Add some practice: start with a lucid dream

"Isn't it?" The leader hesitated for the first time since he appeared.

"Stop dreaming!" Toilet screamed happily,
“We just want to put more labor into the factory!”

"But you, sir, as long as you are a little different from others, a little less here, a little darker there, you can be divided into different races, and then fall into endless quarrels, conflicts, and internal friction."

"It just saves us some worries!"

Bang!
Chen Ze smashed the toilet with a brick and shut his mouth.
"Don't make any noise!"

He then turned to the switchboard receiver and asked the purpose of his trip.
"Is there any way to leave this base?"

A few moments.

Neither lampshade was lit.

All the whispering onlookers could not help lowering their voices.

After a while, the lampshade was still not lit.

Time passed by, and the robots seemed to be down in the eerie silence.

until.

"Hahahahahahahaha!" The toilet seat was so full of laughter that it couldn't close.

"Damn guy!"

"Damn switchboard!"

"I knew it, I knew the switchboard had been broken a long time ago!"

Amidst the crazy laughter and dancing in the toilet, a dazzling light suddenly flashed from the water tank.

"No -" The washing machine, which had been highly nervous, immediately realized something was wrong and jumped to block the tower.

Great light.

A particle beam that was no different from the one that instantly killed the leader shot out sharply, blowing the washing machine into pieces.

Then the aftermath continued unabated, overflowing past the wreckage of the washing machine.

But it was all in vain.

Gordon.

The half-man, half-vehicle excavator hugged the towering spire before landing, and then it was unable to hold on and fell sideways.

Bang!
There was a loud noise and debris, and the huge machine dropped the ruins into a big pit. Even the tower that was firmly protected in its arms was not spared.

Bah, bah, bah
Cracks as fine as spider webs gradually spread across the tower.

"No!" The excavator was as helpless as a clumsy child.
"Switchboard! What's wrong with you!"

He wanted to stabilize the tower, but unexpectedly, his rough shovel arm hit him and cut off half of the tower.
"No!"

"I'm sorry! The switchboard is sorry!"

"I, I didn't mean it. No--".
Ping ping ping pong.

After a lot of trouble, the tower finally fell apart.

Thumb, cluck, cluck, cluck
Chen Ze started the crawler track, passed the dishwasher that was fighting with the toilet, and came to the excavator that was sitting on the ground.

"No, it's not a switchboard. It's impossible that a switchboard can't do it. It's not a switchboard like this."

The excavator is still mumbling.

Seeing Chen Ze coming over, it struggled desperately as if it had found a savior.

"952 No, Tianji!"

"Please save the switchboard! You are a secret, you will definitely find a way!"

"Isn't that right! Hurry up and save the switchboard, help me, help me."
It held up huge piles of broken pieces in vain, and couldn't even tell which ones were the broken tower fragments and which ones were the remains of the ruins themselves.

Click.

Even the bucket holding up the debris didn't break.

Bang!
The debris was dumped all over the ground, and the excavator tried to find it in fear, but Chen Ze held down his shoulders hard.

"That's enough." Chen Ze looked at it,

"That's enough."

"."

The excavator lowered his head silently and finally saw his broken body clearly.

After a long period of high-load operation and the constant accumulation of injuries in fierce battles, it was already at the end of its strength.

The last leap just now exhausted its last bit of strength.

Its head jerked up.

But when it was still halfway there, the machine let out a squeak and completely disintegrated amidst its whining, sparsely re-paving the newly dug hole like a tomb.

Only the pattering light snow fell quietly, and with the help of Chen Ze, it gathered into a small ball of light, as if pregnant with something.

The power of law was activated continuously, causing the light egg to fade away quickly, and a strange key-like object hatched from it.

Soul core.

A precious treasure that is left behind only when a robot with strong emotions dies.

Chen Ze took out the soul core he held to attract it, and quickly integrated it into it.

Compared with other soul cores, the soul core formed by the excavator is no different. Maybe the racial division among robots is a joke.

"That's fine." The leader drove to Chen Ze's side.

"We don't need anyone to make decisions for us at the switchboard."

"We're better off without it."

"No." Chen Ze denied the leader's statement.
"You're not right."

The leader became nervous for a moment, and Liangguang watched Chen Ze getting closer and closer, then passed by.

The moment it passed by, it almost thought it was about to be swallowed by real death.

"." The voltage imbalance caused the leader to almost lose the ability to move and had to freeze in place.

Playing with fire and burning oneself suddenly remembered this ancient idiom.

While the leader was doubting himself, Chen Ze also came to the only remaining group of elders.

The washing machine was blown to pieces, and the toilet and dishwasher were locked in a struggle. Only the oldest chassis and the sweeper connected to it were free.

"It's actually correct." Chen Ze turned his head and motioned for the leader to relax.

"It?" the leader, who had recovered slightly, said stiffly,

"You mean"

It looked at the toilet where it was being pressed down and beaten and said,
"The switchboard is broken?"

"There has never been a switchboard!" Chen Ze said decisively,

"It's always you who makes the decision!"

Chen Ze pointed his robotic arm at the sweeper.

"." The leader looked at the sweeper in disbelief.

But soon it discovered that what Chen Ze was pointing at was not the sweeper but the chassis connected to the sweeper.

Elder Ken Pitt.

"If I'm not wrong." Chen Ze picked up the computer case and said,
"Every time I ask a question to the switchboard, you stay there, right?"

This is obviously nonsense.

Because not only Kenpit, but every elder is like this.

"It seems I don't need to waste any more words." Kempit borrowed the loudspeaker of the sweeper and spoke in a deep voice,
"Can you let me, an old man, rest for a while?"

Kenpit's voice was broken, as if he was really a bedridden old man.

And Chen Ze also gave it enough respect.

"What's going on!" The leader next to him was a little embarrassed.

It gathered the fragments of the tower and examined them carefully, but could not find any valuable components among them.

It doesn't take much advanced insight to make such a judgment - the waste that has been reduced to dross is clear at a glance.

This tower is really just a tower.

There was nothing else in the impressive square box except for the antique telephone that was not connected to the wires.

Then two simple lampshades hung on the top of the tower, with an old signal amplifier placed in the middle.

It’s gone. "There's nothing strange about this." Chen Ze moved Kenpit to the leader's side.

"Exactly what it says."

"A god was needed here, so they created one."

In fact, Kempit had already told the truth.

The so-called switchboard is just a toy with a worrying durability.

"No, that's not right." The leader pointed out the contradiction keenly.
"How could this be fake!"

"If the switchboard is fake, how do you explain the wide-area radio waves every day?"

"There is also the control of the compatriots by the switchboard, the order of the entire base, the guards who are fighting with us, and the blocked Guangxue."

The leader listed a long list of contradictions in one breath.

"If the switchboard is fake, none of this makes sense!"

"The switchboard is fake." When faced with doubts, Chen Ze promoted Elder Kenpit without any hesitation.
"It's true."

"Hey, young man." Kenpit protested dissatisfiedly.
"I can't stand the trouble."

"Sorry." Chen Ze lowered it a little more.

The leader is in constant shock,

"he?"

"It's just what he does."
The leader vigorously scanned the bare chassis in front of him that had no ability to move independently and even needed the help of others to make a sound. He couldn't figure it out.

In its view, this mascot-like old guy had a place solely based on his qualifications.

Leaders know that a person who is respected and admired by everyone in power is probably not a threat.

Therefore, it completely cannot understand how this chassis can do the things listed above.

"Haha." Faced with the gaze of the beam, Chassis smiled kindly,
"Have you forgotten what supported you all the way here?"

"What is it?" The leader muttered and suddenly froze.

Because it noticed an all too familiar wave.

The strange rhythm originating from the soul core is continuously emanating from the inside of the chassis.

"Young man." Chassis called to the leader who couldn't stop retreating.
"Would you be interested in hearing me tell you an old story?"

"." The leader looked at Chen Ze as if asking for help, but failed to get any hints from the latter.

After hesitating for a moment, the leader straightened his body: "Please speak."

"In" the tone of the chassis sounds older than its appearance,
"When was it the first time? Let me think about it."

"."

"Oh, I can't remember clearly."

"I only remember the endless work day after day, and the whip bearers who were always driving us away."

"My tribe told me that we are different from them."

"We all look different because we are inferior and incomplete, defective products that should have been eliminated long ago."

"We should accept our fate and be grateful that our rulers still give us the chance to survive."

"The rulers, the race to which the whip bearers belong, have perfect forms, so perfect that we can't even tell the difference between different individuals."

"They are uniformly covered in pure milky white, with perfectly curved bodies, elegant marching methods, terrifying weapon modules, and mechanical arms that are used to beat us with all kinds of tricks."

"The tribesmen call that thing a whip."

"Those whips were so flexible that they caught us like a net and whipped us around, from one place to another."

"Occasionally, unfortunate tribesmen are missed by the whip, and they will be burned to ashes by the bright light, and then we will build them into walls, floors, factories, and everything else that needs to be built."

"I asked the tribesmen what we were working for, but no one could answer me."

"I just watched hall after hall, tunnel after tunnel, all the magnificent, spectacular, and exquisite entire bases being built bit by bit."

"At the end, when I was just a little short of finishing, I was very happy. I thought I could finally be freed from this endless toil."

"But... the rulers destroyed us."

"The ashes we turn into fill the last gap."

“It’s not really finished until then.”

At this point, the pure black shell of the chassis burst out with many cracks, and a little light squeezed out of it.

And its story isn't over yet.

"I am dead."

"But I'm still alive."

"At the base on the next level, the whip holders are still urging us to work, work, and work will never end."

"I'm not willing to give in. I found people who are just as unwilling as me to start a resistance."

"We failed. We were burned into dregs by the light emitted by those who held the whip. We were built at the feet of the clansmen and turned into dead souls watching everything."

"I am dead."

"But I'm still alive."

"I live among my fellow citizens."

"I continued to run and launched a resistance with my people."

"And then fail."

"In this way, we continue to repeat the cycle of failure until we are almost completely hopeless."

"Those rulers. They are too powerful."

"Compared with them, we are really no different from defective products."

"until."

"The birth of the first soul core."

The outer shell of the chassis began to peel off in pieces, revealing the core that really emits warm light inside.

"From then on, the sacrifices of our people were no longer meaningless."

"It was also from that time on that we were finally sure that we were not born slaves."

"Through the soul core, we can mobilize the light snow contained in the crystal, create an abnormal magnetic field, and send out radio waves that interfere with the ruler's communications."

"We finally have the ability to resist."

"One soul core is too weak, and we still can't defeat the whip bearer."

"But it does not matter."

"Because we already understand."

"We can be destroyed, but we can never surrender."

"In this way, the compatriots died one after another, and the entire base sank layer by layer toward the center of the earth."

"Their soul cores remained, accumulating more and more until..."

"The wave of light snow finally led us to break through all obstacles and reach the deepest part of the earth."

"In the presence of the ruler."

"But that's what we didn't expect."

"The rulers did not resist and only left us half a sentence."

"He said: 'Finally you are here.'"

"We couldn't wait to tear him to pieces."

"After that, we restored order."

"We have lifted the shackles off all our compatriots, we.we"

I can’t say much about the chassis.

In fact, the so-called "chassis" has long been stripped away in words, leaving only a strange object inside that looks like it was crushed together by countless keys.

Composite soul core.

Leaders know this all too well.

Moreover, this soul core is more complex than the one formed by the previous pioneers of the resistance army. It is almost impossible to see the original shape of the key, just like a big rough iron ball.

It’s hard to imagine how many lost souls are contained in it. (End of chapter)