“Do you like animals?” Lin Qiuge asked.
Lu Pei replied, “Animals like me.”
Ever since he was a child, Lu Pei had been accosted and followed around by countless stray cats and dogs, as though they had all decided to claim him as their own. At his middle school, there had been a freely roaming tabby cat with a particularly ferocious fighting spirit. Many students had received scratches from the cat’s claws yet whenever it saw Lu Pei, it would voluntarily approach him and stretch lazily in front of him.
Lu Xun, on the other hand, was his complete opposite. Whenever he approached, small animals would immediately run away and even flowers and plants seemed to bow their heads at the sight of him.
Lin Qiuge said, “Then let’s go to the next floor.”
There was actually another floor below them.
The two followed Lin Qiuge into the elevator. Judging by the buttons, the facility had three floors in total and each floor occupied an area of at least five or six hundred square meters. The sheer scale of the place was beyond anything they could have imagined.
“This place used to be the old site of the Underground Academy of Sciences. It only needed a few minor renovations before it could be put to use,” Lin Qiuge explained, evidently understanding Lu Pei’s confusion. “My grandfather left me an inheritance and the boss, along with a few of my friends, also provides me with financial support.”
Even if the premises had practically cost him nothing, the funding required for scientific research was certainly no small amount.
His surname was Lin…
The holding group behind Pseudo Tech was known as the Lin Consortium, one of the Alliance’s super rich families.
Lu Pei asked in astonishment, “Your grandfather… could he be Lin Dongping?”
Lin Qiuge replied, “Yes.”
Lu Pei was stunned. “Then why are you living in the Underground District?”
The Lin Consortium remained firmly established, its position showing no signs of collapse. Even an illegitimate child from one of the family’s most distant branches shouldn’t have been reduced to working as a low ranking pharmacist in an underground hospital.
“You should have heard about Pseudo Tech’s ‘Key’ incident,” Lin Qiuge said.
“Yes,” Lu Pei replied.
Pseudo Tech was a company dedicated to promoting brain chip technology. Its advertising slogans had been extravagant to the point of absurdity. The company claimed that its chips could fully unlock the brain’s potential and dramatically enhance people’s learning and thinking abilities. By using bioelectricity to modify the human body, they would also be able to eliminate a wide range of diseases. From that point onward, people would no longer need to fear contamination. They could simply walk out of the city and obtain complete freedom.
In short, they had made promises so grandiose that they had practically blown their own claims into the heavens.
Naturally, such wonderful technology had been met with widespread anticipation. Pseudo Tech’s stock prices had continued to rise for three consecutive years.
Then, amid the company’s booming success, the shocking ‘Key Scandal’ erupted and sent shock waves throughout the Alliance.
Pseudo Tech had secretly embedded an additional key command into its chips. Through the company’s central control terminal, it could issue arbitrary commands to anyone using the technology at any time.
In other words, the company could immediately order a person to commit suicide.
Although Pseudo Tech promptly announced that the command was actually a safety protection measure, the public refused to believe its explanation. The company’s plans to popularize brain computer chips consequently collapsed.
“I was the one who contacted the media and exposed the story,” Lin Qiuge explained. “I was kicked out of the family. They told me to take my inheritance and get lost and that I would never be allowed to return to the surface for the rest of my life.”
Lu Pei assessed the situation objectively. “The fact that you’re still alive right now is already a miracle.”
As they spoke, the elevator descended two floors before its doors slid open to either side.
A precisely calibrated ‘breeze’ swept across Lu Pei’s face, carrying with it the fresh scents of grass, leaves and soil.
Sunlight, flowing water, animals…
What lay before them was actually a small ecological garden.
On the grass, a black and white striped animal was chewing on tree bark. It raised its head and looked toward them.
Lu Pei was startled. “A zebra?”
Lin Qiuge answered, “Yes.”
Zebras were now classified as potentially contaminated animals and were prohibited from entering the city. Lu Pei had only ever seen them in illustrations.
He cautiously approached the zebra. Its mane, extending from the center of its ears to the middle of its neck, was also striped black and white, resembling a toothbrush.
The zebra looked back at Lu Pei, lowered its head and took another bite of grass.
Chew, chew, chew.
Chew, chew, chew.
Lu Pei asked, “Can I touch it?”
Lin Qiuge replied, “Of course. Its name is Millimeter and it has a gentle temperament.”
The moment Lu Pei approached, the zebra suddenly retreated. Its hooves repeatedly stamped against the ground as it adopted a posture that looked as though it were preparing to attack yet seemed even more like a frightened animal desperately pretending to be intimidating.
Before Lu Pei could react, the zebra suddenly snorted and bolted away at full speed.
Lu Pei stared after it in disbelief. “It’s actually afraid of me?”
“Yes,” Yuan Que answered.
Lu Pei shot him a sidelong glance. Yuan Que was standing just two steps behind him.
He felt as though he had solved the mystery.
The zebra ran to a tree not far away, lowered its head and began vigorously devouring the small red fruits growing beside the roots.
“Those are ‘dream fruits,’ the primary raw material used to produce psilocybin. They have sedative, calming and hallucinogenic effects,” Lin Qiuge explained. “Millimeter was frightened by the two of you.”
Lu Pei asked, “Since you’ve managed to grow the raw material yourself, why don’t you try synthesizing psilocybin on your own?”
Lin Qiuge answered honestly, “I tried. I failed. That’s why I want the original solution.”
Lu Pei asked, “And what do you plan to do after that?”
Lin Qiuge replied, “I want to find a way to deactivate psilocybin.”
“Why?”
Lin Qiuge answered without the slightest hesitation, “For the sake of free will.”
Free will was itself a questionable proposition. When people lived within a particular ideological framework, the choices made by the vast majority of them were predictable to a considerable extent. Nevertheless, Lu Pei had no intention of debating the matter with Lin Qiuge. There was no point in doing so.
“Good,” Lu Pei said. “I support you.”
He tossed the two sampling tubes toward Lin Qiuge. Startled, Lin Qiuge hurriedly gathered the hem of his clothes to catch them.
Once he had secured both tubes, he examined them carefully before taking a detector resembling a temperature gun out of his pocket. He pointed it at the sampling tubes and pressed the button.
Beep.
The liquid crystal display turned green.
Lu Pei asked, “What’s that?”
Lin Qiuge replied, “A composition detector. It also reacts to dream fruits. You can try it yourself.”
Lu Pei told Yuan Que to remain where he was before walking alone toward the tree roots. He aimed the detector at the small cluster of dream fruits growing there.
Without a certain someone following behind him, the zebra grazing on fruit nearby was indeed no longer afraid. At that moment, a squirrel suddenly darted down from the tree and jumped onto the small clump of shrubs.
“Beep, beep.”
The squirrel’s fluffy tail partially blocked the detector’s sensing port and the liquid crystal display turned red.
The squirrel, which had gotten in the way, dropped a brown object, chirped twice, “Chirp, chirp!” and ran off.
“What the hell is this…?”
Lu Pei picked up the object and couldn’t help laughing helplessly when he realized what it was.
It was a pine cone.
Why was something even feeding him now?
The attack on Sunny Hospital had ultimately amounted to much ado about nothing.
Both the attackers and the injured patients involved in the incident were people working under Wen Tiannan. Although the incident had caused a terrible public backlash, the injured parties had all made the same decision to settle the matter privately. After a series of administrative procedures, the ringleader responsible for the incident received a sentence of only six months.
For people in their line of work, going to prison was practically an everyday occurrence. They could come and go as easily as if they were returning home.
The incident ended with Zhou Zu and the pharmaceutical company suffering defeat. One side had taken a serious blow and failed to carry out its intended revenge, while the other was completely overwhelmed by public condemnation.
According to everyone’s expectations, Zhou Zu should have remained inactive for quite some time, regrouping and preparing to rebuild the smuggling routes that Lu Xun had destroyed.
However, just two weeks later, Laughing Forgetfulness Water unexpectedly began circulating among various black market dealers. Some people even brought the merchandise to the Echo Tavern to conduct transactions, infuriating Wen Tiannan so much that he gave the two men involved a severe beating.
“How on earth is Zhou Zu smuggling the stuff in?”
Wei Lang was completely baffled. He wasn’t the only one who found the situation incomprehensible; everyone else had been wondering the same thing.
“It’s one thing that he had someone backing him before but that official has already fallen from power and the situation is so tense right now. The official checkpoints and all the various back routes are being inspected much more strictly. Even the pharmaceutical company is cracking down on private smuggling. How is Zhou Zu still managing to bring the goods down here?”
Lu Pei replied, “It’s not surprising. Wherever there’s money to be made, there are plenty of ways to get around the rules.”
Every aspect of the Alliance’s administration was riddled with holes, like a sieve full of gaps. In theory, they were living in a civilized society. There shouldn’t have been any need for criminal organizations to exist yet the Underground District still resembled a land divided among rival feudal lords, with several factions carving up territories and claiming their own domains.
It was practically a return to the days of ancient Earth.
Of course, the same was true of the surface. The only difference was that the criminal organizations up there had more respectable sounding names. They were generally called this or that corporation.
Recently, the organization had also been experiencing some unrest. According to rumors, several people had been poisoned one after another and their deaths had been extremely suspicious. Within a mere half month, three people had died from poisoning, all of them succumbing to organ failure.
The incident sparked a great deal of discussion. Everyone suspected that Zhou Zu had sent people to poison them as a deliberate act of revenge but there was no direct evidence to prove it.
Lu Pei, meanwhile, had nothing to do with any of it. He was content to live his peaceful little life on his own.
His daily routine was remarkably simple: eating, reading, wandering around, watching television, ordering Yuan Que to do chores, heading to the tavern for a little something to drink and teaching Yuan Que how to recognize written characters.
The last two activities usually went hand in hand. Whenever Lu Pei went to the tavern to drink some technological fruit juice and read the newspapers, he would bring Yuan Que along to study.
During the daytime, Jiang Gelei was generally responsible for looking after the shop, while Jiang Nina sat beside the bar counter doing her homework. She had accumulated a whole pile of questions and was waiting for Lin Qiuge to finish work so she could ask him about them.
Lu Pei remarked, “Nina has already reached the third volume of advanced mathematics. What about you?”
Yuan Que asked, “What tree?”
Lu Pei replied, “A very tall tree. The kind that’s suitable for hanging yourself.”
Yuan Que was an exceptionally terrible student, practically a legendary disaster in the history of education. Everything around him was more interesting than the contents of a book.
Jiang Gelei was combing Jiang Nina’s hair, parting it evenly on both sides and braiding it into two plaits before tying them together into a single bundle.
Seeing this, Yuan Que decided to imitate her. He ran his fingers through Lu Pei’s hair, gathered the longer ends that had grown out, twisted them into a small braid and secured it by wrapping a thin, colorful elastic band around it.
“Stop playing with my hair,” Lu Pei said. “Do your writing.”
Yuan Que replied, “She does it.”
He was referring to Gelei and Nina. Lu Pei glanced at the two sisters and explained, “They’re sisters.”
Yuan Que thought about that for a moment before saying, “You can call me big brother.”
Lu Pei stared at him as though he had lost his mind. “Are you sick?! No way!”
“I’ll be your big brother,” Yuan Que insisted.
“No, I already have a big brother.”
“Your brother is weak. Replace him with me,” Yuan Que suggested, presenting his argument as though it were perfectly reasonable. “I’m better than him.”
Lu Pei was rendered speechless for a moment. “Even if you’re better than him, that doesn’t make it okay! I’m not replacing him.”
To think that someone would refuse such an obviously advantageous offer! People from the surface really were stupid. They were stubborn by nature and refused to listen to reason.
Yuan Que was displeased. He became even less cooperative and his learning progress slowed to a crawl, advancing at roughly the speed of a tortoise.
Yuan Que copied a few four character idioms twenty times each yet he still couldn’t remember them.
Lu Pei had no choice but to teach him exactly as he would teach an elementary school student. He took hold of Yuan Que’s hand and guided him through each stroke, one by one.
Yuan Que’s palm was a full circle larger than Lu Pei’s. Consequently, even though Lu Pei was the one doing the teaching, Yuan Que ended up loosely enclosing his hand within his own, feeling the movement of Lu Pei’s pen strokes as they moved across the paper.
Since both of them were right handed, their hands overlapped as they held the pen together. Yuan Que had to drape his arm around Lu Pei’s shoulder to guide his hand properly, leaving them in a position that was almost indistinguishable from him holding Lu Pei in his arms.
Yuan Que could feel the small, soft mass moving slightly within the loose enclosure of his cupped hand.
So it really is a cloud? He began pondering the question again. What would it smell like?
The crown of Lu Pei’s head rested against his chin. All he had to do was turn his head slightly to see a face gazing intently at him. Lu Pei’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, giving him an impression of complete concentration and seriousness.
Lu Pei asked, “Have you memorized it?”
Yuan Que replied, “Mm.” Smells so good.
Lu Pei turned the paper over and asked him to write the words from memory. Yuan Que produced a string of incomprehensible nonsense, failing so spectacularly that he might as well have written an entirely different language.
Lu Pei had no choice but to make Yuan Que hold his hand again and rewrite the words, hoping that this time, he would manage to remember the strokes.
After they finished writing them once more, Lu Pei turned his head and, sure enough, found Yuan Que wearing that same serious expression again.
Lu Pei asked, “Have you learned it?”
Yuan Que replied, “Mm.”
Lu Pei asked, “What are you thinking about?”
Yuan Que answered, “Thinking about smelling you.”
Lu Pei: “????”
Lu Pei was driven to the brink of madness. “You’re getting distracted again! You’re not studying at all!”
“I am,” Yuan Que insisted.
He curled his fingers around Lu Pei’s hand and held it in place, then wrote those words on the paper from memory. Every single character was reproduced without the slightest deviation, including the incorrect stroke order. He could even imitate Lu Pei’s handwriting.
Yuan Que said, “Simple.”
Lu Pei exclaimed, “Excellent! You’re actually quite clever after all. Let’s learn the next one.”
He withdrew his hand and found a news headline for Yuan Que to copy. The headline contained twelve characters. Yuan Que copied it character by character, reproducing the original text in a one to one imitation yet somehow managed to produce seven incorrect characters.
Lu Pei stared at the result. “Take a look at what the hell you’ve written!”
Yuan Que replied, “Difficult.”
Lu Pei: “??”
Yuan Que said, “Teach me.”
He stuffed the pen into Lu Pei’s hand, covering the back of Lu Pei’s hand with his own fingers. The pad of his finger brushed against the raised knuckles beneath Lu Pei’s skin.
That was soft, too.
Lu Pei suspected that Yuan Que was deliberately pretending to be stupid. However, he also felt that he couldn’t afford to overestimate the academic capabilities of an illiterate person.
While he was still struggling with this dilemma, You Rulan walked into the tavern and greeted them casually. “Hi, Ruby, Yuan Que. Long time no see.”
“Boss You,” Lu Pei greeted him. “Where have you been making your fortune lately?”
You Rulan’s smile immediately turned into a bitter one. “I haven’t been making any money. Something happened, actually. One of my men is dead.”
Lu Pei asked, “How did he die?”
“He was driving along a winding mountain road when the vehicle went over the edge. Both the man and the car fell down the mountainside,” You Rulan explained. “He was a dedicated delivery driver and that day had been an ordinary afternoon. The sunlight was bright and there was no fog or sandstorm. For an accident like this to happen under such conditions is downright bizarre. The drink he had consumed seemed to have been the problem… Here, look through the newspaper. If it’s today’s edition, there should be a report about it somewhere.”
Lu Pei flipped through the newspapers lying beside him and, sure enough, found an article reporting the incident.
The headline read: West City, Nüwa Mountain Road: Cargo Driver Dies After Vehicle Plunges Down Mountain.
The report was largely consistent with what You Rulan had described. It speculated that the driver had consumed an expired beverage, which had caused him to suffer such severe abdominal pain that he became distracted while driving, ultimately resulting in the accident.
The accompanying photograph showed a winding mountain road. It looked familiar to Lu Pei and the location was in the western part of the city.
Lu Pei pointed at the photograph. “Yuan Que, isn’t this the road we drove along before?”
Yuan Que answered, “We did.”
Lu Pei asked, “The day we ran away?”
“Mm.”
On the day they escaped from the mining site, they had engaged in a high speed chase along that very mountain road with Mammoth’s men pursuing them from behind.
Lu Pei read the news report word by word before asking, “Do you remember which lap it was when the vehicle chasing us from behind went over the edge?”
Yuan Que thought for a few seconds before replying, “Probably the sixth lap.”
The report clearly contained the words ‘the cargo truck crashed through the guardrail on the southern side of the sixth level.’
“Oh…” Lu Pei bit down on his straw.
This was a deliberate accident. An innocent person had been killed, all to send a warning to him and Yuan Que.
Were the three other victims who had died from poisoning also connected to Zhou Zu?
The spoiler narration suddenly became animated.
【Objection! Lu Pei has finally noticed the clues! Faced with Zhou Zu’s blatant, repeated provocations, how will he strike back?】
【Can he win? Will he take the challenge?】
Lu Pei couldn’t help cursing at the narration. “Get lost! Just go away!”
Yuan Que immediately rolled the writing notebook and draft paper into a ball, stood up and asked, “Food?”
Lu Pei: “…Get back here!”