David Klein has a forest cottage in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains southwest of San Jose, close to Redwood National Park. Although David owns hos in various countries around the world, he seldom refers to any of them as "my ho"—but this one does count.
The back door of "David’s House" leads directly into the redwood forest of Santa Cruz. David and his two teenage sons spent half of a sumr building a pebble path here—the pebbles were transported by hired hands for a small fee, and the construction machinery was designed by Xiang Shan in half an hour and was built locally using additive manufacturing. Later, this part of their work was made into a video and uploaded to the internet to showcase Xiang Shan’s concept of an "All-Purpose Industrial Mother Machine" in everyday scenarios.
David loves taking walks on this path. In the morning, the redwood forest is often shrouded in a veil of mist. This thin mist seems to transform the redwood trees, standing tens or even dozens of ters tall, into one cohesive entity. The scaly bark of the redwoods, drenched with dew, exudes a slightly reddish sap, creating an extraordinarily beautiful sight.
The front door of "David’s House," however, presents a different kind of view. From here, one can see all of Silicon Valley—the first information-age technology business hub, once the most renowned high-tech area.
Xiang Shan would occasionally co here to "do so business." During those tis, he would stay at David’s place for a few nights. The password to David’s front door was not a secret to him. Even if the David family were not ho, Xiang Shan could co and stay directly.
Every ti Xiang Shan walked out of the front door, he usually carried a "conqueror’s" mindset—many businesspeople in Silicon Valley, who had interacted with Xiang Shan, would refer to this man from across the ocean as "Conqueror Shan."
By the way, a private cable car was specially built at David’s entrance to facilitate movent up and down the mountain.
But on this day, the "conqueror" wasn’t out on an expedition.
He was spending ti idly with the owner of the forest cottage.
Lately, David had been inspired by a reality show from the Federation that was once very popular and still has a certain audience. He decided to set up a ga-sized dynamic maze in his backyard—for the squirrels living in the redwood forest to challenge.
The massive redwoods support a high population density of gray squirrels. During his walks, David often sees the lively hopping silhouettes of these cute little creatures. Sotis, the chanical design diagrams in his mind inexplicably rge with the impression of "squirrels."
There was a ti when Yawgmoth recomnded the hobby of "birdwatching" to his friends, ntioning that "I heard that ancient Chinese emperors all liked this." David tried it during his vacation, but his start wasn’t smooth. The bird feeders he set up in his yard always ended up attracting squirrels. These small rodent creatures seem to possess intelligence beyond their brain size. Even though David’s feeding devices all had defenses against rodents, the squirrels always managed to find a way to open the lids.
David initially planned to spend half an hour designing a little gadget to solve this problem. However, at that mont, Xiang Shan called him, and David’s ringtone was the the song from "Super Mario."
The "dum~dum~dum-dum-dum~dum—" sound effect sparked so amazing thought process.
David thus rallied his whole family to begin his grand plan.
The kids racked their brains for ga levels from reality shows they had watched or gas they had played, and David took on the challenge of realizing them. The "All-Purpose Mother Machine" that Xiang Shan had been giving away everywhere finally escaped from its fate of collecting dust, albeit temporarily. Unfortunately, before this "luxury amusent park" was completed, David’s two eldest sons had to return to work in the city. His daughter also had to continue attending university.
David calculated his annual leave and was shocked to find that he might not have ti to witness this historical mont. Even though his company didn’t mind remote work, it didn’t seem quite right to be absent from the departnt for too long.
This free-spirited guy pondered over it and finally made a decision—to call his boss over.
This was the real reason for Xiang Shan’s trip to California.
Many elites in Silicon Valley were awake all night due to "Conqueror Shan’s" arrival, all speculating on what critical technology this formidable opponent might have captured, which company he might want to buy, or what shady deal he might want to achieve.
But Xiang Shan was actually just operating his so-called "dream machine," building maze components for David.
"What have I done to make you disrespect like this?" Xiang Shan rolled his eyes in dissatisfaction that day: "Why spend a little money to hire technicians to do this, remote work would be fine too."
"As you guys say, ’it just wouldn’t have the vibe’." David replied with a serious expression, "This is the kind of thing that should be done with friends! Besides, when I was your boss, did you ever respect with a humble attitude?"
During his years at the United Nations Project Services, David briefly served as Xiang Shan’s superior. However, shortly thereafter, Xiang Shan quickly advanced to beco the leader of the area.
Xiang Shan’s involvent significantly accelerated David’s project progress. Thus, David finally began his much-anticipated observing in the last few days of his annual leave.
Unstable ropes, spring-supported passages, super swings, fully transparent mazes, flip traps, spinning platforms...
David precisely calculated the position of each platform to ensure that squirrels couldn’t directly jump from the yard wall to the finish line. The supporting platforms were also made of the smoothest tal rods, preventing squirrels from climbing directly from the ground. To get the food at the finish line, these squirrels had to move from one platform to another.
David prepared about fifteen pounds of brown sugar walnuts at the finish line, a specially bred walnut variety with fat content that greatly surpassed the seeds of wild redwoods, poured into clumps half the size of a squirrel with sticky sugary substance. The sugary substance also greatly prolonged the food’s consumable period.
"I got a little too excited and ended up making too many levels by accident," David concluded.
He thought it would take the squirrels at least half a year to break through.
But Xiang Shan suggested setting up a few relay stations with so small nuts to ensure the squirrels wouldn’t lose too much energy in the maze and wouldn’t lose interest halfway through.
David adopted this suggestion. Xiang Shan specially set up a drone to replenish walnuts at the relay stations on the platform. Sensors would detect whether the walnuts on the platform were gone. If the walnuts were taken, the drone would replace them with a new one.
The two days when the drone was introduced, the squirrels in the yard disappeared. They were terrified of this flying monster. But after a few days, realizing this strange bird had no aggression, the squirrels gathered again in this "promised land" filled with nuts.
A squirrel agilely leapt back and forth between seven wooden planks. There were three planks on the left and four on the right, set at a forty-five-degree angle to the horizontal. The squirrels had to leverage sideway jumps to get past this first hurdle.
David, holding a beer can in his left hand and binoculars in his right, nervously observed the scene. anwhile, Xiang Shan was holding a bottle of sugar-free soda, sitting on the sofa, watching the monitoring footage broadcast through a projector. AI would automatically track the squirrels. Moreover, Xiang Shan prepared a professional AI assistant using David’s private equipnt. It continuously switched caras and moved positions by learning and understanding similar variety shows from the past fifty years in the Federation.
"Watching animals is surprisingly interesting..." Xiang Shan nodded. "As expected of AI."
"Is AI the focus here?"
Xiang Shan shared the video. Yawgmoth occasionally also took a look at the livestream.
David loved the redwood forest since it was the scenery of his holand. However, Yawgmoth’s aversion to these types of plants far outweighed his affection.
More accurately, Yawgmoth despised all lifeforms that co-evolved with "fire." The eucalyptus trees in Australia and the redwoods in California were on his list. These plants evolved towards being "arsonists." They evolved to easily trigger wildfires, clearing all competition and potential animal threats in their living environnt. Redwood trees and Australian eucalyptus evolved to be "fire-resistant."
Redwoods even specialized to the extent that their seeds could only crack due to wildfires or extrely high temperatures.
The Australian predatory birds like the brown falcon and black kite, which mastered arson skills through postnatal learning, were also on Yawgmoth’s enemy list. These birds had learned to spread wildfires and roast animals for cooked at even before indigenous people arrived in Australia.
In Yawgmoth’s view, "fire," a notoriously uncontrollable force, easily kills more life than those "fire-associated" creatures need to survive. It is extrely malicious.
Xiang Shan mischievously speculated that Yawgmoth’s "fire blacklist" probably included humans.
For this reason, Yawgmoth rarely accepted invitations to this house. He said he suspected the redwood trees might plan to burn him to death.
Zhu Xinyu later ca here for two days, and David thought at first it might be to seek Xiang Shan for so growing needs. However, Zhu Xinyu’s restless nature ant she wouldn’t stay long in such a rural place. During this ti, the young lady updated the control system of this play equipnt for the n and contributed two more imaginative levels.
After the springboard, the robust squirrel leapt over the rolling balance beam and the trap-riddled narrow bridge. David watched with surprise and anxiousness, beckoning Xiang Shan to watch or have the AI record the exciting monts. Xiang Shan often had to scold David disdainfully, telling him to stop degrading the AI’s purity and professionalism with such interruptions.
This couldn’t even be called an "exciting mont"! The first few levels were too simple for the squirrels familiar with the terrain, and Xiang Shan only had interest in watching the "failure highlights" for the first two days.
But when it ca to the maze level, Xiang Shan couldn’t help but sit up and watch. This level was a transparent maze. The squirrels perford astonishingly here. So squirrels, visiting for the first ti, could pass the first few intersections with remarkable accuracy. Xiang Shan had to suspect that squirrels possessed interspecific communication abilities and could acquire many complex skills through group communication.
To rule out the possibility of squirrels finding the correct path using their extraordinary sense of sll, Xiang Shan personally modified a cleaning robot to clean the maze while the squirrels were sleeping and sprayed it with a freshener carrying a redwood scent.
"It’s really interesting, the intelligence of squirrels...at what level of cognitive ability does ’consciousness’ appear..." Xiang Shan murmured to himself.
David, excited as if watching a sports ga, exclaid, "Oh, don’t talk about boring stuff, you..."
David Klein suddenly fell silent. He saw soone who shouldn’t have appeared here.
Florence Rulman raised another can of beer.
At that mont, the world stood still, as if the pause button had been pressed.
A drop of water was about to fall from Xiang Shan’s cola bottle but halted in mid-air.
David Klein, the King of Mars and forr NASA engineer turned billionaire, snapped out of his previous state. His facial expression instantly shifted from excitent to indifference and anger: "You shouldn’t be here. You were never supposed to appear here."
"Isn’t this the little cabin where you gather with old friends? Shouldn’t I be here?"
"Florence, don’t make angry," David said, "At this very ti, you should be at the dical center in Beiping, ensuring the safety of the first batch of volunteers. You are the busiest among us. At this mont, you hardly co for dinners unless it’s a departntal gathering hosted by His young Majesty or Xiang Shan takes us to visit you."
"Blaming for breaking your imrsion?"
"Don’t force to speak the truth, King of Venus," David said, "I haven’t congratulated you yet. Zhuan Leibin is dead, and now you’re the only king on Venus. Great. Congratulations."
The Beauty God King, Florence Rulman, was captured around the ti of the Eighth Martial God incident and ultimately chose to surrender under the influence of drugs, becoming one of the three replacent kings.
"Mr. Zhuan Leibin died on his post," Florence Rulman shook her head, "Also, do you really hate that much?"
"Do I really need to spell it out?"
"I truly don’t understand," Florence shrugged, "Do you think I betrayed our friendship? But you did the sa. I was at least coerced by His Highness through drugs, whereas you surrendered of your own accord—and you surrendered even earlier."
"Oh, is there a difference? For soone with your level of Inner Strength, no drug could alter your will without permanently damaging your brain. It’s just an excuse," David said, "And it’s not because of that I dislike you. I dislike everyone now. You shouldn’t be here. If you have sothing to discuss with , find sowhere else. This place isn’t open to you."
"You never used to keep your ho’s door code a secret from others."
"The lock to the bedroom has always been independent. Get out."
David logged out, his consciousness returning to his steel body. He sat cross-legged in the darkness, silent for three minutes.
It wasn’t until Florence ssaged him again that he left the place.
"That guy Zhuan Leibin is dead. You can do whatever you want on Venus now," David said, though his tone was very calm as if he were saying "Congratulations."
"Hartman pulled us out for the war effort on Jupiter," Florence said, "The war in the Jupiter Domain is crucial. Probably."
"Hmm."
"Maybe there will be a chance to kill Xinyu."
"Hmm."
"I thought you’d have a bigger reaction."
"About what? Zhu? My God, we’ve been estranged for almost two hundred years. Ever since the first Fake Xiang Shan... I an the Second Martial God, after that incident, I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t care what happens to her, it’s got nothing to do with ."
"Xiang Shan almost killed Haya."
"The twelfth Xiang Shan almost killed the King of Godspeed," David nodded, "It could count as news. His Highness Godspeed King was terrifically strong, hey, almost died."
Florence sighed, "And if I die at the hands of Xinyu or Xiang Shan?"
"I’ll try to commorate you. Maybe. You were a respectable person two hundred years ago."
"Really..." Florence said, "Your psychological issues are really severe right now, David, I’m worried..."
"You better worry about that bastard on the Sun; I an, our Emperor," David sneered, "If he asks you about my current situation, just say I’m still an useless wreck. That’s it. What you all kill each other over has nothing to do with . If you want anything from Mars, take it yourself, just leave a server."
"God, David..." Florence sighed, "You... I really didn’t an it that way."
"Ah, it has nothing to do with , not at all. Even if I know that this is just a new technological Personality Mask and not your real self, I’ll just pretend I don’t know. I’m not curious," David waved his hand.
"You were closest to Xiang Shan before. Seeing you like this, I..."
"I was only close to the first Xiang Shan, the real one," David waved his hand again, "I once regarded the Fourth Martial God as the first, I once praised a dead man’s resurrection earnestly, as if I were a Christian. My God. But what happened? Treating fakes as real only leads to more disappointnt. I’m just a lonely man. That’s it."
"There’s been a lot of AI malfunction on Mars recently..."
"Also has nothing to do with . I only have a few weak AIs, they’re not even networked. I don’t care if AI is out of control. His Highness probably hopes AI can eliminate us humans," David said.
Florence left.
anwhile, David went to a high-level floor of the superstructure. It was a floor over fifty ters high. Here, several redwoods were thriving.
A small house stood amidst the redwood forest, an entirely indoor environnt that simulated near-natural lighting. A thin, white mist moved between the pine needles. David walked quickly towards the small house.
Then he heard a crunching sound.
He had stepped on so pebbles and crushed them.
David stopped in his tracks.
This house was the sa one from back then, even the pebble path was the sa. Yawgmoth shaved a few ters off the elevation of many parts of the world, taking what he considered "research materials" that might be useful. This house was a gift he gave to the King of Conquest.
David’s shoulders twitched, almost causing him to cry. He squatted down, fingers gently touching the pebble path he and his sons laid, "I shouldn’t have co. Oh, God. I’m sorry, Ian... I’m sorry, Marco..."
These pebbles really were the ones they laid as father and sons. They’re so of the few things that David Klein’s family actually touched.
And Florence... Florence, the current Florence is also heartbreaking.
In the past, the King of Venus was the best nursing expert. She happened to have the sa na as Lady Nightingale, the pioneer of nursing. Back then, she was proud of this coincidence and believed that fate led her to a noble path. During the era of Superman Enterprise, she was the most devout admirer of Yawgmoth. Yawgmoth’s act of publicizing the universal dication thod seed like a saintly deed to her.
—That’s right, we were all hard by Xiang Shan. Universal, universal, shared, shared... really...
David stood up again and walked towards his Quiet Room. There was only darkness and network signals here.
He entered his "toy house" once more.
In the body of 21st-century David Klein, the King of Mars finally found a long-lost peace.
"Let’s choose a particularly happy scene today... Hmm, it can’t be too crowded, can’t be too complex, but... oh, is this part finished too?"
On Christmas, David Klein wore a red coat, donned a Santa hat, and attached a fake white beard, "Let think... Christmas, bringing the best Christmas gifts to kids, and who was with then was..."
He turned around and saw Yawgmoth.
"Who else could it be, a man from the Federation, from the dical departnt, my God." David thought for a mont, reached out his hand, and sent a command. An interactive interface floated next to the static Yawgmoth. David swiped left and right, calling up Ingrid’s data. "My God, you’re really reasonable here, Your Highness, but this isn’t the audience chamber—hmm, it’s you, Viking."
Monts later, he pushed open the door of a house on the side of the street. The enterprise had previously communicated with this household; it was a "surprise event."
"Ho ho ho, where are the good children? Santa has co to deliver the latest and coolest prosthetic body!"
Inside the glass... or rather, in the "mirror image", Xiang Shan and Zhu Xinyu simultaneously held their foreheads.
"Because our essence is now a care program? I really think he needs treatnt..."
"Xiang Shan and David Klein were indeed super close friends, so this kind of sentint is natural for him," Zhu Xinyu sighed, "But the point is what David said to Florence earlier. What do you make of it?"
"The Twelfth Martial God did a wonderful job," Xiang Shan concluded.
He was a Xiang Shan made based on mories of the 21st century, with little knowledge of the outside world. All they knew currently was that Zhuan Leibin was a French combat pilot and one of the first "new soldiers" to rapidly grow during the war. Terrorists and soldiers, Hero and Houndhawk, co-evolved and sharpened each other in that era. Zhuan Leibin was a combat hero of that ti.
Xiang Shan added, "Not bad for a ."
"I really hope the war reaches here soon..." Zhu Xinyu looked at David’s model across the "mirror image."
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