Returning Home

Following the road upward for about three hundred meters led to a dilapidated farmhouse. Ding Shi pushed open the door and stepped inside. The scene matched his expectations: Ritian, Brother Kai, and Chu Yu had already subdued a male dwarf. Chu Yu explained that they had discovered a row of iron cages inside the warehouse. The two adults were unconscious, while the male dwarf was awake. Claiming to be Yingying's younger brother, he had told them the villains had just left and begged them to rescue him. After letting the male dwarf out, Chu Yu had brought him to the front hall for questioning while Ritian and Brother Kai tried to revive the two adults. Since Chu Yu had already learned from Mumu that Yingying was a dwarf, she remained constantly on guard against him. When the male dwarf attacked, Chu Yu—having trained in Jeet Kune Do for ten years—promptly took him down. When Ding Shi had first met Chu Yu, his initial impression of her physique had been fair-skinned and sturdy, with long legs and broad shoulders—the very definition of an athletic woman. Instead of helping in the warehouse, Ding Shi headed to the courtyard and the master quarters. There were quite a few rooms, but most were thick with dust and stripped of furniture, looking battered and empty. Before long, Ding Shi found the two dwarfs' bedrooms. The female dwarf's room was sparse, containing only a bed, a desk, and a chair. A diary lay on the desk. Flipping through it, Ding Shi gained an objective understanding of the world within the Returning Home instance. Fifty years ago, artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere. Pursuing fairness, humanity entrusted judicial authority to AI. Because the AI upheld impartiality and justice to everyone's satisfaction, humanity also handed executive power over to it forty-five years ago. The AI was free of corruption and waste, highly efficient, and remarkably capable, enjoying immense popularity for a time. Forty years ago, the AI rolled out its "Collective Plan"—in simple terms, sacrificing the interests of the few for the benefit of the many. One of its policies was relocating people from villages far from urban centers. The first benefit was returning countryside lands to nature to preserve the ecosystem; the second was reducing administrative expenses so everyone could enjoy the conveniences of city life. The Resistance launched an uprising and clashed head-on with the AI. Unfortunately, the AI soldiers were endless, rolling off the assembly lines as peak combatants. From mining to manufacturing, the AI had automated the entire chain from start to finish. Even with all of humanity united, nothing could stop its dominion over the world. The surviving rebels scattered into non-signal zones. Unable to directly command its soldiers there, the AI enacted an extermination plan. Automated drones dispersed the X virus from the sky over the non-signal zones, while residents of the signal zones had all been vaccinated in advance. Lacking medical supplies and food, the Resistance had no choice but to raid the signal zones for sustenance, medicine, and even people, degrading into what the locals called bandit gangs. With every operation carrying exorbitant costs, the Resistance eventually collapsed without a decisive battle. The dwarf siblings had narrowly survived the X virus, but their bodies suffered mutations—which was how they became dwarfs. More curiously, although the virus stunted their growth, it also preserved their childhood facial features. To survive, the pair turned to banditry along Unnamed Road. Whenever someone ventured onto Unnamed Road, the brother monitoring from high ground would immediately alert the sister. She would pretend to be a child in need of help, claiming her brother had gone missing and asking travelers to help search for him. She would look for an opening to ambush and kill isolated targets with a dagger, while her brother lay in wait at the farmhouse for the prey to arrive. Because the brother and sister looked no different from children, they succeeded time and again, living quite comfortably over the years. The reason things went wrong this time was that Ding Shi's group had entered Unnamed Road right after the siblings attacked Yingying's family. The brother had only managed to dispose of Yingying and hadn't even had time to drive the car away. Ding Shi recalled the quest. The objective had been to find and assist Yingying's parents, not Yingying's family. At first, Ding Shi thought the system had set a trap to make the players assume the female dwarf was Yingying. Looking at it now, the system had been thoroughly honest—it knew Yingying had already been murdered. Ding Shi pulled open the desk drawer and saw a stack of bills. A quick count showed about two hundred instance coins. Inside the drawer also lay a dagger forged from a peculiar material, both thin and hard. Glancing toward the courtyard, Ding Shi heard the footsteps of Ritian and Brother Kai approaching. He stowed the instance coins away, took the dagger in hand to turn it over, and continued reading the diary attentively. Brother Kai spotted the beam of the flashlight and came over with Ritian. Ding Shi greeted them, saying, "This diary is pretty interesting. It records how the AI ruled the world and enslaved humanity." Brother Kai took the diary and asked, "What's so interesting about that? Isn't it just a cliché sci-fi story?" Ding Shi replied, "What's interesting is that the AI mandated humans work thirty-five to forty hours a week. It required people to have at least one physical exam a year. It required everyone to attend university and earn a diploma. It required newlyweds to pass a prospective-parent assessment... a whole long list of requirements." Brother Kai paused. "Those demands sound way too excessive." Ding Shi laughed, and Brother Kai laughed too. Ritian, being an honest soul, piped up, "If aliens like that attacked Earth, I'd be the first to surrender." Ritian was a typical corporate drone at a small-to-medium company; 996 was already a blessing in his eyes, while his routine was practically 007. Working only forty hours a week was a luxury beyond his wildest dreams. Brother Kai asked, "Find anything else besides the dagger?" Ding Shi looked at the drawer. "Nothing. The room next door seems to belong to the male dwarf. I haven't checked it yet." Brother Kai caught the unspoken message: *I've already searched this room. Whatever was in here, I'm only claiming this dagger. But I'd rather waste time reading a diary than search the second room. As for what treasures you can find in there, that's up to your own luck.* Principles existed, but only just enough. Brother Kai headed to the room next door. Ritian looked around the empty room for a moment, then followed Brother Kai to the male dwarf's quarters. *** Team Yuyu held a meeting before the car's headlights. There were two main agenda items. First, they now had three vehicles: the Yuyu car, the red sedan, and an off-road vehicle parked at the farmhouse. Second, the quest to rescue Yingying's parents was complete. No direct reward was issued, though it would likely boost their dungeon-clear rating. What they needed to discuss was the appearance of a new quest called Speedy Express. The players were tasked with delivering a vial of X pathogen obtained from the farmhouse to their own doorstep. The Resistance would pick it up there and use AI laboratories to research it. Once the time was ripe, the Resistance led by Lao Gui would launch another uprising to seize a non-signal zone and resume the fight against the AI. The pathogen vial was only the size of an index finger and required no refrigeration. Completing the quest would raise the clear evaluation by 1.5 grades—turning a C-grade clear into a B+, for example. The container holding the X pathogen was made of a special material equipped with a tracking signal. The moment the pathogen entered a signal zone, the AI would detect it. However, because so much time had passed, the tracking signal had degraded significantly; the AI could only narrow the location down to a hundred-meter radius, unable to pinpoint it precisely.