The real identity of the old man behind the mirror was none other than Diao Chan.
Qian Duoduo seemed somewhat puzzled for a moment, but he quickly regained his calm.
Zhao Meiyou stepped forward, reaching out toward the mirror surface, when a sharp crack suddenly echoed through the space—like a support beam snapping in two. Qian Duoduo’s face changed, and he grabbed Zhao Meiyou by the collar, flinging him behind himself. “Run!”
He even planted a kick squarely on Zhao Meiyou’s backside, his words tumbling out in a rush. “I don’t know why Diao Chan is dreaming inside this Site, but now the dream is collapsing. You’ve stirred his subconscious, and the entire Site will turn against us. I can’t hold out long in his home turf—run!”
The kick nearly sent Zhao Meiyou sprawling to the ground. He couldn’t help thinking, Just what the hell is this guy’s deal, man or woman? He’s way too fierce.
In the next instant, bullets streaked through the air, accompanied by the thunder of heavy footsteps outside the train car. Thermal data flooded Zhao Meiyou’s vision: the lab’s security forces, and there were a hell of a lot of them. The car door exploded inward.
Zhao Meiyou had no idea if Qian Duoduo was a man or a woman, but the guy was tough as nails. Snap-snap-snap—he cracked his fingers in rapid succession, tossing a smoke grenade into the car. Then he gripped a gun in each hand and opened fire ahead, spraying bullets while retreating at top speed. As he reached the rear door, he spun sharply, whipping his leg out in a brutal horizontal kick. The skin on his instep split open, and bone extended into a long blade. With a motion like slicing a watermelon, he carved the door apart.
Qian Duoduo tossed aside the gun in his left hand and snapped his fingers again. With the sound, a motorcycle materialized in the pitch-black subway tunnel below.
Zhao Meiyou leaped aboard, steadying the handlebars. “Get on!”
Qian Duoduo kicked the head off an Artificial Human. “You go first!”
Zhao Meiyou didn’t argue. He slammed the throttle wide open, and twin jets of flame roared from the exhaust, nearly blasting him off the bike with the onrushing airflow. This thing was definitely modded to the hilt—this ride was even faster than Diao Chan’s nuclear-powered hovercar!
But at this speed, could Qian Duoduo keep up? The thought barely crossed Zhao Meiyou’s mind before a deafening explosion rocked the tunnel behind him. A blast wave like a raging dragon surged through the passage, sending a chill down his spine. Then the rear seat dipped sharply—the guy had actually caught up, riding the explosion’s shockwave!
A somersault of a hundred thousand miles? This ain’t some Monkey King bullshit!
“Hold steady.” Qian Duoduo wrapped an arm around his waist. Then Zhao Meiyou heard a heavy, deliberate word: “Wind.”
In the next second, the massive explosion behind them veered unnaturally, skimming along the bike’s tail and punching straight through the tunnel wall. A massive crater erupted on the surface above, raining boulders down on them. This time, Zhao Meiyou didn’t dodge—he figured Qian the Great would pull off some miracle.
Clang! The bike and both of them were smashed to pieces.
Judging by the searing pain ripping through his body, it was at least compound fractures all over. One of Zhao Meiyou’s eyeballs had popped out, but the optic nerve still tethered it to his torso. So there he was, literally watching his own dismemberment in a horrific car crash scene, red and white fluids dripping steadily.
Eugh— that’s brain matter.
In the darkness, the rasp of a lighter wheel sounded. Qian Duoduo lit his “cigarette.”
A hand reached out, and a raspy voice said, “Heal.”
Zhao Meiyou’s soul snapped back into place, his body whole and hale in an instant.
Qian Duoduo hauled him up and spoke again: “Wings.”
They rocketed straight out through the blasted-open hole.
The city in the blizzard had descended into total chaos. Searchlights swept everywhere, vehicles collided on the aerial streets, and airships detonated midair. Yet amid the frenzy, the moment Qian Duoduo and Zhao Meiyou appeared in the sky, every living thing locked onto them instantly. Pilots screamed as they veered to attack—
Qian Duoduo: “Hide.”
Their forms vanished. Several speeding trucks smashed into each other below, erupting in a shower of sparks.
“I’m running low on stealth smokes—they won’t last long.” Qian Duoduo landed atop a skyscraper, its mirrored facade gleaming like a sheer cliff. One step forward meant plummeting into the abyss. “What’s the plan?”
Zhao Meiyou thought for a second. “Capture the king first—cut off the head.”
“Diao Chan’s lost in a daze right now. The odds of snapping someone out of it are under ten percent, or we wouldn’t be running.” Qian Duoduo said, “The government didn’t know the Site’s internals before. Your mission now is simple: get out alive.”
Zhao Meiyou: “I’m sticking to it.”
Qian Duoduo: “How confident are you?”
“You can’t measure us by normal standards.” Zhao Meiyou replied, “Ten percent? More like one percent.”
“You’re still going?”
“Damn right.” Zhao Meiyou grinned. “One percent is generous—it’s not like it’s negative odds.”
Qian Duoduo met his gaze for a moment, then cracked a faint smile. The Artificial Human’s left cheek was charred away, but in that fleeting eye contact, Zhao Meiyou glimpsed a wild glint from the remaining half-smile—like the flash of a blade slipping from its sheath.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Qian Duoduo pulled a cigarette case from his pocket and flipped it open. Inside lay several cigarettes of uneven lengths, one of them burning.
He plucked it out, and Zhao Meiyou got a good look: Marlboro Cigarettes, the most famous brand in the Metropolis. Most 22nd-century civ tech was lost to time, but Marlboro’s parent company still clung to the exact tobacco formula from centuries ago. Zhao Meiyou had seen their latest ad, a throwback to 20th-century vibes: the white filter tipped with a deep red ring, like a woman’s lipstick mark.
“If you wanna play suicide next time, give me a heads-up sooner.” Qian Duoduo eyed the cigarette’s length, then shoved it into Zhao Meiyou’s mouth. “You’ve got ten minutes.”
Then he uttered another word: “Wind.”
An invisible force field seemed to billow out with the syllable. Another cigarette in the case ignited. Qian Duoduo took it out and tucked it behind his ear. Zhao Meiyou noted the smoke curling from it was a deep teal.
In the next instant, Qian Duoduo shoved him off the building. Zhao Meiyou plummeted from the skyscraper, wind howling as an unseen current caught him like ocean waves, carrying him along an invisible river straight to somewhere in the city.
The moment Zhao Meiyou was swept away, Qian Duoduo must have lost his stealth. Countless searchlights converged on him. Every confused lifeform in the Site snapped to attention, surging toward him like a tidal wave. The wind was swift; Qian Duoduo vanished from sight almost immediately. All Zhao Meiyou saw in the distance was a burst of flames, like fireworks.
Diao Chan had apparently left the underground during their escape. The wind twisted left and right, weaving Zhao Meiyou past countless buildings before dumping him onto an elevated highway.
The road spiraled up around a colossal bronze statue hundreds of meters tall. He landed right at the statue’s forehead, where the eyes had been hollowed out to house a Hamburger Shop.
Diao Chan sat at the shop’s entrance, a glass barrier at his back along the highway’s edge. He was eating a burger. Zhao Meiyou knew there had to be pickles inside—close enough to count as a cucumber sandwich.
As for his obsession with cucumber sandwiches, it stemmed from the day they met, back when they were sixteen.
On the day the holographic mother’s self-destruct program activated, her distraught son played an entire piece on the piano before collapsing over the keys, dry-heaving. That was when Zhao Meiyou realized Diao Chan had some kind of block with expressing emotions—maybe a flaw in the cloned genome. The retching echoed through the vast hall like boiling stomach acid and blood, or a massive meat grinder roaring as it pulverized organs. The sound was downright agonized, on the verge of death.
But after listening for ages, Zhao Meiyou suddenly realized: this guy was crying.
And he nailed it. For Diao Chan, tears were more like vomit.
Diao Chan heaved for what felt like forever. Zhao Meiyou got bored and drowsy, finally asking if he was done crying and what he planned next.
He was still retching. Exhausted, Zhao Meiyou curled up in a corner and passed out.
When he woke, Diao Chan sat at the piano bench, his hands pitch-black and reeking of scorch. He cradled something in his lap.
What’s that? Zhao Meiyou walked over and asked.
Diao Chan didn’t answer right away. His fingers brushed the keys, leaving a sooty smear. “This piano broke once before,” he said. “I was young, obsessed with my things. I wouldn’t get a new one. Kept practicing on the busted keys—silent music every time.”
“Then one day, Mother had someone dismantle the old piano. She made me pick parts from it, then installed those old pieces into a new one.”
“She said new things carry the marks of the past, and the old gets reborn.”
Zhao Meiyou listened quietly. Then Diao Chan turned to stare at him. “Did you think the same when you ate your father?”
It took Zhao Meiyou a minute to parse that twisted logic. He shook his head. “By that reasoning, I should’ve eaten my mom. She always said I devoured most of her while she was alive—no need for seconds after death.”
He eyed Diao Chan with fresh curiosity. “Asking that—what’s your angle?”
“If I were a mechanical Artificial Human, I’d install Mother’s parts into myself.” Diao Chan’s head was bowed, hair falling over his face; Zhao Meiyou couldn’t read his expression. He only heard: “Too bad clones have flesh bodies like humans.”
“I searched forever. Found this monitor in the basement.”
Zhao Meiyou finally saw it was a machine box—a holographic display terminal.
In a way, it really was his mother’s corpse.
Diao Chan set the terminal on the keys with a ding. Then he asked abruptly: “Got a pot?”
“Pork Shop has one,” Zhao Meiyou said. “What for?”
Diao Chan stroked the terminal’s casing. After a moment:
“I’m gonna boil it. And eat it.”
Back in the Lower District as Diao Chan wished, Zhao Meiyou tried mechanical cooking for the first time.
The display was top-shelf luxury; even with the core chip fried, the shell gleamed porcelain-smooth, warm and substantial to the touch—like thick, creamy fat. One slice released a sweet, fishy aroma. The circuit board gleamed like silver sinew. He yanked out the fiber optics, like ripping intestines and veins, hot juices coating his hands. Lingering current seeped through the liquid into his skin, sparking eerie shivers.
Any act of dismemberment stirs primal urges: cruelty, hunger, curiosity… Once sated, you see it anew—the tension between meat chunks, slick and glistening, inviting. That’s where beauty begins.
Beauty: tamed wild desire.
This was a fine cut of meat, Zhao Meiyou thought. That stark white mansion was undoubtedly the finest pasture imaginable—rich feed, perfect temperature, meticulous care. She had embraced every indulgence afforded to a pampered lady, transforming into the ideal livestock. Zhao Meiyou had heard how they raised pigs in the Middle Layer District—not lab-grown synthetic pork, but real animals nurtured over time, their final quality determined by the moment of death. Those pigs were euthanized gently, killed without pain, because fear soured the meat. A woman, without question, was the premium cut. She went to her end willingly, without terror—perhaps even with pleasure.
The ingredients made the meal, and Diao Chan was in for a feast.
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