Copyright 2025 Old King. All rights reserved.

  “Watch it,” VenomSpike whispers, her voice barely a hum, “BladeScar, that fat bastard. He knows me. Blow our cover, and we’re damn screwed.”

  Ruoxi carefully sized up the girl in front of her: no makeup, wearing a slightly worn blue work uniform, fluorescent green short hair tucked entirely into a work cap, with synthetic skin patches on her face, false teeth, dark circles under her eyes, and black-framed glasses—presenting the perfect image of an overworked, sleep-deprived factory girl with buckteeth. She nodded and lowered her voice, saying, “Stay sharp, you’re a ghost now. No one’s clockin’ us.”

  “Yo, what you still goofin' off in the bathroom for, fam?” a man in a gray work uniform shouted from the doorway. “Get back to work!”

  Ruoxi and VenomSpike quickly lowered their heads and slipped past him, catching a strong whiff of cologne—undoubtedly a Taiwanese cadre.

  This factory is hidden within a lychee grove near the Tiegang Reservoir in Bao’an District. From a distance, under the cover of night, all you can see is a rusty corrugated iron sheet fence, but behind it lies a brick wall over two meters—nearly three meters—high. Inside the wall stands a massive three-story factory building. To find this place, you must turn left at the village’s archway, leave the paved road, and follow a gravel path that twists and turns through the grove. Without someone familiar with the route to guide you, it’s easy to get lost, especially since the grass along the path grows as tall as two people, making navigation even harder at night. The name “SpecterForge” is truly fitting.

  Two days ago, Lin Ruoxi and VenomSpike received the goods, and early yesterday morning, they delivered them to Sima at Circuit North. Ruoxi was thrilled—not only did she receive the agreed-upon 5,000 ChainCoins, but Sima also gave her an extra 200 as a meal allowance. More importantly, through his connections, Sima redirected the clues in HuaCent’s bounty notice toward a nonexistent hacker, crafting a complete identity and history for this phantom hacker on the dark web. He even programmed the AI to periodically leave traces of this hacker’s supposed locations across the dark web. “Let them chase ghosts!” Sima said. With this, the pressure on Ruoxi eased significantly. Her account now held a balance of over 10,000, doubling her savings. That evening, the three of them celebrated at a Chongking hotpot restaurant. VenomSpike insisted on footing the bill, saying it was to thank Sima for his substantial support. Sima didn’t refuse, sitting in a rattan chair and nodding. Ruoxi, sensitive to spicy food and wary of the hotpot’s heat, pleaded with VenomSpike to order a split yin-yang pot base.

  While waiting for the food, VenomSpike borrowed Ruoxi’s phone and showed Sima the tracking data for the man from StarPulse Tek. The man’s movements were peculiar: after drinking at Black Tide Club past midnight, he went straight to Peninsula City, likely his home, and didn’t leave until noon the next day. That afternoon, Ruoxi and VenomSpike stared at the screen for a long time, noticing that the man hadn’t headed to StarPulse Tek’s office in Dongguan. Instead, he lingered around Tiegang Reservoir for quite a while. A quick map check revealed nothing but a patch of woods there, which was rather odd.

  Sima studied the tracking data, paused for a moment, then slapped his forehead and said, “Heavendamn! Real talk, if you hadn’t mentioned it, I’d have totally blanked—there’s a factory there! I swore that place was long abandoned! It’s gotta be BladeScar’s factory! I was wondering where he’s been hiding! Believe me, this is straight-up ‘dark under the lamp!’”

  VenomSpike asked, “What’s ‘dark under the lamp’? BladeScar has a factory?”

  Ruoxi was puzzled. The name BladeScar had come up in conversation with Sima that night—likely a big player in the black market. She watched as Sima tossed some meat slices into the spicy side of the hotpot, set down his chopsticks, and explained, “Dark under the lamp, got it? Back in the day, oil lamps lit up the whole room, except the spot right under ‘em, pitch-black. That place,” he jabbed at the phone’s map, “is an illegal factory. Believe me, pre-war at HuaCent, I worked there for months. That spot, right by the reservoir, had water access on lock. We rigged up massive water pipes.” Sima poited to the corners of the room, “Roughly the size of this room in cross-section. Water access was convenient. Real talk!”

  “Water access? For what? Was HuaCent raising fish in the factory?” VenomSpike eagerly scooped the cooked meat slices into Sima’s dipping oil dish, clinked glasses with everyone, and continued, “That place sounds pretty weird! Several big industrial zones are nearby, and you guys went for an illegal building?”

  Sima downed a glass of rice wine, sighed, and said, “Real talk, you two ain’t tackled projects that massive. Back then, HuaCent was hell-bent on a computing center, and we scoured for ages, but it was all water source protection land—no factories allowed, period.”

  VenomSpike clinked glasses with Ruoxi again, then turned back to Sima and asked, “A computing center can be built anywhere, right? Why the need for water?”

  Sima shook his head and said, “Believe me, that computing center, codenamed ‘Weak Water Sea,’ was a damn beast. You haven’t dealt with big projects like this—1,000 servers, all 64-core, 500 GPU servers, Kubernetes managing 20,000 containers. Full load, 2MW of power, needing a dedicated 35kV line from the national grid. That generated a ton of heat, and cooling was a huge expense. So, water was critical—cold water in, hot water out, over 100 tons a day. Real talk, I never would’ve thought that place was still kicking.”

  Ruoxi took a bite of fish and asked, “A hub that big—how’d I miss it at HuaCent? Ain’t Pine Hill Lake their West Sea Center? And that, uh… AbyssNet thing?”

  Sima, having removed his holographic mask, revealed a half-burned face that looked particularly menacing, his excitement uncontainable. “You joined the company after the war, right? AbyssNet is an upgraded version of Weak Water Sea. West Sea Center is HuaCent’s corporate data and computing hub. Weak Water Sea was built before the war, and it was classified—most folks had no clue it existed. Hmph… strategic planning! Back then, it was used to create virtual worlds and research consciousness digitization projects…”

  “That early? Wasn’t that supposed to have started during the war?” VenomSpike refilled Sima’s glass, clinked it with hers, and asked, “They said it was for backing up critically injured soldiers, preserving their memories forever, or something like that…”

  Sima’s face was starting to flush, sweat beading on his scalp. “That was all patriotic propaganda for the masses, spinning it like the Americans forced our hand. In reality, the groundwork was set way before. When Elon Musk was messing with brain-computer interfaces, HuaCent applied for a national grant—about 4 billion dollars, tied to Southern Medical University, with the National Security Bureau involved. Our department was responsible for building the digital platform. That woman, now IronGrip, uh, Suechin Liang, was just a PhD student at Southern Medical then. And ThunderVolt, real name I can’t recall, was a nobody security guard, calling me ‘Chief’ left and right, all fake humility…”

  Seeing Sima dive into reminiscence mode, VenomSpike, worried he’d veer off-topic, quickly scooped some duck blood cubes into his bowl and asked, “Let’s not get into that now. Why do you say that place is SpecterForge now? What’s the deal with BladeScar?”

  Sima took a sip of rice wine, sighed, and said, “Ten years, man. I figured that old server room, with all the tech sanctions by the West, real talk, the setup was long outdated. After the war—the Sino-American War, I mean—HuaCent’s project management department hit our team with a memo: Weak Water Sea project was terminated, equipment to be scrapped, team dissolved. I was bummed out for a while. But thinking about it, BladeScar probably pulled some strings to seize that place. He’s got plenty of shady deals with the higher-ups; HuaCent’s rotten to the core, too. Otherwise, how could SpecterForge pump out that kind of output? I kept puzzling over how they did it. Believe me, when I grilled him on where his factory was, one day it’s Pingshan, the next Dapeng. I had people check—it wasn’t real. Never would’ve guessed, never, that his factory is the one I built with my own hands. Dark under the lamp, dark under the lamp!”

  VenomSpike’s eyes flickered as she exchanged a glance with Ruoxi. “So, who exactly is this BladeScar? How’s a Taiwanese guy still operating in Shenzhen?”

  “BladeScar, huh? Surname Zhang, from Tainan. Before the war, he was in Shenzhen, selling computers. He worked with the main supplier for the Weak Water Sea project—what was that company called? Eh, who cares! Doing sales and tech support at the same time. Guy’s skills were legit—knew hardware and software down pat, and real good at working people too.” Sima’s half-flushed face made the scars on the other half look eerily pale. He set down his glass, leaned back in the rattan chair, and said, “Believe me, that scar on his face? He got it when he took me out drinking, got into a fight, and someone smashed a beer bottle on him. He turned it into an asset, using that scar to tell everyone in the underworld he was some Taiwanese Triad gangster. Real talk, in the chaos after the war, that act fooled a lot of people. No one dared delay his payments, and the name BladeScar took off. Now his SpecterForge specializes in Premium Soul Ore, flashing smuggled Abai, and holds a decent market share. This Taiwanese guy, believe me, runs his factory on the cheap—never upgrades equipment if it still works, makes his money squeezing every last drop of labor from his workers, or you may say human ores…”

  At the mention of “Premium Soul Ore,” Ruoxi’s heart skipped a beat. She raised her glass, clinked it with Sima’s, and asked, “So, BladeScar jacked Weak Water Sea? Heavendamn, he’s tight with HuaCent? How do I get in there?”

  Sima glanced at Ruoxi, then at VenomSpike, sighed, and said, “I know what you’re thinking. Real talk, that place is dangerous. I ain’t cheering you on, but I won’t stop you either… You dead set on this?”

  The two exchanged a look and said, “Sima, we’re in!”

  Sima sighed again, patted Ruoxi’s shoulder, and said, “Your little brother’s already gone, sis. No matter where that consciousness is, it’s nothing but a ghost!”

  Ruoxi’s big eyes reddened, tears streaming down as she said, “He’s my brother, heavendamn it. I ain’t ditchin’ him, no way.” VenomSpike, caught up in the emotion, pulled out a tissue to wipe Ruoxi’s tears, her own eyes welling up, too.

  The three sat in their grief for a while, the hotpot broth gradually boiling dry. Sima let out a long sigh and said, “It’s all a wretched fate… Real talk, if I’d seen this coming, I’d have torched that server room back then. Alright, I’ll show you the way and later figure out how to get you into the factory. I’ll show you the way and sort out how to slip you into that factory. Believe me, that place’s edge is its secrecy.” Using his memory, he arranged fish bones on the table to map out the route from the village archway to the factory.

  The main entrance is on the factory’s second floor. Ruoxi and VenomSpike slipped out of the bathroom into the preprocessing workshop, bathed in dim yellow light. Windows, painted black and locked tight, sealed the space. Hundreds of narrow workstations were crammed into twenty or thirty rows, packed so tightly there was no room to breathe. Overhead, ceiling fans spun frantically, churning the stifling air. On the white walls, large green Chinese characters for “Sort,” “Set in Order,” “Shine,” “Standardize,” “Sustain,” and “Safety” were neatly painted. With towels draped around their necks, girl workers stared intently at the graphical interfaces on their computer screens, using keyboards and mice to slice and delete strange patterns. Ruoxi recognized these as graphical consciousness models, with AI tagging functional modules and memory segments and workers manually selecting and deleting unneeded partitions per the work instructions. The workshop was silent except for the clatter of keyboards and mouse clicks, like a cricket farm. The hallmark of Taiwanese-run businesses: tidiness and aged equipment, ruthlessly efficient at extracting the value of Human Ore.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Ruoxi spotted a cleaning cart in the corner and started pushing it. VenomSpike grabbed a broom from the cart and followed closely. Keeping their heads down, they quietly moved into the assembly workshop, just as crowded with workstations. Here, girl workers followed work orders, attaching customized skill libraries—logic reasoning, task execution—to consciousness modules, creating code packages for high-grade Soul Ore. These girl workers earned less than 1,000 dollars a month, relying on endless overtime to make a bit more. Ruoxi glanced at a screen displaying “Skill Library: Emotional Companionship; Sauna ISO Upgrade Kit” and felt a wave of nausea, stirring painful memories. In the corner, a scrawny engineer was quietly reporting to a tall cadre in gray. Ruoxi ducked behind a pillar, overhearing the cadre snap in a Taiwanese accent, “Yo, what y'all screwin' up? The yield rate's still trash, and you tryna say it ain't on you?”

  The engineer didn’t dare raise his voice, only muttering resignedly, “Supervisor, HuaCent’s upgraded AI has been deployed. Their Engineer Wang confirmed the upgrade’s complete. But, to be honest, this version ain’t much better—recognition accuracy hasn’t improved significantly, it’s still taggin’ normal consciousness segments, and the boundary annotations are misaligned, so…”

  “Yo, what kinda dumb stunt you pullin'?” The supervisor wasn’t having it, barking loudly, “Yo, Engineer Wang's braggin' 'bout recognition accuracy jumpin' 30%, ‘unrivaled dominance’! Yet your yield rate’s barely hitting 30%. But your yield rate's scrapin' by at barely 30%. What, y'all skip brain day at trainin' or somethin', so this crew's just botchin' it?…”

  VenomSpike, growing impatient, nudged Ruoxi, and the two pressed forward, sneaking into the IPQC workshop. Ruoxi spotted work instructions posted on the walls. Girl workers checked the integrity of data packets—incomplete ones were sent back, while complete ones were moved to the compilation workshop. There, computers compiled the packets into installers formatted identically to AI packages, making it impossible to distinguish Premium Soul Ore from AI through technical means.

  The validation workshop was the most oppressive. Premium Soul Ore installers were deployed in a virtual machine, subjected to various stimuli. Screens displayed a lifelike white mouse. Many “mice” couldn’t handle the stimuli, their Soul Ore malfunctioning, writhing on the ground as the screens flashed red “NG” warnings. Girl workers clicked the “shred” button. Passing installers were sent to the final encapsulation workshop, loaded into encrypted hard drives, becoming Premium Soul Ore drives sealed with hardware-software pairing. As Ruoxi passed through, her throat tightened— Was Avei’s consciousness brutally sliced and assembled like this, sold off on the black market?

  Smart anti-theft doors guarded the stairwells. The upward one was labeled “Office Area” and “Complete Machine Assembly Department,” the downward one “Server Room,” both marked “Authorized Area: Authorized Personnel Only.” Using the card Sima gave her, Ruoxi swiped open the iron door to the server room. VenomSpike took the cleaning cart, whispering, “You go down, I’ll scope it out… Love ya!” She puckered her lips, blowing Ruoxi a kiss through the air.

  Ruoxi froze—this wasn’t part of the plan—But there was no time to think. She shut the door behind her and slipped into the server room. Massive server arrays glowed coldly, shabby yet tidy, their cooling fans humming, echoing off the walls. A “Weak Water Sea” interface flickered on the screen. Ruoxi slipped on her AR glasses, quickly cracking the password. The system was painfully slow, starkly contrasting with the hulking server room. After a minute, the query interface loaded. She typed in Avei’s ID—a twelve-digit combination of numbers and letters seared into her memory. Another minute passed before the results appeared: Consciousness Entity: “Avei Lam, Level 19 Software Engineer, Status: Long-term Storage, Access Permission: Allowed.” Ruoxi’s heart leaped. She hooked a neural amplifier behind her ear, sat on the floor, leaned against a mech, clutched her Peppa Pig keychain, plugged the data cable into the port, closed her eyes, and let her consciousness dive into the virtual world.

  Avei sat in an empty bubble, his digital coffin—a virtual consciousness container floating in a boundless cosmos, surrounded by countless stars. Ruoxi struggled to reach him, her heart racing, whispering, “Avei!”

  Avei’s reaction was sluggish. After a minute, he slowly turned, a faint smile creeping across his face, as if she’d always been there. He raised a hand, pointing at the stars ahead, shouting to Ruoxi, one slow word at a time: “Sis!… Look!… Our… ocean… of … stars!” Ruoxi tried to hug him, but the system allocated minimal resources to Avei, and his movements were agonizingly slow. Her arms felt leaden, mirroring the weight in her heart.

  Avei’s body felt so real, even the scent of his hair achingly familiar. Ruoxi clung to him tightly, choking back sobs, “Avei! I’ve missed you so bad!”

  Avei wore that same smile, pointing at the stars ahead, shouting, “Sis!… Look!… Our… ocean… of … stars!”

  Ruoxi cried out, “Avei! Wake up! Sister’s here to save you!”

  Avei, still smiling, pointed at the stars, shouting, “Sis!… Look!… Our… ocean… of … stars!”

  Ruoxi shouted again, “Avei! Avei! Your ocean of stars…”

  Avei, unchanged, smiled and pointed, shouting, “Sis!… Look!… Our… ocean… of … stars!”

  Ruoxi’s heart twisted like a knife. This shabby system, bought by BladeScar, must hold a sea of consciousnesses. Overcrowded, it could only sustain the barest spark of activity, like virus samples in cryogenic storage. The brother before her couldn’t respond meaningfully. Choking back tears, she said, “You’re my family, always. I will save you!”

  The virtual world shuddered, its data streams fading to a whisper. Ruoxi disconnected, her consciousness snapping back to reality. Cold sweat drenched her forehead. She glanced at the time—15 minutes had passed. She unhooked the neural amplifier, gasping for breath, only to find VenomSpike standing beside her.

  “What’s wrong, damn it?” Ruoxi slumped on the floor, still reeling from overwhelming grief, her face streaked with tears.

  VenomSpike crouched down, steadying her arm. “You were in there forever. I got worried you glitched out or somethin’. Found your kid bro?” She stood, scanning the room, barely containing her excitement as she whispered, “Wow! This server room’s insane! How much goods’s stashed here?” With that, she turned to the terminal and started to query it.

  Ruoxi noticed a garbage bag strapped tightly with packing tape on VenomSpike’s back. It was clearly full of Premium Soul Ore drives. Fury surged within her. She shot to her feet, grabbed VenomSpike’s collar, and pushed her away from the console, “You’re stealin’ drives? Heavendamn, you said this was for revenge!”

  VenomSpike shrugged, her eyes gleaming with cunning beneath her skin patches. “Steal? Nah, this is just pickin’ up damn stock early. One disk of Premium Soul Ore keeps me set for a year! My boyfriend’s hospital bills ain’t free, got it? Revenge? Without money, how do I hack that?”

  Ruoxi was momentarily speechless. After years of war and chaos, she knew too well the weight of money. Seeing her stunned, VenomSpike handed her a hard drive. “So, damn it? Found your kid bro? Pull him out already, damn it.”

  “Pull him out,” Ruoxi thought. It meant copying the consciousness file from the server and deleting the original. Sima had said it before—this was just a copy. Saving him was more about comforting her as a sister. But she couldn’t hesitate now. She took the hard drive, connected the data cable, and prepared to act.

  “Hey! What are you doing, lah?” A booming shout echoed through the server room. A man in a pristine white cleanroom suit stood at the far end. “How did you get in here, ah? This is a restricted area—no unauthorized personnel!”

  Their faces paled. VenomSpike cursed under her breath, “Damn it!” but flashed a grin at the man, saying, “Nah, nothing like that! The Boss sent us to clean up…”

  “Boss?…” The man drew closer, muttering nonstop, “Cleanin’ the server room’s gotta be on the schedule. Ain’t no approval in the OA system, lah. Don’t touch any damn thing, nothing at all. I’m calling Admin to sort this out…”

  Ruoxi launched a swift kick, landing square in the man’s groin. He doubled over, speechless with pain, clutching himself as he crumpled to the floor.

  “Run!” VenomSpike ditched Ruoxi, bolting for the door. Ruoxi bit her lip, yanked the data cable free, stuffed the hard drive in her pocket, and didn’t forget to log out before sprinting after her. They scrambled up the stairs, shoving the cleaning cart to jam the iron door shut. Then, the factory’s alarms blared, red lights flashing wildly—VenomSpike had pulled the fire alarm. Not a single worker looked up in the workshop, still hunched over their tasks. Back in school, they’d been under constant surveillance. School rules forbade looking up during study hours, or they’d face harsh punishment. At their stations, cameras with AI tracked their pupils in real-time. A glance around meant docked pay. Taiwanese factory discipline and Chinese obedience taming from childhood—a perfect match. Ruoxi gritted her teeth, grabbed an iron chair, and smashed a blacked-out window to shards. She carefully cleared the jagged edges from the frame, beckoning VenomSpike to jump out with her.

  The alarms drew armed guards pouring out of the gatehouse, shouting chaotically, “Fire! Put it out!” Another yelled, “Thieves! Catch the thieves!”—pandemonium erupted. Drones swarmed from their charging docks like hornets, blanketing the factory per security protocol. VenomSpike and Ruoxi knew the chaos wouldn’t last a minute. This fortress of a factory wasn’t a place to linger. They adjusted their clothes, spotting the gate guards distracted toward the factory, phones ringing off the hook in the gatehouse. Feigning calm, they swiped their factory cards and strolled out the gate, breaking into a mad dash only after clearing it. Shouts and gunfire erupted behind them, bullets whizzing past their ears, drones buzzing overhead in pursuit.

  VenomSpike yelled, “NeonEdge, don’t look back! Cover your damn eyes!” She lobbed something toward the guards. Even with her eyes shielded, Ruoxi felt the blinding flash pierce her palms as a massive explosion roared behind her. When the dazzle faded, she glanced back—pursuers were howling, clutching their eyes, cybernetic implants twitching in spasms. The drones had crashed to the ground, some with busted batteries sparking and bursting into flames. VenomSpike saw Ruoxi frozen, grabbed her, and dove into the roadside tall grass, shouting, “Eat shit, you dead-end punks! That cost me ten grand!”

  The e-bike they’d hidden was nowhere to be found. In the towering grass, they groped forward in a rough direction. VenomSpike, limping from a sprained ankle, had lost her glasses and synth-skin patches, but her mood was high. She patted the garbage bag on her back, grinning, “Good thing I taped it tight and tough—no issues.” Seeing Ruoxi pull out a jammer, she added, “My jammer’s good for now. Save your battery. Drones can’t spot us. Use yours when mine’s dead. Don’t freak, when we find a road, we’re cool.”

  Ruoxi’s heart churned with mixed emotions, a bitter resentment she couldn’t pin—On VenomSpike, herself, or SpecterForge? She had no answers, trailing silently behind. Suddenly, she asked, “That grenade you used—what the hell was it?”

  VenomSpike, wincing through the pain, smirked proudly, “EMP flash grenade, Life-Taker 3000, Circuit North’s finest. Black market must-have for travelers and crooks. Trouble hits, this gets you out.” She sighed, “Just too damn pricey and not always in stock. Otherwise, I’d blast a hundred of ‘em!”

  “What if you tossed it in the server room?” Ruoxi asked, pensive.

  “No way! This thing’s kill zone’s too small…” VenomSpike cut in, “Fry the servers, and what about your little brother? Aren’t you trying to save him?”

  Ruoxi said slowly, “I don’t know… I’m so messed up… Is Avei dead or alive?”

  “Yeah, I get it!” VenomSpike’s voice cracked with sorrow. “My boyfriend—alive or dead? He’s lying there, breathing, heart beating. You hold him, he’s warm, real… but no consciousness…”

  They stumbled onto a potholed road, headlights flashing in the distance. VenomSpike hobbled to the middle, flagging down a truck. Clinging to the door, she pleaded, “Big bro, can you give us a lift?”

  The driver, wary, asked, “What’re you two sisses up to, yeah? Where you headed, loh?”

  VenomSpike, voice trembling with fake tears, said, “We were factory workers. Boss said our performance sucked, wanted to sell us to a Dongguan sauna. We snuck out. Please, save us…”

  The driver saw their blue factory uniforms, caked in dirt, VenomSpike limping with a garbage bag slung on her back. Half-convinced, he sighed, “Rough world, heavendamn. Hop in quick.”

  The truck rumbled along. Ruoxi’s nerves had started to settle, but the driver’s constant glances at her and VenomSpike heightened her guard. He pulled out his phone, asking, “Yeah, I’m Amin. Little sisses, what’re your names, loh? Which factory you from? Ever seen this girl, loh? She’s my sister.”