Chapter 101 Sweet and Salty-10
The next day, Jiang Yan found the human Mengtang.
"Did he tell you these things?"
The bar was bustling with people. Meng Tang lazily took a sip of his drink and looked up nonchalantly at the man standing next to him who looked a little unstable.
"Have you been lying to me?"
Meng Tang smiled and said, "He asked me to take care of you, how can I say it's a lie?"
"When did you change? Did it start from the day you returned to the Meng family?"
"You are quite smart." Meng Tang said calmly, "So you came to me to find out which one of us you like, right?"
"Do you know why the robot dared not tell you the truth?" Meng Tang curled his lips, "I asked him too. Guess what he answered me?"
Jiang Yan asked: "What?"
Meng Tang: "He said that you hate monsters, and he thinks he is a monster, so he doesn't dare to recognize you." After a pause, he said, "But I think you two are a good match. A homosexual who likes men, and a weird guy covered in iron. Actually, if you think about it carefully, aren't you both monsters?"
After that, Jiang Yan left without saying a word.
Jiang Yan walked absentmindedly beside the bridge filled with sunlight, with the hustle and bustle of traffic around him and the sound of horns passing by his ears.
"Baby, you went to a new school today. How do you feel?"
"Woo woo, mom, they don't seem to like me? They said I have scars on my face and that I'm a little monster. Mom, is what they said true?"
"How could that be? Baby is the cutest baby in my heart. They must be praising you for being special. Come on, mom, baby."
“…”
A mother and son walked past Jiang Yan. Jiang Yan's ears moved and his eyes followed them.
Under the soft sunlight, a child with scars all over his face was holding his mother's hand, and people were constantly coming and going around him. They walked on the busy street, seemingly unaffected by the outside environment, with smiles on their faces, free and carefree.
Jiang Yan was silent for a long time, standing by the bridge from day to night.
Toot--
Jiang Yan was awakened by the car horn, and when he came to his senses, he found that there was a traffic jam.
He moved and left the bridge. When he returned home, his mother was cooking in the kitchen. "Ahem."
The mother's coughing continued, and Jiang Yan ran over in a hurry, "Mom, what's wrong with you?"
The woman covered her mouth. Jiang Yan went over to take a look and found that it was blood. His heart trembled, "Mom, are you hiding something from me?"
The woman pulled her hand away abruptly, pretending to be calm, smiled and said, "It's okay."
"Mom, come with me to the hospital."
The woman waved her hand to refuse, and said with a wry smile: "It's been a long time, son, and I don't have much time left. I won't go anywhere these days. I will stay here with you."
In the following days, Jiang Yan stayed at home with his mother, chatting with her about study, work and relationship.
"Mom, the guy I like is a little special."
In the room, Jiang Yan asked thoughtfully, "Will you bless me?"
"Of course. What kind of child is that?" the mother said gently. "Can you let me see it?"
"I have his photo." Jiang Yan took out his cell phone and was about to open the album to look through the photos when he suddenly realized that Meng Tang, who was taking photos with him, was not the one he liked.
Although they have the same skin, they are still two different individuals.
"What's wrong?" Mother saw that the joy on Jiang Yan's face suddenly faded.
"No, I don't have his photo." Jiang Yan said dejectedly.
Mother touched Jiang Yan's head and asked, "Does he like you?"
Jiang Yan shook his head, "I don't know."
"Hmm? Since you like her, you can ask her boldly. Don't miss it."
Jiang Yan pondered for a moment, looked up at his mother and asked, "Mom, do you regret being with Dad?" Do you regret not choosing to leave because of what happened that year?
The mother smiled gently and said, "I don't regret anything about your father."
"I'm back." A man's voice came from the door. The mother and son turned around and found it was their father.
At this moment, my father seemed like a different person. He was no longer depressed, and his clothes were neat and tidy. He seemed to have become the pillar of the family again. "Today, my boss said that I performed well and was going to give me a raise."
"Well...that's great." Mom exclaimed.
"Does Dad know about Mom's affairs?" Jiang Yan asked in a low voice.
"Well...he knows."
"Oh, by the way, Mom, I remember you wanted to travel very much before, but I was still young at that time, and you said you would take me with you, so we never went. Why don't we go now?" Jiang Yan said to his mother.
Jiang Yan's father heard it and said, "Sure, I can take a leave. I just finished a project and now I have some free time."
"But..." Jiang Yan's mother hesitated. She probably still wanted to spend the last moments with her child.
After all, she felt that she owed Jiang Yan a lot.
Finally, under Jiang Yan's persuasion, the mother followed the father.
Jiang Yan was the only one left in the empty house. He stood by the window, looking at the hazy scenery outside. Suddenly, he felt that the world became very vague, as if he had had a very long dream.
A week later.
Jiang Yan searched for the robot for a long time, but could not get any news about him. It was like a string of code that was erased silently.
"Sister Xu, is Meng Tang here?"
Jiang Yan looked at Xu Lin and asked.
Xu Lin: "Didn't Meng Tang go back to the Meng family? Why did he come to my place?"
"Sister Xu, I already know about him."
Xu Lin: "Oh, then I can't hide it from you anymore. He has been destroyed. You know, the shelf life of a robot is almost 20 years. It's time to return it to the factory for reset."
"B-but...he came to see me a few days ago."
Xu Lin: "I know, but unfortunately, the day he came back from your house, his body was badly damaged and it was difficult for him to function."
"Then how can I see him?"
"This is difficult to deal with..." Xu Lin sighed and said, "Even if he fixes it, all the programs will be updated and they may not remember you."
"Can I...can I see him one last time?"
Xu Lin looked at the young man in front of her and said, "Of course you can, but... don't be scared."
Jiang Yan was taken to the institute by Xu Lin, and they found Meng Tang in a room deep in the corridor. The artificial skin on Meng Tang's body had been stripped clean, and now only iron skin was left on his body, without even any hair. His head was bald and very smooth, and it was still shiny under the light.
“Meng…”
Jiang Yan shouted subconsciously.
The robot that was receiving updates should have been sleeping, but for some reason it trembled all over as if it had been electrocuted. Its upper body, which was originally lying flat on the experimental bed, suddenly stood up, scaring the staff nearby. They looked as if they had seen a zombie.
"Why... are you here?" the robot asked in a strange tone. His language system had just been removed, and now he could only rely on instinct to form words and speak in a primitive way.
Jiang Yan just opened his mouth when he saw the robot in front of him suddenly turned over and got out of bed, hiding itself in the shadow beside the bed, and said in a crying voice: "No, you can't look at me... I'm so ugly now... so ugly, you will hate me..."
Da-da-da
"I don't hate you." Jiang Yan walked towards the robot step by step.
The robot trembled, "No, you said you hated monsters. I am a monster."
"——No one likes a monster, no one."
Sizzle——sizzle——
Suddenly, the robot exploded.
Jiang Yan: “???”
Xu Lin was stunned for a moment, "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, it's just that the load is overloaded and this body is scrapped."
Jiang Yan showed a terrified expression, "What will happen to him?"
"His chip is still there, he will just fall into a very long sleep, but -" Xu Lin paused, "As for whether he will still be the same person after waking up, that's not certain."
Jiang Yan was a little confused. Xu Lin looked at a huge screen in the middle of the laboratory, which was filled with dense codes. She said, "He is dreaming."
"dream?"
Xu Lin nodded. "Yes, he feels that you hate him in reality, so he doesn't want to wake up again. He is building a utopian world in his dream where he can have you. So when the program starts, he will keep the self with your memory, or the data, in his dream."
Jiang Yan asked: "Then what should I do?"
Xu Lin looked at Jiang Yan and asked seriously, "Do you know that he likes you?"
Jiang Yan was stunned.
"It seems like they don't know." Xu Lin took out a sealed box from the drawer, which contained a lot of information. "When I first learned about this, I was also surprised. Even though we have tried hard to cultivate their understanding of human emotions, many robots only know the surface. Mengtang is the first to have self-awareness."
"We were both surprised and scared. We were afraid that he would one day reverse his control and control humans, so our superiors issued an order to destroy him, but he escaped on the destruction day. We followed him all the way and found that he went to find you."
Xu Lin suddenly said in a humorous tone, "It seems that he just awakened his love brain."
Jiang Yan murmured, "I didn't know he liked me."
"So do you like him?" Xu Lin asked.
Jiang Yan said without hesitation: "Yes, I have always liked him." The child who gave him candy was this robot.
"But he thought you liked someone else." Xu Lin smiled, "He told me before that he was just a monster in his lover's skin. He was not the real him."
Jiang Yan rejected it, "That's not the case."
"So do you want to get him back?" Xu Lin asked, entering the topic.
Jiang Yan nodded, "I don't want to lose him."
It was so hard to find the truth.
"Then you need to cooperate with us in an experiment."
A man suddenly walked in and said to Jiang Yan gently, "Hello, I am the person in charge of the entire Mengtang project. My name is Xu Qian."
Jiang Yan asked: "What experiment?"
"We will open up his closed fantasy world," Xu Qian said. "You have to enter his consciousness and bring him back."
"But how can I find him?"
"Don't worry, he will come to you on his own initiative."
"ah?"
"However, since you are an intruder, in order to let you in smoothly, we need to erase your memory."
"What does this mean?"
"In other words, we need to make him mistakenly believe that you are the person in his dream. He will take the initiative to approach you and try to make you in his dream fall in love with him."
"……OK."
Jiang Yan signed the contract quickly and lay on the experimental bed with an electronic data board belonging to Meng Tang next to him.
Xu Qian inserted a lot of data next to his brain, "This is connected to the Mengtang host. You will enter the world constructed by Mengtang in a while. Remember, you have no memory, so we will pull you back at a specified time."
"Your task is to find a way to convey to him that you don't hate monsters."
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