Chapter 585: An Old Ice Pop?

Chapter 585: An Old Ice Pop, After All?

Above the clouds, the Steel Heart, a distant "Viper" transport plane, retracted the plume of its plasma engines and came to a halt on the iron-laid deck.

Four men in gray robes, escorted by four players in exoskeletons, stepped out of the Viper's cabin.

One of them had a gunshot wound on his left leg, crudely bandaged, limping as he walked. The other three hadn't been shot, but their grimy appearances clearly showed they'd endured no small amount of hardship.

Yet here, no one would sympathize with them.

They were all apostles of the Torch Church.

Or rather, war criminals.

In just a few hours, at least ten thousand survivors had died, directly or indirectly, from the interference of the 03-band of the psychic interference device.

Countless more had suffered mental breakdowns.

About twenty soldiers from the Praetorian Guard had long been waiting by the landing pad.

Seeing the armed soldiers, Yur, standing in the middle, paled slightly.

He was the head of the Pinecone Farm parish and also the lead researcher on the 03-band. If captured, the Tribunal would surely not abandon him.

But looking at these men and the airship beneath his feet, he doubted whether the Tribunal had the ability to pull him out.

"Anti-gravity devices... you've already recovered anti-gravity technology!" he muttered to himself, but no one paid him any attention.

To prevent him from hiding a locator or bug on his person, a soldier stepped forward and placed a metal ring fitted with a signal jammer around his neck and those of the other three apostles.

One apostle tried to resist but quieted down after a rifle butt struck him.

Looking at Ye Shi, who had walked up to him, Lü Bei raised his right fist and tapped it against the left side of his chest armor, delivering a crisp military salute.

"Good work."

"You're welcome. Give my regards to the Administrator. The rest is up to you." Ye Shi smiled, returning the salute.

Lü Bei nodded, watching him return to the plane, then led the four grimy men toward the elevator.

There was no conversation along the way.

Yur finally lost his composure and spoke up.

"You... where are you taking us?"

Lü Bei said nothing, walked straight to a door, knocked, and then pushed it open.

Seeing Zhao Tiangan lying face-up on the floor, Yur's pupils contracted sharply, his face growing even paler, his Adam's apple bobbing involuntarily.

The man in the blue power armor looked him over, then turned to the soldier beside him.

"One at a time. Lock the others up somewhere for now."

"Yes!"

The soldier nodded respectfully, then waved, leading the other three apostles away with a group of soldiers.

Soon, only Yur remained at the door.

Standing alone at the entrance, seeing the man in blue power armor studying him, he inadvertently met his gaze, and a sudden, inexplicable shudder ran through him.

Those eyes were as deep as a black hole.

In just a moment of eye contact, he felt as if his soul had been ripped from his body, exposed without reserve under the sunlight, scorched by its radiance.

No secret could remain hidden...

As a researcher, he didn't believe in such ethereal things as souls, nor did he believe anyone in this world could truly read a person's soul through their eyes.

Yet he couldn't help but avert his gaze.

Then, the man spoke.

"What's your name?"

"Yur." Though he had intended to say nothing at all, the word slipped out involuntarily, filling him with irritation.

Chu Guang looked into his eyes and continued.

"Do you know what you've done?"

Yur lifted his head, stiffening his neck.

"I do..."

He expected the man to ask him why he had done it, but instead, the man simply nodded without further inquiry.

"Good."

The finality in that tone caught Yur off guard.

He hadn't said anything—how could this man act as if he already knew everything?

Did he really have mind-reading powers?

A flicker of panic rose in Yur's eyes, but he quickly felt ashamed of such a foolish thought, and the panic gradually turned into anger.

How could such superstitious nonsense exist?

This man was surely bluffing!

If he thought Yur would be intimidated so easily and spill everything, he had sorely underestimated him.

If this was a necessary sacrifice, then let him be sacrificed.

Yur raised his head, putting on a defiant expression, stiffening his neck as he blustered.

"Heh, I won't say a single word—"

Before he could finish, a pair of glasses was placed on his nose.

His vision blurred through the dark lenses, and Yur froze.

This was...

In an instant, realization struck, and his face twisted in horror.

A memory extractor?!

How did these people have such a thing?!

"Wait, I—"

But the word "say" never left his lips. With a buzzing electrical hum piercing his eardrums, his consciousness was forcibly shut down like a computer, instantly cutting out.

"Heave-ho."

Catching Yur from behind, Han Shuang dragged him energetically to the corner and propped him against the wall.

Watching the unconscious Yur, Chu Guang's expression held no trace of pity.

That memory extractor was loot from the Enlightenment Society. Its principle was to weave dreams from the deepest fears in the user's subconscious, sealing their memories and allowing only a trickle to seep out, peeling them away layer by layer until nothing remained.

The more one resisted, the more painful it became.

In theory, this device could not only extract memories but even help people recall things they themselves had forgotten.

Because it placed a heavy strain on the mind, he almost never used it for interrogations.

If it were a case of being deceived, coerced, or having some unspoken difficulty, he would give this fellow a chance to confess and receive leniency.

But this fellow had said it himself—he was fully aware.

That being the case, being treated in the same way surely wouldn’t warrant any complaints. Compared to the survivors of Pinecone Farm, this punishment was still too light for him.

Turning to the puppet perched on his shoulder, Chu Guang asked,

“Xiao Qi, about how long will the memory retrieval take?”

With her index finger resting on her chin, Xiao Qi, already connected to the memory extractor, closed her eyes and pondered for a moment.

“Hmm, maybe an hour or two should do it?”

She spoke in an uncertain tone, then suddenly opened her eyes and let out a soft exclamation. “...This guy actually has a bionic chip installed in his head?”

Chu Guang frowned slightly.

“Is there a problem?”

Xiao Qi looked over at Eclipse, standing nearby, and whispered,

“Eclipse, can you handle the security program on the chip? I’ll transfer it to you.”

Eclipse nodded expressionlessly.

“No big deal.”

As she spoke, a pale blue data stream was already reflected in the center of her pupils.

Having received the affirmative answer, Xiao Qi quickly turned to Chu Guang and proudly gave him a thumbs-up.

“No problem, Master! Leave it to Xiao Qi with confidence!”

Chu Guang: “...”

Forget it.

At least the outcome was good.

...

The memory retrieval was completed quickly.

Normally, the process would have taken quite a bit of time, but Xiao Qi had offloaded the memory retrieval program onto the shelter’s server.

The data processing power of the shelter’s server was on an entirely different level from the built-in processors of those portable electronic devices.

To make a somewhat crude comparison, one was a rocket, the other a bicycle.

It was like strapping a nitrous boost onto a bicycle.

An hour in the dream was equivalent to just half a minute in reality.

In fact, if not for the limit on how fast the brain could process information, the memory reading could have been even more exaggerated.

But even though Xiao Qi had held back, the brain of that drained apostle still bore a considerable burden.

Though the man had woken up, he was no different from a vegetable—even more extreme than a vegetable.

Watching Yur, who was babbling and walking straight into the wall, Chu Guang’s expression twisted into a hint of bewilderment.

“So... is he awake now or not?”

Xiao Qi’s expression was a bit subtle.

“Uh... he’s probably awake, but not fully awake.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply put, the images he sees are still the dream formed from his memories, but his brain has actually regained control of his body... So from our perspective, he’s walking into the wall, but in his own eyes, he might just be walking from the living room to the kitchen.”

In short, a high-ping warrior?

To other players, he seemed to be walking into a wall, but in his own eyes, he had already gone from B bombsite to mid.

Chu Guang’s mind stirred.

“Like sleepwalking?”

“Yeah, though there’s a slight difference, it’s roughly the same idea.”

Having said that, Xiao Qi added in a low voice,

“I suggest we restrain him... Otherwise, he might mistake something strange for breakfast.”

“Like shoes, for instance.”

Chu Guang nodded and instructed a nearby soldier to take the man to the isolation cell and tie him to the bed for a couple of days.

Just to keep him from causing trouble.

A few passing players happened to catch sight of the fellow walking into the wall and excitedly began whispering among themselves.

“Is this NPC stuck in the wall?”

“A bug! It’s a bug!”

“Awesome, this game actually has bugs!”

Though every version had them watching the dog of a dev fixing bugs, no one had ever seen what a real bug looked like.

Now they finally had!

Leaving the prisoners behind, Chu Guang returned alone to the captain’s quarters, sat down in his chair, and picked up the virtual reality device from the desk, placing it over his head.

He tapped lightly on the side with his index finger and spoke.

“Xiao Qi, help me connect to the extracted memory.”

A spirited voice soon reached his ears.

“On it, Master!”

As the words fell, pale blue particles of light spread from the center of his field of vision, transforming everything they touched into a different scene.

First the floor, then the table and chairs, then the walls—the room beneath his feet shifted from the captain’s quarters to a pure white room.

Chu Guang had never seen this place before.

But from the midwife delivering the baby, the infant lying in its mother’s arms, and the man standing beside the bed who looked like the father, he could roughly guess this was a delivery room.

People in the room bustled about, while the couple sweetly discussed what name to give the child in their arms.

No one noticed the stranger standing in the room.

After all, this was “Yur’s” memory—he did not belong here.

Chu Guang reached out a hand, passing it through a nearby nurse, then walked over to the window and gazed outside.

The greenery outside was lush, birds sang and flowers bloomed... He hadn’t expected even such details to be perfectly recreated.

“Why did you send me here?” Chu Guang’s voice carried a hint of helplessness.

He had no interest in learning the life story of some insignificant person.

Even if that memory might be important to the man himself, it was irrelevant to him and this wasteland.

If he were to watch through these twenty or thirty years of memories from start to finish, he wouldn’t have time for anything else.

Glimmering particles of pale blue light flickered.

Having chased Chu Guang into this stretch of memory, Xiao Qi, now materialized into the form of a doll, dropped down onto his shoulder, swung her little legs, and spoke with a bashful air.

"So sorry, Master... I'm just speeding up the progress bar a bit!"

Beholding Xiao Qi’s sheepish smile, Chu Guang could not help but feel the creature was doing it entirely on purpose.

Seeing that her master remained silent, Xiao Qi asked in a timid, hushed whisper.

"So... shall we begin from when he joined the Church of the Torch?"

"Mm... wait a moment."

Chu Guang was just about to nod when a sudden realization struck his heart, drawing his attention to a single detail.

Beyond the lush, vibrant greenery outside the window, high-rises soaring into the clouds could be seen in the distance, alongside an endless, flowing sea of vehicles... a spectacle that made even the Ideal City pale by comparison.

This place was evidently no wasteland.

Could this fellow actually have been born before the war?

"...Start from his memories before he entered the hibernation pod," Chu Guang corrected himself after a brief pause, continuing, "I want to know which vault he went into."

Yet Xiao Qi’s reply caught him entirely off guard.

"He isn't a vault dweller, you know."

Not a vault dweller?

Chu Guang frowned slightly.

"Then take me to the time before he entered the hibernation pod... I want to know his reasons for choosing 'time travel,' and by what means he journeyed to the future."

As he spoke, Chu Guang stepped away from the window and walked over to the nightstand, casting his gaze upon the holographic screen floating above the digital clock.

The year was 2100.

The seventy-fifth year of the Era of Prosperity.

At this moment, the golden age was at its absolute zenith; humanity had constructed a terrestrial utopia, achieving boundless fulfillment in both material and spiritual realms.

And just a decade later, in the year 2110, industry and academia would once again liberate humanity's imagination regarding the beautiful life of the future.

The graviton channel and the FTL engine would formally knock open the gates to the interstellar age, and tickets to worlds light-years away would no longer be one-way voyages of no return, but rather adventures available to anyone who wished to partake.

Naturally, not everything that arrived alongside the future would be beautiful; stepping forward meant discovering new treasures, but it also meant the arrival of more, newer problems.

For instance, just thirteen years later, a spiritual interference device developed to replace the "infrasound fence"—originally intended to drive away dangerous xenomorphs harassing the colonies—would spark a cataclysmic scandal in the Planet's Third Ecological Protection Zone of Qingquan City, involving allegations of brainwashing and human experimentation.

That matter caused a massive uproar, even implicating the authorities, but to the people living within the utopia, it was evidently nothing more than a minor interlude.

Chu Guang felt that even if he could traverse time and space to speak with the people before his eyes, absolutely no one would believe that the infant currently lying in swaddling clothes would, a distant two centuries later, commit an act that would leave even Satan utterly dumbfounded.

And if he were to tell the people here that it was merely a brief interlude in the far future, and that all this beauty would come to an absolute end in twenty-nine years, he would likely only be treated as a peculiar madman.

The year was 2100.

A mere twenty-nine years remained until the first year of the Wasteland Era—2129...

Vaguely catching the mother giving the child in her arms the name "Yule," Chu Guang then watched as the surrounding scenery flew past in tandem with the progress bar Xiao Qi was dragging along.

Like many people of that era, Yule enjoyed a delightful childhood, progressed smoothly through his education, and then entered the workforce...

When everything froze into place, the clean, bright delivery room had transformed into a minimalist, spacious office, where drifting layers of clouds and skyscrapers like a forest of steel could be seen beyond the wide, floor-to-ceiling windows.

A young man in a sharp, tailored suit stood before the desk, speaking with great agitation to the superior seated behind it.

Chu Guang did not listen closely to the contents of their conversation, but instead immediately kept an eye out for clues containing chronological information.

Before long, upon a holographic billboard outside the floor-to-ceiling window, he found what he was looking for—

The date was July 13, 2121.

Three days later would be the launch conference for a highly popular domestic security robot, with a pre-order price of just one hundred thousand credits—though none of this was the main point.

In the history Chu Guang knew, Vault 79 and its "Yong's" project had been launched exactly in the year preceding this one.

Signs of the golden age’s final hours seemed to have already emerged.

People began, consciously or unconsciously, to feel anxious about the future, and the consensus that tomorrow would be better was gradually replaced by doomsday theories.

And anxiety, in itself, was a business opportunity.

Enterprises selling home shelter solutions and protective gear made a fortune because of this, and the company beneath his feet was evidently no exception.

Chu Guang swept his gaze across the office, and upon seeing the documents on the desk, discovered to his astonishment that, heavens, this place was actually the headquarters of "Champion" Pharmaceuticals!

The researchers of Vault 79 were absolute die-hard fans of this company; even their coffee beans bore this company's brand!

Though—

He had always wanted to complain about that.

Was it really alright for a pharmaceutical company to sell coffee?

Within the office, the conversation between the two men gradually grew distinct.

"...Anti-radiation agents?"

Having finished reading the report in his hand, the superior stroked his chin, a look on his face that made his thoughts impossible to fathom, while the employee standing before him described it in an exaggerated tone.

"Exactly! I wager that this new type of anti-radiation agent will surely become the next growth point for the company's profits! And an explosive growth at that!"

Neither of the two was Yule.

But this was Yule's memory; that fellow was evidently nearby.

Chu Guang looked around but failed to find him, yet a sudden flash of inspiration reminded him that the fellow was only twenty-one years old, likely just a newcomer to the workplace, so he immediately stepped outside the office.

Sure enough, the lad was right by the doorway.

He held a briefcase in his hand, his gaze drifting all over the place, and from certain very subtle expressions, one could tell he must have only recently left campus.

Though he looked a bit younger, this boy was without a doubt the very person he had been interrogating just moments ago.

Seeing Yule intently watching the conversation inside the office, Chu Guang likewise focused his attention on the two individuals within.

If Chu Guang guessed correctly, the new project they were currently discussing was precisely the formula for "synthesizing anti-radiation agents using 'Blue Umbrella Mushrooms'."

In a sense, this formula had indeed saved a great many people.

At the very least, most of the mercenaries in Boulder City relied on this very stuff to prolong their lives, and his own first pot of gold on the wasteland had been earned by selling those mushrooms.

"...To use a more professional term, it is DNA self-repair technology! Within a certain blue fungus, we discovered a special active substance that can repair the macromolecules within a biological body that have been destroyed by neutron radiation."

"The idea is not bad... but if you will forgive my bluntness, medical nanorobots can do it much better."

Placing the report in his hand onto the desk, the man who appeared to be the superior cut off the torrent of words from the subordinate before him, spreading his hands as he spoke.

"We are a technology company, and if you'll forgive my bluntness, using mushrooms as medicinal ingredients... it sounds like an idea from ancient primitives."

Yet, Yule's senior did not give up, continuing to argue his case with righteous vigor.

"War, my friend, I am talking about times of war! Of course I know that nanorobots can perfectly repair damaged macromolecular nucleic acids, proteins, and enzymes, but where on earth are you going to find such things during a time of war?"

"Compared to medical nanorobots, which require an entire, colossal industrial chain to sustain them, this proposal of mine is far more practical! Even if the worst should happen, if suppliers are completely paralyzed and the prices of raw materials worldwide skyrocket, we can still provide our consumers with cheap, reliable anti-radiation medicine... of course, making it a little more expensive is also perfectly fine, as we possess an unparalleled cost advantage!"

This time, the superior sitting behind the desk did not immediately voice a refusal; he stroked his chin, an expression of genuine interest finally surfacing upon his face.

“Sounds a bit interesting.”

Everyone felt that a split with the colony was the most likely outcome, and war seemed to have become the only way to resolve the differences.

To this day, nuclear weapons remain the most efficient means of wiping life from the face of the earth; the only differences lie in delivery methods, scale, and so forth.

A cheap, effective anti-radiation drug, in an age of radioactive fallout, is undoubtedly far more practical than any nanobot.

In the end, Yule’s senior managed to convince both of their superiors.

Even though the process was not easy, and he wasted no small amount of spit and breath.

Watching the senior walk out of the office, Yule immediately stepped forward and asked.

“How did it go?”

A brilliant smile spread across the senior’s face.

“It’s settled! The boss agreed to lend us the research institute in Jinhe City. As long as we can produce tangible results, he’ll fight for more budget for us at the board meeting… Time waits for no one. Pack up your materials before you leave work; we set out tomorrow morning!”

Hearing this, Yule’s face lit up with surprise, and he clenched his fists in excitement, but being tongue-tied, he struggled for a long time before squeezing out just one sentence.

“That’s great!”

The senior smiled faintly and patted him on the shoulder.

“Keep up the good work.”

Watching the two walk toward the elevator, Chu Guang’s face showed a hint of surprise.

If he remembered correctly, the “Champion” Group had only one research institute in Jinhe City—the very one the Academy had given him.

And at this moment, that research institute was under the control of the mutants…