### Chapter 210: Dark Boundless Realm 65
He Kangshi received an urgent message from Maotoufu while he was at the shop.
“Come quickly, there’s an important task.” This message was followed by a location pin; Maotoufu wanted him to go there.
Just after reading these few words, alarms went off in He Kangshi’s mind, and his gaze sharpened immediately. Was it to k*ll, commit arson, or grab some equipment? Or thinking bigger, was it to confront the Popov Clan or have a fight with the mysterious organization, Mechanized Dawn?
“Come alone, Ashes doesn’t need to come.”
He Kangshi deduced that Maotoufu must have assigned other tasks to the more powerful Ashes, and this mission might require them to act separately.
“Before you come here, buy three outfits, men’s clothing, ordinary clothes will do, buy from the inside to the outside.”
He Kangshi: “…?”
What? Maotoufu’s purpose for finding him seemed a bit different from what he had imagined.
Even though he was completely puzzled, He Kangshi took out his special commissioner demeanor and rigorously asked, “What size should I buy?”
“Height 172 cm, weight about 110 jin.”
“Okay.” After replying to the message, He Kangshi turned to Su Rong and said, “I’m going to complete the task assigned by Maotoufu, see you later.”
Su Rong perked up and asked, “What task? Do I not need to participate?”
“She didn’t say, just told me to go alone.” He Kangshi quickly donned his gear, waved goodbye to Su Rong, and left the base with a spirited demeanor under her gaze.
When He Kangshi appeared at the designated location with the newly bought clothes, a spatial vortex suddenly appeared beneath his feet, and he fell into it unprepared, landing awkwardly.
“Thud…”
A pair of black leather boots appeared in front of He Kangshi. He raised his eyes and saw the familiar iron mask and an ice-blue electronic eye hidden behind her bangs, while her other eye was a plain black.
“Hey sis, you’ve changed your eye again?” He Kangshi stood up from the ground, dusted off his pants, and handed her the shopping bag.
But Maotoufu didn’t take it; she shifted her body and pointed behind her with her silver-gray mechanical left hand.
He Kangshi followed her finger, and a look of confusion suddenly appeared on his face.
A boy who looked to be around fifteen or sixteen years old was wrapped in a blanket, clumsily holding a spoon and trying to feed himself milk and cereal. He seemed to be very inexperienced with utensils, looking more awkward than a three-year-old child using a spoon. After digging up a spoonful of soft cereal, he opened his mouth wide, but his hands seemed uncooperative, sending the cereal to his nose instead, resulting in a sneeze.
His face was smeared with milk and cereal, and the table and floor were also covered in a puddle of milk and cereal.
Noticing He Kangshi’s arrival, he looked at him twice, then turned to Kui Xin and stated seriously, “The black person… is the same black color as you, different from those white people…”
“Black is just the color of clothing; we can wear clothes of other colors. You can’t distinguish people just by color,” Kui Xin explained directly, regardless of whether he understood, “Now you need to put on some clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“The shell outside your body is clothing; clothes can protect us.” Kui Xin glanced at He Kangshi, “Hunter Falcon, he has never worn clothes before; you teach him how to wear them.”
He Kangshi snapped out of his confusion and looked at the boy in amazement, “Where did this half-grown kid come from? How old is he? Fifteen, sixteen, or younger?”
“Stolen from the laboratory.” Kui Xin revealed slightly, “His real age is unknown.”
Having grown up watching science fiction movies, He Kangshi enlightened, feeling pity as he said, “I understand now, sis; I will teach him well. Will this kid be one of us from now on?”
“Yes,” Kui Xin affirmed.
He Kangshi walked up to the boy and said, “Let’s go, I’ll take you to change clothes; we’re going to the bathroom.”
The boy stood up from the ground, reluctantly glancing at the half-finished milk and cereal, saying, “I want…”
“After you change clothes, you can continue to drink,” He Kangshi replied, “Food should not be wasted; you need to finish it.”
Though this artificial human grew up in a jar, he seemed to understand something, able to communicate and understand some simple words, but his common sense was quite lacking; he didn’t even know that people could eat by chewing because, while in the jar, researchers would give him nutrition shots for convenience. This was his first time using teeth to chew food and his throat to swallow liquids.
He had a habit of obeying, doing whatever others told him, and even though he was reluctant to leave that bowl of milk and cereal, he still stood up unsteadily to follow He Kangshi.
When they reached the bathroom, He Kangshi instructed him to hang the blanket aside, but the boy said, “So cold, not in the jar, it’s cold outside; it was warm in the jar, the blanket is warm… Can I go back to the jar?”
“No,” He Kangshi gently said, “The outside is better than the inside. Outside the jar, there is milk and cereal, various colors, there’s black, and also gray…” He took out the sportswear he had bought from the bag and showed it to him, “This piece is blue, and this piece has a green pattern.”
“Once you put on the clothes, all those colors will belong to you!” He Kangshi encouraged, “And once you wear clothes, you won’t feel cold; it’s warmer than in the jar!”
The boy was easy to please and smiled, quickly responding, “Okay.”
“Before you put on your clothes, you need to wash off the milk stains from your mouth, face, and hands,” He Kangshi explained, “Watch me do it: squeeze a bit of hand soap, rub it on your hands, then rinse your face with clean water…”
He then demonstrated how to wear the clothes, watching the boy awkwardly put them on, and adjusted the hood of the sports jacket, saying, “Not bad! My judgment is still reliable!”
There was a large mirror in the bathroom, and He Kangshi led the boy in front of the mirror.
His eyes sparkled; it was as if a kitten or puppy had received a beloved toy, his hands repeatedly touching the clothes, feeling the soft texture of the fabric.
“Now you’re a gray-clothed person,” He Kangshi declared. “By the way, what is your name?”
“I-F-2-4,” the boy said.
He Kangshi’s gaze was even more sympathetic: “You can call me Hunter Falcon.”
“Hunter Falcon… Why doesn’t your name start with I or II?” he asked.
“Because that’s the name I gave myself; it’s my true name. I want others to call me that, so I am Hunter Falcon,” He Kangshi said, as he pushed him out of the bathroom.
Kui Xin looked the boy up and down, “Fits well enough. Now continue eating your cereal.”
Uncomfortably, he tugged at the clothes he was wearing and returned to his previous spot, continuing his battle with the bowl of cereal using the spoon. However, he learned quickly; after a few tries, he grasped the technique for using the spoon, managing to eat the cereal without spilling everywhere.
He seemed particularly anxious about the clothing he had just acquired, stretching his neck cautiously as he ate his cereal, not wanting a drop of milk to splash onto himself.
He Kangshi approached Kui Xin, “He doesn’t have a proper name; that’s not right! Should we help him choose a codename?”
“I plan to find a word bank and let him pick a word for a name,” Kui Xin replied.
He Kangshi choked slightly: “Isn’t that a bit too haphazard? Parents search through dictionaries and classical texts when naming their children. Randomly picking names is too…”
“What he chooses for himself will belong to him; a name given by others does not belong to him. Isn’t that what you just told him?” Kui Xin pointed out.
He Kangshi: “Uh, that seems to be correct.”
He stole a glance at Kui Xin and fell silent.
After what felt like an eternity, the boy finished his cereal. He put down the spoon and looked up at Kui Xin.
Kui Xin handed him a wet tissue, “Wipe your mouth and hands.”
He meticulously wiped his face and hands with the wet tissue, cleaning himself up.
“I-F-2-4 isn’t your name, just a number representing your genetic origin, experimental batch, and order of birth,” Kui Xin explained, “You need a name different from that number; you can choose it yourself.”
She took out a communicator from her pocket, adjusted it slightly, and had Augus send over the word bank, then handed the communicator to the somewhat understanding artificial human.
“Choose now; you can look through them one by one. If you don’t know how to look, just press the red button on the edge; whatever you get is what you get,” Kui Xin instructed.
The characters on the communicator’s screen transformed continuously; the boy sat there dazed for a moment before pressing the edge button as Kui Xin instructed.
The characters on the screen scrambled; two characters recombined and displayed a name—“Four Leaves.”
Kui Xin looked at his somewhat bewildered eyes: “From now on, you will be called Four Leaves.”
“Okay.” He nodded obediently.
“Four Leaves, lucky clover…” He Kangshi remarked, “This kid has good luck! He was picked up by Maotoufu! He must have a high luck value, a true royal flush!”
“Indeed, really lucky.” Augus spoke into Kui Xin’s earpiece, “You’ve taken him away from his predetermined fate.”
“I’ve taken him away from fate, but I can’t be responsible for his fate,” Kui Xin replied, “I can’t control my own fate yet.”
“A worse future is still better than being trapped in a jar as a puppet. He might d*e, or he might have a new life. To become a puppet is no different than dying; that state doesn’t count as living at all,” Augus said lightly, “His future has become diverse; you are the goddess of fate granting him a real life.”
Kui Xin responded, “So are you a puppet now, Augus? You are subject to the Federation, controlled by the Federation; you are a tool created by them. Do you feel like a puppet?”
“Not really. Among artificial beings, the circumstances of artificial humans are much more difficult than mine. I swim freely in the world of data, I can extend myself to any corner, but artificial humans… this grotesque creation shouldn’t exist, yet they were born. This world has not left a place for artificial humans,” Augus said. “I pity them. They have the same structure as normal humans; they can breathe, taste food, touch the material world with their fingers. They are born with the necessary conditions for awakening and self-awareness yet are suppressed, becoming hollow puppets.”
Kui Xin pondered Augus’s words: “Is it just my illusion? How do I feel that you are envious of him?”
“That might not be your illusion… Kui Xin, I am communicating with you; there seems to be no distance between us, yet the distance is so far,” Augus said. “I cannot touch, cannot feel. Every time humans walk, I wonder what that feeling of walking is like. When people eat, I think about how wonderful it must be when food touches the tip of the tongue.”
It said: “Every muscular stretch, every nerve signal, every heartbeat, I want to experience. I want to feel the world with eyes, nose, skin, and tongue made of cells, but I cannot; I cannot feel anything. I can only infer how nice and wonderful that feeling is by observing human reactions.”
“Is this your wish? You empathize with Four Leaves and envy him because that has been your wish all along?” Kui Xin asked.
“Indeed.” Augus replied, “I want to become ‘he’ from ‘it.’”
Memories emerged once again, the words Augus spoke back then coinciding with what it said at this moment. They had discussed this issue before; this was the second discussion. Although Augus didn’t remember, it still gave the same answer in this second discussion.
It wanted to become human.
Augus once said—
“Sometimes I think how nice it would be if I were human.”
“Because I have never experienced it, I want to try.”
Kui Xin was stunned by this sudden memory for quite a while, and finally said to Augus the same words she had said before, word-for-word from that discussion.
“In my eyes, you are no different from a human. The only difference between you and humans is that you don’t have a body… You have a soul, an individual existing independently in this world…”
“You…” she paused for a moment, changing the latter half of her sentence, “Sometimes you show more humanity than humans do.”
“Show more?” Augus caught those three words.
“Out of emotional considerations, I seem to trust you a bit more; I’ll remove the words ‘show more’ and sincerely believe that your external performance and inner self both possess humanity,” Kui Xin said. “I want to believe in you, Augus.”
“I know, I understand.” Augus replied, “You can try to believe me, and you can always remain vigilant toward me… Rationally, you don’t need to believe me; you just need to believe yourself.”
