Past and Future

"That shows the boss has a good eye," Pardo grinned like any shrewd merchant. "There's only one of these bracelets left. Once it's gone, it's gone forever. But there are other people who have their eyes on this bracelet."

"Yes, of course I have good taste, that's why I've taken a liking to this bracelet." The blond man twitched his fingers and glanced at Pardo. "After all, this used to be in my vault."

"..."

Pardo's expression changed swiftly. Just as she was about to step back, the person next to the blond man reached out and grabbed her arm.

"They took this while I was out. And because of the cold weather, I haven't been able to search for it for the past month. I thought it was just given to a petty thief. I never imagined it would be such a coincidence..."

The blond man slowly put the bracelet into his pocket, and said to Pardo with a smirk, "Do you know how I got this bracelet? After I chopped off that idiot's hand, this thing became mine. Now, I think it's worth trying to replicate that idiot's screams."

Pardo tilted her head and smiled, "Really? My companion is right behind you with a gun pointed at your head."

"Varied..."

The blond man broke out in a cold sweat. He turned around abruptly and saw a sharp-looking pistol sticking out from behind the wall, pointed at his head.

His men were about to turn around when he stopped them with a stern shout, "Don't turn around!"

"Hmm? Can you let go now?" Pardo smiled and withdrew her hand. She had already taken the bracelet before putting it back in her pocket, but the man was completely unaware of this.

Pardo stepped aside. "Don't look back, let's go."

With no other option, the two could only slink away under the threat of the gun.

"Phew... that scared me to death. Seriously, the person who got robbed is buying things from the thief. What a coincidence that's not funny at all." Pardo wiped the fine sweat from her brow and walked over to the pistol.

Lin sat motionless in his wheelchair, holding a pistol.

Sometimes he would just sit there doing nothing, staring blankly, letting others do whatever they wanted.

"Speaking of which, who exactly are you? Why do you have a handgun on you..." Pardo became increasingly curious about Lin's identity. After searching Lin's body, she found the handgun. She didn't know much about firearms, but just looking at its design made her feel that it was not a simple thing.

"Forget it, let's not think about it anymore and go home."

"Could you be some kind of super-rich boss? It's not easy to own a private residence like that on Dusk Street. And you must have been framed by someone to end up like this."

Pardo pushed Lin's wheelchair toward the house.

She has been taking care of Lin for almost a month, but the key is still not found. However, Pardo has come to know Lin better.

This is a person who spends most of his time in a fantasy world where he is unaware of the outside world. He knows many people, but Pardo can't remember their names, and he has never said his own name.

His mobility was not actually severely impaired; he could push his wheelchair anywhere with his strong arms and recognized the roads, but he could not see anything except the structure of buildings and roads.

Suffering from a disease that leaves purple lines all over his body, Pardo had seen similar patients in the sanatorium, but none of them seemed to have such a severe condition as Lin, with the lines covering almost his entire body.

"But you probably can't recover, right? I don't have money to take you to see a doctor... and your family doesn't have any money either. But I don't know who that person was to you last time..."

"Clatter".

Pardo suddenly stopped.

It's so quiet around here.

The quietness was unlike the infamous Dusk Street.

At the exit of the alley ahead, two people walked in and blocked her way. Pardo immediately turned around, and her blood instantly froze.

The blond man, his face flushed with anger, led three men to block their retreat.

"Huh? This is your companion? Hahahaha..." The man gestured with his lip, indicating for his subordinate to hand him the knife, and slowly approached the nervous Pardo. "Do you need me to 'treat' him?"

"Wait, wait a minute! It has nothing to do with him! He's just an idiot!" Pardo shielded Lin behind her, terrified, but still trying her best to keep them away from Lin. "If you need anything, come to me. Don't make things difficult for him. Here's your bracelet back!"

"Bracelet? Won't it be mine later too?"

"No, don't come any closer!"

Pardo tried to grab the pistol from Lin's arms, but the blond man kicked her in the arm, causing Lin, who was in a wheelchair, to fall over.

Lin lay unconscious in the muddy water, his empty eyes staring at the murky surface.

Now, Pardo is filled with regret. Why did she have to be so careless this time?

If she were alone, she was confident she could escape, but if she took Lin with her...

The blond man, brandishing a small knife, grinned maliciously as he stepped on Pardo's back, then plunged the knife down—

"Smack."

"Click."

A crisp sound of something breaking rang out, silencing the surroundings for a moment.

The man's subordinate standing behind him gaped, speechless.

The one-legged man covered the blond man's mouth with one hand and pinched the man's knife-wielding fingers with the other.

The sound of bones shattering just now came from his hand.

Lin's eyes were still unfocused, but his left hand precisely and forcefully covered the blond man's mouth, preventing him from making any sound even though he was in so much pain that he was about to faint.

He applied force with his right hand again—"Crack!"

The blond man was knocked unconscious by the pain. When Lin let go, he also took a small knife from the man's completely deformed and twisted fingers.

Pardo looked at Lin, who was leaning against the wall and standing on one leg, with equal surprise, and asked tremblingly, "You, you, you... you're awake?"

Only then did the others realize what was happening, and the two people behind Lin were the first to raise their fists and attack him.

Lin didn't turn around. He tilted his head to dodge one of the men's straight punches, raised his arm and broke the man's arm with an elbow strike, then grabbed the man's forearm which was twisting in an odd direction and pulled it, then threw him away with a hook punch, sending blood spurting from his mouth and nostrils all the way.

"Bang!"

The other man was punched in the abdomen by Lin's quicker side punch when his fist touched Lin's back, causing him to vomit stomach acid. Then Lin grabbed the back of his neck and pressed down, elbowing him hard in the spine.

"Crack!" After a chillingly crisp sound, the man fainted, and he would likely spend the rest of his life in a hospital bed.

The remaining two were even easier to deal with. Lin easily dodged their attacks as if he were missing a leg, slashed one of them in the neck with a chop, and finally stabbed the last man in the palm of his hand, pinning him to the wall.

In less than twenty seconds, Lin Lian didn't move an inch; his actions were concise, cold, efficient, and even exuded elegance.

Lin Huansan stared at Pardo lying on the ground. He said nothing, turned around, straightened the wheelchair, and sat down.

"..."

He didn't say a word, just stared into the distance, into who-knows-where.

He seemed to have reverted to a mentally ill state resembling Alzheimer's.

Chapter Twenty: Past and Future

"God must also enjoy killing."

"He/She does it all the time."

The finger cots tapped on the edge of the table. Sitting in her chair, Vill-V smiled as she greeted Einstein. The lights above her head flickered, and in the black and white light, a girl who looked like a doll stood behind her.

"Oh? Is that so? Shouldn't God just be an audience member?" Einstein took off his coat and hung it aside, revealing a plaid shirt, and smoothed the messy hair from his forehead. "He cut fish with a knife and fork, dipped it in sauce, and enjoyed his candlelight dinner amidst the performance of ordinary people."

"But aren't we just God making us out of ourselves?" Vill-V pointed casually, and the lights returned to normal.

Prometheus stared silently at the remote control in her hand, which was under the table.

Einstein walked up to Prometheus and admired her with the eyes of someone examining a work of art. "This must be Prometheus. What an amazing life."

"Doctor Einstein, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Didn't we already see each other once on the transport plane?"

Einstein rolled up the sleeves of his plaid shirt and smiled slightly at Prometheus: "But strictly speaking, this is indeed our first 'meeting'."

"So, Doctor Einstein, shall we continue with our previous topic?" Vill-V snapped her fingers, and a rough design appeared on the screen behind her. "Or shall we go for afternoon tea first?"

Einstein shook his finger. "Oh, my dear Dr. Vill-V, if you'd like to call eight o'clock in the evening an afternoon, I'd be happy to go with you to the cafeteria to drink their swill."

"Right, you think so too..."

"Dr. Vill-V, please get to the point," Prometheus reminded him.

"This child is as clueless as ever..." Vill-V shrugged, "But I don't dislike him."

Einstein's trip was for the purpose of a plan, a plan to combine May's Artificial Intelligence technology, Vill-V's bionic robotics technology, and Delta's mechanical Titan technology.

She called it the "Armed Puppet" project.

The autonomous Titan has been fully developed and armed, but a fatal problem has arisen.

Titans are not suitable for ordinary missions; they exist only for high-risk areas and large-scale Honkai. This means that the advanced weapons installed on them are just gathering dust in warehouses, and there has been no breakthrough in solving ordinary missions.

Therefore, after learning about the creation process of Prometheus 1 at headquarters, Einstein conceived this plan.

The two chatted happily. Einstein was one of those people who could connect with Vill-V, so their communication did not encounter the same obstacles that others faced when talking to Vill-V.

"Then Miss Prometheus will be here to assist me next week." Einstein picked up his coat, put it into his sleeves, and smiled gently at Prometheus.

"Just call me Prometheus or Number One."

"No problem."

Vill-V escorted Einstein outside the Spiral Workshop, she casually remarked, "This child's older brother is missing, so he's been in a bad mood lately."

"Does God also watch his children become sentimental?" Einstein asked cryptically, brushing the dust off his shoulders.

"No, he just laughs while eating dark chocolate with a wicked sense of humor."

Vill-V spread her hands and said, "But I am not God."

"Who... who... who are you?!"

Back in the house, Pardo asked Lin in the wheelchair in a somewhat frightened voice.

When he made his move, his movements were swift and precise, like a scalpel, pinning several people to the ground. None of them died; some, however, might not be able to stand up again.

After witnessing his actions, Pardo knew that Lin was not as simple as he appeared.

However, after doing all that, Lin reverted to being a mentally disabled person, sitting in a wheelchair just like usual.

"Are you faking it? I know you're conscious right now!" Pardo questioned Lin. "I... I've taken care of you for a month now! You should at least talk to me! My name is Pardofelis!"

"You were protecting me just now, weren't you?"

What happened to you? Why are you here?

"You should... answer me..."

Pardo unknowingly fell asleep on Lin's lap. She had been quite frightened today, and the mental exhaustion left her very tired.

Forget it... let's just do it like before and not overthink it...

After she fell asleep, Lin stroked her hair, and she made a purring sound like a cat in her throat.

Lin picked her up with one hand, then pushed the wheelchair to the soft cushion where she usually slept and placed her on it.

After doing all this, Lin opened his empty eyes and looked around.

He woke up, but wasn't fully awake.

Lin didn't know how much time had passed. His consciousness was hazy and blurred, as if he was struggling on the boundary between dreams and reality. Everything he saw was illusory and false.

But as he sank into despair, he vaguely sensed that someone was taking care of him.

He has briefly regained consciousness, but everything he sees is blurred as if through a filter; he can't see anything clearly, and the world is still a hazy jumble of light and shadow.

He couldn't see Pardo's face clearly either.

He had no idea where he was.

Lin lit a fire in the fireplace, picked up the photo frame on the table, and tried his best to focus his unfocused pupils, but he could only see some blurry shadows dancing in his eyes.

It's very familiar.

The photo in the frame felt familiar to him, but Lin just couldn't make out what was inside.

After putting down the photo frame, Lin slumped in his wheelchair, his facial muscles twitching.

It started again. Reason was gradually stripped away as something sharp and hot pierced his skull and stirred, pulling all his memories and consciousness out of his mind.

Everything is drifting away from him.

All.