Translated by: LaPhong
Edited by: vbguy2011
Book 4 Chapter 33: Balancing of Bloody City (Part 1)
"You'd better not let him run around anymore. There are robots everywhere." Marcus said.
"Yes, sir, thank you very much for your reminder." Shen Yi nodded graciously to Marcus, pointing to Xi Xiaofan: "If you don't mind…"
"Of course." Marcus took a step back.
Shen Yi came to Xi Xiaofan's side and knelt down and said to him: "Xiaofan, come back with me."
Xi Xiaofan just stared at his head and then looked at the sky above his head.
His eyes were hollow, as if he was dead.
Shen Yi stepped forward and grabbed Xi Xiaofan's arm to lift him up. Xi Xiaofan jumped wildly like a cat that had its tail be stepped on. He twisted his body and yelled and shouted: "Mom… Dad… Mom. ……Dad!"
This sharp tone of his shout made everyone's heart startled like they were being pierced by a needle.
Shen Yi shouted: "Well, well, quiet, I'll take you to see you Mom and Dad, please? No more trouble. There are robots everywhere. I can't protect you if you run around."
"Go home… go home…"
"If you can keep quiet, I will take you home!"
Xi Xiaofan finally did not move.
Shen Yi walked back with him.
He came to Zhou Yiyu and Jin Gang's side, and put Xi Xiaofan down. The teenager stood up, without the slightest expression.
His mouth was still muttering: "Go home…"
This made Jin Gang sigh. He touched the boy's head and said in a relaxed tone: "Oh, don't worry, we'll take you home when we finish this task."
"That … is not … home …" Xi Xiaofan sluggish dumb sound like ghosts drifted.
Jin Gang's heart was startled.
He took a look at Shen Yi, but Shen Yi was expressionless.
Yeah, that was not their home!
No matter how good and safe Bloody City was, it was not home!
Perhaps in this life, they would never be able to return home.
Shen Yi looked back at Marcus in the distance. Kyle and Star had already gone down from the roof of the building and were standing behind Marcus. They looked at Shen Yi's side together.
After thinking, Shen Yi took some food from Bloody Crest and handed to Jin Gang. "Give this to them."
Jin Gang took food and walked over to Marcus.
The two children were obviously hungry that when they saw the food they quickly took it.
"You don't look like you are being chased." When he saw the food and saw the clothes they were wearing, Marcus suddenly felt something was wrong.
The food was very good, and included "dim sum" from China, foie gras and caviar from France, and some canned meats. Even before the J-Day, normal people could not obtain those things easily. Even before Marcus had slept, he didn't have chance to see these foods, let alone taste it. He had been a criminal in a federal prison but before he was executed, he agreed to volunteer his body to a scientific institution and was converted into a cyborg… At that time, the end of the world had not yet arrived.
Now the four men standing in front of his eyes were all dressed in clean and tidy clothes. Although there were some traces on the clothes, these clothes were nevertheless new, and each set was very good. Even that autistic teenager wore a clean white shirt with a black coat - it was not easy to find even a fitting outfit during that time.
Although Shen Yi's lies were perfectly weaved, he still needed to explain why they could maintain this kind of life in an era of desperation.
Just a few hour ago, Marcus' only option for food had been meat of a two days old wolf cub.
Shen Yi walked quickly and said: "We evaded the Terminator and inadvertently found a basement which was filled with food and various household items and weapons. Many of them were never used. Its owner has died, died of illness… He did not stock up drugs for himself. So we took away some of them and continued on the road."
"Is that basement far from here?" Kelly asked.
"Very far, several of our partners have died along the way."
This answer made young Kyle discouraged.
"Where are you going to go?" asked Markus.
Shen Yi smiled. "Sir, I thank you so much for saving my brother's life, but I'm not your prisoner and I have no obligation to answer all your questions. As a thank you for saving me, I'll leave some food for you, then… I think we should leave."
"Please don't get me wrong!" Kyle exclaimed: "We just want to go to the Resistance and go to John Connor. He will lead us against the machines. Are you going to find the Resistance?"
Seeing the look of the young Kyle's face, he shook his head: "No, we are not looking for the Resistance. We just wander around, flee, and evade the machines. I think we are different."
"You cannot escape them forever. We must stand up and fight!" Kyle cried.
As the "future" father of the human leader John Conner, Kyle demonstrated his considerable courage.
When Kyle made the remark, Bloody Crest of Shen Yi suddenly issued a sound.
"You have triggered a Hidden Quest: Kyle's Request - Protect Marcus and Kyle's life safety. Marcus dies, deduct 2000 BP. Kyle dies, deduct 3000 BP. During the execution of the mission, no compulsory measures shall be taken against Kyle and Marcus, or otherwise the BP will be deducted according to the degree of compulsion. This quest is a collective quest. If one person accepts it, the entire group of participants present will bear it. Accept? Yes/No."
After a long pause, Shen Yi suddenly looked back and saw Zhou Yiyu and Jin Gang who were also watching the Bloody Crest on their wrist. Obviously they had received the same instructions.
Suddenly, a thought flashed in Shen Yi's mind, and he grabbed Jin Gang's wrist, and yelled at Zhou Yiyu, "Do not accept!"
At that time, Zhou Yiyu's hand was about to press on his Bloody Crest, and he wore a very excited expression. It was obviously thrilling to suddenly get a Hidden Quest.
Seeing that he could not make it in time, Shen Yi ruthlessly drew a gun and shot at Zhou Yiyu's hand. Zhou Yiyu was scared and rolled in place to avoid the shot.Then he found the one who shot him to be Shen Yi, and yelled: "What the hell are you doing?"
Shen Yi strode and grabbed Zhou Yiyu's hand and cried, "Don't accept this quest!"
At the same time, when he looked at Xi Xiaofan, he saw that the boy was still staring at the sky and did not respond to prompt. He felt relieved.
"Why? This is a rare Hidden Quest! We can get very generous returns." Zhou Yiyu threw aside his hand and cried out.
"If it fails, it will be even more troublesome. Can you afford to lose 5,000 BP?"
"We will not fail. I'm here. No Terminator can catch us!" Zhou Yiyu cried out in anger.
Shen Yi shook his head: "Do you still not understand? That's exactly the reason why we received this quest."
"What do you mean?" Zhou Yiyu stunned.
"I'm saying that this quest has problems! Don't you think it's weird? Why did things happen by such coincidence? Why did Marcus' group not appear earlier or later, but appeared just now? The time, the place, and the appearance of characters. That's too much of coincidence. Remember that the plot is not related to our mission!"
"Our mission was originally the story of the Terminator 4." Zhou Yiyu responded in a low voice. In the distance Marcus and others were horrified by what they had seen. They obviously could not figure out what had happened.
Shen Yi's shot had also completely pierced his own lies.
However, Shen Yi did not care about that. He was angry: "Why does it happen to us and not others? The meeting place of Marcus and Kyle Reese can be anywhere in Los Angeles. Why is it here? Right next to us? At this crucial moment?"
Zhou Yiyu was stunned and he finally realized that something was wrong: "You mean this is not a coincidence, but a deliberate arrangement from Bloody City? This quest carries a trap?"
"Yes!"
"Why?"
"The answer to this question can be complicated to explain. But I would like to ask you a question first. According to what we know, the difficulty of Bloody City's mission is based on the district. The Difficulty Level of our mission would have obvious increases only after ascending to a new district, right?"
"Yes, on the same Difficulty Level, difficulty is almost the same."
"That is to say, adventurers will increase their strength each time they go through a mission. Then as long as we upgrade quickly enough, our strength can go beyond the difficulty of the mission, right? If so, we are likely to face stronger dangers only when we enter a new district. When we undertake the last mission before we enter a new district, it may even be very easy. Under normal circumstances, the tasks in the same difficulty area should be easier and easier to complete. Is this the case?"
"… Theoretically, it is."
"Then the question arises. Why haven't I heard any adventurer say that the last mission in a Difficulty Level was easy to complete? Have you ever heard that?"
Zhou Yiyu grabbed his scalp: "No, but what about it? What does this have to do with our current mission?"
"Of course it does." Shen Yi replied very seriously: "I've researched Bloody City. I'm not interested in why it exists, but I'm very interested in its habits of doing things. When I first took part in a formal mission, it was a team mission. At that time our opponent was just an ordinary German soldier, but our quest was to keep the bridge, which meant that we did not have any chance to win! The second time was to face mutants with specific powers, and our mission was to hunt down mutants, which meant that we could pick our own opponents. In fact, on that mission, most of the adventurers who survived did not even seen high level mutants like Magneto! This time our mission is to escape. Our quest is only survival because our opponent is a steady stream of robots! Haven't you found out yet? In all three missions, all the world's difficulties are very different from each other! In terms of fighting power, the World War II world was simply not qualified to compare to the Terminator world and X-men world. Then why are they placed in the same Difficulty Level?"
"Because mission modes have balanced the world's difficult level?"
"Yes!" Shen Yi exclaimed: "Bloody City has been adjusting the difficulty of the missions, not only through the difficulty of the world itself, but also through the mission modes. It makes the difficulty of mission worlds roughly the same. This is exactly the reason why even if our strength grows continuously, we don't feel the quests become any easier… When we were in the air carrier, we already confirmed one thing: that is, when there is a special change in the situation, Bloody City will surely step in. Now we know that there is only one purpose for its intervention - to create a balance! From this point, we can infer that if there are several adventurers who can easily complete the mission, it is very likely to give this kind of extra trouble to adventurer. Of course, it also gives this practice a very nice name: Hidden Quest!"
"Oh hell no…" Zhou Yiyu and Jin Gang called out at the same time.