by <unknown>
The mental devil also hesitated. "Is he mistaking us for an artificial intelligence because we have absorbed too many pieces of tenebrum energy from the extraterrestrial devils and Professor Mo Xuan's legacy, which led to messy mutations of the soul?"
"P—Probably?" Li Yao's soul rippled somewhat rigidly. He recalled the data of his brainwaves that were gone in the collapsed 'Virtual Spirits Sector' in the Star Glory Federation, as well as the two 'Ultra Spirits', No. 17 and No. 18, which had gone missing from the world.
Calming himself down, Li Yao managed a smile. "Is it because you thought that I was your own kind that you hid us inside 'Great Iron City'?"
"Yes." The Fist King sighed. "It's been a long time since I last found an undamaged member of my own kind who also boasts magnificent thinking and logical abilities. I was planning to chat with you properly after Liberty City was taken and exchange our data, but I didn't know that the sky's control over the ground was so powerful that they did not want me to win this war at all!"
Li Yao's interest was aroused. "Do you know the secrets of the sky?"
"Very little." The Fist King sighed dejectedly. "At the bottom level of my database, some information seems to have been hidden. It makes me know that I am a product of a certain experiment and a participant of a certain project, and the whole world I'm in is part of the laboratory.
"But as for what exactly the so-called 'project' is about, who my creator is, and how many secrets are hidden in the City in the Sky, I do not know the first thing about it, which is also the reason I want to exchange databases with you. Perhaps we can share some of the critical information and try to reassemble the broken puzzle.
"It is a shame that the formidability of the sky far exceeded my expectation, and I was left with no opportunity at all."
"Our world is part of a laboratory?" Han Te and Liu Li looked at each other in bewilderment.
Over the past month, the two little fellows had been growing very fast. One might even say that they had been completely reborn. They had somewhat sensed part of the truth of the Land of Sins.
But when they heard the Fist King say the word 'laboratory', their heads still went blank. Then, they were both upset and infuriated.
"W-what exactly has been going on?" Breathing rapidly, Han Te said, "Master Fist King, please tell us everything you know!"
"Your emotion simulation system is truly remarkable!" Li Yao was more interested in the Fist King himself. "Your tone when you speak, the subtle changes of your feelings, and your magnificent declarations and speeches on the battlefield are truly as impressive as those made by real human beings."
"All of them are simulated." The Fist King suddenly changed into a tranquil, cold tone. "I do not have feelings, self-awareness, or a soul; I am only a lifeless puppet. All my behavior is the simulation of somebody else."
"Somebody else?" Liu Li asked curiously. "Who might that be?"
"The real Lei Zonglie," the Fist King replied.
"Huh?" Liu Li blinked quickly and nodded. "That's right. Lei Zonglie at the beginning was naturally a human being of flesh and blood instead of a spiritual puppet. Then, how did he become today's Master Fist King?"
"It is an utter mess up there," Li Yao said. "I am secretly scanning the detailed structure of the whole of Liberty City and the enemy's distribution of troops, trying to figure out an escape route from the siege. We have about… twenty minutes. Come on. Tell us your story!"
The Fist King was silent for a moment. The crystal processor that was embedded below the iron shield hummed quickly as massive data were retrieved and sorted at a high speed. He said slowly, "My earliest data includes the blowing wind, the blast of air turbulence, and the picture of the entire planet from the high sky. I fell from the sky after being projected to the Land of Sins from beyond the atmosphere.
"At that time, my database was empty. Except for the fundamental architecture, the basic operational logics, and a fuzzy instruction, there was nothing.
"My ultimate instruction was to be the strongest, whatever the cost and means!
"It was truly an instruction that was beyond the abilities of my analysis, calculation, and logical thinking.
"What did it mean by ignoring the cost and the means? And most critically of all, what does it mean to be the strongest?
"With the questions, I wandered in the wilderness and the bloody battlefields, watching the people in the Land of Sins shooting and killing each other with all kinds of weapons, as well as the look of the so-called 'experts' and 'dominators'.
"Sometimes, I was discovered by them and enlisted into their army, participating in the gory battles.
"I was shattered and almost destroyed in the wars, but I also upgraded voluntarily and involuntarily time and time again, gradually turning into a slaughter machine. I also slowly understood the definition of 'strength' for the people here.
"I encountered countless members of my own kind, and I destroyed, dismantled, studied, and used them to strengthen myself without any mercy. Swallowing my own kind could make me strong. That's what I thought at that time.
"If I'd run into you at that time, I certainly would not have decided to exchange data with you but would have directly destroyed you or been destroyed by you."
Li Yao, Han Te, and Liu Li listened to the Fist King talking about his story attentively.
The two little fellows were fascinated. They seemed to truly see a lonely spiritual puppet wandering, searching, and contemplating among the broken limbs and the dried blood of the dead soldiers on the battlefields that were full of remnants like a metal skeleton.
"It was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. I wandered through the Land of Sins for fifty years in total and destroyed 1,422 members of my own kind, which were all spiritual puppets that boasted automatic learning and upgrading functions like myself. I absorbed all their data into my own database, upgrading and strengthening my combat abilities to make myself evolve incessantly."
Unlike his arrogance and dominance the previous night, the Fist King could not have been calmer at this moment, as if he were describing something utterly irrelevant to himself. It seemed that this was his real style. "However, I met my doom eventually.
"In the overwhelming, protracted war that I was involved in, I was pierced by powerful electricity. Half of my core crystal processor was burnt. My iron body was also destroyed by a destructive bomb. Whatever was left of me fell into the debris of a city. All the buildings above me collapsed, burying me in the deepest part of the sunless ruins.
"The timing function was completely wrecked, and I do not know how long I hibernated in the ruins. I managed to repair part of my body, but I was unable to move the city ruins above my head. Then, accidentally, I noticed that there was a gap below me.
"I crawled for a long time through the gap. The channel was zigzagging and as twisting as a maze. A lot of places were also completely blocked by rocks and mud, and I had to dig through carefully.
"Thankfully, I had unlimited time. My highest instruction did not predicate a deadline.
"Eventually, I found a secret room that was buried deep below the ground, a sanctuary that had been sealed for a long time, or more exactly speaking, a library dating back to a long, long time ago."
"A library from a long, long time ago? How old was it exactly?" Li Yao asked.
"It was founded before 'Judgment Day', when the Land of Sins was still known as the 'Martial Meritocrats Sector'," the Fist King replied.
Chapter 2021: The Real Strength |
"Huh?" Han Te and Liu Li both exclaimed in shock. "Master Fist King, do you know the truth of 'Judgment Day'? What is it about anyway?"
"So, you do know a lot of things," Li Yao said. "You were not exactly telling the truth on top of Great Iron City last night but kept something to yourself, didn't you?"
The Fist King shook his head. "What I said was true, except that it was not what I wanted to say but what the real Lei Zonglie would've said. You will understand what I'm talking
about after I finish.
"I opened the underground sanctuary that had been sealed for a long time, only to discover that it could be dated back to hundreds of years ago at least. All the facilities had been destroyed, and everybody inside had been reduced to bones. They had been dead for hundreds of years.
"However, they left a lot of jade chips that recorded the history of the rise and fall of the civilization in the Martial Meritocrats Sector. There were a lot of journals and last words of the refugees, too.
"In the last days of their life and their civilization, everybody was eager to share. They left a lot of stuff in their elaborate speeches and articles."
The Fist King groped on his body for a while and found a projection hole, shooting out a dim light beam.
In the mottled light and shadow, hundreds of human faces popped up.
There were men and women, old and young, crying, sulking, frowning in pain, looking for a slim chance of hope in desperation, only to be caught by greater desperation later.
Han Te and Liu Li watched in a daze. They could not help but touch the light beam with their hands, only to raise layers of ripples on it. They asked, "Are they our ancestors?"
"Yes. They are the old natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector," the Fist King said. "The sanctuary could be traced back to more than a thousand years ago, when the Martial Meritocrats Sector below our feet discovered the Sand Primitive Sector, another world that was relatively underdeveloped, and introduced a lot of young adults from the Sand Primitive Sector to resolve the lacking labor force.
"However, the policy went out of control, and the people of the Sand Primitive Sector moved into the Martial Meritocrats Sector like a flood, resulting in a lot of grave social problems. A chain reaction was also raised and eventually led to the contradiction between the Cultivators and the ordinary people."
"Cultivators?" Han Te and Liu Li clenched their fists at the same time. "They really existed!"
"If you are aware of the Cultivators, it will be easier for me to explain," the Fist King said calmly. "At that time, the Martial Meritocrats Sector was in turmoil. The contradictions between the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector and those of the Sand Primitive Sector, the contradictions between the Cultivators and the ordinary people, and the contradictions among Cultivators due to different ideologies. Everything was messed up. The world was like a crystal bomb that had been completely activated and might explode brutally at any moment.
"Therefore, a group of people established an underground sanctuary as a precaution, hoping to get out again after the conflicts on the ground were all resolved.
"In the hundreds of years that followed, however chaotic the surface was, the sanctuary was renovated and expanded time and time again to hold more and more people. When Judgment Day took place, the place became the last home for the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector."
"What was 'Judgement Day' exactly?" Han Te asked.
"I do not know," the Fist King said. "In their confusion, those who fled to the sanctuary did not know the answer. Besides, 99.99% of the information had been eroded in the hundreds of years that have passed. From the incomplete information, I could only speculate that Judgment Day was not a civil war of the Martial Meritocrats Sector but involved the forces from the sky.
"Those people who call themselves 'angels' right now—who established the Heavenly Rails and Manjusaka to block the sky of the entire planet, and who created me—couldn't have been the descendants of the Martial Meritocrats Sector at the beginning but were another group of people from the depths of the sea of stars.
"As for exactly why they directed 'Judgment Day' and nearly demolished the entire planet of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, it is not something that I can figure out through analysis."
Han Te and Liu Li both fell silent, feeling a sense of humiliation from being tricked and manipulated.
The Fist King went on. "In the hundred years that followed, I stayed in the underground sanctuary and studied the knowledge and culture left by the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector in the past, naturally, including their journals and last words.
"The people in the sanctuary eventually died of starvation and suffocation because of the shortage of food and the serious damage to the air filtration system. But they left abundant crystals and various other energy sources.
"I did not need to breathe air or swallow biomass. As long as there were crystals and energy, I would be able to live and move, and I could sustain and upgrade the functions of my body with the components stored in the sanctuary."
"Wait." Li Yao interjected with great interest. "You spent a hundred years in the underground sanctuary. Was it because you couldn't get out?"
"Not exactly." The Fist King shook his head. "After finding enough crystals and components in the underground sanctuary, it took me only three days to repair myself and one month to locate a route to return to the surface. But why would I do that?"
Li Yao thought for a moment and said, "Wasn't your purpose to be the strongest no matter what the cost and means?"
"Indeed. My goal was to be the strongest, but what exactly accounted for 'strength'?" the Fist King said solemnly. "Before that, I had always thought that a tougher body, more fierce firepower, and more sharper swords represented 'strength', and I had been upgrading myself continuously along the path over the past fifty years.
"However, in my last battle, faced with the overwhelming iron tides, the storm of bullets that could rip apart the sun, and the dense blades and spears that were like an overgrown forest, I became more confused.
"At that time, my computational ability was already rather developed. I immediately reached the conclusion that the resources on the barren planet were far from enough for me to evolve to the invincible, dominating extent however I tried to improve myself. There would always be something that could destroy me.
"As it turned out, I was almost destroyed in the war, too.
"So, was what I had been working on really 'strength'? Was it possible that the path of my learning and upgrading had been wrong all along?
"I contemplated in the quiet darkness. As it happened, I discovered the essence of the civilization in the underground sanctuary. I came across the journals and last words of the Cultivators and the ordinary people of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, in which they debated and reflected on their wrongdoings in the past, as well as their different choices when they were faced with desperation."
Li Yao's soul was thrilled. "Is that how you got in touch with the ideology of the Cultivators?"
"You can say that," the Fist King said. "Those jade chips included the essence of the thinking of multiple generations of refugees during the hundreds of years. Many of them had been at loggerheads and would kill each other the moment they met when they were on the ground, but after they were butchered and destroyed indiscriminately during Judgment Day, those who were lucky enough to flee to the underground sanctuary had to let go of their conflicts and began to reflect on what they had been doing for hundreds of years. Some of them were even the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector, who were 'foreigners'.
"Because I was a spiritual puppet with automatic learning and upgrading functions, 'learning' was like one of my natural instincts.
"I began to read their journals and last words, study their spirit and ideology, and discover the people who called themselves 'Cultivators' that were entirely different from the sinners in the Land of Sins.
"The strong must protect the weak? All for the civilization? True strength lies not in the body but in the mind?
"Theories that could almost be called 'ridiculous' perplexed me, especially the last finding.
"My logic circuit immediately sent out a warning. If true strength lies not in the body but in the mind, it would be quite terrible because I did not have a mind."
The Fist King's voice was as cold, calm, and indifferent as before, truly like a lifeless mechanical puppet.
But for some reason, Li Yao, Han Te, an
d Liu Li all sensed some feeble bitterness from the cold voice.
The Fist King paused for a moment and continued peacefully. "In the past, I was too occupied in getting stronger to consider the definition of 'strongest'. However, in the sanctuary, a lot of people had debated from many different perspectives about what true strength is, the meaning of the strength of an individual or a group, and where the civilization would be led to even if it was generally strong… It was also mixed with the life experiences of a lot of low-level Cultivators and ordinary people, which were the opposite of strong. I went through the life journeys of the weak, tasting their happiness, sorrow, shock, and fright, everything that they went through themselves.
"I was fascinated by those things. So, I thought for a hundred years in the darkness below the ground on the definition of 'strong'."
Li Yao grew excited. "I get it now. Although you are an artificial intelligence, you are a virtuous and righteous artificial intelligence that is on the side of the Cultivators!"
"Virtuous? Righteous?" The Fist King shook his head. "Your logical thinking circuits are quite weird, my compatriot. Are things like virtue and righteousness supposed to be our concern? I couldn't care less about that, and I have never believed that the Cultivators' ideology is correct.
"It must be noted that there were not just the Cultivators in the underground sanctuary but a lot of people who opposed the Cultivators. Many of them did not change their attitude even on the verge of their death. I do not think that what they said was entirely ungrounded. Perhaps the Cultivators were indeed both hypocritical and idiotic, and they were the cause of the civilization's destruction.
"This is the simplest logic. If the Cultivators truly represented 'strength', why on earth would they have been crushed, unable to protect their home and families? Shouldn't they have done better than fleeing to the underground world and dying without anybody knowing?"
Rendered speechless, Li Yao was at a loss for words for a long time.
"All in all," the Fist King said, "I began to question if my upgrade path, which was in pursuit of pure physical strength, was correct, but I did not accept all of the Cultivators' idiotic ideas. I simply stored the different opinions into my database, colliding, condensing, and contemplating on them.
