When Zhu Man arrived at the base, he was still a little out of his mind. He didn’t know what Tang Yuan and Fan Zimo were yakking about until—

“Oh God, I couldn’t decipher the damn chip yesterday,” Fan Zimo said. “I gave it to our beloved Alliance HQ—”

“What?!” Zhu Man woke up as if from a dream and yanked over Fan Zimo’s collar.

Fortunately, he viewed Fan Zimo differently yesterday because of the power outage.

“Hey, hey, hey, God Man. Don’t be so hasty,” Tang Yuan came over to round up the situation, “The four of us can’t break it anyway, so instead of hiding it ourselves, why don’t we leave it to the Alliance to deal with.”

Fan Zimo nodded as if pounding garlic, “This ‘former excellent doctoral graduate of the Department of Intelligence’ guarantees that the headquarters will break the deciphering in a short period of one week, and the length will not exceed one month.”

Zhu Man unhappily let go of Fan Zimo, and after a pause, he asked Tang Yuan, “The four of us?”

Before Tang Yuan could speak, the door of the base was pushed open.

A man wearing a khaki sweater walked in. His outline was soft, his expression was warm, and his light chestnut hair added a sense of intimacy; a standard next-door neighbor gege look.

Wait, light chestnut hair…

Zhu Man looked at him one more time.

No, it wasn’t the boy in his dream last night. That boy has innocence, melancholy, and loneliness that the person in front of him doesn’t have.

The man nodded slightly at Tang Yuan and Fan Zimo, then walked to Zhu Man and stretched out his hand, “Hello, my name is Jiang Huai, the new Executor of the group.”

Tang Yuan went up and took Jiang Huai’s shoulder, and said to Zhu Man, “God Man, Jiang Huai is my childhood friend. He used to do sociological research. Later, he worked in the former human government’s Women and Children’s Department. He’s a particularly reliable person!”

Zhu Man sized him up. He was cultured and refined and looked quite reliable. Moreover, with Tang Yuan’s guarantee, Zhu Man could trust him. Tang Yuan grew up on the university campus in a simple environment. If Jiang Huai was his childhood friend, there shouldn’t be a problem.

—Trust for the time being and keep observing.

Zhu Man disdained cooperating with other Executors before, but now the mission must be completed within half a year, and he had to compromise.

So he shook Jiang Huai’s hand, “Zhu Man.”

Jiang Huai let go of his hand, glanced at Tang Yuan, and smiled apologetically, “My original Assistant was frightened by your prestige and didn’t follow me, so I might have to share with Tang Yuan afterward.”

Zhu Man: “Doesn’t matter.”

Tang Yuan: “Wuwuwu, God Man, you’re so cruel. You don’t—”

“That Mirage,“ Zhu Man didn’t bother to pay attention to Tang Yuan and immediately entered the working state, “He Feng Hui seemed very resistant.”

“My AI runs a pharmacy in the black market. The psychotropic drugs that He Feng Hui gives you, are all taken from her. She will use the treatment of depression as a reason to convince He Feng Hui.” Jiang Huai said nonchalantly, “Don’t worry, her original body has already been killed by me and replaced with the Anti-Intelligence Alliance’s chip, she is now one of us.”

Smiling gently and saying the word “killed”, Zhu Man immediately understood that this person wasn’t simple.

“Convinced. How long will it take?” Zhu Man didn’t ask about success or failure, but only the result.

Jiang Huai smiled with ease and replied, “Tonight.”

Zhu Man returned home skeptically. He didn’t quite believe Jiang Huai’s “tonight.”

He Feng Hui was an AI with a strong sense of rules. In the past two years, every time Zhu Man felt that He Feng Hui had been aroused by him, the next second, the fire would be extinguished in He Feng Hui’s strong sense of reason.

But in any case, now that time was tight and the mission was heavy, things had to be done absolutely.

Zhu Man took off his clothes in the mirror.

The bathrobe slid down his pale skin. He picked up a small knife and scratched his arm three times.

Blood instantly dripped onto his clean, beautiful skin; breaking, creeping, and bursting like cracks.

Zhu Man raised the corner of his mouth, let go, and the knife rolled off.

When He Feng Hui got home, the door of Zhu Man’s room was locked tightly.

The little hedgehog grabbed the paroxetine bottle, scratching frantically at Zhu Man’s door. It “Jījījī” non-stop.

He Fenghui considered sending it away again, but thinking of what Zhu Man said yesterday, “He’s our master”, he still bent over and held the little hedgehog in his arms.

“Zhu Man.” He knocked on the door.

There was no movement inside.

“I’ll count to three.” He Feng Hui lowered his tone a bit, “Three, two, one.”

Zhu Man still didn’t open the door.

He Feng Hui frowned. The beautiful human pet became more and more difficult to control.

“Take you out tonight.” He released the bait.

The person wasn’t this quiet as usual.

Zhu Man ran out again?

This sudden thought caused He Feng Hui’s CPU to go down for a second, and then he forcibly unlocked the door with an intelligent control program—

The door opened.

The clean white bed was stained with an ugly blood-red color, and the beautiful human pet lay on the bed without a single piece of clothing and with tearstains all over his face.

He Feng Hui’s artificial pupils shrank sharply.

“Jījī!” The little hedgehog jumped down and hopped over to Zhu Man’s hand to lick his blood.

“Jī!” In a second, the little hedgehog rolled off Zhu Man’s body.

It was He Feng Hui who picked Zhu Man up.

He walked briskly towards the pharmacy on the second floor of the villa that was specially set up for Zhu Man. He placed Zhu Man on the small bed, his hands shook a little when he turned to get the iodine tincture.

Strange, his control system was clearly very advanced and stable.

Zhu Man looked at his back and quietly hooked the corners of his lips.

Plan passed.

“Master,” he deliberately called in a hoarse voice, “Will you leave me alone?”

He Feng Hui came over with iodine tincture and cotton balls and grabbed his wrist.

He Feng Hui’s force was greater than usual, yet it could’ve been greater—He was angry and restraining his mood. 

Zhu Man once believed that rational AIs are emotionless. He was wrong. The more sophisticated the instrument, the more obvious it was when something went wrong.

Pursuing the retreating enemy, Zhu Man said in a crying tone, “Can you send me back to the Human Pool?”

The smart AI must have understood the meaning of his words. There was at least a chance of death in the Human Pool. Being locked up in this villa by He He Feng Hui was only worse than death, only to be tortured by depression and anxiety.

He grabbed He Feng Hui with his backhand, knocked over the iodine bottle with a “snap”, and the brown liquid splashed into the corner of his eyes. “Please, master…”

A tear trickled down, diluting the thick brown color at the corner of his eye. The unearthly color trickled down from the corner of his eye, sliding into his dimple, pausing, and resuming its flow.

He Feng Hui stared at the messy drop of water until it dripped from Zhu Man’s jaw. There was sadness and helplessness in his deep eyes, but it was more of an emotion that Zhu Man couldn’t interpret.

He Feng Hui gently pulled Zhu Man’s hand, pulling him into his arms and hugging him. When Zhu Man pushed and shoved, He Feng Hui wrapped his strong artificial arms around his head and stroked his well-behaved black hair with his big hands.

He took the medicine handed by the little hedgehog and fed it into Zhu Man’s mouth.

After hesitating for a long time, a somber voice finally sounded, “I’ll take you to Mirage later. You can meet many other… humans. Communicating with them will help your emotions relax.”

Zhu Man looked up, his light brown pupils filled with surprise.

He Feng Hui averted his eyes.

He used his own program to retrieve thousands of documents about depression and anxiety disorders and consulted with AIs who specialize in the psychotropic drug industry to make this decision.

It was just that he inadvertently said the word “human” very lightly, because he knew that he was not in the category that could surprise Zhu Man.