Copyright 2025 Old King. All rights reserved.

  “Watch it,” VenomSpike whispers, “BladeScar knows me. Blow our cover, and we’re damn screwed.”

  Ruoxi sized up the girl: blue work uniform, hair tucked into a cap, synthetic skin patches, false teeth, dark circles under her eyes. She looked like a sleep-deprived factory girl with buckteeth. “No worries. You’ll blend in.”

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

  To find SpecterForge, 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. All you can see is a three-story factory building protected by a three-meter brick wall, hiding within a vast lychee orchard. Without a guide, it’s easy to get lost, especially at night.

  Early yesterday morning, the girls delivered the snatch to Sima. Ruoxi was rewarded 5,000 ChainCoins and on top of that, an extra 200 as a meal allowance. Her account now held a balance of over 10,000. More importantly, Sima redirected the clues in the bounty notice toward a nonexistent hacker. He even programmed the AI to leave traces of this phantom periodically. “Let them chase ghosts!” Sima said. Ruoxi felt so relieved.

  That evening, the three of them celebrated at a Sichuan hotpot restaurant. VenomSpike insisted on footing the bill, saying it was to thank Sima. Ruoxi, sensitive to spicy food and wary of the fire syndrome, pleaded 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 in the Black Tide. His movements: he left the club past midnight, went straight to Peninsula City—likely his home—and didn’t leave until noon yesterday. The girls stared at the screen for a long time. The man hadn’t headed to StarPulse’s office. Instead, he lingered around a patch of woods for quite a while.

  Sima studied the tracking, paused for a moment, then slapped his forehead and said, “Heavendamn! Real talk, if you hadn’t mentioned it—there’s a factory there! I thought it was long abandoned! Gotta be BladeScar’s factory! I was wondering where he’s been hiding! Believe me, dark under the lamp!”

  Ruoxi was puzzled, “What’s ‘dark under the lamp’?”

  She watched as Sima tossed some meat slices into the spicy side of the hotpot and explained, “Dark under the lamp? Back in the day, oil lamps lit up the whole room, except the spot right under ’em. That place,” he jabbed at the map, “is an illegal factory. Believe me, pre-war at HuaCent, I worked there for months. Right by the reservoir, it has water access secured. We rigged up water pipes. Water access was convenient. Real talk!”

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

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

  VenomSpike turned to Sima, “A computing center can be built anywhere, right? Why the need for water?”

  Sima shook his head, “Believe me, that computing center, codenamed ‘Weak Water Sea,’ was a beast, 1,000 servers, 500 GPU servers. A full load of 2MW of power required a 35kV line from the grid. That generated a ton of heat. So, water was critical—cold water in, hot water out, over 100 tons a day, real talk!”

  Ruoxi took a fish slice and asked, “A hub that big—how’d I miss it at HuaCent? Ain’t that, uh… AbyssNet thing?”

  Sima, having removed his holographic mask, revealed a half-burned face that looked particularly menacing. “You joined the company after the war, right? AbyssNet is the next generation. Weak Water was built before the war, and it was classified. Hmph… Back then, it was used to research consciousness digitization…”

  “That early? Didn’t that start during the war?” VenomSpike refilled Sima’s glass, “They said it was for backing up critically injured soldiers, preserving their memories forever…”

  Sima’s face was starting to flush, sweat beading on his scalp. “That was all propaganda. The groundwork was set way before. When Elon Musk launched brain-computer interfaces, HuaCent got a 4-billion-dollar government grant tied to Southern Medical University. That woman, IronGrip, uh, Suechin Liang, was a PhD student at Southern Medical then.”

  Seeing Sima dive into reminiscence, VenomSpike scooped some duck blood cubes into his bowl, “Let’s not get into that now. Why do you believe it is SpecterForge now?”

  Sima took a sip of rice wine, “Ten years, man. I figured that old server room, with all the tech sanctions, real talk, the setup was long outdated. After the war—the Sino-American War, I mean—the project management department hit us with a memo: The Weak Water Sea project was terminated, the equipment was to be scrapped, and the team dissolved. But thinking about it, BladeScar probably pulled some strings to seize that place. He’s got plenty of shady deals with the higher-ups. Otherwise, how could SpecterForge pump out that kind of output? Believe me, when I grilled him on his factory, one day it’s Pingshan, the next Dapeng. I had checked—it wasn’t real. Never would’ve guessed, never, that his factory is the one I built!”

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

  “BladeScar, huh? Chang. Before the war, he worked with the main supplier for the project, doing sales and tech support at the same time. Guy knew hardware and software down pat, and really good at working people too.” Sima’s half-flushed face made the scars on the other half look eerily pale. He leaned back in the rattan chair, “Believe me, that scar on his face? He got it when we were out, got into a fight, and someone smashed a bottle on him. He turned it into an asset, implying he was some Taiwanese Triad gangster. Real talk, in the chaos after the war, that act fooled many people. No one dared delay his payments, and the name BladeScar took off. Now, he focuses on Premium Soul Ore, flashing smuggled Abai, a hot shot…”

  Sima downed his rice wine, checking into to the Dark Web feed on his phone. “South Africa’s president nearly got killed by a rogue Abai, and the Americans are pointing at HuaCent’s Soul Ore. HuaCent’s execs are sweating, scrambling to bury the trail.” Ruoxi’s chopsticks froze, her mind on Avei’s fragmented data. “South Africa? That far?” Sima nodded grimly. “Yeah, sis. HuaCent’s playing a global game; we’re just ants in their shadow. This SpecterForge deal? It’s gotta be tied to their panic.”

  Ruoxi raised her glass, clinked it with Sima’s, “So, BladeScar jacked Weak Water Sea? How do I get in there?”

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

  The girls exchanged a look and nodded.

  Sima sighed again and patted Ruoxi’s shoulder, “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, “He’s my little brother, heavendamn it. I ain’t ditchin’ him, no way.” VenomSpike was caught up in the emotion, her eyes welling up.

  The three sat in their grief for a while, the hotpot broth gradually boiling dry. Sima let out a sigh, “It’s all a wretched fate… If I’d seen this coming, I’d have torched that heavendamn server room back then. Alright, I’ll show you the way and later figure out how to get you into the factory.” Using his memory, he arranged fish bones on the table to map out the route.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The main entrance is on the second floor. The girls slipped into the preprocessing workshop, bathed in dim yellow light. Windows, painted black and locked tight, sealed the space. Hundreds of workstations were crammed into rows, packed so tightly that movement was difficult. 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 graphics on their computer screens, trimming strange patterns. Ruoxi recognized these as consciousness models, with AI tagging functional and memory segments and workers manually selecting and deleting unneeded partitions. The workshop was silent except for the clatter of keyboards and mouse clicks, like a cricket farm. The hallmark of business lies in ruthless efficiency at extracting the value of human ore.

  Ruoxi pushed a cleaning cart in the main aisle while VenomSpike grabbed a broom and followed closely. Keeping their heads down, they quietly moved into the assembly, which was just as crowded with workstations. Girl workers attached customized skill libraries—knowledge, databases, and task execution—to consciousness, creating code packages for Premium Soul Ore. These girl workers earned less than 1,000 dollars a month, relying on overtime to make a bit more. Ruoxi felt nauseous when she saw a screen displaying “Library 9001: Emotional Companionship; Sauna ISO Upgrade Kit”. In the corner, an engineer was reporting to a cadre. Ruoxi ducked behind a pillar while the cadre snapped 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 only muttered, “Supervisor, HuaCent’s upgraded the AI. Their Engineer confirmed it. But, honestly, it’s not much better—recognition accuracy isn’t improved. It’s still tagging normal consciousness segments, and the boundary annotations are always wrong…”

  “Yo, what kinda dumb stunt you pullin'?” The supervisor barked, “Yo, Engineer Wang has promised 'bout recognition accuracy jumpin' 20%, ‘Supreme, Way Beyond!’! Yet your yield rate’s barely hitting 30%. 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.

  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 Soul Ore malfunctioned, 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 and loaded into encrypted hard drives, becoming Premium Soul Ore drives sealed with hardware-software pairing. Was Avei’s consciousness brutally sliced and assembled like this, then flashed into an Abai that ended up in her shop?

  Smart anti-theft doors guarded the stairwells. The upward one was labeled “Office” and “Abei Installation Department,” and the downward one “Server Room.” Using the card and contact lens Sima gave her. 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. She slipped downstairs into the server room. Massive server arrays glowed coldly, old yet tidy, their cooling fans humming, echoing off the walls. A “Weak Water Sea” interface flickered on a console. Ruoxi put on her AR glasses, quickly cracking the password. The glasses flickered as she scanned the server’s files, her heart pounding. A message popped up marked “Top Priority: HuaCent Directive.” She cracked it open: “Salt Port inspections tightened. SpecterForge shipment detained, risking exposure. Raise alert level IMMEDIATELY. SilverEye.” Ruoxi’s breath hitched. She clutched the Peppa Pig keychain, steeling herself, and dove back into the query. The system was painfully slow. After a minute, the query interface loaded. She typed in Avei’s ID—a twelve-digit combination of numbers in her nightmare. Another minute passed before the results appeared: Consciousness Entity: “Avei Lam; Male, 23; Level 19 Software Engineer; Status: Long-term Storage; Access Permission: Allowed…”

  Ruoxi’s heart leaped. She hooked a neural amplifier behind her ear and sat against the rack. Clutching the Peppa Pig keychain, she plugged the data cable into the port and let her consciousness dive into the virtual world.

  Avei sat in an empty bubble—his digital coffin floating in a boundless cosmos, surrounded by stars. Ruoxi struggled to reach him, shouting, “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 ahead, shouting, “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. This shabby system must hold a sea of consciousnesses. Overcrowded, the system could only spare the minimum resources for this thread. The whole server array was like a cryogenic storage for virus samples. The little brother 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, came back to reality. She glanced at the time—15 minutes had passed. She unhooked the neural amplifier, only to find VenomSpike standing beside her.

  “What’s wrong, damn it?” Ruoxi’s 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 many goods are stashed here?” With that, she turned to the console and started to query it.

  Ruoxi noticed a garbage bag strapped tightly with packing tape on her 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, “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 in advance. One disk of Premium Soul Ore keeps me set for a year! My boyfriend’s hospital bills ain’t free, got it?”

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

  “Pull him out,” Ruoxi thought. It meant perhaps copying the consciousness file from the server and deleting the original. Sima had said it—this was just a copy. Saving him was more about comforting herself. But she couldn’t hesitate now. So, she took the hard drive.

  “Hey! What the hell are you doin’, lah?” A booming shout echoed. A man in a white cleanroom suit stood at the far end. “How did you get in here, ah? This is a restricted area—authorized personnel only!”

  “Damn it!” VenomSpike grinned at the man, “Nah, nothing like that, lah! 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 nothin’ in the OA, lah. Don’t touch any damn thing, nothing at all. I’m callin’ Admin…”

  Ruoxi launched a swift kick. The man doubled over, speechless with pain, clutching himself as he crumpled to the floor.

  “Run!” VenomSpike ditched Ruoxi, bolting for the door. Ruoxi stuffed the hard drive in her pocket and logged out before sprinting. She scrambled up the stairs, knocking over the cart to jam the door. Then, the factory’s alarms blared, red lights flashing wildly—VenomSpike had pulled the fire alarm. But not a single worker looked up in the workshop, still hunched over their tasks. Back in school, they’d been under constant surveillance. Teachers forbade looking up during study hours, or they’d face punishment. At their stations, cameras tracked their pupils. A glance around meant docked pay. The factory’s discipline and Chinese obedience training—a perfect match.

  Plan B! Ruoxi grabbed an iron chair and smashed a window into shards. She cleared the jagged edges from the frame, beckoning VenomSpike to jump out.

  The alarms drew armed guards pouring out of the gatehouse, shouting, “Fire! Fire! Put it out!” —pandemonium erupted. Drones swarmed from charging docks like hornets, blanketing the factory per protocol. The chaos wouldn’t last longer than a minute. Ruoxi and VenomSpike adjusted their clothes, spotting the gate guards distracted toward the building, phones ringing off the hook. Feigning calm, they swiped their 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 in pursuit.

  VenomSpike yelled, “NeonEdge, don’t look back! Cover your damn eyes!” She launched 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 arms twitching. The drones had crashed to the ground, some sparking and bursting into flames. VenomSpike grabbed her and dove into the roadside tall grass, shouting, “Eat shit, you dead-end punks! That cost me ten grand!”