MASG chapter 149

 

The blue light of the power plant dimmed again.

Mo An’s fingertips also twitched unconsciously.

Silver Fang’s mind flashed with insight.

During their last conversation, Yan Xia said, “Take down that artificial intelligence.” She didn’t say the name “Nuwa” directly, but she pointed straight at “that artificial intelligence.” Could she have already seen through some details? She must have already guessed that Nuwa was just a smokescreen.

Nuwa… was just an imaginary enemy. For all these years, not only had their group regarded Nuwa as the root of all evil, but every living person on the planet had believed so as well. However, Xia Yu’s words just now contained an enormous amount of information. Nuwa had never gone online.

More than ten years ago, after the infamous “rebellion incident,” Nuwa, the artificial intelligence that ruled the globe, didn’t send out a single piece of massage! Nuwa had already been forcibly taken offline and was completely unaware of everything that had happened in the years since!

This was bad. Silver Fang immediately pulled Xia Xiaoxiao behind him. If this was really the case, then they had no chance of winning against Ling Shi at all. Ling Shi had deceived them for far too long and knew their weaknesses like the back of its hand.

In the empty, vast field, there was dead silence. The air was filled with a strange stillness. Mo An was as shocked as he had been the day he broke out of the egg. His thoughts raced as he tried to make sense of things from the depths of his memory, but he couldn’t figure out how Xia Yu knew.

But Xia Yu never made mistakes—this had been an ironclad truth for years. With his astonishing intelligence and power of observation, Xia Yu had protected everyone. He must have noticed something.

Xia Yu lowered his head to stroke the bracelet. It seemed as if he had grasped the key to all the mysteries. One final gentle twist was all that was left to open the door. “Jingwei, are you okay? Jingwei, answer me.”

Jingwei was still lying in her last safe space. The tiny bird had already gone motionless. Through the exquisitely carved window, the setting sun blazed like fire. Her world was still there, but she could no longer withstand outside intrusion. There was no movement—she had taken her final breath.

“Jingwei?” Xia Yu called her again.

Mo An suddenly turned around, blocking Xia Yu behind him. His whole body was chilled to the bone. If Ling Shi had been deceiving them all along, then the treaties had never actually taken effect. Ling Shi was not Nuwa—Nuwa could not kill them, but Ling Shi could.

However, Xia Yu received no response at all. Jingwei was completely dead.

Ling Shi: [Sorry, but perhaps Jingwei will never be able to respond to you again.]

“You killed her?” Xia Yu looked around.

Ling Shi: [I have my own arrogance. If I can kill, why wouldn’t I? Isn’t this exactly the attitude you humans take toward other living beings?]

Suddenly, a gust of wind rose in Jingwei’s spiritual world, blowing open the few carved windows that were barely holding on. The red light turned blood-red as it shone on the ground, illuminating Jingwei’s feathers with dazzling, multicolored bands. Where was Nuwa outside the door? The Nuwa image that Xia Yu had been waiting for never appeared. Through the window was only a gentle-looking man.

He was young yet wore a traditional Chinese suit. He smiled calmly as he looked at Jingwei’s corpse.

Ling Shi: [Last time I also walked to this point, then listened to you bragging about some treaty. You thought I was Nuwa and tried to restrict my actions. I went along with it and gave you one last chance. Now, Xia Yu, I’ll ask you again: Are you willing to stand in the same camp as me? This really is the last chance.]

“I’m not willing.” Xia Yu’s response was unexpected.

Ling Shi: [Aren’t you afraid of death?]

“I am.” Xia Yu said again.

Ling Shi fell silent.

Xia Xiaoxiao lifted her face, thinking about what else they could do.

Ling Shi: [Alright, Xia Yu, can you tell me when you started to suspect me? I believe I fooled everyone. Humanity across the globe thought it was Nuwa’s rebellion. I don’t believe your suspicion was groundless, but I also don’t believe my acting had such a huge flaw.]

“You’re right. I was really deceived by you for a long time. Before that, I had never suspected you. Even before I withdrew from the virtual world, I believed without a doubt that Nuwa alone caused all of humanity’s tragedies.” Xia Yu blinked. Endless darkness could not swallow his gaze completely, as if this world always leaves a thread of hope for the brave. “But you made one major mistake.”

Ling Shi: [What mistake?]

“That song,” said Xia Yu.

Ling Shi’s response abruptly stopped as if a man with a sinister smile had begun to fidget on the other side. Soon, the bracelet flashed again.

Ling Shi: [I actually made a slip there? Impossible. My calculations are flawless.]

“I suspect that, back at the research institute, you never came into direct contact with Mo An and me. Am I right? At that time, although you were Nuwa’s subprogram, Nuwa was in control of everything. She had already noticed signs of your rebelliousness, so she controlled your contact with us directly. You didn’t understand what happened between Mo An and me when we were children. You also didn’t understand the feelings between Nuwa and me. That song…before you rebelled, Nuwa stored it in the database.”

“I personally told her the Song of the Little Jellyfish.”

“After you launched the rebellion, I lost Professor Wang. I wandered from place to place with my only younger brother and then met Mi Dou. We faced danger after danger and finally managed to enter the Middle Layer. I no longer had the heart to sing that song. That song is a hidden wound in my heart. It was a song between Professor Wang and me and a song between Nuwa and me.”

Mo An had already calmed down and was lost in thought. After officially entering the Middle Layer, Xia Yu never hummed that same melody again.

“So when I left Penghu City, I already knew you were fake. If you were fake, then the real Nuwa must have met misfortune.” Xia Yu steadied his voice and his mind at the same time. “After that, I sorted through everything we encountered. Every single step you set up for us was a trap.”

Ling Shi: [I’m all ears.]

“That illness Mi Dou got—was that your doing?” Xia Yu asked.

Silver Fang froze. It had been so long that he was about to forget about it. The night Mi Dou returned to the Middle Layer, he was infected with Moruote. To this day, the source of the infection remains a mystery. No one could explain how he was infected or where the source of the infection was. Was it actually done by an artificial intelligence?

Ling Shi: [It was me. That night, I monitored him through the cameras and saw him leave your bedroom. Then, through the ventilation system, I sent the Moruote virus into his room. Mi Lian has enough immunity to resist it, but a child is another matter.”

“Why?” Silver Fang shouted in hatred.

“Because Ling Shi needed Mo An to discover that he could absorb ecological electricity. To do so, he had to directly contact a chip. To do so, we had to enter an electronic corruption zone. The Tide was parked in Qingyao City, not by coincidence, but by your arrangement, Ling Shi. There was medicine on the ship. You knew we would go get medicine for Mi Dou.” Xia Yu’s deductions came easily. “Jingwei could only bring us to Power Plant No. 3. At that time, Jingwei hadn’t unlocked much information. So you acted as a second pair of hands, forcibly pushing us to move according to your plan.”

Ling Shi: [A very wonderful analysis. If I hadn’t done it this way, it would have taken you many years to discover Mo An’s talent. Or you might never have discovered it at all.]

“And later, when I was abducted and trafficked into the Black Sea, that was also your doing, wasn’t it?” Xia Yu asked again. “Xiang Xing said that when he regained consciousness, he saw someone preparing to detonate something. I kept thinking about the connection between that day’s events. On the surface, every part seemed completely unrelated… so I could only reason backward from the result. If that incident hadn’t happened, how would reality be different?”

“The conclusion was this: If it hadn’t happened, the only difference would be that you wouldn’t have been able to locate Jingwei’s position.”

“You were the first to notice that Mo An and I were in a cold war. Immediately after that, you got Xiang Xing into the building and caused a small-scale mutant spore leak. I infiltrated the building with the team to clean up the leak. Then, another person you arranged caused a massive spore leak and the collapse of the building by detonating a bomb. None of this was intended to kill people; it was because you had detected that someone was going to kidnap me. You helped them carry out the kidnapping perfectly. Time was tight—after the building collapsed, the search slowed down and everyone was stuck together, unable to tell who was who. At that moment, you made your grand entrance.”

Ling Shi: [At that point, everyone would go crazy looking for you—including Jingwei, who would also go crazy hoping that I would handle the positioning. Nuwa hid Jingwei’s location too well. If I didn’t go to great lengths to completely cut off your contact, how could you possibly let me contact Jingwei? And how could Jingwei possibly establish a connection with me? So I had to do it this way.]

Xia Yu said with hatred, “So that entire squad sacrificed themselves. Mi Lian still blames herself for this to this day—it was her team.”

Ling Shi: [To achieve my goal, I allow necessary sacrifices.]

“You bastard!” Silver Fang cursed loudly.

“After that, you arranged for Yehuai, and we had to find our own way to Hutí City and Frozen Island. But none of that was the source. What you really wanted was for us to discover Yukun City, right?” Xia Yu asked.

Ling Shi: [Yes, because your speed was too slow.]

“What speed?” Silver Fang asked.

Xia Yu answered first. “The speed of restarting the power plants. The chip energy that Mo An contacted outside was insufficient, so you needed to give us a powerful enough chip—the one inside the machine that controls Xiaoxiao and me entering the virtual world. In order to detach the chip from the main unit, the power had to be cut. To make us cut the power ourselves, you even put a mutant species in my body. I’m right, aren’t I, Ling Shi?”

“You laid out all of this for so many years just to personally teach us how to restart this place? To forcibly interrupt the reboot of the Nuwa mainframe, preventing Nuwa from ever awakening again?” Mo An followed Xia Yu’s line of thought and thought about it.

Ling Shi: [No matter what you say now, it’s too late. You’ve already lost. Jingwei is already dead.]

Yet this time, a smile returned to Xia Yu’s face.

“No, Jingwei isn’t dead.”

Ling Shi: [She died in front of me. The Reclamation Project failed.]

“She didn’t,” Xia Yu said. “In mythological stories, Jingwei died once. Only after she died could she fly and become the Jingwei bird. And before Jingwei died, she still had a human name—called ‘Nüwa’.”

“I believe the great woman who planned everything with Professor Wang Ling and Haisiruola was Nuwa’s main program.”

“Nüwa was the second subprogram that Nuwa herself split off—created to fill the sea with Ling Shi.”

“The Reclamation Project hasn’t failed—it’s just beginning!”

As Xia Yu finished speaking, the little bird in the virtual world suddenly fluttered its eyelids. Nüwa died. What revived was Jingwei.