Answer

"Gate destroyed, A-009 escaped."

"Repeating: Gate destroyed, A-009 escaped."

On the night the alarm sounded, some people in Da Teng City were destined to lose sleep.

Wei Shu stared at the dozens of flickering screens in the emergency Conference Room, his expression taut. The urgent report clenched in his hand had been crumpled into layer upon layer of wrinkles.

The veins on his forehead bulged as he slammed both fists against the console. Unable to understand, he demanded, "How was the gate breached? There were so many guards in the prison—how did A-009 escape?"

"Da Teng City had only taken over A-009 three days ago, and there's already been a prison break. The emergency report says the destroyed gate was caused by a Deep Sea Network issue... but how could Deep Sea malfunction?"

Wei Shu turned to look behind him. "No matter what, it has already escaped. Ms. Nan Jin, you were the officer responsible for escorting A-009. You should know very well... how dangerous that thing will be once it gets loose, right? We need to contain it again as quickly as possible!"

At the entrance to the Conference Room stood a woman with long red hair, dressed in an oversized black trench coat. Her hands were behind her head as she wound up her hair.

She did not answer Wei Shu. Instead, she calmly watched the flickering screens.

Dozens of staff members were each responsible for a screen. Every screen had been divided into dozens of sections, showing all surveillance footage from the gate to the containment city. Yet no one had found anything unusual... After the alarm announcing the gate's destruction had gone out, A-009 seemed to have vanished into thin air. This surveillance network could capture the trace of a mosquito flying past, yet it could not capture a single strand of A-009's hair.

Nan Jin slowly wound up her hair.

Her eyes turned black and vacant. At the same time, the light from dozens of screens and hundreds of surveillance feeds suddenly slowed in her vision.

A-009 had not truly disappeared.

It did not possess an ability such as teleportation. It was simply too fast—so fast that ordinary staff like these could not catch its movement trajectory without slowing the footage down.

Noticing the change in the light in Nan Jin's eyes, Wei Shu raised a hand with a grave expression, signaling the operators to keep quiet and not disturb her observation.

The entire Conference Room fell silent.

At last, Nan Jin locked onto one screen. In a view slowed by nearly twenty times, A-009's shadow appeared. It was like the gloom cast by a flock of crows; even looking at it made one's heart feel oppressed.

The woman's gaze moved slowly from one screen to the next, tracing a winding escape route across the map in her mind.

As she stared, two trails of clear tears slowly flowed from her vacant eyes.

"It was last seen on... Light Rail Line 13. The train has a long stretch left, so it can't get off." The trench-coated woman checked the time and said softly, "If I take a shortcut, I can intercept it at the tunnel exit."

Wei Shu had already been waiting by the console himself. The moment he heard "Line 13," he immediately pulled up surveillance footage from several main roads along the route and slowed it down. Sure enough, he saw that ghostlike shadow... After smashing through the gate and escaping, it had fled toward the outskirts of Da Teng City.

"You want to stop it alone?" Wei Shu frowned. "Capturing an A-class fugitive is no small matter. I suggest you ask Mr. Shu for help immediately."

"There's no time. Teacher is busy... If you can guarantee backup, I can handle this." Nan Jin looked at Wei Shu and asked coldly, "Besides, can you afford to wait? If we miss this chance, who knows when we'll be able to lock onto it again?"

This woman was sharp.

Wei Shu's expression darkened. She was right... This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They could not let it go so easily.

And judging by the situation, A-009 was determined to escape Da Teng City. After tonight, tracking it down would be like looking for a needle in the sea.

"Then... move out! As long as you can stop A-009, I'll guarantee sufficient backup!"

Wei Shu made up his mind, feeling slightly relieved at the same time. Fortunately, it was Line 13... At this hour, no one would ride a light rail bound for such remote suburbs.

"Wait... what's that?"

"Zoom in."

"Zoom in again."

Wei Shu suddenly spotted a black dot racing through the final surveillance feed.

At the same time, black lines seemed to appear across his forehead... After the footage was enlarged, he could vaguely make out a boy of around seventeen or eighteen sprinting all the way and boarding the last train just before the light rail doors closed.

Which unlucky bastard was that?

"..." Wei Shu looked at Nan Jin. "Can he still be saved?"

The trench-coated woman fell silent.

"Line 13 passes through a very long tunnel. He'll be alone with A-009 for at least... twenty minutes." Nan Jin looked down at her watch and delivered a deadpan joke. "By the time I get there, he should still be warm."

Wei Shu's expression was complicated. He had read the files and knew exactly what spending twenty minutes with A-009 meant.

If the boy was still warm, that would already be good enough.

He offered a moment of silence for the boy.

Then he composed himself, took a deep breath, and cast those stray thoughts aside. The most important thing now was directing the upcoming containment operation. He had chosen to gamble everything; there was no turning back. A-009 had to be successfully contained tonight to minimize the losses...

"Connect to Deep Sea. Open the permissions. I need assistance."

Wei Shu's voice echoed through the control room.

When he mentioned Deep Sea, the person in charge could not help but look grave. The emergency report submitted from the rear believed that A-009's escape had been caused by a malfunction in Deep Sea's operations.

Wei Shu could not fully believe that report.

Deep Sea, the massive network spanning and linking the entire Eastern Continent, had operated tightly and flawlessly for over twenty years. Across millions of past incident calculations, it had completed every task perfectly, never once making an error... This time, he would rather believe it was a false report from the staff. There were always false reports every year, and they were always later proven to be human error.

The giant screen dimmed, displaying a loading image of waves crashing and washing across the display. The loading effect in the lower-right corner was strangely retro. Looking closely, one could see it was a blurry girl made of mosaic pixels, running in place over the sand on a beach.

Wei Shu tapped his fingers and waited patiently.

At last, the room brightened, and a crisp, pleasant, gentle voice sounded in the control room.

"Deep Sea connected... Serial number V349708069527. It is my pleasure to serve you."

The lights were dim.

The train jolted.

This light rail was a long snake charging toward the end of a shattered night.

And Gu Shen was inside the snake's belly. He saw the Tall Woman's eyes. They were utterly unlike those of an ordinary person: two snake-like vertical pupils glowing red, slender as swords.

The woman's voice echoed through the empty light rail car.

"Yes... Clearly, you touched it."

Gu Shen's reply came right after. Cold sweat seeped from his forehead, and his voice trembled, but his mind had never been clearer.

One hand touched the ruler; the other tightened around the blade.

The tall woman in formal dress paused, seeming somewhat disappointed.

She hesitated for a moment, then politely pressed on. "Then... why?"

In the dim, blazing light, Gu Shen fixed his gaze on the old bloodstained newspaper in front of the woman's knees. He tried to see its contents, but the lighting was too dark.

Gu Shen laughed softly. "Madam... forgive me for saying so, but not everything can be perfectly embodied in concrete form. Yet when we touch a greater domain, what we possess can only be more than we imagine. Between 3 and 4 already lies infinity."

The red glow in the Tall Woman's snake-like pupils flickered faintly.

Her lips moved, as though she had smiled.

At the sight of that smile, Gu Shen's scalp went numb. Maintaining what he considered a safe distance, he slowly edged closer. The oppressive feeling hanging over his heart had yet to disperse.

He had no doubt that a single wrong sentence—or even a single wrong word—would trigger the condition for this formally dressed woman to draw her knife.

So he could only remain silent and, in the quiet of that silence, slowly approach her.

That newspaper was his only source of information about her. If he could see it, perhaps it would help.

But the woman merely breathed out two words. "Continue."

"...π is an infinite, non-repeating constant. That means it has endless precision, and on a ruler of finite precision, there is no point that can mark π."

As Gu Shen spoke, trying to steady her, he slowly crouched down. In the cramped space, he looked up at the Tall Woman. This statement seemed to anger her. The smile at her lips vanished in an instant, and her gaze turned as cold as a snake's.

She gripped the Bone Scraper, and an icy wind swept through the entire light rail car.

At that very moment, Gu Shen saw the newspaper trembling in the wind, along with scarlet words written in blood... It was a string of numerical symbols and proof formulas.

They looked familiar.

Where had he seen them before?

His mind raced wildly.

Gu Shen recalled the scene when he had first seen the woman. She had been reading the newspaper then... with an utterly enraptured expression.

So that was it. So that was it.

"Even so, I still believe that between 3 and 4, π can be touched."

Gu Shen looked up, his voice somewhat hoarse.

"Madam... as for the reason, you and I both know it, don't we?"

"Alan Turing."

When Gu Shen spoke that name, the Tall Woman's body visibly trembled.

She stared at Gu Shen in astonishment.

Yes, Gu Shen had found the "answer"... The woman had asked him to continue not because she wanted to hear the proof, but because she sought a shared aspiration.

The dense mathematical symbols and proof formulas on that newspaper pointed to the very object of the Tall Woman's fanatical worship.

What she wanted to hear was merely that name.

Alan Turing.

That famous great man who had created the Deep Sea Network—few knew that he was also a mathematician. And in the realm of mathematics, π could easily be touched within the set between 3 and 4.

In the realm of physics, however, π seemed like a nonexistent imaginary number, impossible to touch and even less possible to represent with a scale.

Once that name was spoken.

The cold wind in the light rail suddenly died.

The flickering lights seemed to go out with it.

The woman's expression softened. She extended a hand, seemingly intending to help Gu Shen up, but a ruler slid from her sleeve—the Silver Ruler she had measured with earlier.

Gu Shen froze, then instinctively reached out and took the ruler.

The next moment—

The two people connected through the ruler separated.

The light rail emerged from the tunnel.

A howling gale poured down from above, and weightlessness suddenly struck. Gu Shen was thrown uncontrollably through the air, still gripping the ruler as he slammed hard onto the ground.

Thud!

Gu Shen's expression changed. He heard a dull impact, as if some heavy object had crashed brutally onto the light rail car. Above his head, a pair of clearly visible footprints had been stamped into the roof—

Countless sparks and electric arcs burst forth.

Amid piercing, shrill roaring, a long blade pierced diagonally through the car's metal shell, striking the Tall Woman in formal dress precisely through the shoulder like a nail and pinning her firmly against one side of the car.

Then a second blade plunged into the roof. Its edge spun like it was cutting paper, tearing away a huge section of metal roofing. A red-haired woman in a large trench coat stepped on the falling sheet of metal and crashed down.

Nan Jin landed directly in front of Gu Shen.

She narrowed her eyes, glanced back at the boy sitting on the floor behind her while clutching his clothes, and calmly reported.

"Wei Shu... that unlucky bastard is still alive."

Unlucky bastard was not a bad title. At least it was fitting... Gu Shen bared his teeth, hugging an iron railing to steady himself. That fall had hurt like hell; it felt as though his ass had split into eight pieces.

Right now, aside from pain, all he felt was dizziness.

He carefully tucked the ruler against his chest, hiding it inside his clothes. To his surprise, the Silver Ruler felt cool to the touch, making him exceptionally clearheaded.

Meanwhile, the woman in black formal dress pinned to the side of the car was enraged. She reached out and grabbed the long blade Nan Jin had driven into her body, wanting to pull it free.

Hiss—

The moment her five fingers touched the blade, it burst into flames, and blazing silver light illuminated the entire car!

The woman shrieked in pain and had no choice but to release it.

The silver blade burned with intense Light Fire, but the flames were rapidly dimming—

Clearly, time was limited.

But Nan Jin did not attack. Instead, she chose to wait.

She was waiting for Wei Shu's instructions.

Static crackled.

"Relocate the battlefield. Rescue the boy named Gu Shen first."

Wei Shu's voice sounded, emotionless and deliberate:

"Do not fight A-009 on the train. This is the optimal solution provided by Deep Sea."