Chapter 70: Ice Season 12 Memories? Dreams?
"Be quick!"
"Go faster!"
"What's the point of keeping you here, you useless thing!"
…
Jiang Runian just looked at the young and helpless Ling Sanling through the transparent wall.
There are many children like her in the refugee camp.
The manager there said that lowly lives do not deserve names, only numbers.
029 was a few years older than her, but she was a crying little girl, but she always secretly hid half a steamed bun for her; 032 was a lame little boy who would teach the children here to weave grasshoppers in the middle of the night. 045... 045 was dragged away just a few days after he arrived because he was infected with an epidemic, and the manager said he couldn't stay. She heard 033's crying suddenly stop in the night, like a bird with its neck pinched.
Late at night, they huddled together in a corner of the hut, hugging their bony knees.
Their wrists were as thin as dead branches, and the protruding joints under their skin seemed to be ready to pierce through the thin skin at any time. Their purple pulses were so thin that they were blinding. Every day at the hour of Mao, before daybreak, they would be whipped awake and go to the river to fetch water. The wooden bucket was half a person taller than her, and when filled with water, it was so heavy that it could break her waist. She walked unsteadily, splashing water, soaking her tattered straw sandals, and the blood bubbles on the soles of her feet turned white. Every step she took felt like she was stepping on the tip of a knife.
But the winter in the refugee camp is more painful than a knife.
Gradually, 029 died, and 032 also died, and the children one after another went into their beds made of loess.
Ling Sanling was carrying three loads of firewood when she stumbled and fell into a mud pit. The muddy water poured into her nose, choking her and making her eyes go black.
"How do you do your job!" The manager spat and kicked her in the waist, just because a few drops of mud splashed on her trouser legs, "You bitch, you're so tough!"
Zero Three Zero didn't cry.
She just bit her lips tightly and tasted an iron taste on the tip of her tongue.
She knew that this group of people were ordered to set up refugee camps on the border just to get the money for disaster relief. By enslaving these homeless and fatherless weaklings, and pretending to be so, these beasts could get something they could never dream of in their lifetime. She absolutely could not die and let them succeed.
That day was the birthday in 030's memory.
It just so happened that several managers were drunk.
Ling Sanling crawled out of the haystack and fixed his eyes on the lamp oil piled in the corner.
When the flames spread, the refugee camp was in chaos. The managers screamed and ran out, but were hit by the collapsed beams. They cried, struggled, and turned into charcoal.
Ling Sanling stood in the middle of the sea of fire. The heat waves burned her skin so much that it hurt. Her hands and feet, which had been frozen purple, finally warmed up.
She plucked a wild flower and gently placed it in the sea of fire.
Just think of it as a cremation for those nameless codes.
…
Jiang Ru Nian was breathless. These were the past that Jiang Ru Nian was most reluctant to recall, but what was suffocating her at the moment was not these memories that were as choking as ashes, but - standing on the other side of the wall, from a third-party perspective, Jiang Ru Nian saw clearly that the exiled fairy in white, whom she originally thought was just passing by, had already flown in the air with a sword and witnessed everything she had set on fire.
Ling Sanling was totally unaware of this. He just grabbed Bai Yexuan's snow-white clothes with his black little hands and grinned with his missing teeth: "Grandpa, can you pick me up? I can cook, clean, and wash clothes... Oh, I can also kill people if you need me to."
Bai Yexuan lowered his head and took her hand, not caring at all whether it would dirty his sleeves.
Jiang Runian finally came to his senses - this was the reason why Qingshan Sect never mentioned the refugee camp in the next ten years.
They knew that they were bringing back a child with several lives on his shoulders.
"Call me Rongrong, it's a good match for me!"
"You just entered the sect, why should I call you that?"
"Big sister, why are you fighting with Afu... You can call me whatever you want, but you have to learn alchemy from me."
"That's wishful thinking. She has to go into the treasure house with me."
…
The eight-year-old Ling Sanling had never experienced such a chattering scene. Facing a large table of delicious food and a circle of people surrounding it, he shrank his neck and was not moved.
Bai Yexuan pursed his lips, picked up the largest chicken leg and put it into her bowl: "From now on, you will be called Jiang Runian."
The sea sun rises in the last night, and the river spring enters the old year.
The sun has risen, the old year has not yet passed, and the new spring is quietly approaching.
Although it was a scene she had replayed countless times in her memory, Jiang Runian still couldn't help but feel soft-hearted. How could she not do her best to protect the Qingshan Sect?
At this moment, a dark green butterfly fluttered over Qingshan Sect.
The scene changed, and in the howling wind, the Qingshan Sect was flooded with blood.
"......!" Jiang Runian pressed against the transparent wall tiles. The moment the coolness penetrated her forehead, her eyes went dark again!
When I opened my eyes again, everything around me was white.
Everything here is strange.
There was completely transparent glass on all sides, with all sorts of incomprehensible instruments and colorful lights flashing.
She suddenly felt a needle-like pain in her forearm. She turned her head and saw a researcher in a white coat injecting something into her vein.
Jiang Ruonian was unable to move and could only speak: "...What is this?"
"Ah, you're awake?" The researcher's face was vaguely...surprised. "This is a blocker. After taking it, you won't have to share a brain with the previous AI anymore!"
Jiang Runian: “?”
What blockers? What AI? What shared brain?
She was confused and tried to support her upper body with the help of her head, but she felt a lot of complicated data transmission cables on her head, accompanied by a clearly audible beeping sound in her ears.
"Your performance is simply amazing! Many test subjects couldn't even survive the initial refugee camp, and you were the only one who made it to the Immortal Alliance Massacre!" The researcher was still talking to himself, "030, I was right about you, you really are the best among this batch of test subjects!"
……Wait a moment.
What is she talking about?!
The researcher helped her untie the numerous elastic bands on her body while looking at her lovingly and happily: "Oh, it's my fault for being confused. The blocker you just injected must not have taken effect yet. You should still be in Jiang Runian's consciousness, right?"
These unfamiliar words were like blades, cutting into Jiang Runian's flesh.
She pushed the researcher away, freed herself from the restraints and sat up.
Directly opposite her, I could vaguely see my reflection in the glass.
Countless thin data cables hung from her pale skin, like a group of snakes full of blood, and reluctantly untangled as she stood up. The monitoring electrodes attached to her temples, neck and wrists made harsh protests. Some of them were too tightly attached, and tiny blood beads were brought up when they were torn off. The ECG monitor beside the bed suddenly issued a sharp alarm, and the originally stable green line on the screen jumped wildly. She reached out to turn off the switch, but found that her five fingers were imprisoned by nerve conduction gloves, and each finger was connected to a silver wire as thin as a hair.
In the room outside the glass, countless large translucent screens were connected together, and lines of code were scrolling rapidly: [Stripping progress: 17%]
This is not myself in Qingshan Sect.
Nor is it myself at Qingshan Inn.
So strange.
"Zero-three-zero! Don't move!" The researcher screamed in fear and quickly treated her injuries. "You haven't completely separated from the shared brain with Cyber yet. Your brain waves are not stable yet. It's normal for your consciousness to be confused. You just need to believe that I won't harm you."
Jiang Runian suddenly bent his body and hugged his head.
She had a splitting headache, as if someone had stabbed a silver needle into her temples, and it felt as if ten thousand bees had filled her ears.
Seeing that something was wrong, the researcher immediately rang the bell to call two assistants, and the three of them worked together to barely hold her down. They turned around and saw that the peeling progress on the big screen was still stagnant at 17%, as if it was stuck halfway. An assistant shouted: "What should we do? Should we inject another tube of blocking agent?"
"No! This dose is the maximum dose that the human body can withstand. If it weren't for the fact that the AI of the shared brain is Cyber, even this dose wouldn't be used!" The researcher shouted, "030 is the only remaining experimental subject, no accidents can happen!"
"But……"
Jiang Runian could hear their noise and the noisy buzzing in her brain attacking her mind.
…
Wake up! Jiang Runian!
Wake up from the pain, this is not reality!
In the chaos, Jiang Runian tried desperately to pull back her tortured consciousness.
If she remembered correctly... at first it was because of the sudden arrival of a faint green light that the butterfly sent her into the memory of the immortal world; later it was because of seeing a faint green butterfly that she passed out, and when she opened her eyes again she was in this body.
Jiang Runian couldn't even tell whether this was a memory or a dream.
With his left hand tightly pinching his right wrist, Jiang Runian's eyes were blurred. He could only vaguely see green spots of light flowing in his blood vessels, as if the "blocker" was taking effect.
She narrowed her eyes, focused her gaze on one spot, and carefully searched the items beside the bed. On the mobile cart beside the assistant, she saw several fluorescent green injections with a complex code faintly printed on them.
Jiang Runian's whole body went limp, and her legs were even weaker, so she could only fall forward. As she fell, the data cables still connected to her body pulled down several instruments, and the whole room was filled with the sound of metal colliding.
Amidst the chaos, Jiang Runian reached out and grabbed an injection, bit open the cap with his teeth, and inserted it into his body without thinking.
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