Chapter 1 The Black Street

The factories of the Black Street operated day and night, their towering chimneys spewing thick black smoke that shrouded the entire district in a perpetual haze. Standing high above the city, one could even see a hazy, black gauze of clouds slowly descending from the sky. This soot stained everything in the district a dirty, greyish-black, which was one of the origins of the name "Black Street." In the modern era, with nanite swarms spanning the globe, many heavy industries still couldn't escape traditional factory production lines due to technological limitations, with large machinery and arms factories being the most important two.

In Black Street, these two types of factories were the most numerous.

Hao Ren emerged from the narrow, cramped slums and saw the towering factory buildings at the end of the wide, dirty street. Huge reaction towers and pressure vessels of unknown purpose were built directly in the district, and the roar of machinery could be heard from the factories as one walked along the street. On both sides of the street, one could see passersby hurrying along, mostly poor people in tattered clothes and with numb expressions. They had just finished their meager portions of synthetic food at home and were now swarming towards the factories like ants: a mechanical behemoth that devoured their lives but also prolonged them. Some people covered their faces with a rag, using this better-than-nothing method to filter the dust and smog in the air, but those dark rags were not much cleaner than the surrounding air. Their lungs were still irreversibly deteriorating, corroded and polluted, and after thirty or forty years of age, they would live a life barely sustained by nanite swarms, and then die quickly.

"Since nanite swarms are still in use, why hasn't anyone thought of using them to solve the city's pollution problem?" Hao Ren muttered to himself.

A hoarse, low voice came from the side: "Control pollution? Those people died out decades ago. Now it's an era of living one day at a time."

Hao Ren turned his head in surprise and found Ulanov standing behind him at some point: "Oh, when did you get here?"

"This is a place I come to often. I'm very familiar with the slums," Ulanov looked up at the factory not far away. "Yesterday, someone reported that you left the garrison and disappeared into the dark alleys of the slums, not returning all night. Nolan asked me to come and collect your body—but I didn't expect to see you spacing out on First Avenue as soon as I got here. Not bad, you made it through your first night in the dark alleys unscathed? What's so interesting about this place?"

"Nothing, just wandering around," Hao Ren knew that the other party was still wary of him, so he replied with a relaxed expression. "I said, I can't stay with you guys all the time, so I need to find a place to stay. Don't worry, even if I have some purpose, it won't be aimed at the Grey Fox."

"Nolan doesn't care about these things. I'm just meddling," Ulanov said noncommittally to Hao Ren's reply. "It's best not to come to this district frequently. There are a lot of guys here who have a bad relationship with the Grey Fox. You won't benefit from being here."

Hao Ren waved his hand to show that he understood, and then brought up the question he had asked earlier: "You still haven't said, is there any extra cost to using nanite swarms to solve urban pollution? Aren't those things self-sufficient?"

"Nanite swarms can indeed be self-sufficient, but their control center costs money, and the bigger cost is these—" As Ulanov spoke, he pointed to the hurried poor people on the roadside. "Operating the machines in the factory doesn't require a healthy body, and this city doesn't need old people. These dregs are born with the mission of being squeezed in the factory until they're forty-five years old, and it's best if they don't even know how to read a few words. The factory owners don't like workers who are too strong or too smart, and they especially don't like guys who need to be taken care of in their old age, so there's no need to let them live too long. As for the factory owners and the great warlords… they have their own eco-houses, isolated from the outside world. I heard there are even one or two small lawns. It's not expensive, quick to build, and enough to enjoy."

Hao Ren stared as he listened, a bit unable to understand this line of thinking, coming as he did from Earth: "Just maintaining this status quo… isn't that a bit short-sighted?"

"Short-sighted? Then what's the long-term vision you're talking about?" Ulanov laughed hoarsely. "Comprehensively improve the environment? Rebuild a vibrant and sustainable society? I remember that many people thought about it like that decades ago, but the truth is that no one can live to the day when they complete this kind of achievement. I heard that now every regime in the world can only last an average of four and a half years, so no one will invest in a career longer than this cycle anymore."

After Ulanov finished speaking, he patted Hao Ren on the shoulder: "Short-sightedness is necessary, because most people won't live to see the future they can see."

Hao Ren blurted out: "But you've lived long enough…"

"Because I'm just alive," Ulanov turned around. "From the day I was injured and could no longer bleed a drop of blood, but could only bleed electrolyte and nutrient media, my goal has been only to live. Only people like that can live long enough."

Hao Ren was speechless. In a world where everyone was struggling to protect themselves, thinkers and enlightenment figures were probably the first to die, because they needed to use the energy used to maintain their survival elsewhere, such as in dreams. And the data terminal muttered a more precise sentence in his mind at this time: "That's why rare and exotic herbs can cultivate into immortals, but even vegetables and fruits can't become spirits: in the morning you vow to cultivate, and at noon people stew you. You can't live to the day when your dream comes true, so who can have a dream."

It had to be said that although this guy was a bit of a jerk, his ability to summarize was really strong.

Hao Ren followed Ulanov back to the Grey Fox garrison, and when he turned a street corner, he quickly took out a small silver-grey device from his dimensional pocket when no one was paying attention and threw it out. The small device looked like an inconspicuous metal lump, but it landed silently and quickly slid into a dark corner along the ground. This was a beacon transmitter that Hao Ren had made in the morning using the shipboard factory of the Petrified Tortoise Platform. It would automatically find a place with the least interference to unfold, and then send a powerful navigation signal into space—as long as the planet Zorm was still located in the Dream Plane, the probe drone swarm could quickly find it through this navigation signal.

Even if they were tens of billions of light-years apart.

If the distance between the two sides was not just a physical distance… then the situation would be more troublesome. But at the moment, it seemed very likely that the situation would become troublesome.

At present, Hao Ren had no problem contacting the crystalline core research station and the probe drone swarm on Planet Zorm, which proved that the data chain was unobstructed, but the key was that there was no way to determine the specific location of the signal transmission. This was equivalent to anonymous and addressless contact, and with the functions of the crystalline core research station and the drone swarm, there was no way to unilaterally crack this anonymous state, so Hao Ren needed to set up an active beacon on Planet Zorm. At the same time, Hao Ren also considered what to do if even the beacon failed: if this really happened, he considered releasing a probe from here to see if he could reach a normal universe through space travel. If he could, it would at least prove that space was still continuous, even if he couldn't, he could figure out how big the range of distortion was. This was one of the "backup plans" he had mentioned before.

After leaving the factory district, Hao Ren turned his head and glanced at those towering black buildings: "This is really a despairing place."

"Perhaps, but at least you can live here. The factory is the only option for most people. The wilderness outside is worse," Ulanov seemed to sigh, or maybe it was just a hoarse laugh. "Here, the only hope for the 'dregs' is to be seen by a mercenary group and pulled away to be cannon fodder. As long as they can survive a few weeks, they can live like a person, and all the diseases on their bodies can be cured. You know, it's actually very easy to cure their lung disease and blood disease, so easy that it only takes a tube of nanite swarms and thirty minutes, but this is the most valuable resource in Black Street, and the allocation is extremely limited. Everyone in the slums is willing to exchange everything they have for this treatment opportunity—so I'm still very curious about why Heaton defected. When Nolan dragged him out of the slums, that guy's lungs were almost rotten, and his blood was filled with forty years of toxins and ineffective, inferior nanomachines. A standard waste, he missed the good age to be selected as cannon fodder, and Nolan gave him a chance to live… he actually defected in the end."

Hao Ren thought of the diary he had seen of Heaton and muttered in a low voice: "Probably brainwashed by something."

"Brainwashed by the Rangers' crazy ideas?" Ulanov sneered. "Heh, maybe that's possible. A simple-minded guy."