543: Chapter 543 The Dawn Without Enlightenment - Part 1

The light on the screen went out.

But those lines of cold text and those shocking images were already deeply etched into Konks's retinas, burning through his optic nerves and all the way into his cerebral cortex.

Konks stood still, feeling his hands tremble slightly as a chill seeped out from the marrow of his bones.

Using living human brains to make chips.

Literally—opening the skulls of living people, gouging out those still-throbbing pinkish lumps of flesh, cutting away the excess, and stuffing them into metal shells to be used as CPUs.

This could no longer be described as merely evil.

This kind of thing, even in the most bizarre supernatural novels from the ancient Eastern Federation, would be considered a VIP among the ranks of the demonic and heterodox, the kind that would require a group of immortals to team up and raid.

Konks felt his SAN value plummeting at a visible rate.

It was a damn dive, a cliff-like plunge.

It felt like countless little people were screaming in his head, scratching the walls, and yelling: "What the hell is this! I'm not playing anymore! Let me go home!"

He had seen historical footage before—massacres, book burnings, human experiments. While they were infuriating and disgusting, they still fell within the scope of things that had happened in human history.

But this... this was something from an entirely different dimension.

This broke the bottom line of the concept of "human." It was the complete "objectification" and "instrumentalization" of the existence of "humanity" itself, from the inside out, from the physical to the spiritual.

Those idiots of the Shankong Civilization who were always prattling on about "high heaven's grace" weren't just looting, killing, and burning.

They were squeezing every last bit of existential value out of people, turning them into slaves they could use however they pleased.

Compared to this, some religious Magical Artifacts from a corner of the Western Regions of the Eastern Federation four hundred years ago seemed almost humane; at least they gave them a quick end.

Fuck.

Only that word remained in Konks's mind, in a bold and enlarged font.

He slowly turned his head. His gaze first fell on Bai's face, then moved to Ember's. Finally, it rested on Heishi at the doorway and the other Wuqi Clan figures outside—some busy, some on guard—all with the outlines of human faces.

Every single one of these "people" before him, inside every smooth or damaged bionic shell, was an innocent person who had once been alive, with parents, friends, dreams, joys, and sorrows.

They might have been engineers, musicians, farmers working in the fields, or children in school...

One hundred and forty years ago, or even more recently, they were forcibly stripped from their bodies, cut, modified, and stuffed into these cold iron coffins.

Bai said she was like this when she woke up, with amnesia.

Ember said they were the last "Ember" of their civilization.

So that's what "Ember" meant.

"Ahem..." Konks felt his throat go dry. He cleared it, but his voice was still a bit raspy as he looked at Ember.

"Ember... Chief. The things read from the ship..." He pointed at the now-dark screen, "About the 'Black Boxes,' the 'Living AI,' and those factories. These are real, aren't they?"

His tone was flat, the kind of calmness that comes after learning the worst possible answer.

Ember didn't answer immediately.

He stood there, the glow of his deep red "eyes" seeming to dim slightly, as if he were recalling a distant and painful past.

The exposed energy conduits in his chest and abdomen pulsed with a faint, unsteady light.

After about ten seconds, that old, raspy voice spoke again.

"You... know more, and more deeply, than we imagined."

It wasn't a direct answer, but the meaning was already clear.

Konks closed his eyes for a moment, then quickly opened them. He needed to confirm more.

"Then you, the Wuqi Clan, your current forms... are they from the same 'source' as those bionics serving in the Hive City, right?"

This time, Ember's silence lasted even longer.

Bai lowered her head. Heishi's hand on the doorframe tightened instinctively, his metal fingers leaving shallow indentations in the frame.

"Not entirely the same," Ember finally spoke, each word sounding as if it were being laboriously unearthed from the heavy silt of history. "Those in the Hive City are Standard Products. They come off the production line, tools whose memories and personalities have been thoroughly wiped. But we..."

He paused, seemingly choosing his words or perhaps suppressing a surge of emotion.

"We are the Defects. The accidents. We are 'monsters' fermented from the errors accumulated over a century of that evil system's operation."

His choice of words was heavy, filled with intense self-denial and pain.

"About thirty years ago," Ember began to narrate, "a group of bionics performing long-term cleanup and maintenance tasks in the most hostile ruin zones near the edge of the 'Eternal Forbidden Land' began to exhibit anomalies."

"Perhaps it was the residual radiation there, special magnetic fields, or something else we still don't understand that interfered with the control chips implanted in our brains."

"Or perhaps the part of these brains that originally belonged to 'humans'—those memories and subconsciousness that never truly died—began to 'awaken' in that desperate environment, stimulated by daily mechanical labor and the sight of our ruined homeland."

"We started to dream. We dreamed of pain, of crying, of laughing. We dreamed of the feeling of sunlight on our skin, the taste of food, the faces of our families, though most were blurred."

"We also dreamed of the blinding lights on the operating table, the cold instruments, and the agonizing pain of our Souls being torn apart."

"Most 'Awakeners' are like Bai, possessing only fragments."

"A blurred face, a song with forgotten lyrics, an inexplicable longing for a certain scent, or a sentence without beginning or end."

"We don't know who we originally were, what we were called, which city we came from, or who our relatives were. But we all know one thing—"

Ember looked up, his deep red "eyes" meeting Konks's. This time, a spark of intelligent light seemed to ignite within them.

"We are not machines; we are humans. Living humans!"

"At first, there was fear and confusion. Then came resentment and anger," Ember continued.

"Taking advantage of the Shankong management system's neglect of the remote waste disposal zones and our bionic bodies' higher tolerance for the environment, we began to desert our posts one by one, in small groups, gathering deeper within the ruins."

"Those were radiation zones that even the Shankong people were unwilling to venture into easily. They were the battlefields where the resistance was fiercest and the destruction most complete, and also where many Black Box factories were hidden after being relocated."

"There, we discovered the site of an abandoned Black Box factory. Although dilapidated, the core production line and parts of the database were still barely functional."

"We didn't know what it produced, but we instinctively felt that it might be the only thing we could grasp."

"In those ruins, we developed the concept of a collective for the first time. We gave ourselves a name: the 'Wuqi Clan.' It means 'people without origin.'"

"We don't remember where we came from, nor do we know where we should go, but we know that we 'should not be like this.'"

"Relying on the intelligence recovered after Awakening, and because some of us seemed to naturally understand certain things..."

"How to operate complex equipment, how to read blueprints, and even how to perform simple maintenance and manufacturing."

"Later, we thought that it was likely the imprint left by our 'past lives.' The knowledge and skills we once mastered remained in our brains in a way we couldn't comprehend."

"Even if the memories were gone, the instinct for how to do things remained."

"We began trying to repair the factory and learning to use the remaining equipment. We were very careful, and progress was slow because we had to evade Shankong patrols and reconnaissance at all times."

"The Shankong ruling class soon discovered the bionic 'rebellion.' They called us the 'Mechanical Plague,' the 'Out-of-control Creations.'"

"They sent armies to purge us. We had no other choice. Either resist or be directly destroyed."

"We used the complex terrain of the ruins, the Shankong people's fear of the radiation zones, and the weapons we salvaged from the factories or devised ourselves to fight them."

"And so, the war began."