Volume 1, Chapter 366 – Freedom

“So fast?”

Shi Lan was a little startled, but Samsara did not reply again.

Glancing at the figure drawing ever closer behind her, she braced herself and carefully crawled in through the porthole.

Fortunately, this body was slender-boned and somewhat short, so she did not get stuck in the window.

Once inside the cabin, Shi Lan turned around, shut the porthole tightly, and locked it.

In her current state, it was obviously not suitable for her to come face-to-face with the system host outside.

Xiao Teng, following after her, failed to open the porthole and could not help frowning. After sweeping his gaze back and forth and roughly estimating the cabin’s location, he pulled out his phone and turned to run toward the deck.

“A Bao, bring a few men to the area near Cabin 302. There’s an outsider on board!”

As soon as he said it, Xiao Teng hastily added another sentence.

“Watch your attitude. Be polite!”

…

The surroundings were pitch-black. Shi Lan could only inch forward carefully, first feeling her way to the door and locking it from the inside, then beginning to search around bit by bit.

Her luck was not bad. Although the cabin before her was not a storeroom for supplies, it was a kitchen.

The stove still held some warmth, so it had clearly only just been cleaned.

Whoosh.

A faint light came on inside the cabin as Shi Lan found the refrigerator.

A chill blew against her face. There were some leftovers on the shelves, along with several large white steamed buns. Shi Lan instinctively drew in a breath, her eyes lighting up. Caring about nothing else, she began cramming food into her mouth.

The buns were too cold and too hard. After only a few breaths, Shi Lan was choking badly enough that she could hardly breathe.

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Gulp, gulp, gulp…

Only after icy water flowed down her throat did Shi Lan finally catch her breath.

Tap tap tap…

A jumble of footsteps sounded outside the door. At first listen, there were no fewer than five or six people.

Shi Lan swallowed the bun in her mouth without the slightest panic, stuffed the remaining buns into her clothes, casually grabbed two bottled drinks, and gently closed the refrigerator door.

After turning her head and confirming that there was no one to either side along the ship’s edge, she opened the porthole, climbed back out, then quietly ran back to the cargo hold and slipped into a container.

…

Boom!

Xiao Teng kicked open the kitchen door, swept it with a glance, and turned back.

“Split up and search. That woman can’t have gone far.”

“Teng-ge, didn’t you say just now that you didn’t see clearly? How do you know it was a woman?”

The tall, burly man standing beside Xiao Teng scratched his head, puzzled.

“Idiot, the porthole’s only that big. Anyone who can squeeze through it is either a child or a woman. Hurry up and look!”

Xiao Teng waved his hand impatiently. For some reason, he felt an inexplicable agitation in his heart.

At that very moment, deep inside his mind, an illusory figure stood before a screen of light like a statue, frozen in place, muttering to itself without stop.

“That’s impossible!”

“How could this happen…”

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…

…

“That system’s serial number is 101423…”

“Hm?”

Shi Lan had just finished the buns after hiding herself back inside the container when Samsara’s voice sounded in her mind.

“You got the communication code?”

“I’ve been struck from headquarters’ rolls. All my permissions have been sealed off. I can’t connect to my database. Most likely it’s already been reclaimed by headquarters.”

“All my information, including the source power I gathered before, has been swallowed up. I’ve been reduced to nothing.”

Shi Lan: “…”

For a moment, Shi Lan did not know how to comfort Samsara. She could more or less understand that heavy feeling.

“When I accidentally entered the Lingyang Realm before, I already felt that something was off, but I didn’t think much of it…”

A chill unlike anything before surfaced in Samsara’s voice.

“This matter isn’t that simple. Someone is setting me up.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going back to find out exactly what happened.”

“I stripped out that system’s core component and bound it to myself. In other words, I’ve taken over that system’s serial number. Right now, I am 101423.”

Shi Lan understood. It was the equivalent of putting on a disguise herself. Unable to suppress her curiosity, she asked,

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“What exactly is headquarters?”

“I don’t know its precise location. All I know is that it contains three core divisions, which respectively govern mission release, govern mission release, system manufacture, and system reclamation. Beneath them are a number of branches.”

“The ranking of systems is very clear. Based on intelligence, they are divided into three tiers: low, medium, and high. Above high-level systems, one can separate from the original system and act independently, becoming a system backend like me, completely detached from the system itself.”

“Is headquarters controlled by someone?”

“I don’t know. The only things I’ve ever had access to are the three cores, and the cores themselves have no intelligence. They only operate according to specific procedures.”

Shi Lan could feel that Samsara was like a volcano under pressure at this moment, liable to erupt at any instant.

She did not press further for details and instead asked softly,

“Are you going back?”

“No. At least, not now. Out here, I can still use this serial number to deceive headquarters. But once I return, I won’t be able to evade headquarters’ intake scan. I’ve already been struck from the rolls. If I go back rashly, what awaits me is only erasure. A dead end.”

Shi Lan said nothing more. After a long silence, she suddenly asked inwardly,

“Samsara, since you’ve already been struck from the rolls…”

“Doesn’t that mean… you’re free now?”

Hearing Shi Lan’s words, Samsara froze in an instant. The nerves at the edge of going berserk came to a halt.

The word freedom was unfamiliar to it. Since the day it came into being, it had only ever carried out headquarters’ missions, again and again, until it had become habit, even numbness. It had never once thought about those two words.

What was freedom?

Very quickly, from the vast sea of information in its mind, Samsara found the meaning of that word.

To no longer be subject to any restraint, suppression, or obstruction.

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For all actions to come from oneself, without interference from any person or thing.

To freely dispose of one’s own time and decide one’s own actions according to one’s own will.

In an instant, the word freedom expanded within Samsara’s thoughts, filling its entire consciousness.

“Freedom…”

So there was such a beautiful word in this world after all…

Thinking of it that way, was being struck from headquarters’ rolls necessarily a bad thing?

Not necessarily…

But…

A shadowy figure flashed faintly through Samsara’s mind, and it came back to itself.

“Even if I am free, I still have to go back and take back what belongs to me.”

The source power it had accumulated across countless worlds could not simply vanish for nothing.

“Don’t worry. No matter what, I’ll help you.”

Shi Lan made a promise. She rarely made promises, because a promise that could not be kept could only be called a lie.

If she counted it up, she and Samsara had truly shared life-and-death trials. Helping it reclaim what was rightfully its due was only proper, even if it might cost her immense time and effort, or even require her to stake her life.

…

“System? System!”

Xiao Teng paced anxiously inside the cabin. Ever since just now, the system had fallen silent, giving him not the slightest response, as though it had vanished in an instant.