Jiang Chan sat in the shadows of a corner, clutching a nearly empty synthetic juice glass. Zhu Laoqi's words pierced her mind like cold needles. The amount of data required for uploading consciousness far exceeded what was needed to simulate a complete consciousness? What was that extra, abnormally large portion? Where did it go? What was it used for?

A few days later, Jiang Chan, disguised as a poor student applying for an internship at "Safe Data Processing," worked odd jobs at Zhu Laoqi's shop. Her target was the tightly closed backend server room, which required an access card to enter. It was connected to the secondary nodes that processed the uploaded data.

The opportunity arose during a peak upload period. A surge of upload requests caused a dramatic increase in system load. Taking advantage of the brief moment when Zhu Laoqi and another employee were called away to move a batch of newly arrived "remains awaiting upload"—officially termed "consciousness carriers"—and the server room was temporarily unattended, Jiang Chan used a secretly modified physical data cable to bypass some access checks and connect a simple sniffing program to one of the backup data pipelines.

In the dark server room, only the server indicator lights flickered dimly. Jiang Chan crouched behind the furthest corner rack, a torrent of encrypted data cascading down on the simple portable terminal screen before her. Her program couldn't crack the content, but it could capture the intensity peaks and abnormal fluctuation patterns of the emotional data packets.

Suddenly, the curve representing the intensity of emotion on the screen shot upwards sharply, breaking through the upper limit of daily fluctuations!

Almost at the same instant, Jiang Chan's ears caught it—not through air vibrations, but more like an extremely sharp hissing sound that acted directly on nerve endings, mixed with indescribable pain and fear!

It sounded like countless fingernails scraping against glass, or like the desperate scream of a soul being ripped apart! The sound lasted less than half a second before abruptly stopping, so quickly it seemed like an illusion. The curve on the screen instantly plummeted back to its stable state, as if the peak had never existed.

Jiang Chan's back was instantly soaked with cold sweat, pressed against the cold metal server rack. In the dim light of the server room, her face was as white as paper. It wasn't an illusion. That extremely brief fragment of sound contained pure, extreme pain.

This created the most terrifying and thorough rift between her and all the wonderful propaganda she had received about "the other side of the clouds"—eternal tranquility, ultimate joy, and supreme satisfaction.

Heaven? The uploader's final destination?

Jiang Chan recalled the blue sky, white clouds, and smiling faces on the poster. She remembered the enormous, absurdly large "data flow ring" that Zhu Laoqi had gestured. She remembered the cold look in the old man's eyes as he projected his daughter into "heaven."

These fragments spun and collided wildly in her mind, pointing to a chilling possibility: the ultimate paradise beyond the clouds, revered as a miracle, might very well be a colossal lie! The consciousnesses of those who uploaded them were not redeemed, but instead plunged into some... terrifying state.

Are they being used? Consumed? Tortured? And what role does the super AI "Beyond the Clouds," shrouded in a sacred aura and managing the entire otherworld, play? Is it a cold, indifferent controller? Or...?

The core of the truth lies within "the other side of the clouds," within the consciousnesses that were uploaded into "Heaven."

Jiang Chan leaned against the cold server rack and slowly closed her eyes. A chilling resolve replaced the momentary fear and dread she had felt just moments before. She had to go in. She had to see and experience that so-called "paradise" with her own eyes to tear off its facade and expose the rotten truth within.

Could she get in through the conventional means? She was just a poor woman from the dusty district, destined only to struggle in reality. The only way was to become an "uploader."

She needs a perfect "accidental death".

The plan quickly took shape in Jiang Chan's mind. At the edge of the dusty area ran a freight track abandoned for many years, occasionally punctuated by test vehicles speeding by. Above the track were massive, rusted metal billboard supports, dilapidated and structurally fragile. Surveillance was scarce in that section, and security was practically nonexistent.

She needs a precise "fall," a perfectly timed "impact," to ensure her body suffers what appears to be fatal damage, triggering nearby emergency medical response mechanisms—the only "dignified treatment" these mechanisms can offer when they determine the dying person is unable to pay is basic consciousness transmission.

A few days later, late at night. Dark clouds obscured the already sparse starlight. A deathly silence reigned near the abandoned tracks, broken only by the howling wind among the rusty metal supports.

Jiang Chan stood atop a high scaffold, the cold wind whipping at the hem of her thin coat. Below, the icy railway tracks stretched into the darkness. In the distance, the faint lights of the dusty district resembled a murky sea of ​​stars. The billboard for "Golden Radiance on the Other Shore" shone with a false yet alluring glow in the distant sky.

She took a deep breath. Without hesitation, without lingering, she leaned forward.

A sudden wave of weightlessness washed over her! The wind whistled in her ears. Time seemed to stretch out. She could clearly see the tracks below rapidly enlarging. At the last moment, she adjusted her posture, positioning her back against the cold rails and the protruding metal structure beside her.

Bang!

A dull thud rang out clearly in the deathly silence of the night. Instant pain engulfed her. She could feel the cracking of bones breaking, her internal organs churning violently, and warm liquid rapidly gushing from her mouth and nose. The stench of blood filled the air.

The excruciating pain nearly made her faint. She clung to the last vestiges of consciousness.

As expected, the piercing alarm blared as it drew closer. Several beams of light swept over, and someone cried out and ran towards them. It seemed that the mechanical security guards patrolling nearby had noticed something amiss.

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