Chapter 3: The Descends of the Evil God
A dozen minutes later, Ling Qiu opened the bathroom door. She took a shower as quickly as possible, while keeping an eye on the home security camera. She found that Anbote was just sitting there quietly, motionless, as if he were halfway into meditation.
She went outside, drying her hair as she stared at Ambert's broken leg.
Of course, she carried the severed limb back in a bag. It was lighter than she had imagined. Ling Qiu couldn't understand what kind of person would not bleed after their limb was severed. In fact, their muscle tissue looked very strange, not like that of a normal human being at all.
But he was indeed a person. Ling Qiu could only temporarily attribute it to Anbot having escaped from some laboratory. After all, those people at the top were researching prosthetics all day long, and now they even had fully prosthetic people. What else was impossible?
Because he had been dragging on the ground for too long, the back of Anbot's vest was torn, making the whole vest very loose. Ling Qiu went around to his back and took a look, and found that his back was actually clean and intact, without any scratches or tears.
It looks like a very sturdy body.
Aside from muttering something completely incomprehensible, all this person could do was giggle. Ling Qiu had given up trying to communicate with him; she could just wait and abandon Anbot in the slums sometime…
He was actually quite good-looking. I wonder how someone with both legs missing, who was practically a free man, would be treated in the slums.
Ling Qiu squatted down in front of him and began to observe him carefully. Anbot gave her a strange feeling, but she couldn't say exactly what was strange about it. It was like... like it came from a field that Ling Qiu had never been exposed to before.
She looked at the broken surface of Anbote and couldn't resist touching it with her hand. The texture was no different from his outer skin, which was what made it so strange.
Still, nothing was gained.
He was deliberately trying to draw attention.
Ling Qiu slapped him without hesitation. The slap was so clear that Anbote didn't even have time to dodge.
“No one else here will take you home and feed you instant noodles,” she said. “You’d better behave yourself, and don’t laugh all the time.”
Anbot covered his lips with his hair, the upper half of his face still hidden by his hair. There was no obvious change, except that he was no longer smiling, but the feeling was immediately different, and he instantly became obedient.
Ling Qiu got up. To be honest, she was really worried about leaving such a thing at home, but it was getting late, and she couldn't risk going to the slums at this time. Besides, even if she didn't take it with her, it would follow her, even if it had to crawl.
If someone were to see it, and see his broken leg, Ling Qiu would really be in a difficult situation.
Before getting up to go back to the bedroom, Ling Qiu saw Anbote touching his stomach again, in the same spot. That should be the stomach area. Didn't that mean he was hungry? She had even fed him a packet of instant noodles.
Ling Qiu checked the ropes again to make sure they weren't loose, then she finally went back to her room and closed the door.
She separated the external surveillance footage into a separate screen and placed it aside. A blue fluorescent screen, about the size of a computer screen, floated in the air, clearly displaying the external surveillance footage.
Ling Qiu doesn't have the habit of going to bed early; nighttime is the best time for her to take orders. She logs into her Hilink account, a globally recognized social networking app with real-name authentication. However, Ling Qiu is a hacker and has her own methods to conceal her identity.
As soon as she opened her account, several messages popped up, one of which was a remittance text message after the work was completed. Ling Qiu checked her account and saw that 7,000 Man Yuan had arrived. Then, expressionless, she opened her boss's chat window and transferred 3,500 Man Yuan.
Her damn boss was a complete exploitative madman who could take half the money from her without her doing anything. If she weren't a freelancer who couldn't pass the iris verification on the dark web, she would have dumped this madman and gone solo long ago.
Freelancers at the bottom of society have no way of accessing the dark web system, but Ling Qiu's work is inseparable from it.
Less than a minute later, the other party received the payment, along with a nonchalant "Do a good job, Q".
Q is her Hilink account nickname.
After finishing one order, Ling Qiu decided to see if there were any new orders with good value for money. Without even reading the details of the order carefully, she sent a mass message: How much can you give me?
In Mant City, there must be quite a few people like Ling Qiu who work and earn money as hackers. Mant City's legal system is corrupt, corporations are paramount, and people are more willing to pay for their own solutions to their needs.
Before long, the other party sent a quote. Ling Qiu picked the one with the highest fee and carefully looked at his requirements: I suspect my wife is having an affair. We had a big fight and now I can't find her. Can you help me find out where she is now and whether she has been in contact with other men?
The fee is 8,000 Mandarin dollars.
“Okay,” Ling Qiu replied, “Seven business days.”
The person on the other end said, "Thank you, thank you!"
After finishing the order, Ling Qiu received a text message from Lu Lulan: "Are you okay? Is that pervert still at your house?"
"It's alright," Ling Qiu replied. "Have you finished your meeting?"
"No!!!!" Even the words themselves conveyed Lululan's extreme anger. "We're not adjourning the meeting until 8 a.m. tomorrow."
Ling Qiu was speechless. Was the company taking advantage of everyone's good physical condition as a prosthetic body to exploit them at will? No wonder they wouldn't hire a freelancer like her. She needed to sleep for 7 hours every day.
"I just received my payment. I'll treat you to meat on Sunday," Ling Qiu typed. In Mante City, fruits and vegetables are several times more expensive than meat, and the meat is all processed products. No one knows what the raw materials are. Ever since Ling Qiu tasted it and had a stomachache for three days, she has never tried it again and has only been drinking nutritional supplements.
However, most people don't have any problems eating it; it's probably just that her physical condition is too poor as a free agent, and her body can't handle it.
"Forget it!" Lululan said, "What's the point if I eat it all by myself? Let's save up some more money and go eat vegetable hot pot later! Even though it's all genetically modified, you should be able to eat it!"
Ling Qiu thought it made sense and agreed.
Recalling the unusual events in the alley earlier that day, Ling Qiu asked Lu Lulan again, "Are you sure that when you were talking to me in holographic form, you didn't see anything behind me, and that I told you I was home before hanging up?"
Lululan: "Yes! What's the problem?"
Ling Qiu thought for a moment and then gave her a general account of what had happened in the alley. If she didn't explain now, it would be too late to explain later if something went wrong.
There was a moment of silence on the other end.
"You mean, the video I saw of you saying you got home was a virtual image?"
“That’s right,” Ling Qiu said. “But he is clearly a free man. Apart from a slight problem with his body proportions, I can confirm that he has no prosthetics or internal organs. He is a completely free man from the inside out.”
After a moment of silence, Lululan sent Ling Qiu a link, which Ling Qiu quickly browsed.
"Superpowers?" Ling Qiu asked, puzzled.
"Yes, this is the latest experiment. I heard it has been going on secretly for several years, but it was only recently that the company started to notify its employees. The company requires us to keep it absolutely confidential. Delete this link completely after you finish reading it."
"So his superpower is... modifying holographic images?" Ling Qiu felt something was off. "I can modify that too."
"Haha! Honey, you really think everyone is a hacking expert like you?" Lululan teased. "Even if you want to make changes, you'll need tools, but maybe that guy won't."
"Is there anything else unusual?" Lululan asked.
Ling Qiu thought for a moment and said, "I noticed that he kept touching his stomach. I thought he was hungry, so I kindly gave him some instant noodles, but he still didn't stop doing it after he finished eating."
As for the words "Anbot" that he kept repeating, Ling Qiu had already searched thoroughly. If she couldn't find anything, then Lululan couldn't either.
Lululan: "You mean, a good-looking man is waiting on your way home, following you relentlessly, and even touching his stomach from time to time, trying to communicate with you?"
“…” Ling Qiu, “That’s right.”
"Is it possible that you are the child's mother?" Lululan asked bluntly.
This statement was so abrupt that Ling Qiu was taken aback. She immediately denied it, saying, "There is absolutely no such possibility."
"Hahahaha!" Lululan burst into laughter. "It's so funny to tease you! Why aren't you laughing at something so funny?"
Ling Qiu: "..."
"Getting back to the point, since he's not in danger right now, you should keep an eye on him. Try to avoid going to the slums lately; it's become much more chaotic there than before," Lululan reminded her.
Riots frequently occur in the slums, but Ling Qiu didn't pay attention. After talking to Lululan, she started her work. This time, her client was named Mad John, a fat man with short yellow hair. According to him, his wife went missing on April 17th, and it had been five or six days since then. Mad had been searching for her for several days but couldn't find her, so he had no choice but to ask a hacker for help.
This situation is common in Mant City, where police are virtually non-existent, the law is a pipe dream, and everything is sacrificed for the company's interests; the company is above all else.
Therefore, people are more willing to seek help from hackers than from the government. Although the theft of information and the opening of boxes do not bother people, everyone is still inseparable from hackers.
Ling Qiu began searching on the dark web.
Sally's social media account was filled with her own drawings, which were dark and unsettling, with eerie and terrifying ghosts lurking everywhere in them. Ling Qiu browsed through the comments one by one but found no information about her infidelity.
Then she went back to Mad's social media account and found that Mad had posted about his wife Sally's disappearance three days earlier, with a lot of comments below:
"Haha! The honest guy got dumped!"
"Be careful, she might get pregnant soon after she gets back!"
Congratulations, Ma De! You're going to be a dad!
"Hurry up and look for them, something big has happened in the slums recently."
...
Temple? Cult?
Looking at these words, Ling Qiu suddenly felt a sense of temporal and spatial disconnect. The last time she heard about such supernatural theories was when she was very young. At that time, both her parents were alive, and her mother warned her never to get close to people wearing red armbands on the street, as they were all cult followers.
Later, thanks to the company's strong crackdown, the cult disappeared. Unexpectedly, after so many years, this obviously fraudulent thing has resurfaced.
The photo shows a girl pointing at the sky with a terrified expression, but the sky is completely black and there is nothing there.
Ling Qiu searched carefully in the sky, her gaze sweeping across the heavens. Suddenly, she seemed to see the dark sky move, emitting an eerie red light.
Ling Qiu blinked hard. The photo was just an ordinary photo; there was no red glow at all.
She saw wrong? Ling Qiu rubbed her eyes. The body parts of a free agent are really unreliable; even eyes get blurry after a while…
Suddenly! A bizarre human face appeared on the photo she had zoomed in on, twisted and maniacally laughing, revealing sharp fangs. It flashed by like an illusion, startling Ling Qiu so much that her heart stopped.
Then, a slight noise came from outside.
A note from the author:
The male protagonist's name is not Anbote.
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