She was so scared that she couldn’t move.
She could only watch as the bionic man came closer and closer, on the verge of discovering her.
Lian Qi curled up and held her head, not daring to look at it again.
The snapping sound of the bionic man’s shoes wet with artificial bloo-d, as well as the sharp knife slowly turning between the pale bone knuckles.
All of it sent chills down one’s spine.
Lian Qi’s fragile spirit was taut as a string, almost ready to snap.
Because she knew that once she was discovered by this crazy Adam, she would only be greeted with an even more miserable end than that loser.
Splat.
The footsteps finally stopped at the corner near Lian Qi.
There was no movement for a long time.
Just when Lian Qi thought that the bionic man hadn’t noticed her, she looked up and saw the bionic man.
Raising her head, she saw Adam’s icy gaze overlooking her.
The twisted smile at the corner of his mouth hadn’t dissipated yet, and when he looked at her with his head tilted, there wasn’t the slightest emotion in the bottom of his eyes.
He seemed to be pondering whether or not to dispose of her, as he had disposed of the loser just now.
Because Adam was just as cruel to humans and bionics alike, with no empathy to speak of.
“Aaahhhh!!!” Lian Qi screamed out uncontrollably.
“Don’t ki-ll me! Don’t ki-ll me! I didn’t see anything!”
Lian Qi was so scared that she rolled and ran towards the outside of the alley.
Behind her, Adam was following her like a cat catching a mouse, bringing a strong sense of oppression.
“We really won’t ki-ll each other anymore.”
Outside the alley, there seemed to be someone’s voice promising steadily.
The rampaging Lian Qi almost ran into the two people passing by at the entrance of the alley.
The moment she saw the person coming, Lian Qi, who was still in a state of disbelief, showed surprise on her face.
“Jiu Shu! It’s you! I finally found you! Let’s get out of here; it’s too dangerous here!”
Lian Qi knew that the Adam behind her was dangerous, so she wanted to take Jiu Shu with her and leave this place.
“Dangerous? What happened?” Jiu Shu’s voice carried the characteristic cleanness of a young man, soothing the fear in Lian Qi’s heart.
But at this time, the situation was so urgent that she couldn’t explain too much, only pointing her finger in the direction of Adam behind her.
“Adam, they are all Adam; they will ki-ll us; let’s run away!”
As long as they could escape from here, it was good. Once everything that happened here was exposed, the country would definitely not let go of this terrible artificial intelligence.
“Adam, they’re all crazy! They are k-illing each other!”
As soon as the words fell out of his mouth, the expression of No. Four beside Jiu Shu stiffened for a moment, but then he regained his composure.
Jiu Shu, on the other hand, looked thoughtfully at the alley behind her.
There was only an empty bl-ood-stain there.
Lian Qi was already incoherent with fear.
Not noticing in the slightest that the movement behind her had somehow disappeared.
“What? What happened?” Lian Qi turned her head and looked at the empty alley in disbelief.
Even the bodies were gone.
How could this be possible?
“No, that’s not right… Where did the body go? Where did the body go?”
Lian Qi’s collapsed brain was on the verge of not being able to think under this unexpected stimulus.
“It should be your hallucination.”
Lian Qi saw the man with pitch-black pupils beside Jiu Shu make a definition as if nothing had happened.
Lian Qi looked into the man’s eyes in horror, as if she wanted to say something, but her eyes swept behind him.
It was found that all the humans and bionics on the street, which had been noisy and bloo-dy, were standing still and looking straight at her.
Their eyes were all as black and appalling as ever.
Unlike the gentleness when they were facing Jiu Shu, each of their eyes now contained a chillingly morose meaning.
“It’s, it was probably an illusion.”
In the face of these ghastly sights, Lian Qi could only reply tremblingly with her remaining instincts.
Jiu Shu glanced at the No. Four at his side, who immediately lowered his eyes and stopped looking at Lian Qi.
The tip of Jiu Shu’s eyebrow was slightly raised, seeming to really believe this explanation.
Without saying anything else, he continued to walk forward.
And in the shadows of the alley behind them, the two bionic people who had been ferocious and fighting to the death just a moment ago were carefully huddled in the corner like two small children who had made a mistake.
Not daring to make a sound to startle Jiu Shu.
The bionic man, who was more seriously injured and missing an eye, even wiped the bloo-d on his face carefully, fearing that it would fall on the ground and make noise.
It was only when Jiu Shu walked away that the two of them looked at each other and walked out of the alley.
Jiu Shu was still nearby; it wasn’t appropriate to continue k-illing each other now.
Although there was no longer the control of the main body, it was actually possible to transfer information between the conscious bodies.
The message that Jiu Shu hated them k-illing each other could easily be captured by them.
So it absolutely could not be exposed.
On the other side.
Lian Qi warily walked behind the two of Jiu Shu, shocked at everything around her.
It was completely different from when she arrived.
The people on the streets were walking in an orderly manner, although their faces and bodies were all scarred from the fight, and some were even bleeding, but that didn’t stop them from pretending to be in harmony and walking on the streets.
There was a complete absence of their previous ferocious and tyrannical appearance.
Why was there such a change?
Lian Qi really didn’t understand.
She could only look around in fear that these crazy Adams would go on the rampage again.
Having seen the true face of their madness, Lian Qi now simply couldn’t trust their gentle appearance.
Jiu Shu was probably also unaware of the No. Four’s true identity, which was why he was acting so calmly.
Looking at Jiu Shu’s back as he walked calmly, Lian Qi could only make excuses.
However, when Lian Qi saw the expression on No. Four’s face as he looked at Jiu Shu with his eyes downcast, she suddenly realized an incredible thing.
Adam seemed to have a crush on Jiu Shu.
He might even be in love with Jiu Shu.
No, it shouldn’t be possible.
Lian Qi was shocked by this thought of hers and couldn’t help but deny it for a second.
Lian Qi had already been indoctrinated by her boyfriend with the idea that Adam was an emotionless lunatic, so she was still a little apprehensive about the idea.
She was sure that she might be overthinking it.
Adam was just an AI created by a bionic human; he was an AI in a deep state of insanity. Would he really fall in love with a human?
Lian Qi began to doubt herself.
But when she looked around, whether it was the Adams’ walking by the street or the Adam who had been following Jiu Shu’s side, their gazes as they watched Jiu Shu seemed to be soft.
It was very different from the coldness before.
There was only this one reason to explain all this weird change.
“Miss Lian Qi, is there anything else?” Jiu Shu’s voice yanked Lian Qi out of her unbelieving shock.
Facing Jiu Shu’s gentle and beautiful face, Lian Qi opened her lips, unable to even utter a word.
“No, it’s fine.”
Jiu Shu arched his eyebrows and politely said goodbye, “Then it’s goodbye for now.”
He still had to go find Zero Three’s main body and didn’t really want to pay much attention to this heroine who took the initiative to follow him.
Looking at Jiu Shu’s distant back, Lian Qi reached out her hand as if she wanted to stop him and tell the truth.
However, under the cold interplay of countless gazes on the street, she still withdrew her hand with a shiver.
Lian Qi’s plan to save Jiu Shu was a failure.
Originally, she had thought that she could save the hero and win Jiu Shu’s favor so that they might be able to develop a beautiful relationship.
However, after experiencing everything today, Lian Qi inexplicably realized with some frustration that she might never be able to get close to Jiu Shu.
Being targeted by that crazy AI, Jiu Shu was already getting farther and farther away from her.
Perhaps she could only get really close to Jiu Shu when she saved Jiu Shu from Adam’s clutches after exposing Adam’s existence.
Yes, that’s right, Jiu Shu must still be waiting for her to save him!
With this belief in mind, Lian Qi regained her spirit.
She had even forgotten about her boyfriend Cory now and was focused on getting out of Seventh City in a hurry to expose all of this.
But now that the entire city was occupied by the rampaging Adams, there was no way for Lian Qi to leave the city.
She could only take advantage of the sudden calmness of the Adams’ in the lower city to temporarily escape back to the upper city.
The Adams’ in the upper city were still k-illing each other; everyone hated each other.
Seeing these chaotic as hell scenes made Lian Qi almost faint.
She could only force herself to escape back to her apartment.
Now the high-class apartment she was in had also fallen, and there were bloo-dy handprints all over the walls.
When Lian Qi returned to her apartment, she fell to the ground, unable to get up for half a day.
Then she walked to the floor-to-ceiling window after she managed to get up, observing everything outside.
Through the floor-to-ceiling window, Lian Qi could see half of the Seventh Metropolis, including the monstrous fire in the lower city.
Although the old factory was nothing compared to the vast area of the Lower City, the flames from that explosion were extraordinarily obvious and could be easily seen.
Lian Qi remembered that Jiu Shu was heading towards the place with the highest flames in the first place and couldn’t help but tremble, fearing that something might happen to Jiu Shu.
The exploding flames only stopped after an hour.
It was also half an hour after the flames stopped that Lian Qi saw that most of the humans and bionics in the Seventh Metropolis had stopped k-illing each other.
Their originally indifferent expressions became strange; the corners of their mouths hooked up and couldn’t fall off, like a child who finally got what he wanted and threw away all his worries, his excitement completely noticeable.
It looked particularly bizarre on those faces with different appearances.
After the excitement, they even began to actively repair their broken bodies, as if they were afraid of being discovered.
The transportation to the outside of the city also returned to normal at the same time.
After quickly buying a ticket out of the city, Lian Qi once again gave a worried glance in the direction of the lower city and decided to leave the Seventh Metropolis to ask for help.
There was nothing she could do now if she stayed here, and the only way to bring in help and save Jiu Shu was to go out.
The entire network of the Seventh Metropolis had been monitored, and the only way she could successfully call the police was to escape to the next city over.
As for the Resistance, it was obvious that they couldn’t stand up to Adam anymore, and Cory had probably died in the explosion.
She could only save herself.
Thinking about this, Lian Qi still had the heart to step onto the plane leaving the 7th city.
After an hour’s flight, when the plane arrived at the next city, the first thing Lian Qi did was to run out of the plane with only one passenger.
She also stayed away from the bionic people on the plane who were the flight attendants with indifferent expressions and black eyes.
The first thing she did when she arrived at the airport waiting room was to call the police.
Lian Qi is more or less a nationally famous idol star, so after she asked to call the police, the officials also received her police information very solemnly.
“Are you saying that the entirety of Seventh City is being manipulated by an AI?”
“Yes!”
Lian Qi was firm.
However, in the face of Lian Qi’s words of conviction, the people of the Sixth Metropolis were still somewhat skeptical.
After all, the Seventh Metropolis was a megacity, so if something had happened, it was impossible that there hadn’t been a bit of news until now.
At least so far, whether it was on the internet or in reality, the Seventh Metropolis was communicating well with the outside world; no crisis had arisen, and there was simply no way that something like an AI assimilating humans could have happened.
Therefore, even though Lian Qi had some influence in the singing world, the government didn’t intend to really take Lian Qi’s words seriously.
However, just as the government was about to treat this matter as a farce, a large number of alarm calls suddenly appeared in the Seventh City.
All of them were saying that they had been manipulated by an unknown being and had now regained their freedom.
Such unbelievable descriptions made it impossible to explore the truth, and the government could only send the first airplane to the Seventh Metropolis.
Trying to find out the truth.
When the airplane hovered over the seventh metropolis, the first thing that caught the eye was the large swaths of roses.
As far as the eye could see, the top floors of almost every building were filled with roses, turning the Seventh Metropolis into a veritable city of flowers.
The humans and bionics that walked the streets in a well-organized manner in Lian Qi’s mouth were also walking normally.
The humans were in a hurry, while the bionics were all a bit restless.
Indeed, all of them did not have the dark pupils that Lian Qi remembered.
Adam had left?
Lian Qi was still a bit reluctant to believe it.
But it was true that Adam’s consciousnesses were nowhere to be found in the Seventh City.
The manipulated humans recalled their memories of the time when they were manipulated, but they only remembered that they worked and lived like robots every day, maintaining the operation of the city.
Their memories were blurry, only remembering how dull and numb each day felt.
Only on rare occasions did they feel warm and fuzzy in the heart.
Oddly enough, though, the bionics had feelings very different from those of humans.
In their memories, those manipulated days were peaceful and beautiful, no longer being ostracized and suppressed by human society but working and living as normal humans.
It was a life the bionics could only dream of, and their hearts were often as soft and sweet as if they had been soaked in warm water.
Faced with these very different findings, the government was at a loss as to what to do.
In the end, they could only admit that what Lian Qi had said in the first place was true.
The Resistance had really created an artificial intelligence that no human had ever created.
A terrifying plague that could manipulate humans without a word.
Even the government, no matter how incompetent it was, was slightly revitalized in the face of a possible plague of artificial intelligence.
It decided to start looking for traces of this renegade AI, or else by the time he did develop, the human world would really suffer a disaster.
However, it was not to be; the government could not find any trace of Adam at all.
All the databases of the Seventh Metropolis couldn’t find any trace of Adam’s presence.
It was logical that as an AI active in the cyber world that had been controlling the Seventh Metropolis for such a long period of time, it would have revealed something.
But it just couldn’t be found.
The government investigators could only see many surveillance images of manipulated humans and bionics walking down the street with blank expressions, which did not help in analyzing Adam.
But in fact, to Lian Qi, it didn’t matter if Adam wasn’t found; the most important thing was to get the news about Jiu Shu.
Lian Qi had thought that with Adam’s disappearance, Jiu Shu would also disappear; after all, Adam’s possessiveness of Jiu Shu couldn’t have been more obvious.
With Adam’s insanity, taking Jiu Shu away and imprisoning him was something that was completely predictable.
But to Lian Qi’s surprise, Jiu Shu didn’t disappear.
His account was still active.
One of the latest updates was two clasped palms.
One pale and broad, the other fine and soft.
Both hands were wearing rings.
Jiu Shu seemed to be dating and even married to an unknown person.
Lian Qi froze the moment she saw the post and didn’t come back to her senses for a long time.
The same as her were the wailing fans under the account.
Most of them were those who had once watched Jiu Shu live and heard Jiu Shu sing.
Even though many of the photos and videos of Jiu Shu circulating on the internet had inexplicably disappeared since the Seventh Metropolis incident, this didn’t affect the crowd’s enthusiasm in the slightest.
People were still enamored with Jiu Shu.
Because no one could forget the face of the young man who glanced over faintly in the program’s live video.
As a result, a large portion of the fans were harboring certain unseen thoughts, just like Lian Qi.
It was completely unexpected that this newly famous underground idol would publicize his romance so directly.
As an idol, one had to remain single in order to attract fans, and this was even more of an unspoken rule for underground idols.
And Jiu Shu seemed to not care about these unspoken rules at all.
Not caring about his newly-found popularity, he did as he pleased.
It was just that Lian Qi froze for more reasons than that.
She looked at the palm of the hand in the photo and inexplicably felt that the hand holding Jiu Shu was so pale that it looked like a bionic human.
But how could that be?
Lian Qi denied herself this ridiculous thought.
Instead, her expression became somewhat self-deluded.
With the love for the bionic that Jiu Shu had shown earlier, it wouldn’t be strange even if he really fell in love with the bionic.
Lian Qi just couldn’t help but compare that hand to the No. Four she had encountered when she last saw Jiu Shu in her memories, and she even had the illusion that the one accompanying Jiu Shu was that AI Adam.
But how could Adam stay so peacefully by Jiu Shu’s side?
If he really hadn’t left, he would have been discovered by the police long ago.
Lian Qi consoled herself with this and opened the internet to search for information on Jiu Shu as usual.
Although Jiu Shu might have gotten married, it wouldn’t stop her from following him every day.
Recently, Jiu Shu had even released a new album, and his popularity was rising, so every time she went online, she saw new news about him.
Many of them were slightly blurry photos, but they still didn’t detract from his beauty.
The songs on Jiu Shu’s new album are the usual classical fare that seemed out of place in today’s era of heavy metal rock, yet sales continued to climb.
As of today, the third day of its release, it had already topped the gold sales charts that Lian Qi couldn’t hope to achieve in the past when she released new albums.
Lian Qi clicked on the comments under the song and saw that many of them were blessings for Jiu Shu.
[Jiu Shu is the best contemporary classical singer!]
[I can listen to this song a thousand times for ten thousand times!]
[He’s too perfect and too good!]
[As expected of an idol who was once known as the light of the Seventh city’s downtown, he’s so much better than Lian Qi!]
Looking at all the comments, Lian Qi was no longer as irritable as before but instead endured it.
Ever since Jiu Shu became popular, her past was also exposed. It was said that when he first graduated from university, he was suppressed and kicked out of the live streaming industry because Lian Qi was jealous of Jiu Shu’s talent, and then he became an underground idol in the downtown area.
This was an extremely unforgivable act for many fans who loved Jiu Shu, and even if the cause of the incident was that Jiu Shu had openly talked about Lian Qi’s scandal in the live broadcast room, not many people understood.
After all, it was just a few casual remarks, and then he was boycotted by the whole industry; this kind of behavior of bullying the small couldn’t be justified.
As a result, Lian Qi was boycotted by the fans of Jiu Shu.
But Lian Qi didn’t care; she was now more concerned about what Jiu Shu thought.
Since the one-sided meeting in the Seventh Metropolis, Jiu Shu hasn’t contacted her so far.
Lian Qi didn’t know if Jiu Shu was disgusted with her because of this, and if she was, she wanted to apologize to Jiu Shu in order to be forgiven.
Just as Lian Qi was scrolling through the comments, she suddenly realized that today’s news headlines weren’t quite right.
Seventh Metropolis was on the hot search.
Ever since the last incident, news of the Seventh Metropolis had been blocked by the government, and not much could be rumored about Adam at all.
The manipulated humans couldn’t prove that they had been manipulated either, and not many people believed what they said, so they had to settle for that.
Lian Qi could see that the government had seen that Adam hadn’t been heard from, and after relaxing their vigilance, they felt that Adam’s danger was ordinary and didn’t bother to continue to investigate.
Lian Qi didn’t know how the Seventh City had made it to the top of the search engines and only found out that it was the Resistance that had disappeared for a long time.
Lian Qi concluded that Cory was dead and stopped paying attention to the Resistance ever since she lost contact with him.
She only remembered that the Resistance had been whisked away when the government searched the Seventh City.
Today, however, they suddenly jumped out.
And they were claiming on social media platforms that they had saved humanity.
Saved the humans of Seventh Metropolis from an evil AI.
In order to gain credibility, they even released a surveillance video that even the government hadn’t found.
Clicking on the video, Lian Qi saw the familiar flames of the old factory explosion.
In the fading flames, a tall figure could be vaguely seen walking out of the old factory, blood and burn marks making him look particularly gruesome.
The tall youth across from him, however, didn’t have the slightest intention of fear but instead embraced the tall man, who seemed a bit overwhelmed, and only after a long time did he slowly embrace the youth.
The silhouettes of the two men were indistinguishable from each other in the surveillance, and one could only vaguely make out their figures.
And shortly after the tall man hugged the youth, all the bionic people in the vicinity looked at them unanimously as if they were possessed.
This bizarre scene could indeed be called ghastly.
Just today, the Resistance claimed that the video was of that terrifying AI who had betrayed humanity and would sooner or later destroy the human world.
On top of that, there was a lot of footage that the government had already blocked of people walking mechanically while being manipulated.
Lian Qi even found out that Cory wasn’t dead; he just changed his body and was still the leader of the resistance.
Lian Qi recognizes Cory’s shadow in this series of behaviors of the Resistance.
Cory probably wanted to use this to gain the recognition of the humans and get help from the government to settle Adam.
However, things always changed unexpectedly.
When the video was sent out, the human community was lukewarm.
After a short period of curiosity, they lost interest in the video.
They didn’t seem to care about the AI.
Their usual work was already tiring enough; there was no time to pay attention to these things that weren’t real.
After all, if the government didn’t bother, it was pointless for them to pay attention.
TN:
Honestly I need the bottle of delusion that Lian Qi drinks from 🥹🤲.
I had to split the chapter into two cause it was really longgggg, see ya tomorrow ✌️
Thank you for the chapter!