He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Chapter 125 Hugh

The rain was pouring down.

In the thick curtain of rain, a dark shadow, like an ink blot spreading and indistinctly appearing, flickered in the dim light.

The empty layout of this place—like an abandoned factory—was torn apart by the violent raindrops falling from the sky, reflecting the dim, even somewhat gloomy, neon lights in the distance.

Hugh pulled his goggles down hard and gently kicked away the foreign object beside his leg without making a sound. He moved forward into the darkness using all four limbs, only glancing back casually as he passed the "foreign object".

What came into view was a corpse that had been bloated from being soaked in the rain. The extent of the alteration was conservatively estimated to be over 50%. The rare flesh and blood had been corroded by the flowing water into a disgusting, burnt yellow color. With a casual glance, Xiu could tell that the fatal wound was the stark white hole in the center of the head, through which the dark cement floor could be seen.

Suppressing his inner turmoil, Xiu withdrew his gaze expressionlessly, only his deep purple pupils slightly contracting.

An unlucky, or rather, foolish, colleague.

Although he was momentarily blocked by the obstacle, Hugh's movements remained swift and silent. Once he was far away from the area covered by the dim lights, he seemed to disappear into the shadows like a fish entering water.

—We succeeded.

The chip at the back of his head was burning hot from storing too much data temporarily—Hugh suppressed his pounding heart and, under the cover of the downpour, began to run wildly in the darkness—on a rainy day like this, the view was incredibly narrow behind the heavy curtain of rain, and the wet glasses only made his vision more blurred.

The young man angrily flung off the heavy goggles around his neck as if venting his frustration. When he bought them, they were said to be equipped with a full-channel "pulse jamming weapon" that could block more than 99% of the surveillance channels during a mission.

In actual combat, it became nothing more than a psychological comfort—Hugh had made up his mind to replace it with a brand with a legitimate distributor after he returned this time—otherwise, given the dangerous nature of his "work," he would have perished long ago from this set of unlicensed equipment if it weren't for the "superpower" he unexpectedly gained.

...

The world, devoid of daylight, resembled a messy pile of vomit. The perception of time was meaningless to those who lived here. Only Hugh could know the exact time that had passed through his "treasure," the "atomic watch" he now wore around his neck along with his junk glasses, which he had purchased at great expense.

—That's about it—After running for so long, no one can find this place anymore.

With a flash, Hugh turned into an unknown, dark alleyway, passing through the city, which was almost indistinguishable from a jumble of rocks—just like the bloated, rotting corpse Hugh had seen before.

—A world without "miracles".

[Lolanda Hallownest, December 2077]

[Bottom Nest]

—”

Ignoring these familiar scenes, Xiu pulled out a portable terminal hanging around his neck and skillfully used various small movements to reach the [Association]'s signal base station. He then sent an encrypted message to the [Copper Moss] intermediary, indicating that the "commission was completed," and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After a half-hour escape, including a stretch of "pipeline area"—who knows how long that place had been unmanaged—if his lungs hadn't long been replaced with prosthetics of the same function, though they were made in a small workshop but were still sturdy and durable enough, he would never have been able to still look alive and kicking after walking that distance.

—But according to a rough estimate this year by the Southern Association, the Fallen Organization, and the Holy Gear Church, 11% of the entire Undercity population now resides in the Pipeline District—a number that sometimes sends chills down Hugh's spine just thinking about it.

—Can anyone really live permanently in a place like that?

It is hard to imagine that, under extreme conditions, such "refined" organisms as humans—often regarded as naturally noble organisms—are as ubiquitous as poisonous moss and insects in the bottom nest, infiltrating every nook and cranny and endlessly growing and spreading in damp and dark corners.

Xiu shuddered.

—At the very least, don't go to places like that.—

As it turns out, people's bottom line will gradually shrink—in the very beginning, just a few years ago, Hugh would have imagined that one day he could climb to a higher level, at least to live in a position where the light shines, instead of now, risking his life at any moment to gain that little bit of space, to take a small step upward.

—But it'll be soon—

The young man calculated the wealth he had accumulated with the "middleman" and finally managed a genuine smile from his stiff lips.

—Including this commission.

Hugh casually removed his right prosthetic arm and discarded it in the alley like a disposable glove. He was mainly worried that the neural coordination chip on it was a jailbroken version. Some dealers like to put some outrageous functions into these chips of unknown origin, such as forced location without authorization. For someone like Hugh, once the box is precisely opened, his life is over.

As a member of "Copper Moss," Hugh had already given up the opportunity to be selected and promoted by the so-called "official" organization. No matter who he was working for, a thief was a thief. In the bottom nest, even a "murderer" had a higher status than a "thief"—everyone hated insects that snooped on other people's property—so every time he went on a mission, whether it was to steal data, technology, or physical objects, he had to be prepared to "fall into eternal hell."

Everything he does now is no longer for himself.

—It'll be soon—

He thought to himself.

—We are very close to redeeming my father's rights.

He waited in the dark for nearly an hour, during which time the layer of gelatinous skin covering his face kept wriggling and changing, until Hugh was sure that his bionic disguise was enough to fool the association's identification before he officially began to finish his work.

The most troublesome thing is that you still have to deliver the goods in person.

On his way home, Hugh thought helplessly: Although the reward for this commission was much more generous than before, the specific requirements were much stricter. He didn't know what the data stored in the "special chip" in the back of his head was, and of course he didn't need to know. The client's requirement was that, in order to prevent the association from intercepting the remote information transmission, Hugh needed to find an intermediary to make the handover offline.

So he had no choice but to go home first.

Otherwise, Father would have arrived home first.

Xiu sighed.

—If that guy comes back and doesn't see me, I wonder how worried he'll be.

The dome and the earth are gray and black, and in this narrow crevice, there is a young man who is not very tall—after taking off his disguise, he looks like a teenager.

Hugh strolled among the ruins, slowly taking in everything familiar around him.

Everywhere are dilapidated and bloated buildings, with unsightly shantytowns and gray-black towers crammed together crookedly, like a pile of ruins that collapsed from the beginning. The ramps that tilt at every angle are the "roads" here, obviously unusable by any conventional means of transportation. Not far from this slum, among the buildings of varying heights, lights are sparse and scattered. Metal pipes and steel cables of unknown purpose are like old spider webs, crisscrossing above the buildings. Smoke and dust linger under the dome, a hazy gray and pitch black expanse.

No sunlight shines here because it's blocked by the spiraling, layered buildings closer to the dome. These densely packed behemoths seem to squeeze the entire world into a cyst within a mother's womb, with plumes of white smoke rising from their center—who knows, that's where the "boiler" is built, the largest "power plant and biomass recycling system" in the bottom nest.

But unlike the singularity creations above, the boiler is far less magnificent than the "furnace core," and it does not have an endless final combustion. It only has the power based on physical structure—countless giant and crude mechanical structures combined together, boiling and burning, eternally playing a monotonous noise, restarting and reincarnating day after day—but it can no longer bring people more annoyance.

What's even more annoying now is the endless "rain".

Hugh silently raised his head and looked up at what was above him:

The rain poured down from the other side of the dome, seemingly without end.

In the bottom nest, "public morality" is a non-existent thing—a new component installed today will become the spoils of scavengers tomorrow—even if someone is specially assigned to guard it, anything that "looks like it can be taken off" will never stay in its place for more than a week.

So, starting ten years ago, people abandoned the maintenance of the dome, and the "rain" falling from that black sky became more and more frequent until it became a common natural phenomenon. For the same reason, the rain from the bottom nest always has a strange smell—a nauseating smell like crushed sulfur. As for whether smelling it too much will have any health effects, it is not a concern for the people here.

After all, very few people live long enough for their health to deteriorate first.

"stop."

In a metal shack he passed by, a man with a worried expression stared blankly at a piece of copper wire that had solidified into a single block due to corrosion and rust—until a boy happened to pass by, at which point he quickly called out to him.

"Hugh, what should we do?" The man asked expectantly, his rusty chin opening in an asymmetrical arc, one side shorter than the other, making his smile look rather terrifying—but his tone suggested that he could solve any problem the person in front of him could ask.

"Uncle Gerry," the boy replied politely, his cat ears twitching slightly. His soft facial expression contrasted sharply with the man's, making him lively and vibrant. "If you just want to separate this tangled thread—just soak it in the rain for a while. The water is already slightly acidic these days—but it might rust even more in the future. If you find a new one that works, make sure it's waterproof."

"I see, I see." Gerry's voice was clearly unnatural. The 27-year-old man had just "retired" from the mine a month ago and had not yet adapted to his new "lungs".

"As expected of Xiu."

His smile was still almost ferocious, but Hugh wasn't afraid because the man named Gerry was sincerely praising him: "You helped those idiots in the next town fix their lighthouse the other day, Hugh, you're a genius! — And those bastards didn't even say thank you, Hugh, don't help them again."

"I see----"

Hugh answered softly. He didn't know when it started, but he had gotten used to this kind of simple communication since he was "picked up" by his father and grew up in this place.

"Each small settlement is what the people of Dichao like to call a town." I don't know which era this name came from, but it sounds strangely comfortable.

There's also the "rain" that lasts from morning till night, which the bottom-nest people also call "rain," but they add a prefix like "damn it."

Damn rain!

Although people attempted to maintain those old water and air circulation devices half a century ago, and several major forces even joined together to issue an "Environmental Protection Declaration" to protect the dome that sustains the fragile ecosystem, it is still teetering on the brink of collapse.

It rains here an average of five days a week, and it's always dark and damp—even cement and metal corrode quickly in the rainwater of unknown composition, so everything is covered in rust.

Looking at the rain that showed no signs of stopping, and wondering when the condenser malfunction would be resolved—perhaps it wouldn't be fixed for the next week—Hugh frowned slightly.

—Such heavy rain is a rare occurrence even at the bottom of the nest.—

He sighed softly, and then, following his inertia, he naturally stopped in front of a simple door. The dented metal door looked like it was riddled with bullet holes, and it was armor plate that he didn't know which junkyard had salvaged. Its advantage was that it was sturdy and durable enough, and also corrosion-resistant. The wiring channels that surrounded the small house were all waterproofed with black tape, showing that a lot of care had been put into them.

Hugh stared at the peephole in the door, and as if triggering some kind of recognition, a metallic scraping sound came out, followed by a distorted "beep," and the program that recognized the boy's iris features opened the door.

—This is a lock cylinder modified from a half-destroyed encryption terminal. Although it doesn't involve much technology, it's quite a remarkable creation in the slums.

"Dad?" Hugh called softly into the room, and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't get a reply. Luckily, he came back before that guy, otherwise he really wouldn't know how to explain it.

Leaving one's usual "town" in the Deep Nest is a dangerous move—because apart from the "city" where important figures reside, the area is teeming with scavengers and copper moss.

Those people aren't as law-abiding or easy to talk to as the townspeople.

The moment he got home, Hugh visibly relaxed. He dried himself off with a tattered towel by the door before slowly walking around the entrance and into the living room.

—Would you like to take a shower?

He pondered silently—the water rations were never enough each month, not even enough for most people to drink, but Hugh, as one of the few skilled workers in town, could still get a lot of preferential treatment in his living conditions by helping out with small tasks.

In addition, Hugh has recently been trying to deeply process rainwater. Although it has not yet reached drinking standards, it should not be a big problem for the tough-skinned bottom-nest people to use it for bathing.

It's rare for me to splurge like this.

He took off the atomic clock from his neck, and as for the heavy eyepiece—after hesitating for a long time, he couldn't bear to throw it away. The cat-eared boy sighed, resentfully hanging it in a corner, and when his gaze inadvertently swept over it—

For some reason, he seemed to see an unusual reflection in that thick mirror.

"Shower gel—shampoo—" With a relaxed expression on his face, Xiu tiptoed around to the other side of the cabinet, humming a tuneless little melody as he rummaged through the pile of bottles and jars on the cabinet.

The next second, he suddenly looked up from the pile of clutter, clutching a huge object that was completely disproportionate to his size.

[Engri shotgun: Equipped with 12-gauge ammunition, capable of making a hole in a 2-centimeter-thick steel plate at close range.]

"Who's there?"

The dark muzzle of the gun was particularly eerie in the dimly lit, enclosed space. Xiu uttered those three words softly, then pointed the gun at an equally dark corner.

"Get out here."

There was no echo in the darkness, so Hugh took a deep breath, raised his gun in front of him, and stepped into the deathly silent corner, his distorted shadow spreading out behind him like ink spreading into water.

"Right here."

He looked at the dark corner, squinted slightly, and his left prosthetic eye, whose light-sensing system wasn't very sensitive, slowly activated until he could make out the figure lying there.

'

The next moment, Hugh's eyes widened.

Before me stood a person with wings—

He tilted his head.

—A girl who is unbelievably beautiful.

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