Chapter 1 Still Won't Move

Hao Ren looked down at the blonde girl he was holding. Her cold body was unresponsive. He gently shook her, and her arm flopped limply in the air. Hao Ren sighed, "...Still won't move."

Even Nolan, who usually maintained a wooden expression, seemed unable to accept the scene. She approached, lowering her head, and said softly, "I understand how you feel, but she's really dead. Bury her properly. It's better for both of you. You'll only drive yourself mad like this."

Hao Ren was on the verge of tears, but if he actually started crying, things would get even more chaotic. He couldn't exactly tell her, "It's because my tablet computer possessed this girl, so I have to hold her like a necrophiliac." If he did, he'd be seen as a lunatic suffering from extreme stress. So, he could only wear a mournful face: "Don't try to talk me out of it. I really can't let this one go..."

The Data Terminal was still nagging in his mind, "Serves you right for always throwing me around like a brick! This is retribution!"

Given the current situation, nothing Hao Ren said could clear up the misunderstanding. Nolan looked at him with pity and sympathy: "You... never mind, Ulanov, just bear with it. I'll have the 'doctor' pay you a visit later, at least to take care of this... girl."

Hao Ren guessed she was talking about embalming or something, but he felt the topic was too bizarre in the current context, so he didn't get involved. He followed the dejected Ulanov out, and not long after, he heard Nolan talking to another mercenary. The mercenary clearly didn't understand Nolan's decision: "Boss, you're really letting him stay here with a corpse?"

Nolan's voice was weak: "It won't be for long. I can tell. He'll leave."

The mercenary didn't give up: "But... Boss, you might not like what I'm going to say, but I've never seen anything so weird in my life..."

"Enough," Nolan interrupted her subordinate. "You haven't seen it, but I have. I've seen people even crazier than him. He's already like this, so let him numb himself for a while. In this world, being able to dream is a kind of luck."

Hao Ren trudged along, carrying the Data Terminal, his heart filled with tears. He knew exactly what kind of image he presented to outsiders—a madman driven by a tragic love, a fanatic, a schizophrenic, and a necrophiliac...

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but pay his respects to Ulanov beside him: "Seriously, you're a real man."

To be able to accept having a corpse next door, this helmeted guy's mind was truly broad.

Unexpectedly, Ulanov nodded at Hao Ren with admiration: "You're the one. I didn't expect there to be a man like you in this world. You're a real man... she must have been very happy when she was alive, right?"

Hao Ren's face twisted into an abstract painting. He almost gritted his teeth and said to Ulanov, "Let me tell you a story..."

Ulanov was puzzled: "Go ahead."

"I have a tablet computer, a nagging, sarcastic, annoying piece of junk, but one day, some wire short-circuited, and its consciousness possessed a blonde girl. And I don't even know this blonde girl. Now I'm carrying this heavy, dead thing around, and you guys think I'm a madman, a fanatic, a schizophrenic, a necrophiliac, but actually... hey, don't go!"

The facts proved that this was indeed impossible to explain.

Ulanov led Hao Ren to his assigned dormitory, a small, silver-gray room made of metal. Almost all the buildings in the camp were built from these mass-produced "iron boxes," monotonous and oppressive, but still far better than the tin shacks in the black street slums. The small room was simply furnished with only a simple bed that could be folded into the wall and a set of tables and chairs that could be folded into the floor. On the table were some items that belonged to the room's previous occupant, and in the corner was a small box. There was nothing else.

It seemed that all the furniture in the room could be folded into the walls. It was like a shelter or an alien habitation module. It probably wasn't originally intended as a barracks for ground troops: for ordinary rooms, these folding features seemed unnecessary.

Ulanov noticed Hao Ren's curious gaze and sighed, "These 'gray boxes' were all dug out from the old Yatu spaceport. They were supposed to be launched to Tum, becoming the first extraterrestrial colony built by humans. But after the war, everything was destroyed, including the spaceport and those naive scientists... Now all that's left are these gray boxes, filled with poor wretches who will never see the stars again."

As he spoke, Ulanov subconsciously touched his smooth black visor, then waved his hand, "You get settled in. I'll be next door."

After Ulanov left, Hao Ren casually tossed the Data Terminal (dead girl version) onto the bed, surveyed the room to see if there was anything suspicious, but found nothing. Seaton, who had lived here before, seemed to be a very tidy person. The room was spotless, and everything was arranged neatly. It was hard to imagine that this room had once been occupied by a vulgar mercenary. Hao Ren went to the metal folding table and picked up an old diary.

Nolan didn't seem worried that an outsider would steal the mercenary unit's secrets, or perhaps there were no secrets in Seaton's room. In any case, she hadn't sent anyone to clear out the relics in the room beforehand, so Hao Ren could take the opportunity to see what information the renegade mercenary had left behind in this world.

But the diary was full of boring content, recording the monotonous and dull everyday life of a rigid, rule-abiding mercenary. The diary entries were also intermittent, and the writing was crooked, looking like a rough man who didn't like writing had forced himself to keep a record. Hao Ren couldn't help but recall Ulanov's words: Seaton had grown up in the slums and didn't seem to be very well-educated.

The Data Terminal sensed Hao Ren's current actions through mental connection and was puzzled: "Why are you so interested in a renegade mercenary?"

"Just bored," Hao Ren flipped through the diary quickly, soon reaching the first few pages. "Just want to understand the situation of this world..."

The beginning of the diary stated that on a certain day of a certain month, Nolan had suggested that the diary's owner develop the habit of writing a diary, so that he could at least leave behind some memory of his existence in this world—this was the beginning of the entire diary.

"This Seaton seemed to be a loyal fellow a long time ago," Hao Ren frowned. "He started writing a diary at Nolan's suggestion. He was an uneducated brute who didn't like this kind of literary stuff, but because of Nolan's words, he insisted on writing a diary for a year."

"But in the end, he still defected," the Data Terminal muttered in his mind. "Many carbon-based organisms are fickle."

Hao Ren didn't say anything, just quickly flipped the book to the last few entries. He saw that the last entries in the diary contained some inexplicable ravings. The mercenary named Seaton mentioned delusional dreams, endless pain, and a life of being deceived. He seemed to firmly believe that he was trapped in a huge conspiracy, and the center of the conspiracy was none other than Nolan, the leader of the "Gray Fox." These parts of the text were so disordered that even the grammar was no longer coherent, making them very difficult to read.

In the last few paragraphs of the diary, Seaton wrote in a neurotic tone:

...It's all a scam, it's all fake, the whole world, most of my life, it's all fake! This world is definitely not like this, something is wrong... I need to wake myself up, like waking up from bed, but I need to find a way... Maybe Nolan is the key, she seems to know the real world situation, so she must be the key! I don't have much time left...

This was the last piece of information left by the mercenary Seaton before he defected.

Hao Ren was confused. He thought of the mental interference of the First Born or the Mind Flayers on humans, but Seaton's situation didn't seem to be like that—and if it really was the Guardians who influenced Seaton's mind, causing him to defect, then it shouldn't be just him who was affected. All his mercenary partners should have been affected as well.

He shook his head, threw the diary aside, and turned to look at another item on the table:

It looked like a personal computer, or some other electronic device. In any case, it looked like it could be used to look up information.

"Terminal, help me get into its..." Hao Ren was about to habitually ask the Data Terminal to help him hack into the device's database, but he looked up and saw the girl's corpse lying on the bed, and immediately deflated. "Damn it, always screws up at critical moments... I'll do it myself."