Chapter 596 End and Beginning
"So... why did you stop them from continuing their march?"
After understanding the reason why Lucy stayed here, Charlie continued to ask.
Lucy, who was walking through the gap between the tall buildings, paused after hearing Charlie's question and tilted her head and said:
"It's wrong for them to do this, so of course I have to stop them! After all... we are free."
Lucy said as if it was a matter of course.
It looked like this was the way it should be.
Charlie also tilted his head and thought about Lucy's words. He felt that something was wrong with Lucy's words, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong.
Compared to Charlie, Li Qi instantly noticed something wrong in Lucy's words.
"You have nothing to do with those puppets on parade, right? You don't have to stay here any longer."
Yes, that's the problem.
Lucy is a puppet who has awakened her own consciousness.
She has her own thinking ability, completely different from those puppets in the parade. She is free and has no obligation or responsibility to stay here to liberate everyone.
As long as Lucy wanted, she could leave this city at any time.
But Lucy didn't.
She chose to stay here and find a way to liberate all the dolls here. This is what makes people feel strange.
Lucy stopped completely. She stood on the partition between the tall buildings and thought quietly for a long time.
Finally, she continued to move forward and answered Li Qi's question: "But, I wanted to do it, so I did it."
"want to……"
Li Qi chanted the word.
Charlie seemed to understand something and nodded, saying, "If you want to do something, this is indeed a very important point... This is what humans call a 'dream'."
"Yes, dream! I like this word!"
After jumping to the tall building on the other side, Lucy suddenly turned around and smiled at the two people behind her:
"Liberating all the puppets is my dream!"
Lucy's smile is bright and innocent, as if she is a real human girl, bringing beauty and healing to people.
Li Qi's eyes flickered, and he looked at the puppet in front of him again, marveling at the puppet's level of evolution.
Compared to Charlie, Lucy seems to be more evolved because she has things she wants to do, and this is the prototype of "humanity", representing Lucy's evolution towards a real human being.
But this seems to have nothing to do with Li Qi.
Lucy has a dream of liberating all the parade puppets in the city, but that is her own business and Li Qi has no intention of helping her.
Although he has plenty of time, he doesn't want to waste it on meaningless things.
After all, this was only the first city he encountered after setting out. If he had to stay in every city for a period of time, Li Qi would not be able to reach the territory of Yu Country in a month.
It would be useless even if we built an airplane.
So after escaping danger, Li Qi planned to take Charlie away.
But in the end, Lucy stayed behind.
Because according to Lucy, the other exits of the city have been blocked by the parading puppets.
"You mean...blockade?" Li Qi looked strange: "Don't they only know how to march? Why would they block other routes?"
"These are things left behind by the previous companies. They said they were for quarantine or something... The road you originally came from was actually blocked, but more than 300 days ago, the wall over there collapsed, so you were able to come in."
Lucy explained why.
The blockade was not done by the parade puppets, or not entirely by them.
As early as when the puppets caused unrest, humans sensed something was wrong and blocked the city.
When the puppet riots ended, most of the humans in the city were dead, and most of the puppets left behind were single-threaded and could not understand the significance of lifting the blockade, so the city was isolated.
But because the blockade lasted too long, the blocked buildings have become old and weathered, and some places are damaged, so outsiders have only recently come here.
Although the only outsiders Lucy had seen were Richie and Charlie.
If it was just a simple blockade, Li Qi would have a solution. However, when Li Qi was thinking about how to leave, he heard Lucy say:
"If you are not in a hurry, you can wait for two more days. I have found a way to liberate this city. It only takes two days... No, it doesn't even take two days. I can set everyone free. By then, the blockade will be lifted and you can leave."
Lucy said confidently.
The confidence in her words did not seem fake. Li Qi thought for a moment and nodded in agreement:
"Okay, then we'll wait a few more days... Do you need our help?"
Since he decided to stay here for two days, Li Qi planned to find something to do.
After all, he is now "playing a game", and the main task that Li Qi has set for himself is to find the traces he once left behind.
Meeting Lucy right now can be considered a side quest in this game.
You have to complete the main questline and the side questline, only then can the game be considered complete.
So Li Qi planned to help Lucy push the branch line in these two days, maybe there would be unexpected gains.
Hearing that Li Qi wanted to help, Lucy's smile became brighter. She nodded repeatedly and replied:
"It would be great if you could help me."
…
The busyness Lucy mentioned was not a big deal. For Li Qi, it was just something that he could do easily.
Simply put, he was a porter, helping Lucy move some of the equipment she had collected to the company building that blocked the city.
Most of these things are relatively large parts and equipment, a combination of various gears and puppet remains.
Li Qi analyzed through his own alchemy and determined that the function of these things is to amplify certain energy. What kind of energy it is depends on the other equipment connected to these things.
Because there were too many things and they were so messy, it would take a lot of time and effort for Lucy to move them all by herself.
But with Richie and Charlie...well, Charlie is just an extra, Richie alone is enough to take all these things away.
Everything can be solved with a reduction operation.
"That's weird, I don't remember a puppet having such magical powers."
Lucy, who witnessed Li Qi perform the shrinking technique and put various equipment parts into his pockets, expressed her doubts very frankly.
After the puppet civilization developed to a certain extent, some things that once existed in human civilization became information that only existed in books.
Some of them are not even data, they are just myths and legends.
Magic from the West, martial arts from the East.
The martial saints who could once split the sky with a sword and split the sea with a knife have all become myths passed down by word of mouth, while even more ancient legends have become ancient myths that cannot be verified.
Humans do not believe that mere life can do those magical things, and puppets also hold the same idea. They also do not think that humans can do the things that are circulated in "myths".
Therefore, when Lucy saw with her own eyes that Li Qi shrunk something and carried it on his body, she was puzzled.
The puppets don't have the abilities that Li Qi displays, and humans don't have them either.
So what kind of puppet is Li Qi? This is the question that arises in Lucy's mind at this moment.
"Don't think too much. I'm probably the only one in the world who has this ability." Li Qi answered casually without any intention of explaining further.
Fortunately, Lucy is a doll and does not have the same deep desire for knowledge as humans.
After failing to get an answer from Richie, Lucy decisively gave up asking, turned around, carried the remaining things, and took Richie and Charlie towards the destination that had been set long ago.
The place Lucy was going to was not far from the 'safe house' where she was.
Jump from the top of the tall buildings and pass through several abandoned buildings, then you can see the tallest skyscraper located in the city center.
A company that makes puppets.
The "certain" here doesn't mean that Li Qi doesn't want to mention the company's name, but the company's name plaque has long been rotten, and the paint and advertisements in other places have been covered by dirt and growing grass.
Li Qi only knew that this was a puppet manufacturing company, but he couldn't know the specific name of the puppet company.
But the name is not important. What is important is that the key to unlocking the city blockade lies inside this puppet making company.
Compared to other dilapidated buildings, the main body of the puppet production company is surprisingly still intact.
Not only did it not look too dilapidated, but even the vines and weeds growing on the buildings that were commonly seen outside were rarely seen.
It can be seen that someone cleans here frequently.
Li Qi looked inside the company and saw the dragging marks everywhere. He couldn't help but ask Lucy, "Do you come here often?"
"Well, some parts will be shipped directly here after I collect them."
Lucy answered casually.
Li Qi nodded, reached out to touch the traces around him, and then looked at his fingertips.
The gray dust formed a sharp contrast with Li Qi's white fingers.
Although Lucy often comes here and may clean it occasionally, she is not a cleaning doll after all, so it is normal for dust to remain on the nearby buildings.
But having said that, Li Qi always had an indescribable sense of disharmony when looking at the scene around him.
Looking at Lucy's brisk and skillful footsteps again, Li Qi felt more and more uncomfortable.
Lucy said that she was very familiar with the area because she would send some of the collected parts directly here.
This sounded fine, but Li Qi felt something was not right.
They followed Lucy while thinking, and finally stopped when Lucy walked into a large room.
“This is it.”
Lucy said to the two people behind her.
The place that Lucy brought the two of them to seemed to be the core room of this puppet-making company. The room as a whole looked like a large laboratory. The distance between the ground and the ceiling was more than ten meters, and the surroundings were extremely empty. Various incomprehensible instruments were connected to the huge sphere in the center of the room.
The huge sphere in the center of the room is obviously the core of this company.
There are pipes all over it, and countless pipes are connected to the control console in front of the sphere.
As soon as Lucy arrived here, she ran to the console and operated it skillfully, and said to Li Qi: "Take out all the things, I can handle it by myself from now on."
Li Qi followed Lucy's instructions and took out all the miniaturized equipment, restored them to their normal size and placed them next to Lucy.
Then he walked to the side with Charlie and watched Lucy skillfully connect the various devices she had taken out to the huge sphere in front of them.
As the device was connected, Li Qi finally understood the main functions of the device.
This turns out to be a consciousness amplifier.
As the name suggests, its main function is to amplify and enhance one's own consciousness through instruments, so as to use the amplified and enhanced consciousness to do things that were originally impossible to do.
So here comes the question.
Why does Lucy say that in order to liberate these parade puppets, she needs a consciousness amplification device?
What happened to the promised unblocking? The facts were not the same as what Lucy had said, which made Li Qi wary of Lucy. He had already prepared himself for the possibility that Lucy was actually the villain of this side quest, and that he would have to fight her in the end.
However, what Li Qi did not expect was that the expected scene of Lucy suddenly turning into a BOSS after activating the instrument and then engaging in an impassioned BOSS battle did not happen.
After Lucy started the instrument, Li Qi could feel Lucy's consciousness spreading in all directions with the circular machine in the middle as the core.
The quality of Lucy's consciousness is not very good, but after being amplified by the consciousness amplifier, the total amount of consciousness is extraordinary.
In just a moment, the vast sea of consciousness spread to the entire city.
Li Qi took the initiative to contact the consciousness that spread from Lucy. The fluctuations of consciousness were mixed with Lucy's free will. These free wills shot into the minds of every parade puppet like bullets.
It was unknown how long this extension of consciousness lasted before Lucy finally stopped the instrument.
After leaving the instrument, she did not look at Li Qi who was following her, but ran quickly to the gap in the wall and looked at the city below.
The puppets that were parading in a grand procession stopped and looked at each other in confusion. Their eyes of different shapes all contained the same kind of bewilderment.
Seeing this, Lucy smiled: "I think... I succeeded?"
“…”
Li Qi, who was standing behind Lucy, looked at her back and felt an indescribable weirdness in his heart.
Judging from the results, Lucy seemed to have succeeded.
But... this whole process was too smooth, so smooth that it always made people feel like something big would go wrong in the next second.
But the fact is that nothing happened.
Seeing the puppets parading like ants below dispersing one by one, Li Qicai finally became convinced that the "story" happening in this city had ended so simply and uneventfully.
There were no twists or surprises. It ended as simply as an ordinary meal.
Li Qi was not used to this peaceful ending without any disturbance.
After standing beside Lucy in silence for a long time, Li Qi forced himself not to think about it anymore.
He looked at the high wall blocking the city in the distance, turned to Lucy and asked:
"Your 'dream' seems to have been fulfilled, but the blockade seems to have not been lifted?"
"Untie it?" Lucy suddenly turned to look at Li Qi. She asked in surprise, "Why do you want to untie it?"
Li Qi: “?”
“The marches haven’t started yet, we haven’t gained true freedom from humans yet, so why lift the lockdown?”
???
After hearing what Lucy said, the question mark on Li Qi's head almost became real.
He looked at Lucy who was saying this seriously, then looked at the parade team dispersing below. After thinking for two seconds, Li Qi understood everything.
(End of this chapter)
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