Era of Magic and Martial Arts

Chapter 618 - 590: Everything Is Guided by Destiny (Double-Length)_2

Wu Shou now regrets immensely, questioning why he had to ask more, and why he wasn’t a deaf person.

What he regrets even more is why he was enticed to join the Corpse Recovery Man.....ah, spit, it was joining the taxi "union."

Corpse Recovery Man my ass.

In the eyes of "Black Yama," you’re a taxi driver;

In the eyes of "[Destiny]," you’re also a taxi driver;

Then you are just a real, bona fide taxi driver!

Understood, from now on I am just a taxi driver, and corpse recovery is my side job.

Ah, no, I’ll find a way to quit the union when I get back, whoever wants to drive a taxi can do it, but I’ll never drive again even if it kills me.

If...afterwards, I still have the opportunity to be killed...

......

The railway network left behind from the Ancient Era is now mostly reduced to rusted scrap iron.

Because the vast and dangerous Relic Areas separate the districts, cars with four wheels can find a way to cross, but trains that can only travel along the tracks definitely cannot.

No one knows which section of track will suddenly break in the next moment, and even if repaired, it will soon be destroyed again.

Most deadly is that the roving Calamity Corpses, mutated monsters, and even scavengers in the Relic Areas, all see a train entering as a...moving buffet car.

After the establishment of the New Era, the Executive Government spent decades attempting to reconnect rail transport, but ultimately never succeeded.

Until Upper City floated, blocking the sky, ground tracks were completely forgotten, leaving only the sighs of wind and rust.

At this moment, on the edge of Zone 9, is a huge, long-abandoned freight train station.

Tracks, after years of erosion, are climbing with dark red rust, some places even twisted and deformed, deeply embedded in the broken stone roadbed.

This was once a logistics hub of the last era, now only the stretching, ragged warehouse frameworks and mountains of discarded containers remain.

These containers, varying in degree of rust, like giant building blocks casually discarded, are piled up in layers, chaotic and disorderly.

Some are crushed and deformed, the walls covered with fierce dents;

Others have open doors, revealing a dark interior like a beast’s open maw.

The wind cries with a low sobbing "whimper" through the gaps between the containers, swirling up the moldy and rusted scrap on the ground, adding even more desolation and eeriness.

The giant shadow stretched long under the light of Upper City, twisted and deformed, like a giant beast dead for 200 years, still refusing to be buried.

In the deepest part of this forest of containers, there is an extremely inconspicuous standard container.

The exterior even more tattered than its peers, covered with deep brown rust, with paint completely peeled off, exposing the rough, equally rust-caked metal underlayer.

However, inside it is hidden a miniature laboratory filled with precise technology, in stark contrast.

The interior walls of the container are not exposed iron but covered with a layer of matte, special alloy panels with strong sound insulation properties.

On the walls, several high-definition holographic screens of various sizes and shapes float, silently streaming a vast amount of data and complex charts.

The bluish light flows on the screens, interwoven and skipping, reflecting the barely perceptible floating dust in the air.

In the center of the container is a silver-white metal workbench that dominates most of the space.

The surface is smooth as a mirror, clearly integrated with a powerful computing core and energy system, emitting a low and steady hum.

Above the workbench, several slender and flexible silver-white mechanical arms hang down, either standing by or meticulously working in coordination.

The end of one mechanical arm flickers with tiny electric arcs, welding a fingernail-sized chip substrate; another extends a very fine probe, testing a row of tiny components.

Beside the workbench, a similarly silver-white cylindrical hibernation chamber is in an open state.

The cover is semi-transparent, the complex life-support system and neural interface lines inside are clearly visible, at the moment emitting a gentle pale green standby glow.

The interior wall of the chamber is soft and smooth, with faint pressure marks left by a human lying down.

Zuo Bai, right here!

Or rather, the real Zuo Bai has always been here.

To say that, after being attacked by [Destiny], he didn’t escape back to Zone 6, didn’t escape to Eternal Life Technology Company.

Rather, Zuo Bai never left Zone 9.

Everyone thought that the Zuo Bai at the company was his original body, and the one hidden in the refrigerated truck was his spare clone body, but in fact, those were all clone bodies.

His true body has always been hidden in the safe house in Zone 9.

The safe house is also a laboratory, and such safe houses are secretly placed not only in Zone 9, but also in other districts.

Much of the experimental funding he applied for over the years from the company has been secretly used to build safe houses.

After all, as a meticulous scientist, setting up safe houses in various districts in advance should be basic practice, right?

And his true body chose to hide in the safe house in Zone 9 because Zone 9 was more backward in development compared to other districts, thus consistently ranked the lowest in danger assessments among districts.

Of course, the lowest danger does not equal zero.

Didn’t his clone bodies all get destroyed one after another in Zone 9 this time?

Especially the last clone was scrapped by [Destiny].

The danger assessment level of Zone 9 virtually soared to red alert.

"[Destiny] is a huge vortex, appearing in Zone 9 indicates a huge problem in Zone 9."

After retrieving the clone memory, Zuo Bai’s first reaction was to flee Zone 9.

But the scientist’s rationality suppressed the impulse to escape—he must cultivate a clone body again, complete the memory core transplantation backup before he can leave.

Otherwise, what if he runs into [Destiny] as soon as he steps out?

Then he would really be dead.

Don’t think such a possibility is unlikely, concerning [Destiny], all sorts of weird things can happen.

Yes, although Zuo Bai has no fewer than ten safe houses, his clone body count is only two.

Don’t think two is too few, two are many, almost at the limit.

After all, who can predict that the two clone bodies would be destroyed consecutively on the same day? This probability is almost negligible.

The most crucial issue is still the cloning body’s replication being hampered by unresolvable technical bottlenecks.

It’s not the replication of the clone body shell, but the vast limitation and...errors?! in memory replication.

Zuo Bai couldn’t even be sure if this could be called errors.

Simply put, ignoring the rigorous academic discourse of a scientist, explained in simple terms that common carbon-based life might comprehend:

At the same time, only one clone body can be activated.

Once two or more are activated simultaneously, severe "data conflicts" and "logic errors" occur during their mutual memory synchronization updates.

Leading to mental breakdown is the best outcome.

A bit worse, they question each other’s authenticity, doubt the authority of the original, then quickly turn into a tragic fratricide.

The reason can tentatively be attributed to the exclusivity of consciousness, but Zuo Bai vaguely feels a deeper secret hidden behind, which he currently cannot probe into, nor can he resolve.

In summary,

During the same period, only one clone body can exist, this is the ironclad law.

Besides, there’s an even more serious problem, which is the fragility of "memory" itself.

Human memory is not data files that can be infinitely copied and pasted.

Each time memory is copied or uploaded, and implanted into the clone body’s memory storage.

To the original body, it’s like a cruel "cut," not a copy.

This finding is a conclusion drawn through countless painful experiments and his own experiences.

Of course, most of the pain involved belongs to others, validated through the company’s clone Zuo Bai, out of the company’s experimental consumables, half were actually consumed here...