He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Chapter 129 Quinoa

Although she had no idea how to start this strange journey, or even any further purpose or plan, Aina, who embodied the Moth's Criterion, never thought about such things.

—It's almost entirely arbitrary.

Before the new log project was launched, she tried searching her built-in database and casually added the word "salvation". The search results came up with a bunch of strange things.

—For example, keywords like "Stand users save the world", "Katana swordsmen save the world", "JK girls save the world", "girl bands save the world", "playing cards saves the world", "Pepsi saves the world" — and so on.

Even Aina herself found it difficult to understand the thought process of her creator; she even briefly wondered if she was doing something wrong. After confirming the information in the personality memory bank was correct, she decisively pasted all the search results into her log.

After all, the creators wrote in the opening tutorial that "having fun" is the most important thing on this journey to the bottom nest.

Of course, there is another indicator, perhaps it is that yearning that comes from the depths of the mind, stemming from the moth's pursuit of light and the bird's faith in "above":

That was the ambition surging from the chaotic red liquid—so every word he said to Hugh just now, if you really want to analyze it, was serious.

At least, a mere nest cannot imprison the ever-soaring heart of a bird.

—Tsk.

Aina showed no sign of restraint in her pride and sharpness; the light in her golden-red eyes was a vibrant color that clashed with the atmosphere of the underworld.

This was projected from the Creator—an "obsession with upward mobility" that had not been interpreted before, transformed by the flowing spiritual fluid into the cornerstone of the personality in Tin.

Because I was born in light, naturally pure.

Because I was born noble.

-Um----

She turned to Xiu and pondered.

"The fact that you have a job behind the scenes, yet can still live like an ordinary person, means you have a perfect middleman to sever your identity —"

—For example, a trustworthy contact person.

The bird raised an eyebrow. "Trouble! — Remember to take me with you next time you turn in a quest, I'll be very useful."

, "7

Hugh still had that contorted expression. After a moment, he turned his head without a word, took a deep breath, and said, "Next time, for sure."

Realizing the perfunctory tone in Hugh's voice, Aina tilted her head, suddenly feeling like a speedrunner treating an NPC.

At the same time, he was arrogantly trying to skip dialogue scenes while also thinking about pushing the mission forward as quickly as possible.

To ease the eerie feeling, she smiled, her adorable face still irresistible. "By the way, I'm quite interested in the 'Association' you mentioned—and that 'Metropolis' above your head."

As the towering structure standing on the border of Usa withdrew the last rays of light that had fallen upon the town, night finally fell.

It began with a fear and aversion to the unknown and the inhuman. In the end, Hugh was unable to give a definite answer. He sat in the shadow of the eaves, lost in thought, until the night wind grew stronger and stronger. It was his little father who poked his head out from the crack in the door and called them to go back inside and rest.

The hand-rubbed electric heater had already started running, and the small house had a strange smell of "iron being warmed by fire." It wasn't unpleasant; it was like a fireplace burning in the cold winter. Except that it didn't produce sparks like when wood crackles, it even added a touch of warmth.

Originally, the enthusiastic mouse wanted to prepare their only bedroom for the guests, and Aina herself didn't refuse. However, Hugh said that it wasn't convenient for a girl to stay in a room for two men, so in the end, they made room for the rascal to have a sofa.

And so, in the small house filled with the smells of engine oil and rust, Aina welcomed her first night after arriving at the bottom nest—but after closing her eyes on the sofa for about half an hour, she helplessly straightened up.

—Hey—I don't think I have a sleep function either.

As a strange life form driven by spiritual fluid, the flow of thought is like the running of a program—for Aina, thinking and memory are life forces that cannot be stopped.

So she quietly got up in the middle of the night, and easily unlocked the simple access control that Hugh had set up. She silently pushed open the door and walked out into the pitch-black outside.

The bottom of the nest is cold at night.

Aina squinted, the glowing elixir allowing her to perceive an infinitely faint vision: compared to the almost perpetually dark Lower City and Upper City, the Bottom Nest seemed to have recreated a primitive world from a pastoral era, truly possessing the phenomenon known as "the alternation of day and night."

Light rises and falls, electricity is scarce, and light is precious—these are all scenes that are out of place with a nest, something so ahead of its time.

Aside from the same overcrowding and bloated atmosphere as Downtown, it looks even more dilapidated, but the good news is that it doesn't have the impersonal coldness of a place filled with steel.

Aside from the Metropolis standing at the end of the spiraling city overhead, the Underground Nest, built from the "original land," still retains the world's original, pristine landscape: unlike the unchanging flat ground of the Lower City, it features undulating terrain, bare patches of land that have long since turned into deserts but may have originally been forests—and countless bare pits exposed on the earth's surface—these may be dried-up lakes, now transformed into the grim scars left behind after a certain stage of the world's death.

From the edge of Usa, at the end of the horizon, lies the wilderness of the bottom nest—where crops are certainly impossible to grow, as an array of factories blots out the sky, roaring day and night.

Aina took a deep breath in the biting wind, her exhaled white mist mingling with the distant black smoke, becoming indistinguishable. In that silent moment, a soft, delicate voice sounded from behind her.

Aren't you cold?

Wearing a heavy overcoat stuffed with cotton and leather, the hem of which trailed on the ground, Hugh's originally petite figure looked swollen—she stood behind Aina, breathing into her palms to warm them, and said softly, "The nights here—are awful and not very safe."

"————" Aina glanced back and tilted her head.

I don't know your name yet.

"G378, that's my employee number. If you're referring to a name like Hugh, I'm sorry, but I can't print it on my ID yet. But if you're from Usa town, people usually call me 'Li'."

In stark contrast to his daytime persona—a man reeking of alcohol and cuddling a cute little mouse—this miniature father, barely reaching Aina's chest, displayed a completely different composure and maturity in front of her.

He smiled, tightening his coat. His thin body trembled slightly from the pervasive cold, but he still smiled.

"This is the name Hugh gave me. It's said to be from a seed that grows from underground a long, long time ago and produces something that can fill people's stomachs. I like it very much—"

Aina circled around him with great interest, her eyes, which had been somewhat sleepy, now shining brightly. Although this was impolite and might be seen as a provocation, Hugh's father didn't care.

"Your biological age is only—twenty-four? Hmm—that kitten has such a young father?"

-and.

She observed the dense, deep-seated marks on Li's body—almost irreversible physical damage caused by strenuous labor—clearly typical of the bottom nest's laborers, common in factories and mines, and the cheapest type of labor.

But the father of this mouse's demeanor and the way he talked to people didn't seem like a numb laborer whose mind had nothing but survival.

Instead, it resembled that kitten somewhat, with a pair of dark blue eyes that always seemed to have thorns in them, as if they could pierce people's hearts.

"Hugh is not my biological child."

Li casually uttered a truth that was expected, but still somewhat "strange" to a stranger who had only met her for a day: "I haven't received my citizenship certificate yet, so of course I don't have the right to have children. Of course, in a small place like Usa, no one cares about having one more child or one less child—"

"So, I picked him up. Thinking back to that night from the junk pile near the [lighthouse], I'm still so glad I didn't get too drunk that day. I thought the factory's roar was particularly shrill, and then I realized it was a child crying."

As she said this, looking at the thoughtful Aina, Li smiled. "He already knew about my background. After all, nothing about me can be hidden from him. Hugh is a very smart kid, isn't he?"

"Indeed," Aina nodded. "Everyone loves a smart kitten."

A fatherly pride flashed in his eyes. Li chuckled, then magically pulled a glass bottle from inside his heavy coat and shook it. "Do you drink?"

Aina flapped her wings. "We can give it a try."

"Thanks."

They even thoughtfully prepared disposable plastic cups. Aina and Li squatted behind the armored plate, in a corner where the cold wind couldn't reach them, and clinked their cups together.

The first time I ever drank alcohol—it couldn't even be called alcohol; it was just cheap, adulterated industrial alcohol. But if it was just for numbing the body and keeping warm, this kind of stuff would be enough.

"This one's still the best." Only at this moment did Li look like a drunken old man, his face flushed and curled up into a small ball. "Don't you allow me to drink this—I don't know where he gets the money from every day, he even goes to buy those expensive brewed wines. Cough cough, that little guy—he's always causing me trouble."

Aina licked her spicy lips, coughed twice, and thought that alcohol was no good, definitely worse than "Dr. Pepper" and "Cola".

"What Xiu said is not wrong."

She looked at Li and said in a deep voice, "Your condition—according to my organism analysis report, well—is not optimistic. The compatibility of these implants was already very low, coupled with the inherently weak physique of rodents, if this continues, you will not be far from your lifespan limit—at most two or three years."

"Isn't this perfect?"

Li started talking more.

"What he needs isn't a father like me, a guy who needs children—and in turn, devotes all his energy to taking care of them—"

Li, her head flushed, forced a bitter smile. Her large ears twitched a few times, like a physiological phenomenon that occurs when crying. "What he needs is his kind, his kind who shines just as brightly, his kind who can understand what's going on in his little head. No one in Usa can do that. Those complex and frustrating pieces of knowledge, those mechanical operations, those grand and frightening principles—we can hardly understand them just by listening, let alone do them."

"When I first found him, he was very young—only three or four years old. I didn't know where he came from or who abandoned him—I even fantasized that he might be a child abandoned by someone in the metropolis, the child of a big shot—he was really smart, smarter than everyone in Usa, even the inspector living in the tower wasn't as good as him—I heard he helped fix the malfunctioning lighthouse, and the guys in the next town were so surprised their eyes almost popped out!"

"At first, he started telling me a lot of strange things. He had collected all the books in the house, and I tried to read some of them in order to communicate with him, but it was all too difficult. At best, it only made me—a little less dull—"

—

"At first, I just thought he was a kid with too many whimsical ideas, but later, I found that even as a father, I understood him less and less—how sad? A father, let alone helping him, can't even understand what he's doing anymore—"

Hugh thought he had kept his "side hustle" well hidden, but a father's intuition is more acute than he imagined.

Aina narrowed her eyes in silence.

Li drooped her ears in frustration, "I don't want to drag him down anymore."

"I don't want him to have this label on his head forever, a stumbling block that might accompany him for life and even prevent him from entering a wider world."

He lowered his head and said stiffly, "The son of an inferior race, the son of a slave."

"A child raised by a rat."

The silence lasted for a long time.

Li looked down at herself, head bowed, curled up like a cooked shrimp, trying not to let outsiders see her disheveled expression.

"I don't know who you are, and I've never seen anyone like you who looks so different and out of place here."

He said, "But I have a feeling that Hugh should belong to your side of the world—your appearance may be his only chance to get rid of me."

"I'll go to the pipeline area myself in two days. Don't tell him—"

"Eh————"

Aina opened her mouth slightly, revealing a rare expression of surprise.

In the area below towns like Biusa, the decaying caves are riddled with holes, and the non-renewable resources have been almost exhausted in the past century. Beneath their feet lies the "underground world" that has been developed to its limit by the Bottom Nest people.

To support these crumbling geological structures, the [Pipeline Zone] was created.

That was "a country squeezed into a crack"—people used scaffolding left over from excavation work to fill in the supports used for surface restoration, and then, together with gigantic pipelines, constructed a lower-level settlement.

That place should never have been a place for humans to live.

Aina swirled the glass in her hand, watching the clear yet seemingly murky liquid at the bottom clump together.

But just like the process of civilization's decline, when the blockade above is like a wall of sighs, with no way to go further and no more redundancy, the darkness below will be explored even more deeply.

The initial impression of the bottom nest is almost absurd—a return to the simplicity of the pastoral era. But after the warm filter provided by the cat and mouse father and son is shattered by the sight before one's eyes, the further impression is that this place is like a defeated person trapped on the ground because its heritage has been exhausted, a dead civilization.

—No future, no miracles.

Only a more barren, more exposed, and more pathological underlying condition.

-interesting.

Aina slowly turned her head.

Behind them, separated by an iron door that wasn't completely closed, leaving only a crack—a pair of bluish eyes, close to the crack, silently retreated into the cramped darkness.

>