If soone had asked Lin Sanjiu in the past what the worst way to live a life was, she probably would have answered, to be utterly alone.
But after spending so much ti in the doomsday—so long that when she looked back, her pre-evolution days seed as brief as the edge of a fingernail, while post-evolution stretched into an endless, unseen river—she had a different answer.
Living alone for a lifeti wasn't great, but if one had no attachnts, it wasn't the worst either. Even if she had people to care about yet remained alone herself, she could still endure.
The worst way to live, without a doubt, was exactly what happened in the doomsday. Just when she had made a difficult decision, when the first buds of sothing new had appeared on the branches, when she had finally begun to familiarize herself with the road beneath her feet... ti was abruptly severed.
She made her choices, but without any soil to take root, they drifted in the void. She never got to see what flowers would bloom, what fruit would bear. Lost friends never sent another word, and all she could do was pretend to forget them.
Each teleportation was like hitting pause on one life and starting another. Her existence beca a giant frawork filled with abruptly cut-off fragnts of small, unfinished lives. In a way, every posthuman was like Bohemia—a life split into segnts, except posthumans weren't even as lucky. At least Bohemia forgot everything.
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Unfinished wishes, unfulfilled promises, people she hadn't yet seen... Even if she had been in the middle of rushing to put out a fire and was suddenly teleported away, knowing full well that the fire still raged on, she had no choice but to put everything on hold. Most of the ti, she had to pretend it didn't matter, force herself not to think about it, and console herself with the lie that maybe one day, another teleportation would finally give her the chance to set things right.
But even Lin Sanjiu couldn't lie to herself anymore.
The truth was, as long as teleportation existed—whether it happened every fourteen months or was as chaotic as the Great Deluge—she would never be able to finish a song, tell a story to the end, or truly get to know soone.
Before she had entered the Brain in a Vat, she had nearly forgotten that life could be different. That for travelers, there was always a ho to return to. That plans made together could be carried out to completion. That everything could be stable, continuous, and therefore aningful.
Before the Great Deluge, a handful of lucky posthumans had managed to hold onto that sense of aning through visas. But now, with the Great Deluge growing ever more frequent, Lin Sanjiu no longer dared to think about what the future would look like.
If they could stay. If her friends could stay. That would be the greatest salvation of all.
Because of that, the words thank you felt too light. Nothing in this world seed heavy enough to match the weight of what Rena had done and what this discovery ant. After a long silence, Lin Sanjiu finally asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"There is," Rena replied. "You have the Ah Quan pocket dinsion, don't you?"
For a mont, Lin Sanjiu had almost forgotten that the organization trying to save posthumans from teleportation was the very sa Shark Nexus that had once altered mories and manipulated people. The gap between those two versions of the organization seed so vast that standing on one side and looking at the other felt utterly unreal.
"Does it have to be him?" she murmured. "Why did you... why did you do those things?"
Rena didn't ask what things. After a brief silence, she simply said, "I need to take back the Ah Quan pocket dinsion. When everything succeeds, when the ti cos, it won't matter whether we restore their mories or try to make ands. But right now, the most important thing is solving teleportation. Everything else must take a back seat to that."
Lin Sanjiu suddenly recalled what Xie Feng had said: The things the Shark Nexus has done may have wronged people, but they were the right things to do.
And now, the other missing pieces fell into place.
Wu Yiliu had said he knew his mory had been altered, yet he accepted it with remarkable calm. Xie Feng had insisted she would never leave Tear City. Because she knew that once she had the vaccine, she could stay with Dong Luorong forever.
"But isn't testing the Great Deluge once enough to see if the vaccine truly works?" Lin Sanjiu asked, still reluctant to hand over Ah Quan's pocket dinsion. "Why do you need Ah Quan now, at the very last step?"
Rena shook her head.
"Until we achieve true success, we can never be sure if this is the last step," she said. "Even if we succeed, that only ans the research is done. Next cos multiple rounds of clinical trials. And after that, even if the clinical trials go well, we still face the massive hurdle of large-scale production. This isn't like an ordinary vaccine; every step we take is like building a castle in the sky, with no precedent to rely on. In reality, the hardest part is just beginning. That's precisely why we need the Ah Quan pocket dinsion now."
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Rena hadn't explained why in detail, but Lin Sanjiu understood. When faced with such a massive, complex challenge, the ultimate solution always depended on people. Yet, people were unpredictable and unreliable. With Ah Quan's pocket dinsion, they wouldn't have to worry about soone hoarding resources, driving up prices, refusing to cooperate, or even sabotaging their efforts from within. At the most critical monts, the right people could determine the success or failure of the entire plan.
"I admit," Lin Sanjiu said in a low voice, "compared to solving teleportation, these things are small evils." She hesitated, then added, "But even small evils fall on individual people. Ah Quan is a person. The Eight-Heads De you're targeting next is a person. I can't just stand by and watch—"
Rena suddenly smiled.
It wasn't mocking, nor was it exasperated. She looked genuinely pleased, as if she were happy to hear Lin Sanjiu say that. "It looks like you've been doing well all these years."
"Huh?" Lin Sanjiu blinked in confusion.
"You've had regrets and pain, but you don't have scars, no irreparable wounds, nothing carved out of you that can't grow back... That's why, over ti, you've only beco more compassionate." Rena's tone was light, but there was sothing behind it, sothing distant and knowing. "After all, kindness and rcy are luxuries. Most people can't even afford them, let alone understand why they're luxuries."
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She exhaled softly and then, just like when she was a teenager, pointed to herself. Even her voice carried a faint trace of the past. "Look at ; I don't have that luxury. To achieve what's most important and right, I don't mind doing so wrong along the way. Besides, for the Ah Quan pocket dinsion, and that... Eight-whatever? Oh, Eight-Heads De. For them, this is temporary. They just need to wait. Later, we can restore their mories, fix what was lost. But right now, the priority is stopping teleportation. Everything else can wait."
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Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth but didn't know what to say. After a mont, she stamred, "I... I understand that, but... I need to think about it."
At the very least, she wanted the chance to ask them herself.
"Alright," Rena said, unsurprised. "In the anti, why don't I show you more of this section of the factory? You wouldn't believe how much effort it took just to find a container, sothing that could be folded up, carried away, and opened in a controlled space..."
Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but smile a little, reminded of the way Rena used to show off her achievents. No matter how much people changed, so parts of them always found a way to resurface.
Perhaps Rena wanted Lin Sanjiu to understand and accept the Shark Nexus's actions, so her explanations were particularly thorough. Though she was the leader of the organization and the mastermind behind the plan, she, like any CEO of a large company, couldn't oversee every detail. Many things had to be delegated, and even she couldn't answer everything. So things, Rena said, Lin Sanjiu would have to figure out herself as she explored the factory.
"You know what a CEO is?" Lin Sanjiu asked, looking at this doomsday-born gi—no, she couldn't call her a girl anymore.
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"I can still learn things," Rena said with a smile. "I even visited a world six months before doomsday arrived."
As they walked together through the corridors, it felt almost like the old days—wandering an apocalyptic world side by side. It was as if all those years, all those separate lifetis, had faded away. Only Rena had grown older; everything else was the sa.
Then, as they passed through yet another corridor, soone called for Rena. From the sound of it, an urgent situation had arisen that required her to make a decision.
"Go take care of it," Lin Sanjiu said. "I won't leave. I'll just sit here and rest for a bit."
It seed to be a serious matter. Without explaining much, Rena gave her a few quick instructions before hurrying off to handle the crisis.
Lin Sanjiu looked around. There was no good place to sit—anywhere she chose would likely be in the way of so machine—so she simply sat down on the floor.
A pair of boots stopped in front of her.
She looked up just as a person in a biohazard suit reached up to remove their helt.
Sothing was off about their suit. The sleeves weren't properly attached to the gloves, and on closer inspection, the whole thing looked like a makeshift assembly of different pieces. As they pulled off the helt, a strip of skin was exposed at the wrist.
Ink-black and deep blue reflected under the dim lights, swirling across the skin as if the tattooed figures—animals, ancient gods, and demons—were on the verge of waking.
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Lin Sanjiu barely stopped herself from gasping. She stared in shock at the half-revealed face beneath the helt and whispered in disbelief, "You... What are you doing here?"
Yu Yuan held the helt in one hand, expressionless. The flowers and wolves inked on his skin remained still, as unmoved as he was.
"I may be Veda," he said flatly, "but ever since I left the Data Stream Library, every single action I take requires energy. And that energy doesn't replenish itself like it does for you, through eating."
His voice remained emotionless, but Lin Sanjiu could almost feel the suppressed frustration beneath it.
"Do you have any idea," he continued, his tone unwavering, "how much energy I've wasted just to find you in this world? It hasn't even been a month since I arrived."
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