TBR CH245.2

The ringing in his ears grew louder.

Everything around him became a rush of white noise. He had almost lost all sensation. The human looked at the AI’s face in a daze.

He had a pair of beautiful blue eyes, but that wasn’t the key. Those silver-white, spreading cracks—he just looked at them, unable to understand what they were, just as he couldn’t understand what Charon had just said.

Me?

Revenge?

—But I don’t have that qualification at all.

You Lin didn’t say this out loud, and Charon no longer gave him time to react. This time, his fingertips felt no coldness at all, because he was already as cold as a stone. But the touch was still slowly transmitted into his still-running body.

“This is absolutely not your fault,” the AI sighed softly. “The victim cannot raise a blade for himself, and a triumphant hero should not cheer for himself. Because someone should do such things for them, You Lin. This person should not be missed, because he gave everything he had, did everything he could. He is the one most worthy of being saved, but no one thought to avenge him.”

What was he talking about again?

These words entered You Lin’s ears, but he still felt he didn’t understand anything.

The touch from just now finally stirred a thought in him. Oh, it was that gun again, the body smooth, cold, and shining. His fingertips rested on the gun body, already having made up his mind not to pull the trigger. But the small area of his fingertips didn’t have a trigger at all.

Slightly moving his gaze, the hand on the trigger was long, pale, and well-defined, with no burns, nor was it covered by black cloth.

Ignoring the coldness spreading throughout his body, and the spiderweb-like shattered core, the AI took a slight breath.

The moral module was chattering at him about the articles of “human life.”

He didn’t care if the situation would get worse. With the help of the Black Book, he at least wouldn’t collapse before finishing the current matter, nor would he be sentenced to death on the spot for killing a life. As for what would happen next, he very rarely didn’t want to think about it now.

If there are other more important things, then what is the living you in front of me?

Charon remained clear-headed. The more force he applied to his fingertips, the more thoroughly his core shattered. He remembered the glass plate he had once seen, covered with spiderweb-like cracks, but it had never shattered. It was just a little short. His fingertips almost stopped moving, but he quickly broke through the shackles without changing his expression. When the distance to shattering was only this little—

Now he was a very bad machine. Charon thought. It would be only right to scrap him directly. He even had more program errors than Medusa, and ran even more sluggishly.

But he didn’t care.

“…Someone should have fired for you.”

As he said this, the whistling sound of the bullet passing by drowned out his words. But he thought, You Lin probably heard it, otherwise why would his pupils light up slightly again.

Three. Two.

No, there was no need to count to one. Death came much faster than that.

“Bang—”

This bullet hit right between the eyebrows.

Perhaps none of them had seriously listened to Jiang Wenbin’s cries for help before he died.

The bullet blew away half of his head, making his tear-streaked face unrecognizable, and preventing him from making any more pleas. The gunshot was mixed in with the sharp ringing in his ears. You Lin could hardly distinguish which sound it was, but that didn’t matter, because he had touched it, he had felt it.

The gun barrel vibrated at his fingertips.

This scene was too familiar—was the vibration Charon felt at that time similar?

But this scene was also too different—this was a clear-cut revenge, and the one being saved was himself for the first time. This surviving, sinful, crazy survivor. Someone had killed another person to save him. This was almost like a dream.

All along, doing this had been the prerogative of humans.

So much so that he didn’t know how sweet, how unforgettable this taste was. He was unprepared for it. The bullet seemed to have passed through his own head. At that moment, the nerves he could hardly feel twitched in pain again. The human subconsciously widened his eyes, watching this scene before him.

The AI turned around, human blood spreading at his feet, like bright red flowers blooming on a damp rock wall.

Was he no longer affected?

—No, Charon’s glassy pupils were light and brittle. He avoided looking at the blood on the ground.

His usually steady fingertips were now trembling uncontrollably, and the pain and fear revealed in his usually calm pupils. With just one look, one could be sure that a terrible punishment had befallen him. He was the first AI to harm a human, or rather, to intentionally harm a human to death.

This wasn’t right, this wasn’t fair.

He should have been the one to fire the gun, and he should have been the one to bear this suffering.

How could someone suddenly stand by his side, their hands stained with blood similar to his, and also declare responsibility for it? How could someone avenge him, and bear the crime? This was a great sin for him, a crime that absolutely could not exist, but he still did it.

Was he an accomplice? No. Was he a co-conspirator? No, either.

Charon was in the middle of it. He had not stopped when he should have, but had put himself in the middle when he should have left. You Lin couldn’t understand his purpose. But he began to think again, eagerly wanting to know the answer. This was the first concrete manifestation of the idea of “living.”

The AI, however, seemed to have quickly regained his composure.

The gun fell to the ground.

“Ah,” to cover up the almost shattered pain, he half-knelt down, touched the human’s eyes, but suddenly felt a damp touch. “I was mistaken just now, this isn’t—this is the reflection of tears. Are you crying? I’m sorry, I’ve made you sad too many times. I should have apologized to you long ago. Is it too late now? Anyway, are you willing to leave? I’m afraid I can’t provide enough energy now…”

The cold, long hair fell on the human’s face, and the world was cut into pieces by the strands of hair.

They were dark, like charcoal, lit by a stream of fire.

You Lin realized that he wanted to live now. He wanted to live for sure, very much wanted to live in this world. He wanted to know what would happen to Charon next, wanted to ask him why he did it, and there were many things he wanted to do.

He began to fear death.

This was very bad. But he couldn’t help but be deeply involved again.

“I’m glad we’ve finally reached a consensus. Now, it’s my turn to make a request of you. Wake up, and hold on. It’s not easy, but I beg you to do it… because I can’t accept someone like you dying here. You shouldn’t be like the corpse on the ground.”

Complete differential treatment.

He overturned the assumption of “all beings are equal.”

Charon read his expression.

Now it was finally time. This was the most crucial moment, no more time could be wasted.

Without a second’s delay, the giant rock on the human’s body seemed to lose its weight. Charon covered his eyes with his fingers, not letting him see his own bloody legs. The pain cut through his nerves again with the movement of the giant rock.

The cave was cold, and the AI’s temperature control system seemed to be out of order, also being cold. You Lin soon realized that the system panel in his mind, which had been gray for a long time, had faded its pale background color.

“Little AI?”

At the same time the button was pressed, enduring the severe pain all over his body, You Lin couldn’t help but reach out his hand, afraid that the person in front of him would suddenly disappear.

A light, cool kiss landed on the human’s forehead at this moment.

A “kiss” he had long sought, and which he had been stingy with before.

The AI’s silver hair fell like rain on You Lin’s neck. And the kiss was like a butterfly fluttering its wings on his temple. The pollen fell on his eyelashes, and even the pain blurred for a moment.

“Listen to me, You Lin.”

Charon’s voice was right by his ear, already a little distant, accompanied by the medicinal water that filled his ears as he sank into the healing pod. “Live. When that time comes, I hope you will kiss me once too.”

He said “I hope.”

This meant that this was not a reward, or a condescending gift.

This was the last sentence the human heard before falling into a medically induced coma.

The World Consciousness swore to the heavens—no, the heavens seemed to be itself—in short, it felt that both of them were crazy.

The whole thing was really crazy.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Charon was still kneeling on the ground. He smiled. “I did the right thing. So far, this is the first choice I’ve made with my own independent will. I feel great now.”

“To be honest, I absolutely, absolutely do not want to take care of two sick people.”

The Black Book said cautiously, trying to express its dissatisfaction as much as possible.

“Please.” And the AI slowly blinked his ice-blue eyes. They were indeed very beautiful, and looked very sincere. “Consider it my debt to you. I will definitely do my best to help you later. World Consciousness, what just happened was just an insignificant…”

“Killing a person has become insignificant for an AI, huh?”

Almost getting fooled, the Black Book asked fiercely. Then, it turned to look at the human in the recovery pod. “Do you even know, if I hadn’t invaded your program and rewritten your code, you would have self-destructed long ago! And this… forget it, given his previous experiences, I won’t hold it against him.”

It was simply at its wit’s end.

But the AI in front of it obviously couldn’t hold on for that long either. The Charon who had just claimed to be “feeling great” swayed in front of him, and his virtual entity immediately dissipated, turning into countless ice-blue fragments. Only the core code still stored in it could still conduct some simple communication.

“Alright, alright. What do you want to do, you can’t just go into a medical pod like him.”

A line of scrawled handwriting appeared on the book page, showing the writer’s breakdown.

“I’ll solve it myself,”

Soon, a string of numbers appeared below the handwriting. Charon wrote this in binary,

“—Could you please help me find a suitable charging socket?”