Chasing the Little Rabbit

After saying that, Bai Ying lowered her helmet over her head and quietly watched Xingtian outside the window.

Since Xingtian was an older model of mecha, its neural synchronization system had been designed from the outset with a separate connection program. It could run completely independently of the central control system.

That had become the only hope for Xuanse Cangqiong.

"Parameters calibrated. Are you ready?"

Bai Ying nodded.

"Good luck."

A vast expanse of white light suddenly burst open before Bai Ying, instantly swallowing everything in her field of vision.

An endless, overlapping shriek of electric currents pierced Bai Ying's eardrums like an icy needle, leaving her deaf.

Bai Ying couldn't feel her hands or feet. Even her brain seemed to have forgotten how to control her limbs, as if they were organs humans had shed in some distant age.

A pain that struck straight at her soul seared Bai Ying's reason, as though thousands of scalding maggots were gnawing at her body!

Yet she also felt like a corpse floating on the surface of the sea, her whole body submerged in cold, dark waters, without the slightest sensation.

She felt nothing, yet could feel the agony of a fatal wound!

In a daze, Bai Ying saw a little girl wearing a white nightgown.

The girl's hands were a bloody mess; not a single fingernail remained intact.

Her white hair hung over her shoulders, hiding her deathly pale face. Only the tears falling from her chin kept pattering onto the rubble and blood beneath her knees.

Bai Ying saw the girl open her mouth again and again, trying to say something, but in the end, not a sound came out.

She kept digging and clawing away, like a madwoman who had lost her mind, in front of the collapsed building.

Behind her lay a pile of rubble that had nearly grown into a mound. Whenever the girl came across a chunk of concrete she couldn't move, she crawled on her knees to the other side and kept digging.

No one stopped her. No one tried to talk her out of it.

Bai Ying stood beside the girl, watching the sun slowly sink below the distant horizon as starlight scattered across the brilliant Milky Way.

Only after the broken white moon had disappeared behind the dark clouds did the girl finally stop.

A bloodless hand, like a withered branch, lay still amid the ruins.

The girl trembled all over as she crawled toward it, inch by inch.

Bright red blood trickled across the ground, leaving a crimson trail wherever she went.

At last, the girl could go no farther. Her swollen eyes burst into tears once more, and bloodshot threads swam through the murky tears.

She wanted to scream, to call out, but her throat was like a dried-up well, long since drained, and not a sound could escape.

Bai Ying watched the girl open her mouth wide and wrap her frail arms around the hand.

Did she hate him?

If the general hailed as a hero truly loved his home,

then Bai Ying's dead mother would not be buried beneath these ruins.

After that, Bai Ying no longer wanted to be Chen Weimin's daughter, and she never again answered to Chen Ying.

Bai Ying slowly walked over to the girl and took her bloodied hand.

"Mom..." The girl's voice was so hoarse she sounded like a traveler in the desert, dying of thirst.

"Mom's gone." Bai Ying drew the girl into her arms.

"Dad... why... didn't you protect us...?"

"He had orders. He had to protect more people. It was an order, and he couldn't disobey."

The girl wrapped her arms around Bai Ying's neck and wept bitterly in her embrace.

Who should Bai Ying blame?

A mecha that couldn't be in two places at once, or two cities attacked at the same time?

She had forgotten the last time she'd called him "Dad," but she would still rather call him General Chen, like everyone else, than call him her father.

So many years had passed, and Bai Ying had long since understood the choice he'd faced back then.

But understanding didn't mean forgiveness.

When he faced the Fusion Beast capable of destroying Xuanse Cangqiong, had he given that order only to save his own daughter?

Bai Ying had no way of knowing.

The only thing she knew was the choice she'd made then:

To protect everything she held dear.

Suddenly, everything before Bai Ying vanished—the ruins, the high-rises, and the person she had been.

In their place came a powerful sensation of weightlessness. Bai Ying was falling into a pure white abyss!

Thud!

When Bai Ying landed again, she found that she hadn't been smashed to a pulp as she'd imagined. Instead, she stood steadily, as if on level ground.

The laws of physics in this space didn't seem to follow those of reality.

Bai Ying was sure she'd just experienced a "chasing the little rabbit."

The term "chasing the little rabbit" was borrowed from the plot of a fairy tale, in which the protagonist chased a talking rabbit and fell into a strange underground world.

During neural synchronization between a mecha pilot and their machine, "chasing the little rabbit" referred to cases where the pilot failed to clear their mind beforehand and, distracted by wandering thoughts, caused the synchronization to fail.

The ultimate form of "chasing the little rabbit" was when a pilot became trapped in a vivid memory deep in their subconscious and lost themselves in it.

But that should have been impossible for Xingtian and Bai Ying!

There were two types of neural synchronization: between a person and a mecha, and between two pilots.

The first type was relatively easy. After all, a mecha was just a metal shell. As long as the computational load of controlling it didn't exceed the pilot's mental capacity, their synchronization rate could usually never fall below 80%.

But neural synchronization between two people was much harder. It was like directly stuffing another consciousness into someone else's brain. Both parties had to open themselves up completely, allowing their bodies to adapt to and accept the commands issued by another consciousness.

Yet even if both sides could truly be honest with each other, their synchronization rate might still fall short. The psychological defenses in a person's subconscious couldn't be controlled; they would instinctively mount physical or mental defenses against an outside consciousness, causing problems such as metabolic disorders, muscle spasms, bouts of amnesia, or mania.

In severe cases, it could even cause the pilot to develop a split personality.

For that reason, the Tieyu who piloted two-person mechas were usually relatives, married couples, or friends who had grown up together.

Their lifestyles tended to be similar, and on both a conscious and subconscious level, they could accept most of each other's thoughts.

But Xingtian was a single-pilot mecha. Even if Bai Ying had started "chasing the little rabbit," it should at most have lowered her synchronization rate with Xingtian—not trapped her in a memory and caused her to lose herself!

That was because a mecha couldn't bear a pilot's subconscious or memories!

Only another living mind could contain the workings of a human brain!

"Could it be that Xingtian's self-awareness really has evolved to the point where it's just like a normal human's?"

If that was true, Xingtian could no longer be considered a "living mecha."

It would be a life-form in the truest sense!