Chapter 255: The Descendants
When Cillin cut down the fake Gen Xingchen in one strike, there was a person, no, a robot that looked exactly the same as one of the missing scholars standing not far away from the window. The fake scholar ran off, and Cillin gave chase while jumping from roof to roof. The reason he hadn’t used a hoverboard was because the airspace was too limited right now. He could be targeted from all sides while he was flying, and a hoverboard ultimately wasn’t as nimble as his own body. To be safe, he decided to rely on his own two legs.
The robot moved quickly, and unlike a human it wasn’t limited by its air capacity. It could run infinitely at high speed for as long as it had power in its body, and it could jump across several buildings at once while landing safely without error. It was as if every move it made was calculated to perfection. Speed wasn’t its only advantage either. Careful with its selection of escape paths, the robot avoided the crowded zones and moved away from the city. Logically speaking, the robot should’ve run into a crowd of people and transformed into another human. This way, it could’ve easily fooled the military that was trying to gun down the robot army. It didn’t do that though.
There was a large desert just outside the city. Assuming that the sea beasts somehow made all the way to the inner land, the desert would serve as a natural defense line and severely hamper the sea beasts’ progress. The sea beasts couldn’t live without water, so the desert was literally their most disliked environment.
There was nothing and no one in the desert except a couple of lookouts set some distance away from each other. It was incredibly empty.
It was where the robot was heading to.
Cillin was wearing a tracker, so technically Pistura and the others could detect him wherever he went. However, the only thing that greeted Pistura on his laptop was a complete blank. This meant that the tracker signal was completely jammed, and they couldn’t detect it on the global satellite network or the private channels.
“The satellite probes and global radars have all been tampered with, senior brother. All systems are temporarily paralyzed.” Goryeo informed Pistura through his communicator.
“How long will it take for them to recover?”
“... I don’t know. The technicians are still making no progress. I’ve already talked to Teacher Guan about this, and someone from the RAS will remote teach them how to fix things later. There’s no telling when the systems will come back up though.”
“Understood. Now get moving and look around the desert!”
“Got it.”
Pistura just received news that someone had spotted Cillin running towards the desert. However, the witness wasn’t sure which direction Cillin was heading to, and he wasn’t able to catch up to Cillin because the latter was moving too quickly.
At this point the three disciples had cursed Cillin a thousand times in their heads already. They had told him many, many times not to move out of their sight, but the moment the attack began that worrisome bastard immediately ran off to god knows where! Wasn’t he afraid of being kidnapped?!
Mental complaints aside, they did their best to find Cillin. He was their junior, and they could hardly justify themselves if something really did happen to Cillin.
...
Cillin was slowly being attacked by the enemy after he set foot into the desert. There were a lot of robots hiding here such as robot scorpions, robot lizards, robot eagles and so on. Not only could they adjust their skin color so they looked the same as their environment, they could even turn invisible entirely. However, their ability to go invisible was ineffective against Cillin because he was very sensitive towards magnetic fields. The robots used magnetic fields to distort the air and light around them to achieve invisibility, but Cillin was capable of sensing even the tiniest changes in a magnetic field with a bit of concentration.
Cillin kept running while avoiding the laser beams fired by the enemy robots at his direction. Those he couldn’t avoid were blocked using Oskulos’ blade.
There weren’t many blades out there that could block laser beams. Oskulos’ blade was one of the rare few.
Cillin cut a charging robot lizard in half and pushed the ground with his right leg. An instant later, a hole appeared where he stood as yellow sand melted and turned black. Cillin plunged his knife into the ground before he even landed and lifted the thing that was hiding beneath the sand. The tiny, half meter long snake that looked exactly like the sand spat a mouthful of corrosive acid at Cillin’s face, but the hunter dodged sideways before cutting it cleanly in half. tIt was clear from the cut surface of the decapitated snake that it was mechanical.
Who would’ve thought that a robot snake would carry such deadly poison in its body! These animalistic robots definitely had many ways to kill a person besides the obvious.
A huge gust of wind quickly caused the air to become covered in sand, but the little change in environment didn’t impact the battle between man and robot. A mere sandstorm wasn’t going to stop these animalistic robots from attacking.
Even Cillin had to admit that it was quite difficult to avoid the attacks, kill any enemies that came too close and chase after the fake scholar all at the same time. However, after they had completely left the city, the fake scholar suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Cillin. At the same time, he transformed into an incredibly beautiful woman wearing a V-neck shirt that revealed her cleavage in full.
“I didn’t think you’d be able to follow me all the way here.” Even her voice was full of magnetic charm.
Cillin stopped not far away from the robot and cut a robot lizard in half without even bothering to look behind himself.
“Isn’t this exactly what you wanted in the first place? Why have you led me all the way here?”
“Do you really not know?” The robot giggled softly before lowering her eyes. “We were going to get the sea blue formulas from you, but... my master’s mind has changed.”
When the robot looked up once more, the sand behind her suddenly moved and gathered around Cillin. When the things hiding beneath the sand rose to the surface, they slowly took on human forms that Cillin was very familiar with: Pistura, Fu Qingqing, Goryeo, Guan Feng, Gen Xingchen...
Cillin revealed no emotion on his face or in his eyes. He simply cut down the enemies who charged at him one after another.
The enemy robot leader was surprisingly well versed in psychological warfare. Although the robots were obviously fake, they all wore the same faces as the people around him. Some of their eyes even looked similar to the real thing. Not many people could kill these robots without feeling some sort of trauma.
Cillin’s hands were very steady though. He cut through the robots without hesitation as if he didn’t recognize these faces at all.
Robots were robots, and humans were humans. Even if a robot had taken on a human’s face and worn eyes that looked a bit like the real thing, they could never be identical to the actual person or replace them in any way. To Cillin, it was like two parallel lines that could never intersect with each other.
The robots turned into old people, children, more familiar faces and so on. Cillin cut them all in half without showing any emotion at all.
“Tsk tsk, now I feel you are much more of a robot than we are.” The robot leader said, “Alright, I believe we can have a proper conversation now.”
The robot leader waved a hand, and the rest of the robots stopped attacking and backed away from Cillin.
Cillin withdrew his blade and stood still just like before. The difference between then and now was that the floor was littered with robot corpses.
“It’s pointless for you to hold them captive. They don’t know about the sea blue gold formulas, and the empire and the RAS won’t tell you anything,” Cillin said.
The robot leader knew that Cillin was referring to the two kidnapped RAS scholars, but she didn’t provide an answer immediately. Instead, she said, “You’ve been here for around two weeks, haven’t you? You must have witnessed the war on this planet and learned about the human’s individual combat strength and military equipment.”
Cillin stared at her wordlessly. He didn’t know what the robot leader was trying to say.
The robot leader continued, “Compared to the RAS, you can easily say that the weapons on this planet are several leagues behind times. That minor noble kept all the power to himself and refused to share it with any external forces, even if it meant that the citizens of this planet had to live with a constant warfare. Of course, the citizens have no complains because of long term brainwashing and having no idea how far the outside technology has progressed compared to their own. War has made them numb and unreceptive after all. However, that will change starting today.”
The robot leader opened her palm as a hologram that was five meters long and three meters wide abruptly winked into existence. It was a display of the war that was happening inside the city right now. The three armies was currently fighting against the robots, and brilliant-looking laser and particle beams filled the entire screen. Even the locals who had evacuated from the war zone could see them from a distance.
The robot leader then opened her other palm and displayed a battle scene between the locals and the sea beasts. Cillin himself had watched them while he was going through the network.
There was a clear gap between the two wars.
“A villager who was isolated from the outside world won’t realize just how poor and backward they truly are, but when the outside world broke the village’s peace in the name of defending the weak and supporting progress, realization and the sense of inferiority will hit them like a hammer. Maybe now the citizens who’re hiding at the distance will think: will the sea beasts still be a threat if we have this level of equipment?”
“You sure talk a lot of nonsense.” Cillin said. He didn’t voice any reflections after listening to the robot’s speech.
A human is a creature who will waver when their sentimentality is triggered, and if they wavered once they can waver a second time. This meant that the robot was planning to move on to another subject, attempt to influence his emotions again and crack open his mental defenses step by step.
The robot leader smiled helplessly when she saw his reaction. “You really are more like a prototype.”
“Prototype? Does that mean you are the descendant of a line?” Cillin asked.
The robot declared proudly, “Yes, we are the descendant. We think like a human, but we function as a robot.”
The decapitated parts of the robots that Cillin had cut in half earlier started joining back together until not a blemish could be seen on their metallic surface. The robots that he had cut from head to toe remained immobile, however.
Cillin raised his gun and opened fired at the head of a newly recovered robot.
Bang!
The shot caused the robot’s entire head to explode. Without its head, the robot reacted once mechanically before it stopped moving entirely. The robot leader thought that it was an act of provocation.
“I don’t want to waste time with you. I don’t sense a shred of sincerity in you at all.” Cillin said slowly.
Sincerity?
The angry look on the robot leader’s face instantly turned into a smile. “Does that mean you’re willing to turn in the sea blue gold formulas?”
“Show me the two hostages.” Cillin said.
He was demanding, not asking. It was clear that Cillin’s current position was quite dominant.
“Acceptable.” The robot leader stretched out an arm as the image on the hologram turned into two scholars sealed inside two translucent pods. It looked like they were unconscious.
Cillin shook his head when he saw this. “I don’t trust your images, it is only too easy for you robots to tamper with an image. I’m also certain that’s why the three armies still can’t locate me even now.”
“You sure are a crafty one. I knew you wouldn’t tell us the sea blue gold formulas so easily.” The robot leader withdrew her arm while replying.
“How credibility do you think Black Viper has?” Cillin countered.
The robot leader stared at Cillin for five seconds straight. Finally, she smiled and said, “Alright, I’ll take you to them.”
Right after she said this, the beautiful robot turned into an eagle and took to the air.
This time, Cillin activated his hoverboard and chased after the eagle.
The eagle landed on a sand dune before letting out a cry. One third of the sand dunes started transforming into two robots that were guarding two translucent pods in a crouching position, and inside the pods were the two old scholars everyone was looking for. Although the hostages were still unconscious, Cillin could see and judge from their wrist pulse and venous pressure that it was just a normal coma. Their lives weren’t in danger.
“Now that you’ve seen them, it’s your turn to show me your sincerity.” The eagle on the sand dune said. Suddenly, it turned and looked at a certain direction as the remaining two-thirds of the sand dune suddenly moved and transformed into all kinds of robots. The whole thing was made up of robots!
Pistura was driving a single-person airship towards them.
Goryeo and Fu Qingqing was following closely behind.
The eagle didn’t look angry or anxious at the arrival of Guan Feng’s three disciples. On the contrary, it smiled at Cillin and said, “Your senior brothers and sisters are here, boy. Say, what do you think will happen when my subordinates clash against the three of them?”