MASG chapter 137

 

Xia Yu’s brow never relaxed.

To say he wasn’t sad would be impossible. He had gained a complete set of memories. As an ordinary resident of Penghu City, he had been loved by that place for eighteen years. Yet, that place was destroyed because of his awakening. Zhang Mingqiao, Xia Li, his classmates, and his neighbors… turned into wisps of dust in the data world.

No, they couldn’t even be considered dust. Nuwa wouldn’t allow them to leave anything behind.

Nuwa… Nuwa…

Nuwa…

Artificial intelligence.

Xia Yu suddenly opened his eyes. Intense pain struck instantly, making him want to scream uncontrollably. But the moment he opened his mouth, a flood of liquid rushed in, choking him so badly that he spasmed and coughed uncontrollably. His body convulsed as water filled his lungs. It felt as if a layer covered his eyes. He could touch a hard object by reaching out, but he couldn’t push it away.

Choking on water for just a few seconds nearly took half his life. Only when the cover opened did an external force help Xia Yu sit up.

“Xia Yu! Xia Yu!” Midou didn’t care about anything else; half of his body was completely soaked.

The liquid inside the pod wasn’t a nutrient solution that could be injected directly; it was more like some kind of medium. It felt sticky and, once it touched Midou’s skin, immediately turned into a semi-transparent film. As if he had regained something he had lost, Midou wrapped Xia Yu tightly in his arms and pressed his face against his.

“Is this real? Is it real? Is it you?” Midou didn’t even notice that his voice was trembling so much that it had changed pitch and sounded ridiculous. “Xia Yu! Do you remember me? You remember me, right? I’m Doudou! I’m your little bear, Doudou!”

“Let go of him first. Let go first.” Talos was excited too, but he had to control Midou’s emotions. “There are still a lot of tubes on Xia Yu. Let him come out first!”

“Tubes? Come out?” Midou glanced blankly at Talos, then at Xia Yu’s body.

Xia Yu was almost naked. During this period, he had been lying inside the pod, relying on various infusion tubes to maintain his bodily balance. Needles were inserted not only at his wrists but also on the backs of his hands, the inner sides of his upper arms, the inner sides of his thighs, and the tops of his feet. Even more terrifying was that there were needles in places like his temples.

He didn’t feel it when he was unconscious. Once he woke up, the first things Xia Yu felt were pain and weakness.

“It hurts so much…” He wanted to reach out and pull them out. The needles lay hidden beneath his skin, poised to pierce his temporarily fragile body at any moment. But he had gone too long without moving. His limb muscles had more or less atrophied, and he couldn’t even lift his wrist.

Doudou… Midou? He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t see anyone’s face clearly. Light rushed into his pupils, drilling in like iron nails as if to nail his eyeballs firmly into their sockets!

“Protect his eyesight, hurry, protect his eyesight!”

Silver Fang was the most experienced. Having fought here the longest, he immediately saw what was happening to Xia Yu. After not seeing sunlight for a long time, even the slightest light would burn his fragile eyes. Talos first covered Xia Yu’s eyelids with his palm and spoke softly, as if soothing a terrified little animal.

The white, cat-like mutant creatures darted around nearby and then gathered around them out of curiosity.

“Relax, relax, it’s fine, it’s fine now… Xia Yu, relax. Don’t tense your muscles too much; otherwise, the needles will get stuck in your skin, and we won’t be able to help you. Relax…yes, that’s very good…”

With Talos’s calming voice, Xia Yu began to relax and his consciousness returned to reality. He was back. But around him wasn’t Penghu City but… some random, unfamiliar city. In any case, he wasn’t inside the artificial intelligence’s virtual world. He coughed violently, and with each cough, more and more water left his lungs. Once he could breathe normally, he grabbed Talos’s arm tightly and gasped for air.

Fresh air. Real air.

One by one, the needles were removed from his body. They had been inserted for too long, though, and once removed, each left a clearly visible bloody hole. Blood flowed freely over Xia Yu’s skin, making his sun-starved complexion look abnormally pale. Ultimately, the blood flowed into the liquid medium inside the pod, dyeing a large area red. Xia Yu was like a newborn baby, wrapped in blood-colored “amniotic fluid,” performing the most instinctive act of breathing.

The scene was exactly the same as when he was born. Back then, Wang Qin had taken him out of the artificial womb.

“There are two left. It might hurt a bit. Endure it.”

Talos knew that Xia Yu wasn’t afraid of pain. However, the fact that it hurt so much meant that these needles might be directly stimulating his pain nerves. Xia Yu really wanted to nod to show his trust in his companions. His hearing had already begun to recover.

Midou, Talos, Silver Fang—these voices sounded like a previous life.

At that moment, the two pods nearby also began their automatic opening sequence. They were Mo An and Lao Gui. Silver Fang ran over to greet them. Since they hadn’t been in the pods very long, their situation wasn’t as severe as Xia Yu’s. Meanwhile, Talos and Midou studied how to pull out the last two needles.

They looked like two needles but were actually parallel clusters of three needles each. This meant that six needles had been deeply embedded in Xia Yu’s temples.

At the same time, the bloody needle holes on Xia Yu’s feet began to heal on their own. The genes of the blue jellyfish were taking effect.

A glass bottle nearby also began to vibrate. A tiny blue jellyfish tapped against the inner wall of the bottle as if cheering for its companion. It emitted a blue glow. Though faint, its resonance with its companion was extraordinarily strong.

Xia Yu could feel it, too. Even with his eyes closed, a faint blue light leaked from between his eyelids, dyeing his entire row of eyelashes blue. It wasn’t just his eyes. All the blood vessels in his body were responding. Any blood vessel visible to the naked eye emitted a dim blue glow.

“My God,” Talos couldn’t help but exclaim.

Xia Yu… he was different from before. Had he upgraded? He could actively respond to his vast, dangerous species! In the past, Xia Yu was just a little jellyfish drifting alone, waiting for the blue jellyfish to find him. Now, he could communicate with his kind. Gargoyles had never seen this situation before.

Xia Yu had become the leader of the blue jellyfish, half a lord of the ocean.

With blue light all over his body, he gathered strength, raised his wrist, and touched his temple with his fingers. Silver Fang also pulled out Mo An. Still in his fishtail form, he quickly removed the needles from his body and slid over, not caring about anything else.

“How long has it been?” Mo An grabbed Midou’s arm. “How long were we unconscious? How much time has passed?”

This was the question Mo An urgently needed answered. He and Lao Gui had lived in Penghu City for almost six months. Was the time outside synchronized? Or had it been compressed? How were Midou and the others surviving in Yukun City? This place was an inorganic ecosystem. Did Yan Xia provide them with energy supplies?

But Midou’s answer shocked Mo An.

“Five minutes.” Midou was so excited that he could barely breathe. “From the time you and Lao Gui fully connected to the time you successfully woke Xia Yu, only five minutes passed! I didn’t even have time to put Xiang Xing’s spores into the cultivation chamber!”

Mo An briefly lost the ability to think.

They were only inside for five minutes?

Five minutes of real-world time was enough to support the complex, deep emotional technology of Penghu City. Nuwa invisibly displayed its power. The Blooming Plan crossed the real boundary without mercy, pushing everything toward nothingness. Zhang Mingqiao, Du Meng, Chen Minghao, and Chen Ailu… It was only five minutes.

Midou couldn’t understand Mo An’s grief at that moment, but he could see that no one was in a good mood. No one could guess what exactly happened during those five minutes, but Lao Gui sitting on the floor, looking lost and desolate, was heartbreaking.

“Are you okay?” Midou grabbed Mo An’s arm.

“I… I’m fine.” Mo An shook his head. He had hidden his feelings for that world deep in his heart and no longer dared to touch them, even though they were only five minutes. Sensing his awakening, Little Blue the jellyfish waved its tentacles more energetically, forming a heart shape for the humans.

Mo An slid over to touch the bottle, then moved toward Xia Yu without hesitation.

Xia Yu trembled nonstop in Talos’s arms. Talos wanted Mo An to help hold Xia Yu, but then he remembered that they couldn’t touch him casually.

Xia Yu heard the familiar voice and seemed to hear the faint sound of scales rubbing against the ground. “Mo An? Is that you?”

“It’s me. We’re all back.” Mo An really wanted to grab him. The pressure and pain that Xia Yu was enduring far exceeded his own. “Don’t move around. There are needles in your head.”

“I’m going to pull them out now. It might hurt a lot.” Talos reminded him softly.

“Okay, I can endure it. Go ahead.” Xia Yu adjusted his breathing. When the pain came, he pictured Xia Li’s and Zhang Mingqiao’s faces. Talos grabbed the base of the needles and tried to pull them out, but he couldn’t. Then, in a heavier tone, he said, “Xia Yu, these needles… might be serrated. It will be very, very, very painful.”

Mo An looked at Talos in an instant.

Talos nodded helplessly.

Xia Yu knew there was no turning back. Instead, he carefully tried to persuade them. “Okay, I understand. It will be very painful. But I can endure it… Talos, do it. Don’t be afraid of tearing my skin, because I can heal myself… Mo An, Mo An, don’t stay too close to me.”

“At a time like this, don’t worry about me.” Mo An slid around the pod.

“All right, then I’ll count down from three, and then I’ll do it. Three, two—” Before he could say “one,” Talos took advantage of Xia Yu being off guard and swiftly pulled out the row of needles from his left temple. He did tear Xia Yu’s skin, but there was no other way.

Three bloody holes gushed with blood.

Before Xia Yu could cry out in pain, Talos clenched his teeth and quickly pulled out the row of needles from the right temple. It was a fast, precise, and steady move. This row was larger than he had imagined, and part of it had grown together with Xia Yu’s flesh. Not only did it fling out a string of bright red blood droplets, but it also threw out bits of minced flesh.

Fresh blood splattered everywhere, splashing into Mo An’s mouth and face.

Mo An only felt the heat on his face and tasted blood in his mouth. He hurried to wipe it away, trying to salvage the situation. Midou and Silver Fang panicked. No one expected things to take this turn. They had been too careless.

In the past, just touching him was dangerous. Wouldn’t Mo An be poisoned to death on the spot now?

“Mo An, how do you feel? Quick, rinse with water!” Midou took out their precious drinking water and splashed it on Mo An’s face. “Antidote… Antidote… I’ll go look. I’ll go look!”

“Wait…” Mo An lowered his hand.

His webbed hand was stained with blood, but he wasn’t hallucinating. Even though he was sure he had swallowed a drop, he was completely clearheaded.

“I think I’m fine.” Mo An looked at Midou. The blue jellyfish’s poison acted quickly. A few seconds should have been enough, yet he was still fine.

“Fine? Could it be that Xia Yu… he can control the poison on his own now?” Midou looked toward the pod.

Xia Yu, with blood streaming from both temples, had already been carried out by Talos. He opened his blue-glowing eyes and looked up at the camera above. The camera moved as well, aiming toward him.

“I’m back.” Xia Yu’s hand reached for Talos’s belt. He took the gun from the holster, aimed the muzzle at the camera with his trembling right hand, and shot it to pieces. “I’m back, artificial intelligence.”