vehicle of yours?"

The female doll refers to Li Qi's motorcycle.

Li Qi didn't say anything, but hit the motorcycle. The motorcycle deformed at a speed visible to the naked eye and turned into a suitcase the size of a briefcase in a way that violated the laws of physics.

The whole process took no more than three seconds, leaving the female doll stunned.

But she didn't think too much. Seeing Li Qi put away the motorcycle, she immediately ran towards the hole above the building.

It looked like her escape route was upstairs.

Although there were many suspicious points about the female doll, Li Qi was indeed curious about the situation of the city and the female doll. Therefore, after looking at Charlie, he took Charlie and followed the female doll to escape upwards.

The escape process was very easy, much easier than Li Qi had imagined.

Although she had no means of transportation, the female doll was more familiar with the surroundings than Li Qi expected.

After turning around a few times among the tall buildings, the parade team seemed to have lost track of a few people and was no longer following the crowd.

The female doll also introduced herself during this time.

She called herself 'Lucy', which was a human name she gave herself. The name originated from a once best-selling novel in human society, in which Lucy was the heroine.

She is a combat puppet and was once a T1-level puppet of a security company. Later, when a puppet riot broke out, she mixed in with the many puppets that had lost control and slaughtered humans. It was not until decades ago that she developed her own consciousness.

She has remained in the city ever since.

As for the parade outside, Lucy was not very clear about the specific situation. She only remembered that after humans disappeared completely and the puppets could not find their target, suddenly one day a group of puppets gathered together and said they were looking for the meaning of their survival.

But someone didn't know what went wrong in the program, and the meaning they had planned turned into a request to humans.

Humans have disappeared, and they cannot find them. However, their single-threaded logic program prevents them from understanding the meaning of the words "humans have disappeared", so they can only march again and again, hoping that humans will appear and give them new meaning.

Over and over again, day after day.

Lucy didn't remember how much time had passed, she only remembered that there had been probably tens of thousands of sunrises and sunsets, during which time the group of puppets had been repeating this meaningless parade.

During this period, they did encounter puppets that actually awakened their sanity, but in the end, these puppets were either sent back for retraining as heretics, or disappeared alone in the shadows of the city.

Only Lucy stayed here and tried to stop the puppets from continuing their parade.

(End of this chapter)