Honkai, why do you only play high-end games?

"The egg should have been cracked from the inside, but he chose to break it from the outside. Then, looking at the yolk spilling all over the floor, he said happily, 'Look, I saved another life!'"

After a long and impassioned speech, Lin Wei slowed down his tone and said,

"Anna, you have to know one thing. If you skip understanding the problem and just copy the answer, you will still not be able to do it. The next time you see it, you will still get zero points. The principle is the same."

"..."

Anna was stunned when she heard this. She didn't understand why Lin Wei told her this, but she instinctively felt that Lin Wei was doing this for her own good, so she asked directly.

"…Why are you saying this to me?"

"Because I saw some idiot being told to doubt his life by others! It was so ugly, I couldn't bear to watch it."

Anna suddenly cried out in pain, as Lin Wei hit her head.

"I just want to tell you one thing. The same thing, when said forwards or backwards, can be two completely different things. Have you forgotten what I told you? Your eyes can deceive you, and your ears can deceive you too. What you see and hear isn't necessarily the truth."

"So what is the truth?"

Anna felt as if she were back in her school days.

“The world is not as good as you think, nor as bad as others say.”

Lin Wei smiled and said,

"What exactly you perceive as the truth depends on you. Before that, you need to observe, think, and summarize more. By then, no matter what the world looks like to you, it will be real."

"Eyes can deceive, ears can deceive, everything can deceive, except your own heart. So, no matter what time it is, don't deceive yourself, don't be stubborn, because you can't deceive yourself."

Lin Wei rubbed her hair and said softly,

"Remember it."

Anna was still confused and nodded blankly.

"Drip drip..."

Lin Wei glanced at Anna's communicator. It was ringing again. He guessed they had reached the fourth floor. He looked up at the ceiling. He could clearly feel the vibrations of the excavation under his feet.

"Let's go."

Lin Wei pulled up Anna, who was still a little dazed, and turned around to walk out.

"Haven't you gotten any information out of her yet?"

“It’s no longer necessary.”

That thing over there is just a tool. Tools have no thoughts, no self, so to save time, it is faster to just flip through the answers.

"What about her?"

Anna looked back at the mechanical girl who was trapped and motionless. Was she going to leave her here alone to die?

Lin Wei casually chopped off the nerve line blocking his way with a stick. A scream quickly came from behind him. Looking in the direction of the sound, he saw the girl twitching and wailing in pain in the restraints.

"She's covered in this stuff, and I don't know how many of them there are. We can't take her with us unless we cut them all off. But if we cut them all off, I'm afraid she'll die from the pain."

Lin Wei bared his teeth and said, "Who the hell designed this? It's too inhumane!"

"...So we're just going to leave her here to die? That's too pitiful..."

After some ideological persuasion, Anna temporarily escaped from the abyss of self-doubt and her compassion resurfaced.

Hearing the sound, Lin Wei pulled out a gun from her waist and put it in her hand.

"Why don't you give her a quick death?"

Anna turned around and glanced at it, then put it down dejectedly and said with a wry smile,

"I can't bring myself to do it..."

Lin Wei pulled her to continue walking,

"I can't go down either."

"Then she..."

"I gave her a chance. Since she gave up on her own, she should stay here and continue to perform her duties. She deserves it, living and dying with this base."

Lin Wei said calmly, he didn't think he would appear cold-blooded.

"..."

Anna took one last look at the girl who was trapped like a cocoon and sighed.

……

This room is densely woven with various lines like a spider web, and in the center is a mechanical girl who is bound like a silkworm cocoon.

It's finally over, she thought.

Everyone left, and she was the only one left;

Mom and Dad are gone, and she is the only one left...

Without the noisy computer and the trivial work, she was alone and found for the first time how quiet the world was.

The vibrations in the ceiling began to intensify.

Oh, as expected, it’s not quiet at all, the girl thought disappointedly.

Just like when the collapse suddenly came, the world suddenly became strange and terrifying.

Fortunately, her owner took her in and gave her another life.

Even if she lost everything, even if she lost her human identity, she was grateful for it.

Because no matter what, I survived, even as a machine, a tool.

The girl suddenly shuddered and murmured,

“Live…live…live!”

Without the cold computer, she finally became a real human being again;

Faced with the approaching death, she finally could no longer deceive herself.

This world is terrible, I just want to numb myself...but I want to live even more!

The murmurs grew louder and louder, and then turned into cries for help, but unfortunately no one could respond to her now.

She wanted to struggle, but her limbs, which had been bound for so long, had already lost their strength and were bound by the nerve lines connecting her body, making her unable to move.

Finally, having exhausted her last bit of strength, she felt the long-lost despair again, just like when she saw her parents, who had become dead soldiers, rushing towards her fiercely.

She turned her face towards the direction where Lin Wei had left. She had lost all her strength and could no longer shout. She could only murmur,

"help me……"

She remembered that Lin Wei and Anna had asked her name, and she remembered her own name.

"My name is..."

"Oh!"

The ceiling was dug through, and the huge shield machine crashed down. The sharp blades tore her into pieces in an instant, just like the hundreds and thousands of zombies who were crushed into pieces before.

This process is so fast that I can't even feel the pain.

In the end, the girl, no longer a machine, was unable to utter her own name.

Lin Wei, who was at a distance, seemed to sense something. He stopped, looked back, and sighed.

He shook his head, stopped thinking about it, and smiled at Anna.

"Let's go."

The butterfly breaks out of the cocoon, but it's too late.

Pity……

Chapter 61: "Survivors" (6,000 words)

Time goes back a little bit.

Lin Wei took Anna away from the mechanical girl and returned along the straight stairs.

Anna kept looking back as she walked, until the girl wrapped in the "silkworm chrysalis" disappeared from her sight, then she turned back silently and no longer looked back.

Before they met, she thought she was hateful;

When they first met, she felt sorry for her;

When she talked to herself, she felt that she was hateful;

When Lin Wei exposed her, she felt she was despicable;

She felt she was pathetic when she chose silence;

And now, when they were completely separated, she felt pity for her, felt regretful, and felt melancholy...

Anna didn't know why she had such complicated feelings.

"Lin Wei..."

Anna called softly,

At this moment, Lin Wei was leading her forward, like a lamp that showed her the way forward, making her want to rely on him.

"She, why..."

Then, Anna paused, because when the words came to her lips, she suddenly found that she didn't know what "why" to follow after "why".

Because she has too many "whys" to ask.

Anna suddenly realized that she only had the strength and title of "A-level Valkyrie", but after leaving the headquarters, there were too many things that made her feel at a loss, unable to understand, unable to figure out, and difficult to accept.

"Ok?"

Lin Wei looked back at Anna and saw that her eyes were full of confusion and her lips were pursed with a pitiful expression of melancholy, as if a child who had just learned to speak was asking an adult about the unknown in the world.

“There’s no reason, because this is how the world is—people have to move forward and be responsible for their choices.”

Lin Wei answered seriously. Perhaps this was too cold, so he thought for a moment and added,

"Time is limited now, so this isn't the time to talk. If I get a chance later, I can tell you a story that might help you, but that's ultimately my answer, not yours, Anna. Now just remember what I said before: in the days ahead, never deceive yourself or give up on yourself. Walk more, see more, and you'll eventually find your answer."

Speaking of this, Lin Wei smiled.

"Maybe by then, you'll tell me a different story."

Anna panicked and couldn't help but stretch out her other hand, holding Lin Wei's hand tightly with both hands, as if she was afraid that he would leave her.

The staircase wasn't long. As they spoke, they returned to the messy place where the ground was covered in a pale green liquid mixed with glass fragments, and the air was filled with a strange medicinal smell.

Anna looked around, trying to find a way out, but unfortunately, there was none. She looked at Lin Wei with some concern, but she didn't make any sound. She believed that Lin Wei would find a way, and hoped that she would not interfere with his thinking.

"That room that looks like a spider's nest is the control center here, and it also serves as a disguise to conceal something deeper."

Lin Wei said softly, picked up his cane and tapped the steps behind him, and the virus invaded instantly.

Following Lin Wei's movements, the seemingly insignificant staircase suddenly shook slightly, as if it had come alive. Every brick and stone, every step folded, changed, shrank, and collapsed with a "click, click" sound.

"Generally speaking, there are always some places in ant nests where food is stored, and they are always hidden deeper."

Finally, the stairs disappeared between the walls on both sides, leaving only a narrow and shallow corridor, revealing what was hidden behind it - another elevator, standing upright below the room where the mechanical girl was, obviously leading only to deeper places.

Still going deeper, are you thinking you haven't buried yourself deep enough?

Anna was a little uneasy about this, but it seemed that there was really no other way to go at the moment.

He turned around and looked at Lin Wei again, feeling a little regretful and reluctant, but also inexplicably feeling that this seemed to be a good thing...

What are you thinking about? Anna felt ashamed and embarrassed about her thoughts.

"Let's go, hurry up."

Without paying too much attention to Anna, Lin Wei took her directly to the elevator. There was only one button in the elevator, either up or down, depending on the current position.

With a light press, the elevator began to descend steadily and quickly amidst a slight feeling of weightlessness.

Lin Wei closed his eyes, counted the seconds, and calculated the depth here to assess how much time he had left.

He never worried about whether he could leave here. Not to mention that he clearly knew from the mechanical girl's memory that there was another way out; even if there really wasn't one, he still had other options.

At worst, I could just get mad, pull out a flaming sword, and strike it over my head.