章 5: 5. A transcendent status.
Qing Chen had also once wondered whether there were other people whose arms also displayed a countdown.
It was precisely because of this speculation that he was so careful and cautious to take the subway to a distant place to verify some things, lest he be tracked down in the future by the clues left behind.
But then a series of sudden changes followed one after another, almost causing Qing Chen to forget his guess.
Now it seemed that his speculation had ultimately turned into reality.
There must be quite a number of people who had transmigrated from Earth to this world; just in this prison alone there were two, let alone the world beyond the prison.
How many transmigrators were there? A few hundred? A few thousand?
For what reason had they transmigrated?
Qing Chen couldn't be certain.
"The new guy that came this time is quite interesting, isn't he a fool?" someone laughingly said, watching the collapsing teenager: "I heard he was sentenced to 7 years for tax evasion? He didn't cry when he was brought in yesterday, yet only started crying today."
"Anyone who dares to mess with the tax authority these days, if not a fool, what could he be..."
Qing Chen looked toward the source of the voice, which was a young man with mechanical legs. Seeing Qing Chen look over, he smirked and said, "Hey, newcomer, are you ready?"
The surrounding crowd burst into laughter, as if they were all waiting to see a show.
This place was so sci-fi and advanced, and yet the dark side of humanity seemed to have changed little.
Qing Chen frowned but did not respond. He turned his gaze back to the young man surrounded by drones.
Perhaps only he knew why the young man hadn't cried yesterday and started crying today: just like Qing Chen, he had just transmigrated from the "greenhouse" of Earth and was struggling to accept this new reality.
This was not speculation, as he had seen the young man before.
Qing Chen was 17 years old this year, a junior at Los Angeles Foreign Language School.
And the collapsing young man was in his freshman year.
The two had never interacted, but Qing Chen had a photographic memory, and it was difficult for him to forget anyone he had seen.
This made Qing Chen somewhat surprised. Could it be that the location before transmigration was close, so the locations after transmigration would also be close?
He couldn't be certain.
However, Qing Chen did discover one thing: everyone here spoke Mandarin, and not a single person spoke a dialect.
At that moment, robotic guards were charging up the stairs, each step taking them up five stairs, accompanied by a distinctive hydraulic transmission sound.
The young man was already crying inconsolably.
Half the people in this prison fortress had mechanical limbs. In such a place prowled by these steel beasts, encountering someone from Earth felt like meeting a kindred spirit in a foreign land.
Ordinarily, when people meet "fellow townsmen" in a strange place, they feel an inexplicable sense of safety.
But Qing Chen felt no such thing. Looking at the teenager on the verge of collapse, he realized that a "townsman" might not necessarily be of help but, instead, could become a burden.
Not everyone could remain calm in the face of this strange new mechanical civilization.
What he needed to do now was to survive the first two days after his arrival and then return to Earth to understand what all this was about.
Qing Chen quietly observed everything with a low profile, and for some reason, he felt even more composed at this moment.
Until then, all the prisoners remained standing still in their spots.
He looked around the prison fortress. Of the nine robots that had just charged from the outside gate of the cell block, three were left in the plaza below to maintain martial law, while the others went upstairs to take the panicked young man away.
The plaza downstairs was very spacious, about the size of a soccer field.
The open plaza was divided into several areas: a dining area, a fitness and entertainment equipment area, a reading area, a multimedia area, and so on...
There were no partitions between these areas, resembling a large open space for activities, and around the edges of the plaza were eight large steel gates.
The gates were so large they seemed to allow armored vehicles to pass directly through.
Suddenly, Qing Chen stiffened. He saw that three people had appeared at the dining table in the plaza below at some point.
A middle-aged man in his forties was sitting, while two young men with smiles stood by his side, then curiously looked up at the prisoners upstairs.
In front of the middle-aged man was a chessboard with an endgame set upon it.
What was most astonishing was that next to the chessboard on the dining table, there lay a cat with tucked paws dozing off, grey with tuffs of pointed hair on its ears, looking a bit like a lynx, but not quite.
Maine Coon Cat.
You could keep cats in prison?!
Qing Chen was somewhat shocked; his attention had been drawn to the "townsman" so much that he hadn't noticed when these three people and the cat had come to the plaza.
At this time, the middle-aged man was intently staring at the chessboard, as if unconcerned with what was happening upstairs.
Moreover, what startled Qing Chen the most was that even the robots on the plaza acted as if these three people and the cat didn't exist.
The solemnity and tension upstairs contrasted sharply with the relaxed composure downstairs, as if they were two distinct worlds.
Of the three, the two young men were wearing the typical blue and white striped prison uniforms, while the middle-aged man wore a white exercise suit.
In this grim and oppressive environment, that touch of white was exceptionally ethereal.
Qing Chen pondered, "Could this be the warden?"
No, that wasn't right. Although the person was dressed in an exercise suit different from the other prisoners, there was a small black inmate number embroidered on the chest of the suit.
This middle-aged man was also a prisoner in the jail, just the most special one of them all.
As if he felt his gaze, a young man beside the middle-aged one suddenly turned his head, returning his look with a smiling glance.
Qing Chen immediately looked away.
After the collapsing young man from Earth was taken away, the prison fortress's speakers sounded once more, "Line up in order and proceed to the cafeteria for your meal."
No sooner had the announcement finished than Qing Chen saw all the prisoners turn right and form a long line, advancing towards the square along the stairs.
It wasn't until this moment that Qing Chen had the opportunity to count the total number of prisoners: 3102, including himself.
There were seven levels in the prison fortress, with prisoners on each floor forming one team, led by a prisoner at the very front, orderly proceeding to the cafeteria in sequence.
During this time, no one cut in line or left the formation; Qing Chen felt as if everyone here was operating according to a pre-programmed procedure, everything "restrained" by someone.
This order persisted until everyone had received their food from the robot server windows.
It seemed that after getting their food, they were free to move about.
Qing Chen and his fellow inmates resided on the fifth level, so by the time it was their turn to get their food, the people from the first level had already finished eating. He saw two burly prisoners dragging a young man toward a cell on the first floor, closest to the cafeteria, amid a lot of heckling from the crowd.
Someone else instructed, "Hurry up and pull him into the cell, don't injure him in the square, and watch out for the robotic guards intervening."
The prisoner dragging the young man responded carelessly, "Don't worry, I'm not an idiot like Yang Jie."
Meanwhile, the young man was struggling fiercely, yelling, "Let me go!"
But as he was about to be dragged into the cell, his voice turned to pleading, "Please, spare me!"
However, no matter what he said, no one paid attention to his request, which only attracted louder jeers.
Suddenly, an old man with mechanical eyes in front of him turned around and grinned, "Stop looking around. You'll be up soon."
Qing Chen looked at him calmly, and the old man suddenly felt the gaze from this young newcomer was somehow different. For some reason, he felt an unexpected tightness in his heart.
Formations broke apart after getting their food from the window.
Qing Chen noticed three people sidling up towards him as if they intended to take control of him directly!
He instantly quickened his pace, and they likewise hastened theirs, surrounding him tightly!
In the next moment, the scene in the prison fortress seemed to play in slow motion through Qing Chen's mind.
Eighteen steel beast-like machine guns lay in wait above the dome, like sleeping tigers.
Seventy-two drones hung in the alloy ceiling's slots, resembling hibernating wasps.
Two hundred and ten surveillance cameras slowly rotated, and three robots stood with guns in the square.
Prisoners collected their meals one after another from the windows, some complaining about the unpalatable synthetic meat again.
Next to the pool, someone was washing dishes, while others washed dishes for someone else.
As more and more inmates finished their meals, the square grew busier, with people shuttling back and forth—some headed to the gym area, others to observe the Newcomer Ceremony.
Yet, everyone subconsciously avoided the middle-aged man staring at the chessboard.
The man remained engrossed in the game, with no one approaching within five meters, an oasis of calm and solidity amid the tumultuous sea, where all raging waves and boats must retreat.
All of a sudden, Qing Chen, carrying his tray, accelerated through the trio enclosing him, heading towards the middle-aged man.
Seeing his direction, many people quickly realized what this newcomer intended to do.
Gradually, more and more gazes shifted toward him, whispers spreading, and the expressions on the faces of the inmates seemed to anticipate watching a joke unfold.
There were many newcomers who found the middle-aged man unusual, and many who wanted to rely on him to escape their predicaments; Qing Chen was never the only one.
But, in fact, all had failed.
Yet, Qing Chen, undeterred by the mocking voices, continued unaffected, holding his tray as he wove through the crowd.
Before he could get close, a young man beside the middle-aged one stopped him, smiling as he said, "Newcomer, I know what you're planning, but we won't help you."
The man had guessed Qing Chen's thoughts, and Qing Chen's gaze drifted past the young man to the middle-aged one beyond.
The middle-aged man turned a deaf ear to everything happening around him, as if he heard nothing at all.
He looked at the middle-aged man seriously and said, "Forward one with the pawn; I can solve this endgame."
Only then did the middle-aged man lift his head, and suddenly the square went quiet, and even the cat opened its eyes.
…
Thank you to Sea Soul Clothing for becoming a Silver City Alliance member of this book.
Thank you to Li Ren, Teacher Ren, the Mouse Who Snores, Da Bing er, the Guy Who Makes Sassy Comments Gets Hot Reviews, Yan Zu Zu, and Wang Jia Ning for becoming Alliance Hierarchs of this book!
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