Qingchen once thought about whether there would be countdowns on other people's arms?
It was precisely because of this speculation that he would take the subway to verify something far away so carefully to avoid being found by others looking for clues in the future.
But then a series of changes happened one after another, making Qingchen almost forget about this guess.
Now it seems that his guess has finally become a reality.
There must be a lot of people who have traveled from earth to this world. There are two in this prison alone, not to mention the world outside the prison.
How many time travelers are there? Hundreds? Thousands?
Why did they travel across time?
Qingchen couldn't be sure.
"The new guy here this time is quite interesting. I'm afraid he's not a fool," someone looked at the collapsed young man and said with a smile, "I heard that he was sentenced to 7 years for tax evasion? Didn't he come in yesterday when he was escorted in?
Cry, I have only cried now.”
"Anyone who dares to mess with the tax collection agency these days is nothing but a fool..."
Qingchen looked towards the source of the sound. It was a young man with mechanical legs. When the other party saw him looking, he raised his lips and smiled: "Hey, new guy, are you ready?"
The crowd around him burst into laughter, as if they were all waiting for a good show.
This place is obviously so sci-fi and advanced, but the evil side of human beings doesn't seem to have changed at all.
Qingchen frowned, but ignored it. He looked again at the young man surrounded by drones.
I'm afraid only he knows that the reason why the other person didn't cry yesterday but only cried today is that the other person, like himself, just traveled through the "greenhouse" of the earth today and can't accept this reality.
This is not a guess, but he has met the other person.
Qingchen is 17 years old and is in his second year of high school at Luocheng Foreign Language School.
The boy who collapsed was in the first grade of high school.
The two of them had never crossed paths, but Qingchen had a photographic memory, and it was difficult to forget what he had seen.
This made Qingchen a little surprised. Could it be that the locations before the time travel were similar and the locations after the time travel would also be very close?
He couldn't be sure.
However, Qingchen discovered something: everyone here spoke Mandarin, but no one spoke dialects.
At this moment, the robot guard is rushing up the stairs, spanning five steps with each step, accompanied by a unique hydraulic transmission sound.
The young man was already crying uncontrollably.
Half of the people in this prison fortress are equipped with mechanical limbs. Meeting earthlings in a place surrounded by such steel beasts feels like meeting an old friend in a foreign land.
Most people will feel an inexplicable sense of security when meeting "fellow countrymen" in a strange place.
But Qingchen didn't feel this way. Looking at the boy who was on the verge of collapse, he realized that "fellow countrymen" may not necessarily help you, but may become a drag.
Not everyone can remain calm in the face of this newly arrived mechanical civilization.
What he has to do now is to survive the first two days of his arrival, and then return to Earth to understand why all of this is happening.
Qingchen watched in low-key silence. For some reason, he felt calmer at this moment.
Until then, all the prisoners were still standing motionless.
He looked around the prison fortress. Among the nine robots that had just rushed through the gate outside the prison area, three were left to guard the square downstairs while the rest went upstairs to take away the panicked teenager.
The square downstairs is very wide and feels as big as a football field.
The open square is divided into several areas: restaurants, fitness equipment entertainment areas, reading areas, audio-visual areas, etc...
There is no separation between these areas, it is like a large free activity place, and there are 8 large steel gates distributed on the edge of the square.
Those gates are so big that they can allow armored vehicles to pass directly.
Suddenly Qingchen was stunned. He saw three people appearing at the dining table in the square downstairs at some unknown time.
A middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties was sitting, with two other young men standing beside him with smiles, and then raised their heads with interest to look at the prisoners upstairs.
There was a chessboard in front of the middle-aged man, and an endgame was laid out on the chessboard.
The most surprising thing is that next to the chessboard on the dining table, there is a cat taking a nap with its paws in its hands. It is grey, with two tufts of pointy hair on its ears. It looks a bit like a lynx, but it is not.
Maine coon cat.
Can you keep a cat in prison?!
Qingchen was a little shocked. His eyes were attracted by his "fellow countrymen" just now, so that he didn't even see when these three people and a cat came to the square.
At this time, I saw the middle-aged man staring at the chessboard intently, as if what happened upstairs had nothing to do with him.
Moreover, what surprised Qingchen the most was that even the robots in the square acted as if these three people and one cat did not exist.
The seriousness and tension upstairs and the relaxation and calmness downstairs are like two different worlds in sharp contrast.
Among the three people, the two young men were wearing normal blue and white prison uniforms, while the middle-aged man was wearing a white exercise uniform.
In this dark and depressing environment, that touch of white is extremely dusty.
Qingchen thought to himself, could this be the warden?
No, although the other prisoner was wearing a different training uniform than the other prisoners, there was a small black prison number embroidered on the chest of the training uniform.
This middle-aged man is also an inmate in the prison, but he is the most special one.
As if sensing his gaze, a young man next to the middle-aged man suddenly turned his head and looked back at him with a smile.
Qingchen immediately took it back.
After the collapsed Earth boy was taken away, the announcement sounded again in the prison fortress: "Go to the restaurant in order of queue."
As soon as he finished speaking, Qingchen saw all the prisoners turning to the right, then lining up in a long formation, heading towards the square along the stairs.
Only then did Qingchen have the opportunity to count all the prisoners: including him, 3102.
This prison fortress has a total of seven floors. The prisoners on each floor form a team, led by the prisoner at the front of the team, and go to the restaurant in an orderly manner.
During this period, no one jumped in the queue, and no one left the queue. Qingchen felt that everyone here seemed to be operating according to established procedures, and everything was "restrained".
This order does not end until everyone has finished typing their meals from the robot window.
It seems that after finishing the meal, we can move around freely.
Qingchen and the others lived on the fifth floor, so when it was their turn to prepare meals, the people on the first floor in front had already finished their meals. Two burly prisoners were seen dragging a young man directly to the one closest to the restaurant.
When I walked to the cell on the upper floor, there were many people following me, making noises.
Someone else said: "Pull him into the cell quickly, don't hurt him in the square, be careful of the intervention of the robot prison guards."
The prisoner pulling the young man responded casually: "Don't worry, I'm not a fool like Yang Jie."
At the same time, the young man struggled hard and screamed: "Let me go!"
But just when he was about to be pulled into the cell, the young man's voice turned to pleading: "Please spare me!"
However, no matter what he said, no one paid attention to his request, which only attracted more noisy ridicule.
Suddenly, the old man with mechanical eyes in front of him turned around and said with a smile: "Stop looking around, it will be your turn later."
Qingchen looked at him calmly, and the old man suddenly felt that there was something different in the eyes of the young man opposite him. He didn't know why, but he felt a sudden tightening in his heart.
After eating at the window, the formation dispersed.
Qingchen noticed that the three people around him were approaching him indistinctly, as if they wanted to control him directly!
He immediately quickened his pace, and the other party also quickened his pace, surrounding him tightly!
The next moment, the scene in the prison fortress seemed to have been replayed in Qingchen's mind.
On the dome, 18 steel beast-like machine guns stand silently on standby, like sleeping tigers.
72 drones hang in slots on the gray alloy ceiling, like sleeping wasps.
210 surveillance cameras slowly rotated, and three robots stood with guns in the square.
The prisoners received meals from the window one after another, and some complained that today was another unpalatable synthetic meat.
There are people washing dishes next to the sink, and there are people washing dishes for others.
As more and more people finished their meal, the square began to become lively. People were walking back and forth, some went to the fitness area, and others watched the newlywed ceremony.
However, everyone subconsciously avoided the middle-aged man staring at the chessboard.
The man was still looking at the chessboard seriously. No one was approaching within five meters of it. It was like a calm and hard rock on the sea level. All turbulent water and ships must give way.
Qingchen suddenly picked up a dinner plate and sped through the circle of three people, heading towards the middle-aged man.
Looking at the direction he was heading, many people suddenly realized what this newcomer wanted to do.
Gradually, more and more people turned their eyes to him and whispered. The expressions on the faces of each prisoner seemed to be waiting to see his joke.
There are many newcomers to prison who discover abnormalities in middle-aged men, and there are also many newcomers to prison who want to rely on each other to get out of trouble. Qingchen is never the only one.
But in fact everyone failed.
However, Qingchen turned a deaf ear to the banter and continued to walk through the crowd carrying the plate as if no one else was watching.
Before he could get close, he was stopped by the young man next to the middle-aged man. The other man smiled and said, "Newcomer, I know what your plan is, but we won't help you."
The other party guessed what Qingchen was thinking, and Qingchen cast his gaze behind the young man.
The middle-aged man turned a deaf ear to everything happening around him, as if he hadn't heard anything.
He looked at the middle-aged man seriously and said: "The forward soldiers advance, I can solve this endgame."
The middle-aged man didn't raise his head until then. Then the square suddenly became quiet and the cat opened its eyes.
…
Thank you Haihunyi for becoming a Silver Alliance member of this book.
Thanks to Li Ren, Teacher Ren, Snoring Mouse, Dabinger, Hot Talking, Yan Zuzu, and Wang Jianing for becoming the ally of this book!
