Translator: Sarah

  It was five in the afternoon, and it was raining. Due to the bad weather, the glowing lines of the public transport system were dim, and Luo Nan became increasingly drowsy. He even had Mo Peng yawning because of him.

  “Hey, these few days of treatment didn’t work at all.”


  “Cough, I just want to sleep……What if I fall asleep when we get there?”


  “Fine, you go sleep now. When we get to the arcade, are you still going to sleep in someone else’s business?”


  Luo Nan was discharged from the hospital on the 3rd and stayed at home for another four days. After a while, even Ms Luo Shuqing thought it couldn’t be good for him to be cooped up at home and asked Mo Peng to coax Luo Nan out to relax.

  However, he was not in the mood to enjoy. Anyone who was carrying a bomb that could go off at anytime would share his sentiment.

  The one week of treatment was actually not as ineffective as Mo Peng made it out to be. His symptoms such as lethargy and the coughing had improved by a lot……At least it had until last night.

  Yesterday, on the night of October 6th, the Blood Flame Order who had remained silent for a while must have sensed that the majority of people’s energy was placed upon the Deep Blue Walkers. The news about the “Human faced Arachnid” had passed, so they restarted the “grazing” activity.

  The Wraith Sign, perfectly disguised as its predecessor, had been brought all around to every location of Xia City by Mo Lun. After he had come across an unfortunate darksider life form, the Wraith Sign had swallowed it up like dessert, all at once.

  Luo Nan’s fun just got a lot more intense.

  Just as his body and soul imbalance seemed to have gotten a bit better, due to the gain in the feedback of the Wraith Sign, his balance immediately came crashing. If Luo Nan hadn’t gotten his soul out of his body to digest this “gain”, then he would have painted the health pod in blood, causing huge drama in the hospital.

  After that, Luo Nan loitered outside his body for most of the night. After repeated attempts, he carefully let his soul return to his body through by using the dynamo core as a buffer.

  However, such a repeated attempts caused his soul power to increase by a factor, increasing the pressure against his fleshly body. This rendered nearly all of the previous days’ treatment useless, like popping a bubble. All his symptoms came back.

  He spoke two sentences to Mo Peng and started coughing again.

  Mo Peng could not do anything; in a bit, they’d have to go to the game lounge to feast and he found it meaningless to play games on the sliding stage. He didn’t know what to do. Under the immense boredom, he would idly look at a hot program that was currently playing on the projector of the public transport system.

  It was the special news piece by the Star Associated Press on the Deep Blue Walkers.

  A quick-witted host, a stiff expert, and a sleek expert on video editing of a great production, all of these factors made up a quadrilateral with ever-changing focuses. It was honestly quite captivating.

  Mo Peng was captivated by the edited video of a “Deep Blue Walker”.

  At that moment, the program entered a corner where the audience got to interact with the experts. The host excluded ridiculous topics such as whether “Xia City underground had mutants” and whether “Deep Blue Walkers represent war”. Instead, he chose a question that was relatively basic and professional.

  “There is a saying that Deep Blue Walkers are neither a type of equipment, nor a specific person. You’d need to combine a “Burner” with a special tailor-made “Deep Blue Armor” to be considered a real Deep Blue Walker. Is this true?”


  “No.”


  The stiff expert was an authoritative figure in the relative field and his professional knowledge was impeccable. He immediately replied, “Strictly speaking, Deep Blue Walkers are considered a type of systematic concept. They are built on the basis of the systems theory and ‘Archetype Nerve Formatting Theory.’ They require the human nervous system as a core to distribute their resources in order to achieve the best result.”


  “The first applied research conducted regarding said theory was the Quantum Company’s ‘Deep Blue’ project. As for ‘Walker’, it is a term for a prototype machine. There are two meanings of the term: the first is a pedestrian that walks on the roads and the second is a Buddhist term, which means an ascetic that hadn’t shaved his head. This is to say, it is just the beginning, and there is a lot of follow up work to do in regards to research on this topic.”


  “In terms of the material, ’Burners’ are worthy cores. They are confined to the natural conditions of the body and require the assistance of a specialized ‘exoskeleton,’ so burners and their armors have a dominant and auxiliary relationship, not one that is equal……In my opinion regarding the ‘Archetype Format’s’ theory, the relationship between man and machine should be like the dominant and auxiliary relationship of the core. The auxiliary equipment should support the lower limits of the Deep Blue Walkers and humans should determine the upper limits of the Deep Blue Walker with their autonomy.”


  The host began to regret letting the stiff expert open his mouth. He wondered how many viewers became tired and yawned or changed channels altogether.

  Mo Peng was one of the viewers that yawned; however, he turned his head and found Luo Nan staring at the screen without even turning his eyes.

  Right, the “Archetype Formatting Theory” the stiff expert was promoting was something that Luo Nan absolutely detested. Mo Peng was seriously concerned that Luo Nan would get sick again from anger and quickly placated, “This dude’s such a show-off as if he’s the only one that understands……”


  “He has a point.”


  Luo Nan was referring to the later part, about the autonomy of humans. It coincided with his situation these past few days, only his situation was more complicated.

  However, a fact that could be predicted was if he could get his body to endure a greater amount of pressure, then the “lower limit” of his ability would correspondingly increase as well.

  The problem was, how would he do it? It would be impossible to catch up with the tempo if he were to increase the strength of his body step by step. Then, how about the alteration of the human body?

  As he was pondering this, Mo Peng pushed him along, “Let’s go, we’re here.”


  The low-altitude bus stopped in the busiest area of Xia City; regardless of what time it was, there were always a lot of people. Luo Nan didn’t like this feeling as it felt too constrained. Walking on the sidewalk, he was surrounded by towering buildings; it felt like they could collapse at any time.

  “Ahaha. Frost River Reality, here I come again!”


  Mo Peng suddenly got excited. Luo Nan lifted his head and saw that not far ahead, there was a beautiful hologram advertisement board that displayed the words “Frost River Reality” and was currently showing a passionate battle scene. Wilderness battle, lava battle, deep sea battle, space battle ……each of these realistic battle scenes captured the attention of passersby.

  “Virtual Reality” holds an immense attraction towards almost every young person. As Xia City’s greatest “Reality Base” chain store, every “Frost River Reality” was a large-scale amusement park; it was a fantastic place to kill time.

  Of course, with Mo Peng’s personality, it was impossible to get him to play quietly with just two or three people. As he looked around to find people, an Intel cut through, “Peng Seventeen, Nanster, come here. You guys are so slow that my spine is getting frozen from drinking cold beverages!”


  At a cold beverage shop near the Frost River Reality, there was a group of young boys and girls already waiting for them.