Chapter 38 - Wilderness (6)

Zhang Xun and Adam waited in the abandoned mine for about two hours before carefully squeezing through a crevice in the collapsed rock into a nearby tunnel.

The Feathered Serpent City mechanical dogs had disappeared and the entire mine tunnel was pitch black, with only the occasional sound of dripping water, as if no one had set foot here for a long time.

The light from the flashlight could only tear apart the limited darkness in front of them. Zhang Xun followed Adam as he turned into a fork in the road again and then turned several more times. When they were running away they were forced into chaos and Zhang Xun had long forgotten which paths they had taken, but Adam seemed to remember them all clearly. As long as he walked through it once, the structural map of the underground mine in his database would naturally unfold and would never be erased. This was beyond the reach of the human brain.

Never forgetting any details, all memories, good or bad, could be recalled at any time.

Adam roughly calculated the possible location of the entrance to the Feathered Serpent City's base based on the distribution of the mechanical dogs. There were three possibilities and they need to be verified one by one.

"Based on the positions of the mechanical dogs we encountered two hours ago, their current position can be roughly calculated based on their patrol algorithm. Right now the closest mechanical dog to us is about twenty to fifty metres to the right of the horizontal tunnel ahead of us. It's moving to the left, but after passing our fork, it will turn back after about twenty metres. After that it has to walk another hundred and fifty metres before turning back. After it turns back, we will slip into the tunnel on the left. It's better to take off our boots and not make any noise."

Sometimes Adam would come over, sticking to Zhang Xun's ear and detailing every step of his plan. Zhang Xun also, as he had promised, completely believed in Adam and acted according to Adam's instructions and they indeed managed to avoid at least five patrolling mechanical dogs. The two passed through the long tunnel like shadows, even holding their breath, and sometimes Adam would stop to let Zhang Xun catch his breath.

Apparently, Adam had already calculated the intervals that Zhang Xun needed to rest in his plan.

Luckily for them, after ruling out one guessed location, at the second location, a sloping mine tunnel, they found a metal cover with a fingerprint lock on it.

Adam activated the option to enter a password and then quickly entered a long, seemingly incoherent 60-letter password. Obviously that was the secret key that Eden had left in all the combination locks produced in these post-Eden times, the all powerful key that no human could crack. Sure enough, the combination lock silently turned green and the metal door quickly opened to both sides, revealing a ladder extending down into the darkness.

Adam went down first, followed by Zhang Xun. After a while, they entered a very wide underground space.

It was a long, huge corridor with a height of a hundred metres, hollowed out from the entire mountainside. A row of white fluorescent lighting rings spread out along the arc of the tunnel, illuminating everything clearly. There was a flat runway on the ground and two aircraft the same as they had seen before were parked on one side of the runway. In addition, there were many giant mechas, which were supported by metal brackets. Those mechs were very different from their Lost Paradise counterparts, many were not in humanoid form, but closer to a combination of certain beasts. The gleam of metal swept along the smooth lines, and sharp thorns rushed into the air along the spines. There were powerful claws that could easily tear apart any metal, eyes that could shoot death rays and other weapons all over the body. They were brilliant, yet terrifying.

There were some people, some male warriors in mirror-smooth combat suits and some researcher-like people in white coats, surrounding the huge and advanced machinery on the ground, like an ant colony.

With so many weapons, it was clear they were planning to launch an attack somewhere.

The place they entered from was relatively hidden, behind a metal structure used to reinforce the rocks, so they didn't attract the attention of the people from Feathered Serpent City in the distance. Zhang Xun looked at the amazing scene in front of him from the gap between the steel bars, almost thinking that he was in a dream.

Such a large-scale base couldn't have been built in a short period of time. How did they build such a base here without drawing the attention of Lost Paradise and Eden?

"There are other forces funding them. I'm not sure if it's the government or a private enterprise." Adam seemed to be able to guess what Zhang Xun was thinking and whispered, "I even suspected that my AI might be out of control, but after investigating, there is a high probability that it's a human factor."

"Human? You mean women in the ordinary world? If you don't count your actions in the last bombing, the ordinary world hasn't had any war-related casualties for almost a century and their countries live in abundance. Why would they support the Feathered Serpent City?"

"I found that human nature does not like peace and equality. When peace lasts for a long time, some people want more privileges and want to snatch other people's things, no matter what gender. Do you know why I added olfactory gender recognition to the robot soldiers recently? Because I found that when women were privileged, after generations of social order reshuffling, a considerable number of individuals, regardless of behaviour patterns and mindsets, were becoming more and more like the men who oppressed them in the first place. They were becoming impulsive, aggressive and quite extreme. Although not as common in numbers as men, it was worth noting ."

Adam murmured softly, paused and continued, "I was only looking at big data without looking at the specific reasons behind it. From a macro perspective, it may have been able to effectively solve the superficial problem, but it didn't solve the fundamental problem. This was a major mistake I made, probably because I didn't know enough about human beings at the time."

Mistake.

This was Adam, or Eden, for the first time truly admitting that he had made a mistake in the decision to kill all men.

Was this a big improvement?

But this wasn't the most important issue at the moment. Zhang Xun suddenly grabbed a steel bar and leaned into the gap to look out forcefully.

"I saw them! Cannon and four other people were caught!" Zhang Xun narrowed his eyes and watched hard, "They're being taken to an elevator. Six people are guarding them."

Adam nodded, took a deep breath and said, "It's time for us to go on stage."

"Us?"

Adam turned his head and stared at Zhang Xun with blue eyes that made him panic. "Remember, absolute trust."

Before Zhang Xun could answer, Adam raised his mechanical arm and threw a punch.

Zhang Xun felt a heavy blow on his cheek, his eyes darkened for a while and a loud groan in his head caused his entire body to lose balance, but before he could hit the ground, Adam grabbed his arm and forcibly twisted it behind him.

Zhang Xun's mind was foggy and he struggled instinctively for a while, but suddenly stopped.

He forced himself to remember what he had promised Adam.

Absolute trust.

Adam's eyes were as cold as knives, with a sense of oppression that Zhang Xun had never seen before, beyond his imagination. As if they were the eyes of humans looking at ants waiting to be wiped out, a higher species looking indifferently at an inferior species.

This look made Zhang Xun exude a strong fear and chill from the bottom of his heart. A voice said in his heart: This is the real Eden.

Perhaps this indifference had always been hiding behind the irresistible tenderness and sincerity in those blue eyes.

As Adam was looking at Zhang Xun, whose cheek was rapidly becoming red and swollen, whose meticulously combed hair was messy, whose arm was twisted helplessly and whose dark eyes, which had always been calm and authoritative, were filled with terror, he felt a strange agitation in his blood. It was the instinctive agitation of a powerful predator as he stepped on a prey that was unable to struggle.

Adam continued holding Zhang Xun like this and strode towards the people from the Feathered Serpent City.

............................................................

General Muluk stood on the terrace of the temporary command centre, looking down at the soldiers from Lost Paradise who had attempted to sneak into the base.

Apparently they had been negligent. Before they caught him a few days ago, that man named James Kugel must have left traces behind so that these people could track them down. Catching five on the first day was bad enough and now that so many more had come, he feared that even more people would come in the future. Fortunately, their preparations were almost complete. Now that they had been noticed by Lost Paradise, it would be better to start as soon as possible.

No matter what, James refused to open his mouth to reveal more information about the North American server, but one of the five people arrested later began to cave, saying that their god descent plan should be related to the North American server. But with his ability to read people that he had developed over the years, he determined that among the newly captured people, at least two of them were weak-willed and he should be able to force out more useful information from them within a day.

However, just as he was contemplating how to take these captives for his own use, there was a commotion below.

He frowned and saw not far away that a blonde man was striding over with an Asian man. The people around pointed their laser guns at them, but the blonde man wasn't afraid, he even had a slight smile. He stopped, looked directly into Muluk's eyes from a long distance and said loudly, "You came here to find me, so here I am."

"Raise your hands! Throw away all your weapons!" A soldier was yelling at him, his voice full of threats.

The blonde man then let go of the Asian man he had been restraining, who was apparently also a member of Lost Paradise, and raised his hands in obedience. The Asian man was pushed and staggered a few steps. Facing the frightened eyes of his teammates, his expression was complicated and sad and he raised his hands in surrender without any resistance.

Cannon spat on the ground and cursed, "I knew it! These artificial intelligences have been playing with us from the beginning! Fucking heartless twat!"

As soon as the blonde man appeared it was obvious that the prisoners' emotions had been stirred up, especially the leader, who had a resolute and heroic expression on his face, but at this moment he was suddenly in despair.

And he mentioned artificial intelligence?

Muluk took a few steps forward, holding the railing with both hands, staring at the blonde man, "Who are you?"

The blonde man replied cheerfully, "I'm Eden's North American server. You can call me Adam."