Chapter 590: The Purpose
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
On the second floor of the governor’s mansion, there was a balcony that directly faced the city square. Whenever there was a conference, succession ceremony, or any activity, the mayor or president would come out of the mansion and enter this balcony to receive the praises of the public and interviews from the press.
It was 10:30 at night. The citizens of Sector 9 should have been in bed, but right now, there was a crescendo of loud sounds coming from the square. The intensity was so high that the balustrade shook.
Yun stood behind the door to the balcony, hiding his presence under the floor curtain. He grabbed the thick curtain as he stared fixedly at the masses below. The moon tonight was full, and the snow-white tiles on the balcony shimmered in the cold moonlight.
Half of the teenager’s face shone brightly under the moonlight while the other half hid in the dark shadows. Both sides were bereft of any emotion.
“What did you say to them?” he asked suddenly.
The black figure came to an abrupt stop, seemingly surprised by the teenager’s keen observation. He waited for a moment before sighing softly. “I just told them the truth.”
The teenager gave the person a half-turn while pursing one side of his lips. “The truth? Mind if I ask which part of the truth you are talking about?”
“Does it matter?” the black figure said. “Regardless of what I say, they will merely believe what they see as the truth.”
“What do you want?” Yun said through gritted teeth.
The black figure raised his head and glanced at the curtain, which now trembled in the teenager’s tight hold.
“I merely want to offer you my help.” His voice still sounded the same—full of affection and cordiality. “Also, based on the fact that you did not attack the moment you saw me, is it safe to say that you have already thought it through?”
As if he’d heard the most hilarious joke in the world, the teenager sneered coldly. “The reason I did not attack you is that I know you’re completely out of my league. If I could, what I wouldn’t give to see you rot and die in the most gruesome way. Just as I did to Yunqian.”
The dark figure sighed again. “I’m just helping you shed your burden and clearing your path. You will understand in the future.”
“What the hell do you want from me?!” Yun screamed out his question.
The dark figure did not reply. He crouched down and slung an object toward the teenager’s feet.
With the help of the moonlight, he saw the real face of the object. Yun was startled. He tore his gaze away from the object on the floor and asked tentatively, “What do you mean by this?”
“Nothing. As I said, I’m here to offer you my help.” The dark figure giggled. “I’ll leave that in your hands. I know you might want to use it to attack me right away, but I advise you not to. Anyway, it’s all yours now. Use it to your heart’s content.”
Holding the palm-sized tablet in his palm, the teenager could not come to terms with the fact that the man had given it to him with good grace. He even doubted if the thing in his hand was a replica. When he finally came back to his senses, the dark figure was already gone.
Gritting his teeth, the teenager glanced around, and his fingers danced gracefully on the tablet. Then, he stopped and waited with bated breath. However, a few minutes passed, yet nothing happened. The governor’s mansion remained silent, and only the yelling from the square could be heard. The teenager remained impassive at his failed attempt, as he’d already anticipated that the man would have something up his sleeve.
He tightened his lower jaw and straightened his back.
Standing at the sideline, Lin Sanjiu quietly looked on as Yun walked step by step onto the balcony.
The moonlight drew a long shadow of the lonely teenager on the white arctic tile, which stretched all the way into the room and merged with the darkness inside. He was thin, pale, and frail-looking, but his face was full of determination and coldness. The yelling outside suddenly stopped. Nobody seemed to expect Yun to show himself so readily. They remained stunned for a few seconds until the impasse was broken and the silence shattered when a woman shouted, “Where is Mr. President? Bring us Mr. President!”
The momentary pause in the square turned to chaos. The masses exploded into a conniption, and for a moment, the air was filled with yelling, crying, cursing, sobbing, and all sorts of other noises. The scene was chaotic, anarchy ruling.
The teenager gripped the balustrade while holding the tablet in his other hand. The glitter around his eyes turned into a deep grey, and his lips appeared bloodless under the pale moonlight. He looked impassively at the crowd, not saying a word.
“Let us see Mr. President!” A voice slashed across all other sounds. More and more people joined that sound to press the teenager. “Let us see our president! We want to know how he is now!”
“How dare you show yourself up there! How dare you stand where he stood! Tell us! Did you do something?” someone in the corner near the balcony exclaimed at the top of his lungs, and then a black shadow flew up. A shoe grazed past the teenager’s cheek and hit the door to the balcony with a loud thud, startling Lin Sanjiu.
Yun smoothened his face into a nonchalant expression. In the past, this balcony was the place where the mayor or the higher echelon of Mistral held all kinds of ceremonies, thus the public address system was always in standby mode. Yun looked left and right a few times before setting his eyes on a corner of the balcony.
“You all seem to hold Yunqian in high esteem.”
The words the teenager said spread across the square, silencing the crowd. Their cries faded away, leaving only some murmuring.
“Fair enough. I understand why you all would think that.” Yun’s faint voice was amplified through the clip-on microphone that he nipped in between his fingers. He nestled in a chair near the corner, his legs on the balustrade. He sounded as if he was talking to himself.
“I know all of you have tasted despair, and none of you wish to go back to those days after having seen the light. Under Yunqian’s guidance, Sector 9 has gotten better and better. You no longer have to do anything. The AI get everything done and bring it to you. Just like the good old days.”
“Yeah, so what?” a voice raised amongst the crowd. “This is all thanks to Mr. President!”
“Have all of you already forgotten how the Golden Age came to an end?”
“Mr. President is different! He is one of us!”
“Such loyalty.” Yun scoffed, not sparing an eye to the crowd below. “I’m touched, truly. Unfortunately, I killed him three hours ago. Well, technically, he is not dead yet, but I guess it should be not too far from that.”
The moment the sentence escaped Yun’s lips, the clamor that burst forth from the square almost flipped Lin Sanjiu away. She did not know why Yun would go so far as to antagonize the people. Without thinking twice, she rushed out to the balcony, wanting to protect the teenager and bring him back to the room before the people could harm him. However, the moment the moonlight fell on her, she once again realized that she could no longer interact with the world.
“Calm down, people. Take a look at what is in my hand.”
The teenager stood up and waved the tablet in his hand. He did not bat an eye at the people who were climbing up the balustrade, merely inspecting his fingers. A bored expression graced his face.
The enraged crowd was stunned.
“That… Isn’t that…”
“A controller.” The teenager threw himself back on the chair as if standing up tired him out. “This is the controller for Sector 9’s defense system and Artificial Intelligence system.”
As his voice faded into the corner of the square, all sound left, and the crowd immediately turned quiet.
Thud, thud, thud, thud. A few of the mob members fell from the balustrade to the ground.
“Sector 9 is my home, and you all watched me grow up. I’m not an unreasonable person, so I’ll now propose two options for you all. First, let me be the next president of Mistral. Everything will stay the same, but nobody shall ever mention the name Yunqian. Whoever is bold enough to break this rule, I’ll throw him out and let the beasts maul him to death. Oh, there’s one more condition. Since he is still alive, I want you all to parade him through the streets to expose him before the public. And when I say public, I mean every single citizen in Sector 9 has to see with their own eyes what has become of him.”
Nobody spoke in the square. It was so quiet that even a drop of a needle could be heard.
“Now, here is the second option — a life for a life. Tonight, I’ll burn myself to atone for the sin I have committed…” Then the teenager stopped speaking. Everybody held their breath and waited, as they knew that he hadn’t finished his sentence yet.
“… along with this controller. Just next to your beloved Mr. President.”
Lin Sanjiu closed her eyes, turned around, and went into the room.
She did not need to observe this farce any further since she knew what would happen next. She went to the stairwell and threw herself on the staircase.
Initially, Lin Sanjiu thought she would feel pity for them. However, after she’d settled down, she realized that her heart had nothing and her brain was blank. She sat on the staircase, waiting numbly for the inevitable to happen since everything she was experiencing now was merely a fragment of a memory the Veda extracted from Puppeteer’s mind.
Somehow, images of Xueqin and the girls in the Garden of Eden began to enter her mind. She stared at those images like watching a trotting horse lamp. After that, the photos bobbed out and turned into those of Rena and Reno. She kept watching and watching and watching until the retrospection completed with the smile of Nüwa.
The noises outside flooded into the mansion like tidal waves washing up the shore. Yun did not speak much, but every time he said something, the clamor would get louder.
She rested her chin on her palm and waited. Time ticked by slowly.
After what seemed like an eternity, the teenager said something, snapping Lin Sanjiu out of her reverie. She stood up and turned to look at the balcony.
“Although the people here make up less than half of the population of Sector 9, I’ll take it as a yes. Then… following the old rules, what should you guys say now?”
A cacophony of noise rang out from outside. There was such a lack of dissonance that nobody was able to tell what they were chanting.
“What? I cannot hear you. Repeat yourselves.”
Following this, all the noise slowly and gradually converged and formed into a bright and resonant sound. Thousands of people shouted in chorus, their voices so high it tore through the air and spread far into the sky. “Hail the new president. May the prayers of God be with you.”
The teenager let out a sigh and shut off the microphone.
“It’s the same congratulatory message as when we’re fighting the Vindice. Can’t they be a bit more creative?” He spoke to himself. Tapping, a few times on the tablet, he then went into the mansion.
There were shouts of horror and fear as dazzling laser beams filled the air. Lin Sanjiu shut her eyelids to protect her eyes from the blinding light. Amidst the chaos, Lin Sanjiu could only see the figure of the teenager silhouetted against the light as he walked towards her. The glaring white light lasted for five minutes, and when it finally died down, silence prevailed all over.
The governor’s mansion had blacked out.
All of Sector 9 had plunged into darkness.
‘Perhaps the laser destroyed the electric grid as well…’ Lin Sanjiu thought to herself while sitting in the dark.
Tonight, Yun died, but Puppeteer survived.
Puppeteer’s footfalls stopped not far away. Then he smacked his hand hard on the handrail as he slopped down onto the floor. Lin Sanjiu listened to the noise behind her and said softly, “I know you can’t hear me… But I still want to say this.
“I think I now know why you refuse to let go of the grand prize. What I’m going to tell you is that you don’t need the grand prize. This is because I know the man you want to find.
“His name is Gong Daoyi.
“I can help you… I’ll do everything to help you find him…”
But nothing happened; there was no response from behind her. She was merely a watcher, a ghost in this world. Thus, there was no way Puppeteer could hear what she had said.
When she thought about this, she suddenly raised her head. Little by little, she turned her head to look over her shoulder.
Her gaze met with the teenager’s expressionless face. There was an arm inside her chest.
There was no blood, and she felt no pain. Her surroundings began to bend out of shape and fall apart. Everything was turning into blocks of color, and the teenager was losing his human form as well. It wasn’t long before the entire world shattered.
The world coded by the Veda had collapsed; all the matters in that world vanished. When Lin Sanjiu came back to her senses, she found herself floating in a void.
Countless white threads emanated from her body, stretching far into the void. Aside from the beam that looked like silk, she could not see anything, not even her body.
“This is… the Data Stream Library?” she muttered in her heart. “I.. I’m back?”
“Impressive, I must say.” A thought in the form of words bumped into her mind. “In the face of a crisis-laden situation, your barrier is virtually indestructible. It was absolutely out of our expectation that a replay of someone’s memories would, in the end, help us get what we wanted. Your humanity, for better or worse, is a huge burden. We can get rid of it for you, but of course, it’s up to you to decide.”
“Puppeteer… He…”
“The two Puppeteers you interacted with after you came out of the convenience store were created by us through coding.”
Lin Sanjiu was stunned for a moment before understanding dawned upon her.
“You say you can help me delete my humanity?”
“Affirmative. Oh, by the way, thank you for your information. We’ve already gotten what we needed.”
