"Beep—"

"Beep—"

"Beep—"

The instrument's monotonous sounds came from somewhere. But there was another kind of sound throughout the entire room as well.

"Ba-thump."

"Ba-thump."

"Ba-thump."

This sound was extremely similar to a human heartbeat, but it wasn't real, because it permeated the entire room. It seemed like there were sound playing devices in the four corners of the room.

Right at that moment, footsteps came from the end of the room. It was two humans who were conversing as they walked, seeming to be taking notes on something.

After a while, the sounds of a simple conversation drifted over.

"Area 4 is normal."

"Area 6 is normal."

"Number 113's development has stopped."

"Continue observing."

"Number 334's cell growth is abnormal. It must be destroyed."

"Number 334 was transplanted too early."

"There was no choice, the last report wasn't approved. The higher-ups are determined to counter the high abnormality rate with a high birth rate."

"The abnormality rate of the embryos has been constantly increasing in these past two years. This isn't a wise decision at all. Only by staying in the mother's body for at least another month can the embryo's smooth development be ensured."

"The mothers' flowering periods are too short. If that time is too prolonged, the birth rate will be insufficient."

"Why is it this difficult?"

"Look on the bright side, the overall number of children is increasing."

The footsteps drew away, and all that remained were the heartbeats that still pervaded the room. The light in the room was dim and soft. It was a safe nest, or a massive hollow organ. That powerful heartbeat was like a form of proof of the existence of life.

An Zhe slowly backed out of the pipe. He felt a bit of discomfort in his own body—in this place, there seemed to be some strange waves affecting his body. But fortunately, after seeing the arrangement of the human rooms, he finally regained his sense of spatial orientation. He had to go towards the outside of the building.

After circling in the pipes many more times, he found many vents, and these vents all led to one small square room after another. It seemed that it was still the time for people to be sleeping, for one person slept in each room. He had no way of getting out from under the beds to see, but he could hear weak breathing sounds, the breathing sounds of younglings. The windows were sealed shut, and the red light of video cameras shone high up in the rooms. He had no way of getting out of this kind of room.

It wasn't until after another very long time that An Zhe successfully found a vent placed in a corridor ceiling at last.

He carefully emerged, and his body spread out on the ceiling before he moved through the corridor along the ceiling—the cameras were angled downwards, so they couldn't capture the visuals of the ceiling.

Every floor in the Garden of Eden had a similar layout. He recognized that this ought to be a corridor used for taking care of chores, for the storehouses that held indoor cleaning tools, household goods, foodstuffs, and junk were here.

He became slightly excited. Based on the pattern, at three-quarters of the way down the corridor, there would be a door leading to a mid-sized balcony—occasionally it would be used for drying things, and staff members would sometimes smoke there.

Very soon, An Zhe found the door. Striving to stretch out his hyphae, he flowed in through the crack of the door.

The sky was bright outside—unexpectedly, it was already daytime.

But before An Zhe had time to think carefully, his attention was completely diverted.

On the spacious balcony, a very small white figure stood upon the concrete railing. It was a girl in a white dress. She had her back turned towards An Zhe as she faced the outside. She was slowly spreading her arms, and her body leaned forward—she was about to fall.

His human form materialized, and he took a few steps forward, grabbed the girl's shoulder, carried her down from the railing, and put her onto the floor. "You..."

The girl turned around.

An Zhe was stunned.

He had seen her before, just two days ago. She had run from the Garden of Eden to the road outside, been stopped by Lu Feng, and finally taken away by the staff members of the Garden of Eden. He wouldn't mistake her for anyone else.

She looked at An Zhe. It was a look almost devoid of spirit, without the brightness of the children in An Zhe's class. For a moment, An Zhe felt that this girl was a lifeless doll. He knew that his current appearance was not ordinary, draped in a robe woven from hyphae. Perhaps he looked like a human who had come outside draped in a bedsheet—but normal humans wouldn't come outside draped in a bedsheet.

But the girl acted like she hadn't seen anything at all. She seemed to not think that there was anything peculiar about An Zhe's attire or that there was anything abrupt about An Zhe's appearance. She also seemed to not recognize him. Perhaps she didn't remember his existence at all. Three seconds later, she once again slowly turned to look forward.

It was currently early morning. The aurora had just disappeared, and thick white mist overflowed within the dark gray city, surging towards the gray-blue skies like rolling waves. From this angle, half of one's field of vision was blocked by the nearby cylindrical magnetic field generator. Bigger and taller than all other buildings, it was like a mountain, an island in the sea of mist, or a spiral staircase connecting the sky and the earth. The street lights and the dawn stars flickered together, but in front of such a massive form, they were eclipsed.

The girl lifted her head and looked at the limitless sky above.

"I don't want to jump." Her voice was very young, but her words were very clear. "I want to fly."

An Zhe said, "You'll fall."

She said, "I know."

Her tone of voice was calm, not befitting a child her age. The morning wind blew, lifting her white dress and black hair. That was an unusual delicacy and softness. The women and girls outside didn't have this kind of thing—Doussay had this quality as well, but it was even more obvious in this girl.

An Zhe stood behind her. He had just protected a human youngling, and at the same time, he had paid a price. At least, his existence had been exposed to this girl's eyes, and now he stood in the midst of extreme danger, unable to reveal any weaknesses.

He said, "Why are you here?"

"Sometimes, the surveillance will be messed up for a while. They haven't discovered it yet," the girl said. "I come out to look at the sky."

"You can look at the sky during free activity time too," An Zhe said. "What floor and class are you in?"

He earnestly carried out the responsibility of a teacher. He couldn't allow a youngling to stay in such a dangerous place.

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She said, "I'm in the Garden of Eden."

"Which floor and which class of the Garden of Eden are you in?"

"I'm not in any floor or class," she said. "Only boys are there."

An Zhe patiently explained, "The classes have girls too."

There were many girls in his class alone, such as Ji Sha—although their appearances were about the same as the boys, not wearing dresses or letting their hair grow to shoulder-length like the girl in front of him.

"Those girls aren't girls." She turned her head to look at him. "Only the ones on the twentieth floor and above are real girls."

"How come?" He asked.

"You don't even know that?" she said.

"I don't know," An Zhe said.

It was the truth. He indeed knew very little about this human base.

An expression other than indifference appeared on the girl's face for the first time. The corners of her lips lifted, carrying a faint pride. "Then you don't know the 'Rose Manifesto' either."

"What is it?" He asked.

The girl turned around and draped herself on the railing. The sun rose faintly in the sky.

"Then you wouldn't also be unaware of bacterial infection, right?" she said.

"I know about it," An Zhe said. He did indeed know about the calamity that led to the death of ninety percent of this planet’s humans, once upon a time.

"Only people with outstanding genes could survive," she said.

"Mm-hm," An Zhe said.

Against strong mutated bacteria, human treatment methods had no effect, so they could only escape infection by relying on innate immunity. If a human's genes destined him to resist this disease, he would be able to survive.

"Then, after those people survived, they discovered that very few live children were being born in the world." She reached up to comb her hair and paused for a while, as if she was sorting out her words. Only then did she say, "After being infected, the surviving girls all had defects in their ability to give birth. Only a very few of them had relatively small defects that would allow them to safely do so."

An Zhe didn't say anything. She wrinkled her nose and continued. "Scientists would give them genetic examinations. The rubric said that if they had beneath sixty points, they lost the ability to do so entirely. Above sixty points, there was a chance they could have normal children. Then there was the 'Rose Manifesto'. You're a boy, so the Manifesto has nothing to do with you."

An Zhe asked, "What is the Rose Manifesto?"

"We just memorized it," she said. "Would you like to hear it?"

"Okay, "An Zhe said.

In a calm voice, she recited, "The 23,371 women of the four human bases with a fertility score of 60 and above passed the following manifesto with zero rejection votes: I'm willing to devote myself to the destiny of humankind, accepting genetic experiments and all forms of assisted reproduction, to strive for an entire lifetime for the continuation of the human race."

"That's how it is," she said. "That's why I'm on the twentieth floor, and you guys are down below. Now you know."

"Thank you," He said. "But you still need to take care to not come to such a dangerous place."

"I won't jump down," she said. "I come every week. Haven't you come as well?"

She looked at An Zhe again and repeated, "I want to look at the sky, so I come here. Why are you here?"

"I can't find my way back," An Zhe said.

"I know the way," she said. "I have a secret passage."

He thought for a while. "I also don't have clothes to wear."

"I also know where the laundry room is," she said.

An Zhe asked her, "Could you tell me where it is?"

But she didn't give a direct reply. Instead, she asked, "Are you a student from the lower floors?"

"I'm a teacher," An Zhe said.

"Promise me one thing." Her eyes seemed to gain a bit of spirit as she said to An Zhe, "Promise me one thing, and I'll go find clothes for you, then take you outside through the secret passage."

An Zhe asked, "What thing?"

"Find a boy on the sixth floor called Si Nan and tell him that I've been injected with a tracking agent, so I can't go out to play with him anymore," she said. "At this time next week, come back here and tell me what he said."

He was silent.

The girl looked at him and asked, "Are you unable to do that?"

"I..." An Zhe met her eyes. She blinked, and only at this time did she seem like a normal child.

In the end, he said, "I may not be able to.”

She said, "You can find him. He's just on the sixth floor."

An Zhe didn't say anything.

But she seemed to become a bit anxious. As she pushed open the balcony door, she said, "I'll go find some clothes for you."

Before An Zhe could stop her, her white dress disappeared behind the door.

If the Si Nan she spoke of was the Si Nan who An Zhe knew, then he was already no longer in the Garden of Eden, but rather the Lighthouse. But he didn't know how she would react if he really told her this information. He knew that human emotions would bring her pain.

So even after the girl left and came back, pulled him along through the quiet and deserted empty corridor, and finally stopped at a half-open small door in a pile of odds and ends, he still hadn't figured out how to respond.

"If you can get in, you can go down to the first floor." She pointed to the door.

That door was half-open. Strictly speaking, because it had been long neglected, it was no longer perfectly shut, but rather loosened. But the rusty door bolt still hung on one side of the door, one side of it embedded in the wall, making it so that the door could only open far enough to allow a child to slip through sideways.

An Zhe said, "I'll try."

He walked up to the door and leaned over slightly.

It was impossible for an adult human to pass through here, but he was still a mushroom after all. Under the cover of his clothing, his body briefly changed into hyphae. After losing the limitations of a human skeleton, he very easily got through the door.

"Your body is so soft," the girl said.

"I have something as well," An Zhe said. "Can you not tell others that I came here today?"

The girl said, "If you come here again next week—"

Her voice cut off.

"Lily?" A female voice sounded.

"You came here again." The voice carried an undertone of reproach.

An Zhe dodged to the side, and he heard Lily say, "I'm sorry, Madam."

"This time it was I who found you." The voice of the woman referred to as "Madam" was gentle. "If it was them, you'd be locked up again."

Lily said, "I won't do it again."

Following that conversation was the sound of footsteps as they seemed to walk away. An Zhe looked in that direction through the crack and saw that a madam in a long white dress was holding Lily's hand as their figures gradually receded in the dimly-lit corridor.

Lily hadn't finished speaking, but he knew what she wanted to say. He seemed to have reached an agreement with Lily. Next week, he had to come here again and tell her Si Nan's reply.

Preoccupied, he looked around—it was dark all around, and the aroma of dampness wafted towards him. He dimly saw that the walls were mottled and flaking and covered with grayish-green spots of mold and that the ground was covered with fallen light gray powdery debris—this was a narrow and steep staircase. Furthermore, it was obvious that it hadn't been used in who knows how many years.

An Zhe found the stair handrail and walked down along it bit by bit. There were no windows, and it was even darker than the night. This place wasn't much better than the pipes.

Every floor had twenty steps. As An Zhe walked, he counted the floors. When he got to the sixth floor, there was a gap in the staircase's small door approximately the same size as the one on the twentieth floor. He exited from there and reached the sixth floor's utility room.

The bright light shone upon him. The clothes Lily gave him were the standard uniform of the Garden of Eden's staff members, a snow-white shirt—no different from his previous dress. He walked out and took a look at the time on the wall clock in the corridor. It was seven o'clock. If he went to work at the training base from the Garden of Eden—he was already late.

Thus, An Zhe went downstairs, speeding up as he walked towards the doorway. The bright red "Humankind's interests take precedence over all else" slogan was particularly eye-catching on the snow-white wall. The staff clad in white uniforms walked about on the bright ground, and children's voices traveled over from afar. Everything was different from the interior of the quiet and circuitous pipes.

He felt that he had been reborn.

The main hall's glass door opened, and he ran head-first into someone.

An Zhe was at a loss for words.

Lu Feng.

Behind and slightly to one side of Lu Feng was Seraing.

He saw Lu Feng's eyes narrow, and from this movement, he felt an aura of danger.

As expected, Lu Feng said grimly, "Why are you here?"

Facing this person, An Zhe's hyphae were on the verge of standing on end.

He shouldn't be in the Garden of Eden right now; he should be at the training base with Colin.

"I..." He lifted his head to look at Lu Feng.

Those ice-cold green eyes observed him, seemingly saying: you can start telling your tall tales now.

An Zhe said, "... I went the wrong way."

He really did go the wrong way, having gotten utterly lost under the entire city. If he hadn't come to the Garden of Eden by coincidence, or if he hadn't found that balcony in time, he may have continued to be trapped in that place, then lose his identity as a human and never again be able to come out.

And...

And this bastard Lu Feng would never have anything to do with him from then on.

He slightly dropped his gaze. For some reason, he unexpectedly felt that the current Colonel wasn't as hateful as before.

Then he heard Seraing gently say, "You're supposed to go to the training base for work today. Did you not realize that the location has changed?"

An Zhe said nothing. The sun rose from behind the distant artificial magnetic pole, and its golden light shone on the silver buttons of Lu Feng's uniform.

His voice was a bit hoarse. "Moreover, you'll be late."

Lu Feng didn't say anything, but he also didn't deliberately make things difficult for An Zhe. He felt that, based on Lu Feng's understanding of his IQ, Seraing's reason was sufficiently convincing. He moved to one side, trying to bypass Lu Feng and leave.

Suddenly Lu Feng's voice came from next to him. "I'll take you there."

Lu Feng drove very steadily and quickly, his speed at least twice that of the shuttle. When he stopped at the entrance to the training base, the display inside the car showed that the time was just 7:25 a.m., five minutes before it was time to go to work. He wasn't late.

It was just that when he got out of Lu Feng's car, An Zhe felt that those other people who had also come to the training base for work all cast a look at him.

In any case, it wasn't his first time being looked at. An Zhe came to the card-reading turnstile at the entrance. People came over one after another, swiped their cards to open the turnstile, and walked in.

An Zhe froze—he realized something.

Footsteps came from behind him. He turned around and saw Lu Feng standing very close behind, looking at him with eyebrows raised.

"... I forgot my card, too," An Zhe said.

He heard Lu Feng softly click his tongue.

Two slender fingers clasped the blue ID card and put it up to the sensor. With a "beep", the turnstile opened.

Lu Feng used his own ID card to open the gate for him.

At the same time, the Colonel's voice, tinged with a faint disdain, sounded in his ear.

"So stupid."