The "Survival on the Train" game has bugs, it's really laggy!

The Devourer was parked in the middle of the corridor.

The stark white fluorescent tubes hung overhead, one after another, their current unstable, their brightness alternating between light and shadow. The ballasts inside the tubes hummed, flashing every two or three seconds, cutting the reflection on the car window into fragmented afterimages.

The floor tiles are yellowed. Black water stains have accumulated in the grout lines.

The smell of disinfectant seeped out from the ventilation ducts. The concentration was very low, but just enough to penetrate deep into the nasal cavity, making one's throat feel tight.

The old terminal with green background and white text displays stably.

"The patient refused anesthesia."

Please strictly adhere to medical operating procedures.

"The surgeon has the authority to perform the procedure in accordance with regulations."

"Violent killing of a patient will trigger a medical malpractice determination."

"Consequence: Permanent revocation of knife-wielding qualification, and the subject will be reclassified as an infected intruder."

Little Fire squatted beside the control panel, its tail pressed against the floor, motionless. After reading the line of text, its lips moved a few times, but finally it managed to squeeze out only two words.

That's really mean.

Wang Hu stood at the back, his robotic arm half-raised, his fingers slightly spread. He stared at the corridor outside the car window, his Adam's apple bobbing.

At the end of the corridor.

The iron door to the first ward was still open. The hinges were severely rusted, the door panel was crooked, and there was an arc-shaped scratch on the bottom.

There was no light behind the crack in the door.

But there was a sound like fingernails scraping against metal.

Sizzle.

Sizzle.

Very slowly. Very forcefully. With each scrape, the door panel trembled slightly, and rusty fragments fell from the door frame.

Su Yuan stood in front of the control panel, his right tricolor vertical pupil remaining completely still. The silver-black mechanical sphere in his left eye socket rotated half a notch, and the AM resonant slot tapped steadily.

Click.

Click.

Click.

He looked down the corridor, his left hand resting on the keyboard, without moving.

The scraping sound stopped.

Five fingers first peeked out from under the door.

Very thin. Bone protrusion. Grayish-white skin clung tightly to the finger bones, almost revealing the veins beneath. The nails were long, split into several pieces, the gaps filled with a dark red, dried substance.

Fingers gripped the edge of the door frame.

Then, a face emerged from the darkness and pressed against us.

Sixteen years old.

His features were slender. His cheekbones were slightly high. His chin hadn't fully developed yet, retaining a youthful thinness.

Su Yuan's face.

To be precise, it was Su Yuan at the age of sixteen.

But only the right half is normal.

The left side of his face was covered with dense, grayish-white lumps. The largest one bulged above his eye socket, pushing his left brow bone outward to reveal the moist, dark red tissue inside. The surface of the lumps was covered with grayish-white lines, within which fluid seemed to writhe, its rhythm synchronized with his heartbeat.

The gray-white code extended downwards along the neck veins, burrowed below the collarbone, and disappeared into the collar of the hospital gown.

It came out from behind the door.

The footsteps were very light. Barefoot on the tiles, toes were grayish-white, and toenails were all cracked.

It was dragging an IV stand.

The IV stand had an old-fashioned stainless steel frame, and only two of the four wheels at the bottom were still turning. The metal base dragged across the tiles, making a sharp, scraping sound that carried down the corridor, muffled by the hum of the fluorescent light tubes.

The IV bag did not contain saline solution.

It was a grayish-white, turbid liquid. The liquid surface swayed with each step, and a layer of active codes adhered to the inner wall of the tube, constantly changing their arrangement under the light.

It raised its head.

With the eyes of a sixteen-year-old Su Yuan, looking directly at Su Yuan in front of the control panel through a corridor more than thirty meters long and through the windshield of the Devouring Wasteland vehicle.

Then it opened.

His voice was hoarse, with the broken quality characteristic of puberty. Each word seemed to scrape against his throat, leaving rough edges.

"elder brother."

Xiao Huo's hair stood on end.

Wang Hu's robotic arm tightened abruptly.

Do you remember?

The clone tilted its head, and the grayish-white tumor swelled up with the movement.

"When you were sixteen."

"She was lying on that bed."

"Kneel down beside me."

"You begged for three hours."

"By the time you begged her, she was already dead."

The physical gravity of the corridor has shifted.

It wasn't interference from the laws of nature. It was base-level pollution that rewrote the curvature of local space through sound wave vibrations. The filaments of fluorescent tubes were being pulled by additional gravity, emitting a hissing, overloaded sound. A low groan of metal pressure emanated from the hull of the Devourer.

Xiao Huo suddenly covered his temples with both hands.

Something traveled along the physical sound waves and penetrated his senses. It wasn't a picture. It wasn't language. It was a pure, unadulterated feeling of despair.

It was very concentrated. So concentrated that he felt as if his core computing area had been filled with lead.

Wang Hu's knees buckled slightly. The servo motor of the robotic arm issued an overload alarm. He clenched his teeth, and veins bulged on both sides of his neck.

The clone continued forward.

With each step, a layer of sound wave frequency is superimposed.

"You never cried again after that."

"But every time you close your eyes, you can see that bed."

"That white bed sheet."

"And that mark on the bed sheet."

One of the fluorescent light tubes exploded.

The broken glass fell onto the tiles with a crisp sound, which was then stretched and distorted by gravity, turning into a drawn-out hum.

The armor plate on the front of the Devourer began to show slight deformation. It wasn't from a physical impact. It was from the gravitational difference pulling on the metal lattice at the molecular level.

Su Yuan stood still.

The tricolor vertical pupil in the right eye remained unchanged.

The mechanical left eye turned one notch.

Click.

He looked at that face. His own face at sixteen. A face half-covered in grayish-white tumors.

His expression was so calm it was almost inhuman.

The clone walked to a point 20 meters from the front of the car and stopped.

It tilted its head to look at Su Yuan, its lips slowly twitching to the sides. It wasn't a smile. It was a mechanical stretching of its facial muscles, driven by the base code. Grayish-white liquid seeped from its cracked lips, dripping down its chin.

"elder brother."

It opened its arms.

"Let me in."

"I'm so cold."

next second.

It pounced.

Barefoot, he kicked and shattered the tiles. The IV stand was flung against the wall, its stainless steel rod smashing through the plaster. The grayish-white IV bag burst upon impact. Turbid liquid spilled all over the floor, seeping into the cracks in the tiles, and grayish-white patterns crawled out from the cracks in the ground.

The clones are extremely fast.

It wasn't the biological body's maximum acceleration. It was the base's contaminated code that directly rewrote its physical motion parameters. A emaciated sixteen-year-old body traversed a distance of twenty meters in 0.03 seconds.

On one side of its face, grayish-white tumors burst open at the same time.

It's not broken. It's blossoming on its own initiative.

Each tumor resembled a burst abscess, gushing out a concentrated, grayish-white sap. The sap carried with it dense base-cleaning code, and something even more disgusting.

memory.

It is not a simulated memory. It is not a fabricated image.

It is Su Yuan's original memory. It is the raw experience extracted from the underlying data of the neural interface without any processing.

Sixteen years old.

hospital.

White bed sheets.

Hands that were completely cold.

I knelt in the corridor for three hours and no one paid any attention to me.

All the fragments were compressed into information warheads by the high-concentration base code, mixed in with the grayish-white slime, and slammed heavily onto the windshield of the Devourer.

Snapped.

The entire glass surface was instantly covered with grayish-white stains.

Physical sound waves penetrate the car body. Memory resonance directly enters the interior of the car.

Little Fire let out a half-scream, sprang up from beside the control panel, and then crashed back down. His hands pressed tightly against his head, pale blood seeping from between his fingers, and his tail twitched violently.

"No--"

His eyes were bloodshot. The information flow from the base code, mixed with memories of despair, was violently eroding his core senses.

It was not an attack.

It's an infection.

Wang Hu lasted three seconds longer than him.

Three seconds later, his robotic arm issued a series of malfunction alarms, his knees slammed to the floor, and he gasped for breath.

"Hold……"

He braced himself on the ground with his left hand, while the joints of his right robotic arm trembled uncontrollably.

The memory resonance was too intense. He could even see a blurry white space. A cold floor. The back of a kneeling boy.

That wasn't his memory.

But that despair was so real. So real that even the neural signals in the physical dimension resonated with it.

Outside the car window.

The clone was lying on the windshield.

Grayish-white slime was still oozing from the fissures in the tumor on its face. Its palms were pressed against the glass, its fingernails carving grayish-white scratches into the surface.

It looked at Su Yuan through the glass.

The twitching at the corners of his mouth widened. His teeth were fully exposed. His grayish-white gums were covered with coded patterns.

"elder brother."

It spoke close to the glass, its breath condensing into a grayish-white mist on the glass.

Aren't you going to save me?

Grayish-white code began to seep into the gaps in the metal of the car body along with the slime.

The dark gold surface of the Devourer's hull showed visible fading. Grayish-white patterns spread from the front of the vehicle to both sides, moving slowly but very steadily.

assimilation.

It assimilates the vehicle body.

Xiao Huo lay on the ground, blood flowing from his nostrils and ears, his voice broken and incoherent.

"Master...it's eating the car..."

Wang Hu forced himself to look up. His right eye had been stunted by the memory resonance.

"Old Su! Fire!"

He yelled it out.

"Bomb it!"

Su Yuan didn't move.

Wang Hu gritted his teeth and dragged his half-crippled body toward the weapon panel.

His hand had just touched the edge of the panel.

Ding.

A glaring yellow warning pops up in the terminal.

The text is very large, filling the entire screen.

"Medical malpractice early warning"

"Weapon system activation tendency detected."

"Reminder to the surgeon: Violently killing a patient will result in immediate disqualification from performing surgery."

"After the deprivation, the surgeon will be reclassified as an infected intruder."

"The Great Wall defense line will carry out a full-scale physical elimination of the invaders."

"Including but not limited to: gravitational compression, matter disintegration, and causal erasure."

"This ruling is not subject to appeal."

"This ruling is irrevocable."

Wang Hu's hand stopped three centimeters above the panel.

His fingers were trembling.

It wasn't out of fear. It was because I was so angry that I couldn't unleash it.

"What a load of bullshit rules..."

He squeezed out a few words through gritted teeth.

Su Yuan finally tilted his head slightly.

"Stop."

The sound was soft. It was flat, without any variation.

Wang Hu gritted his teeth, retracting his fingers one by one, his fist clenching so tightly that the mechanical joints creaked.

He didn't move.

It wasn't that he wanted to stop. It was that he knew there was no other option when Su Yuan said to stop.

Outside the car window.

The gray-white assimilation area has expanded to one-third of the front of the vehicle.

The clone lay sprawled on the glass, grayish-white slime seeping from its entire body, spreading backward along the car's exterior. The tumor kept breaking open, each crack releasing a new wave of memory resonance waves.

Little Fire was completely sprawled on the ground. His core sensory layer was in complete disarray from the impact, and his tail drooped limply to one side.

Wang Hu knelt on one knee, his teeth clenched so tightly they were almost breaking.

Slaughterhouse Command Center.

The terminal displays a green background with white text.

The seven officers watched the clone clinging to the windshield of the Devourer vehicle, watched the grayish-white slime slowly devour the vehicle's hull, and watched the yellow warning boxes firmly jamming the weapon systems.

The fire control officer lay on the ground, his broken ribs leaving him only able to breathe shallowly.

"It can't be hit."

The communications officer's eyes were bloodshot as he stared at the screen.

"If you give an injection, you're not a doctor."

The adjutant leaned against the equipment cabinet, half of his face covered in dried blood, his voice hoarse.

"If we don't fight, we'll be eaten."

The commander sat on the ground, his back against the tactical platform leg. He looked at the yellow-framed warning sign, his expression slowly darkening.

"Rules of Earth".

He said four words.

There was no follow-up sentence.

Because everyone understands.

The old rules on Earth don't care how strong you are. They don't care how many galaxies you've devoured. They don't care how many gods you've killed.

It only cares whether you're within the rules.

You said you were a doctor.

Then let's follow the doctor's instructions.

Killing patients?

roll.

The observation area of ​​the high-dimensional dark web.

The young elder propped himself up halfway out of the black blood, and his eyes lit up the moment he saw the yellow warning frame.

That kind of brightness is not rational.

It was a drowning person who grabbed onto a piece of driftwood.

"ha……"

He smiled.

He laughed until black blood gushed from the corners of his mouth. He laughed until the broken bones in his chest rubbed together with a dull thud.

"Did you see that!"

He raised his hand and pointed at the screen. His fingertips were covered in black blood and trembling violently.

"He's locked up!"

"The Rules of the Great Wall!"

"Doctors cannot kill patients!"

"He dares not use weapons! He dares not violate the laws! He dares not deny!"

"What monster that devours everything! What madman who gouges out eyes!"

The young elder laughed until his tears mingled with black blood.

"He failed because of the oldest rule!"

Several afterimages nearby were also watching the scene. They didn't laugh. But their silence itself was a form of agreement.

The young elder braced himself on the ground, his whole body trembling, his voice broken yet high-pitched.

"To die according to the rules of one's hometown!"

"Su Yuan!"

"This is your end!"

Inside the wasteland bunker.

The staff officer rested his hands on the table, his face ashen.

"He had no room to maneuver."

The commander stared at the screen.

"Weapons cannot be used. Laws cannot be used. The inner universe cannot be used either."

The staff officer's throat moved slightly.

"Once a violent kill is determined, Great Wall will carry it out on the spot."

He looked down at his fingertips on the keyboard.

"The host computer is going to die on its own operating table."

Inside the Devourer's Carriage.

The gray and white assimilation area has covered nearly half of the front of the car.

The clone adhered to the glass, its grayish-white tumors bursting open, transforming into a gigantic mask of contamination. Its mouth opened and closed, continuously uttering fragmented sentences of memory.

"You scraped your knees when you knelt down."

"The blood seeped into the cracks between the floor tiles."

"The nurse passed by three times."

"Nobody stopped."

Every word carried a base-level vibration, penetrating the physical barrier and hammering into the nerves of everyone in the carriage.

Xiao Huo could no longer speak in complete sentences. His core sensory layer was damaged by more than half, and he could only emit intermittent breathy sounds.

Veins bulged on Wang Hu's forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wasn't overwhelmed by memories. He was pushed to his limit by the suffocating feeling of being unable to fight back.

Su Yuan stood in front of the control panel.

He looked at the face pasted on the glass.

That face of my sixteen-year-old self.

Grayish-white sarcoma. Cracked lips. Hoarse voice during puberty.

And those memories.

Every single word is true.

He did indeed kneel for three hours.

He did scrape his knee.

He was indeed passed by three times.

Su Yuan's right eye, with its three-colored vertical pupil, remained unchanged.

From beginning to end.

The mechanical left eye turned one notch.

Click.

His left hand rested on the old-fashioned mechanical keyboard.

The finger bone touched the keycap.

Click.

Not in a hurry, not slowly.

Click. Click-click.

The Morse code was typed out through the physical input port.

Xiao Huo lay on the ground, turned his head, and looked at the terminal with his eyes that were not yet completely out of focus.

Green background with white text refreshed.

"The surgeon enters the command."

"Content analysis in progress."

Su Yuan continued knocking.

The fingertips landed on the keycaps with an almost unnervingly steady rhythm. There was no pause. No hesitation.

The last character has been typed.

Press Enter.

Snapped.

The terminal displays the complete command.

"Patient's condition confirmed: Extreme mania."

"Accompanied by severe self-harm and aggressive tendencies."

"The patient is contaminating the medical environment and the people around them."

"The surgeon requests: intervention with physical restraint straps."

Wang Hu raised his head.

His face was covered in blood, and his eyes were wide open.

Little Fire lay on the ground, its lips moving slightly.

The cursor at the top of the terminal blinked three times.

Three times very quickly.

It happened so fast that everyone's heart skipped a beat.

Green background with white text refreshed.

"Approved."

"The patient's behavior meets the criteria for compulsory restraint."

"Physical-level constraint devices are permitted."

"Restraint area: Limbs fixed, head semi-fixed, trunk restricted."

"Constraint method: Non-lethal physical lock."

"implement."

The front of the Devourer emitted a dull metallic sound.

Dark gold vines sprang out from both sides of the front of the car.

It wasn't the dark gold tentacles with fangs and a devouring desire that we saw in the previous battles.

All lethal structures converged.

The fangs retract. The barbs are smoothed out. The corrosive glands close.

The surface of the vines is reassembled into a cold, rigid polymer restraint clamp with a joint-locking structure.

The jaws are four centimeters wide. The inside is lined with a metal cushioning layer. The outside has a physical locking mechanism.

Standard medical restraint equipment.

Ugly design. Rough workmanship. But absolutely reliable structure.

All four restraint clamps were ejected simultaneously.

It accelerates faster than the clone's base.

boom.

The first one clamps the left wrist.

boom.

The second clamp clamps the right wrist.

Bang. Bang.

The third and fourth lock the ankles respectively.

The clone was forcibly torn off the windshield of the car.

The grayish-white viscous liquid stretched into long threads, snapped with a snap, and fell onto the tiles, emitting gray smoke.

The four restraint clamps tightened simultaneously, throwing the clone toward the left wall of the corridor.

Click—Bang!

The emaciated body was nailed to the yellowed tile wall.

The four limbs are spread out in a large "X" shape.

Both wrists were tightly locked to the sides of the shoulders by clamps. Both ankles were nailed half a meter above the ground.

The restraint clamps plunged deep into the wall, and the metal anchors unfolded inside the bricks, locking them in place.

The clone struggles.

Its body convulsed violently, and the grayish-white tumor swelled rapidly as if enraged. Its spine arched outward, and its ribs were clearly visible beneath the skin. Its bare toes dug into the wall, scraping off a piece of tile.

The hoarse voice turned into a scream.

It wasn't pain. It was anger.

"You can't do this!"

"You can't touch me!"

"I am you! I am you! I am you!"

The grayish-white tumor spewed out a new wave of contaminated mucus from the crack, attempting to climb back up the restraints and invade the Devourer's vine system.

The moment the gray code made contact with the surface of the restraint clamp, it was bounced off by the polymer buffer layer.

It is not a resistance to the laws.

It's due to incompatibility of physical materials.

The restraint clamp's surface coating is a purely physical-level insulating medium. There is no high-dimensional interface. There is no proof-of-concept terminal. There is no brain-computer interface.

The gray code indicates that no port can be written to.

It can only slide down the outer wall of the jaws and drip onto the tiles, like sewage with nowhere to go.

The high-dimensional dark web.

The young elder's smile was frozen on his face.

He stared at the clone nailed to the wall in the screen, at the four restraints without fangs or lethal structures, his mouth agape, unable to close for a long time.

"this……"

His voice was hoarse.

"What's this?"

The shadowy figure beside him whispered.

"Restraint straps".

The young elder turned his head sharply.

"Restraint straps?"

The afterimage didn't look at him.

"Commonly used equipment in psychiatry. Used to control manic patients. Non-lethal. Complies with medical guidelines."

The pleasure on the young elder's face gradually froze.

"He wasn't hitting."

The afterimage continued speaking.

"He's going through the formalities."

The young elder's lips trembled slightly.

Slaughterhouse Command Center.

The fire control officer lay on the ground, staring at the terminal screen, breathing rapidly.

"Restraint belts?"

The communications officer had bloodstains around his eyes and a hoarse voice.

"It's compliant. Great Wall has approved it."

The adjutant leaned against the cabinet door, stunned for several seconds.

"He didn't request fire support."

The commander sat on the ground, the back of his head resting against the tactical console. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.

"It's a doctor's order."

Wasteland shelter.

The staff officer suddenly stood up from his chair.

"He went around it!"

The commander looked at him.

The staff officer was covered in cold sweat, but his eyes were bright red.

"Weapons are forbidden. Laws are forbidden. But medical restraints are acceptable!"

"The logic of the Great Wall defense line is the logic of hospitals!"

"If a patient becomes violent and attacks, the doctor has the right to request physical restraint!"

"This isn't violence! This is standard operating procedure!"

The commander stared at the clone pinned to the wall on the screen, and his lips twitched slightly.

"He never intended to make a move from the beginning."

The staff officer was stunned.

The commander's voice was low.

"He didn't enter a battlefield."

He went into the operating room.

Inside the Desolate Wasteland train carriage.

The clone was nailed to the wall, its roars gradually turning from anger to hysteria. The tumor on half of its face kept swelling and contracting, and grayish-white slime dripped down the wall, pooling on the tiles.

It began screaming new fragments of memory.

More vicious. Deeper.

Did you hear her last words?

She didn't say your name.

"She called someone else."

"You wouldn't dare to think about it."

"But you know."

The vibrations of the garbled memory intensified. Three fluorescent light tubes in the corridor exploded in succession, and shards of glass were twisted and flung in all directions by gravity.

The doors of the Devourer were tightly closed. But the vibrations penetrated the metal shell.

Xiao Huo lay on the ground, his fingernails digging into the cracks in the floorboards, his mouth covered in blood.

"Master...please..."

His voice was broken and incoherent.

"Let me turn off my hearing..."

Wang Hu knelt on one knee, the veins on his forehead throbbing. His robotic arm was completely out of control, hanging limply at his side, its fingers opening and closing erratically.

Su Yuan walked towards the car door.

Xiao Huo raised his head, his eyes bloodshot.

"Owner?"

Su Yuan pressed the physical switch on the car door.

hiss--

The airtight seal is released. The car doors slide open to both sides.

The smell of disinfectant and the gray, white code wafted in from the corridor.

Su Yuan stepped out of the car.

Leather boots stepped on the yellowed tiles.

Click.

Very crisp. Very clean.

His right hand was hanging down. His left palm was facing up.

A scalpel rested in his palm.

It is not a weapon based on higher-dimensional laws. It is not a crystal of three-colored divine fire.

It is an old-fashioned physical scalpel formed from pure and authentic primordial matter.

Willow-leaf shaped blade. 9 cm long. Blade width 0.3 mm.

There are no destructive laws attached. There is no conceptual negation coating. There is no devouring function.

It's just a knife.

A scalpel used for surgery.

Su Yuan stepped on the tiles and walked step by step toward the clone that was nailed to the wall.

The sound of leather boots hitting the ground echoed in the corridor.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Grayish-white slime spread around his feet. He stepped over it, but the soles of his boots remained unstained. The True Essence formed a thin film on the soles, automatically repelling the base code.

The clone saw him come out.

The struggle suddenly intensified.

The four restraint clamps issued a metal stress alarm, but the anchor claws remained deeply embedded in the wall and did not budge.

The grayish-white tumors were swelling wildly. The largest one had already swelled to the size of a fist, and the grayish-white patterns on its surface were refreshing so rapidly that they could only be seen as a blur to the naked eye.

"Don't come any closer!"

It screamed in the voice of sixteen-year-old Su Yuan.

"Touching me is the same as touching yourself!"

"Your memories reside within my body!"

"If you cut me, you're cutting into your own past!"

The scrambled memory signal's transmission power was pushed to its limit. The last few fluorescent light tubes in the corridor shattered. Shards of glass hovered in the air for a fraction of a second before being pulled into arcs by the distorted gravity and embedding themselves in the walls on either side.

Su Yuan walked up to the clone.

The distance was less than half a meter.

Grayish-white slime seeped from the clone's entire body, accumulating in a layer on the ground between the two.

Su Yuan looked down at it.

Looking at that face that looked exactly like hers when she was sixteen.

It looked like a grayish-white fleshy tumor.

Looking at the cracked lips.

Watching the code erode the blood vessels.

It was trembling. It was screaming. It was using Su Yuan's most painful memories as a weapon.

In Su Yuan's right eye, in its tricolored vertical pupil, there was no anger. No pain. No hesitation.

There is only one kind of extremely calm scrutiny.

Just like a surgeon examining a patient's body under the operating lights, looking at the lesions that need to be removed.

He spoke.

"Since you refuse anesthesia."

The sound was very soft.

His voice was so steady that it didn't sound like someone being bombarded by their deepest memories.

"Then cut while you're fully conscious."

The scalpel fell.

The blade cut precisely into the edge of the largest grayish-white tumor.

Without hesitation. Without testing the waters.

One stab.

The cutting edge follows the boundary between the sarcoma and normal tissue. The angle, depth, and speed are all calculated. Only the grayish-white contaminated tissue is cut. The underlying clonal cells are not damaged.

The scalpel is moving.

The surface of the grayish-white sarcoma was gradually peeled away.

The clone's screams changed.

The anger turned into a pure, physiological scream of excruciating pain.

No anesthesia was administered.

Every cut was made with a clear mind.

The neural interface of the gray-white sarcoma is completely connected to the pain system of the clone. Cutting it open is equivalent to vivisection.

The clone's body convulsed violently within the restraints. The muscles in its limbs were stretched to their limit, and all its fingers and toes were spasmodically bent. Its teeth clenched, producing a grinding sound.

"Aaaaaahh ...

His voice was torn apart. The hoarseness he had developed during puberty was ripped to pieces by extreme pain.

Grayish-white viscous fluid gushed from the wound. Su Yuan slightly shifted his left hand to avoid the splatter, and continued tracing the lines with his right hand, knife in hand.

One centimeter. Two centimeters. Three centimeters.

The gray-white code roots at the base of the sarcoma were severed one by one. Each time a root was severed, the clone screamed in agony.

The green background with white text keeps refreshing stably.

"The debridement procedure was performed in accordance with regulations."

"The resection path has excellent precision."

"Tissue damage is controlled within an acceptable range."

"Resection progress: 12%"

"Please continue."

Slaughterhouse Command Center.

Seven officers stared at the terminal screen.

The fire control officer lay on the ground, mouth agape, forgetting to breathe.

The communications officer covered his temple, his eyes darting about.

The adjutant leaned against the equipment cabinet, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down three times before finally uttering only a soft sound.

"Live...live cut?"

The commander sat on the ground, his back straight.

He stared at Su Yuan's hand holding the knife and drawing lines in the picture.

That hand was incredibly steady.

There was not the slightest tremor.

Grayish-white slime splattered. The clone screamed in agony. The jumbled memories continued to assault the system.

That hand just didn't shake.

The commander opened his mouth.

"This is not a fight."

The communications officer turned to look at him.

The commander's voice was dry.

"This is a surgical procedure."

"Inside a cosmic-level defense line."

"Give me a god-level contaminant."

"Perform live wound cleaning."

"No anesthesia."

The fire control officer lay prone in a pool of blood, his face pressed against the cold metal floor, his eyes wide open.

He served in the military for seventeen years. He witnessed salvos of planet-bombers. He witnessed warp-and-fly attacks. He witnessed dimensional collapse.

I've never seen anything like this before.

I have never seen it.

Wasteland shelter.

The staff officer's legs went weak, and he slumped into his chair.

On the screen, Su Yuan's scalpel precisely cut along the fourth incision line. The base of the grayish-white sarcoma was peeled away one by one. The clone's screams had turned into dissonant groans.

The staff officer's lips were chapped.

"Contamination of the galaxy's base that can destroy it."

He stared at the screen.

"He treated it like a festering wound and cut it open."

The commander did not speak.

The staff officer continued to stare at the screen.

"One cut at a time."

"Physical scalpel"

"Without the support of any rules."

"It's all done by hand."

The high-dimensional dark web.

The young elder's smile had completely vanished.

He lay in the black blood, his eyes fixed on the screen, his lips moving.

The scalpel made its final incision at the base of the grayish-white sarcoma.

Su Yuan extended two fingers of his left hand and pinched the top of the tumor.

The fingertip touched the sarcoma through a thin membrane of real source material. Grayish-white code crawled wildly on the membrane surface, but no intrusion port could be found.

Su Yuan exerted his strength.

laugh--

The grayish-white sarcoma was completely peeled off the left side of the clone's face.

The connecting tissue at the bottom broke, spraying out a cloud of grayish-white liquid mist.

The clone let out its most deafening howl of the round. The sound waves shattered the remaining plaster fragments on both sides of the corridor. All four restraint clamps simultaneously overloaded, and the anchor claws creaked and rattled inside the walls.

Su Yuan held the fist-sized, grayish-white tumor in his hand and turned it over.

The base of the tumor showed clear traces of coded roots. Each one was twitching, like an insect being pulled from the soil, its grayish-white veins fading rapidly.

He glanced down at it.

Then let go.

clack.

The tumor landed on the tile.

A damp, muffled sound. Grayish-white liquid seeped from the bottom, spreading through the tile grout.

The clone's howls turned into heavy panting. On one side of its face, where the tumor had peeled away, a bloody hole was revealed.

There were no bones in the cavity.

There was no blood.

Something fell out.

It's very small. Not much bigger than a thumbnail.

Ding--

The crisp sound of metal hitting ceramic tiles.

A metal plaque.

Rectangular. Rounded corners. Severely rusted surface. However, the stamped lettering on the front is still legible.

Su Yuan looked down at the iron plaque.

The mechanical left eye rotated one notch, scanning the AM resonant slot.

Click.

The stamped content was read.

"001-A (Backup)"

"Blue Star Era - Pangu Project - Discarded Cloning Batch"

Su Yuan's right eye's tricolor vertical pupil contracted slightly.

The clone pinned to the wall stopped struggling.

Its head hung low, and grayish-white sweat trickled down its forehead. Blood was still seeping from the gaping hole in half of its face, and dark liquid dripped down its chin, splashing onto the tiles at its feet.

Two seconds passed.

It raised its head.

He looked at Su Yuan with his right eye, which was not covered by the tumor.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

It's not the kind of mechanical stretching driven by code that we had before.

It is a genuine laugh belonging to a sixteen-year-old boy.

Weak. Eerie. With a chilling calmness that sends shivers down your spine.

"elder brother."

Its voice was so hoarse that it was almost inaudible.

"Is your knife sharp enough?"

Su Yuan did not answer.

The clone's right eye slowly veered towards the depths of the corridor.

"In the corridor."

Its sound broke into a whisper.

"There are still a hundred 'we' waiting for your rounds."

Su Yuan's mechanical left eye suddenly stopped.

The clicking sound from the AM resonant slot stopped for a full second.

Deep in the corridor.

In the dark areas where the stark white light cannot reach.

The handle on the iron door of ward number 2 was turned on.

creak.

Very light. Very slow. The rustling sound of an old tin door hinge being slowly turned.

Number 3.

creak.

Number 4.

creak.

Number 5.

Number 6.

Number 7.

The sounds began to overlap. More and more. Increasingly dense.

One after another, the sounds of metal scraping against metal emanated from the darkness deep within the corridor, layer upon layer, forming a continuous stream of metallic noise that sent shivers down your spine from the back of your head to the soles of your feet.

Number 20.

Number 35.

Number 58.

Number 79.

Number 100.

The handles of all ninety-nine iron doors turned at the same time.

Crunch crunch ...

Inside the Devourer's carriage, Little Fire lay on the ground, its tail exploding.

Wang Hu raised his head, his pupils suddenly contracting.

In the command center of the slaughterhouse, seven officers held their breath simultaneously.

Inside the wasteland bunker, the staff officer's pen fell to the ground.

In the high-dimensional dark web, the young elder's face, half-submerged in black blood, froze completely.

Su Yuan looked down at the rusted iron plaque at his feet.

"001-A (backup)".

He then looked into the depths of the corridor.

Ninety-nine doors.

Ninety-nine patients.

The scalpel was still in his hand. The blade was stained with grayish-white blood.

The mechanical left eye restarted.

Click.

Click.

Click.