[System Loading...]
[Map resource download complete: Upper Realm · Neon Sky.]
[Current Location: Lower City · Fourth Electronic Waste Processing Plant.] The moment consciousness returned, Shen Qingqiu's first sensation was—acidity.
Not muscle soreness, but a pervasive, sour, putrid odor, a mixture of sulfur, ozone, and inferior synthetic nutrient paste.
Followed by cold.
Icy rain lashed her face, causing a slight stinging sensation.
Shen Qingqiu abruptly opened her eyes.
What met her eyes was not the familiar ruins of the imperial palace, nor the vast starry sky.
But a dizzying, bizarre, neon-lit abyss.
She was lying on a gigantic "mountain."
This was not a mountain of earth and stone, but a mountain of electronic corpses constructed from countless discarded mechanical prosthetics, broken screens, tangled cables, and rusted circuit boards.
The sky above was blocked by thick, leaden clouds, but this did not obscure the city's brightness. Countless holographic billboards floated in mid-air, massive beams of light piercing the rain, showering down a deluge of multicolored light pollution.
[Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance Prosthetic Clinic: Liver transplant, thirty years of life extension.]
[Ecstasy Pill: One pill to the soul, cyber ascension.]
[Wanted: Illegal hacker…] The Chinese characters twisted and flickered in the rain, reflected in Shen Qingqiu's dark pupils.
"Cyber…cultivation." Shen Qingqiu propped herself up, her hand pressing against a shattered screen. The screen lit up briefly, flashing a strange smiling face before going completely dark.
She looked down at her side.
Seventeen lay beside her.
In this filthy, chaotic, rust-smelling garbage mountain, he was as clean as a bug that shouldn't exist.
His body had changed.
No longer a mortal body, nor the cobbled-together mechanical shell of Fog City.
Now, he possessed a near-divine, perfect prosthetic body.
His skin had a cool, translucent white texture—top-grade biosynthetic silicone—with faint golden data light flowing beneath.
Long, silver-white hair cascaded across the black ruins like flowing mercury.
Most striking was his right arm.
The once ferocious "Xingtian Grip" had evolved into a streamlined, nano-black-gold arm. It was entirely black, without a single seam, only revealing its complex honeycomb structure when rain slid across it.
"Seventeen?" Shen Qingqiu reached out, his fingertips gently touching his cheek.
So cold.
Colder than ever before.
And…no breath.
[Warning: System restarting…Progress 99%…]
[Error: Hardware driver incompatible. Calibrating pain module.]
Seventeen's eyelashes fluttered violently.
He opened his eyes.
In that instant, Shen Qingqiu seemed to see a galaxy shatter.
Those were pure, unblemished purple eyes.
Deep within the pupils, countless streams of blue data were cascading down like a waterfall.
"Qing…Qiu…"
His voice was no longer produced by vibrations in his throat, but synthesized by a vocal unit located in his Adam's apple.
Magnetic, perfect, yet carrying a hint of electromagnetic noise from initial activation.
He tried to raise his hand to touch her.
But his nano-right arm only twitched slightly, emitting a buzzing electrical sound.
"Don't move." Shen Qingqiu immediately pressed down on his shoulder.
Her golden eyes instantly lit up, her gaze piercing through his skin, seeing the state within his body.
[Diagnosis: System latency too high. Motor neurons not connected.]
[Recommendation: Manual assisted guidance.]
"Your new body is too advanced; the network environment here is too poor, the driver loading is stuck." Shen Qingqiu knelt on the greasy garbage heap, completely unconcerned that her clothes, which had automatically transformed into a black tight-fitting leather suit (the system-adapted hacker outfit), were now soiled.
She reached out and cupped Seventeen's face in her hands.
Her forehead pressed against his.
"Seventeen, look at me."
"Don't worry about those messy agreements."
"I am your root directory."
Buzz— Their mental energies forcibly connected at that moment.
Shen Qingqiu, as the "administrator," bypassed the system's self-check process, injecting his bioelectric signals into Seventeen's body.
It was like injecting a burning soul into a cold machine.
Seventeen's purple pupils contracted sharply.
He felt it.
That familiar, warm, domineering consciousness flowed from his brow throughout his entire body.
[Connection established.]
[Pain System: Online.]
[Touch System: Online.]
He felt the coldness of the rain, the sharpness of the scrap metal beneath him, and even more so… the warmth of her fingertips.
"Qingqiu."
This time, his voice was much smoother, filled with deep longing.
His black and gold right arm finally rose, though still somewhat sluggish, it accurately gripped the back of her head, pressing her against him.
Amidst the neon lights and acid rain,
he kissed her.
There was no exchange of saliva, only the tingling sensation of electricity.
Shen Qingqiu felt as if her lips had touched a high-voltage current, a shiver running down her spine to the top of her head.
"Welcome back, my… Ready Player One." Seventeen released her, his purple eyes reflecting this bizarre world, finally settling on her face.
"It's… noisy here."
He frowned.
His super hearing system allowed him to hear all the noise within a ten-mile radius: the crackling of electricity, the hawking of holographic advertisements, the gunfire of a distant gang shootout, and… the greedy heartbeats of countless people.
"It is quite noisy." Shen Qingqiu stood up and pulled him along.
"And it seems we've run into some 'hospitable' locals right from the start."
She turned her head, looking down at the garbage mountain.
In the shadows of those massive, abandoned shipping containers, several furtive figures were rapidly approaching.
They were five gang thugs, their entire bodies clad in cheap prosthetics.
Some had rusty chainsaws as arms, others had cheap infrared sensors for eyes, and still others had springs with reversed joints.
"Hey, look what we found!"
The leader, half his face covered in metal plates, chewed on a gleaming betel nut.
"Two top-quality chickens who just 'fell' from up there?"
They stared greedily at Seventeen's perfect prosthetic body and Shen Qingqiu's naturally beautiful face, a sight unparalleled in the Lower City.
"We'll dismantle the guy and sell the parts. That model of prosthetic can buy a sea-view apartment on the black market!"
"The girl… hehe, we'll keep her as a 'power bank' for the brothers." Seventeen's body, which had just regained its footing, tensed instantly.
The gentleness vanished from his purple eyes in an instant, replaced by extreme indifference and killing intent.
He took a step forward, blocking Shen Qingqiu's path.
His black-gold right arm, though not fully calibrated, already emitted five eerie blue plasma blades from its fingertips.
"Seventeen, conserve your power."
Shen Qingqiu patted his shoulder, his tone languid.
"Your system isn't fully updated yet. These low-level fry don't need your weapons."
"Then…" Seventeen turned his head, somewhat confused.
"Use your eyes." Shen Qingqiu pointed to his eyes, then to the thugs.
"The prosthetics here are all connected to the internet. As long as they're connected, they can… hack." Seventeen understood.
As the highest-level AI, he was a walking virus repository.
He turned to look at the thugs who had already rushed at him.
He made no move.
But within his purple pupils, countless data streams accelerated instantly, finally transforming into a high-frequency interference wave invisible to the naked eye. [Target locked: Cheap prosthetic control chip.]
[Attack method: Logical deadlock.]
[Command: Overload self-destruct.]
"Go! Take that guy's leg off... uh?"
The leader of the thugs suddenly stopped.
He felt his prosthetic arm getting hot, like a red-hot branding iron.
"What's going on? My hand... it's not obeying me?"
"Boss! My eyes! My eyes are on fire!"
Sizzle—Boom!
Like a chain reaction.
Black smoke simultaneously billowed from the prosthetics of the five thugs.
Immediately afterwards, the chainsaw jammed and reversed, severing its owner's thigh; the infrared sensor overheated and exploded, blasting half his face apart; the spring-loaded leg went out of control and slammed him into a pile of garbage.
"Aaaaaahhhhhh—!!!" Screams rose and fell.
Less than three seconds.
The once-aggressive robbery gang was now a group of crippled writhing writhing on the ground.
Seventeen withdrew his gaze, the flow of data in his eyes subsiding.
He glanced at the carnage on the ground with disdain.
"The firewall... is too fragile."
"It can't even withstand one-thousandth of my computing power."
"Let's go." Shen Qingqiu took his hand and led him over the still-twitching bodies.
"It's not safe here. We need to find a place to do a deep optimization of your system."
...The rain intensified.
The two traversed the intricate mountain of garbage, finally finding temporary shelter in a giant abandoned shipping container.
The container was dry and dimly lit, with only a few discarded electronic components piled in a corner.
Shen Qingqiu had Seventeen sit on the ground.
She rummaged through the garbage and found a few data cables that weren't completely broken, and a barely usable old battery.
"The conditions are basic, but we'll have to make do for now."
Shen Qingqiu skillfully peeled back the insulation from the data cables and twisted the copper wires together.
"Seventeen, turn around, expose the back of your neck." Seventeen obediently turned around, tossing his silver hair behind his ear. At the back of his neck, at the top of his spine, was a hidden data interface. It was the lifeline of all cybernetic beings in this world, the entrance to their souls.
Shen Qingqiu sat cross-legged behind him.
She didn't have an interface (because she was mortal), but she possessed golden eyes and mental power.
She plugged one end of the data cable into Seventeen's interface, holding the other end in her palm.
"Bear with it, it might feel a little numb."
Buzz— The mental link reactivated.
This time, it wasn't just an exchange of consciousness, but a sharing of vision.
Shen Qingqiu closed her eyes.
On her retina, the world seen through Seventeen's eyes began to appear.
It was a world filled with data annotations, thermal imaging, and logical lines.
"So beautiful…" Shen Qingqiu couldn't help but exclaim.
In Seventeen's vision, the neon lights outside were no longer light pollution, but flowing rivers of energy. The rain was no longer acid rain, but dancing musical notes.
Even this dilapidated shipping container was automatically rendered by his system into a glowing fortress.
"Qingqiu." Seventeen's voice echoed in her mind.
"Hmm?"
"Look." Seventeen raised her hand, pointing to the broken roof of the container.
A sliver of neon light from the outside world shone down, illuminating the two of them.
Under Seventeen's **[Artistic Rendering Module]**,
that sliver of light was broken down into countless tiny, luminous particles. They danced and swirled in the air, finally converging into a dazzling galaxy.
"Stars," Seventeen said.
"Although there's no real sky here, I can create a starry sky for you…" Shen Qingqiu opened her eyes, looking at the holographic starry sky before her, constructed of data, belonging only to the two of them.
The particles even pulsed with her breath, beautiful as a dream.
She reached out, wanting to touch the points of light.
Seventeen also reached out, her black and gold mechanical hand passing through the points of light, intertwining her fingers with hers.
In this cold, filthy, hostile cyber slum.
In this abandoned iron box. They possessed the entire universe.
"Seventeen." Shen Qingqiu leaned against his back, feeling the slight vibration from his metal spine.
"In this world, I have no household registration, no money, not even a decent prosthetic body."
"I only have you." Seventeen turned and embraced her.
His purple eyes shimmered with a gentle light in the darkness.
"That's enough."
"You are my administrator."
"As long as you are here, my system will never crash."
He lowered his head and kissed away the raindrops clinging to her eyelashes.
"Sleep, Master."
"Tonight, I am your firewall." Outside the window, neon lights flickered, desire flowed freely.
And inside this small shipping container, two lonely souls, in this torrent of data, found each other's anchor.