Two Pieces of Good News

Brother Lu had left.

He had taken a luxury maglev car to the Shining Central District.

The road ahead of him... would probably be paved with gold, right?

The young man walked alone down the street, lost in thought.

Entering Central City.

Living permanently in the metaverse, making big money, and enjoying the technology of the age.

That was the dream of everyone in Rust City.

But he had heard that basic jobs in the metaverse only paid enough to get by. To strike it rich, you had to explore the unknown, and the more unknown it was, the more dangerous it became.

It was a double-edged sword.

The young man headed back to his apartment.

Then he suddenly noticed a robot more than two meters tall standing outside his two-story building.

Its entire body was made of silver alloy. It looked imposing, with a huge beam pistol holstered at its waist.

A long black cape fluttered behind it in the wind, and its red electronic eyes scanned in Qin Yiguan's direction.

"A Central District Mechanical Guard?"

The young man narrowed his eyes. "Blocking my apartment entrance, no less... did my food borrowing get exposed?"

"Impossible."

The young man felt perfectly at ease.

He was invisible to the Central District, after all.

He walked straight up to the robot, stepped sideways, and prepared to open the door.

With a mechanical whir, the towering mechanical guard also shifted one step sideways, blocking his path precisely.

"Huh?"

The young man froze, then moved left again.

The towering robot moved left with him. Its neck mechanism turned, lowering its head slightly to look directly at Qin Yiguan.

"You... can see me?"

The young man was startled.

But at that moment, the robot stopped moving and fell completely silent.

The young man relaxed a little and reached past the robot's body to open the door.

"Not only can I see you."

"I also know your name is Qin Yiguan."

A low mechanical voice drifted out.

The young man stiffened, his arm suspended in midair.

But his surprise lasted only a moment before his expression eased into a smile.

He took a step back.

"No wonder you can see me."

"You have 'True Eye.'"

"That voice sounds so familiar. Officer Wang? Uncle Wang? Have you upgraded your Mechanical Proxy?"

Then.

The young man looked down and spotted the police badge at the robot's waist. "Oh, the station upgraded its equipment."

Officer Wang was also one of those who lived half their lives in each world.

They immersed themselves in life in the metaverse, but when a case arose in reality, they used their consciousness to control Mechanical Proxies like this and take action.

Officer Wang said, "You instinctively ignore every robot, kid. Looks like you've sneaked into the Central District plenty of times. That's a serious crime."

The young man smiled calmly. "Do you have any evidence?"

Evidence.

The Central District Defense System couldn't capture you at all.

Where was he supposed to get evidence?

But.

The mechanical body turned its head, its gaze penetrating hundreds of meters. In its infrared view, it clearly saw the group of children munching on fruit.

The child who had broken a baby tooth was sucking on soft durian flesh.

An identification code still hung from the durian rind-003 Central District, Building a5426.

After a moment's thought, Officer Wang said, "No."

The young man smiled. "Heaven protects the good."

The robot waved a hand helplessly. "I came to see you 'in person' because today's a big day for you."

"Hmm?"

The young man tilted his head and thought for a moment, unable to recall anything special about today's date.

The robot raised its arm. A metal panel slowly opened, revealing a stack of paper documents, an antiquated format that nevertheless lent the occasion a sense of ceremony.

-Metaverse Nutrient Pod Application / 100th Response / Qin Yiguan.

"You brought it yourself?"

The young man's eyes widened slightly, and his heart inexplicably began to race.

Officer Wang had personally delivered the response. Its contents must be different this time!

His arm trembled a little as he took the document.

The hundredth time!

Before this had come ninety-nine disappointments!

Tears almost welled in the young man's eyes as he gave Officer Wang's mechanical body a grateful look.

The metaverse was vast and wondrous, far beyond the drudgery before his eyes.

With a nutrient pod, I wouldn't be limited by login time. I could experience a full range of sensations and travel wherever I wanted!

And endless unknown opportunities would open up before me!

The young man straightened his back, then slowly and solemnly opened the thin, two-page response.

A racing heart, trembling hands.

"Given the applicant's brain condition, prolonged stays in the metaverse may produce unforeseeable consequences."

"Eligibility requirements not met. Application denied."

Beneath the moonlight.

The green trees beside the road swayed gently.

Outside the little apartment.

The giant mechanical policeman's black cape snapped in the wind.

"..."

"..."

The young man seemed to return from a dream to reality. "Uncle Wang, thank you for delivering the response personally. Don't come next time."

The mechanical voice sounded again. "Do you know why the metaverse government controls the distribution of nutrient pods?"

The young man shrugged, sounding resentful. "Because they have nothing better to do."

The mechanical policeman scoffed. "Because of cerebral nerve dissolution."

The unfamiliar term echoed in the young man's mind as he looked at the mechanical policeman in confusion.

"Ninety years ago, the metaverse had only been widely available for ten years."

"Back then, nobody regulated nutrient pod distribution. Like cell phones in the old days, practically everyone had one."

"Then, sure enough, things went wrong."

"Some users died while using them."

The mechanical policeman's electronic eyes flickered. "Unnatural deaths."

"Twenty-three people in two years."

"They all had one thing in common. Either they were born with structural defects in their brains, or illnesses later in life had caused those defects."

At this point, the young man suddenly spoke, as though offering a counterargument. "My brain is perfectly normal."

"Heh."

The mechanical policeman chuckled.

He seemed to be saying-if your brain was normal, wouldn't that mean he had been born with an alien brain?

After three seconds of silence, he continued, "I've seen the photographs from the death scenes and read the autopsy reports."

The mechanical policeman stared at Qin Yiguan. "Inside the victims' brains, their entire central nervous systems, along with some spinal nerve roots... dissolved."

"First, they turned into liquid and flowed out through the victims' facial openings. Then they solidified into white strands."

"From a distance, the bodies lay flat inside their nutrient pods, with huge quantities of 'silk' spilling from their faces."

"Then that 'silk' seemed to weather away, constantly shedding pure white fluff that drifted slowly into the air."

"It was an incredibly eerie sight. More disturbing than any murder scene."

As Qin Yiguan listened, the image forming in his mind seemed to resound with some sacred hymn: breaking through restrictions, mortals ascending beyond their flesh. It didn't feel eerie to him.

The young man fell silent for a moment, lowered his head slightly, and scratched his forehead with one finger.

Officer Wang continued, "I know you inside out, kid... with all your psychological disorders, your brain structure definitely isn't normal."

"If the authorities gave you a nutrient pod... they might as well kill you."

"Giving you a Neural Helmet was already a dangerous gamble."

The young man sighed softly. "Understood. A nutrient pod just isn't in the cards for me in this lifetime."

The mechanical policeman puffed out his chest slightly. "Don't be so pessimistic. The main reason I came was to tell you something even more depressing."

Then.

The robot turned around.

Across the street from Qin Yiguan, the entrance to a five-story apartment building was kicked open from inside with a crash!

Four mechanical policemen resembling "Officer Wang" emerged from the building, escorting a middle-aged man.

The man was tall and thin, wearing an ocher trench coat. His face was gaunt, his eyes behind his glasses dark and sinister.

With his hands cuffed behind his back and mechanical policemen surrounding him, he slowly passed in front of Qin Yiguan.

The young man narrowed his eyes. Under that sinister man's stare, he felt as though the temperature around him had dropped several degrees.

"Suspect No. 6?"

"The killer who murdered and dismembered that girl?"

"He... was hiding right across from my home?"

Suspect No. 6 stared fixedly at Qin Yiguan, then suddenly let out a twisted, crazed laugh. "Hahaha... hahaha!"

"Your name is Qin Yiguan!"

"You're pretty special, aren't you?"

"You actually solved the case by imitating me?"

"Very impressive!"

"Now that I've been arrested, are you bursting with a sense of accomplishment?!"

"Let me tell you!"

"I already have the urge to torture you to death, and it's so strong I can't suppress it!"

"I'm telling you, one day, we'll meet face-to-face!"

The mechanical policemen escorted Suspect No. 6 farther and farther away, but the grinding of his teeth remained clearly audible!

Uncle Wang spoke beside him. "Over the past six days, you studied his files and imitated him... but he was doing something even more terrifying. He hid across from your home and watched you for six whole days!"

The young man said nothing.

Instead, he swiftly imitated Suspect No. 6's thought processes in his mind.

No.

Watching me from the shadows isn't No. 6's usual behavior, nor does it fit his way of thinking.

He's volatile. He doesn't have that kind of patience.

Someone guided him, taught him, and made him change his behavior.

Who?

I can't predict that.

Besides, how did he know the police had hired me as their "Perversion Detective"?

And how did he find my real-world address?

I've known Uncle Wang since childhood and worked with him on plenty of cases. Uncle Wang would never betray me.

It was someone else.

Is there a traitor in the police station?

Who?

Anyone willing to associate with a lunatic like Suspect No. 6 probably isn't normal either.

After a moment of silence.

The young man asked Uncle Wang, "Where will Suspect No. 6 go now?"

Officer Wang paused, then said slowly, "He'll be imprisoned in a remote part of the metaverse and made to contribute where needed, either as a research subject or through work like hard labor, until his physical body dies."

A moment of silence passed.

The young man suddenly gave a bitter smile. "So No. 6 could still escape... and he's already made me his target. I could be tortured to death at any time."

Officer Wang chuckled. "That's right."

The young man sighed. "Looking ahead, the road before me really is sprouting with fresh hope."

Click.

A crisp sound came from the mechanical policeman's voice generator. Officer Wang's consciousness seemed to have temporarily left the mechanical policeman, leaving only its voice system behind.

He seemed to have lit a cigarette inside the Metaverse.

"Forty thousand."

The boy suddenly blurted out the amount.

Officer Wang choked on the smoke. "What do you mean, forty thousand?"

A sly gleam flashed in the boy's eyes. "You came here 'personally.' First, to warn me that someone has their eye on me. Second, to drop off the receipt while you were at it. Third, to hint that this business with Number Six isn't simple, and there might be a bigger fish behind it."

"Helping you get to the bottom of it? No problem."

"So."

"My fee is forty thousand."

The robotic officer remained motionless. "Tsk, tsk... tsk, tsk... You're just too clever. Far too clever. So clever you've started jumping to wild conclusions."

"The department has explicitly forbidden us from hiring you again!"

"I only came personally because this concerns your safety. I'm just giving you a friendly warning!"

"What investigation? What conspiracy?"

"Stop imagining things!"

Qin Yiguan remained unmoved and said calmly, "So that means you'll most likely be paying this fee out of your own pocket. For the sake of our years of friendship, I'll give you half off. Twenty thousand."

The robotic officer fell silent for a moment. "Deal."