Cyber ​​Sword Immortal Iron Rain

Xin followed her through the ruins, using his scabbard to sweep away the debris that blocked his path. Ah Tong's words were so incoherent that he had difficulty understanding them:

"…It's too confusing to understand. What is a Tianguan?"

Ah Tong stopped, turned around and raised his eyebrows in confusion:

"Where are you from? Haven't you seen Tianguan? Tianguan is... Hey, I don't know how to explain it to you all of a sudden! I'll show you when I have time."

She waved her hand, signaling Xin to continue following:

"Do you know why people call me 'A Tong'? I used to like picking up old-fashioned cables and selling them at hardware stores. The shopkeepers always told me the same thing: 'There is no copper in optical cables, so it is useless if you steal them.' As time went by..."

Ah Tong kept muttering as he pulled Xin into a large container that was completely blocked by cement blocks, leaving only a narrow gap.

"I'm home!" Atong clapped his hands and shouted loudly.

No one answered.

Xin followed and squeezed into the container: there was no light inside, but it was glowing with a pale green fluorescence, allowing people to just see things. The light came from the words posted on all sides, and the strange slogans overlapped and illuminated the "hut".

It was a little cramped, but clean and bright. Trash and sundries were neatly stacked in the room, surrounding the old sleeping capsule in the middle. Some huge object took up half of the space in the container, and it was covered with canvas.

Ah Tong noticed the new gaze and knocked on the wall with some pride:

"These are small advertisements I scraped from somewhere else. Fluorescent paint can last for hundreds of years. All of them together are about the same brightness as ordinary lamps, but without the electricity cost."

She walked briskly to the corner of the room and lifted the canvas, revealing a huge petri dish:

"Here, say hello to my family. This is my mom, this is my sister, this is my grandpa..."

There were several bodies floating in the petri dish, some old, some in their prime. They were naked, their eyes were closed, and their limbs were stiff as they sank in the life-support liquid. They looked like corpses that had just drowned.

Xin walked forward and put his hand on the petri dish. There was a slight vibration and heat coming from the transparent petri dish wall, indicating that the petri dish was still in operation, and these were all living people:

"Aren't you... fatherless and motherless?"

Ah Tong climbed into the tattered sleeping cabin and exhaled a long, foul breath, seeming to be very relaxed:

"Yes! They are not biological relatives, these are my picked-up family members. They are also 'Hundred Family Infants', but they have not been activated yet." She sneered, "Oh, I forgot you didn't know! Some of the 'Hundred Family Infants' look young and some look old, but they are actually only a few months old. It's normal, society needs people of all ages, so companies invest in both men and women, young and old."

Ah Tong stretched out his hand and pointed at a woman in her thirties in the petri dish: "My mother was released a while ago. She may have been away from the 'fetal sea' for only two or three months. It's a pity that she didn't find a baby of the right age to be my father, so my mother has to remain single for now."

"As for me, I've been in prison for three years." She shyly made a face and smiled warmly. "Hehe."

"...So, he's only been born three years ago? But he looks almost as old as me. Judging from his mental and cognitive abilities, he's at least at the level of an average adult..."

Xin sat cross-legged on the spot and took off his rain hat. He leaned on his sword and said nothing - just like in the wilderness, Xin was used to listening. He could see that A Tong was in high spirits.

"People like us don't have the kind of parents that everyone talks about. I'm lucky because the community funded my activation. After I wake up, I just need to slowly repay the loan to the community, and then buy 'point cards' and top up 'life time' myself."

She held her chin with both hands, stared blankly at the petri dish, and suddenly sighed:

"But now the launch of Baijiaying has been stopped for some reason, and I can't activate it with a loan. I can't afford it. Let them sleep here first, but the fee for the petri dish is too expensive. I used to be able to support myself as a garbage collector, but with this fee... But I can't bear to throw it away."

Ah Tong pulled the sleeves of his surgical gown up to the top, and numbers flickered on his slender shoulders:

"Here! This is the time I have left, one and a half days. If the living time is used up, the nerve signals will be interrupted - it will be like only the face can move, and the body is as dead. I can't make money that way, and I will really starve to death. So I say, Brother Xin, you'd better sell my body. I don't want to owe you a favor, right? This favor should at least be of B grade - ah~ yawn~"

She stretched and wiped away the tears from her yawning:

"Sorry! I'm sleepy. I've used up all my stimulants recently. I only need four hours of sleep a day... I don't know what happened to the hardware store where I bought the medicine. It's closed these days. The barefoot doctor's medicine is too expensive. I can't afford it."

Shin put the sword aside and lay down on the hard floor. Perhaps it was because yawning was contagious, or maybe he was too tired, but he suddenly felt his limbs and heart were extremely heavy:

"If it's so much trouble, why do you still want to...'pick up' your family members?"

Ah Tong raised his eyebrows, his tone full of doubt:

"A person can have nothing, but he must have a 'home'." She emphasized the word, even with a hint of ferocity; "What kind of home is it without 'family'? How come you don't understand anything, Xin Ge?"

Xin did not answer. He really did not understand, nor did he know how to respond to such a statement. Only distant words floated from the depths of his mind, with a hint of mockery:

"As long as human beings can keep themselves healthy, they can avoid most of the troubles..."

In his opinion, Ah Tong picked up these irrelevant "family members" and was completely asking for trouble. It was also the kind that had no meaning or reward - maybe it was just to satisfy some strange psychological needs.

Shin looked up at the light cast by the densely covered words on the ceiling and suddenly asked:

"So why did you become a heavenly official? Because you have no money?"

Ah Tong put his hand on his bald head again, as if he remembered what happened before:

"Yes! It feels like a way out. Once I become a Heavenly Official and abandon my mortal body, I won't have to buy Hundred Infants' cards to make a living. Maybe I can even make some money and activate everyone in my family."

Xin sat up straight again and faced A Tong:

"But you almost died. If you disappear, who will pay the usage fee for your 'family's' petri dishes?"

"Everyone has their own fate. What else can I do? Without me, they would have been scrapped long ago." A Tong asked back, his tone calm; "The Hundred Family Infants can't transfer their souls to change their bodies, and they all have point cards and counting chips embedded in them. Even the human breeding farms in Manila won't accept them. Anyway, I can't afford to raise them. I have to rely on hard work to see if I have the blessing."

"Of course it would be better for them if they were scrapped directly? But it's normal for people to be selfish. Since I picked them up and treated them as family, they should just indulge me a little..."

Ah Tong suddenly felt completely refreshed and stood up with renewed energy:

"Ah! I almost forgot. Let me introduce you to it!"

She deftly flipped out the sleeping cabin and carefully pushed out an object from the corner of the room:

It was a long rectangular piece of metal, about one person tall, polished to a smooth shine. There was a blurry yellowed sticker near the top - vaguely visible was a photo of a young woman, smiling with joy. It was newly seen that it was some kind of mechanical body: its two arms hung limply by its side, as if it had been turned off for a long time.

Ah Tong wrapped his arms around the brick-like machine and hugged it tightly, pressing his face against the metal casing:

"Look! This is grandma. She used to be a celestial official, but unfortunately she is no longer popular. There are no shops waiting for her blessing, and no customers, so she can't make much money."

She closed her eyes and lowered her voice:

"When grandma was still alive, she bought me a subscription card for the first year, but she didn't make it through the 'five decays of heaven and man'."

Chapter 94: Love Story in the Cyber ​​Age - Part (VIII)

"...I originally wanted to use grandma's body after I reached the Heavenly Gate..." Ah Tong twisted his body on the hard ground and rested the back of his head on the hard metal block.

Atong's voice became increasingly weak, and eventually turned into a sharp snoring sound from his slightly open mouth.

She fell asleep.

Xin walked forward, put his unmodified left hand through Atong's armpit, and lifted her up.

"It's so light." He felt as if what he was holding in his arms was just a bunch of broken dry branches. "It's probably less than 70 kilograms."

Xin guessed that A Tong's bone density must be lower than that of an average person: from the outside, she looked like an ordinary girl in her twenties, and it was impossible to tell that she was so light. He bent down and carried A Tong into the relatively soft sleeping cabin. She turned around in a half-awake state, and a faint light shone through her left shoulder from the surgical gown: "30".

"That's the time that A Tong has left... probably about 30 hours."

Xin looked at the petri dish - the men, women, young and old in it were unconsciously soaking in the orange-yellow life-support soup, floating around. Xin hesitated for a moment, then whispered to them:

"Nice to meet you."

As the voices echoed in the container, the canvas that had fallen to the ground was raised and used to cover the petri dish again.

"Now how to do?"

In this life, Xin has been breathing, living, and killing on the earth for fifteen years, but this is the first time he feels so lost. Reason tells him that he should step out of the container, leave the slums, and continue his journey to find people - can A Tong really provide him with more useful information? This is just a "three-year-old child" who may not even be able to maintain his consciousness...

Xin paced back and forth in the container, and finally sat down cross-legged again.

Next to the sleeping cabin was a palm-sized pocket divination machine, shaped like a round stick tube. It was tattered and no one knew where Ah Tong had picked it up. There was an iron stick sticking out of the edge of the divination machine, which should be the result of Ah Tong's last divination:

"Good luck."

Xin turned his gaze from the crudely written iron stick without even a line to the sleeping Ah Tong. Perhaps because of today's ups and downs, her snoring even had a bit of a fancy inflection:

"Is it considered a 'good luck' to almost lose my soul?"

A stream of smoke came out of the respirator, forming a smoke ring above Xin's head. He shook his head, but he knew in his heart that the result of the divination was correct - Ah Tong was saved by him and survived from a desperate situation, which was indeed a good omen.

This realization, however, did not make him happy: Xin was different from Atong and did not want to "create trouble for himself".

Shin stood up and walked forward to feel the metal rectangle that was once the "Heavenly Official". If this was something like what he thought...

Snapped!

The face of the cube opened crisply, like a closet with a spring lock:

In the middle was a cylindrical transparent cylinder, reflecting the new face, and around it were densely packed wires, like vines entwined around a tree stump.

Shin put his face closer - there was a pool of mucus at the bottom of the cylinder, nothing else. He was very familiar with this scene: it was the remnant of brain tissue that had rotted and degenerated and liquefied after necrosis due to lack of oxygen.

"This transparent tank is used to store the brain."

No matter who once lived in this place, he or she has long passed away, leaving only the final traces.

"The Five Decays of the Celestial Beings are a curse that all those who seek immortality cannot escape. All of these curses cannot be changed by human will..."

Xin spoke softly, repeating the words Atala had told him:

"'Withering of hair on the head' is one of the most serious signs of decline."

"The jeweled crowns of the gods are brightly colored. When their blessings run out and their lives come to an end, the jewels on their heads will naturally wither. This is a sign of great decline."

This sentence is also recorded in the storage logs of those travelers - the lifespan of brain neurons may be longer than other natural organs of the human body, but it also has its own limits.

This might be what happened to the "grandma" mentioned by A Tong: her brain eventually died of old age in this transparent cylinder. If she had not been affected by the violence of the outside world and had simply died naturally, she would have existed in this metal body for at least a hundred years.

"But there is nothing wrong with the body's functions..."

According to rumors, many people in ancient times were very resistant to the old-fashioned soul transfer. At that time, it was impossible to "cut" the three souls and seven spirits like files in a computer - extracting the three souls and seven spirits from the brain and transmitting them - it could only be completely "copied". This resulted in the original body and brain having to be destroyed after the soul transfer, otherwise there would be two identical consciousnesses.

This is undoubtedly not recognized in the old laws, and only one of them can enjoy the rights of a "person". At the same time, they are faced with a certain difficulty in thinking: the individual after the soul transfers is just a number or other forms of "copy", and the real self who "lived and experienced" has disappeared - destroyed along with the body that is destined to decay.

Therefore, people who want to pursue long life but do not want to lose their most "original" selves have to settle for the next best thing: they choose to remove their brains from their bodies and store them in machines, using a more conservative form to overcome the limitations of the aging body.

For example, this body of a celestial official...

These bits of history from the old days are no longer known, with only fragments left in the form of legends passed down by word of mouth like those of Xin and Atala.

Xin turned his eyes away and moved his fingers along the line, trying to trace the trajectory of the wires. Those wires were like deliberately made Möbius strips, or like overly complicated balls of yarn, with no starting point or end point to be found.

These wires were not even connected to the cylindrical cylinder, and the material made it impossible for Xin to distinguish them: but he understood that the body of this celestial official was functioning unhindered.

He put his hands down, and his understanding deepened - this was a machine from the old times, which did not require any unnecessary debugging or operation.

"If I want to transfer A Tong's brain into this body, I might be able to do it alone... as long as I have the right craniotomy tools."

Xin exhaled a puff of smoke: This conclusion, like those wires, brought him more troubles and entanglements.

……

When the number on A Tong's shoulder jumped from "30" to "28", she finally woke up from her sleep. Xin sat on the ground, holding the sword in his arms, looking at the girl who had taken a short nap for two hours:

"How much... money do you have to spend to buy the Lifetime Point Card? And there is also the fee for using this petri dish."

He uttered this unfamiliar word stiffly with a stutter.

"Anyway, if I want to find Atala, I'll need money too."

Shin gripped the sword even tighter. As long as the sword was with him, he would definitely be able to get money.

Ah Tong shook his head and squinted his eyes. From that line of sight, he saw something sharp and soft:

"Brother Xin, I know what you mean. It's not necessary. You've already helped me a lot." She turned away, her voice filled with fatigue that couldn't be erased even by sleep; "The money that needs to be spent is indeed a troublesome problem... but that's my own problem. Or rather, it's the only 'thing' I have."

At this moment, Xin had an inexplicable understanding of her: for A Tong, a rootless person, the heavy pressure she had to bear every moment became a kind of anchor between this Baijiaying and reality.

She also didn't want to pass on that sharp burden of pain to a new person.

He felt speechless and had to turn his head away to avoid A Tong's sight.

Ah Tong did not wait for a new answer and continued speaking hastily:

"You came to Kuala Lumpur to look for someone, or something, and what you're looking for is in the wealthy area." Ah Tong was not asking, but stating; "I can see that."

Xin was waiting for her next words: I have never hidden my intentions, and Ah Tong is a very smart girl, so it is normal for her to see these things.

"I can't help you now, but maybe Ah Tong can after he becomes a celestial official."

"The previous... investment proposal still stands, Xin Ge. Can you help me become a celestial official?"

Chapter 95: Love Story in the Cyber ​​Age - Part (End)

Xin and A Tong squeezed out of the container, just in time to meet the heavy rain that fell in the city after the night ended. A Tong did not change out of the dirty and ill-fitting surgical gown, and just bathed in the rain.