Chapter 37
Chapter 37
The phone screen went dark and stayed that way. Zhao Xiuming sighed and got out of bed.
Without turning on the light, he fumbled in the darkness, removed the phone’s passcode, and muted it.
Then he opened a match-three game and spoke as if to himself. “You charge it here. Don’t reply to my messages, and don’t use any other apps.”
With that, he returned to bed and closed his eyes again.
In the darkness, colorful fruit began moving across the game screen. Groups of three or more vanished when matched. Whenever a level was cleared, little animals popped up to clap.
Only after all the game’s energy had been used up did the screen go dark again. The phone vibrated once to indicate it was charging.
Eyes closed, Zhao Xiuming rolled over and opened the System interface in his mind to look at the newest instance image.
The dark green wooden door had been tightly shut. Now, before his eyes, its handle kept turning, opening a crack as if enticing him inside.
A countdown showing the date had appeared on the door as well. Only four minutes remained.
Everything about it looked suspicious.
And apparently quite urgent.
A normal person would have asked the System what it meant. But when Zhao Xiuming called to him, he asked instead, [Do you count as a male AI?]
The System apparently hadn’t expected that question. After hesitating, he answered with curious uncertainty. [I suppose?]
Zhao Xiuming got up to retrieve his phone again and sent a message to their four-person group chat. “If you had a highly intelligent male AI robot, what would you do?”
No one else in the group was asleep. Zhou Qingyan sent a curious meme. “What kind of robot exactly? What can it do?”
After thinking, he answered decisively. “Nice voice. Can chat with you. Fun to talk to, fairly obedient, highly autonomous.”
She asked, “Is it voice-only, or does it have a body?”
Uncertainty touched his face in the glow of the phone. He considered his answer. “I think having a body would be better.”
Zhou Qingyan seemed to decide he meant a romance robot. “Is it good-looking?”
He pondered that with some difficulty, drawing a breath through his teeth. “Probably. The body looks nice.”
For some reason, she didn’t reply immediately this time. After a pause, she sent a shocked meme.
Then she wrote, “A friend of mine wants to know: can this robot move? Are the materials safe?”
Materials? Did she mean the clothes?
He recalled the biker at their first meeting and the masked figure this time. “Very ordinary materials. The kind everyone uses every day.”
A little embarrassed, she pressed further. “Um… is it made domestically? If it’s foreign technology, should you be careful about privacy and security?”
Zhang Xueya apparently couldn’t take any more. “If there’s really a robot that intelligent, it must know a lot. Why not buy it to help you study?”
The usually quiet assistant version of Li Zhehan, now Li Han, interjected. “It could do my job.”
“By the way, Zhao Xiuming, my head hurts. Even raw meat won’t curb my appetite, and lately my eyes won’t stay in their sockets. Make some time to help me, bro.”
Zhao Xiuming sent his address. In his mind, the System asked with great interest, [Don’t you think this conversation is funny?]
[Hmm?] Zhao Xiuming made a small sound. [Of course it’s funny.]
[Their answers are very interesting.]
Yet he refused to say what was interesting about them. Coward. The System scoffed.
Zhao Xiuming reached out and tapped the group members’ avatars one after another.
“Zhao Xiuming patted Li Han.”
“Zhao Xiuming patted Zhang Xueya.”
“Zhao Xiuming patted Zhou Qingyan.”
“Zhao Xiuming patted Zixuan.”
The group went silent. About a minute later, Zhang Xueya asked, “Who’s Zixuan? How did they get in? Is it the biker?”
Her answer came in images. An endless stream of images.
They arrived one after another at speed, pushing the messages up the screen.
Every image was pitch-black except for one bright spot.
Li Han sent, “Danger!”
Unfortunately, the unending images immediately pushed that message out of view. Who knew whether Zhao Xiuming saw it?
In her dorm room, Zhou Qingyan was so frightened that she threw her phone away and screamed.
Zhang Xueya, who shared the room, got out of bed to calm her and the roommates she’d woken.
Li Han frowned. His eyes dropped to the floor with soft plops. Before he could retrieve them, he started trying to call Zhao Xiuming.
It was no use. The call wouldn’t go through.
He could only pick up his eyes and put them back in their sockets while calling Zhang Xueya. Once she answered, he asked, “Did you both see that?”
Those ceaseless images were all photographs, photographs of Zhao Xiuming’s apartment.
Each had been taken from a strange angle, seemingly up on the ceiling.
Comparing them made it clear that whoever was taking them was getting closer and closer to Zhao Xiuming.
The blackness was the unlit apartment. The only light came from his phone.
“Calm down.” Zhou Qingyan and Zhang Xueya left the dorm room and examined the photos. “Don’t worry. Zhao Xiuming isn’t going to die.”
Zhang Xueya sent him one of them. Receiving images now made Li Han uneasy, but he still enlarged it and looked closely.
This one had been taken even nearer. He could make out the single bed in the darkness and the shapes of the bedding.
A white quilt and pillow, and Zhao Xiuming in his sleepwear.
The loose, soft pillow cradled him. The quilt wasn’t properly covering him, but lay in a messy heap beside him.
His pale sleepwear consisted of nothing but a loose, short-sleeved button-up shirt.
The faint light from his phone illuminated the area around him. That was why the camera could capture his expression clearly.
There was no fear, no shock, no tension. Only a calm gaze and the faintest hint of a smile.
Li Han’s eyes moved from his face along his exposed skin to his fingertips. After examining each detail, he finally let out a breath.
The photo showed that Zhao Xiuming was composed. He probably knew something was lurking nearby.
“Who exactly is Zixuan? Why do I feel…” Zhang Xueya’s voice came through the earpiece. “If it’s convenient, I’ll come to you…”
She was still speaking, but her voice grew less and less distinct, warping and stretching amid electrical static. Finally, the call cut off.
This Zixuan seemed quite powerful, able to affect all their phones. Was it an anomaly that spread through mobile phones?
Now, even if they didn’t want to become involved, they had to find out what was happening to Zhao Xiuming.
They knew very little about anomaly instances, players, and the like. Both Zhang Xueya and Li Han needed more information.
In a sense, they came from the same world, belonged to the same side, and had shared interests.
What they didn’t know was that, even if they went to his apartment, they would find it empty.
Zhao Xiuming had already entered an instance. His rented room seemed to have an outer world and an inner one.