Deceitful Game

Chapter 243 Will You Mourn for Me?

Mingpo stared intently at Ai Shiping.

Or rather... he was staring at the stranger named "Ai Shiping".

Of course he knew that Ai Shiping was telling the truth.

He also believed that Ai Shiping was indeed from his "previous life"... from a peaceful era before the corporate war broke out.

Having spent so much time with Ai Shiping, Mingpo could easily tell whether he was her stupid friend or whether he was lying.

But it was precisely because of this that Mingpo felt a sense of sorrow.

A profound sadness, a feeling that the person he knew would never return.

"...I actually have a general idea of ​​what's going on."

Mingpo was silent for a while before speaking, "The person I was chasing just now seems to know me too."

"She and I were survivors from the same beginner game... Her name is Lin Ya, have you heard of that name?"

"…Sorry, I don't remember this person."

Ai Shiping was silent for a moment before slowly replying.

Mingpo nodded slowly.

That means that Lin Ya never managed to get close to Ming Po until her death.

He brought Lin Ya back to the company so he could directly search her memories. But there was another reason: he wasn't sure what his relationship with Lin Ya really was.

If the goal was simply to extract information, he could get a general idea by interrogating the victim on the spot. Mingpo was quite confident in his interrogation skills.

But he took Lin Ya's head back, sparing her life... simply because Mingpo wasn't sure what his relationship with Lin Ya was. If they were enemies, or at least had a distant relationship, that would be fine. But what if they later became friends...?

Mingpo didn't want to do anything that she might regret.

"Do we really have to talk in the car?"

Suddenly, Ai Shiping spoke up and asked.

It was only then that Mingpo realized...

Sometime later, the hovercar had stopped.

He didn't give the hovercar a very specific target; he simply let it take him to a relatively spacious and safe location nearby.

Mingpo and Ai Shiping simultaneously opened the left and right doors of the car and exited from the back seat of the hovercar in sync.

For a moment, Mingpo even had a hallucination.

He and Ai Shiping were like two cowboys dueling, back to back in the sunset, counting away from each other step by step... just waiting to finish counting before turning around and shooting at each other.

It wasn't until Mingpo suddenly turned around and saw the somewhat helpless smile on Ai Shiping's face that she snapped out of her reverie and back to reality. This was the Ca09 region.

Compared to Ca12, this area is further from the suburbs and has much richer resources. Moreover, this area should not have seen any rebellion against the company, and it must have been a rare urban area before the war, with its high-rise buildings remarkably well-preserved.

Looking at this somewhat familiar area, Mingpo felt a little dazed for a moment.

He felt...this place looked familiar.

"Do you remember, Amber?"

Ai Shiping followed beside him and said softly, "Although this isn't where you were born... you should have lived around here since you can remember."

"……ah."

Upon hearing this, Mingpo suddenly realized what was going on.

Why did this place seem so familiar to him?

This is the area where he lived before joining the company.

"I remember, this place is called..."

Mingpo tried hard to search her memory, but that name hadn't been mentioned for far too long.

So much so that Mingpo got stuck on the spot, unable to utter the word that was on the tip of her tongue.

"Shanghai."

Ai Shiping, on the other hand, pronounced the name of the place very fluently.

He gazed at the towering, spherical structure that seemed to pierce the night sky. Though scarred and marked by radiation, it still hinted at the splendor of its bygone era. "That thing is called the Oriental Pearl Tower, do you remember it?"

"...I have absolutely no idea about that."

Mingpo slowly shook her head and said softly, "I was too young then."

He still remembers some TV series, movies, and animations he's watched, and some games he's played. But he has no idea about these things that only "adults" would know. Because his body is too weak, he can't go out at all.

"I know all of that."

Ai Shiping said, "But I'm not from Shanghai. Do you know how I know that?"

"Because after you died, I lived in this city for more than ten years. I've walked through almost every alley here, so I can be considered a local in a way."

He chuckled softly and said, "There are many places you probably don't know as well as I do."

Mingpo did not respond.

Because he didn't even know a single alley.

They walked two more blocks, and the number of Nest City people with prosthetic bodies and cloaks decreased, while the neon signs along the street became increasingly sparse.

Almost all of the streetlights were malfunctioning. Some were flickering at high frequencies, some were completely dark, and others were emitting only a faint, warm yellow light. Mingpo's prosthetic eye had automatically activated low-light enhancement mode.

The dark areas in the field of vision began to become increasingly clear thanks to filters and AI analysis.

The alleyway began to narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, with layers of wooden planks and barbed wire overhead. It wasn't that the city was originally like this; rather, people built their houses where roads should have been. The existing "roads" are basically all things that grew out of their own making.

It's like moss and weeds growing in the cracks of a wall.

While they might foreshadow decay, in the hive city, they signify life. The presence of these things indicates that the radiation levels in the vicinity are not too high, and are instead synonymous with vitality.

In Hive City, there are no longer any vehicles of the "car" size traversing the city, and the roads originally intended for vehicles are no longer necessary. Not to mention that they were basically all destroyed in the nuclear war... furthermore, the company would not allow the people of Hive City to have too strong a transportation capacity.

Only those transporting resources who must traverse the wasteland would be completely covered in black cloth, driving recklessly through the radiation zone without navigation. The vehicles are almost always parked near the edge of the wasteland, usually as a symbol of gang power.

As for whether the car and the black cloth would be of any use in the radiation zone... Mingpo felt that they would probably only offer some comfort at best. In fact, Mingpo didn't know where he was going.

But Ai Shiping didn't ask any questions, as if this was the place he was meant to go. So they just kept walking forward.

The already dim light around us grew even dimmer.

As they continued walking, the smell of burning protein in the air grew stronger... it smelled like something being grilled without salt or spices.

But what are they baking?

It's definitely not going to be any good meat.

A little further on, Mingpo saw someone grilling something in a corner. The fire was coming from some kind of modified industrial waste bin, and what was being grilled was unclear. The person was crouching in the shadows, the firelight only illuminating his black goggles and a discarded prosthetic limb "gripped" on a metal skewer.

The prosthetic limb was a model from at least ten generations ago; it didn't even have a bionic hand, but rather a "multi-purpose hand."

It was an integrated tool that looked like fingers, with five fingers comprising five tools, from a screwdriver to a welding torch. And the metal skewer was stuck in one of his missing fingers.

He seemed to hear something, and looked up at Mingpo and the others with indifference.

For a fleeting moment, the man's eyes turned fierce and greedy. But when he saw the color of Mingpo and the others' collars by the firelight, his expression immediately turned to fear. He dropped the roasted meat in his hand and ran away in a panic.

Mingbo stared at his retreating figure.

This guy is no different from the scum that Mingper killed.

In past missions, Mingpa had killed countless Hive scum. And it's the same now. All it takes is raising her hand and pulling the trigger, and that person's life is over.

For some reason, Mingpo felt her right hand, which was already lightly gripping the gun, become incredibly heavy. She couldn't even lift the gun properly.

It's like when I was little, I wanted to cook a meal for my parents, so I tried my best to lift the cleaver... but I almost cut my own hand instead. "If," Mingpo suddenly said, "I awakened memories of my past life..."

"Would you mourn for me now?"