For a moment, Zhao Pengcheng felt bewildered by the word "organization." In his view, everything should be for the sake of the race, but his comrades kept talking about the organization, giving him the illusion that this was not a racial war, but a political struggle.
The resistance's base was destroyed, but Mei Yiqiu and several key members escaped. Zhao Pengcheng thought they couldn't cause any more trouble, but to his surprise, their resistance became increasingly fierce and their results more and more significant. This protracted struggle continued for many years, by which time Zhao Pengcheng was already old and frail.
Bi Shenghua has been arrested. After carefully studying this woman, Dream Society concluded that she had no value for parasitism. According to the principles for dealing with members of the resistance organization, those who cannot successfully parasitize or have no value for parasitism will be disposed of like garbage.
Zhao Pengcheng found Bi Shenghua, who was imprisoned, and tried to persuade her to back down. He explained that the Parasitic Consciousness and humans shared a common agreement: anyone who acknowledged the legitimacy of the Parasitic Consciousness could guarantee their right to life. Bi Shenghua initially disagreed, but she fell silent when Zhao Pengcheng mentioned Qingmu.
She wanted to go back and take care of the person in a vegetative state.
Zhao Pengcheng didn't know why he helped Bi Shenghua, but he did it anyway. Before he could even understand himself, the organization concluded that he had been reverse-infected by humans, unable to escape human emotions, and had degenerated into a low-level consciousness.
Given his past contributions, the organization did not take any action against him, but simply withdrew its decision to grant him another Dream Corridor.
Zhao and Tushu returned to work at the hospital, but not the same hospital, and no longer as a surgical expert; instead Pengcheng, he became an ordinary anesthesiologist.
A few years later, Yu Jianguo was also released from prison, and Zhao Pengcheng went to pick him up.
Yu Jianguo was overjoyed that Zhao Pengcheng was still alive, even more so than if he had received a ten-year reduction in his sentence. In reality, he was sentenced to seventeen years, and only two years had been reduced in total. When he was released, he was already very, very old.
Zhao Pengcheng helped pull some strings and got Yu Jianguo the hospital's security department. However, because of his age and lack of knowledge about the new technologies that had developed in recent years, he could only work in the morgue.
Everything seems to have gone back to what it was more than a decade ago.
Yu Jianguo died peacefully in the morgue; no one knew. He simply covered himself with a white sheet. Zhao Pengcheng took him to the crematorium and then brought his ashes back to his hometown to scatter on the mountain. He and Tu-shu knew that Uncle Yu had long wanted to go home.
After returning from his hometown, Zhao Pengcheng was recalled by the organization because their great leader, Comrade Ronald Cohen, had passed away.
Of course, Ronald Cohen's consciousness itself doesn't die; only the aging human body he inhabits dies. Before he dies, he chooses a new host and leaves his last words. "The woman holding the golden bottle walking towards the Sun, that is my mother."
At that time, there were approximately 20 million Parasites worldwide. Everyone was waiting for the birth of a new leader. Two months later, a baby was found in a small seaside town on the East China Sea of Argentina, in the Gulf of San Matías. Her mother had gone to the beach at dawn with a golden fish basket to find her husband, and as the Sun rose over the eastern horizon, he was born from her womb.
The baby was named Ronald II.
Years later, as one of the first heroes to arrive on Earth, Zhao Pengcheng was summoned by Ronald II, not in a palace or holy mountain, but in a dream. His body had reached its limit, and Ronald II allowed him to freely choose a new human to inhabit.
As he was about to bid farewell to this human body named Zhao Pengcheng, he remembered Qingmu was still in the dark zero-dimensional Dream Corridor.
So, before re-parasitizing, Zhao Pengcheng went to Liuying Lane again.
Liuying Lane looks much more dilapidated than it did decades ago. Since the parasites seized power, the government's enthusiasm for protecting human civilization relics has greatly diminished.
Zhao Pengcheng walked along the street covered with fallen yellow leaves, leaning on his cane. His legs were not as strong as before; what used to be a twenty-minute walk now took him two hours.
Halfway through the march, a group of people carrying banners that read "Oppose parasitism, give me back my freedom" came by in a chaotic manner, but then dispersed as they were driven away by the military and police.
After finally reaching the Ruhua Bar, Zhao Pengcheng leaned against a pillar in front of the door, panting for a long time.
The gate he once photographed is gone, replaced by a sealed wall, covered with posters, just like anywhere else on the street.
He pounded on the door as hard as before, and more dust fell on his head. He waited for a long time, but there was no response from inside. He went around to the back door and saw several flowerpots placed on the steps by the door, with many weeds growing in them.
Zhao Pengcheng hesitated for a moment, then squatted down and moved one of the flowerpots. He remembered that twenty years ago, this pot contained a Star Beauty succulent.
Sure enough, there was a key under the flowerpot.
The door lock wasn't broken and could still be opened. The room was covered in cobwebs, and the scene in the bar lobby downstairs was unchanged. Zhao Pengcheng glanced at the table where he had eaten that day; it was there that he had drunk the poisoned chicken soup and fainted.
The hallway was even dustier; he used his cane to brush it aside and then laboriously climbed the stairs. Sunlight streamed in through the second-floor corridor window; the newspapers on the walls were still there, and the row of benches was covered in dust. Further in was Qingmu's studio; the couplets at the entrance were blurred, and the room was covered in cobwebs. He picked up a magazine from the floor and saw that it was thirteen years old.
The door to the inner room was closed.
Zhao Pengcheng reached out to push, then hesitated. He didn't know what he would see—an empty room filled with dust, or a desiccated corpse?
The door creaked open.
To Zhao Pengcheng's surprise, there was neither a mummified corpse nor dust. It was a clean room, as clean as a sterile ward in a hospital.
It was dusk when Zhao Pengcheng left Liuying Lane. He put the key back under the flowerpot, then, leaning on his cane, he shuffled along in the afterglow of the setting sun.
At the very last moment of his life, a bombshell news story stunned everyone like a thunderbolt—a robot named Ghost announced to the world via the internet:
The Internet has become the new ruler of this world. Mechanical life will take over all armed forces on Earth within 24 hours. Whether humans, Parasites, or resistance organizations, they will all become slaves to the Internet.
Zhao Pengcheng's attempt to re-parasitize failed.
Ronald II found him through a dream, saying that the Parasitic Consciousness would join forces with the human resistance against the rule of mechanical life. However, by then, Zhao Pengcheng was already lying on a bed in the hospital morgue, covered with a shroud.
The icy feeling made him think he had returned to Mei Yiqiu's absolute zero laboratory.
However, he saw an operating table. Not far away on the ground was a scalpel, its blade emitting a faint red glow, as if it still retained some warmth.
The door to the adjacent changing room slammed open. Behind the door should have been a small room with wardrobes, a bench, and a sink. But now all of that was gone, leaving only darkness.
The sound of clattering footsteps echoed in the darkness, and a man in a trench coat emerged, a Crow perched on his disheveled hair.
"How is this possible..." Zhao Pengcheng muttered to himself, his last bit of Mental Power dissipating as he slumped against the operating table.