Light Fortress

"I'm back——"

Gu Shen pushed open the door to his home and softly called out.

The simple one-room apartment was completely empty, about forty square meters, containing nothing but a table and a bed. Describing it as 'bare walls' was no exaggeration.

The bedroom's mottled light faintly flickered.

Had he forgotten to turn off the holographic screen on the table when he left? Gu Shen paused for a moment.

"Meow——"

What usually responded to him was an eager call for food from a cat, only today's response was a bit delayed, and sounded much calmer than usual.

An orange cat was squatting in front of the table's holographic screen, staring intently at the doorway.

This was a stray cat, which Gu Shen had only recently picked up, named Ju Zhi. After bringing it home, he discovered… this cat could really eat. True to being 'Da Ju,' but somehow it didn't gain much weight; it ate but didn't get fat.

Today so many things had happened; he got home past two in the morning. It must have been hard on the cat to wait until now.

Gu Shen yawned, took out a big bag of cat food on his own, and poured it into a bowl, "Ju Zhi, time to eat."

No response.

Gu Shen was a bit surprised, this silly cat usually rushed over immediately. He didn't see, with his back to the table, that Ju Zhi from its high position looked down, its eyes emitting a faint glow.

"Not eating? If you miss this chance, there won't be another," Gu Shen said, not feeling very much inclined to turn around.

"Meow!!!"

Accompanied by a sharp meow, Ju Zhi shuddered all over, as if awakening from a deep dream, its eyes' glow disappeared, and it intensely jumped off the table and buried its head in the bowl, eating voraciously.

This way of eating… Gu Shen watched with a bit of disgust.

After the silly cat had its fill and drank enough, it swaggered off to find a spot to purr and sleep.

Meanwhile, Gu Shen sat in front of the holographic screen, wrapping his finger with a tissue, he carefully took out a ruler from inside his shirt, looking at that silver measure… he fell into thought.

This ruler, it seemed it did not have the ability to corrode?

When A-009 handed this thing to him, it seemed without malice?

But what exactly was the use of this thing?

After he boarded that subway, the scenes, one by one, reversed, froze, and flashed back.

Gu Shen had too many doubts in his mind… He had thought he could get some answers from the mouths of those people in the interrogation room.

But…

The story he had quickly made up while having a sip of water, the guy named "Wei Shu" had taken it seriously… Clearly, something was wrong with the surveillance footage in the train car; those people had no idea what had really happened in there!

All they saw was the regular line 13.

Yet, what he initially boarded was the old, mottled "001."

"…that girl, and A-009, what on earth was all that about…"

Gu Shen had no clues, rubbing his brow, he muttered, "That old man said, a new era is coming soon…"

"New era… new era…"

He opened a webpage.

The holographic screen displayed layers of waves sweeping and scourging as an effect.

In New Year 638, thanks to the supercomputer "Deep Sea" developed by "Allen Turing," the five continents were tightly connected by a virtual network, allowing all citizens to enjoy a massive amount of real-time news and extremely rapid super-intelligent services without ever leaving home.

"Such a huge commotion tonight, and yet no related reports or posts…"

Gu Shen frowned, glanced at the breaking news, feeling something wasn't quite right, he was about to type on the keyboard, when suddenly he stopped.

A sentence from the elderly man on the train echoed in his mind.

["Someone has already started paying attention to you."]

This sentence reminded Gu Shen.

"If someone is really watching me… I must be careful."

Gu Shen knew very well that the search traces he casually left could very well become clues for those intent on tracking him.

A very soft "dingdong" sound.

Suddenly, a chat box popped up on the computer screen.

"Congratulations."

The chat indicated the other person was typing: "…that question, you answered correctly, very impressive."

This was… Gu Shen was stunned for a moment.

The other person's avatar was blank, but the tone, it was very obviously that of the girl in a white dress he had encountered on the train.

No need to worry about someone impersonating… Gu Shen was certain, nobody else knew about his encounter with the girl, not even the mysterious Mr. Shu.

He immediately clicked on the avatar frame, trying to find information on the other person… but whether in personal information or related fields, no matter how much Gu Shen clicked, all that displayed was blank.

This sort of blankness wasn't due to items not being filled; it was as if there were no fields to fill… on the tiny info card, there was no name, no gender, no date of birth, no hobbies, no signature, nothing at all.

Only blank.

Just blank.

Even dead people, as long they had been born, wouldn't have this kind of blankness.

Gu Shen had never seen something like this before; every citizen of the Five Continents had to have their blood entered into the Deep Sea database, only then could they log into the Deep Sea Network by real name.

But everything on this card was blank… could this be a system malfunction?

However it was, it didn't matter anymore.

Gu Shen now felt fortunate… he was glad that he hadn't honestly confessed everything in the interrogation room. Who knew what those guys, arriving ominously in a helicopter to collect A-009's corpse, would have done had they known about the girl, an unrestrained character still existing?

He certainly didn't want the girl to end up imprisoned like A-009!

"Thank you," Gu Shen replied politely, then eagerly asked, "I have a few questions I'd like to ask… for instance, who are you?"

He had too many questions.