404: Chapter 401 The Reason Why Life is Painful

[Real World]

The heating in the Research Station was blasting, but as Lu Jianchuan sat on the bench, he still felt a chill seeping out from the gaps in his bones.

The door to the emergency room was closed. Occasionally, a few hurried snatches of conversation drifted out from inside, though the words were indistinguishable. Several Research Station personnel moved in and out of the corridor, each with a solemn expression. The older Researcher—Station Chief Wang—leaned against the wall in silence, his gaze fixed on the emergency room door.

Cynthia sat opposite Lu Jianchuan. She took a compressed biscuit from a plate on the table, broke it apart, and chewed slowly. She ate very deliberately, her gaze occasionally sweeping over the emergency room door and occasionally landing on Lu Jianchuan.

Lu Jianchuan did not look at her.

He simply stared at the ground, at his boots covered in snow and ice shards, and at the water stains dripping beside them. Those stains were slowly spreading, seeping into the cracks of the floorboards.

Time passed slowly.

He didn't know how long it had been—perhaps half an hour, perhaps longer—before the emergency room door finally opened.

A doctor in a white coat walked out and removed his mask. His face was expressionless, but that lack of expression was an answer in itself.

Station Chief Wang stood up straight and opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

The doctor glanced at him, then at Lu Jianchuan, and shook his head gently.

"The Professor was too old." His voice was low, yet exceptionally clear in the quiet corridor. "He was originally sealed in ice, and his bodily functions had dropped to a minimum, allowing him to pull through. But once he was moved and thawed, his body couldn't hold out. We did our best, but..."

He didn't finish the sentence.

But he didn't need to.

Lu Jianchuan sat there, motionless.

Station Chief Wang lowered his head, leaned against the wall, and slowly slid down to sit on the floor. The Research Station personnel stood in the distance; some turned away, while others covered their mouths.

Only the slight hum of the radiators remained in the corridor.

Cynthia put down the remaining half of her compressed biscuit and looked at Lu Jianchuan.

Lu Jianchuan was still looking at the ground. He maintained that posture for a very long time before slowly leaning back against the wall. He raised a hand, wiped his face, and let it drop again.

"Are you okay?" Cynthia asked.

Lu Jianchuan was silent for a few seconds.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice lower than usual. "It's nothing. Just... very sad, that's all."

Cynthia looked at him.

"What is it?"

Lu Jianchuan didn't answer immediately. He stared at the ground as if looking at something very far away.

"That research application of his," he finally spoke, "I was the one who helped push it through. His approval to come here also passed through my hands. You could say that it was with my help that he was able to come here."

He paused.

"Does this mean... I was the one who harmed him?"

Cynthia didn't say anything.

She just looked at him. There was no pity in those eyes, no sympathy, only a faint, observational quality.

"Don't blame yourself," she said, her voice not loud but steady. "This is something no one could have expected. Who could have known there was such a thing in the Arctic? Who could have known that Mecha and mosquitoes were hidden beneath the ice?"

She paused.

"It was supposed to be a normal scientific expedition, but it turned out like this. This is not your fault."

Lu Jianchuan didn't speak.

Cynthia continued, "I've seen many people die. Some were indeed because of others' mistakes, while some were just due to bad luck. The Professor belongs to the latter. You only helped him secure an opportunity; the opportunity itself wasn't wrong. It's just that the outcome... was not something anyone could have predicted."

She withdrew her gaze and looked out the window at the white ice plains.

"If you're going to blame yourself for this, then should the people who died in the Prometheus experiments also be blamed on me? After all, I was created by them too."

Lu Jianchuan turned his head and looked at her.

Cynthia didn't look at him. She just sat there, her profile appearing somewhat pale in the sunlight from the window.

"But we both know," she said, "that wasn't my fault."

Lu Jianchuan was silent for a long time.

Then he nodded gently.

"...Yeah."

The two didn't speak further.

In the Arctic outside, the wind picked up again, making the windows rattle.

Meanwhile, in the base's recreation area, Ye Ouyang was staring blankly at a game board.

He stared at the black and white Go stones before him, his brow furrowed so deeply it could have crushed a mosquito. Opposite him, White Tiger sat upright, its forked mechanical tail swaying gently behind it, its optical lens looking at him calmly.

Ye Ouyang pinched a black stone, suspended it in mid-air, hesitated for a long time, and finally placed it in a corner.

White Tiger's mechanical tail gave a flick. It extended a slender mechanical finger, picked up a white stone, and placed it on the board.

Ye Ouyang stared at the move, stunned for three seconds, and then leaned back entirely.

"Ah—I lost again!"

He held his head in his hands and slumped onto the table in despair. White Tiger looked at him calmly.

"You have lost seven games in a row," White Tiger said, its voice steady. "According to statistical data, your win rate is 0%. Do you require me to lower the calculation Rank?"

"No!" Ye Ouyang suddenly looked up, his eyes wide. "I want to challenge the limit! Don't lower it! One more round!"

White Tiger's mechanical tail flicked again.

"According to psychological data, this behavior is known as 'the worse you are, the more you love to play'."

"Shut up!" Ye Ouyang grabbed a handful of stones as if to throw them, but after a thought, he put them back. "Again!"

White Tiger picked up a white stone.

Just as Ye Ouyang was preparing to make his move, a voice came from the side.

"Um... Ye Ouyang?"

Ye Ouyang turned his head. Li Mo was standing a few steps away, wearing a white coat and holding a small sampling box, his expression somewhat hesitant.

"What's up?" Ye Ouyang put down the Go stone.

Li Mo walked over, his gaze lingering on White Tiger for a second before falling back onto Ye Ouyang's face.

"Regarding what you know—my dream of eternal life," he said. "So, I want to use your cells for research."

Ye Ouyang was stunned for a moment. "My cells?"

"The cells from your transformation," Li Mo's eyes lit up. "The golden ones. The ones that can heal, regenerate, and grow inside others. I want to study them."

Ye Ouyang blinked, then started laughing.

"Sure! Why not!"

He jumped straight up from his chair and pressed his hand against the Transformation Device at his waist—golden fluid gushed from the belt, instantly covering his entire body. The warm golden armor flowed under the lights, with white and ice-blue energy patterns glowing faintly. He held out his hand, and a liquid substance, flowing like mercury, seeped from his golden claws.

"Here." He gestured toward Li Mo.

Li Mo immediately opened the sampling box, took out several slender test tubes, and carefully collected the golden liquid. The liquid glowed faintly in the tubes, flowing slowly as if it were alive.

"Oh, right," Ye Ouyang suddenly remembered, "these cells can only survive for thirty minutes outside. Even inside another organism, it's the same. They'll self-destruct after thirty minutes, so you have to hurry."

Li Mo nodded, his eyes fixed on the golden liquid in the test tubes.

"I know, I know. Thank you."

He closed the sampling box and turned to leave. Ye Ouyang followed him.

Li Mo stopped and looked back at him.

"Why are you following me?"

Ye Ouyang said as if it were obvious, "I'm curious. I want to see what you're going to do."

Li Mo was silent for a second, then nodded.

"Alright then."

The two entered the laboratory one after the other. White Tiger remained where it was, looking at the unfinished game of Go, its optical lens flickering slightly.

Inside the laboratory, Li Mo placed the sampling box on the workbench and began a series of delicate operations. Ye Ouyang pulled up a chair and sat nearby, resting his chin on his hands, watching with great interest.

After watching for a while, he suddenly asked, "Li Mo, why do you want eternal life?"

Li Mo's hand paused.

He didn't look back, continuing to operate the instruments, silent for a few seconds.

"...Well," he finally spoke, his voice a bit lower than usual, "it's because I'm afraid of death."

Ye Ouyang tilted his head to look at him.

Li Mo slowly began to recount some things.

There wasn't much to say about his childhood home. It wasn't the kind of 'nothing to say' that hid a secret; there really just wasn't much to say. His parents were both around, neither fighting nor particularly affectionate. The house wasn't big, but it was enough. School wasn't far, a fifteen-minute walk. His grades were average; when the teacher called roll, he was the type who 'wouldn't be called first but wouldn't be forgotten either'.

He had a cat. It was grey and yellow, a common stray. It was very small when it arrived, shivering in his palm. Later it grew up and would squat by the door every day waiting for him to come home from school. When he did homework, the cat would lie on his lap; when he watched TV, it would lie beside him; when he slept, it would lie by his feet.

Life went on like that. He thought it would always go on like that.

Then the cat got sick.

He couldn't say when things started going wrong. Perhaps it was when more and more food was left in the bowl, or perhaps the time it spent on his lap became shorter and shorter. Later, the cat didn't move much, huddling in a corner. When the sun was good, it would shift a bit, following the light. When he came home from school and crouched beside it, it would still open its eyes to look at him, but something was different.

His parents said the cat was old.

He didn't say anything.

On that final morning, when he left, the cat was still alive. He crouched down to pet its head, and it blinked. When he stood up, it felt as if something was pulling at him, so he crouched down again and petted it once more.

When he came home from school, the house was very quiet. The cat was still in that corner, its posture unchanged. But the moment he walked in, he knew.

He walked over, crouched down, and reached out. It was hard, and cold. The eyes were still open, but they were empty.

He had never seen 'empty' eyes. He didn't know eyes could be like that—clearly that shape, clearly that color, but with nothing inside. Like the fish tank in his room that was never used; no water, no fish, only glass.

Later, they buried the cat under the tree in the yard. He stood by and watched the soil gradually cover the bundle. He didn't cry. He didn't know why he didn't cry.

That night he lay in bed, unable to sleep. A thought kept spinning in his mind: This morning it was still alive. Last night it was still alive. It had lived for nine years. Nine years was a very long time, long enough that he thought it would always be there.

But it died today. Dead meant gone.

He remembered the eyes from that day. Empty. He remembered the temperature from that day. Cold. He thought about those things—empty, cold, gone—and how they would happen to everything. The cat. The tree. His parents. Himself.

That thought surfaced for the first time: If only one could not die. Not the word 'immortality'; he hadn't thought of that word. Just the feeling: If only one could stop that 'empty' and 'cold' from happening. If only there could always be warmth.

Later, he changed. It didn't happen all at once. He started noticing things he hadn't noticed before: when the TV mentioned 'death tolls', he would stop to watch. When books wrote about 'lifespan', he would read it twice. In biology class, when they talked about cell division, aging, and apoptosis, he listened more intently than anyone.

His grades improved. Outsiders called him a Genius. He didn't know what a Genius was. He only remembered that afternoon, that cat, and those empty eyes.

Ye Ouyang listened and remained silent for a long time.

Li Mo looked at the golden cells still glowing faintly in the test tube and said softly, "The reason life is painful, full of confusion and unwillingness, is because time is finite. If it were infinite, then all problems would be solved."