Chu Ling

Late at night, all was silent.

A jet-black business van, ghostlike in the darkness, sat with all its lights off not far away from Gu Shen's Unfinished Cylindrical Building.

The old man rested with his eyes closed. He looked as though he were asleep, but he was actually waiting, his fingers tapping against his armrest again and again.

"Beep—"

A real-time communication request notification sounded inside the vehicle. Mr. Shu slowly opened his eyes and accepted the call. The next moment, soft light spilled and gathered from the starry ceiling inside the vehicle, forming a light screen.

Nan Jin's face appeared on the virtual light screen.

"Teacher, the A-009 containment mission has been completed," she reported respectfully.

But clearly, that was not why she had made this call.

"It's rare to see you value someone so highly, Teacher. You personally escorted Gu Shen tonight..." Nan Jin paused, then solemnly asked, "Do you hope to recruit him into the Adjudication Court?"

"Aha... yes."

The old man smiled frankly. "I think very highly of him. As an ordinary person, he survived the A-009 incident completely unscathed. That wasn't easy."

Indeed... Nan Jin nodded.

Since he was someone her teacher had taken a liking to, there could be no mistake.

She asked again, "Are you so certain... that he'll join the Adjudication Court?"

"Actually, I'm not sure either, so there's a bit of a gamble involved." The old man raised two fingers and rubbed them together with a sly smile. "I gave Gu Shen a number. Now I'm waiting for the phone to ring."

Waiting for the phone to ring?

Nan Jin was stunned.

A string of events appeared in her mind on their own... A-009's escape, the emergency capture, the train's brakes disengaging, the helicopter cleanup—

Such a huge commotion must have drawn the attention of "those people."

And those people only needed to trace the train's records to easily find the person at the center of it all... Gu Shen.

She understood her teacher's intentions at once.

"Tonight's loss-of-control incident drew the attention of many people."

"To those who crave for things to spiral out of control and grow ever worse, it must have been terribly disappointing if a high-sequence Transcendent losing control only caused a train derailment..."

"At the very least, someone should die, shouldn't they?"

Mr. Shu lowered his eyes and murmured softly, "A-009's ability just happens to be corrosion. With such an ability, even if the person involved dies in an 'accident' after leaving the incident, it can still be explained away. Poor little fellow—if he's sharp enough, he should have sensed the danger by now, right?"

Was her teacher testing Gu Shen?

Nan Jin was somewhat worried. "Those people aren't like A-009. There's no fixed pattern to follow. If they take action, how could Gu Shen possibly withstand them? He's only an ordinary person, after all..."

"An ordinary person couldn't have survived A-009, much less qualify to join the Adjudication Court... When we were on the train, I saw that boy's eyes. He's different from you. He's someone who values his life very much." Mr. Shu's expression turned solemn as he stared at his beloved disciple. "So Gu Shen won't risk his life. He'll think of every possible way to save it."

"Under such circumstances, if he can't even manage something as simple as making a call for help..."

Mr. Shu's expression became calm and composed, as though he did not care about anything.

He closed his eyes again. Like someone talking in his sleep, his voice grew softer and softer. "Then it means I misjudged him. Gu Shen surviving the A-009 incident was merely... an accident."

"I'm back—"

Gu Shen pushed open the door and called out softly.

The shabby one-room apartment was empty and bare. It was only thirty or forty square meters, and aside from a table and a bed, there was nothing else. Calling it four bare walls would not have been an exaggeration.

A mottled glow flickered faintly from the bedroom.

Had he forgotten to turn off the holographic display on the table before leaving? Gu Shen paused in surprise.

"Meow—"

Usually, he would be greeted by an anxious meow begging for food. Today, though, the response came a little slower, and it sounded much calmer than usual.

An orange cat sat in front of the holographic display on the table, staring at the front door.

It was a stray cat Gu Shen had only recently picked up. Its name was Orange. Only after bringing it home had he discovered... this thing could really eat. It truly lived up to the name Big Orange, yet its weight barely increased. It ate and ate without gaining a pound.

Too much had happened today. It was already past two in the morning when he got home, and it had been hard on the cat to wait until now.

Gu Shen yawned, took out a large bag of cat food, and poured it into the dish. "Orange, dinner's served."

There was no response.

Gu Shen was a little surprised. This silly cat had not come running over immediately. With his back to the table, he did not see the orange cat looking down at him from above, a faint phosphorescent glow shining in its eyes.

"Not eating? If you miss this chance, there won't be another one." Gu Shen turned back irritably.

"Meow!!!"

Accompanied by a sharp meow, Orange jolted all over, waking from its dream. The fluorescence vanished from its eyes, and it leaped off the table with murderous intent, burying its head in the dish and wolfing down the food.

That way of eating... Gu Shen watched with a fair bit of disdain.

After the silly cat had eaten and drunk its fill, it swaggered off to find a spot and promptly began snoring.

Gu Shen, meanwhile, sat before the holographic screen. Wrapping his fingers in a tissue, he carefully took the ruler from inside his collar and stared at the Silver Ruler... lost in thought.

This ruler did not seem to have any corrosive power?

When A-009 had handed this thing to him, it had not seemed malicious either.

But what exactly was this thing for?

The scenes after he boarded that subway train replayed in his mind, frame by frame, rewinding, freezing, flashing back.

Gu Shen had far too many questions... He had thought he could get some answers from the people in the interrogation room.

But instead...

The story he had made up on a whim while drinking water had been remembered with utmost seriousness by that guy named Wei Shu... Clearly, there had been a problem with the carriage surveillance footage. Those people had no idea what had actually happened on the train!

What they had seen was the ordinary Line 13.

But the train he had boarded at the start was the old, weathered 00 Me.

"...What exactly was going on with that girl, and A-009...?"

Gu Shen had no clue. He rubbed his brow and muttered to himself, "That old man said the New Era was coming soon..."

"New Era... New Era..."

He opened a webpage.

Layers of special effects depicting surging waves washing across the screen appeared on the holographic display.

In the year 638 of the New Calendar, thanks to the supercomputer "Deep Sea" developed by Alan Turing, the five continents had been tightly linked by a virtual network. Without ever leaving home, all citizens could access an immense amount of current information and exceptionally fast, ultra-intelligent services.

"Such a huge commotion tonight, and there aren't even any related posts or reports..."

Gu Shen frowned and glanced at the breaking news. Something felt off. Just as he was about to type on the keyboard, he suddenly stopped.

The old man's words on the train resurfaced in his mind.

"Someone has already started paying attention to you."

That sentence reminded Gu Shen.

"If someone really is watching me... I need to be careful."

Gu Shen knew very well that the search traces he casually left behind could very likely become clues for someone with ulterior motives to track him down.

A soft ding rang out.

Suddenly, a chat window popped up on the computer screen.

"Congratulations."

The chat window showed that the other party was typing: "...You got that question right. Very impressive."

This was... Gu Shen froze for a moment.

The other party's avatar was completely blank, but that tone clearly belonged to the girl in the white dress he had encountered on the train.

There was no need to worry about someone impersonating her... Gu Shen was certain that no third person knew of his encounter with the girl. Even the unfathomable Mr. Shu had no idea.

He immediately clicked on the avatar, trying to find information about the other party... But no matter how Gu Shen clicked through the profile and related sections, everything displayed was blank.

This kind of blankness was not because the fields had been left unfilled. There were no fields to fill at all... On the small profile card, there was no name, gender, date of birth, hobbies, signature—nothing.

Blank.

Nothing but blankness.

Even a dead person, as long as they had once been born, would not have such a blank record.

Gu Shen had never seen anything like this. Every citizen of the five continents had to provide blood samples to be entered into Deep Sea's database. Only real-name verification allowed one to log into the Deep Sea Network.

Yet everything on this card was blank... Had the system malfunctioned?

No matter what, it was no longer important.

Gu Shen felt fortunate now... Fortunate that he had not honestly confessed everything in the interrogation room earlier. Who knew what insane things those people, who had come in helicopters with such aggression to collect A-009's corpse, would do if they learned there was still an unrestrained figure like the girl?

He did not want the girl to be imprisoned like A-009!

"Thank you." Gu Shen replied politely, then urgently asked, "I have some questions I'd like to ask... For example, who are you?"

He had too many questions.

Who was the girl? What was going on with that train? And A-009, as well as that newspaper... There were too many questions to count.

"My name is Chu Ling." As if she could read minds, the girl replied the instant Gu Shen's message was sent. "...I know you have many questions to ask, but now isn't the time. The people who want to kill you are on their way."

"?!"

That single sentence struck like a heavy hammer.

Gu Shen's fingers hovered above the projected keyboard. For that instant, his mind went blank.

"The current situation will be rather dangerous. Communications will be blocked next, and the network will be cut off as well. I will contact you another way."

He tried to process that flood of information. Chu Ling's final message in the chat window was still the same sentence she had said when they parted on the train.

"Gu Shen, stay alive."