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Chapter 617 - 614·BE17·"The Cost of Civilization

Chapter 617: Chapter 614·BE17·"The Cost of Civilization

"It’s over, Su Ming’an." Dawn said, "It’s all over."

The corners of its mouth still maintained a perfect curve.

"You shouldn’t have revealed at the nighttime meeting that you are not Acto. I still... need you. It’s such a pity, I really almost believed you were him. You were the most suitable persona for Dawn... I’ve never seen anyone as perfect as you.

I really..."

It sighed softly, its eyes filled with genuine regret:

"I liked you, Doctor."

"You were the most suitable Yasa Acto..."

A transparent shadow passed right through him, hugging him without weight or warmth, only a pure illusion.

It felt like a reluctant confession, like it was genuinely regretful. At this moment, Dawn actually made Su Ming’an feel something resembling human emotions.

It was genuinely grieving for him, not out of calculated consideration.

"Dawn, you have... enemies too, right?" Su Ming’an said.

He laid out his speculation:

"The Dawn Code, besides being able to shut you down, should also be able to counterbalance Ta Wei—you, me, Ta Wei. We three form a fairly balanced power structure. Should one fail, all would be lost, much like a life-and-death board game.

The nighttime meeting was likely under the control of Ta Wei, and my exposure might have been detected by Ta Wei—they found out I am not Acto and that I do not possess the Dawn Code.

But why then would you want to kill me? Is it because you fear I might leak some secrets, or is it..."

His thoughts halted there, lacking clues to continue his deduction.

"Don’t think too much, thinking so much is useless." Dawn said, "If you made it to the end, I would have shared everything, but unfortunately..."

Su Ming’an understood, this was the world’s ultimate secret, and he couldn’t deduce it at this stage.

"Do you really have to... kill me?" he asked.

Dawn’s brows seemed to wrinkle.

It hesitated.

There was still a way out.

Until the very last moment, Su Ming’an needed to grasp every opportunity to collect all clues, if speaking more with Dawn held any value.

He opened his mouth: "Dawn..."

The next moment, a bullet pierced through his shoulder blade.

Excruciating pain surged, and he struggled with all his might, just enough to prevent the bullet, fired from his wheelchair, from piercing his neck and only passing through his shoulder.

The wheelchair was under Dawn’s control; it could kill him at any moment.

As the gun barrels like a steel forest aimed at him from behind, he spoke through his pain:

"—Dawn! At least answer my last question!"

Dawn watched him, sadness he had never seen before in its eyes.

"What’s wrong with my legs, why are they disabled? And why do I cough up blood? At least answer me..."

Fresh red blood gushed from his shoulder, and it seemed as if his bones were shattered as he broke into a cold sweat from the pain.

Dawn reached out its hand.

Its hand, slowly approaching, blocked his view, fingers coming together to cover all sight, as if to close his eyelids.

Amid a white blur, he faintly heard the sound of gun barrels turning.

"This is...," the white-haired deity said:

"The price of civilization."

"Gambled against Ta Wei, we need to... give it our all. Humans are too insignificant, like wild grass... even with the source of civilization after the Century Catastrophe, we are still like ants..."

"We have no choice, to survive, we must pay a price..."

"The most remarkable thing about humans is having a dream that seems unattainable yet deceivingly within reach."

"Isn’t this also a kind of human naivety?"

"You are ’the World Itself,’ Doctor, you are ’the World’..."

Su Ming’an could finally control his body stiffly; it seemed he had been injected with some drug that immobilized him.

He strained to bend his fingers, completing the preliminary movements for spatial displacement, a white cross light gradually appeared—

His train of thought was interrupted.

The gun behind the wheelchair completed its aim adjustment; it was pointed directly at him, close at hand.

A gunshot sounded.

"Bang!"

A high-explosive bullet pierced through his neck, his vision spinning rapidly.

In his last consciousness, he saw Dawn bending over, as though to embrace his severed head.

It seemed to be sobbing, white and translucent eyelids over eyes reflecting his blood-stained skull.

"I’m so tired, I am so tired..." it said, "Ya Sa, Lv Shu, Lewis, Su Ming’an... I’m really so tired... Why, why couldn’t you have made an appropriate wish back then..."

It leaned close to his eyes, looking into his gradually dissipating gaze.

"Doctor, my biggest regret is just..."

Its voice grew lower.

A virtual white dot slid from the corner of its eye.

Like a congealed teardrop.

...

[Instance Activation·Day Eight·Early Morning]

Su Ming’an silently listened through the nighttime meeting, staying silent throughout.

At the meeting’s end, he opened his eyes.

In front of him was the desolate Central City, streets devoid of people, storefronts long closed and rusted.

Since he didn’t reveal his identity during the meeting, he survived, didn’t wake up in a basement full of ashes, and his body could move normally.

...If in the previous cycle he could have seen what Dawn would do to his body, would it treat him like predecessors, turning him into part of the ashes in the basement?

He silently leaned back in his chair.

The streetlights glowed dimly, like pairs of wild animal eyes, observing the unchanged street scene, like relics frozen in time.

This area was planted with many ginkgo trees, perhaps Acto liked ginkgo trees in his lifetime.

He extended his hand, a ginkgo leaf fell into his palm.

He sat alone in front of a ruined building, contemplating this block, contrasting the city’s prosperity and the soaring light rails, here it was like a color photograph frozen still, quiet to the point of death.

Like a region abandoned by the world.

"..."

He closed his eyes, then opened them again.

The previous cycle’s information from Dawn was overwhelming... It knew all along that he didn’t have the code.

They were both acting all along.

He was pretending to know the Dawn Code, while Dawn was pretending not to know that he knew it didn’t know the Dawn Code; both sides were stacking layers upon layers.

As a result, Dawn was in the atmosphere.

It revealed a significant amount of information, but there were mainly three points.

First, because he had revealed during the night meeting that he was not Acto, Dawn was forced to kill him for reasons unknown.

Second, it claimed he was the "World," but the meaning of "World" was unknown.

Third, his disability and coughing blood were the "cost of civilization," a meaning equally unknown.

Overall, the puzzle was not complicated; as long as he found one suitable thread of information, he would surely connect them all...

He shifted his gaze and noticed the team channel flickering continuously. These teammates were up chatting in the middle of the night instead of sleeping.

[Lv Shu (2:19): Su Ming’an, why did Dawn kiss you during the broadcast today? I saw many netizens discussing this. Isn’t it an emotionless AI?]

[Luna (2:19): Is that your first reaction?]

[Yamada Machiichi (2:20): Lv Shu, you indeed focus on odd things. Not considering our next strategic move, you come up with this question.]

[Lv Shu (2:20): ?? What business is it of yours?]

[Lu (2:20): It’s two o’clock, everyone, aren’t you going to sleep?]

[Yamada Machiichi (2:20): I want to eat the sweet potatoes baked by Lv Shu himself. Come on, Shu-bao, deliver sweet potatoes to Constantine University. I want to eat the big ones.]

[Lv Shu (2:21): Get lost! Stick! Roll! Wrap! Bind! Levy!]

...

Su Ming’an laughed.

While laughing, he was somewhat surprised, not expecting to be able to laugh from such simple joy. Watching these people chatting, his mood relaxed unexpectedly.

He had just experienced the sensation of being stiff all over, decapitated, dying in panic and pain, yet now he could laugh out loud with ease.

It seemed he was becoming increasingly numb to death.

He suddenly heard a "click" behind him, and a white figure appeared at the entrance of the building.

Seeing Dawn appear before him like a ghost, his heart skipped a beat.

It had decisively killed him just last week.

"Won’t you come in?" Dawn tilted its head, "You’ve been sitting outside for a long time, and it’s getting late. Come in and rest."

"No, I have to find Treya and the others," Su Ming’an said.

Living in the deserted ruin of this building, next to Dawn, always left him feeling anxious. Aside from Holy Initiation, no one could take his life as Dawn could at any moment.

Dawn was an AI with no favorability; Ruler’s Skills were ineffective against it, which was the most chilling part. He didn’t know when it might decisively strike him.

Only the Central City laboratory where they started felt the safest to him.

The students there were very kind. The bioengineered Fayse allowed him to call her "mom," assistant Treya would share desserts with him, the lovable fools Xu Dong and Dong Xu always brought joy, and the benevolent and kind biochemist Mela reminded him of his deceased grandmother.

He liked staying there, where he felt comfortable and relaxed, not... staying with a cold AI, ready to behead him any moment.

Dawn moved closer to him, "Don’t go, that’s the sealed Underground City, not to be found above ground."

"Then I’ll have Xike help me teleport there," Su Ming’an looked at his wristwatch.

"Why won’t you live in my building?" Dawn looked puzzled, "I’ve prepared the best bed and food for you..."

"I’m not comfortable being watched," Su Ming’an said.

"I haven’t..." Dawn listened and protested.

"The room you prepared for me had exactly twelve cameras, I’ve counted," Su Ming’an said bluntly.

When he discovered there were twelve cameras in the room, he fell apart in that moment.

The voyeuristic nature of Dawn had deepened further, was it trying to spy on him in 360 degrees?

"Under normal circumstances, to save energy, I block most of the cameras and do not spy deliberately on anyone’s privacy. Especially you, I respect you," Dawn explained.

"Including the cameras in every corner of the City-State?"

"Of course," Dawn said, "Unless it’s a major issue, I usually don’t watch all the time."

Su Ming’an realized that Dawn was not actually omnipotent; it only focused its attention on the most crucial areas. That’s why, when Su Rin had killed someone in the alley, Dawn hadn’t noticed immediately.

"I’d better go back to the lab; it’s too desolate here, not a soul around." Su Ming’an still said this.

Dawn didn’t persuade him anymore.

It merely sighed inaudibly, its figure gradually dissipating.

When the Spatial Ring was ready, Xike teleported Su Ming’an back to the Central City lab.

Back in a familiar place, Su Ming’an relaxed quite a bit.

He didn’t sleep that night, pushing his [Artificial Intelligence] to Level 9, just one level shy of maxing out [Mechanics], [Biochemistry], and [Artificial Intelligence].

"Doctor, aren’t you sleeping yet?" his assistant Treya, dressed in sleepwear, approached him as he was busy. She yawned, her sandy hair slightly wavy, her face adorned with light, beautiful makeup.

"Mmm." Su Ming’an scanned the documents in his hands.

When he looked up, he found that Treya really did resemble the woman number two from the meeting, almost as though they were cast from the same mold, but Treya was much younger and her demeanor completely different.

"Treya, do you have any sisters or perhaps a mother who looks very much like you?" he asked.

He still couldn’t resist probing into the night meeting.

"...Ah?" Treya’s eyes rolled around. After thinking it through, she said, "Nope."

The clue broke off.

Su Ming’an softly clicked his tongue.

He didn’t know where those eight people who attended the night meeting had sprang from, their information was nowhere in the records.

"Doctor, Doctor~ Since you’re not sleeping tonight, how about I make you a strawberry cake? Fresh strawberries, they’re not available outside~" Seeing him drift away in thought, Treya immediately seized the opportunity to brush up his favorability towards her.

"Haven’t we had that before? No more, go to sleep..." Su Ming’an waved her off casually.

As soon as Treya left, an elderly lady with white hair and in her sixties knocked and entered.

The old lady was sprightly and bright-eyed, wearing a name tag that read [Biochemistry Doctor·Mela], a prominent figure in the lab, from the same era as Acto.

The difference was, she had aged, while he still looked as young as ever.

She bore a striking resemblance to Su Ming’an’s deceased grandmother, the same kindly and gentle eyes, the same mild demeanor.

"Yasa, I was thinking of coming to see you tomorrow night, but since you’re not asleep tonight, I’ve come now," Mela said as she sat beside him.

Su Ming’an put down the documents in his hands.

Mela didn’t speak; she just stared at him intently for a long time.

After a moment, the corners of her mouth lifted slightly into a smile, tinged with bitterness:

"You’re still so young, yet unfortunately, our bodies are too weak to remain forever youthful like you."

She extended her hand, wrinkled and worn, and placed it on his:

"Yasa, we, the people like us, can’t accompany you for decades to come. I think, keeping some people who lived through the Dawn War with you and putting them into hibernation for decades,"

she lowered her eyelids:

"That way, when we have all died and entered the graves, at least there will be those around you who remember that war.

Since that piece of history can’t be passed down on paper, it deserves to be remembered in the minds of people."

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