After ten minutes of high-speed train travel, the city had been completely left behind. Once Lu Feng took back his right hand, An Zhe saw thick clouds in the direction they had come from. The fighter planes, returning to their base, passed over the train with a roar before disappearing from his field of vision.

He said nothing. After quietly watching for a short while, he returned to his original spot and sat down.

The moment he boarded, he was still thinking that once communication was restored, he'd use his communicator to tell Mr. Shaw where he was going, but now it seemed that it would no longer be necessary.

He looked outside with his chin resting on his hands, and in his peripheral vision, there was a black figure. Lu Feng had sat down one seat away from him, and the young Judge who always followed him sat down at his side.

"Colonel, a message from the Trial Court," he said. "Of the Trial Court, twenty-one people have evacuated, nine people died, and four people were infected and have already been exterminated."

Lu Feng said, "What about the City Defense Agency?"

"No data at present."

Then their voices ceased. An Zhe looked out the window the whole time—but in truth, there was nothing outside the window that was worth looking at. In the rain and fog, all that was visible was the vast and barren cement ground.

It was a buffer zone. From the city gates to the Outer City, and even between each one of the Outer City's districts, there were huge buffer zones where no buildings whatsoever had been built. This was so that as soon as a xenogenic invasion or large-scale warfare occurred, the buffer zone could buy valuable rapid response time for the military instead of allowing xenogenics to charge directly into densely-populated residential areas.

Before long, there was movement in the coach as Colin regained consciousness after his brief fainting spell. He got up from the aisle, returned to his original spot, and sat down, his face pale. Head bowed, he took out a pair of black-rimmed glasses from his pocket and repeatedly polished them with the hem of his shirt without saying another word. At that moment, An Zhe felt that this boy was no longer the same person as when they first met.

He turned back and looked at Lu Feng.

At the exact same time, Lu Feng looked away from Colin and at him.

Their eyes met, and An Zhe uneasily grabbed the hem of his own shirt.

Lu Feng only gave him a flat glance before breaking eye contact. He felt the current Lu Feng was very unfamiliar—even though they had slept in the same bed last night.

After some thought, An Zhe still said, "What's next?"

Lu Feng said, "Based on the courses you studied before, you might go teach children how to read."

"Then what about you?"

Lu Feng said, "I'll obey the Main City's plans."

An Zhe mustered up his courage. "Will you go to the Lighthouse?"

He knew his spore was likely at the Lighthouse.

Lu Feng looked at him.

An Zhe felt that this seemed to be the look he would give to someone slow in the head.

"I'm part of the military," Lu Feng said. "My next task is to recover the Dispersion Center."

"... Oh."

Then An Zhe said in a small voice, "Good luck."

Lu Feng quietly looked at him for a few seconds. "Thank you."

After that, neither of them spoke further. Somehow, An Zhe felt that the Colonel may not have been in much of a mood for conversation.

After yet another dozen or so minutes, the train arrived at the station, and Lu Feng walked towards the front of the train.

At the same time, an announcement was broadcast within the train. "Passengers, to ensure the safety of the Main City, please form a line for a second inspection."

The people in the train began to line up, and An Zhe and Colin were at the very back. The second inspection was a genetic examination using machines, and the inspector was still that young blonde and blue-eyed doctor in the white coat. After An Zhe and Colin had their blood drawn, the doctor started the machine and said, "Wait five minutes."

An Zhe obediently pressed a cotton swab to the spot where his blood had been drawn as he stood to one side. The doctor smiled. "It's you again."

"Hello," An Zhe said.

"So the Arbiter would actually bring people over for genetic examinations," the doctor said with a click of his tongue. "Everyone in our examination office was surprised."

An Zhe said, "He believes that I'm human now."

"He may have just wanted to nitpick." The doctor shrugged. "People of the Trial Court, you know, there'll always be minor problems with their minds."

An Zhe says, "He's all right."

The doctor tossed an admiring gaze at him. "You're the first person I've met who will speak on behalf of Colonel Lu."

As the doctor spoke, his gaze moved to An Zhe’s left arm. "You got hurt?"

An Zhe noticed that because his movements were rather large, his sleeve cuff had been pulled up, and some of the bandages wrapped around his left arm peeked out.

"Mm-hm," An Zhe said.

"You should change the dressing." The doctor picked up a nearby medical kit and pulled out a new roll of bandages. "I'll change it for you."

The doctor seemed to be an easygoing and kind person. An Zhe murmured, "Thank you."

As the doctor took off An Zhe's original bandage, he said off-handedly, "This knot was tied well."

An Zhe thought for a while but didn't say anything. He decided to not tell the doctor that Lu Feng had wrapped it for him for fear that the examination office would be surprised again—they seemed to believe that Lu Feng was an evil person with no uncrossable line.

Once this thought popped up, An Zhe suddenly frowned.

At that moment, he seemed to understand why Lu Feng seldom conversed with others. The position of Arbiter was destined to be like this.

Just as he had that thought, he heard Colin softly say from next to him, "Doctor."

The doctor finished wrapping the bandage for An Zhe and looked at him. "Hm?"

"Now that the Outer City has completely fallen, there's no need for the Trial Court anymore either," Colin said. "Can we know the principles behind the Trial Court's judgments now?"

An Zhe thought that Colin was indeed a steadfast member of the opposition party.

"Why do you want to know?" The doctor leaned against the instrument-bearing vehicle with arms crossed, looking at him as he said, "Did you have family members or friends whom Lu Feng killed?"

"My mother," Colin said. "That time she went into the wilderness, she hadn't gone out of the armored vehicle the entire trip."

"Although there are few tiny monsters, they are by no means nonexistent."

"But there was nothing abnormal about her appearance or behavior."

"Uh-huh," the doctor said flatly. "So? If every single person's relatives demanded an explanation from the Trial Court and the examination office, we wouldn't have any time to ensure the safety of the city gates."

"But it's different now. You guys have time now." Colin raised his voice. "We only want to know the reasons."

While watching him, the doctor smiled.

"You're right, it is different now," the doctor said softly. "Now you are people of the Main City, so you'll gradually come to know a lot of information."

He nonchalantly said, "Do you guys think that after being infected—that human bodies will slowly be corroded?"

Colin said, "What else?"

"That's not it." The doctor lifted his head and looked up at the sky. "At the very moment infection occurs, your strands of DNA—all the DNA structures—will instantly change. Once infection occurs, a person's fate is sealed."

"Impossible," Colin said. "I've studied biology. Viruses need time to spread, and there will be incubation periods—"

But the doctor interrupted him straight away.

"Following that, the DNA strands' structure will affect the composition of RNA, and the changes in RNA will affect the manufacture of proteins, and humans' biological characteristics will begin to change. All of these things begin happening within a very short span of time. Your skin, appearance, expressions, how you move, how you think, language ability... All of them will change. All the training Judges receive before formally becoming Judges is to observe these differences with the naked eye." He smiled. "Once their differentiation accuracy reaches eighty percent, they can graduate and formally serve. Do you think your shallow observation of human behavior is comparable to their more than ten years of training?"

Stolen story; please report.

"Eighty percent." Colin abruptly lifted his gaze. "So the Trial Court cannot completely identify xenogenics either. They really do ensure that they won't erroneously let xenogenics pass via large-scale random killings, right?"

"I'm very sorry, but there's something I must tell you." The doctor looked at him. "Lu Feng's result that year was a hundred percent."

Colin dumbly stood in place for a few seconds before saying, "... Impossible."

"I hope you don't use ordinary standards to determine the upper limits of other people's abilities, especially after entering the Main City." The doctor's tone of voice was flat. He was speaking to Colin, but he was looking at An Zhe. "At the very least, under circumstances where it could be tested whether the judgment outcome was correct or not, he has not made a mistake even once. The examination office and the Trial Court have a very close relationship. I've seen his examination results. Back then, the Arbiter received full marks on all indicators. However, that may not be the reason why he can determine xenogenics with a hundred percent accuracy either."

"He seems to have an innate gift, a kind of intuition," the doctor said. "Back then, after discovering his talent in this field, the examination office drew his blood every month, but unfortunately their research bore no fruit."

"No..." Colin frowned deeply. "This goes against science. Intuition can't be used as the basis for science, and what you said about infection methods at the very start also—"

There was a brief beep, and a green light lit up on the machine.

"Here's your new ID cards and communicators. Get on the shuttle. The Main City will allocate living quarters to you." The doctor handed them two blue chips and communicators. "Afterwards, wait for information from the communicator."

Colin accepted the items. "But..."

"I know it goes against some principles of biological science, but the most fearsome part of this era is—" As the doctor looked at him, his azure eyes seemingly frosted over, he said one syllable at a time, "We've discovered that the systems of human sciences are all but worthless."

"Human science is like mountain climbing, but a hundred years ago, we lost our footing." The doctor smiled. "Just like how we weren't able to explain from then until now why the geomagnetic field would suddenly disappear for such a long time."

With that, he was no longer talkative. "Get going, then."

Colin bowed his head and walked towards the shuttle without another word. After An Zhe bid the doctor goodbye, he boarded the shuttle as well.

Lu Feng's location was a mystery, for An Zhe hadn't seen him. He was a very busy man, and it also seemed that he didn't want to interact with An Zhe much today, so he had probably already left.

After confirming the last two people had boarded, the shuttle bus left the train station along the track. It was the last bus, and it was packed tight with close to a hundred people standing inside. The place they set out from was inside the building, so the situation outside was not clearly visible. It wasn't until three minutes later, when the shuttle passed through a tunnel, that the sound of rain and the light from the outside world came in. Up ahead, it suddenly became clear, and from within the vehicle came the sound of faint gasps.

An Zhe’s gaze passed through both the crowd inside the vehicle and the vehicle window—there was another buffer zone, but right after the buffer zone, countless large gray-blue buildings that shone with a glassy sheen rose up.

His eyes slowly opened wide.

One month ago, the first time he came to the human base, he felt the mysticality of human buildings. They were taller than the vast majority of giant mushrooms, unusually magnificent and lofty—but those were the magnificence and loftiness with regard to a mushroom who had never seen the world.

It was different now. As someone who had become accustomed to the building standards of the Outer City, he once again felt that those skyscrapers were looking down at him. The Outer City's residential buildings were mainly ten stories high, but the buildings here were different. After he counted to thirty, because it took too long, that building had already retreated and disappeared from his field of vision, while he had only counted a little over half of it.

At the same time, they were unusually concentrated together and intricate, intertwining dazzlingly in An Zhe's sight. The rain gradually lightened up, for summer storms always left very quickly. Golden sunlight penetrated through the clouds and shone off of the glass curtain walls at the tops of the buildings.

An Zhe once heard the entire story of how the base was established from Poet's mouth. At first it was the weakening and then disappearance of the geomagnetic field—to solve this problem, humans built two magnetic field generators, and the Northern Base's Main City protected one of them.

It wasn't until afterwards, when the mutation of bacteria and plants and animals occurred, that humans began gathering together to save themselves, which led to the emergence of the entire Northern Base. Therefore, the Main City was established earlier than the Outer City, and many things had not yet happened at that time. The magnetic generator and the Main City were the pinnacles of human technology and construction respectively at the time.

And after that, it all went downhill.

The robotic guide’s voice said, "Passengers, due to the scarcity of housing in the Main City, the residential areas affiliated with the Lighthouse and Garden of Eden are at full capacity, so you will be temporarily placed in the military residential area. Please find the corresponding address based on your ID card number and await further instruction."

An Zhe took out his new ID card. The card number had changed; now it was 3124043702.

3 represented the human base, 1 represented the Main City, and the remaining numbers delineated the exact residential location.

The people within the shuttle began to whisper amongst themselves, and they discovered that their addresses were all very scattered.

"I got it," someone said. "There's no danger to the people working in the Lighthouse and the Garden of Eden. They won't die, so the residential areas are at full capacity. But the military's numbers are often depleted, leaving many spaces, so they're perfect for us to be stuffed into."

The other people all agreed with this view. Before too long, the shuttle stopped and let them out. There were a few others living in Building 24's Unit 04 with An Zhe. They walked into the building and began learning how to use the elevators in a flurry—those were something the Outer City did not have.

Finally, Colin got off at the thirty-sixth floor, and An Zhe came alone to the thirty-seventh floor. There were no other buttons above thirty-seven, as it was the top floor. Two doors faced each other, both with white seals pasted on them. An Zhe tore off the seal on the door to No. 02, then swiped his card and entered.

The living spaces in the Main City were clearly larger than those of the Outer City. This was a suite with a bedroom and a living room, and it had a separate bathroom and kitchen. In the living room was a simple tea table and small gray sofa, and on the wall facing the small sofa hung a black rectangular object. The rectangle's structure and color reminded him of the tablet he had played with at Mr. Shaw's place. He went up to it and pressed the button at the bottom.

"... have safely been transferred into the Main City, and the Main City has entered a state of emergency defense. The United Front Center has expressed that the base will enter a five- to ten-year withdrawal period until the next generation matures. At the same time, the Lighthouse has surmised that the monsters outside have produced high-intelligence mutants and that the swarm's invasion is the collective action of insects in the midst of their breeding season. To avoid the potential danger of gene leakage, the Lighthouse recommends that the United Front Center carefully dispatch troops to the outside, no longer carry out high-risk operations, shift their work focus to the production of resources and combat readiness research and development, and search for ways to overcome the current predicament. Next, we'll turn to Lighthouse researcher Mr. Chen."

The interface changed from a suit-clad broadcaster to a middle-aged man with a serious expression clad in a white coat.

"As everyone knows, arthropod-class monsters do not necessarily have a survival advantage in high-risk areas, but during their breeding season, they need nutrient-rich and genetically-advantageous animal blood and flesh to serve as the breeding grounds for their eggs. We surmise that this is why they have collectively attacked the human base. After all, reproduction is the first priority of species, so they can do anything. But how they produced an intelligent group consciousness is unknown. We fear it may be related to some of the individuals absorbing human genes."

The broadcaster asked, "Regarding this situation, what would you like to convey to everyone?"

"It is a misfortune that the entirety of the base's Outer City has been lost. But in the end, we have eliminated the possibility of further human gene leakage and left the monsters no opportunities to reproduce, which is also a form of victory," the researcher said. "What I want to tell everyone is, there is currently no need to worry about the safety of the Main City. The Main City is the crystallization of the pinnacle of human technology, and the degree of its security is such that it will not be invaded by the monsters of the outside world. At the same time, there's no need to be anxious over the future of the human species. I've received news that our reproduction technology has advanced and that the number of newborns in the Garden of Eden has sharply increased in recent years, so the base is about to enter a period of population expansion. Our future is bright..."

The researcher spoke at length, generally focusing on placating the people. After he finished, the broadcaster connected to someone from the military and asked him to introduce the most recent progress of the work out in the field to everyone.

An Zhe thought that the Main City's news broadcasts were much more detailed than the Outer City's monotonous broadcasts.

He felt that it was very interesting. Once the news finally finished broadcasting, the screen turned a dull gray and began playing meaningless music, and only then did he turn it off.

It was now evening. Outside the bedroom window, stars had begun to appear, and a black silhouette in the shape of a massive cylindrical tower stood in the distance. It was too big, occupying almost a quarter of An Zhe's field of vision, and taller than all the other buildings, resembling a huge monster hibernating in the middle of the city. A thin aurora swiftly fluctuated around it, and An Zhe thought that perhaps it was the legendary magnetic field generator.

He watched for a while longer, then opened the door with the intention of going out for dinner. The Main City was just like the Outer City, with communal dining rooms on certain floors.

He noticed that the seal of the neighbor across the hallway had been torn off.

An Zhe had no intention of investigating when his neighbor had come back, nor what kind of person they were. This day had a hair-raising beginning, and he didn't like it. He intended for it to come to a quiet conclusion.

Thus, he achieved his wish and quietly reached the next morning. A message had come from his communicator, requesting all civilian personnel transferred from the Outer City to gather at the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Last night, An Zhe read the map of the Main City and the Base Handbook, so he knew the Main City had twenty thousand permanent adult residents, seventy percent of whom belonged to the military and the remaining thirty percent consisting of scientific research personnel and various kinds of civil servants. The periphery of the Main City was composed of the military areas, military bases, landing fields, train stations, and residential areas, while the interior was the core area, containing three of the base's important institutions.

The first one was the United Front Center—the military—and it was responsible for managing military personnel and materials. The second one was the Scientific Research Center, which had the same function as its name. Because its symbol was a simplified lighthouse, it was also simply called "the Lighthouse". The United Front Center and the Lighthouse each had its own large building, and the two of them were connected by corridor bridges. The buildings that they were composed of were called the "Twin Towers".

The third one’s name was rather long. It was called "Reproduction, Nurturing, and Education Center", and it had two functions. One was to provide foodstuffs and nutrition for the base—An Zhe thought that this may be where humans planted potatoes. The other was to grow their younglings. Human babies grew up and received their initial education here. Because the name was too difficult to pronounce, it was also known as the "Garden of Eden".

An Zhe's future workplace was the Garden of Eden.

He looked at the distant Twin Towers, then looked at the Garden of Eden. In truth, he was looking forward to it a little because he hadn’t seen human younglings before. His spore was a very soft and white little thing. He didn't know if human younglings would be the same.

But could taking care of human younglings allow him to accumulate experience for taking care of his own youngling?

It seemed that it couldn't.