East of Eden

The portrait is done.

But Xing didn't want to hand over all of Liang Shiheng's appearance to the housekeeper. Out of some thoughts, he put a mole on the man's chin in the portrait, which Liang Shiheng didn't have originally.

The butler took the painting and started to frame it into a picture frame.

That night, Xing was arranged to spend the night in a separate bedroom on the second floor of the manor.Unsurprisingly, the bedroom also adopts the ancient palace-style decoration style, with heavy wooden furniture, closets, and an accordion beside the bed.

Perhaps because of drawing portraits for too long during the day, Xing suffered from insomnia.

When he closes his eyes, the memories come flooding back, making him a little schizophrenic.

After tossing and turning for a long time, he finally got up, picked up his coat and walked out of the room.

The corridor outside was empty, and the light blue moonlight quietly poured on the floor through the glass windows, obliquely falling into elongated squares, like discarded white handkerchiefs.

Standing in front of a window, Xing let the night wind pour into his collar, clasped his hands together and lit a cigarette.

The smoke rose, pulling his gaze upwards, looking at the eternal stars in the night sky.

The starry sky 3000 years ago was brighter than it is now, and you can see various constellations, but now you can only see a solitary Venus in the night sky, which is also the brightest celestial body in the entire sky except the sun and the moon. A name, called "Chang Geng", this is what Liang Shiheng told him.

When he was on the grassland, Liang Shiheng would tell him stories about the stars.At that time, they could not be called friends, they just met by chance at night, and found that the other party was not asleep, so they ran outside to relax.

Said it was a distraction, but in fact spent most of the time in silence, ignoring anyone, Xing followed him, entirely to prevent this powerful magician from fleeing again.It went on like this for a while, and finally one day Liang Chen couldn't help talking to him and said:

"Have you heard of Donglu's astrology?"

When he spoke, Liang Chen was lying on the grass, his white robe was covered with grass leaves, he was casually resting his arms on his head, looking at the night sky with bright eyes.

Star said he hadn't heard of it.

Liang Chen then said: "Donglu has its own astrological system called Sanyuan 28 Mansions. Every star in the sky corresponds to people and things on the ground. There are emperors and ministers on the ground, and there are Ziweiyuan and Ziwei in the sky. Yuan is the center of the night sky, which is equivalent to the imperial palace. The emperor corresponds to the Gouchen Jiazi star in the Yuan, and there are stars corresponding to ministers and concubines next to him. Even the bed and carriage used have corresponding comparisons, called Tianbed There are generals guarding the northwestern part of the palace to prevent foreign enemies from invading the star and Huagai star. When meteors from outside invade Ziweiyuan, it means that the fate of the country is in danger..."

Liang Chen talked a lot, and found that Cang Xing beside him was like a piece of wood without saying a word, just put his hands on his knees, raised his head to look at the stars like him, his black eyes were like some kind of dog.

"Hey, are you listening?"

Star said: "Yes."

"Do you believe in fate?"

"Do not believe."

"I knew it."

Liang Chen smiled, as if he had let go of his defenses.The world respects him as the holy Zhusi, supreme, but when he laughs now, he is no different from an ordinary boy.

......

Memories are like old friends, they will always find you as expected, but the gap brought about by the changing landscape is always confusing. Xing does not like this kind of sad emotion, so he uses tobacco sober up.Rather than sinking into a certain emotion, Xing is more willing to do some practical things, such as fighting, repairing machinery, and raising cats and grass.His mind is simple in structure, just like the berserker represented by the madman Arthuria, loyal to fight until he falls.

Memory stops.

At this moment, footsteps suddenly sounded in the corridor, Xing turned his head slightly, and saw an android dressed as a maid walking through the corridor with a tray, and the high-heeled shoes fell on the ground making a clear sound.

"Sir, are you still asleep?"

The maid noticed the man smoking at the window. Out of programming, she always cared for the guests meticulously.

"Excuse me, is there something uncomfortable in the bedroom?" She asked with concern.

"It's okay." Xing stubbed out his cigarette and waved his hand.

At this time, his eyes fell on the tray in the maid's hand. On the tray were three bottles of transparent liquid, sealed with a 500ml medical plastic bottle, with a black label on the side.

For some reason, this plastic bottle faintly touched Xing's nerves, which part of his memory was touched.

"what is this?"

"Oh, this is the nutrient solution that the master needs."

Xing recalled the appearance of the butler serving Helios water and delivering nutrient solution during the meal.

"Your master usually only relies on this for a living?" He asked slightly suspiciously.

"Yes, the master can't eat on his own, so he can only rely on Mr. Housekeeper to inject him."

"Is the butler usually responsible for taking care of him?"

The maid nodded: "Well, Mr. Steward is the only body here that can move freely, like we will only be awakened when we need to use it. Do you have any questions, sir?"

Xing thought for a while: "Not anymore."

The maid was about to leave, but Xing suddenly stopped her again:

"Wait a moment."

He strode forward and picked up the medical-grade plastic bottles again, this time carefully reading the labels.In fact, he couldn't understand the names of the chemicals on the label, and the molecular structure formula. He only saw the image of a mummy painted on the label, and "CR-H8" was written in red next to it.

Some memories awakened in the brain, like a piece of fragments assembled into a whole:

The dark and damp warehouse, the rusty hospital bed, the ticking sound of the electrocardiogram, and the smell of disinfectant in the air...

This is the memory before Xing woke up!

After being dug out from the snowy mountain, he seemed to have been lying on a hospital bed in an abandoned warehouse. He thought of the gray walls and the flickering light tubes on the ceiling in the warehouse. During the period, people in white coats came in and out of the warehouse. Give him some kind of fluid day in and day out.Xing vaguely remembered the label on the bottle, which was exactly the same as this label, with the mummy pattern and the red CR-H8 on it.

But that is not a nutrient solution delivered to living people at all, but a drug to maintain the body functions of brain-dead patients.

Could it be that Helios is in the same state as the star before he woke up, but he is actually a living dead? !

Is there such a possibility: Helios has actually lost his independent consciousness, and the butler relies on this drug to keep his body from decaying, and then pretends that he can type with his fingers and pretend to repeat his words, but in fact, it is completely the butler himself A play directed by myself!The old man in the wheelchair is just a puppet!

It is not the old man who has been talking to them, but the housekeeper.He's the Helios they're looking for!

Thinking of this, the stars shuddered, and immediately walked upstairs, intending to enter Helios' room to find out.He has always had the character of a lone wolf, and sometimes acts willfully and recklessly.

The maid chased after him: "Sir! Please wait a moment! You can't go to the third floor!" The high-heeled shoes slammed on the ground.

The star's footsteps did not stop.

third floor.

The master's bedroom is very easy to find, the one with the ornate vermilion double wooden door.

Xing tiptoed to the door, opened the door, and a very thin creak pierced the darkness in the room.

Tick, tick, tick...

The sound of medical equipment echoed in the room, and a dark green light flashed beside the bed, which looked very strange.

The old man seemed to be the only one in the room. He was lying on his back alone on the gorgeous big bed, and the wheelchair was stored beside him. The four corners of Helios' big bed are supported by pillars, and snow-white gauze curtains hang from the pillars, wrapping him layer by layer in the bed, forming an airtight cocoon.

Xing quietly walked to the bed without making a sound, his black clothes blended into the night, only the moonlight outside the window vaguely outlined the outline.

Stretching out his hand, he quietly lifted the gauze curtain.

Fingers touched a cold body.

The old man opened his mouth halfway, his emerald eyes still open, staring at the ceiling unfocused, with almost no pulse or breathing.

"Mr. Helios."

There was no echo, not even a finger movement.

Xing confirmed that he is a living dead, at least brain dead and lost independent consciousness.

At this moment, a ray of light suddenly pierced into Xing's eyes, and Xing turned around immediately, only to see the light beam focused on his iris into a small spot of light, small but deadly enough.

light gun.

"This is not where you should come." A figure walked out of the darkness, aiming the light gun in his hand at the star.

"It's you."

--housekeeper.

Xing has never experienced the combat effectiveness of bionics before.The butler lifted his black hair and tied it behind his head, revealing his artificial interface with blue light flashing.

Raise your hand, the light gun fires.

Without any redundant dialogue, and without any devious preparation time, the death notice was issued directly-following the principle of maximum efficiency, this is the behavior style of artificial humans.

Xing predicted to dodge, the light beam passed by his cheek, leaving a dark hole on the wall beside the bed.He doesn't have any weapons on him, and the Zhanfeng gun is not in this room, but he has the wheelchair that Helios used before, and he simply swung it up as a weapon. beat.

The housekeeper was not as embarrassed as Xing, he stood gracefully on the spot, holding a delicate light gun in his hand, and shot Xing accurately.Xing threw the wheelchair at him, and immediately bent down and rolled under the bed, trying to avoid the rays. The housekeeper missed the hit this time, and sneered calmly, because the light gun has a very strong penetrating power, and the bed board can block it .

However, in the next second, the entire bed board was suddenly lifted up, and the living dead body lying on it was thrown towards the butler.

The old man's pale face suddenly appeared in the darkness, like a wraith seeking his life.Seeing that the puppet who had been with him day and night suddenly came back to life and rushed towards him, the butler panicked for a moment. At this time, Xing had circled behind him and pulled out his artificial interface neatly.

With a plop, the cold and artificial body fell to the ground.

Xing took the light gun in his hand and fired two shots at the joint of the back of his neck to ensure that he was completely damaged.

After finishing all this, Xing lowered his arms and calmed down his breath quietly.Everything was silent, and the light blue moonlight was as usual, reflecting the two cold bodies, which could not be defined as "dead".

Crows chirped outside the window, especially clear in the quiet night.

The curtains fluttered silently.

Just when Xing thought everything was over, a voice broke the dead silence in the house:

"You are skilled, but you can't kill me."

I saw the maid who was chasing the star just now stood outside the door at some point, with a straight figure, still holding the tray in her hand, with a stiff and weird smile on her face, and the moonlight reflected her face in half-darkness.

"At the moment you killed me just now, my will has already transferred to other organisms, and these organisms are nothing more than containers to me." The maid, or the housekeeper, said calmly.

The butler's will escaped before he was killed, occupying the body of the nearby maid, and the current maid is the butler just now.This is the advantage of artificial people over human beings: they are given life by the program, and as long as the program is continuously backed up, they can gain eternal life.As for the shape and body, it is just a container for lodging.

Xing quickly realized the difficulty, but still said firmly: "Then I will kill all your containers."

General Xing wanted to push the engine, but the other party calmly twisted his fingers around his curly hair and said with a sneer:

"Yes, what about this?"

A blue halo surrounded the maid's body, as if scanning, and then her face and even her whole body underwent changes visible to the naked eye. Could it be that this is the body remodeling?

Xing was stunned by the light, and when he regained his eyesight a little, he saw a pair of dazzling blond hair hanging down in front of his eyes, and the blue light spots scattered away like fireflies.The person who was stripped from the light beam had blond hair and golden pupils that Xing was familiar with, and his appearance was as beautiful as a marble statue under the moon.However, he is not a statue, he can move, laugh, and condescendingly look down at Xing who is so shocked that he can't speak.

...Liang Shiheng.

His body was still in the maid's attire, just wearing a dress and high heels, gently pulling his blond hair behind his ears, and approaching the star step by step.If he had a three-foot long sword in his hand at this time, Xing would have been pierced by him without a fight, and then he would die in amazement while watching his golden eyes.

But there was no weapon in his hand, only a tray.He walked up to Xing without fear, pressed his chest against the trembling light gun in his hand, and whispered in his ear:

"Long time no see, Cang Xing."