Chapter 1029: Been a While

With her hearing sealed, Vermilion Bird rushed toward the humanoid weapon, using her superpower and activating the Red Scorpion from the maximal range of twenty meters, digitizing all her consciousness to infiltrate the weapon’s system.

The humanoid weapon shuddered before its head jerked up and its body stiffened, entering standby mode.

Vermilion Bird dropped to her knees with her head drooping, entering sleep.

The digitized Vermilion Bird knew she wouldn’t be able to dominate the humanoid weapon; instead, she wreaked havoc as a virus.

She roamed the cold city of data and brought destruction wherever she went, breaking down skyscrapers into countless chunks of scrambled code and scattering them.

Soon, she stopped and realized something was wrong.

Her head jerked up. Above was an identical, intact data city, hanging upside down like the reflection in a mirror.

Pzzt—

In the real world, Ronnie’s Disorientation persisted. He had to keep interfering with the humanoid weapon’s brain in order to cover for Vermilion Bird’s infiltration.

In three seconds, Vermilion Bird’s face became sheet pale. At the five-second mark, her nose started bleeding. Then ten seconds, blood was trickling down from a corner of her mouth, too.

“Aghh!”

Meanwhile, Gao Yang was still trying to make it to the car under the barrage of Disorientation.

It was less than ten meters, yet it felt like an arduous trek to heaven.

One.

Two.

Three...

Twelve steps.

Finally, Gao Yang reached the car. He yanked the door to the passenger seat open.

Thank God, it’s still alive!

The white cat curled up on the seat with its eyes squeezed shut and expression distorted in pain. It was hurt by Disorientation as well.

Don’t be scared. I’ll save you!

It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We’ll go home together...

Gao Yang reached out to the cat.

“Gah!”

Vermilion Bird suddenly opened her eyes, throwing up a mouthful of blood and collapsing to the ground.

Ring—

A powerful wave of energy exploded, throwing Gao Yang off his feet.

Face pressed against the ground with blood coming out of all her orifices, Vermilion Bird parted her lips and used all her strength to make the final command:

“Run.”

The humanoid weapon’s hologram mask stopped showing scrambled codes, but displayed the violently crimson “S”. It lowered its head slightly, seemingly noticing Gao Yang getting thrown away, and it concluded based on his action that there was something in the car that was important to the target. It was a hidden threat it must eliminate now.

Whoosh

. The humanoid weapon flew above the car. Backlit by the moonlight, it expanded its two wings slowly, which doubled in size and cut the artificial moon into countless patches of silver. The picture painted was grandiose, eerie, and ominous.

The wind stopped.

The humanoid weapon looked down at the prone Gao Yang. Its force field emerged once more, bringing its twin tails flying in the thickening air.

Gao Yang crawled up and reached out.

“No...no...”

Ring—

The force field around the humanoid weapon shrunk all of a sudden, concentrating beneath her feet.

Like a bedsheet getting lifted and shaken when making a bed, the ground fluctuated in the shape of an S, and Gao Yang, Vermilion Bird, and Ronnie flew up before landing heavily like bugs on the bedsheet.

When Gao Yang endured the pain and got back to his feet, his eyes widened.

The car below the humanoid weapon was gone. Only a crater was left.

More precisely, the car had been crushed into a flat piece of metal sheet no thicker than two millimeters by the tremendous power in a split second, embedded into the three-meter deep crater.

“No!” Gao Yang shouted, rushing toward the humanoid weapon.

An agile figure tackled Gao Yang to the ground. Lithe Snake.

“Let go! Let go...”

Gao Yang lost his composure and struggled. Lithe Snake slammed his face with a steel-like fist.

“I’ll slow it down!” Lithe Snake growled. “Take the others with you!”

“Cat...”

“There’s no cat!” Lithe Snake knocked Gao Yang down with another punch. “There’s never been a cat!”

“What...”

“It was only your imagination! We’ve been playing along!” Lithe Snake grabbed Gao Yang and hurled him toward Vermilion Bird.

Gao Yang flew.

In that short yet drawn-out two seconds, countless images flashed through his head.

Gao Yang sitting in the factory, staring at a pile of abandoned prosthetics like he had discovered something when there was nothing there.

Gao Yang getting his arm sliced off and tortured by Berserking Lion to an inhuman degree, yet he stared at Berserking Lion’s face, transfixed, like there was something attached to the man’s face.

Gao Yang, covered in blood and injuries, sitting amid the rubbles while holding onto nothing with one lone arm, like he was holding something precious. He smiled and kept saying, “Thank God...thank God...”

On the surgical bed, Gao Yang looking at nothing in his embrace, speaking gently, “Don’t be scared. You have a home now. You don’t have to wander around...”

There was no cat.

It was all his hallucination.

The cat was dead. Long gone.

It was all a dream. Yes, it was a dream. Nothing to be afraid of.

...

Gao Yang shook violently. His last remaining rationality forced him to stand up, stumbling toward Vermilion Bird.

“The cat never existed...”

Gao Yang helped Vermilion Bird up with difficulty, repeating in monotone, “The cat never existed...”

Light flashed behind him, piercing the corner of his eyes like a white needle.

Clack.

Two seconds later, something flew over and rolled to Gao Yang’s feet.

“The cat never existed...”

It was Lithe Snake’s head. His neck had been sliced clean, gushing and pooling blood. His eyes widened in terror, despair mixed with a hint of confusion. That was his expression in his dying moment.

“The cat never existed...”

Gao Yang continued to repeat as he turned around.

The humanoid weapon had landed. The white skeletal wings “melted” into about a dozen soft tentacles glowing a white light.

𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

It had converted highly concentrated energy into stable light it could wield, allowing it to easily slice and slice anything on a molecular level; cutting metal would be as easy as cutting butter.

It proved particularly effective in dealing with an agile, skillful melee fighter.

Such was the S-class weapon made with Cloudland leading the development and Closure and Spiritlife providing the technology. A regular augmented human couldn’t even compare.

There was no running away. None of them would escape.

This was a trap they were never going to get out of.

“The cat never existed...” Gao Yang continued to repeat the words like a lifeline holding his rational mind together.

He slowly laid Vermilion Bird down and looked at the humanoid weapon. “The cat never existed...”

When they were at eye level, Gao Yang suddenly realized that the humanoid weapon was small in frame, like a girl in her teenage years.

It didn’t immediately kill Gao Yang, but instead slowly walked up to him.

“The cat never existed, the cat never existed...” Gao Yang continued to drone where he stood.

The humanoid weapon stopped, speaking in a mechanical yet clear and innocent voice.

“When did you wake up, Brother?”

“The cat never...”

Gao Yang stopped.

The next second, the humanoid weapon’s mask was gone, revealing the fair face of a girl. Its eyes were large and ink-black, and it had a lovely heart-shaped face.

Although it was smiling, the smile looked eerie with nothing signifying its morality, and there was an indifference that seemed to stem from its hatred for everything.

“It” was Gao Yang’s sister, Gao Xinxin.